Advice Line with Curt Richardson of OtterBox

0:00Before we get into the episode, thanks to our presenting sponsor, Anthropic. They make Claude an AI built for the problems that take real thinking, research, strategy, planning, and making sense of a lot of moving pieces. Give it a try for the next thing you can't quite stop turning over in your head. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai.hibt. Seeing your business idea come to life is exciting, but it's also incredibly complex.

0:31But Shopify can make it simple. They provide all the tools you need to launch from day one. If you're nervous about building a website, Shopify's templates and AI tools will get you up and running with no coding needed. If you hit a wall in the setup process, Shopify's built-in AI assistant, Sidekick, can help you build, troubleshoot, and keep on moving. And when customers arrive, boom! Shopify checkout means more people actually buy and can check out with just one click.

1:01With Shopify to handle setup and checkout, you have more time to focus on growing your business. That's why Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, from household names like Gymshark and Mattel to businesses that are just getting started. All you need is the idea. Shopify handles the rest. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash built. That's Shopify.com slash built. Shopify.com slash built. They say that every day your business is late to AI, you fall two days behind.

1:35But how do you keep up when the competition is only moving faster? With NetSuite Next. NetSuite Next is the next huge leap in how business gets done. Because AI is built into everything you do. It automatically provides custom insights throughout your day, while AI agents work alongside you to solve problems and handle routine work. And anytime you have a question about anything, ask. Just like you're having a conversation with a colleague. If I needed to manage HR, commerce, inventory, CRM, financials, I would use NetSuite Next.

2:11Whether your company earns millions or even hundreds of millions, it's time for NetSuite Next, where your business meets AI. For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuite.ai slash built. Built for every industry, ready for every boardroom. netsuite.ai slash built. Hello and welcome to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.

2:46I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show, who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week is OtterBox founder, Kurt Richardson.

3:17Kurt was first on the show back in 2019. And if you missed that episode and you want to go back and listen, we will drop a link to it in our episode show notes. Kurt grew up in a tiny mountain town in southern Colorado. And when he was just 21, Kurt bought his own small plastics company. And for years, he had a really rough time of it until he came across a book called The E-Myth, which helped him understand what truly matters at the core. And this insight eventually led Kurt to build Otter products, which started out as small, waterproof boxes for outdoor enthusiasts.

3:51And when the iPhone exploded in popularity, OtterBox was in place to become the dominant phone case brand in the U.S., growing the company from $5 to $575 million in just five years. Fast forward to today, Kurt is no longer the CEO, but he's now the company's chief visionary officer. And we are so happy to have him back on the show. Kurt, welcome back to How I Built This. Oh, thank you for having me. I remember when we met in Denver. It was a great time. We did. We did a live show today. It was super fun.

4:23When you were on that show back in 2019, what did you think the next sort of five years would look like? And, of course, what eventually actually happened? I was out or getting out of running day-to-day by then, which was something I desired. I think any entrepreneur many times hits a size of a business where it's like, okay, this is beyond my skills. I'm great at startup, but this has turned into operational. So I went through a number of CEOs in the meantime, learned some hard lessons there.

4:57And we've got a great CEO and great executive team now in place at Otter and seeing some great benefits from it. So initially, OtterBox was known as the protective case. Like if you dropped a phone from a building, you knew it was going to be fine. Now, you know, you've got a whole range of products out there. I mean, when you are sort of the top brand, what does growth look like? Like how do you innovate? How do you get bigger? Or is that even – does it even matter? Well, we've been around 30 years.

5:29So for us, it really is listening to the customer, watching the market. A lot of things have changed and continue to evolve in the marketplace, although we've really become a commodity. So, you know, when we grew, we went clear up to $1.1 billion in revenue. And the market has shrunk. People don't buy phones as often. So as far as overall revenue, we've dropped. But as far as overall profit, we've come up.

6:00So for Otter, it was all about getting better at what we do and, you know, how we sell the product, whether it's D2C, whether it's distribution. You don't always have to be first to be there, but when you get there, you need to be very present. Yeah. Kurt, I remember we spoke about this a little bit, but one of the other things that you're focused on is this sort of other business that you started called Blue Ocean Enterprise. It's really focusing on investing in businesses that are designed to stimulate the economy and engage the community.

6:33You know, I hear from a lot of startup founders who are trying to build the next sort of interesting or cool consumer brand or consumer product. And often I'll say, you know, the businesses that are consistently successful in – at least in the U.S. – are the ones you don't hear about, the sort of the boring – I hate to use that word, but the sort of the boring businesses, right? That actually provide goods and services that many industries need, right? And really, OtterBox kind of started out that way.

