YouSaid · the spoken record

Arran and Ratana Stephens

lines on the record: 87
first: 2022-05-23
most recent: 2022-05-23
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

“Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you want to contact the team, our email address is hibt at id.wondry.com. If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at howbuilt this, and mine is at guyraz. And on Instagram, I'm at guy.roz. This episode was produced by JC Howard with music composed by Ramtin Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Murashima. Our production staff also includes Elaine Coates, John Isabella, Liz Metzger, Carrie Thompson, Catherine Ceypher, Alex Chung, Chris Massini, Sam Paulson, Carla Estevez, and Josh Lash. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to how I built this.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ratna and Aaron Stevens, co founders of nature's path. By the way, when their son Arjun got married back in 2010, it actually inspired a whole new flavor of cereal. The wedding couple made a special granola loaded with berries and coconut and chocolate and gave it out to their guests as kind of a party favor, and people loved it so much that they decided to turn it into a product, and they called it Love Crunch.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, when you think about the journey you took, Aaron, you didn't finish high school and you didn't. You didn't necessarily have a clear path, but you clearly found a calling and, of course, built an incredibly successful business. Ratna, you had no idea when you were 18, 19 years old that your future would be in Canada. I mean, your life was in India But this is the way your life kind of turned out. When you think about all that you have built together, how much do you think that has to do with how hard you worked and your skills and how much do you think has to do with just luck and fate?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's a lot of people that you know and you know their kids and you know their You've been part of their lives, so it's not just about selling and making money. It's like you're giving up all of that too. And that's worth a lot. I think most of your kids, or maybe all of your kids, are involved in the company.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and it's not just about money. I mean, I think you've got close to 1,000 employees now between all your different factories. And is that about right?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So here's the thing it's totally admirable. We've had companies on the show that have the same position, right, that do not want to sell, and we've had companies that have sold, including to Kellogg's and General Mills. And many of those brands continue to operate as they did before. They're just, you know, and the argument that the founders have made is, look, if Kellogg's is going to scale our brand and bring it to an even bigger audience, we're fine with that. I mean, it is true you could probably walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe more if you sold nature's path, but at the same time, it sounds like what you're saying is we're just not as long as we're alive, Aaron and Rottena, we will not entertain that. We rule that out.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And did anybody ever put money on the table or make an offer with real money and say, like, we'll give you X dollars, X number of dollars, if you sell to us? Did anybody ever say that to you?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want to ask you about something that you know naturally would start to happen in the organic foods business, which is some of these brands became huge, almost like multinationals. And then some of the giant brands General Mills and Kellogg's and Kraft, they understood that there was a lot of money to be made in natural organic and continued to do so, and they're buying up and have bought up a lot of these smaller brands because Good for their brand. I have to imagine you start to get approached as you grew to a pretty big company by 2010 a hundred employees. Your revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars, did you start to get approached by some of the big companies to sell?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Ratna, you controlled the purse strings if he wanted to make a purchase, you had to sign, you were the finance person.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it sounds like in general you more or less each had your areas that you focused on and that you didn't really have too many drag down fights.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How did the two of you, here you are, and we're having this great conversation, and you're both so nice and lovely. And I love your relationship. It's such a model. But let's be honest, there's no such thing as a perfect relationship. I mean, some of us are lucky we've got great partners and we've got, but we fight and we argue with tension, conflict. I mean, what was an example where you did not see eye to eye on how to operate this company?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, with all due respect, Aaron, because you have a vision here, but Ratna really is the brain of this operation. I know I'm supposed to be objective here, but”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In terms of leadership, right, how did you, I mean, Ratna clearly you came in with a plan to kind of create systems and organization and to clean up the books and to professionalize his operation. And so would you sort of describe yourself at the time in the 90s and even beyond as like the chief operating officer? And Erin, you were the chief executive officer, or is that not quite right?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What's a product that you guys got really excited about and went in full on and it turned out to just be a flop and you lost money on it?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He had tortilla chips, and I mean, how important was it to, when did you start to understand that you really had to expand your product line? You got 150 plus different products today. When was it clear that in order to thrive, you had to do that?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So you are in this crowded marketplace. A breakfast cereal is It is kind of insane, right, how crowded that market is.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But part of your packaging certainly early on was just a window, just a clear window that allowed you to see the product inside.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For as long as I can remember, seeing that big panda face or gorilla face on the box or the koala. It jumps out at you. The gorilla in the jungle, and you're like, oh, I want to eat that cereal as a gorilla, he's eating the cereal. I want to eat the cereal the gorilla's eating, right?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How are you able to compete? How are you able to get the word out when you didn't presumably have a huge marketing budget? How did you manage to get people to know and to buy your product? Was it just word of mouth? Or was it more sort of deliberate intentional strategy?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, Cascadian farms and Muir Glen and others, but I'm not asking you to critique their product or say, tell me why yours is better. What I'm trying to understand is,”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the way the world is. There are always going to be competitors, and you're clearly doing well, and there's people who like gorilla munch and these different.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You do use cane sugar, and I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just saying that. Nowadays people are kind of looking at cane sugar and there's some people are moving towards coconut sugar or of that.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And presumably, clearly you didn't want to just be for crunchy granola eating people. You also wanted to appeal to families and kids, which helps explain why you have gorilla munch and koala crisps and the other kids sort of focus brands.