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Hello and welcome to the Advice Line on how I built this lab.
I'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.
Send us a one -minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with.
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And we'll put all this info in the podcast description.
All right, let's get to it.
Joining me this week is Eric Ryan.
He's a serial entrepreneur, co -founder of, wait for it, Method, Welly, Ollie, and so many other brands.
Eric, it's great to have you back on the show.
Guy, thanks for having me.
You were originally on the show back in 2018.
You and Adam Lowry, your Method co -founder, interviewed you guys in person in San Francisco.
And just to remind people of this story, you guys were childhood friends from Michigan.
you were both on the sailing teams and then after college you moved to san francisco and in the 90s you guys started to talk about uh starting a cleaning products business and this by the way was when everyone in san francisco in the 90s was talking about a tech company you guys are talking about a cleaning products company but one that was like was environmentally friendly but that actually worked and so in 2001 you launched method uh selling the now very well -known colorful soaps in those sleek bottles, which we talked about on the show how you spend so much time designing those bottles.
The brand was eventually acquired by S .E.
Johnson and you went on to co -found, as I mentioned, a bunch of other brands including the gummy vitamin company Ollie and the first aid brand Welly, which were also acquired.
By the way, if you guys haven't heard my original episode with Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry, I really recommend it.
It's an excellent episode and we will put a link to it in the show notes.
Eric, before we get to today's callers, it's been a few years since you've been on the show.
So I wanted to just kind of ask a couple questions.
First of all, you know, one of the things that you've done and really started with with method is, you're not an expert necessarily in any of these things and vitamins or soap or, you know, first aid.
But you go into into spaces that where you find opportunity.
So how do you think about starting businesses?
I mean, are you literally looking for where there might be an opportunity?
Yeah. So I definitely have a little bit of an academic approach to it.
Like a lot of founders will follow something they're really passionate about or they see a problem in the world they want to solve.
I really start with categories.
And so I will look for spaces that I think are a sea of sameness.
Um, and that's kind of the clue dig here.
And what I do is I look for what I call like the culture shift or the macro trend that that category is missing.
So in the case of method, uh, we found two is lifestyle in the home.
Like nobody thought about these products as a, as a form of self -expression in your home.
I mean, you look at a dish soap more than you use it at the same time.
This is back in 2000, you couldn't buy a natural product outside of a natural store.
Um, but yet you were asked to pollute when you clean or use poison to make make your home healthier.
So those were the two macro trends of high design and deep sustainability that we built the brand off of.
And so within each business, that's the opportunity I look for.
And I kind of then, you know, build a strategy around it and to your point of like, you just got to get in and figure it out.
Yeah. I remember you talking about with method that used to just wander the aisles of grocery stores looking for ideas.
Still do. Yeah. So right now I'm focused focused on building a functional candy brand called Tandy.
You can find it at Target, Amazon, soon to be CVS. And functional means it's kind of got healthy things in it, like nootropics or whatever.
That's right. So I've always wanted to, I think Willy Wonka is my favorite movie of all time.
So let's go be Willy.
So Tandy is a better for you candy, low sugar, nothing artificial, tastes great, but each one has a functional benefit.
It's amazing how many different brands you've built and how so many of them have been successful.
One of the things that I think is really critical to mention, Eric, is that you've also started brands that didn't work out, right?
Which is really important to know, right?
Is that in order to have those big successes, you know, Ollie and Welly and Method, you've got to take big swings, right?
That's right. My dear friend, Tony Hsieh, who we lost, would always say, like, sometimes you're you're sitting at the wrong poker table until you get into an industry and really understand the characteristics of it.
And look, you always have to go in being naive and having that beginner's eye, otherwise you wouldn't do it.
But no, failure is part of it.
I've had failures of both on the business side, as well as within the companies that have been successful.
Method, we had an original personal care line called Block, that was a massive failure.
We talked about that.
Massive failure and cost you guys a lot of money.
That's right. And you pick yourself up, and you get right back at it, and you keep building.
But no, failure has to be part of it.
And as I said to my kids, like with skiing, if you're not falling down, well, you're just not trying hard enough.
And really, you've become known as a sort of a creative brand builder.
Like you focus a lot on – in the method conversation, we talked – I think a significant part of that conversation was just talking about the bottle design.
That really was so important, even though you were making an organic.
because a lot of people think, okay, let's make an organic soap.
We'll slap organic on the label.
It'll say toxic -free, and people will flock to it for those reasons.
And your view is, well, that's not good enough.
Let's make a beautiful bottle that looks so nice you want to put on your sink.
And, you know, if they discover it's organic afterwards, great.
Like, so is design for you the core, sort of the center of how you build products?
It is. And it's not just, I mean, I see design as part of a tool in creating brands that have an incredible emotional connection.
And I want to create brands and products that the second you see it, you want it.
And then hopefully you actually need it, which is fun going into these more fundamental categories.
But the heart of it, what I'm trying to create is almost like objects of desire.
And I want to create this emotional connection through great design, great creativity, like working every touch point to be able to do that.
and I think if you really dig down a little deeper kind of part of like I say I'm a one -trick pony but part of my trick is I try to almost bring like an inner child approach to these very serious categories and so I mean you look at method it almost looks like what a what a kid would want to clean with Ali what I did was I brought kids gummy vitamins to the adult market really I got adults to wear bandages that were supposed to be for kids.
And I think that's how I create that emotional connection is this almost like, as an inner child approach to these very, very serious categories.
Eric, when you launched Method 25 years ago, it was a different landscape, but how does it, I mean, how do you think about distributing a product, selling a product?
Are you leaning heavily into online?
Do you still believe in the traditional Walmarts, Targets, and Kroger's of the world?
Yeah, I very much do.
I think today it's just much more of an omnichannel approach. I don't think it's one or the other.
And I don't think consumers look at it that way.
When they see a brand that started off as more of a traditional DTC online brand, they see it inside of a Target, they don't think of like, oh, there's that DTC brand now available in wholesale.
They think like, oh, that's that brand I love.
And I think vice versa.
And then for someone like me, those retail partnerships, I still think there's no more valuable real estate in America than an end cap at a target.
And the efficiency of scales working with them is still really important.
And is, for example, with the candy, is it enough to have an end cap or to have, you know, decent placement at target?
Or, and then, you know, if you build it, they will come kind of thing, like it will sell on its own?
Or do you still have to, you know, are you still?
still you know putting in considerable dollars into marketing the thing yeah i think of you know i still think of advertising as a tax on an unremarkable product and the better you get the product the packaging and something that creates that immediate connection then marketing is really just gravy and jet fuel to be able to accelerate that um but today no you've got to you got to be able to win on shelf immediately you got to do that through great visual merchandising great packaging a product you know a product that is instantly under you know you get instantly understand, but then no, you have to
be building through Instagram, social, TikTok.
You kind of have to do it all today to build a modern brand.
And the ones that are really breaking out, you're seeing their ability to do that.
Yeah. Well, congrats on everything you've built and on what you're building now with Tandy.
I'm excited to see where that goes.
Why don't we bring in our first caller?
Are you ready? Let's do it.
All right. Hello, caller.
Welcome to the advice line.
You're on with Eric Ryan.
Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.
Hi, Guy. Hi, Eric. My name is Aubrey Walaski.
I'm calling from Franklin, Tennessee.
My husband and I own Transparent Hospitality.
We have five locations in Northern Nevada, and we recently just moved our four little kids to the greater Nashville area to expand our bakery and restaurant concept called Peren.
All right. Well, welcome to the show, Aubrey.
So you have a business that is a food business.
And what's under that besides a bakery?
So, we kind of expanded our bakery concept.
It's a bakery, vanuastri, naturally -leavened bread restaurant.
And we expanded it to Peren Grocery, where we have three different locations in Reno. We do have a little restaurant called Cleo.
It's a rotisserie. So, we recently decided to combine our rotisserie concept and our bakery concept and open in the Nashville area.
So, we just opened, actually.
I'm upstairs of the restaurant.
We opened this week in Franklin, Tennessee.
Oh, congrats. Thank you.
Wait, do you have, you have five locations and four kids?
Yes. That's amazing.
Oh my God. So you've got, and you're splitting this between Reno, Nevada and Franklin, Tennessee.
Okay, let's, let's dive into this.
And you do this with your husband, you said?
Yes, my husband, Tyler.
Okay. And tell me how you guys, how this all started, because this is a sprawling business.
You've got a bakery called Peren, right?
And then a grocery and you've got a rotisserie restaurant and then bakery and restaurants in Tennessee?
Yes. And all called Perrin?
All called Perrin. Yes.
So we're kind of, I mean, we have never done this before.
We're kind of just going for it.
As you can tell, we had four kids.
So we actually, we met at culinary school at the CIA in Hyde Park, New York.
You and Tyler did? Yes.
Oh, nice. Okay. We're very passionate for the industry, but we also are really passionate about changing the industry.
