YouSaid · the spoken record

Adam Lowry

lines on the record: 47
first: 2018-10-08
most recent: 2018-10-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You walk into a random restaurant bathroom, and there's our teardrop hand wash sitting there, and you see it and you can think of like the stories and the creation of it. It's so much a part of our.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I always say an entrepreneur can never have an ego because luck is always a factor, and I agree with Adam. With enough persistence, luck always shows up. Yeah, I mean, we made so many stupid mistakes and kind of had near death moments that luckily the ball just bounced the right way to keep us alive. It's just been a real, real pleasure.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, we were approached by a private family out of the UK, and they had owned the Ecover brand, which was really the pioneers from the 70s of green cleaning. And so their pitch to us was it was an opportunity to really allow all of our investors who'd been in it for a long time to see a nice return.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we really learned each other's working styles, and we were able to find a better rhythm together. I mean, it was a very...”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we just over time, you know, we knew how to be friends, but we didn't know how to be colleagues and partners together. And we started to learn each other's different styles professionally. My instinct is to just engage and run at it. Adam needs a little bit more space to kind of think it through.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Costco loved it. Grocery. Everybody got behind it. And it essentially was nailed to the shelf and did not move. And it's expensive to launch a new product. It's really expensive to discontinue.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, almost imagine like a seed. But we wanted to still keep that kind of object approach, and we ended up with square. And then it's like a plane crash. It's not one thing that goes wrong. It's like 10 things that go wrong. And that's exactly that we did there. From kind of walking away from our core vision of it to not getting the tooling right, and one of it is we were always a little bit more conservative of, you know, we believed in fail fast, right? So you get products out there, limited number of retailers, make sure it works, adjust, launch and learn. And everybody loved the design of it. So we went really broad.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We felt we had to grow fast, both to keep startup competitors away, but also all the legacy brands were starting to copy us.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so we both took a shot at the toilet bowl cleaner. And then I immediately texted Adam. It was still, you know, he was still sleeping here. Finally he got back to me. I was like, hey, just drank the toilet cleaner. I'm going to be okay. Right? He writes back, well, it wouldn't have been my first choice. Like, thank you, Captain Avias.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was in And I love the British press. They're so skeptical. And I was talking about our products that they're non-toxic and safe. And she said, is it safe enough to drink? I was like, sure. And it was a toilet bowl cleaner.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just didn't look like a green product. We didn't wear the uniform of green. We wanted to change that because those weren't the people we wanted. We wanted people to buy our product who would never consider buying a green product”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's the paradigm we really broke. And I guess we'll take credit for it because we haven't found anybody who did it before us, but Eco Chic. And traditionally, green products didn't look beautiful in beautiful products weren't necessarily green. And I think a lot of it is just coming down to our own dumb look of Adam's passion for sustainability, mine for design. That's why Target made so much sense because we just needed that bigger platform to drive change.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Consumers would go to smell it because the fragrances were really unique at the time, and they would pull off the bottom in a way it wasn't supposed to really come off. So it didn't really go back on. And thinking we were great merchants, we put that on the top shelf. So we would walk into stores and there's just dish soap raining down our entire display. It's hard to sell a product when it's covered in dish so And it's really hard to clean up dish soap in the aisle of a store.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first thing we did was there was a set date. And so we had to make sure we got on shelf as fast as possible. So we started driving store to store, go in. If it's not set up, you go to the back room, you pull it out yourself, you take whatever's on shelf off, and you get your product on shelf quickly. First week looking at the numbers, we're missing the number. And then we had a problem, which was the dish soap that we did, which was the first ever inverted dispenser so it comes out of the bottom.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They said we'll do a test. Marketing stood up at the end and said this is right for our guests. It's designed forward on trend. And so Target gave us a 90 store test to basically prove ourself out.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, it was. I mean, I was starting to work on my business school applications just as backup because. Yeah, I mean, you knew that if we could not get a national retailer behind it, the economics weren't going to make sense. I mean, we're competing against people who, you know, they own their own plants. They've had 150 years to figure out efficiency. And we were charging initially like $5 a bottle way to keep bringing the price down to make it more competitive.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And ultimately, none of this company would have ever gone on to exist if it weren't for the risk we took on our dish soap. And Adam pulled miracles. Get the first prototype of the dish soap. It arrived moments before the presentation.