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Started to ride the whole foods wave because Whole Foods just went on a tear, started kind of buying up Mrs. Gucci's and bread and circus and really expanding across the U.S. It just the whole category of the natural and organic foods just exploded. Was Whole Foods? It must have been really significant to your growth.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, so you start to really kind of make inroads into the supermarkets. And meantime, by the late 90s, I guess you are, in a sense, kind of positioned. And we have conversations with other natural brands, you know, natural products like seventh generation, the cleaning products. They were in a similar place in the late 90s where”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But so here's my question if you were in a grocery store in 1995 and you had an option between Kellogg's cornflakes and nature's path cornflakes which were, I have to assume, significantly more expensive because what you were selling was a different quality, organic, natural was going to be more expensive. If the consumer didn't fully understand what they were getting, how are you making the case to them that they should go for yours”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what was the value proposition? What was the value proposition on the bag? Because, again, we have to remember, 1995, the average consumer was not as educated about organic and natural as they are today.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But let's just back then to get, I mean, how do you get into Safeway? And even when you did get into Safeway, I'm assuming it was just a tiny little bit of shelf space, not much.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Millions of dollars. It's like being in the App Store. You've got to pay them a cut of your app. If you want your stuff in a supermarket, you've got to pay them for the right shelf space and right?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we come back in just a moment, how Aaron and Ratna start to get nature's path into the major grocery chains, and why when some very big companies offer to acquire them, they say no. Stay with us, I'm Guy Ross, and you're listening to how I built this Hey, welcome back to How I Built This I'm Guy Ros. So it's 1995 and Aaron and Rodna have sold off their restaurant business and are fully focused on getting nature's path cereals into more stores. And they're aiming for all kinds of stores, by the way, not just the little mom and pop organic markets.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But see, this is an important point, right? Because you have enough self awareness, Erin, to understand that that is a weak point. That you have that weak point. And so, in order to fill that gap, you have to find the person, and the person happened to be your wife. So you were very lucky that your life partner was also just perfectly placed to be your business partner”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But meantime, I guess Aaron kind of recruited you to come work in the factory, right? That basically said, look, I need you here”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you are maybe headed towards bankruptcy, maybe not towards bankruptcy, but you were not. There was a downturn in your business after this factory opened, right?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very few businesses could survive that, right? I mean, that's just, I would be losing my mind. I would be. Shouting at the guy who put in the equipment, what are you doing? This is defective.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wait, sorry, you were making thousands of pounds of product that you would send for hog feed? What why wasn't it good enough? Was it the flavor? Was it the texture?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Snapped pictures That This is, you're still, everyone leaves the factory. The machine is still not working. You've just paid six million dollars for equipment that doesn't work. So what did you do?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow. I mean, you had to, right? Because you had to figure out what to do. It would have been so embarrassing. There was press there. That's true. So they just saw these beautiful golden cornflakes in the conveyor belt”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you basically put Another brand's cornflakes on the conveyor belt to make it look like your factory was working. It was like a Potemkin village.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow, that's a lot of cereal. Okay, so you are on fire here. You're ready to go, and they build this for you. By the way, you are in now, like, you guys are kind of underwater, right? Because you took out this big loan.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And just out of curiosity, how much cereal could that make a day, what they were building you, how many bags, did you remember?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, tell me a little bit about how you 1989 you decide to start building a factory beginning, get the loan, but then where do you get the equipment? And where do you get the production lines and all those things?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An extruder, which is like something that you make sausage out of, and it just pushes it through, and then you got to shape it and then bake it and dry it and toast it. There's a lot that goes on just to make a cornflake.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You said we're going to make organic cereal in our own, and I guess we should explain this because a cereal factory is actually very complex because you're basically making a mush, right, of all these whole grains and then putting it through like a”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you came to the conclusion that you wanted to make your own cereal for a number of reasons. First, you could do quality control, but also over time it would be more economical. But building a factory would have been very expensive. From what I gather, even, I mean, even in by 1987, your combined revenue for nature's path and the restaurant was about $3 million, which isn't bad, but it's not, I mean, to build a factory would have been hard. It ultimately cost about $6 million to do. So how did you go to, did you have to start to go to banks to see if you could get loans?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And of course, I'm assuming you couldn't make it yourself, so you were working with an outside sort of manufacturer to make this. And how did the cereals do? I mean, were they selling okay?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you came to the realization that cereal there was an opportunity in cereal. And I want to ask you about that first to you, Aaron, because I know Ratna, you wouldn't fully come into the business for a couple more years, but you were still obviously involved. What was the first kind of serial you started to make?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And making mana bread probably. Were you making it in like a, did you rent space in the kitchen? Did you just use a third party manufacturer and give them the recipe to make it for you?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Needless to say, you don't make mana bread any more, But this was really the first product. But already in 1985. You knew that you were going to develop a line of different products. Is that true”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sold in the freezer section of, I mean, Whole Foods was already around. There was Mrs. Gooch's. There was bread and circus in the U.S.”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that Brett had a short shelf life. So, I'm assuming in order to sell it, I guess you had to sell it frozen, right? Okay, where were you selling it at the restaurant?”
2022-05-23 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Nature’s Path: Arran and Ratana Stephens · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT