This episode is brought to you by Wondery in partnership with Dell Technologies. In honor of small businesses, we’re featuring inspiring stories of successful companies that started out small.

In 1972, pinball machines and mechanical games ruled the arcades. Then, Atari founders Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney came up with a game on a television screen controlled by two players. Pong helped catapult Atari from a start-up to the leader of video games, where it would stay – almost unopposed – for the next decade. 

Once Atari made Pong, the company took off like a rocket. But for Dietrich Mateschitz, success was a slog. When he returned home to Austria from a trip to Thailand in 1982, he brought an idea for an energy drink with him. His creation was expensive and tasted foul, and would be rejected over and over.  But a slick marketing campaign made it the symbol of club cool and fuel for daredevils — and it took North America by storm.

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Amazon decides to go after Walmart’s biggest category: fresh food. But moving into groceries is harder than Bezos expected. Meanwhile, Walmart has finally found success in marrying their online operation with their brick and mortar stores by allowing consumers to order groceries online and pick them up at a store. And with an aggressive new head of online sales — who has a personal vendetta against Bezos — Walmart is feeling good. But, determined to make an impact in the world of fresh food, Bezos makes a move that surprises everyone and upends the retail world yet again.  

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Walmart finally decides to focus aggressively on its e-commerce division, but struggles with the best way to use the internet to reach consumers. They decide their best strategy is to buy up successful online retailers. Unbeknownst to Walmart, Amazon, which is looking to move into apparel sales, is pursuing a similar strategy. As the two companies go head-to-head over an unlikely product, Walmart is unprepared for just how dirty Amazon will play.

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By the mid-2000s, Walmart is starting to show some cracks. They are still successful, but bad press and sluggish growth are taking a toll on their earnings. The company debates the best way to move forward, including focusing on online sales, something they’ve long eschewed. As Walmart waffles, Amazon launches a risky new program that sews internal dissent, but moves the goal posts for e-commerce once again. 

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In the late 1990s, Walmart is happily trucking along, dominating the American retail market. They’re expanding locations and increasing their own backend efficiencies to keep prices low. It’s a formula that’s worked for decades and they see no reason to change now.

But as Bezos expands Amazon’s offerings, he quickly realizes that he doesn’t have the infrastructure to keep up with his ambitions. His warehouses are in chaos. There is only one company that knows infrastructure at the scale he envisions: Walmart.  

When Bezos starts poaching Walmart’s executives, he brings Amazon into Walmart’s sights. And they don’t like what they see.

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Ninety-six percent of Americans now shop online, snapping up everything from rare coins to industrial-sized barrels of hand sanitizer. Almost half of those purchases take place on one website: Amazon. 

But before sales were a click away, Walmart was the top dog, decimating main streets across America with its big-box efficiency and ruthlessly low prices. 

It’s 1994, and a slim 30-year-old with thinning hair dreams of leaving his high-paying finance job to sell books on the internet — a move he’s convinced is his ticket to one day dominating the world of e-commerce. Jeff Bezos just has to break the news to his parents. Luckily, he’s already found the perfect name for his new venture. 

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One of the key players in the story of The North Face is Hap Klopp, who in 1968, bought the then-burgeoning outdoor sports equipment store. He bought the company for the bargain price of $60,000.

Klopp was CEO of The North Face for the next 20 years, and turned the small chain of Bay Area stores into a multi-million dollar business. Today, The North Face is a global brand that can be found in 5,000 locations across 50 countries. 

We’ll hear from Klopp on what the journey was like to become one of the biggest outdoor apparel brands.

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It’s 2010 and Yvon Chouinard is about to give Patagonia’s executives their toughest challenge yet: telling people to buy less Patagonia gear.

Meanwhile, The North Face is playing catch up on environmental responsibility with a spate on new initiatives.

But soon, the two rivals will find themselves coming together to battle a common foe.

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It’s the late 1990s and The North Face is seeking to attract mainstream customers by opening hundreds of Summit Shops within the nation’s stores.

But when the expected avalanche of sales fails to materialize, the company finds itself slipping over the edge.

Meanwhile, Patagonia steps up its mission to become a responsible company by tapping into the latest in textile tech. 

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It’s the dawn of the 1990s and Yvon Chouinard is struggling to come to terms with his new status as a successful entrepreneur. He cannot decide what to do with the fast-growing monster he’s created.  

Meanwhile, The North Face’s new owner Odyssey International is pushing the limits as it scrambles to become the king of the mountain.

But when economic headwinds roll in and bring recession, both companies find themselves battling unforgiving conditions.

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