So we actually started as private chefs in the Lake Tahoe area that snowballed into having a catering company.
And to supply our own catering company with great bread, my husband taught himself the sourdough and then laminated pastries.
And we decided to open a little bakery on the side while doing our catering company.
Wow. I'm looking at your website for Peren.
By the way, what does Peren mean?
It's short for perennial.
Oh, nice. Okay. And it's great.
I love the little rabbit logo you've got.
It's really cool. Thank you.
And wow, the pastries look absolutely amazing.
Before I ask you more questions, tell me what question you brought for us today.
Okay. So as young entrepreneurs, my biggest question is how do we find a mentor that can help guide us, help us with large questions while still maintaining the ethos and the vision that we personally have?
All right. Good place to be.
You've got two of them right here for the next few minutes.
But before we answer your question, Eric, any questions for Aubrey?
Yeah, first of all, I love your, I'm just looking at your site right now.
I love your identity, and I'm just in awe of how much you're doing.
It's absolutely incredible.
So congrats on everything.
It's got to be exhausting.
But tell me a little bit more on Mentor Advisor.
Where are the areas in the business that you're feeling most insecure or where you feel like you need the most support as you're scaling up this business?
Probably around scale.
We started as 23, 24 -year -olds really only leaning on our own intuition and what felt right, knowing that the backbone of everything was being very transparent.
That's why we coined our company Transparent Hospitality with not only our customers, but with our own team.
We have now a team of 120 people.
We're not ever trying to become a, I mean, everyone says, are you going to franchise?
Will you become a chain?
I think we have so much energy and so much growth and we know all the things that we want to do and we want to be able to pace that out.
So for us, we've never had a mentor.
We've really just kind of gone with it and hope for the best. But as we get a little bit more serious and have a little bit more people to take care of, we want to make sure that we're, you know, bouncing ideas off of people, especially as we grow into a larger city.
So I would say it's predominantly about the growth and, you know, gauging whether or not it is a good point to grow or when to take a pause.
Aubrey, I imagine you feel like you're on a hamster wheel that just is never going to stop.
Is that fair to say?
Yes, but it's all our own doing, you know, so it's a happy hamster wheel, if you will.
I'm just in awe of what you guys have done because I know the food space so well.
And Eric, you've been involved as an investor, I know, in some food brands.
And it's a challenging, you know, bakeries, restaurants, really challenging business.
Yeah. To Guy's point, I sat on a couple of restaurant boards.
One of them you're probably familiar with, Flour and Water, here in San Francisco.
And they're going through a similar process that you are.
We're building out a chain of pizzerias and starting to scale up the business.
But have you thought, and you've taken new outside capital, have you thought about putting together either a small board or a small advisor group, and there's different ways to compensate them through cash, which is considered more phantom equity.
But if you consider putting together like a small, maybe like a trio of advisors that could start to work with you almost as a board. I would love to do that.
I mean, one of the ways many certainly high -end restaurants make it and thrive is there is is usually an investor or a group of investors behind it.
But certainly one kind of main investor who joins as an operator as well.
And I know that's that to be the case with several, you know, sort of Michelin style restaurants in the Bay Area, what you guys are doing is just high level.
And you want to, as you said, you want to find somebody like a Danny Meyer, somebody who's not going to compromise right on qualities, who's not somebody who's just going to want to expand and just sell franchises.
And, you know, soon Soon you're going to be going to your bakeries and people are going to be just making Pillsbury croissants or something, right?
You don't want that.
You want somebody who really believes in the business.
I wonder, Eric, whether that person is also an investor, somebody who joins as an investor but who also part of that is that they are helping to guide the business.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And I get it too. Like you have full control right now.
And once you bring in outside capital, it comes with expectations of how you're going to provide a liquidity return on that.
But if you can find the opportunity to bring in a long -term partner who wants to build it for cash flow so you don't ever have that pressure to sell the business someday, and to Guy's point, who can also be a smart money, a great strategic partner.
And look, this is a real passion industry, too.
And so finding somebody who's got that same passion that you have could be a nice Goldilocks fit.
it. Can I ask you a question regarding that investment piece?
You know, we've had this for about six years now.
So we do have, you know, pretty decent sales.
How do you classify what would be worth it to bring the investor to give up equity?
Yeah, well, if you haven't done it already, and I'm sure you're you and your husband probably get zero time together.
But if you could like book a place to go for a few days and really build out what is your three to five year vision and really build that vision and that plan of where do you want to get to and then work backwards from there.
Understand can you self -fund it or do you need capital to get there?
And then once you decide which path you need to go, I would then figure out what are the key areas that you feel like you need to bring a few people in to really help you, whether it's operations, operations, finance, and then populate around a small advisor board of maybe three people, then you and your husband.
So it keeps it to five odd numbers are always best. I think then, then you have a real clear vision of who you need around the table and the beauty of putting together.
Like if you don't take outside capital, you don't need a true board, but, but having a group of people function as a board, it kind of creates these like tent pole moments and put structure around the business to help you create a really clear clear rhythm to help you scale more.
And then I think once you build that plan, I think everything flows from that, whether you do need to take capital or not, or if you want secondary to be able to get a little financial relief.
Yeah. Aubrey, you are in the hospitality business, right?
At the end of the day.
I mean, obviously you're making an incredible product, I can see, but really, and I read your mission statement, really you're in the business of bringing people together around a shared experience, which is food.
And I would really lean on finding somebody somebody from that world, right?
Somebody from the hospitality business.
And sometimes it's hard to ask people, like, can you be a mentor?
Because I'm asked that a lot.
And it's tough. I don't always have time.
But I think maybe a better approach might be, can I talk to you and ask for advice?
But in the course of that conversation, your ask should be, who do you know that I should should talk to?
Or who are some other people who might be worth reaching out to?
And could you make a connection?
Because sometimes people really do want to help, but they don't have time.
And sometimes it's just a matter of finding that right person at the right place at the right time who has the time and the interest and the passion.
And I think it's about having the conversations first before directly just saying, do you want to be my mentor?
Eric, do you get because I'm sure you get that a lot too, Eric.
I do. And that's why I think putting it into a structure of either either a formal advisor or board, I think helps people get their head around to what the expectations are.
And I agree in the first, you know, always get a coffee date.
And if you walk away from that coffee date being either both really inspired or they were able to push or challenge your thinking, then, you know, there's somebody that you want in your orbit.
Yeah. Right. Again, get clear on like where you're taking this business.
And then when you reach out to individuals, you want to, you want to really bring, you know, recruit them onto your journey of like, Hey, over the next five years, we are going to scale this to here.
I need, you know, we need an advisor group of three people.
We need somebody who's been there before and understands how do you scale a service multi -unit business like this.
I need somebody who really understands finance and how do we best capitalize this business.
And something you may want to consider about so you can scale this without always your equity into it is CPG.
You're building a brand that could really build a CPG business.
But if you had three people around you, a great finance person, somebody who's scaled this type of business before and a CPG person, you kind of recruit them together as a team with you and bring them onto your journey.
That may really help what the next three to five years looks like for you.
Aubrey Olasky, the brand, a company called Peren, congrats.
Good luck. It's awesome.
Thank you. Awesome.
Thank you so much. Thanks, Eric.
Thank you guys. It was such a pleasure.
Incredible. Great to meet you.
You too. Thanks. I love, I mean, I know you know this business because you work with Flower and Water and and I in San Francisco, and I just love, I love these businesses, because they are not cutting corners, like you can see how they're rolling those croissants and how they're laminating that dough.
And it's so much work.
And then they and then it gets sold for a couple bucks.
And that's it. It's such a bespoke business and the passion and energy that you have to put into this and do it every day.
And the fact that they're doing it as a married couple with four kids, it's It's unbelievable.
I think I want her as my mentor.
Right? I know. She could really, and she will be clearly one day, she's going to be mentoring people once she's kind of off the hamster wheel a little bit.
But man, I don't think there's direct flight from Nashville to Reno. So that must be a pretty challenging commute.
No, but if we're like, I think Perrin has the potential to be a big brand and hopefully just somebody listening there who could reach out and potentially help them on their journey because I think they've got real potential.
Okay, next up after the break, another caller with another business challenge.
I'm Guy Raz, and we're answering your business questions right here on the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.
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Welcome back to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.
I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Method Olly Welly co -founder Eric Ryan.
Eric, let's take another call.
All right, let's do it.
Hello, welcome to The Advice Line.
You're on with Eric Ryan.
Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.
this. Hi, my name is Maggie Gerth, and I'm from Chicago, Illinois.
And I founded Props Luggage, which is a carry -on suitcase that has its own built -in leg system.
So you no longer need a luggage rack when you travel.
You basically pull out the legs and you just got your bag is its own luggage rack.
You don't have to bend down to get your stuff.
It's just right there.
It's right there. Maggie, it's great to have you on the show.
You have been to How I Built the Summits in the past. In 2018 and 2019, you were at the Summits.
I was there at both Summits.
And you met Eric, yeah, at our How I Built the Summits, yeah.
I did. I met you, Guy, and I met Eric.
So this is extremely thrilling.
drilling. And I'm, I will tell you, I had this idea over years of traveling with four daughters and messy hotel rooms. I thought about it for years.
And a friend of mine invited me to join her at the summit.
And so I went with this idea in my head and went again the next year.
And I will say after the second year, I said, okay, it's time for me to...
I'm in. Yes, I did.
I'm going to do this.
And what were you doing before you started this business?
I was in investment banking out of school.
And after our first daughter was born, I decided to stay home.
And so basically, I was raising my girls.
And when they got a little bit older, I decided to just go for it.
I love it. So you basically started to work on this idea, which now is a real thing.
you've sent me one so thank you for that I have it it's awesome and it's a you you worked I think you worked with a designer right to get get everything right like because you wanted the legs to come out and it's not just a I think you can like you can use it at the airport to put like a cup of coffee on it or even your legs to rest on it if you want like I don't think you can sit on it no but a lot of people so originally uh my vision was to use it in hotel rooms because because there's always one luggage rack, but when it was launched, what became even more popular was its use in the airports
for people who travel a lot for work or pleasure.
How often are we all stranded in the airport for hours and you set it up and you put your laptop on it and you've got got your own workstation, or you put your meal, you know, you don't want to be juggling your meal on your lap.
So it really, it developed a lot more popularity for use in the airports, which was great.
Tell me, and I think you're mainly selling them direct to consumer, but you are in some stores, I think some boutiques, right?
Yes, actually, we started out, this has all been self -funded.
Wow. Yes. Wow. My husband has been huge support.
So we work together, but we started out direct and then we were lucky enough to be put into the in motion stores in airports.
Yep. We've also we just recently got into the container store.
Nice. Which is nice.
Maggie, just very briefly, how are sales doing?
I mean, this is a tough category, right?
There are some very, very big players, and it is a relatively crowded category, which isn't a problem, but you're a small player.
So far, how has it been with sales?
The first year was a little bit slow because it was all direct on our Instagram.
So it was about 50 ,000 the first year.
then we started to gain a little momentum.
And now we're on probably this year, about 250.
That's helpful. All right.
And your question for us before I bring in Eric?
So my question is, do I stop the self -funding and just realize in order to really move this ahead aggressively, do I decide to take on investors or partner or bank loans?
All right. Eric Ryan, lots to ponder, lots to think about.
Yeah. So I think at the heart of it, that's a personal decision.
And I've always heard a great expression of you can either go for control or a financial win, meaning if you want to just continue to have full control and really build this yourself, it's going to be a slower, longer build, but you can have control.
If you want to really scale up and have a bigger financial win, you're going to have to give up some control.
And that's, that's what is required when you bring in partners and advisors.
So it really goes back to a very personal question of, of what do you want to do?
What type of business do you want to build?
There's no right or wrong answer here.
Um, I think you've done a great job of disrupting the category with what I'd call an attribute.
Um, but the way you think about attributes, benefits, and experiences, I think the opportunity, if you brought in outside capital is how do you turn this into a brand and a product experience that's bigger than just the props on it.
And whether it's like you're really building a smart suitcase, a smart way to travel.
I might even drop the S and just call it prop.
But I think you've found a way into the category and a point of differentiation.
But for this to be really a long -term success, the props is going to have to be just one of the attributes of a smarter way to travel.
Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And is this patented?
Is your design patented?
Yes. It is. Okay. So it's a patented design, and it's really right now going to appeal to people who also have this same problem.
The question is, can you broaden it out to people who don't have this problem?
Like some people just don't care.
They're just going to throw their suitcase on the ground at the hotel or on the – there's two beds, and they just need one.
They're going to throw it on the other bed.
When I think of suitcases that I have that work, I mean some of them have – actually, I guess fewer of them now have the plugs because the airlines don't like that.
But, you know, just the different pockets or the different compartments or the different ways that they allow you to organize clothing inside.
There are other features, the hard case and the hard shell, the look, right?
I mean, I think a lot of what differentiates sort of the higher end, the Ramoas from, you know, the others is they focus on the design, the look of it.
I think those are all things you want to think about.
And have you had any interest from investors so far?
Have you been approached by anybody who said, hey, I think this is something I'd like to get involved with?
We have had a few, but nobody that we've moved forward with.
One thing that I would love to ask both of you is, my intent was never to just have a one product.
