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Hello and welcome to The Advice Line on how I built this lab.
I'm Guy Roz. 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.
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Alright, let's get to it!
Joining me this week is Michael Praisman.
He's the founder of the clothing retailer Everlane.
Michael, welcome back to the show, great to have you on.
Super excited to be here.
Thank you for having me.
Alright, so Michael, today we are going to talk to founders of a few direct -to -consumer businesses that are looking to kind of build buzz and take their businesses to the next level.
And I wanted to invite you back specifically for this episode because when you launched Everlane, the thing that was kind of at the core of your idea was getting attention by building buzz, like waitlists and focusing on going viral and creating scarcity, which is now the norm with so many products
and shoe drops and all this stuff.
So many drops, and it's a totally different world than it was 15 years ago, and I just launched a new brand again, so I'm right back in the stick of it.
Shoe right in it, yeah.
Know some of the new tricks and I'm also baffled that learning on the go as well because you always got to stay young and learn.
For sure. But before we get to the callers, Michael, first of all, tell me a little bit about what your new venture is.
Yeah, for sure. The new venture really sits in a huge interest of mine, which is I really believe we're moving from a world of designer clothes to designer bodies, and you and I were just talking about this.
Everybody wants to know how do I live longer, healthier, better.
And with that, they're paying attention to what am I putting in my body and who are the doctors I talk to, et cetera.
So the first brand that I launched is called Magna, so it's an electrolyte brand focused on how do we get more of the right nutrients in our body through supplementation.
And you know so much of this from entrepreneurship.
People burn out and they can run themselves to the ground.
I like to say you only have one life, but it's actually quite long if you live it right.
And so we're really out there to inspire people to play the long game.
Nice, I love it. All right.
Michael, a lot of entrepreneurs, of course, struggle to get attention.
You're just talking about your new venture and it's a different world than when you started Everlane 15 years ago.
And this doesn't matter what industry you're in, right?
At any point, there are at least a dozen or more people trying to do the same thing.
You obviously knew that at the time there were hundreds, thousands of clothing retailers, but you weren't thinking about initially by comparing your product to anyone else's.
So how did you think about getting eyes on that first shirt when even then people online had a bunch of different options?
Well, I'll say two things, first of all.
It wasn't as many options as we think.
I mean, this was the time before even Shopify really existed.
So we were very early on in the days.
It was like Warby Parker had launched, and I know you did a great interview with them.
They had launched a year and a half ago, but it was before Glossier, before Harry's.
So it was still quieter online.
So we had a bit of an advantage that way, even before Instagram ads.
So it's very different.
Whenever Lane started, it was part of a two -decade period that I call the period of authenticity.
It's the period where people really cared about where their products came from.
Local, organic, sustainable, transparent.
That was a reaction to the 70s and 80s, which was all about greed.
We are now past that phase and what I call into the attention economy.
It's going to be two decades of obsession around attention.
It's why we're seeing all the growth around celebrity.
It's why we're seeing all the growth around how many followers, how many likes do you have?
A brand that's really hot for like two years and then no one cares.
And so I think we're in the smack middle of this.
So there's two things happening.
There are people like you and me and the people who listen to this podcast that still care about those things, but the bulk of where the attention is and the growth is happening is around this attention economy and celebrities.
Now I believe we're still got probably a decade left of that, maybe a little bit less, but it really puts into perspective, how do you get attention today and how do you grow your business?
Well, that's lots to talk about.
Let's bring in our first call because I think, Michael, you have got a lot, I know you got a lot to offer and a lot of great ideas.
So hello, caller. Welcome to the show.
Please tell us your name, where you're calling from and a little bit about your business.
Well, hello, Guy and Michael.
Thank you so much for having me on the show.
I'm a big fan. So this means a lot to me.
My name is Todd Weinberg.
I am calling from the San Francisco East Bay area.
I'm the founder of Kitchen.
We are a pickleball inspired lifestyle apparel and accessories brand.
Our goal is to really bring a fresh and elevated sense of style and aesthetic to the pickleball space.
And we want to be the go -to brand that people think of when they want to look good and feel good, both on and off the court.
All right. Pickleball.
I've played it a couple of times.
I love it because it's like ping pong.
Anybody can can basically play right away.
You don't have to, it's not like golf where you have to start when you're like seven.
You can, but remind me, what is kitchen?
Because what is the kitchen is a thing and pickleball, right?
Thank you for asking.
And actually, when I was listening to Michael's interview, I think you had mentioned that a name isn't all that important, but I think in this case, the name kitchen is very important for this particular brand.
