Hexclad: Danny Winer

Cookware is a $73 billion global industry - awash in all kinds of pots and pans. Like, if you’ve ever cooked scrambled eggs, you've probably used a non-stick frying pan. They’re inexpensive and everywhere. But they’ve been dogged by complaints: many can’t handle high heat, like broiling or searing, and they scratch easily. So, when Danny Winer came across a new non-stick technology at a trade show overseas, he jumped on it, co-founding Hexclad with a buddy. Danny was convinced it could be adapted to the U. S. market - and be a hit. He was right! In just under ten years, Hexclad grew into a $500 million company. This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson, with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Andrea Bruce, with research help from Katherine Sypher. Our engineers were Jimmy Keeley and Gilly Moon. You can follow HIBT on Twitter https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis, and email us at [email protected]. Sign up for Guy’s free newsletter at guyraz.com http://guyraz.com/ or on Substack. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 0:46Guy Raz?

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• 2:16Guy Raz?

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• 3:45Guy Raz?

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• 4:27Guy Raz?

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• 5:16Speaker 01

  We would literally line up boxes in Cole's backyard, and we'd run down a line, and I'd be like, 12-inch pans, 12-inch pans, 12-inch pans.

• 5:24Guy Raz?

  Hand-packaging them.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Hand-packaging them to save money. And then we'd be like taping them closed, and we had so many paper cuts on our fingers that there sometimes would be little blood spots on the box, and we would have to take Windex and go back and clean the blood off the top of the box, and we would drive them to the Costco to sell them.

• 5:51Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:02Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Danny Weiner grew Hexclad from a backyard business into a $500 million cookware company in just under 10 years.

• 6:19Guy Raz?

  Anything you use to cook food, pots, pans, Dutch ovens, they're part of a $73 billion global industry known as cookware. Everyone has to cook, right? But surprisingly, at least in the US, there aren't that many brands that people know. Sure, you might recognize Allclad, or Lodge, or even Le Crusay. But for the most part, people tend to buy whatever's cheapest at Target or Walmart. And that's opened the doors to a bunch of new upstart brands over the past few years. One of these brands is called Hexclad. It was launched about a decade ago by two guys who previously worked as sales reps for another cookware company that's no longer in business.

• 7:02Guy Raz?

  Danny Weiner, one of the founders, discovered the pans at a trade show in China back in 2015. He was instantly intrigued by the pan's non-stick features and its hexagon-like pattern on the surface. Danny would end up teaming with the inventor in Korea, rebranding the product as Hexclad, and coming up with a whole new line of cookware with that same surface. In 2024, barely a decade after its founding, Hexclad sold over $500 million worth of its products. Now, when Danny first came across this technology, he and his co-founder Cole McCray were running low on cash.

• 7:44Guy Raz?

  Their previous business, which was selling high-end home juicers, was about to collapse. Danny went to that trade show in China as a kind of hail mary move, hoping for a miracle. Even more remarkable is that he never intended to become an entrepreneur, let alone an expert in cookware. Danny wanted to become an actor. He grew up in Buffalo, New York, and studied film and theater at NYU. After graduating, he moved to Los Angeles, where he hit round after round of auditions and cattle calls.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  I don't think I ever wanted to be a Brad Pitt-level star. I think what I wanted was just enough of it that I could like, maybe go back to New York and call my shots in the theater, you know, and things like that, and bounce back and forth and make a good living, but I didn't have to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars and, you know, be a Harrison Ford.

• 8:41Guy Raz?

  And you could have. I mean, I'm looking at you. I mean, I could see you in Goodfellas, or, you know, you could be, you know, sort of, you could play an Italian guy, or a Jewish guy, or, you know, you'd be like a New York kind of character act type.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, listen, you wonder why these things don't work out for you at a given time.

• 9:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  You know, I always wonder, you know, does the universe give you success when you're ready to handle it? I don't know. Could I have gone down, you know, the wrong path if it had been easy?

• 9:14Guy Raz?

  So you get to LA, and what did you do? Did you start to go on auditions?

• 9:18Speaker 01

  I started going on auditions. You know, it was so different than New York, because I remember the first audition I went to, I showed up, you know, gave my resume, my headshot, and they lined me up, and they were looking at my height, and then they go, "Okay, thanks for coming in." And I'm like, "Wait, do I get to read or act?" "No, I'm the wrong height." And I'm like, "How about a courtesy? Because like, I might be wrong for this." But, you know, I found out, I think they'd hired the girl who was going to be in it, and she was like 5'1", so they kind of wanted a guy who was like 5'8", and I'm 5'11". It was like, it was a very disrespectful process at the time I found.

• 10:04Guy Raz?

  So this is a period of like three, roughly three years where you're sort of going back and forth in and out of auditions. And did you, did you ever land? I mean, you must have landed some things.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  It's funny, the things that you land that get you going and like, I don't even have access to this, but a couple of like short films that never really got anywhere. Maybe they played in a festival, but it was a really good role type of thing. And I can't even go into detail because I just barely remember them. But then I get like a couple of commercials and, and sometimes you have a line and sometimes you don't. Sometimes it's music and you're just on the beach and you're running around and you know, and you and a girl are running down the sand and you know, and that's the commercial. And you're like, well, I guess it's acting in a way.

• 10:49Guy Raz?

  Do you remember feeling anxious at that time? Just feeling a lot of anxiety about the future and about life?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  There is a little bit, but I think in a way you still, I would say, you know, now I'm like, I'm probably about 27 ish. I'm still dumb enough to think like that, oh, you know, it's not me, it's them and they're going to see and people are going to want to hire me. But I think what started creeping in was I don't like failing at things. And I was feeling, beginning to feel like a failure. And the thing is when you fail, like, look, you know, eventually at the end of the fourth quarter, right? They blow the whistle and the game's over. And there's no like, oh, I don't want to feel like a fail. Well, you did fail. Today you failed. So, so now you have to, you know, dust yourself off and decide,

• 11:42Speaker 01

  how do I win next time? Whatever that looks like. And I think that feeling was beginning to creep into my, my mind that one, I don't want to be seen as a failure. I don't like looking at myself in the mirror when I'm failing.

• 11:55Guy Raz?

  Nobody, nobody does.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I guess around 1994, you you get in a car accident. A bad one.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:07Guy Raz?

  Badly injured. And you ended up like having to go to rehab and like we were walking with a cane for like a long time, many months. Back brace. What what what happened? I mean,

• 12:24Guy Raz?

  were you just at it? I mean, yeah, I mean, what happened?

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Well, you know, this it's obviously one of these life changing moments and,

• 12:36Speaker 01

  you know, it was a bad accident. I shattered my right leg. I broke vertebrae in my back and I had to get better, but, and I and obviously when you're young and broke, now you're even broker, but you're not younger. So, and during that period, I said, number one focus is I have to make money. I don't know what that looks like. I'd never been so poor, you know, I I had this moment. In fact, this is one of the a pivotal moment in my life, and I don't know if I've ever told it publicly. I've told a few friends, but I was on crutches still, so I'd had like pins taken out of my leg, but I had to walk with with crutches

• 13:18Speaker 01

  just because my legs weren't strong enough. And and we lived, my buddy and I had a house in Eagle Rock, California, and we lived kind of on the side of the hill and I had no money and I, you know, at home, I couldn't work yet. So I'd be until he came home from work, I'd be sitting in this house and, you know, we didn't have cell phones then, you know, I don't think we even had internet then. And the movie Braveheart came out.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  And I remember I had a free movie pass to the Glendale Movie Theater. So I'm like, I'm going to go see this movie to cheer me up. And I I crutch down the hill. And I go to the bus stop, you know, I have no car now and I take the bus, I see Braveheart, you know, it inspires me and I come back. And I see there on the side of the road, this this gentleman who's standing there with bags of oranges. And I'm like,

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Look, this poor guy's got to stand out here. I go, how much is the bag of oranges? He's like, $2. I have $2 left after the movie. So I buy the bag of oranges and he puts them in like a plastic shopping bag and, you know, I'm crutching up the hill and I get almost to the top of the hill and I'm exhausted and the bottom of the garbage bag rips and all my oranges start tumbling out and they're rolling all the way down the hill and I just, I can't chase them. I'm not physically able to chase them. And I look down the hill and I start to cry. And, and the thing is, I'm

• 14:59Speaker 01

  not a, I don't cry often and I start crying and I'm like, I can't believe I'm going through all this. And I had that moment of self pity. And then somehow I saw myself like in the third person, you know, on the hill with these crutches, with a torn plastic bag. And I just started laughing and I'm like, I, I, I can't believe this is what I'm going through right now. But it was a pivotal moment for me.

• 15:25Guy Raz?

  So, all right. So you, you go through this sort of traumatic accident and you are unable to work and clearly you haven't really managed to get any kind of traction as an actor. And I guess around this time, you had a friend who, somebody you actually knew from NYU.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:44Guy Raz?

  Who was, uh, he was like selling cookware at trade shows.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 15:50Guy Raz?

  And I said, hey, do you wanna help me out? Is, is that, is that what happened around that time?

• 15:57Speaker 01

  That's exactly what happened. I hadn't worked yet. So I was, I was just getting off my, my cane at that point.

• 16:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  And, but I had to work. I had no money. And he said, listen, you know, you wanna come to this convention center? We sell cookware. I'm like, cookware? He goes, yeah. He goes, I need, I need somebody to help run the credit cards and stuff. He goes, I'll give you 500 bucks. And I'm like, 500 bucks? Sweet. I'm there. And I went and helped him and it was hard because it's 10 hours on your feet. And I'm like, I'm like, I was in a lot of pain, you know? So, um, but.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  You know, I saw him do well and he's like, I go, if you need help again, let me know. And he goes, well, I'm doing another one of these in, I don't know, a week or two. Do you want to help me? I'm like, yeah. And I'm like, whenever you need the help, because at that point, I'm like, oh, I do have my days free. I can still go to an audition if I get one and I can work these Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays with him. And then I got good enough at it on my own that the company offered me to do my own events. And, you know, and that's the first time where I go, I don't want to do this. But this makes sense because I can make money. I can make it quickly.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  I can, don't have to completely kill my dream yet, but I can get a lot of bang for my buck. And I'm getting better and better at this.

• 17:26Guy Raz?

  So this was your friend, your friend buddy, and what kind of cookware were they selling? Pans and pots and pans?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Yep, pots and pans. And it was like a restaurant line of cookware.

• 17:37Guy Raz?

  So you, so you basically get a job as a sort of a commission based sales rep for them. And, and did they, I mean, did they put you through like sales training first before, before you started to go out and pitch?

• 17:51Speaker 01

  So essentially what wound up happening in my case was I had worked for months with my friend. Like, once I started generating income for him as well, he's like, hey, I'll pay you more because you're really valuable to me. I can go grab lunch and I come back and you've made sales. So by the time I was offered this, you know, this spot, I was very good. Like I was very trained. I knew the cookware space.

• 18:17Guy Raz?

  So you're, and, and so then you become a sales rep for this company. But, but you still had one foot in entertainment, right? You still, you were still kind of going to, to some auditions now and again, still thinking this was going to just pay the bills.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Yes. And you may be overly generous saying a foot. It may have been, it may have been my big toe in, in at that point. But you know what? There was the point where you're kind of done. And I remember, I think I had a 9 a.m. audition and the alarm went and I looked and I hit snooze and I went back to sleep and I knew that day. At that point, I needed to do this. It was producing a very good income at this point.

• 19:05Guy Raz?

  You saw this as something that, you know, and I think you are admitting this now in hindsight, but that at the time you kind of felt like that it was not really what you had planned to do with your life.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  No. And, and look, the fact is, very few people are on that, you know, on the, on the plan they set for themselves, lying on their bunk bed when they were 12 years old, you know? So, you know, identifying what I was good at and removing ego. I mean, I have a healthy ego like a lot of people do. And you know what was kind of interesting as I felt like, oh, I'm a friggin salesman, but I was making a good living. And I had a really good friend, another NYU buddy, who was a lawyer and he was seeing me like work these weekends and then have the days off and he's working his ass off.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  And here you, you know, he's got law school loans and he's like, listen, is there any chance I could get one of these cookware jobs? And I'm like, buddy, you're a lawyer, you know? He's like, it sucks being a lawyer.

• 20:14Guy Raz?

  Yeah, it's a grind.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  It's a grind.

• 20:17Guy Raz?

  It's a grind. So this really is sort of now you're full on into this career and eventually you get promoted and, and national sales manager, VP of Sales. And, and while you're there, you, you meet another, I mean, you've become friends with people and one of the, one of them would, would become critical in the future, which we'll get to, but this is a guy named Cole McCray. Tell me a little bit about Cole.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Cole is one of the most interesting guys I know because I met him right before I went into the office. So at this point, we're both salesmen when I meet him. And he just, you know, we have similar senses of humor. Like, we like dark humor. We like saying, you know, stuff that other people won't say. So we kind of became friendly. And then when I became his boss, you know, he quickly became the top salesman. He was very, very good. And so he was like my, my main guy. But Cole is also, he does not mince words about stuff. So now

• 21:20Speaker 01

  just say, I'm in the office a couple of years now. And I think I just got made VP of Sales. And he like, he'll come in the office and I'm his boss. He goes, he walks in, he sees me sitting there. He goes like this, well, somebody's getting fat. Like, I'm not getting fat. You know, I mean, maybe I put a few pounds. I'm at a desk for the first time. He goes, you're fat. Five o'clock, you're coming to the gym with me. Okay. I'm like, fine, I'll go to the gym with you. And then he and I started working out. Like, if he wasn't off traveling for a show, we worked out, you know, four or five nights a week. Which eventually is where the idea during our workouts of starting our own company came.

• 22:05Guy Raz?

  All right, we'll get there. But for now, I mean, you and Cole are kind of killing it, right? In the mid 90s into the 2000s. You become VP of Sales. He's your top sales guy. But I guess, I guess around 2009, 10, right? Business starts to shrink. I mean, it's the financial crisis has happened. And I guess around that time, I read that you started to sort of look at e-commerce, right? To help try to boost sales. And that was, e-commerce was pretty new, right? I mean, e-commerce was relatively new. It's just catching on.

• 22:40Guy Raz?

  I mean, by that point, was the company even, even selling anything online?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Technically, yes, but, but not really. So at this point in our area, in say, the kitchenware space, your website and the ability to purchase online was looked at as just a tool to help you sell in person. You don't buy cookware that way. You know, it's kind of like, people weren't quite yet, they were just beginning to buy clothes. Online that way.

• 23:10Guy Raz?

  So, did you ever go to your boss, the owner of the company and say, hey, we should really, we should get on to these like platforms or Facebook, or we should really be doing like, you know, let's, let's go build a Facebook community and, you know, try to, try to see if we, if that helps sales.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  So that's exactly what happened. I got excited. One thing I'd noticed at this point was I'd read an article about the, about decline in cookbook sales. And

• 23:42Guy Raz?