You can't have a brand.
And so this was never my intent just to have the one carry -on suitcase.
I always, I have a plan in my head.
I've had high demand for the next size from those who have the carry -on.
They now want the larger case, but then the tariffs just hit, so things have been paused.
but to that question like how important do you think it is to expand the line you can't just have a company or a brand that has one product yeah I think it's really really hard long term to build one product I think you'd be in one category really well I think the white space for you too and some of those brands that guy just mentioned that are really elevated in design like Tumi but they're at a very high price point and you have a much more sophisticated customer and a younger customer that is traveling, 20 -year -olds travel in ways that 20 -year -olds used not to travel.
I think you could elevate the design.
The prop feature is part of this overall more smart approach to baggage, but I think you could ladder up, build a bigger brand that feels more elevated, but at an affordable price point.
I think that's the real white space opportunity, but yeah, it's got to be bigger than a product feature, and it's got to be bigger than just one suitcase to build a successful company here.
Yeah, I agree. And I would also go back to your original question about whether to seek out help.
I mean, I think that, look, as you know, being a former investment banker yourself, it's a tough environment now.
It's a tough time to raise money in any CPG category.
I think, Eric, you can probably attest to that, although you probably don't have a problem because of your track record. It's always hard. It's a tough environment now, right?
Money is tight because of uncertainty, right?
Tariffs, economy, what's going to happen?
The bond market's scared.
But that being said, I mean, you're in Chicago, right?
There's a robust sort of network of founders and builders.
I was just in Chicago a couple of weeks ago and met with some, and it's an awesome, just an awesome hub of entrepreneurship.
I mean, if you have conversations and you can start to have conversations around potential partners, I would really consider it, especially if you could find somebody who has some experience in travel or in hospitality, something connected to this space, brand building, who can help you sort of develop it.
I think that it might be worth thinking about bringing somebody on if you can find it.
Right, right. And to build on that, you don't have to make the decision to raise capital.
You can make the the decision just to go explore it.
So plan A could be to continue to bootstrap it and grow it organically.
And then to Guy's point, go out there, really socialize and see if you find a partner that would be a great fit that you're inspired by.
And then you can make the decision whether you take the capital or not.
Right. I would also be open to the idea, and I would love your thoughts on just licensing the leg system idea to larger brands.
hands. I think it's a great thing to explore for sure.
Eric, what do you think, Eric?
Yeah, I think it's free cash flow.
So that's always a great thing.
Less likely to get knocked off and somebody trying to work around your patent if they're just able to access it.
And I think it'll put pressure on you to build props into something bigger than just that feature if you're going to be able to license it to others.
So, and same thing, like you don't have to make the choice to do it or not.
You just make the choice to go explore it, see what opportunities come along.
And then you can make the decision to execute a deal like that or not.
But free cash flow for a founder like this all day long.
Right. Maggie Earth, the brand is called Props Luggage.
Maggie, thank you so much for calling in.
Thanks so much for coming to the summit and keep us posted.
Thank you. So appreciate both of you and I hope you have another summit.
I hope so too. Great to meet you, Maggie.
Nice to meet you too.
too yeah i i do not i can't remember the last time i checked a bag uh yeah no i think checking a bag is a failure as a traveler i think i fell in love with my wife when i did our first trip together and i saw how small her carry -on was stay with us because after the break we'll talk to another founder working to take their business to the next level that's after the break i'm guy and you're listening to the advice line right here on how i built this lab Welcome back to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.
I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking your calls with Eric Ryan, brand builder extraordinaire.
Eric, let's get back to it and take another call.
All right, let's do it.
Welcome to The Advice Line.
You're on with Eric Ryan.
Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.
Yeah, hi, Guy. Hi, Eric.
Thrilled to be here.
I'm Matt Angorn calling from Scottsdale, Arizona.
I am co -founder of FlipMits 3 -in -1 Adventure Gloves.
FlipMits switch or flip between a mitten, a fingerless glove, and sweatpants.
They help you stay warm when you're cold and dry when you're hot.
So, wait, like sweatpants for your hand, basically.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, sweatbands. Sweatbands, sweatbands.
Sweatbands, yeah. That's what they wear as gloves.
I was like, sweatpants.
Yeah, they convert to mittens.
Oh, wow. They're like running and then, yeah, they slide them down and you're wearing the sweatbands and they keep you dry or act as a hand towel when you're running.
Okay, so this is a flip mitt.
