http://asklaurenfleshman.com/journal/
She wants to have a bebe and heal up before coming back full time as a pro runner
She wants to have a bebe and heal up before coming back full time as a pro runner
no longer with Nike!
"Oh yeah, and I’ve decided to part ways with Nike, peaceably, and spend the next few months identifying my dream support team and preparing to make magic happen with them. Boom."
She decided? No, she got canned. The whole all-talk-no-action act doesn't pay the bills.
Funny the part about deciding to part with Nike, best $hit I read all day!
She's not coming back. Finally finding her calling, being a stay-at-home mom.
She's making about $5M/year from Picky Bars, so she can just run for fun now.
boulderisbolder wrote:
She's making about $5M/year from Picky Bars, so she can just run for fun now.
5 milly?
http://i.imgur.com/seh6p.gifIsn't she already in her 30s? Getting a bit old for gap years. Won't be easy to come back but if anyone do it, it would be Mrs F. That girl is NAILS.
She's profiting $5mm/year on an enterprise that, last I heard, was being run out of her kitchen? Maybe hand-baking millions of Picky bars a year was the cause of her injuries.
She will not be back. Having a baby is also not the best way to attract a new sponsor. Oiselle may pick her up as a lifestyle model, but it is time for Lauren to retire to blogging and raising her brood.
Fine collegiate and off-Olympic year career.
Hope things go well for Lauren, both in terms of baby-making, and staging a running comeback if that works. She is a great runner and a great person, and knows much better than to pay any attention to the negative bulls++t that shows up much too often on this site !
a. she's not making 5 mil.
b. making it back is relative: different than making an O' team.
Bubsayer wrote:
She's profiting $5mm/year on an enterprise that, last I heard, was being run out of her kitchen? Maybe hand-baking millions of Picky bars a year was the cause of her injuries.
When it was out of her kitchen, they had scaled up to 12,000 bars a month. And they aren't in her kitchen any more (read
http://pickybars.com/blogs/picky-bars/6294802-picky-bars-is-growing-up-new-production-partner)
Back of the envelope calculations suggest they have revenue of $3mm/year , so definitely not profiting at $5mm/year, but they can likely pay her a salary well above what Nike was paying her and it is perfect timing to go out on the road to use her former national champion status to promote the company. Hold clinics at running stores sponsored by picky bars and use them to convince the stores to carry the products. Hit up a different local road race every 3 or 4 days handing out bars to runners. And if she returns to racing in 2014 or 2015, she can now have a Picky Bars singlet in the NYC Marathon, not Nike. Picky Bars have great growth and they will easily be into 8 figure revenue by 2014.
(And don't forget, she has a second company,
http://www.believeiam.com/, that will also benefit from a tour of running stores around the country)
Taking a year off means taking your life off of comp running!
cowsandmilk wrote:
Back of the envelope calculations suggest they have revenue of $3mm/year , so definitely not profiting at $5mm/year, but they can likely pay her a salary well above what Nike was paying her and it is perfect timing to go out on the road to use her former national champion status to promote the company. Hold clinics at running stores sponsored by picky bars and use them to convince the stores to carry the products. Hit up a different local road race every 3 or 4 days handing out bars to runners. And if she returns to racing in 2014 or 2015, she can now have a Picky Bars singlet in the NYC Marathon, not Nike. Picky Bars have great growth and they will easily be into 8 figure revenue by 2014.
(And don't forget, she has a second company,
http://www.believeiam.com/, that will also benefit from a tour of running stores around the country)
Call me stupid, Ms Hyperbole, but 12,000 bars a month is 144,000 a year. At $2.00 a bar that's only $288,000 per year GROSS revenue. Take out material and production costs, then administrative, I don't see anywhere near $3mm profit? Maybe $150k at most!
Is LF returning to Hollywood ?
so many couch to 5k losers out there dumping criticism on her. i'm sure all the posters crewed up as a relay team could not beat her. and the rules being- you can't pick your relay team. even the morbidly obese poster must have atleast a 400m leg participation.
So she probably got "dumped" by Nike. How many runners are able to keep a substantial contract when they're in their 30's?
Even if she doesn't make a comeback, I will always be her fan. She is always funny, always insightful and one of the few elites/former elites out there that truly cares about the fans. So thanks, Ms. Fleshman.
She's done.
Yeah she probably got canned but that speaks more to short-sighted corporate sponsor than it does to her future place in running.
Runner's World should pick her up, use her as a good will ambassador like with Bart Yasso. Except marketed toward women with kids.
She's a good runner but is great at connecting to an audience. There's no other competitive runner with such likable personality not one that appears so relatable to hobby joggers.
I wish her well, but she seems to be totally underestimating the work needed to raise a baby.
She wants to have a baby !
Here is how it will go , gets knocked up , business grows , kid time , running time but not training time , hubbie is full time athlete no time for kid , new priorities , retire.....
The topic of discussion is a Stanford graduate, entrepreneur, runner successful beyond the wildest expectations of 99.965 percent of human beings. Imperfect as a competitor, yes, but unlike most, willing to discuss this with an anonymous public.
Before the Internet existed, I never would have believed it possible that someone like her would be the subject of scathing criticism that anyone would take remotely seriously. But now I know better.
So...thanks?