7:04I mean, you weren't making – you know, it evolved into what it is today. If you were starting OtterBox today, right, with no brand and no distribution and no capital really, could you still build it in the same way or would you have to do it differently, do you think? I don't know that I would have to do it differently. Would I do it differently? Well, sure, I'd love to have the kind of capital to really just hit it hard. But you know what? There's a lot to be learned from bootstrapping it.

7:34There's a lot to be learned from having to do stuff the hard way. I think it makes you a better business person. It also makes you looking like, how do I do this differently? You know, the innovation isn't always in the product. The innovation is very much so in the business. How do I do this business right in the right way? And I think that's a huge question that a lot of people never ask. They're always looking for the next new product, and we've done that. We did coolers. We did clothing.

8:04You know, all of which we don't do anymore. Focus is so important. We focus on phone cases and mobile accessories. Yeah. Well, Kurt, we asked you to come onto the show to help us do one of the things that you really love doing, which is mentoring. And we've got some callers waiting for advice with some questions. You ready to take our first call? Sure. All right. Let's bring on our first caller. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with Kurt Richardson, founder of OtterBox. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business, please.

8:36Hello, guy. Hello, Kurt. This is Andy Jeremiah in Sarasota, Florida. My wife, Tracy, and I founded Mr. Game Show Florida in 2020. We conduct live game show events in the many gated communities in the area. Our mission is to have everybody play a game at least once a week. So we offer free print and play games and game night ideas on our website as well. All right. Thanks for calling in, Andy. Okay. So Mr. Game Show. So tell me, you convene game nights. Tell me specifically what you do. So our primary business is putting on live game show events.

9:08So communities here are always looking for something to put on their calendar. So we offer music bingo, a twist on Family Feud, a twist on the Wheel of Fortune. The unique part about our games is that we're very scalable from 12 to 200 people. And we just make sure everybody has a ton of fun. And these are retirement communities, I'm assuming, right? Mainly? Yeah. I mean, most of them are definitely 50 plus. But yeah, there are some family communities now in this area as well. Got it. Okay, cool. And how long have you been doing this? We started in 2020.

9:38Out of COVID, our community was looking for games. And we just started doing music bingo in the parking lot. It went so well, I started offering it to other nearby communities. And, you know, things took off from there. Wow. And tell me, how many events do you do a year, roughly? We average about 10 events a month as a side hustle. We did just over 50K last year, all through word of mouth, no advertising, no social media. Okay. And what does an event cost? We start at $350 for a 90-minute event.

10:09And it'll go a little bit more if we have to travel farther than the little radius that we like to stay in. Okay. So pretty, you know, relatively affordable, even for an event's budget at a community center. Okay. Exactly. Before we dive in further, what's your question for us? So we'd like to scale Mr. Game Show nationwide by providing our content to others who want to start their own local game show business. It's relatively low cost to start. We have great, unique content. We have a twist on a lot of, you know, popular, familiar games. We just want to get that material out to more folks.

10:41And we're just looking for a good pathway to get there. All right. Kurt Richardson, I want to bring you in here. Where Andy's got this business, they're hosting games, trying to figure out how to scale this, how to make this a bigger brand or bigger business. Yeah, scalability. Big question. And a tough one when it's so dependent on you. There's a lot of different ways to go here. Maybe it's an app kind of thing that they can buy into and you're giving them new content all the time. Maybe it's a video play.

11:12It's a training tool. It's a kit somebody buys. Maybe it's a subscription-based deal. That could be one way to go about it. To me, it seems like you've got to create a lot of content. So I guess, are you technical enough to be able to do that on your own? Can you and your wife put together that where that's sellable? We have. I mean, I was a former corporate trainer, so I'm great at developing documentation.

11:42And so we have a lot of, for example, our trivia game. We have over 26 sets, unique sets. You're ready to go, which I think are easy for other folks to kind of grab and promote themselves in their local market. Andy, I have a question for you. What do you, if I say to you, hey, what's your product? What are you selling? What's your answer? Fun. We're selling fun. Fun. Okay. I would argue, I would argue, and I can tell by just talking to you here, and I haven't been there, I would argue that you are the product.

12:13That you and Tracy are the product. Because it's not just music bingo. It's what you're bringing to it. The charisma and the excitement, probably the way you host, probably the way you write questions or jokes, you know, making sure that people have a great experience. And so the challenge is, is how do you scale Andy and Tracy, right? You know, we had a question about, similar to this in a recent advice line episode from somebody who had a training business, and I was trying to figure out how to scale that.

12:46And I, my advice to them is the same I would give to you, which is, you may want to start with an experiment. So, where in Florida are you? Sarasota area. Sarasota, okay. So, you're not too far from Tampa, is that right? Okay. So, maybe find somebody in Tampa that you can train, that you can give them your materials, and let them run a few events. And maybe show up and take notes and see what happens. See if customers are just as happy. And that's where you start to get the answer, can this scale, can I create material that I can license and build actually a business that is a Mr. Game Show branded or certified host, you know, down the line.

13:30Anyway, that's my initial thought. Kurt, sorry. Back to you. No, I did. That was great. Because I was kind of, honestly, I'm kind of stumped by this just because I'm such a product guy. And this is a product, and you're right, and he's the product. Yeah. Can he duplicate himself? Can he sell that? I mean, that's the question, and that's a great experiment. I think that's one of probably a couple different ways for you to go, yeah, this is doable, or maybe not.

14:01Okay. You know, maybe it's just, maybe I'm just going to keep doing this and make my $50,000 to $75,000 a year and be good with it. Now, you did say something interesting about your background, Andy. You said you were in corporate training at some point? Correct. Yes. Okay. That's great. So, you know what it means to build scripts and to build, you know, content and a playbook and, you know, rules and all of the systems. So, knowing that, if you can find compelling, exciting people, theoretically, this could work.

14:37You know, this is the whole Zumba model. In Zumba, you pay a license fee to be a Zumba instructor. Anybody could kind of replicate a Zumba-like class, but to actually be a Zumba certified instructor to get that, you know, on your title when you're trying to advertise a course, you've got to pay a license fee. That's the value. So, maybe, you know, you start to build this out thinking, all right, can we make Mr. Game Show that thing? You know, oh, it's a Mr. Game Show host.

15:07We want this person in our retirement community. But I think I would start with identifying somebody who's interested in doing this, who you think you could train, and see what happens. Great advice. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks for the many words of wisdom. And, Guy, thank you for all the inspiration you give entrepreneurs. Thank you. And, Kurt, thank you for the great role model that you've been to entrepreneurs as well. Thank you. You bet. You are, Kurt. In fact, all the work that you've done in building a sustainable company and also building a community of employees who really benefit from what you've done and what you've been doing.

15:41Well, thank you. I echo that. Thank you. Thanks, Andy. Thanks, Andy. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question, and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raz, and we're answering your questions right here on the advice line on how I built this lab.

16:02Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. I've been using Claude when I'm prepping for interviews, and it's become one of those tools that helps me get out of the messy middle faster. I can be looking at a founder's timeline, trying to understand what happened when, which early decisions mattered, what the real turning points were, and where the story actually starts. And instead of just giving me a quick summary, Claude helps me work through the material and find the thread, the thing that connects where someone started to where they ended up.

16:34And that's what I love about it. Claude doesn't just give me answers. It helps me think through the problem and organize what I already know and get to better questions. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. And now with CoWork, you can use Claude to help with the operational work that piles up too.

17:08Point it at a folder on your computer or connect tools like Google Drive, Gmail, and Slack. Describe what you need, and it can help organize files, build spreadsheets, draft reports from scattered notes, and queue up tasks so you can come back to finished work. So whether you're in deep research, prepping for a conversation, thinking through strategy, or just trying to hand off the busy work that slows everything down, Claude helps you keep moving. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai.hibt.

17:43Support for today's episode comes from Square, the easy way for business owners to take payments, book appointments, manage staff, and keep everything running in your business without running yourself into the ground. In my neighborhood, there's a shop that sells incredible locally made food, fresh breads, prepared meals, sauces, jams, all from producers within an hour's drive. And they use Square. And as a customer, I love the seamless payment, quick checkout, and easy receipts.

18:13Square's intuitive software and hardware simplifies everything. You can sell anywhere, in store, online, or mobile, while managing inventory and tracking sales in real time. With Square, you get all the tools to run your business, with none of the contracts or complexity. And why wait? Right now, you can get up to $200 off Square hardware at square.com slash go slash built. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash G-O slash built.

18:47Run your business smarter with Square. Get started today. Think about the last time you tried to launch a great new idea. You've got the passion, the vision, but then the moment you need to actually build a website, everything grinds to a halt in a bottleneck of technical requests and design issues. I've interviewed hundreds of founders on how I built this, and they all tell me the same thing. Momentum is everything. That's exactly why Framer is such a game changer.

19:17Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder for creators, teams, and businesses who want a professional site and care enough to get every single detail right. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com slash built for 30% off a Framer Pro Annual Plan. That's framer.com slash built for 30% off.

19:47Framer.com slash built. Rules and restrictions may apply.

19:57Welcome back to The Device Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Kurt Richardson. He's the founder of Otterbox and Blue Ocean, and we are taking your calls, and let's bring in our next caller. All right. I'm excited to talk. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business. Hey, I'm Marissa Valenzuela. I'm calling from Tampa, Florida, and I am the founder and lead fairy godmother of Gilded Coach Tees, where we create enchanted teas inspired by fairy tales from all around the world.

20:30Awesome. Welcome to the show, Marissa. So Gilded Coach Tees, you sell loose-leaf teas in bags? They're in, like, canisters. I have two sizes. So I have canisters, like a three-ounce size, and a one-and-a-half-ounce bag. And these are cardboard canisters? The canisters, yes. Okay, cool. And tell me, I love tea. I'm a big tea drinker. I've lately gotten into this really intense Chinese black tea that is, man, it gives me

21:01a big hit of caffeine in the morning because I switched from coffee. I gave up coffee at the beginning of this year. I love it. But tea just, I just, it's really my jam now. So what, tell me about your teas. Like, if I was like, all right, Marissa, why should I buy your teas? Well, you should buy your teas if you are someone who happens to enjoy magic and nostalgia. So we have blends inspired by Cinderella. In fact, the first blend I ever came up with was called Once Upon a Time. And it is a hazelnut black tea with French vanilla creme as well.

21:35It's hazelnut because in the original Grin's fairy tale, there's no fairy godmother. There, there's a hazel tree that Cinderella sort of cries to and it grants her wishes. So I like to go back to the original fairy tale and base each blend off of that. Wow. I'm, I'm looking at your website and this makes sense now. I'm on the fairest of them all. I'm assuming this is from Snow White. Yeah, of course. You've got herbal tea with candied apple that you would steep. Oh, that's so cool.

22:05Cause she of course has the, you know, the poisonous apple. Yes. So you are like a real fairy tale scholar. Thank you so much. I haven't gotten a fairy tale scholar. That is, I'm going to, I'm going to steal that. Thank you. So you're blending these teas and selling them on your website. And tell me a little bit about, uh, how long has the business been around? And yeah. So we've been around since October, 2020, and we've developed a couple blends, shelved a couple. We're in two stores at the moment locally.

22:40And how, and give me a sense of your sales. How are you doing roughly? So that kind of, uh, leads into my question. Okay. Our sales were doing really, really great for a while where they were projected to go up and up and up and up if you will. So, but I sort of took like a one year hiatus when I had my first baby personally. And ever since then, I felt that we've lost momentum and I want to know what I can do to sort of regain that momentum and recapture those sales.

23:12All right. Regain momentum and recapture sales. And you feel like you're starting from scratch. Okay. Kurt Richardson, I'll bring you on. Any thoughts, any advice on how to regain momentum? Well, I guess right away you've got to treat it like you're starting all over. Um, cause you are in some ways. Um, but the nice thing is you've got product you and you, I love your story. Thank you. I think story is huge. Yeah. You've got lots of opportunity with social media with this brand. I mean, this, this just reeks social media, good stuff.

23:44And, uh, I would really pour my attention into getting my story out. So people, um, people come to my website and direct to consumer. I mean, this has it written all over it and that's where I would go. You can play with some stores and stuff, but man, if you can go D to C, you're going to make so much more money for your efforts. I just, I love D to C. Yeah, I, I agree. I love the story. Uh, I mean, all these teas are inspired by fairy tales and then you start to see it when

24:15you look at the ingredients and ingredients are awesome and they sound delicious. I mean, looking at little sea princess, obviously inspired by the little mermaid. It's got, I didn't even know what this is. Danish bilberry and sweet honeysuckle at a white tea blend. That sounds delicious. Bilberry is like a, it's like the Danish version of a blueberry. Okay. And that's of course a Danish story, right? Yes. Yeah. And what's this dust? Oh, pixie dust. So we, it's an edible, it's our edible glitter that we call pixie dust.

24:45And we say you need a fairy's handful and just the tiniest amount in your cup. And it makes everything sparkly and magical and enchanted. Um, we used to put it in the tea itself and then like shake it up. So that way, when you scooped your tea out and steeped it, it was already covered for you. Um, we've since stopped doing that because I don't own my commercial kitchen and you know, people don't like it when they get glitter on their tools. I think there is so much, I mean, I, and I'm going to tread carefully here because I know

25:16that all kinds of kids love, um, fairy tales and, but I've been to Disney world and Disneyland and I've got two boys and I can tell you right now, they did not run to the princesses, even though that is the biggest, I think it's the biggest part of what Disney sell. Like, I think it's the, it's just massive, right? But so I can imagine birthday parties for, for, for girls, little girls. And I, it's just so many cool things here. Here's, here's what I would, what I would say, right? Cause your, your, your question is how do I jumpstart this?

25:49How do I regain the momentum? First of all, taking a year out again, because you had a baby is awesome. And I think that's just amazing to give yourself that time with your kid. Thank you. Um, I would not put that kind of pressure on yourself because that's, that's exhausting. Maybe I think the question is like, what, what can I start to do consistently each week? You know, for, for three, for six months. The other thing is I imagine because you did have, you did reach, you know, sales that you

26:19were happy with. You probably still have the context of those people who bought your teas. So many businesses and Kurt, you know, this so many businesses are focusing on customer acquisition and costs are through the roof. Now, I mean, what used to be shooting fish in a barrel, you're now spending 80, 90, a hundred dollars more on customer acquisition costs. I don't think enough businesses focus on customer retention. That's really where, you know, a lot of times that's where the sweet spot is because that doesn't cost that much at all.

26:50You've already got the customers and the contacts. I would really try and double down on identifying your best customers. Who, who ordered from you more than once? Are they, you know, have you been in touch with them? Can you offer them some incentive to start buying your tea again? One other thing I might have is, is maybe really focus on those people that, um, guys talking about, is it little girls with tea parties that you could sell a tea set with too, you

27:22could sell a whole experience, your whole story. I mean, there's so many more things you could add to the tea that are upselling could put you in a whole different spot. And, you know, wow, my, my mom bought me this tea set. Well, the next little girl's going to want the same tea set and teas. And maybe there's crackers or crumpets that can go with it too. Right. I mean, have fun with this. I imagine right now you don't have a whole lot of cash to spend on, on social media advertising, but you can make, you can make social media posts and, you know, and, and who knows sometimes

27:56that, you know, something can really go viral without, uh, many dollars behind it. It can still happen, especially on TikTok. Uh, but I do think that as Kurt said, that there's just so much potential for storytelling here, right? I mean, you already, you're already telling stories in the tea. Um, and, and have you, by the way, have you reached out to your previous customers? Yes, I do have a newsletter that I do a pretty good job, if I may say so myself, of keeping up with. And a lot of people, when they find us are very intrigued by the story and the retail

28:29aspect. So in that way, I do stay in touch with a lot of my core customers. I would offer some kind of interesting incentive, like, Hey, for, you know, our most little customers were experimenting, um, you know, if you orders tea, we'd love to send you a sample of, of some blends and tell us what you think. I mean, I'm just sort of spitballing here, but I do think that, or even, you know, a discount or something just to bring them, bring awareness back into their minds, right? To get you back on their radar.

28:59Yeah, that's a great idea. Yeah. And, you know, and I've got a granddaughter and I don't know how many princess outfits she has. It's crazy. I think you got a chance here to sell a whole experience. It's just, you know, tea's part of it. You know, it's, it's maybe the outfits and the books. And I mean, there's just, there's a lot of meat here. That's good, but you're going to have to focus. Don't try to be everything to everybody. Find that little niche, maybe that princess niche. Yeah. Your core product is tea, but I think Kurt, you're onto something I can.

29:31I mean, I would start to see if I see you, you offer weddings or wedding blends, but I mean, man, could you mount, could you, could you mount a whole tea party for a seven or eight or nine year old girl's birthday? I would think that there are plenty of parents in Tampa who would be willing to spend, you know, pretty decent money on a party like that. I agree. I agree. I do believe they are indeed out there. I have to find them. So thank you so much. Yeah. Uh, the brand is called Gilded Coach Tease.

30:04Marissa Valenzuela, uh, thanks for calling in. Good luck. Good luck. Thank you so much. And before I go, Kurt, I just want to say thank you so much. I, you sparked my yearly re-listen and re-read of The E-Myth. It's something every single year I forget about it. Something sparks me to re-read it and that would be listening to your episode. So thank you for that. There's so many good tidbits in there. You bet. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, Marissa. Thank you so much. We're going to take another quick break, but we'll be right back with one more caller.

30:35Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab. We get support from U.S. Bank, a question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't.

31:11Say you're 18 months in. Business is growing. You've got expenses coming from six directions, gas for the van, office supplies, your phone bill, team lunches that are actually client meetings, and you're putting it all on whatever card you grabbed in year one. You're not thinking about it. Why would you? You've got bigger problems. But here's the thing. Path A, you keep going like that. End of the year, you're sorting through statements, trying to figure out what went where. You've left hundreds, maybe thousands on the table in rewards you never earned.

31:44Money that could have gone back into the business. Path B, you pause and get the U.S. Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Card. Now, you're earning 3% cash back on gas and EV charging, office supply stores, cell phone service, and restaurants. You pick up an extra $750 cash back as a bonus. And you've got a low APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months while you're scaling. Same business, same expenses, two completely different outcomes based on one small decision.

32:20Visit usbank.com slash business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is U.S. Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. When it comes to your health and well-being, the right care can change everything. That's why Cleveland Clinic has been elevating world-class patient care for over a century. From the most specialized heart, neurology, and cancer treatments to the latest surgical innovations and beyond,

32:52Cleveland Clinic is here for every care in the world. Whether you're exploring advanced care or just looking after your health, all the info you need is waiting for you at clevelandclinic.org.

33:08Welcome back to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking calls with OtterBox founder, Kurt Richardson. Kurt, we have one more caller for today looking for some advice. Are you ready? Yeah, I'm ready. Caller, welcome to The Advice Line. You're on with Kurt Richardson, founder of OtterBox. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business. Hi, Guy, Kurt. I'm really excited to be here. Big fan of the show. My name is Vince Giudice. I'm calling in from Chatham, New Jersey.

33:39My company, or my wife and my company, is called Everloop, and it is a sustainable baby gear company. It's sustainable for two reasons. We make our products exclusively with recycled and regenerative materials, but also more importantly is that we buy our products back from our customers when they no longer need them for 20% cash back, so we can recycle it into new products. Our big thing is zero waste, nothing to landfill. Wow. Okay, welcome to the show. So you make baby products. Tell me just a couple of products you make. We just launched this time last year.

34:10We launched with two products, a three-in-one high chair made from recycled HDPE, given the plastic call-out because I know Kurt knows plastics, and an organic bouncer chair, so something that you'd put your baby in to lounge in. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so two products for now. And did you design these products yourself? No, I worked with – my career before this was in the toy space, and I worked with some really stellar designers and engineers. I have a strong understanding of injection molding and manufacturing, but I am not a designer and engineer by training,

34:40so I worked with them to design these products using exclusively these materials. And everything is recycled? All the plastic, all the materials you use are recycled? All the plastic is 100% curbside collected plastic, recycled plastic. We do use stainless steel, which we'll recycle when we get the product back. And when we use fabrics, for example, we use 100% organic cotton and organic wool. And we do that so that we can actually compost the product when we're done with it. Yeah. So it's a mix of different ingredients.

35:11So you were in the toy space for a while, and how did you come to this idea? I mean, baby products, I think, interesting category. Tell me about the decision to start this brand. Yeah, so the first decade of my career was at an environmentally friendly toy company. I loved every day of it. I enjoyed Mondays as much as Fridays.

35:32You know, we used recycled materials for those toys, but it really kind of dawned on me that, you know, if you went to recycle one of those products when you were done with it, it would go to landfill. And that's because recycling centers globally don't know what it is. They know what bottles are and cans are. So that's where I kind of had this idea of brewing, where it was like, what if we brought it back and recycled it ourselves? And that was kind of the jumping off point for the Baby Gear brand. Wow. And tell me, you launched a year ago, and it's direct to consumer entirely? Yeah, so we launched a year ago with our two products,

36:06you know, leveraging some contacts, a lot of contacts I've had. We are now live with Nordstrom, Pottery Barn Kids. We're live on Target. We're live with Creighton Kids, Masonette, a lot of other third-party e-com retailers, and then direct on our site. So it's all direct to consumer. Most of these products are drop ship, so we use their marketplace. Not too much gear is sold in store besides big box retailers, and things are going well. Tell me, yeah, how'd you do in your first year? Yeah, so our first year, we only did like 18K in revenue,

36:36but this year we're on track to do 100K. Amazing. Okay. Before we dive in further, what's your question for us? So my questioning is related to marketing. So most of our sales are baby registry-driven. And what that means is there's about a three- to six-month lag from discovery to purchase, and that makes knowing what marketing channel is working very challenging. So my question is, is if you were in my shoes, would you place a lot of small bets in different channels, like TikTok, Meta, or Pinterest, or others?