So from the net to seven feet on each side of the net, that area inside there is called the kitchen.
And so that's how we derived the name.
Okay. Pickleball. I know there's been a lot of hype around it.
You know, first of all, what are you selling?
Are you selling pickleball rackets?
Are you selling pickleballs as wiffle balls?
Like what is the product?
Right. So we're mainly focused on apparel with some accessories.
And the brand launched only November of last year.
So we're not quite even a year in the public yet.
So we're still developing the product line, but currently away from the activewear side and into t -shirts, hoodies, crew necks, sweatshirts, and lots of hats.
Okay. How did you, uh, I'm assuming you're a pickleball fan and you're thinking, Hey, cause there's golf, I mean, there's a whole billion dollar industry around like golf lifestyle brands, right?
All these, uh, companies that basically built these huge businesses, uh, with like golf shirts and stuff.
So I'm thinking, you're thinking, Hey, there's an opportunity here.
How did that, how'd I come about?
Yeah. So, so briefly, the origin story is that I did not set off to start this company, uh, in the way that it happened.
I, uh, was sort of semi -retired.
I am I'm the old guy on the call today.
And I have a couple of businesses here in, in East Bay area that were kind of on autopilot.
And I decided that I was getting a bit bored.
I wanted to do something, uh, else.
And I love pickleball picked it up during, uh, COVID got super inspired by the game and my kids love it.
My, my family plays often and, uh, also grew up in the fashion industry.
That's another story, but I just had an interest in, uh, pickleball apparel.
So I just started doing some research and found that this, this side, not the active wear side, the active wear side is very crowded, but the lifestyle side, the, the more off court side of the business is more open.
And so that's the, that's the niche I've been going after.
Uh, pickleball is an emerging sport.
It's the fastest growing sport in the world right now, certainly in the country.
And it's just taking off, but I think currently six, 16 to 17 million players in the U S and so we want a piece of that pie, but it's a piece of the lifestyle slice of the pie.
All right. Um, and before we get to Michael, tell me the question that you have for us today.
What I'm most concerned as a new brand is how to best build community and engagement with my specific demographic.
You know, it's a pretty niche space, even still as popular as pickleball is, it's still quite niche, especially in our demographic, which is really ages, let's say 22 to 35 is kind of our sweet spot and how do I reach them best?
Before we answer Todd's questions, do you have any questions for Todd about the business and the brand?
First of all, congratulations always, uh, it's not for the faint of heart to go into apparel.
Um, and especially in, in this market, it's gotten harder and harder.
So you better love it because otherwise, uh, it's, uh, it's not worth it.
It's quite difficult.
Yeah. And I was going to ask you, you know, um, I guess two questions, like when you think of what you want to be, when you grow up, as they say, you're like six months, you know, call it almost a year old.
What do you want to be when you grow up and what's not working right now for you?
Okay. I love that question.
And there are a few brands out there that really inspire me.
And one of them is, is a brand called Malbin.
They are a really fantastic, uh, golf lifestyle brand.
And they've really started to take off in the last couple of years.
I mean, you're probably more familiar with a Travis Matthew, right?
Travis Matthew has been established for many years as the 800 pound gorilla in the space.
I mean, you could wear Malbin or Travis Matthew to church on a date night and it's that kind of a vibe.
Yeah. Okay, cool. And, and what do you think's not working for you right now?
Where are you struggling?
There are a few areas, I would say, we're really trying to figure out how to resource our materials so that we can build margin, having a difficult time, just resourcing, because I've want high quality.
You know, I want to have that Lululemon Alo quality at a price point that my demographic can afford and I'm really struggling and that's probably just finding our margins is probably the biggest struggle right now.
So the two most important hires for me in the early days in an apparel brand are sourcing and production and creative.
And I think, I think both address the pieces that you're talking about from my perspective, one on the sourcing and production, uh, getting that right.
Is so, so critical because if you don't get that right, the, the challenge with apparel is everything's this iterative cycle where you buy, it takes a while to get in, you sell.
So unless you can get the supply chain really tight and short, it takes six, 12 months to fix something properly by the time you sell through the inventory, maybe you can do a bit faster.
So I just think getting an advisor or getting somebody who can join you or help or consult, if you have the ability that can just make sure that your, your pricing, your quality is spot on and your costing.
And I've had tons of friends who've started streetwear brands and it's always the ones that are successful.
Have that production nailed from day one.
Just really, really, and if you don't, it cripples you.
Michael, I'm curious.
I mean, we talked about this, just a couple of minutes ago, about this idea of that we're in the middle of the attention economy, right?
And, and we got about another decade of it.
And so with a brand like this if you can capture attention, then you can, presumably you can build momentum, right?
And so I wonder whether, whether a brand like this, like you, you mentioned this golf brand Malbon, I'm looking at their, I was looking at their website and they are clearly doing tons of collaborations with like all these other brands and, you know, and this is a big thing.
Now it's a golf brand and there's something aspirational about golf because golf, you know, is expensive and people talk business on a golf course.
So the, the pickleball community is not exactly a one -to -one comparison, but I wonder, and Michael, you may have some thoughts on this.
I mean, is there a world where Todd really, you know, needs to kind of lean in on this kind of, you know, collab style influencer kind of thing to really start to build momentum?
Or, or, or is that just like, you know, a money pit just pouring money down the drain?
Well, I don't think it's a money pit.
I think you hit the nail on the head though, with something interesting, which is golf is aspirational.
And the other one is of course, tennis is aspirational, which is where you see brands like Sporty and Rich on the female side and just so many different tennis brands that have been successful.
There is an opportunity for that to happen here, but it's not there yet.
I think there's a bit of a, how much you want to invest in creative so that you're creating a bit more of an aspiration and pickleball.
And I think that could be really interesting because that isn't yet owned in the world of pickleball.
And, and is anyone providing that aspirational lifestyle?
Right now, I would say when I look at kitchen, it's a little bit more casual.
And when I look at Melbourne that you're talking about, there's some casual, but it is, it, it, it's got a vibe to it that feels cool.
And being cool just takes expensive cool.
Yeah, it takes work.
It takes creative execution.
And so, you know, it's interesting because at Everlane, any time we wanted to drive growth correctly, it was always about the product.
And the creative. That's what's beautiful about apparel is the marketing is built in because people want to wear it.
And so I would really dial in with your customer and with people who aren't your customer to ask them what's, what's resonating with you and our brand?
What would you like to see more of?
What kind of feeling do you get?
Because the thing about apparel is it's all about the feeling that people have when they put that on and they feel something.
And so what are the feelings they get with the brand kitchen?
I was just going to mention that, you know, in the last, let's call it a year of launching the company, we came out with some kind of like, throw a bunch of stuff on the, throw spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks, right?
So you're trying different things here and there.
But to get to the point where I can actually start doing collabs, I feel like that's just a whole other level, you know, it's just, it's just, it's a whole other ballpark.
And we're not even close to being there yet.
So I'm trying to get to from point A to point B and just trying to build some, like build the wave and the critical mass that we can get there.
I think that makes sense.
I mean, I do think the more you can get, and this is why I keep coming back to Creative is that the creative was resonating.
Figuring out who the influencers are in this space and making sure they're obsessed with your brand is the next level of this, and you can't pay to play here.
They have to love the product and love the brand.
And so that's why I keep coming back to, if the creative's great, the influencers will want to wear it.
It's like, why does Justin Bieber want to wear Malvin?
Because it's cool. Because the design's cool, the couple's cool, the vibe's cool.
So he feels status in that.
And that's the reality with apparel is if you want to build a lifestyle brand, it needs to be that level of aspiration, which is, by the way, really hard.
So I commend you for doing this.
Thank you. Thank you.
Yes, I'm realizing that.
Todd, congrats to Brandon.
It's called Kitchen.
Good luck. We're going to be following you, and I can't wait to see what you make of it.
Thank you guys. Thank you very much.
I appreciate it. All right.
Thanks for calling in.
Awesome. Congrats. You know, I love pickleball, but every time I go to the pickleball courts in my neighborhood, they're all taken, they're all taken by these like aggressive pickleball players.
And, yeah, I'm like sitting there waiting and no dice.
So. Yep. I know. Well, it is a hot sport, but I, I, you know, what I would say is I'm not sure yet, it has the aspiration, you know, it's, it doesn't have the rich history that tennis and golf have that allow it to play in the world of street wear and luxury.
So I just think we're a little early perhaps, and I think he's probably got the right idea, but a little early.
Well, that that's nothing wrong with that.
You were early and look what happened.
That's true. So we'll give it to him.
Yep. 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 Roz and you're listening to The Advice Line right here 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 Roz, and my guest today is Michael Praiseman, the founder of the online clothing retailer Everlane.
All right, let's bring our next caller.
Hello, welcome to the Advice Line.
Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business.
Hi, Guy. Hi, Michael.
Lovely to meet you.
My name is Anna Babbage.
I'm calling from Bondi in Sydney, Australia.
So I'm the co -founder of Earthlings United.
We're a kids' clothing brand that's designed to fit for longer.
So our intent is to reduce the amount of waste surrounding kids' clothing.
So when you say, welcome to the show, thank you for calling in.
When you say fit longer, what do you mean it's designed to last longer, to fit them longer?
So we've really considered the areas where kids grow.
So think track style pants that have an extended cuff that you can fold up and down.
We have a dress we call the dress top that has elastic drawn sides that you can release.
So it starts out as a dress on like a two, three year old.
And then when they get to a four, five, six, becomes a top.
And we have a short that is worn as a pan as a two year old.
And then it's got a drop crutch.
So they grow into it and whereas a short four, five, six.
So we just do two sizes.
So you only have two sizes and it's designed to fit kids aged.
Some of the ages? Yeah, two to ten.
Two to ten years old.
So you just have to buy two sweatshirts and two whatever bottoms.
And you got the whole thing for eight years.
Yep, don't shop for eight years.
Yeah, that's cool. What a cool idea.
So now and it's like most it sort of like sweat pant, like sweat like gear, right?
Like sort of. Yeah, it's it's all super comfortable.
Organic cotton and natural mineral dyed.
But yeah, we want it to be comfortable.
We want kids to wear it.
I love that you're doing that because I have got to tell you, I'm going to get in trouble because some of my friends listen to the show and they make this stuff.
I'm getting increasingly concerned with the amount of plastic I wear.
All the performance where I use plastic.
Yep. Plastic, plastic, plastic.
It's everywhere. And I'm like, why am I wearing this was plastic and you're now you're here telling me you're doing organic cotton and natural dye is awesome.
You know where I sit with plastic.
Yeah, please. As little bit as possible, please.
I love this idea. Want two sizes.
Basically the clothing adjusts to the kid over time.
That's super cool. Tell me about the idea.
How did you come up with it?
Well, my brother's my co -founder and we had kids and, you know, the piles of hammy towns just pile up and pile up and it was getting frustrated.
But the true inspiration was these pair of pants that my son wore and they were just a cotton jersey pants.
Well, when he was one and then he kept wearing them, it was two and they started to turn into shorter pants.
He was three and then four.
They were shorts and they wore them to pajamas.
He wore them for five years.
And so I just thought these pants are amazing.
Why can't all kids clothing evolve with them like these pants?
And, yeah, that was really the inspiration.
I love it. So, OK, when did you guys launch?
When did you start?
We launched three months ago, but we started three years ago working on it.
And right now you're selling it direct to consumer through your website.
Yes, but we just opened a pop up in Bondi a month ago.
In Sydney. Nice. And tell me what, before I forget to ask you, what what's your question for us today?
So the number one request we receive from our customers is to create adults clothing.
So nearly every second day on Instagram, someone saying, please create our adults, adults line.
And so the problem we went out to solve was the fact that kids grow up so quickly and, you know, create so much waste.
But adults don't grow up.
They grow out, not grow up.
And so it's it's that's that's not sort of an area.
We want to work, go, you know, look at babies and then older children.
But we're never going to do adults.
So how do you know when to pivot and listen to your customer, even if it sort of strays from your original business intent?
That's interesting.
So you've got the whole idea was to make it so parents wouldn't have to buy a bunch of crap every year and throw it away.
But now you've got the parents saying, hey, I want the stuff for my size.
I want this comfortable Jersey cotton and, you know, to wear around the house.
Michael Praseman, what do you think?
I mean, we're I mean, the customers are demand asking for this, but she's so early in the business.
What does she do? Oh, my goodness.
I mean, first of all, I'm with you.
What a great idea. But I have a seven month old.
And so as we as we think about all the clothes you've got to buy, it's like every two, three months, new clothes, it's always it's just a train of new clothes.
And then you're just hoping you have more kids so that they can grow into and then eventually you have to give it all away.
So it's a very cool idea.
And what I like about what you're doing is the positioning.
And I was telling Guy, positioning is so important.
You have a very clear positioning in the market.
And I I guess my question for you is what are adults looking for in your clothes?
Like what are they do?
They just love how they bought it for their kids and they just love how comfortable it is, like what's the what's the story there?
They love the natural mineral dye colorways.
I think it's also the comfort too, but everyone is drawn to the colors.
So that's sort of something our main focus was the fit.
You know, when we went out to design these pieces, but we managed to find this factory in Portugal and they've painted this technology to use natural mineral dyes that don't run.
And so we sort of got lucky and everyone is obsessed and so drawn, but drawn in by these colors because they're these quite unique, new to tones that you can't get.
Yeah, they're cool.
Like lavender and like these greens I'm seeing and these sort of blues.
Yeah. So it's they just like, oh my God, I want that for myself.
And I think also is that whole market of matching with the kids that adults?
I don't do that, but some some people do that.
And so if we were to introduce adults, is it still a different sort of section of the brand or yeah, it's it's hard to know.
I think, yeah, I mean, what I would say is sometimes we start.
And this was guy knows is like we started Everlane.
We started selling phone cases and then it ended up looking like radical transparency, so it's pretty, pretty different.
Right. And I think we always had this idea of like at the core reinventing, retail and creating a better experience.
When I look at what you're doing, I would just say I hear the words Earthlings United and I hear better for the planet.
Yes. And then I see your site and I see both.
It's better because we don't have to grow by as much clothes.
But I also see it's organic.
It's mineral dyed and it's dressing race.
And there's a lot of goodness in that as well.
So I think at the core for me is that Earthlings United, which is such a fun name and the logo you have.
Agree. You know, I totally agree with that.
Michael, we did a story maybe a year or two ago and it's worth worth listening to with the brand called Primary.
And this their whole point was, hey, we want to make kids basics that's less expensive, that, you know, that is without a label, without, you know, and eventually the adults were asking for stuff.
And so now they do adult clothing as well.
So I agree with with Michael here.
I'm looking at your website.
I see Earthlings United and yeah, I might say, hey, kids grow up close to two.
But you could also have a window that says, hey, we make stuff for grownups, too.
You know, I mean, I don't I don't see a whole lot of problem because your name, Earthlings United doesn't say, hey, this is just for kids.
It's like it's a it can be a universal brand.
So I think it's a really interesting thing to consider.
Yeah, the way I would think about it is do a couple of pieces for adults and see how they sell, because it might be that the that the notion is that the and again, I think about positioning, the positioning becomes the eco friendly first through the lens of the fabric and then the kids becomes a subset
of that. Yeah, I think that's a good idea.
Like maybe we test out a couple of sweaters or something and do a smaller run.
And that could almost be exclusive or something just just to test the adult market.
But I did take a lot of inspiration from listening to your podcast episode, Michael, because I remember you saying and I took this inspiration when I was walking past this site before we opened this pop up, because I remember you saying, oh, we never intended to do brick and mortar stores, and it's very
early days. But I was walking past this closed down location and I just happened to inquire.
And so we've kind of taken a bit of a leap by opening this little pop up.
But I think that's a good example, I guess, of just sort of pivoting in your business and totally seeing how it goes, I guess.
Yeah, I think that you have the opportunity to create a hype machine.
You've got to do a drop.
You're going to just like have a we're going to do a limited drop of adult, you know, maybe just do two sizes of adults, too, or something, you know, two men sizes, two women sizes, and for now and you just try them out because, you know, performance were really kind of exploded in the last 20 years.
Lou Lemon really was one of the first pioneers of this.
And I think a lot of people, they love it.
They appreciate performance wear, but they are looking a lot.
A lot of people are starting to look for natural organic versions of this, which essentially is what we wore in the 70s and 80s.
It was just cotton sweat.
Like all, you know, athletes wore.
But I think there's a there is an opportunity around that.
And I really think that trying it as a limited time drop could be really cool because it's because you already have right.
I mean, you're already working with manufacturers and suppliers who presumably could just make bigger sizes of this stuff.
Yeah, I really like that guy where you said about just still do two sizes, because we that is another one of points of communication.
We say just two sizes.
And maybe that's how we can carry that into the adults and streamline it.
But the one thing I'll tell you is don't get too hung up on your communication because that might not be what the consumer is hearing.
What I'm hearing you say is the consumer is hearing these incredible dies.
And one of the things I've always seen with founders is these what I call sacred cows.
And the question is, for me, what's the what are the sacred cows, the consumer?
What do they really care about as it relates to your brand?
Is it the eco friendly?
Is it the quality and the comfort?
Is it the fact that you only do two sizes and and knowing that hierarchy from your consumer allows you to figure out what you're talking about and and maybe change some things in the future because otherwise you can get stuck?
Yeah, and I think that's such an important point.
Right. And maybe it might be worthwhile and you may be doing some of this, but it might be worthwhile to even do a limited survey, you know, ask people, what is it about our clothing that was interesting to you and find out?
Is it the two sizes?
Is it the fact that it's cotton?
Is it the fact that it's natural dies?
Because I think Michael, you're on to something here.
I think you might be surprised about what you learn.
Yeah, that's really good advice, actually, because you get stuck in your head.
You're just like operating this vacuum and you make all these assumptions.
And I think I think that's a really good idea that we should conduct a survey because I think we could be quite surprised.
Awesome. All right.
Well, I really I can't wait to see to the I'm going to keep checking your website out, because if you make an adult size, I'm going to order one.
The brand is called Earthlings United, Anna Babbage, thank you so much for calling in.
Good luck. Thank you so much.
Congratulations. Thanks, Michael.
Thanks, Guy. Thank you.
I want to go to Bondi Beach right now.
I want to go there now.
I want to be sitting on Bondi Beach and just watching the sunset or, you know, I don't know if the sunset if it sets there.
I can't I don't know that you I don't know if it does.
It probably does. I think it does.
I think it's pretty beautiful.
Oh, it's east coast.
It's east coast of Australia with the sunsets in the west.
But maybe it doesn't in Australia because it's on the other side of the earth.
I don't know. I think she's making cool stuff.
I think it's fun. Totally.
Absolutely. OK, next up after the break, another collar with another business challenge.
I'm Guy Roz, and we're answering your 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 Roz and my guest today is Michael Praeseman, the founder of the online clothing retailer Everlane.
All right. Let's bring our next caller.
Hello, welcome to the Advice Line.
Please tell us your name, where you're calling from and a little bit about your business.
Hey, Guy. Hey, Michael.
I am calling from British Columbia, Canada, and my business is called Mr.
Lid. We make a plastic container with an attached lid so you never lose the lid.
And tell us your name.
Oh, Paul Massaev. Paul Massaev.
Paul, I believe we have met before.
Yes, sir. I believe we met at a trade show that I want to speak at.
Yes, sir. Yeah, I remember Mr.
Lid. I'm so glad I got a chance to run into you, Guy.
Well, so tell us about Mr.
Lid. So Mr. Lid is a plastic container attached lid, never lose the lid, solving one of the biggest frustrations people have in the storage game.
You've been in my kitchen and you've seen all the empty lids that I have, missing orphaned lids.
Yes, keep going. So Mr.
Lid's actually been around since 2011.
I am not the original founder of Mr.
Lid. I ended up buying the company just over a year ago.
It's made in Wisconsin.
It's a USA made product.
I bought it because I saw a need for a container company to be fun, to be trendy, to be modern.
We did that and then people started to write in saying, hey, love what you guys are doing, I've been using Mr.
Lid for over 10 years.
In fact, I still have some of the same containers.
That's what really prompted us to develop this vision around replacing single -use containers.
So we're very much focused on reusability.
We're focused on alternative materials.
And that's kind of the purpose of the company moving forward.
Where are you selling right now?
Mr. Lid .com and Amazon.
Got it. Okay. And tell me a little bit about the challenges that you've faced.
I mean, you bought this, I guess, in 2023 and it was an established brand.
But are you facing any challenges?
Are you facing any headwinds or so far smooth sailing?
The response to the brand is good.
We have a lot of work to do, but we have some early signs that our messaging is working.
We're obviously going against some very big competitors in this space, some longstanding competitors, you know, kind of timely with some of the news that came out yesterday.
You're talking about Tupperware, right?
Because Tupperware just declared bankruptcy.
Correct. And if I could say, I actually sat on Mr.
Lid for a while before I purchased it.
One of the reasons I bought Mr.
Lid was reading Tupperware's earnings report from early April, despite some of the issues they had claimed in their report that they were having a hard time connecting with the younger audience.
Yes. And that's that set off a light bulb.
I said, you know what?
Well, first things first, you got to understand your audience.
So we went out there and I pulled and I asked questions and I wanted to know what did a younger audience want from a container?
And that I thought Mr.
Lid had some of those attributes.
Paul, I'm looking at your website and I see your bio and it says a long time tech entrepreneur, how did you go from tech to to getting this plastic container company?
So that's right. I was an entrepreneur at the age of 16.
I was very, very much engulfed in in tech.
I loved, you know, I was friends with my janitors at school because I was tinkering in the computer lab.
So I found a passion very early on.
I kind of grew up in the VC era, thought I should be able to invest in companies.
And I tried and I failed and I'd consult.
And then I tried again and I failed and I'd consult.
And I went through this cycle of trying to get, you know, one startup off off the ground at a time.
And I just remember the last one that we were involved in.
I said to myself, I said, I don't know if I want to do this anymore.
I want to find boring, profitable companies.
Love where I can where I can add, you know, my flare, my personality, my ideas into and grow.
So when I had the chance meeting of meeting the owners of Mr.
Lid, when I heard container with a lid attached, I just said, oh my gosh, this is so simple.
I can understand this.
Everyone can understand this.
There wasn't a six month sale cycle.
You know, there wasn't.
It was just, oh, container with a lid attached.
It just made so much sense.
Yeah, I love that story.
It's like, why don't more people just buy laundromats or car washes?
You know, like these, these businesses that just have this recurring cash flow.
Anyway, that's a different conversation.
What Paul will tell us what your question is for us.
Well, so I mentioned that baked into our vision statement is this idea of replacing single use containers.
So how can we change consumer behavior and turn Mr.
Lid into an accessory that replaces takeout containers?
Interesting. OK, that is a big challenge, right?
To create a whole category or guess to change consumer behavior, not a category.
But, Michael, we can we can go to Paul's question, but you may have questions of your own for him.
So please. Well, yeah, first of all, I love the idea of buying a business.
You know, it's having being somebody who helps people start them and starting them myself, it's like, why not just go out and take something that's already working a little bit and say, hey, let's let's not create something completely new.
Let's build on what's out there.
So congrats on that.
You know, it's a big vision to say, let's create a new category like a water bottle.
What's what's the use case?
Like, can you tell us, like, where would we take this?
How would we take it?
How would we use it when you think about it replacing the world of takeout containers?
So the first the first use case we were going after is very specifically when you go out for lunch, when you get some fries with the guys and you got some leftovers, we are trying to encourage the behavior where you reach into your bag and you pull out your litty and you say instead of taking home a piece
of garbage, you know, the container that they provide you, so you ask the the server, can I please put that in my Mr.
Lid? So we're trying to we're trying to take that on first before we take on bigger use cases.
It's interesting because I would have thought about this a bit differently, which is it's so hard to change consumer behavior, you know, to get someone to take something like this and put it in their bag and carry it around and then go to the store.
Whereas and it took a long time for you know, it started with, by the way, water bottles that were throw away to then getting people to move to refillable water bottles that were for performance to then moving towards Stan Lee's or whatever it is where people carry them all day.
So these things take decades to switch.
You know, what I instantly started to think about is like, how do you get these restaurants or these grocery stores to start packaging things in Mr.
Lid like a tote to say this is a reusable container?
This is a Mr. Lid. It's super cool.
It's super rad. And you can reuse this forever.
I love it, Michael.
I tried. I feel like a lot of restaurants are so they're very busy.
They're focused on their food.
They're focused on their experience.
When a guy wants to talk to them about containers, they kind of say, OK, I'm too busy.
But I do think there is a world where a restaurant would be excited by the fact that they're able to sell a reusable container.
They can minimize how many of the singles that they're purchasing.
They encourage customers to bring it back, possibly for a dollar off their meal, pay for the container.
And one of the things we can do with the Mr.
Lid is it's called IML.
It's baked into the plastic graphics.
So now you're putting a container in someone's house with your graphics on it, reminding them that you're a brand that cares about reusability.
The optics of that are very positive.
So we do. I will say we actually had a really recent development where a school district has called us and they're ordering three thousand of our containers to hand out to young schoolchildren, elementary schoolchildren to teach the benefits of reusability.
And so when that occurs, we that's in discussion right now, when that occurs, we're going to jump all over that with our press team and try to encourage other schools to follow that sort of behavior.
I mean, that's what gets me excited.
There's a couple of sayings and I can't I can't pin the one for this one.
One of them is education requires tuition and tuition is expensive.
And so to get people to to reeducate them on how to use this product is hard.
And that's where I like all the opportunity you have in the branding and the storytelling and creating this sort of reusable container and making it fun.
That I get excited about.
I love it. I do, too.
Yeah. One of the things that I keep where my brand keeps coming back to and Michael, you're going to deal with this in your one year little girl is in just a few years, which is school lunches.
And I know and I'm looking at your website.
I know you've got like a bento box insert and stuff, but that to me seems like a real opportunity to like really use fun pops of color and maybe even like, I don't know, maybe there maybe Mr.
Lid is a character, maybe Mr.
Lid is like a monster, like a friendly monster with a you know, with a lid head or something, you know, where where it's like there's a character here and he's Mr.
Lid and he's on the side of your bento box.
I don't know. I love it.
I'd love it. And so, Michael guy, I have three little girls, nine, seven and seven.
I've got identical twins and nice.
I could tell you kids are the biggest Lid losers around.
So making the product accessible, regardless of if if it's for, you know, school aged children or adults, having that design or, you know, brand affiliation or collab, there's no reason we can't do a collab with like a famous singer or an NFL team.
It creates that connection to the product.
It's a bit of a signal and it's really key to making this something that people actually want to take out.