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, agreed to do it, which was absolutely amazing. And they at the time target was working with Philippe Stark, and we knew they had an interest in working with Karem. And so what we did was working with Karam, we were able to use kind of Karim as the carrot to get a meeting with Target Marketing, who then invited the buying team. We did a big dog and pony show with Karem, kind of spent pretty much our last dollars.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we were able to convince him to do it for a lower fee because he really believed in the project, but also with equity. And got him to have skin in the game with us.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And said, you know, here's our pitch. We want to work with you to redesign the dish soap, an object that sits across every sink in the landscape of America. Will you work with us? And he wrote back within 20 minutes and said, Yes. Wow. I do remember, I think when he first met us for the briefing, he said to Josh, Handy, who we work with at the time, he's like, maybe try to get some of the payment up front.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were huge believers in the power of design and great industrial design. So we put a list together of the top industrial designers. And Karen was at the top of that list. So I figured we'd just work down the list until we finally got somebody degree to work with us. And I shot Karem an email”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, not at all because we wanted to be able to get the capital, but what we started doing is we're working with Karen Rashid, who is a very famous industrial designer. And we wanted to create a line of products working with Karem that would make a real statement in the marketplace.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm a big part of our pitch was showing what we had proven locally and regionally. And the argument that we were going to go get Target next and that we needed capital to be able to close Target and start to scale nationally.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One investor, and we were scheduled to sign the term sheet on what turned out to be September 11th. And so, in the months that followed, we were stalled because, of course, nobody was doing deals with the uncertainty in the world, particularly in a premium-priced cleaning product. And I remember we finally closed in November, and you always have a closing dinner when you raise capital. And we went around the room to pay the bill afterwards in between Adam and I, none of our credit cards worked. Luckily, we knew the person who owned the restaurant and we asked them if we could pay them next week after we closed.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are people who believe in you more than they necessarily believe in your idea. And I also found it so motivating because there's one thing for Adam and I to lose our own money or fail. But when you're taking money from people you really care about, our roommates, grandma, siblings, parents, you don't want to let them down. And I always encourage entrepreneurs to take money from family because I think it's the best motivation to ensure that no matter how hard things get, you're going to find a path forward.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, the challenge is with any startup, but particularly in this space, momentum is your friend. And then to raise capital, you need to show momentum. So, yeah, you always felt this race against the clock to grow as fast as possible.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But what we did, we built up these 30 stores and we called it our paper route. So every morning we would take turns driving to each store, counting how many you sold, replenishing it, writing up an invoice. And it was a way for us to really understand the grocery business. And I think a big moment of truth came through when we didn't have a customer service number. So my cell phone was on the back of every bottle. And I remember getting this first call from this person who just wanted to call to say how much they loved our cucumber bathroom cleaner. And of course, I thought he was a friend just playing a joke on us. But these calls started coming and we realized we really struck a bit of an emotional chord in a category that traditionally is so low interest and so boring.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Set up a table, and I was wearing a lab coat, which is comical to look back years later, and it's kind of funny. I look at these photos and I was standing in the wine aisle. And I think I just realized that people shopping for wine were way more interesting to talk to than people shopping for cleaning products. But we were really big believers that the packaging would have to be the primary marketing vehicle. And you would see it on shelf because of the design. You would buy it because the unique fragrances. You would get home, find out it works, turn the bottle over and realize it's good for you and good for the planet. And that would start to create a following. And if you talk to most Americans at that time, they would say green doesn't clean. The only way we're going to make this work is we had to get the mainstream into a green product. And we thought a lot of it as it's a Trojan horse for good. We had to put our green credentials on the back of the bottle and almost kind of hide them.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We didn't have marketing dollars, so what we had to do, we would offer demos. So we did that, and of course, we didn't have anybody do a demo, so that would be me.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember sometimes like taking a shower in the morning. You're like, God, what am I doing? I'm doing a silly cleaning process.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was the best training because we didn't know how to sell. And you had 30 seconds to pitch. And so it really helped you learn how to sell the product.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So essentially, what we need to do is get a proof of concept. So we decided the first step was to try to get into all the independent grocery stores in the bay area. These are the places where that manager can make the buying decision. So you got to show up at 6 a.m. This guy's always really grumpy. And I think essentially they just agree to take your product because they know you're going to keep coming back until they say yes.