  Which would totally go the opposite way like a few years later, because it would just skyrocket. But yes, keep going.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Well, and, you know, why is this? Well, I'm like, well, there's a ton of great recipes online. People now, like I say, people love cookbooks again, you know, and, but at this point, they're like, oh, wait a minute. I don't have to spend $30 to buy, to get all these recipes that I don't really like and the 20 that I do like. So they're starting to digest content online. And I became very aware of this and I'm seeing the Food Network exploding. And I'm like, this is a big deal and we need to create a community here. And I went to the CEO of the company and I had Facebook up and I go, I, I want to tell you my idea. I go, I don't have it completely fleshed out yet. But I go, this is where

• 24:33Speaker 01

  we need to be. I pointed at the screen. I'm like, we got to create a community and then we own the experience with our customer and this is going to lead to sales. And he quite literally did hand to the face to me and he goes, listen kid, this Facebook thing, it's never going to last. And that was the moment that was, I walked out and I'm like, I gotta start my own company.

• 25:01Guy Raz?

  I mean, to be fair, at that time, right, 2010, 11 wasn't uncommon for somebody, especially somebody from, you know, so older to feel that way, that this is just a fad, or this is just to post your books and your likes and your music you're listening to, your vacation pictures, right? Like, I think that, because this is around the time when like Sheryl Sandberg just joins company. So, Facebook is about to transform into a massive advertising platform, which is, but, but you feel like if they don't change, you might not have a job. Like, the company might not, might not survive.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Exactly. Because, let's face it, you, you, you know, people are terrified of change, right? Because the future is scary, often. You know, I was scared to say, let's pivot slightly and, you know, really embrace social media. But, but when I look at it very analytically, I didn't see a downside.

• 26:01Guy Raz?

  And eventually, the company, it doesn't exist anymore, right?

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. It, they wound up fading out, but at that point, I was, I was gone at that point. I think, you know, they locked the doors around sometime around 17 or so.

• 26:16Guy Raz?

  All right. You and Cole had been talking about maybe doing something together one day. Like, if you were to start a business, you were brainstorming ideas around things that you would use in the kitchen?

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely.

• 26:29Guy Raz?

  And you, and I guess you start to, you start to look for what that product could be, right? You're still working for the, the cookware company. But how, how did you start to go search for this next thing that you wanted to do?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  So, as we, we, you know, played around with what this could look like, you know, it started at the gym. We, we talk about ideas. Now that he had got me back working out, we were both very, very health conscious at this point. And we, we had both become big juicing fans, you know, green juice. And, you know, it was like becoming huge at that point.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  We were reading about like new advances in making cold pressed juice at home with a couple of Korean companies, but they hadn't really like the big juicer was like the Jack Lalanne juicer at the time.

• 27:19Guy Raz?

  Right. And that's and just for people who like that's a juicer where you put the carrot in and it grinds it up and it basically is heating the the the fruits or vegetables. And so you lose some of the vitamin content, but cold press just slowly presses it down. And then the the the thinking is the juice retains the vitamin content because it's not heated. But but generally, you can't do that at home. You'd have to buy like you could buy cold pressed juices and you're and you you were starting to see that there were home versions of this being created.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Yes. So so we were doing our research and we thought, um, this, the health benefits are huge. Like we had seen like Vitamix like cornered the smoothie market, but quite frankly, still like smoothies are not as good as vegetable juice.

• 28:05Guy Raz?

  You were looking for something cool to sell.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:08Guy Raz?

  And and eventually you found a juicer.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  We did.

• 28:12Guy Raz?

  That that you liked.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  And we thought we found the holy grail because what was interesting, it was a cold pressed juicer. It had been invented in Korea. And what was was great about it was it only had one part to clean. You popped out the center like it was like a giant screw and you just washed it all off. So it was like, wow, this is easy to clean. This is the holy grail. So, you know, we were very excited about bringing that to market.

• 28:40Guy Raz?

  And how much how much were these going to retail for?

• 28:42Speaker 01

  These were going to retail for about 400 US dollars.

• 28:46Guy Raz?

  Got it. Okay. So you have this idea. You go back and you and Cole agree that this is what you're gonna do. And so I'm assuming you both at this point leave leave the company to start your own company.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  So by the time I think I left. It took all of thirteen into fourteen till we were ready to sell this product. So, once the product was ready to be sold, that's about when I left the company.

• 29:14Guy Raz?

  Yeah, in terms of negotiating it, I mean, you had to make a deal presumably where you would be the exclusive distributor in the United States.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 29:22Guy Raz?

  And how much, I mean, did you have to have a lot of money upfront to make this happen? I mean, because obviously you were making good salary, Cole was probably making good salary, but I mean, I can't imagine you had millions and millions of dollars to put down.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  No, for this, well, there were a couple of things. One, there was a level of ignorance on our part about exactly everything we would need. But our goal at the time was to really do this slowly and judiciously. So, you know, spending the money, you know, we felt like we could do it carefully and we'd be able to self-fund at that point. And then kind of reinvest the profits. So it was pretty much ready to sell, which was great.

• 30:13Guy Raz?

  And what was it called? What was the product called?

• 30:15Speaker 01

  It was called Juice Presso.

• 30:17Guy Raz?

  Juice Presso, okay, like, and so the idea was you were gonna sell these, I mean, you had this idea of direct to consumer, right?

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:27Guy Raz?

  And was that what you were gonna do here?

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Well, it was, because we also felt that direct to consumer tied in quite nicely with demonstration sales. Because in a way, I can deliver this little demo to one of two ways. I can deliver it to you in person, or I can deliver it to you in thirty, sixty seconds

• 30:46Guy Raz?

  With a video.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  With a video on Facebook. And if it's good enough, you'll watch the whole video on Facebook.

• 30:53Guy Raz?

  And that was your strategy? Let's just go in on Facebook with videos?

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Yes, and it's also like, you know, and very quickly, we thought also, this is great, soon as you're on there, we want you to start sharing your recipes, we want you to start sharing your videos. Now, the thing is, you know, you hope you get the participation quickly.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Because we don't have money. There were no paid influencers at this point either.

• 31:19Guy Raz?

  Right. Well, did you guys see the juicer as sort of the first product that would become part of a larger constellation of products?

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Yes, that was it. Like, we thought, I never thought we were going to sell $100 million worth of juicers. But I thought, you know, if we could get a suite of products that are complimentary in the kitchen space, maybe we have five, six, seven of them. And, you know, my goal was, can we get each one to generate about 10 million in revenue? And if we can, we got a business.

• 31:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah, sure. Where were you selling them, by the way, mainly online?

• 31:51Speaker 01

  So at that point, we were selling some online, some at trade shows. We tried to find like, kind of health and wellness and gourmet shows, ones that kind of lend themselves to a higher price point. And we had started selling them with Costco in their roadshow program as well. What we were never expecting was in 15, that Whole Foods makes an announcement that we're putting a juice bar in every Whole Foods, fresh whey, cold-pressed juice, that, you know, all of a sudden, creation and Jamba Juice, they're going to even make real juice, not just delicious sugar, you know, juice. You know, we were holding hope that people

• 32:33Speaker 01

  aren't going to pay 10 bucks for a juice. And this was, I've said it before, never underestimate the laziness of the American public, because we want it now, we want it easy. And there's a juice place in LA called the Beverly Hills Juice Club, and I think that's the one I was in, where I saw a girl order a juice, and she didn't have enough money on her credit card to put it all on one card, I think. And I'm like, wait a minute. That was quite an aha moment. She doesn't have $8 or $7, but she won't make it at home.

• 33:10Guy Raz?

  So you see, I mean, you have this amazing year in 2015, but it's not, you start to feel like this is not going to be representative. This is just a blip.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  You know, again, we were starting to see like the first half of 15 was going well.

• 33:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  We were cautiously optimistic, but then we were seeing a little bit of a plateau. And this is as we're seeing more and more juice shops pop up. I'm like grudgingly becoming to grips with the fact that this may not have legs.

• 33:44Guy Raz?

  I want to point something out here, which I think is really important and critical, which is you left your safe job as you were getting close to 50. I mean, you were, you had a very good career, a good salary. I mean, you really started this business when you were like 49. And a lot of people think, oh God, that's late. And I mean, in fact, it's not. But the other thing is that, and I've said this on the show, there's a lot of evidence to show that late sort of entrepreneurs or older, not late, but older, have a much higher rate of success because they come to the table with a lot of experience.

• 34:26Guy Raz?

  But it is scary because the stakes are somewhat higher. Like if you fail at 49 or 50, it's just harder to recover than if you're 25.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  You know, I'm so glad you brought that up because it really, it's very important because the fact is there's something about this country that is both amazing and challenging, which is we love an underdog story. We love a rags to riches story. But also there is this level in, in our country where we want to knock people down when they hit a level of success.

• 35:04Guy Raz?

  And we celebrate the 25 year olds who fail. We pity the 50 year olds who fail.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:09Guy Raz?

  Were you, were you nervous about, about doing that in your 50s and your late 40s? And was there any part of you like, God, this is, I'm nervous, this is scary?

• 35:18Speaker 01

  There's a level of terror to it. Luckily, I think very often ignorance is bliss, right? So what you don't know, you know, can't really hurt you, so to speak. So there were certain areas where I've said it a couple of times, I was naive, especially starting with juice presso. And maybe this overconfidence that because I was a good salesman and I really believed in the product. I could convince you that this was in your best interest to buy this. And we saw that business drop month by month by month. And the thing is, this is the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life, and it was one of the smartest things.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Because I had to look, I had to look very closely at this and go, this business is not salvageable. And my ego wanted to fix it. But the thing is, sometimes you gotta pull the plug, right? And sometimes you need somebody else to tell you that. It's very hard looking in the mirror, sometimes. You know, very often, we're looking all over the place for the reason why we're not doing well, and then we skip the mirror. In this place, I played a role, but I misjudged the market. That's what I did wrong. I don't think the way I brought the product to market, the way we tried to sell it, I think we did the right thing there. I misjudged the market and shame on me, you know?

• 36:42Speaker 01

  And we were in the juicer business, like on a Tuesday night at 5:00 PM. And the next morning, at 9:00 AM, we were not in the juicer business anymore.

• 36:52Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how trying to avoid Chinese Premier Xi Jinping led Danny to start Hexclad. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Does your team want a website that looks and feels handcrafted but is still fast to ship? Well, Framer is built exactly for that. With Framer, you design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts, hosting, and a CMS built in, so the work is production-ready from day one. And you can get it done with help from Framer's AI agents.

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• 38:20Guy Raz?

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• 39:03Guy Raz?

  That's why NetSuite wants to put a new expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization, and how to position your business to prosper from it. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built.

• 39:45Speaker 02

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• 40:51Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2015 and even though Juice Presso made about $5 million, Danny and Cole know the business doesn't have legs. So they amp up their search for new products and Danny even heads overseas to check out some Asian trade shows. And there, in the basement at the Canton Fair, Danny finds it, a new nonstick technology. He believes he can turn into a cookware success, thanks in part to one very important man.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  I think one time somebody asked me, well, who do you owe it all to? And I go on a way, I owe it to Xi Jinping because he showed up at the Canton Fair this day to cut like the opening day ribbon or something. And I'd been at the preview day the night before and I met somebody. I don't even remember what it was. He had some interesting product and I said, okay, I'm going to meet you tomorrow at noon. And I go to show up to walk into this hall and there's just 30 Chinese soldiers there. And they've got their guns there and they won't let me in. And apparently I'm being directed, I gotta go down three flights of steps into the basement, walk all the way and come back up on the other end. And I'm like, I'm looking at my watch and I'm like,

• 42:09Speaker 01

  damn Xi Jinping, you're making me late to my meeting. And so I head down into this basement area. And I think for anybody who's ever been to a trade show like this, they'll sell every last bit of real estate they can get somebody to set up a booth in. And I'm walking down there and this is another one of the moments in my life where I'm like, I'm not on my phone. I'm not looking right, I'm looking left. And I look and I see this round plate, steel plate with hexagons all over. And I go, hmm, that's interesting. So I walk over and immediately, you know, they, most of these booths, they hire like young college students because they can speak some English.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  And this girl comes up, she goes, oh, do you like that, that, you know? She's like, yes, we invented that. That's the line everybody says. It could be 10 booths selling the same tea kettle and they'll all be like, oh, we invented this. We invented, you know, they're all claiming ownership. And I'm like, okay, sure you did. I go, this is interesting. Have you, have you ever made a frying pan with it? And they go, oh yeah, we're experimenting with them right now. And I go inside their booth and they show me one pan. And I'm like, well, this would never sell in America. And a gentleman walks up and he spoke English. So we started talking. He was, yes, we're really developing, you know, the frying pans and that. And I go, oh, I used to be in the cookware business.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  And he goes, oh, we're like, well, so where do you sell in the U.S.? And I started saying, well, you know, we've sold all over. And then I get to, and I've also done a good amount of business with Costco. And his eyes lit up. He's like, Costco, oh, we would love to do business with Costco. So I kind of jumped on that and I'm like, well, you know, I know them very well. And, but I go, I think I've seen this tech, I lied. I'm like, I've seen this all over the Canton fair. He goes, no, no, this is ours. I go, no, come on, tell me the truth. And he goes and gets a book. And in the book, he's just got page after page of global patents. And I'm like, did I actually run into the real deal?

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Like the guy who actually did invent this and has the patents to prove it? Because I've never seen anybody pull out a book with patents before.

• 44:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And you, and oftentimes you go to these trade shows and there's like 40 of the same version of the same product. But this was, he, he's basically saying, no, no, I'm the inventor. This is our product. Can you, can you explain what it was about it that, that appealed to you right away? I mean, it's, it's a non-stick pan with these like hexagon shapes on the, you know, on the lining of the pan. Why did it, why was that intriguing to you? Why was that interesting to you?

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Well, for a couple, a couple of reasons. So to say, Essentially, what they do is they laser etch these hexagons. So the nonstick is sitting in the removed portion of metal. So it sits slightly recessed. So one of the biggest problems with nonstick pans with people, you scratch them with a metal spatula and then they wind up peeling and flaking and they get into your food and they-

• 45:17Guy Raz?

  They last three months.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Exactly. And also, they don't, they don't sear very well. You know, you, essentially, to get a good sear on a stainless, on a nonstick pan, you have to overheat the pan and you will destroy the pan to get a sear. So I'm like, wait a minute, you've got this steel, which can get a sear at a lower, medium heat. I'd been selling cookware for 15 years at that point. I'm like, people complained about not getting a good sear. They complained about their, their nonstick peeling. And then they're like, oh, by the way, because of the design, it's also oven safe to at least 500 degrees.

• 45:59Guy Raz?

  So just to be clear, I mean, most nonstick pans are and were aluminum pans, right?

• 46:08Speaker 01

  The vast majority were, yes.

• 46:10Guy Raz?

  There were some, I mean, I think Scanpan was doing steel and a couple other-

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Allclad was doing it for a while, but the most part-

• 46:18Guy Raz?

  It was aluminum with a coating of, you know, that Teflon style coating, right? Which still, you can still get them, versions of that. And this was different because it was steel, it was steel, which, which conducts heat better. Well, aluminum does too, but, but steel is preferred by like serious cooks. And then, and it had this nonstick element, but it was different. It wasn't like Teflon, it was these etched hexagons-

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:46Guy Raz?

  That, that covered the whole surface of the pan.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:50Guy Raz?

  So you come across this brand, what's the guy's name, by the way?

• 46:53Speaker 01

  His name is Mr. Lee.

• 46:55Guy Raz?

  Okay, so you start to talk to him and at that trade show, at that point, I can't imagine you were thinking, I want to sell these, or were you? Were you thinking, I gotta, I gotta lock this up?

• 47:08Speaker 01

  I knew they had something special. It was not ready for the Western market, but I was excited about it. So, you know, when I went back to my hotel room, I was alone and I called Cole. You know, and I'm like, this might be a winner. You know, we talked about it and then essentially I went back the next day. We talked more. They're like, look, we're going to make some new samples. A little bit deeper. Cause they were too shallow. And I go, great. I go, I'll help you. I know what'll sell in America. So that was in the spring of 15. I wound up spending almost, I'd say until around August 1 of 16.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  So we probably spent 16 months working on the pans together.

• 47:57Guy Raz?

  Okay, I want a bunch of questions. So basically, once again, like with the juice presso, you've got to come up with a deal where you are going to be the exclusive distributor of this product, presumably for a country or territory, maybe more. But this was different because it wasn't just that you were going to distribute his products. You were actually, you wanted him to design, to use his technology to design cookware, to design pans, pots, other things that you wanted to help him build because you had experience in that. How does that work?

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Well, I would say he was already working on cookware. He was thinking of the needs of the Korean market, which are slightly different than the needs of, say, the US market. So I was giving him feedback of what I would need to make that product successful in the US. And really, this in the beginning was a handshake agreement. You know, there was a lot of faith on both parts. And I know this is strange, but we trusted each other. Like when I still see him, I'll fly over once a year at least to see the factory and he and I just look at each other and we kind of laugh and hug because there was a lot of trust in it.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  He's like, I'm not going to sell to anybody else in America and you're going to trust that I'm going to make the product. Great and not cut you out. And for that first year, we both openly said we're taking chances on each other because they were very small. He just had this great idea and he had a factory to produce it. And I told him my, my plan and I said, you know, I want to be a direct to consumer cookware brand. I go, I want to sell online because I want to control the story. And by the way, this unique design needs its story told.

• 49:53Guy Raz?

  How many people did you have working for you? Was it just you and Cole?

• 49:57Speaker 01

  At that point, we, we were so bootstrapped. We were me and Cole and our assistant as full-time employees in the office.

• 50:06Guy Raz?

  You were doing everything and then you'd outsource things like maybe some, some sales and bookkeeping.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Yep. So we used, yeah, we used, you know, we had a three PL handling stuff for us. We, you know, used outside, outside bookkeeping. We had at that time, because we were still growing the roadshow at Costco. So maybe we only had about 15 employees there.

• 50:28Guy Raz?

  But they were all on contract?

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:31Guy Raz?

  How did you pay for the initial orders of, I mean, by this point, the, the, the pans and the pots are starting to be made and manufactured in Korea. Where, where did you have the cash to even pay for those first orders?

• 50:46Speaker 01

  So we'd gotten to the point that we were kind of, we were breaking even on the juicer. So maybe a tiny bit of profit there in like, say, May, May-ish, June. We placed our first cookware order at the end of July. We'd kind of had it perfected. We made the cookware. We could only afford one 20 foot container at the point because we, Cole and I had to come up with the money out of, you know, our pockets. And we found a way, it was even, it was cheaper for us to send the cookware over unboxed.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  So we could fit more in a container and then box it in Cole's backyard.

• 51:27Guy Raz?

  Roughly, how much money did that cost you?

• 51:29Speaker 01

  That first order wasn't that much because it was a small container. I think it was around $75,000 worth of product.

• 51:36Guy Raz?

  And then, once you sort of package it and sell it, probably would sell for at least twice that.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably more like three.

• 51:43Guy Raz?

  Three times that. And by the way, did you have a name for it yet? I mean, they had a name for what they came up with, but you were going to brand it as something different, right?

• 51:51Speaker 01

  So, yeah, we had to make the boxes and Cole and I, it was 9:30 at night and we had to trademark something the next day, 9:00 AM. And we're like, Cole's like, what about Hexclad? I'm like, nah, I don't, I don't, I don't like it.

• 52:04Guy Raz?

  Hexagon and clad, like you think of like, there's all clad, there's other cookware.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  There's clad, yeah. So Cole's like coming, and I'm like, we can think of something better. And then finally, like an hour later, he's like, dude, come on, we got it coming. All right, Hexclad. And people have always like, we love your name, you know, your, your branding company that came up with it. They did great. Nah, Cole just came up with it at 9:30 and, and then we just, we had to go start making the boxes the next day and, and in fact, and we've gotten compliments on our logo, the Hexclad logo. We had no money to hire an artist or a company to design it. So I found a website that does these contests between artists all over the world.

• 52:50Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  So I put it up there, like 299 bucks to make the Hexclad logo.

• 52:55Guy Raz?

  All right. So you've got a logo, you've got this initial order, but if you, if you want to go big, you, you need some serious money behind this to, to, to, to generate, you know, to basically get some inventory produced. And so did you, I have to imagine you thought, well, let's go out and raise money. I mean, this is 2016. I mean, this is the height of the, I mean, there's a lot of money going to DTC companies at that point.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  This, this was the start of it. So I went out, tried and raised money and.

• 53:24Guy Raz?

  Mostly in LA or New York or both?

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Mostly in LA and up north. And I may have had one meeting in, in New York and I got this. There were a couple of things, like one. They didn't get the pan. And I'm like, am I not explaining this technology properly? But they were like, okay, it's different. I go, yeah, I go, this is a new advance in a tired old business that hasn't known any innovation since Teflon came out essentially. And it's scratch proof. It's nonstick, scratch proof. I want to say scratch resistant. If you dig in there with a knife, you can scratch it. But if you're cooking normally, you grab a metal spatula, metal spoons, whisks, it's fine.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  And they're like, okay, that's good. But and they go, okay, well, listen, forget, let's just say everybody loves your idea. How are you going to get shelf space? And I went, aha, I don't want shelf space. They're like, what? Yeah, I go, I don't need all clad shelf space at Bed Bath & Beyond. They're like, well, how then? I go, we're going to be the first direct to consumer cookware brand. We are going to take out the middleman. We're going to market to our customers and start a journey with them. And people were like, you cannot sell cookware that way. People don't buy their cookware that way. You know, they looked at me like I was out of my mind.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  So there wasn't a single investor you met with that was interested in? A few people mildly interested, but not really. And look, I didn't completely blame them. Part of me was like, you know, I'm like, I need to maybe do a better job of telling this story. But really what it is was consistently, people were like, nobody's going to buy cookware this way. And it was, and it was, these were hard no's. They weren't like, let's go to committee. They were like, hard no's. And so during, during 16 and 17, you know, we

• 55:34Speaker 01

  I cashed out my 401k that I'd had, I retired my Roth, my, I took all the money out, paid penalties, everything I'd had saved up. I had 90% of my life savings by the, by the time we hit tied up in the company. We, we applied for credit cards and we were paying one credit card with another credit card. You know, we may have even exaggerated a couple of things to get another credit card.

• 56:02Guy Raz?

  How much money did, did the two of you have to put in?

• 56:05Speaker 01

  I would say we were probably flirting with like around, between the two of us, like 800 grand, 900 grand that we had in.

• 56:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah. That's scary. I mean, you're, cause at this point, you know, you being 50, over 50, saving that amount of money, you know, you're, you're already thinking, okay, in 15 years I'm gonna retire, I've got a, so to take four or $500,000 of your whole life savings out, pay the penalties to put into this thing. And then if you're wiped out, that's not gonna be good.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm probably gonna be tending bar again, or you know, or selling.

• 56:45Guy Raz?

  Until you're, yeah.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  I'll tell you, guy, it was, that was terrifying. And this is the part where I, you know, I wanna encourage entrepreneurs, but I would wake up panicked at 4am in 16 and 17 because we, now we're all in. You know, still with the juicer, we'd started, you know, breaking even at least, we're not feeding the machine, so to speak. And I still had money in the bank, but now this took more money to develop. And we were very good at stretching a dollar. But it was, it was frightening.

• 57:24Guy Raz?

  Why were you so confident in this product? I mean, I mean, it's, it's a kind of a rhetorical question, but you went to all these VCs and they looked at it and, and what they're looking for is innovation, right? Like an AI wired, you know, like a internet connected pan or something that is very different. And to most of them, they, they just saw a pan that was not, was a slight variation on Teflon to them, right? You're saying, no, no, this is totally different. It's relevant. But why, why did you, even after hearing all that pushback, why did you think that this was so special?

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Well, you know, Cole and I had spent a good chunk of our adult life selling cookware. Yeah. We know that people buy it. People cook. People are cooking more. You know, I, I think I, I had mentioned, now I'm also being validated by the explosion of Instagram chefs, of food content producers, you know, and I got questioned by my boss and by other people. Now I've been proven right on this and I was confident and I knew this. I knew that I could sell this. This was a great product. So we launched our website in November of, of 16 and I still have the email. We sold a 10 inch pan. Why this person

• 58:45Speaker 01

  bought it? We started, you know, running Facebook ads and I wanted to understand what people were reacting to. So as we hit that end of 16 and beginning of 17, I think I even booked a trade, a gourmet show. Hmm. And I went there with hex clad and nobody knew it yet. And, and I remember it was like all day Friday. I didn't sell anything. And I'm like, I'm worried. And I had one of my, one of my best friends came with me at the time. He's like, I'll help you out. We'll do it. You know, he was a good salesman and, and we hadn't sold anything and it was

• 59:26Speaker 01

  one o'clock on Saturday. I'm like, oh God, maybe I am wrong. Well, then one o'clock, I finally connected with somebody and they're like, I'm going to get it. Okay, I'll take it. And then I kept demoing. I'm like one after another and all of a sudden cut to three hours of me not talking, like just talking non-stop and we'd sold 18 of our frying pan sets. And also I was realizing what was resonating with people and what wasn't.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  What was working and what wasn't? What I'd realized was I, I found I was not only just promoting the benefits, but I was apologizing for the things that weren't as good about it. Like for example, if you take a Teflon pan out of a box, the Teflon pan will clean up easier. Now, our pan's gonna clean up much better than an aluminum or a stainless steel pan, but it's only gonna clean up about 85% as well as a Teflon pan. But the benefit is, you don't have to worry about metal and all those other things. And once I honed in on all that stuff, then we started connecting and people started buying.

• 1:00:41Guy Raz?

  So what about, I mean, because it was supposed to be direct to consumer. Were your Facebook ads, it doesn't sound like the Facebook ads were a really moving product.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Well, we had no money, first of all. So we were only, we could, we were spending like a thousand bucks a month in 16. But also, what this gave us an opportunity to do, as we did a couple of these shows, I was able to take my learnings and then tweak the Facebook ads a little bit.

• 1:01:09Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  And then what happened was, I decided to take a chance to reach out to my Costco connection.

• 1:01:17Guy Raz?

  All right, so you decided, I mean, you had this in, a Costco with a juice presso.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:21Guy Raz?

  And you and Cole say, let's, let's try this again. Let's try to bring these pans to Costco. So I think about a year after you get your first shipment in, you get a chance to do an in-store demo in Costco, it's November of 2017. Is it, is it in one Costco, or is it gonna be in multiple Costcos?

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  What they do is they give you one test store with a couple of backup test stores. I mean, they have the option that if it's completely disastrous, they could pull the plug, I guess. But I think usually they're gonna give you a few stores.

• 1:01:52Guy Raz?

  And so where did you, did you go yourself to demonstrate it?

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  I went there, I relied on one of my old reps from my old company, who had needed, was looking for a new opportunity, and we've been talking, and he really liked the product. And he's like, I'll do it for you.

• 1:02:08Guy Raz?

  Wow. So, so really, if you get into Costco, it's not a guarantee that you're gonna succeed. Like, there are products that did try Costco and don't exist anymore.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:02:20Guy Raz?

  Like, it can, because their margins are very slim.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:23Guy Raz?

  They, you know, they, they require, I mean, they demand a very low price.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:02:28Guy Raz?

  And you gotta move product in order to make money there.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  Yes, um, you know, it's scary, but I also knew, I went back to me standing at the St. Louis Food and whatever gourmet show when we had done it months earlier. And I just saw, like, I knew what people did in demonstration with this, like, it resonated. They liked it.

• 1:02:49Guy Raz?

  What kind of food did you make, just omelets?

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, oh, because they want to see an egg cook. And I think we did cheese, you know, then we make a quesadilla for them, some sticky stuff. And, and then talk about the deal and show about the value props, like, you know, you make some dumb jokes, like, ladies, this is husband-proof cookware. You can use the metal spatula, whatever it might. But when we got that opportunity, Fountain Valley, I remember, we sold in the neighborhood of $5,000 worth of product that first day in one store.

• 1:03:20Guy Raz?

  And is that, I mean, that sounds like a lot to me. Is that a lot?

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, that's, that's a lot.

• 1:03:26Guy Raz?

  I guess if you're doing 20 grand a month, doing five grand in a day is pretty awesome.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  And, and in the roadshows, your schedule, there are 10-day events. So I think when we finished, we were flirting with around 40,000 US dollars in that 10-day period.

• 1:03:44Guy Raz?

  And what was the goal? What did you, what was the metric that you had to hit in order to prove it out?

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  I'm guessing we, we more than 3Xed what they were hoping for.

• 1:03:53Guy Raz?

  Wow, all right. So, so you proved this out, and now you are going, and, and what does that mean? Does that mean they, they come back to you and say, okay, well, let's go national?

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Well, immediately, they're like, great numbers. And we already had store two and three scheduled, so that means those are going to go through. In the couple of days between the starting of stores two and three, they offer us two or three more stores. And we're like, yeah, let's do them. Well, now store two goes equally as well, and we're like, we cannot afford to have inventory sitting around. So now we're, we're running into inventory problems. And we were still at this point, like, having product come in, unpackaged, because we couldn't afford. So we would literally line up boxes in Cole's backyard, and we'd run down a line, and I'd be like, 12-inch pan, 12-inch pan, 12-inch pan, 10-inch pan, 10-inch pan.

• 1:04:46Guy Raz?

  Hand packaging them.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Hand packaging them to save money. And then we'd be like taping them closed and we had, we had so many paper cuts on our fingers that there were sometimes would be little blood spots on the, on the box and we would have to take Windex and go back and clean the blood off the top of the box and we would drive them to the Costco to sell, to sell them. Yeah, it was, it was, it was scary and exhilarating at the same time.

• 1:05:15Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Danny and Cole turned this backyard business into a $500 million company in under 10 years. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 1:05:34Speaker 04

  With the Venture X Business Card from Capital One, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase. Plus, big purchasing power means you can spend more and earn more. The Capital One Venture X Business Card. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details.

• 1:05:56Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So 2017 to 2018 is a pivotal time for Danny and Cole. Costco puts HexClad into more and more stores and sales grow and the guys figure out how to make ads work for them on Facebook and really connect with customers.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  So essentially what was happening in, in the first half of 18 was we were, I would say, putting almost 100% of the money back into the company. There was no taking salaries. There was no, you know, there was none of that. I remember like finally the first time Cole and I took a paycheck in July of 18.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  And we were each able to take, I think, $10,000. And that was like, we were like, $10,000.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  We made it.

• 1:06:54Guy Raz?

  So, all right, so 2019, the direct to consumer side of the business really takes off. And, and do you remember roughly what you got, I mean, 10 million in sales in 2018? Do you remember what you guys did in 2019?

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  We almost doubled that. So we were, we were up in the 18, 19 range and, yeah. And by the way.

• 1:07:17Guy Raz?

  And profitable.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  And profitable. So really, we were profitable by the middle of 18.

• 1:07:24Guy Raz?

  But you had to be, you still had to be somewhat nervous because you had seen with the juice press, awesome sales and then the whole thing just fall apart.

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, you're always going to be a little nervous and I guess if you're not nervous, you're, you know, not doing your job properly, right? You should always be concerned.

• 1:07:43Guy Raz?

  Because of course, then you hit 2020, which is the COVID year. And now, all of a sudden, all eyes turn to, really to, to computers and phones. Everyone's stuck inside and a lot of direct to consumer businesses, Peloton and others, just went crazy. And did it also have that same effect on, on sales for you guys? Were people just ordering cookware because they were stuck at home now?

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  Well, well, there were a couple of things and what was interesting about that was, as, as we're selling right along with the production capacity of our factory, Costco shut down the Costco Roadshow.

• 1:08:28Guy Raz?

  Right, because of the pandemic.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  Because of the pandemic. In March, they became groceries only. And if it wasn't groceries, they weren't selling it. So now we had all this additional product that we'd paid for. So essentially now you were expecting to sell X, not X plus Y. But Cole and I, you know, now we're heading into April 1.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  We're like, we don't know quite yet that people, how long they're going to be locked up and how long they're going to be shopping. We're still doing pretty well online. This is before, nobody, no one was talking about a payroll protection plan yet. This was just, that was a couple of months away. And then we also went, well, we got all this cookware. How much money do we have in the bank? And I remember we had a million bucks. And we just looked at each other and we're like, let's blow the whole million on advertising on Meta. And we spent a million bucks in April. And I think, I think in February, we had, we were doing a million a month online. And we sold $5 million in April, online.

• 1:09:33Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  And we're like, wow. So we go, we, I would probably be able to start taking a salary in May.

• 1:09:41Guy Raz?

  I guess that summer, summer of 2020, somebody on your team, because I, I, because you'd staffed up and you had to staff up, right? And you had somebody who noticed that Gordon Ramsay had been following you guys on Instagram.

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:09:56Guy Raz?

  And so obviously you reached out to him, the most, probably the most famous chef on the planet. Well, so I guess initially to, to give him pans, right?

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:06Guy Raz?

  To sort of send him like some, some gifts.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  You know, it's, it's been such a strange journey and I even, that, that's like one of them. Uh, you know, I mean, Gordon Ramsay is the biggest chef on the planet and they know him everywhere. And we went to see that he was following us on Instagram was like, wow. And I, you know, what I learned later was somebody gifted him a pan, I think during the pandemic. And he, he was home like everybody else. He's cooking every day for his kids. And, um, so we did reach out and we're like, can we send you some more pans? And whoever answered on his team said, sure. And then we also just said, does, you know, Gordon involved with the cookware company? And they were like, I don't think so.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  And that led to we're like, well, we'd love to talk. And I don't know, a few days later, I was on a call with Gordon's business manager. And, you know, we're discussing, you know, what could this look like? I mean, it's a bit surreal.

• 1:11:07Guy Raz?

  And initially, they were thinking, okay, maybe a commercial, right? That you wanted him to do a commercial.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  He threw out the options. He's like, you know, Gordon, like, if he likes your product, you know, he'd do a commercial. It's expensive. But he also

• 1:11:20Guy Raz?

  Probably like a million bucks.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  I would guess, like, you know, yeah. He never gave me an exact number, but I knew it was a lot. And then, you know, and it's short term, unless you keep buying it. But then he said, but Gordon likes your product, you know, he Gordon's, by the way, a very, very shrewd businessman. And he's like, he likes your product, and I think he'd love to participate. And I'm like, well, let's see what that looks like.

• 1:11:49Guy Raz?

  And, and the idea would be, hey, maybe he actually becomes an owner, part owner.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what we were, that's what we were looking at. I mean, really, we wanted to say, like, were we a good fit? What are our goals? How do they fit ethically together in a way? Like, that's one thing I think that's that Gordon and I have in common. Like, we're, we're both very hardworking. We, we don't want to half ass anything. Like, my product is a great product. It's well made. It performs well. And I won't sell something that way. And Gordon's the same way. And we kind of saw that in each other. And Gordon's very enthusiastic, and he's got great ideas, like ways you can market stuff. And so we got on this call, and I was intimidating. You know, I just go on the screen. It's like we're on right now.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  But there's the biggest chef in the world on the other side. And we start talking and I had 20 minutes scheduled for the call and Gordon and I talked for an hour and 20 minutes and we just talked about everything we could do and and I think when we got off the call, everybody involved was like, yeah, this makes sense, you know?

• 1:12:56Guy Raz?

  Then you just had to get it, get the lawyers to hash out what it actually would mean and and so you, of course, we know, I mean, people who know Hexclad know you made it, you came to an agreement with him and and what did that mean? I mean, it meant that he would post on social media, you would, you would film videos of him using it. What was it going to mean to have him as a brand ambassador and an equity holder?

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  You know, we'd put faith in our relationship with Mr. Lee early on with your hopes that there's a follow through with everything. Yes, there's a contract that has X, Y, and Z deliverables. If that was the way we approached this relationship, I would say I don't even know if we would still have a relationship with Gordon because it's been like a very fluid type of relationship. Like, yes, we're gonna do a certain amount of content every year and Gordon's gonna collab on some posts with us and, you know, and he's like, I want to use the cookware in a lot of my restaurants. And that was all good, but what he didn't

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  need to do, and it's not in any contract, was I'm gonna put it on all my TV shows. So, you know, we started doing that and like, they called me and he's like, you know, I know we've been talking about doing something in Canada. He goes, I'm gonna be in Vancouver at the end of February. Why don't we do an event? He didn't have to just offer that. It's like he does stuff like, he's always thinking like, he's like, what can we do to take this to the next level and the next level and the next level?

• 1:14:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, he is a very good, I mean, he's probably easily the best, the best sort of food entrepreneur on the planet. I mean, in part, he's a great chef, he's got a Michelin three-star restaurant, but he's also a personality that's managed to become so much bigger than, than his restaurants. And, you know, I imagine that, I mean, having him, again, you know, it actually reminds me a lot of a story we did on the show a year or two ago about On Shoes, a brand that was founded by, you know, three Swiss guys, not very well-known. They scaled it on their own. They turned it into a real powerhouse. And then Roger Federer became

• 1:15:17Guy Raz?

  really interested in doing something with them. He's Swiss, they were Swiss, and Roger Federer's involvement helped take on to the next level. You know, all of a sudden, it wasn't just a really popular shoe brand, it's like now one of the most popular running brands on the planet. And it was started in 2012. So there's a lot of parallels there, right? Like, you guys got it to a pretty great point.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:40Guy Raz?

  But then Gordon Ramsay is interested, and he can help you really supercharge it.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  Exactly. I mean, I think we would have continued to scale. And he'll sometimes, you know, poke fun with me when we talk and be like, oh, you know, thank God you got me. And, you know, and I'll joke, I'm like, thank God you got me too. And we're a good team. But yes, like, look, Gordon, Gordon brings you eyeballs. And that's what this business is about, right? You want eyeballs. Because if you have a good product, and you get the consumer's attention, when they're ready to purchase, they're going to consider you. So Gordon gets a lot of people to consider our product. Maybe that didn't know about us.

• 1:16:24Guy Raz?

  I mean, in the first full year that he was a partner, I read that your revenue was $170 million. And there's no question that that was a huge help.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, it was huge. You know, maybe we, we scaled that year, maybe we do get it. We do 100% again, and we go to...

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Around a hundred. I, you know, it's always hard to guess, but I know this. When you get somebody like Gordon, who's passionate, you know, you add that all together. It's just a recipe for, for growth.

• 1:16:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah, no question about it.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:58Guy Raz?

  But I mean, this is now expanded into like, if you go to the Hexclad website, you know, his signature is on there and it's not just pans and pots. I mean, it's like you guys are doing knives and you're doing cutting boards and aprons and other tools. I mean, there is like a, this is like a bunch of different things that you are now. You've really expanded out into a bunch of different places.

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  So like we do want to kind of own the kitchen. And that was when like, when I met with Gordon, I talked about this, like I, this is what I want. I go, I want to innovate in every kitchen category. So when we can innovate, bring something new, a better mousetrap, we're going to do it. If we can't totally innovate, I want to make something that's of the finest quality that just looks sexy as hell.

• 1:17:53Guy Raz?

  It's, it's amazing because you, you know, in a, I mean, of course it was, it was a long, I'm sure it's felt like a very long journey, but right 2017 to 2025. And, you know, you probably, you know, you might hit 700, 800 million this year. Who knows? And how many people now work for Hexclad? How many employees do you have around the world?

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  We have in the neighborhood of, and by that I should know the exact number, but we are hiring pretty regularly still. Globally, I'd say we're, we're around 235, 240.

• 1:18:29Guy Raz?

  So pretty efficient for the amount of revenue you're bringing in and, and everything is still made in Korea or has had to build second factories in other Asian countries?

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  So we make different things in different places. Like I told you, like the steel is manufactured in Japan for that. The cookware, most of the cookware is made in, in China, actually. Our wood products are made in Slovenia. Our eco-friendly aprons. Here in LA. So we do have a lot of global locations where we do manufacture. And we're looking to expand that and diversify further in the next year or two.

• 1:19:11Guy Raz?

  So Danny, here you are, 60 years old.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  59 still. I'm Clint.

• 1:19:16Guy Raz?

  59, okay. But this is your 60th. No, I mean, I think you should be immensely proud. You know, you're hitting your 60th year and you start a business at 50.

• 1:19:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:26Guy Raz?

  You know, that's a big risk. And it was a while before you saw any money. And now you are, you know, a majority owner here. You have no investor still. I mean, Gordon Ramsay's an equity holder, but no outside investor still.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  We got one outside investor last year. We did release that.

• 1:19:46Guy Raz?

  Oh, that's right, right, right. Gordon Ramsay's Fox.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  Partnership of Fox and Studio Ramsey Global.

• 1:19:52Guy Raz?

  They put in 100 million, right?

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:54Guy Raz?

  No, I mean, it really is an amazing gamble slash sacrifice to make. And then to see it pay off is, I mean, it just must be incredibly fulfilling feeling. You know, just this like gratifying. That's the word I was looking for. To be able to sit there and be like, we did this. We made it. This worked.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  You know, it is. And I hope like, you know, I hope people, if they get one thing. And I love that you brought up my age multiple times because we are taught like, you know, there is a fear. If you're gambling your livelihood, you got a husband or a wife and you got kids. You got like, I didn't have that. So it was easier. So, you know, I'm not as brave, right? I was only screwing over myself if I failed, really.

• 1:20:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah, it's still something now.

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  It absolutely is. And it is terrifying. But I think that if you see a hole in the marketplace, if you think you have a better mousetrap, don't go to the roulette table, but you know, kind of, but take measured risks on yourself and on the fact that you have something that the market wants. Because that's how great stuff happens. That's how we get innovation. And I applaud it, even for people that failed with it. I mean, you know, failure has been one of the best things to ever happen to me. If Juice Presso hadn't failed, Hexclad would not be as successful.

• 1:21:25Guy Raz?

  When you think about the journey you took and where you are now, how much of where you got to do you attribute to the grind and the work you put in? And how much do you attribute to luck and timing? You know, just people just watching social media and getting into cooking? And I don't know, what do you think?

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  I mean, look, that's a really good question. Is there luck involved? There is chance, whatever we want to call it, luck, chance. Did a pandemic help? Yes. Do I think we were already wildly successful? Yes, we were. You know, there's stuff I can control. I can't control a pandemic, right? I can't control, you know, a boom or a recession. I can control my work ethic, you know? That I can control. I can control me knowing that I have turned over every rock to make sure this is the best product, that I've looked at every marketing plan to know that this is one that's going to bring us a set level of revenue next year.

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  I can control that. And it's kind of like, you know, being kind of out in rough seas. You know, I can man the tiller, right? I can stay there and I can forego sleep. I can't control which wave is coming when. If I'm controlling the tiller, I have the best chance of us getting to our place successfully. And so I think that's what I try to do in my life and in my business is be the best guy at the helm to be able to control any storm that happens. Because it's going to come, right? It's just a matter of time.

• 1:23:14Guy Raz?

  Danny, thanks.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  Guy, thank you. This was fun.

• 1:23:19Guy Raz?

  That's Danny Weiner, CEO and co-founder of Hexclad Cookware. By the way, during his time trying to break into Hollywood, Danny landed a few background parts in commercials, but his potential big break? He got a role in a film called Rising Sun, starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  It wasn't even a bit part. It was like, I was a cop, like a couple cops show up and you can't even see me in it, which was so disappointing because originally I had a line. And it was short. And I don't know, it was like one of these, like, just the facts, please. Even though I did get to meet Sean Connery.

• 1:23:56Guy Raz?

  Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please sign up for my newsletter at guyraz.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Andrea Bruce with research help from Katherine Seifer. Our engineers were Gilly Moon and Jimmy Keely. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, J.C. Howard, Chris Messini, Sam Paulson, John Isabella, Iman Maani, and Elaine Coats. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.