It's like a glove that opens up and then it can, your fingers are free or it can go on your wrist. Tell me what, just before I ask you about the business, what are the use cases here?
have here. Yeah. So we initially created this for trail runners was kind of our original case.
You'd go running on a cold morning, your hands would be freezing, but then very quickly your hands get sweaty.
You're looking for a place to put your gloves.
And then the end of your run, you've got, you know, soggy gloves and cold hands.
And so this actually transitions through the whole run.
It keeps you warm in the beginning.
It keeps you dry in the middle of your run.
And then at the end of your run, you can just slide them back on and they keep your hands warm again.
Yeah. I like that guy.
I lived on the East Coast 10 years ago.
I lived in Washington, D .C.
I used to love those freezing cold mornings, like 18, 19 degrees to take runs in.
I just run better in them.
But your hands, it's torture, right?
They're so cold. But then when you warm up, obviously it's better.
So that's where the idea came from.
This was a problem you had?
Yeah, yeah. This was a problem I had.
I used to run around in the trails in New Jersey, and my hands were over.
And I always had cold hands.
I would wear fingerless gloves inside.
I would buy them by packs of 12 and lose them.
And so the ability to always have them on your wrist when you want them and then just slide them back onto your hand ended up having a lot of other value, too.
So tell me about where you're selling the Flipmits now.
Where can you get them?
Sure. So primarily via our Shopify store, Flipmits .com.
We're also on Amazon.
And we're on QVC. We actually did a test run with QVC in January.
That went fairly well.
So those are the three primary places.
We've gone out and visited Walmart.
The real challenge there has been we've gotten a lot of great feedback from our, and interest from retailers, but they don't really know where to put our products.
Is it for runners? Is it for cyclists?
Is it for hiking? And so that's kind of one of the challenges I'm calling about.
And tell me a little bit about sales.
I mean, how are you doing so far?
How are you doing this year?
Yeah. So it's been a rollercoaster chasing inventory like so many different companies that call in, but we've done really well.
Well, we've done a little over 600 ,000 in sales to date.
That's over the course of your whole business.
Yeah, yeah. Half of that came in 2024.
So we kind of started off with one color, two sizes.
We scaled to four sizes and four colors.
And then we started launching graphics like skeleton hands and rainbows and trying to make it more fun.
And so, yeah. And then we launched heavyweights last year.
And then we're launching Sungloves this summer for sun and sweat.
And we've been doing events, going to running events.
And the feedback's been great.
We've had customers buy 10, 12 times.
Has this design patented at all?
We've got trademarks and copyrights, but very difficult to patent apparel.
Has anybody knocked you off yet?
Not yet. Waiting for it.
Worried. Hopefully it doesn't happen.
What question do you have or challenge are you facing?
Yeah, I would love your advice on scaling beyond Shopify and Amazon, right?
I did some boutique stores running cycling in the beginning.
They were excited, but they didn't really move.
And it does really well when I can explain it to people.
People just go, oh, I get it when I give them a demo.
But moving it off the shelves on their own has been difficult.
We have improved the packaging.
We've put the photos of the product on the packaging.
but I do wonder if we needed to take it to another level.
Just kind of curious, what kind of advice you would have for me on that?
Yeah. First of all, like seeing this is like, why did nobody think of this before?
It's pretty genius.
Thank you. I think a couple of ways to think about it.
So I heard your problem before of like in conversations with Walmart and where does it go in the store and looking at your site.
It's your point too, there's this consumer education.
And I always look for things that like hit that intersection of novel and familiar.
And you've got a really, really novel, novel obviously approach to gloves.
It takes, it takes some education.
So I think for retail to work, you've got to be able to really put it into that space of familiarity and possibly maybe the right way to do that is you create different versions of it targeting different use occasions.
So if you were to go into Walmart, so you've got a sport version that can live in the sports section that's calling out specifically for runners.
Maybe you've got one that goes into hunting section.
Maybe you've got a seasonal one that comes out when the winter gloves and in the winter gloves.
Oh, yeah, I like that.
So it's always that familiarity of like, I'm buying gloves.
Oh, and then the novelty of like, oh, this is a different type of glove.
I love that idea of thinking about different ways.
And you are doing some of that already, I think, Matt.
Yeah, yeah, and I love that approach and you totally nailed it, right?
I've got hunters, cyclists, I have tattoo artists, people from all walks of life.
Anytime your hands are cold and you want control, you have nurses that use them because you can wear them underneath rubber gloves.
And so they are so adaptable.
So I love that idea of packaging them for specific activities versus just doing infographic after infographic, which is kind of the approach I've had so far.
And you could call it like the runner's glove or the hunter's glove.
But also too, like you've kind of created the world's most versatile glove.
I feel like you need to kind of ladder this up to the world's best at something.
Yeah. I go back and forth between the age old wisdom of like, find your tribe and grow your tribe and, and really try and, you know, grow with their needs versus this product that can go so many different ways.
And, and I kind of look at like Crocs, I feel like as a similar example, sometimes where it's kind of different, it's still a shoe, but it's different and, and trying to take what I can learn from that.
Yeah. And I wonder whether you could do more of a weightlifting glove that has like grips on it, you know, something that is really designed for weights or for the bar, but gripped.
Yeah. Yeah. I love that idea.
I've done, I've done weather prototype palms and I've tried to do the grip one.
We've been trying to produce in North America and I haven't been able to do, find how to do the grip in North America.
So if anybody's listening, call me, but that can do that.
But yeah, I love that idea.
We've got, I've had rock climbers ask for like extra grading on the the side for like rock abrasion and things like that.
And so that's absolutely where I'd love to go.
And it's been chasing that inventory and having that, you know, we were sold out for almost all of January and just trying to get it back in stock before, you know, the season warmed up was a heart attack for myself and my partner.
Yeah. Looking at it, I was debating whether you should ladder up and build a brand.
Because Flipmits is, I think you're most, more like a flip -flop than a crock.
And Flipmits feels, it's very much a product brand.
and I was debating in my head like okay should you go up and build a brand above and then Flipmints is your product brand but I don't know what you'd ladder up to and I think I would do the opposite.
I would like ladder down what you're talking about be hyper specialized.
So build these hyper specialized uses just like you said and also licensing could be really I mean University of Michigan, Flipmints available in the stadium you know starting in late October and like look for those you know I think licensing also could be a great way to open up some of these used educations, but I would go hyper -specialized.
I love that. We've had some small businesses on this show that have done licensing deals with big schools.
It's possible to do.
It's not as onerous as one might imagine, and that's a great idea.
I love that. I do imagine it to be incredibly onerous, but I do think it's an amazing opportunity, and I appreciate the encouragement.
management. The brand is called Flipmits, Matt Enghorn.
Thanks for calling in.
Congrats. Good luck.
Thank you so much, Guy and Eric.
Appreciate it. Great to meet you.
Likewise. Are you a runner?
Is that a G? Are you a runner?
I can't remember. Only, only when chased.
Yeah. I should run more.
Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. It's okay.
I just did a long run the other day and I jacked up my Achilles heel and now I can't run.
So I got to wait for five days for it to heal up.
Isn't over 50 fun? It's so fun.
So fun. Oh, my God.
But I go to CrossFit.
I work out a lot, but I don't know.
Running isn't - That's good.
That's very good. You can wear flip mints next time.
I know. It's kind of like when those things are like, why did nobody think of that before?
A lot of inventions today.
A lot of inventions.
Cool, right? Eric, before I let you go, a quick question that I ask everyone who comes on the show, which is, now with all of this experience, you know, as you become a wise old man, what would you have said to you, you know, when you're 22, 23, starting method, 24, I can't, you're so young.
When you started that brand out with Adam, if you go back and say, hey, I'm going to give you a piece of advice, here it is.
It would have been my relationship to time.
Be much more patient and don't be in such a rush.
You know, building, you know, building strong foundations takes time and entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship, but also at the same time, you know, treat, treat your time as what it is, the most precious, scarce commodity that, uh, that you have. And I think pacing as an entrepreneurship is one of the biggest challenges.
And I think it's a theme we heard today.
Um, if you really get to the heart of a lot of what everybody was struggling with, whether I take capital, how fast do I grow?
It's really about the right pacing of building a business.
That's Eric Ryan, the man behind the brands Method, Olly Welly, and so many others Eric, it's great having you on the show today Thanks so much for coming on Always a pleasure, Guy, thank you And by the way, if you haven't heard Eric's original How I Built This episode You gotta go back and check it out We'll put a link to it in the podcast description And here's one of my favorite moments from that interview I read at one point, Eric, that to prove that this really was non -toxic You actually drank it Yeah, so I was in London in, you know, I love the British press.
They're so skeptical.
And she said, is it safe enough to drink?
I was like, sure. So we both took a shot of the toilet bowl cleaner.
And then I immediately text Adam, finally got back to me.
I was like, hey, just drank the toilet bowl cleaner.
I'm going to be okay.
Right? Thanks so much for listening to the show this week.
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