37:07Or would you pick a lane and go deep? Interesting question. Okay, Kurt Richardson, I'd love to bring you in. Say hello to Vince. Hello, Vince. How are you? Hi, Kurt. Thoughts, ideas, questions? Well, yeah, I get your question. First of all, I'm a big, I would shoot BBs until I hit something. And then when I hit it, I'd kick up to a .22 caliber, and when it really took off, I'd go .50 mag, .50 cal. You know, what I'm saying is don't throw all your money down one hole at once.

37:42You've got to fire a lot of bullets until you hit something significant, and then that's where you start to spend your money. I'd be very careful just picking one channel. That can, time is money. And if you spend all your time down one rat hole and don't go down multiple ones until you find what you're looking for, it's going to hurt you. Yeah, that's very refreshing to hear. I've talked to many different folks about it and agencies that focus on specific channels,

38:14and everyone's selling their channel as the place to be. Careful with agencies. Exactly, yes. We use consultants for the most part. My gut has said to do what you're suggesting, and that's pepper the bets out there. And, you know, take your time. Be methodical until you start understanding. You know, back in the day for Otter, we used a lot of different channels to get different people to write about our products. And there's a lot of free marketing out there if you look for it,

38:46if you find the right people to talk about your product. Let other people talk about it. It has more credibility than you anyway. So, I mean, when you're blowing your own horn, people just know you're blowing your horn. But if somebody else is blowing it, it's much better advertising. Definitely. Vince, I have a slightly different take, which is to say it depends in part on what you are prepared to spend, right? I mean, if you're talking about tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars,

39:17I think there's a compelling case to make that you do make small experiments. But one of the mistakes that we have seen early-stage founders make often is that they will put, you know, $5,000 or $10,000 into multiple channels, and it doesn't always tell you much. And I think one of the reasons why is because oftentimes, especially at the early stage, founders don't spend as much time as they should really getting obsessed with who is actually buying your product.

39:50I would hasten to guess that most people buying your product are not buying it because they're necessarily environmentally conscious. Probably some are. But I would think that most people like the product. And the other thing that I think is probably the most compelling thing about this is the buyback. 100%. I mean, I can't think of any, I mean, very few baby products where they're like, yeah, you buy it and enjoy it,

40:20and then we will give you 20% of what it costs. We'll buy it back when you're done. That's very significant. I mean, that's a big deal. You hit the nail on the head. I go to a lot of consumer shows, and we sell our pitch. We talk about the ingredients, and everyone says, oh, that's great. I love that. And then when we say the buyback, the eyes just light up. And they say, sign me up. Let's add it to registry. Yeah. And I would say before you even put a dollar down, I would try and call literally.

40:50I'll buy things online, and I use a pseudonym, but I'll get an email from the founder saying, hey, to my pseudonym, I would love to hear what you liked about a product. Give me a call, literally. And I'm very impressed when I see that. I mean, at this stage, I think you could do some of that. I mean, just do a call. Instead of having people fill out forms and see if you can get 10, 15, 20 more people giving you reasons why they did that. And once you start to build a profile of who that person is,

41:21that really can help you sharpen your focus on where you want to put those dollars. Because I would say three channels, four channels, great. Seven, 10, 15 channels, I'm not sure. Unless, again, you've got huge amounts of money to spend. But I think knowing who those people are will help you figure out where to put those marketing dollars. Does that make sense? That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Just going direct to the source to see. And mind you, I wasn't saying go 10 places.

41:53I would really research and pick four to five and then see what lands, see what hits. And again, my philosophy early on was, I'm not going to spend money on advertising unless I can measure it. Because if you can't measure it, you have no clue where that money's going. I'm in that camp as well, Kurt. And that's been the challenge is I like seeing the data and the flow through. And I'm having trouble seeing that, which is tough for an ops guy. Yeah. Yeah. But Guy hit it. I mean, if you can get a hold of your customer who bought it, where did you hear about it?

42:25Why do you like it? Why did you buy it? Great questions. Yeah. And I think that the story is so compelling. And it really, to me, even beyond the regenerative, I love the regenerative stuff. I love that. I live for that. But I'm not the typical consumer on that. It's the buyback. I think of all of the baby stuff we had with our kids and just getting rid of it. And, you know, you sell some of it. You find people who want some of it. You throw away some of it. I mean, I'm embarrassed to tell you, you know, what we threw away.

42:56And that buyback is just very meaningful. It's basically saying, we got you. You're never going to have to deal with, like, what to do with this thing when you're done. And it plays into the bigger vision, which is getting people locked into this circular ownership model, which is as soon as they use our high chair and send it back, you know, their child's probably ready for, you know, a walker or a rider, a bike of some sort or a scooter. So I'm glad to hear that it resonates with you because as a parent, like, it hit a home when I landed on it.

43:28And especially because, like, traditional donation channels won't take baby gear for liability reasons. So you have a lot of stuff that's gently used and no place to go. I would really shout that from the rafters, even on your website. You know, I don't see that right at the front and center. I would make that the core right now of what you are doing. One other slant I might have on this is maybe you look at the philanthropic side of this instead of, you know, you give this to, you have some programs you work with, you know, people who cannot afford this.

44:01So rather than recycling it, because it costs money to recycle that, right, it doesn't cost as much to get it into a program where now somebody else gets to use this thing that is, you're just cleaning it up and shipping it on and really helping somebody else. And that connects, too. That could be part of your story in a big way. I love that. We've actually done some work with some hospitals. Again, not offering product but steep discounts to, like, get, you know, we are a young company and we are a bootstrapped company. But it's a great way to build awareness.

44:33But honestly, I love that idea of offering the product that comes back to other folks that are in need. Awesome. It's just a really, really cool idea. Vince Guaducci, Everloop is the brand. And good luck. And, yeah, keep us posted. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Yeah. Keep at it. Thank you. Kurt, thank you so much for coming back on the show and doing this. Before I let you go, I want to ask you a question that I've been asking everybody who does come back on, which is, you know, if you could go back to when you were first starting out, right, and give yourself some advice,

45:07what do you think might have been helpful for you to know that you didn't know then? I think for me to wrestle with the question, what do you want? What do I want? And many times it doesn't have to do with the business. It has to do with the heart, not the head. And I think it's important that you discover that for yourself and let that be your guiding light going forward. Also, you know, I was really good at making things, but I wasn't really good at running things.

45:40So it's very important to get educated. There's different ways to do that. You go to college, but I'm not sure it's going to teach you that. There's a lot of great books out there. There's a lot of great mentors. Nowadays, I mean, you can learn so much on YouTube and podcasts. I mean, like this. So educational. I would encourage people to dive into this type of media and learning because I learn that way from watching and listening, hearing other people's stories, learning from other people's mistakes and successes.

46:16Yep, for sure. Well, Kurt, thanks so much for coming back onto the show. It was great having you. You bet. Thank you, Guy. It's fun seeing you again. You too. And it's great watching what you're doing. Thank you for doing that for the entrepreneurial community. It's so big. It's so important. You really mean a need. Thanks for being part of it. That's Kurt Richardson, founder of Otterbox and Blue Ocean. And by the way, if you haven't heard Kurt's original How I Built This episode, go back and check it out. Please, great episode.

46:47And here is one of my favorite moments from that interview. This is a great story. So I remember being at CES. In Las Vegas. In Vegas. And Michael Cowan, who was the head guy for stuff at AT&T, came by and showed him the case. And he said, well, how much is it? I said, well, it retails for $49.95. He's like, you're crazy. $49.95? Crazy. I'm just going to buy a case. All the cases were like five bucks. It's nuts. Yeah. So he said, but we'll do a test.

47:17So they did a test and they were going to do a three-month test. Well, I think they did a three-day test because they all sold out. Wow. They sold like crazy. I mean, it was like that UPS commercial, you know, where it's like tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And we're going, oh, crap. Hey, thanks so much for listening to How I Built This Lab. This episode was produced by Carla Estevez with editing by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez. Our music was composed by Ramteen Arablui.

47:49Our production team also includes Alex Chung, JC Howard, Casey Herman, Elaine Coates, Chris Messini, Catherine Seifer, Kerry Thompson, Sam Paulson, and Neva Grant. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This Lab. One more mention for our presenting sponsor, Anthropic. Claude is built for people who like to keep pulling on the thread, the research, the planning, the questions, the follow-through, until the work starts to make sense.

48:20So try Claude for the next problem worth solving.