You know, the reason I think it doesn't occur now is there's a bit of a stigma around it or it just doesn't look cool.
I think I think building on what Guy says, I'm like, yeah, where do all these lids go?
Mr. Lid can tell the story of where all these lids disappear into the world and why with Mr.
Lid, you don't have this problem.
There's just so many fun stories to tell that way that could be that could be a really great angle because in this world, content matters.
And so I think less about I know your initial question was how do we change consumer behavior?
And I think more about exactly what Guy's saying and you're building on, which is how do you create personality and personalization that gets people really excited and connected to this product and a part of their daily life?
Yeah, I think there's a I think there's a real opportunity to create some like low, low cost content here.
You none of you guys have teenage boys or middle school boys.
So you may not know about Skibbity Toilet, but any parent listening knows what I'm talking about with teenage children or elementary school.
This is a very weird phenomenon that start on the Internet in the last couple years is a toilet.
It's videos of a toilet saying Skibbity Toilet.
And every kid says this is so weird.
But I can see like Mr.
Lid, you know, like an animated Mr.
Lid kind of thing, like munching up, you know, all this garbage and plastic or I don't know, something like that, like stop motion, Mr.
Lid because it's attached to the thing.
Yeah, I love it, Guy.
And we're trying to create connection two ways.
We want we want the product to be fun.
But we also want to let people know how serious we are about reusability.
You know, one of my favorite emails is from a young woman who told me that her family bought Mr.
Lid when she was 11.
She's taken them to college with her.
She's 22 now. They still work.
She keeps one in her car to pay for the coffee, holds her change.
It still works like they did on day one.
And it just it makes me so proud that, you know, we can do something to kind of mitigate how much of that garbage is being generated by throw away containers.
I love it. I love it.
Paul, good luck. The brand is called Mr.
Lid. We're going to cheer you on, man.
Good luck. Thanks, Guy.
Thanks, Michael. Congrats.
Thanks so much. Thank you so much for calling in.
Yeah. I mean, do you know what I'm talking about?
The Skippity toilet.
You probably don't.
I do. Actually, I've seen it before.
But he needs Skippity Lid.
Skippity Lid. Skippity Lid.
Skippity Lid. So great.
One of my kids was saying it like, you know, about a year ago.
I just didn't know it.
It's so weird. We live in a weird time.
It'll only get weirder.
Michael, before I let you go, and I'm super psyched about your new brand and it's going to be awesome.
But when you started this out, you know, you're ever laying back 15 years ago, if there was something you kind of wish you knew at the time that would have been helpful to you, what what do you think that might be?
I'm going to say I'm a marketer.
And so when we launched Everlane, it was so much about storytelling.
And even when I do things today, it's always the positioning and the storytelling.
And what I'll say is that what I think is so important, if you want to build an enduring brand, is that when you have phenomenal product that's differentiated, that's high quality.
Or the or the lowest price, whatever it is, that the product itself delights people.
Boy. It makes marketing's job 10 times easier.
Everlane was lucky in the early days because we were at a we had such a unique marketing position in a world that wasn't as crowded as it is today.
And eventually we our product caught up with our marketing.
But that didn't happen for five or six years.
And once we did, that's when the brand went from 50 million to 200 million into in three years.
And so I think I I go back to the product has to be amazing.
And if the product's amazing, it'll go very long way.
Michael Praisman, thanks so much.
Thank you. It's always fun.
It's great having you back on.
And by the way, if you if you haven't heard Michael's original, how I built this episode, you've got to go back and check it out.
You can find a link to it in the podcast description.
And here is one of my favorite moments from that interview.
So the strangest thing you would never expect if you were to build a brand today and you start with a T -shirt, your next product would might be denim.
Our next product was literally ties and bow ties, ties and bow ties, ties and bow ties.
It just seems like a like a kind of a just throwing a dart at a dartboard list to bow ties.
It is weird. Yeah, we didn't have a lot of connections and it was we would have to wait six to 12 months to be able to launch a sweatshirt.
And our alternative was we had a guy that could make ties and bow ties in two months.
And how did those do?
We never made ties and bow ties again.
Let's just put it that way.
Thanks so much for listening to the show this week.
Please make sure to check out my newsletter.
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And we'll put all this in the podcast description as well.
This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music composed by Ramtina Rablue.
It was edited by John Isabella.
Our audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez.
Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Chris Messini, Carla Estevez, Elaine Coates, J .C.
Howard, Katherine Seifer, Devin Schwartz, Neva Grant and Sam Paulson.
I'm Guy Raus and you've been listening to the Advice Line on how I built this lab.
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