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we wanted to feel very different than everything else out there, but also to really show it was safe to be around. You think about when most people would clean, they would put on that, you know, that old team building exercise sweatshirt from 1998 and the rubber gloves because you don't want the stuff touching your skin. So our first labels were very different. They actually showed people on the front of it. And of course, we didn't have any money. So we would go to Home Depot and buy a sink and photograph Adam holding the sink, promptly return the sink to get our money back.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we did. I mean, design was so important. A big chunk of the dollars we had went into tooling. We just couldn't afford the actual design, but tooling.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We wanted a name that represented a technique, a new approach to doing things. And Adam and I were both brushing our teeth at the same time. Sounds very weird.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, our plan was to create our first four products, which were the surface cleaners, and get them in the local stores. So Adam was working on basically doing everything in the bottle, and I was doing everything kind of around the bottle. And this joke was style and substance. And so what I started doing was we didn't have a lot of money to do custom tooling. And so I started looking for stock bottles, confining I really liked. So I had this camping water bottle from Norway that I had found. Just a really simple kind of bullet design with these nice elegant shoulders. It was very utilitarian, but at the same time would look almost like a vase sitting in someone's home. So we use that as the basis for the first bottle.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The best part is I came home one day and Adam was mixing things in beer pitchers, which I'm like, we're going to kill one of our roommates here. Luckily this stuff's non-toxic.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had friends who are raising $40 million on 40 page business plans and bragging about a million dollar per page for a raise or doing these lavish lunch parties, which seems so ridiculous now to spend funds on a launch party. But yeah, this was San Francisco at the turn of the century, and money was being thrown around in tech. And here we were showing up pitching soap, an idea that was hot 120 years ago.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Got everything from people who actually we found some former Clorox employees, lawyers, people from a finance background, advertising, just like tell us why it's going to fail. And nobody could come back with a reason other than if it's so good, why has nobody done this before”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, we said from the beginning go big or go home. We want to disrupt an industry, but we didn't feel very secure getting there. So one of the first things we did was we created what we call the concept book. And so we brought to life the idea, gave it to the 20 smartest people we knew.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“25, and we're going to take on not only some of the largest multinationals, but the world's first multinationals in the form of Procter and Unilever, who have a 150-year Head Start and have really owned distribution.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, really understanding consumers, and this was really kind of driven by, so you go back to 1999, IKEA was just arriving in America. Home and Guard and Television was just taking off. So it was a time where people were starting to think more about their homes as a reflection of themselves. And so the thought was well, what if we design these products so they were like pieces of decor? And hey, if a spray cleaner was beautiful enough to leave on the counter versus hidden underneath the sink out of sight out of mind, you might actually use it more. And I love the phrase, like there's no such thing as low interest categories, just low interest brands. So our thought was, how do we take boring cleaning and not make it boring?”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really strong sense. There was kind of like you know, if your eyes weren't watering, it means it wasn't clean. It was a pretty toxic category. And to Adam's point, that was the thing that he brought that really opened my eyes. It's like, you mean like you actually pollute when you clean and you use poison to make your home healthy?”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The one point I remember is we got there to go skiing and we went up the first chair lift and we did a couple runs and we realized we were more excited to go work on this idea than we were to keep skiing.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I mentioned that, hey, I think there may be an opportunity in this space. And I remember Adam looks over at me as he's driving and goes, you know, I have a degree in chemical engineering.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think with any idea, you start off from this absolute place of insecurity. When I mentioned this to my mom, she's like, I've never seen you make your bed. Are you sure you're the right person to start a cleaning products business? So I hid the products underneath my bed because it's pretty dorky. I didn't want anybody to know I was even thinking about this category. And Adam and I were both back in Michigan and we were driving up north early morning to go skiing and being close friends, I felt like Adam was somebody I could share an idea with.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was working on a project for Colgate, so I was spending a lot of time in the grocery store. And I just started looking at the cleaning aisle and saw that it was such a big category, but a sea of sameness. Like everything looked and smelled the same. The brands were pretty dated. And so that was kind of the clue of dig here.”
2018-10-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · method: Adam Lowry & Eric Ryan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT