YouSaid · the spoken record

Bob Monahan

lines on the record: 50
first: 2021-03-29
most recent: 2021-03-29
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 know what? Looking back on it, I know this, I don't know. I don't know what I really would have done differently. It's almost like pushing a wheelbarrow or something like that. It's like, okay, how are you going to push this wheelbarrow a mile? Well, I know, you know, if I take one step, I'm closer, I take another step, I'm closer. So it was just kind of like don't give up and just keep pushing because ultimately, you know, whatever. Why not you? Why does it have to be somebody else? It can be you, somebody else.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, hard work makes luck, you know, in some ways I say make your own luck. I'd say it's I'd say I'll go and say two-thirds hard work and one third luck.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People treat me nice here, which is kind of nice too. But right now I get a pretty good balance. I get to sneak out a little bit here and there and do my thing. And I have good people that can cover for me. Yeah”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. I mean, I definitely wouldn't mind doing some things like that before the body goes. Everything's kind of working right now. So those thoughts certainly enter your mind. But I do enjoy coming into the office. I enjoy the people I work with. They're my family.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stay out of fashion. I don't do any fashion. Used to get involved with naming, I don't get involved with naming anymore. So, those are certain things, you know. Like, I named the first two strollers, but now I've been fired from naming. But yeah, so I mean, whatever. Certain things just go let go. In fact, fashion, I don't mind because that's a whole monster and there's certainly better people than I to do that. So yeah, we know we learn what we enjoy and what we're good at. We try to stay focused on those.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, a lot of the push to me is it a sales decision or a brand decision. You know, some decisions you make are like, okay, what's going to sell the most? Okay, then we're going to do that. Well, okay, yeah, I understand that would sell, but for the brand, you know, this is what we want to do and I can't really articulate why we're going to do it. But that's kind of what makes us unique. And so some things you just sit, you're not always trying to like do the most volume or whatever all the time. Some things you just got to make decisions about the brand. And to me, those don't always make sense.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it's definitely, I say, there's definitely been some tough times because we're not always going to agree on everything. But right now we're really kind of like, we have our lanes and we do our thing and we just, so we have a system over the 15 years. I think that works.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would be less. It's just not as good. I mean, it's just, you know, Hyundai still has a radio. It's got wheels. It's tires, power windows, whatever. But it's not. And it's what your values are. Somewhere in there. Either the rivets aren't stainless steel and they're going to rust or it doesn't have bearings. They're ultimately going to wobble or it's got EVA foam instead of PU foam, the tires, it's going to wear out. I can go on and on. There's like everything on the stroller you can buy steel powder coated or you can buy aluminum anodized. There's just a million little things in each one you can choose in terms of manufacturing and what's on it, what the materials are, the durability, this is what it costs.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I was I had been semi frustrated at making product for mass market for most of my life, so it was like we want to make the stuff again with like us as the target audience. We want to make what we like. And so it wasn't about, hey, we want to make something that cost us much so other people can't afford it and people think we're cool. It's like, no, these are the, this is the one we want. And this is what it costs. We always joke around. It's not like we talked about gadgets you could put on the stroll or certain like there's no gold. There's no fake chrome. There's no rhinestones. There's no anything that you don't need. So it's all the stuff you want. And this is kind of what it costs. And yeah, as a consumer, you've got different choices. But we weren't trying to do it to be a leader. What we felt the best product would be.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I remember me and Trung looking at the numbers and I don't know we wanted to try. Strong's our VP of design and been with us from. He was consulting even in the very early days. And I don't know what the numbers were. It was like a container a month was like 300 strollers. And if we could sell a container a month, we just thought that we were there. And that meant that the assembly line was dedicated to us or kept the assembly line going in Asia. And that was pretty exciting.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we really looked at that and said to ourselves, people are generally having their kids later. They have more money, but they tend to have two or three kids in fairly quick secession, kind of how we did it. And so we were the first stroller to go from, you know, you have a stroller and you can add a second seat. And now you can add a piggy bag. So we could put three kids on our stroller. You're talking about a six-year window, and it's really became a valuable purchase. It resonated and it stuck for quite a while.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were in Rockland and we were in an old shoe factory. Eventually grew to be about seven or eight, nine people. The way we did furniture there, when you were done with a piece of furniture, you put it in the lobby, and then when you wanted a piece of furniture, you just went and got it and put it in your desk. So we didn't buy any furniture. We had somebody in customer service sitting at a second grader desk. But yeah, it was like the bathrooms were on a different floor. We had an elevator that was a cargo elevator. We had no air conditioning. So I'll tell you, you know what paperweights are for? You learn what paperweights are for when you don't have air conditioning. So it was interesting. It was good.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Sarah Jessica Parker was a big user early on. And Lauren always gets the thing that she looks like Sarah Jessica Parker when she was in New York, so that was kind of a funny tie-in. And we're having kids at the same time as them, and she was using the stroller, so that was super exciting.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“much it's weird like i think that you know we started with 40 and they all sold and then everybody reupped Next month, we sold 100. The next month we sold 175. The next month we sold 250. Like it just kind of kept going. I don't really recall. The nice thing about all of this is that we are our proximity to New York. And that was the birthplace or this whole movement of this high end product. And the New Yorkers have been good to us and they use their strollers more than anybody. They don't just throw it in the trunk of their car. They lived out of their strollers We sold New York is where we grew, and then that's how it all happened. Yeah.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Lauren can maybe help me out with this. I'm pretty sure that Albies bought them. We had some group in Puerto Rico that bought some. Yeah. And we had who was the one that started up with us in New York where your mom bought her stroller, Lauren.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was like people came to us and a lot of the brands coming in from Europe, the new brands were, I don't know, more higher end been around for longer. And they were like, you had to order 20, you had to order $10,000 worth. And they come up to us and like, what's your minimum water quantity? We go one.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's not an order taking show. That's generally an industry show. I mean, there was some interest, to be honest. It wasn't great. I mean, I actually be quite honest. I felt pretty confident, but it wasn't, I don't know, maybe we didn't present it right. Maybe there's too much going in my booth, but it wasn't okay.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, you sit there and hopefully somebody will come by. And I remember Alby Baby out of New York came by. They were one of the best specialty stores. He said something like, you're trying too hard. It was a nice concept, but you're trying a little too hard on the fashions. I mean, I was doing the fashions, which was the fashions.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, cut himself. I mean, I never met Hooter, but it's a good guy, I guess. Nobody noticed it that much. And yeah, so they set it up and it was largely set up by the time I got there.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, our first employees, Molly, was running our sales. And she just started. I didn't really know her that well, but she was going to go down and get things going. Before you got there. Start setting the...”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I flew out that afternoon and my team who I just, one person I didn't know, the other one we just hired like a few weeks prior.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I flew to Florida. It was our third child. We've been down this road before. So we were kind of getting the crows third in five years or whatever.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that was the goal would be some middle ground or maybe upper middle ground. Right. Entry level luxury or something like that.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was the number we picked, yeah, and we kind of we just bought them sight unseen. We were, it was a risk, but we just felt good enough about it.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It took about a year, maybe a little bit less, I'm trying to think we sold our first strollers in the September of 2006. And we air freighted 100 in from China for a trade show.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was our daughter, McKenna, who wanted to be picked up all the time, and she would say Uppa all the time. She'd walk around with her hands up in the air. She wanted to get picked up.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The modular strollers do is you can take the seat out and you can reverse it, you can face it away from you or towards you and then recline it. You can put a bassinet in and you can put an infant car seat in So, those were the things that wasn't new to this stroll. This was like another way to do it We owe a lot of credit to Bugaboo for kind of like pioneering the market, but in my opinion, it wasn't the most user-friendly stroller. So yeah, we're going to have the high-grade aluminum. Yeah, we're going to have the high-end wheels. And yeah, we're going to have the modularity. But you are going to be able to pop this out of the box and snap it all together. So we really focused on ease of use, good customer service. That was our angle on the modularity type stroller.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we had some meetings, I had some concepts. I guess it was a little bit scattered, as you can tell right now. There was a lot of things on the table. But, you know, I think he believed in me enough that let's give this guy a bit of a shot.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And, you know, Lauren's dad was a good friend of mine, and I think he wanted to help me out a little bit. And like, you know, it wasn't, you know, he helped me, you know, with a little bit of capital to help me get going with this, but it really wasn't a big deal.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of it was a guy thing, almost more than a woman thing. It was like guys get into the modularity, guys get into the aircraft aluminum tubing, the wheels, the big wheels that look like race car wheels. There's just a lot of things coming together in that whole arena that like, okay, this, you know, I don't have a patent in this. I haven't come up with this whole concept of the ground up, but I knew that there was that there was this is a supplying and unmet need. There was a huge need in this area”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, that's what people showed off. That's what you walk down the street in. I mean, you make a nice car seater, a gate, or a monitor that sits in your house. Who cares? A stroller, like I said, it's what people talk about. It's out there.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I also became aware of how hot this market was. Like dads were getting excited about strollers. There were blogs. And this is 2005. You know, blogs were big deals. These guys were getting so passionate arguing about the Quinnie versus the bugaboo and like the features and the wheels, the air filled tires. And it was just something that was surprising and it actually made sense to me. It was something they got excited about and felt that they could participate in. And then something they could enjoy, you know, strolling with your baby.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I source products in Asia for eight years, so And some of the factories make gates and also strollers and things like that. I had great relationships with a lot of factories over there. So, yeah, I was just, you know, talking to these guys and like, hey, listen, I'm starting my own company. I'd love to work with you. I want to do my own brand. You know, is there anything that we can work together on? And along with Gates, there was the whole stroller side of it. And I was just one time when I was over there, there was a model that the concept of it had some modularity to it where the seat would come out where you could put a bassinet in or something like that. And it was fairly half-baked at the time, but I'm like, that's exciting. Like I think we can do something with that.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like jail, yeah. Is that what? Call JPMA is a governing body, juvenile products. I don't know. Yeah, you're right, but it's juvenile products is the industry.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was definitely scary because we had the house, the kid, and went to trade shows and tried to get it moving. I still dabbled in the juvenile world because that's, you know, I thought in the gate side and stuff like that. So I guess this is kind of like throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what hits.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I felt that way, and also two things that, yeah, I was disappointed that I wouldn't get to do that. I was also disappointed that the person they're probably bringing in to do it was my old boss at Rebach, who laid me off. And then I had these opportunities. I want to do something on my own.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They were just very modern looking, and they were modular, and you could put an infant car seat into it, like this whole Maxi Cozy snap-in system that's still around today. I mean, they were all aluminum. One of them would automatically open just very modern, very Dutch design and all that. So trying to figure out how they were going to launch it in the United States. And I did a lot of work on that later on it became aware that I wasn't going to be the guy that launched it. I was just going to do the background work. I was more of an engineer than a marketing person. I think they wanted a real marketing person to launch it.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So they have this brand Quinnie they want to launch. That's an expensive stroller. And that's where I became aware of it is we're like, how are we going to bring the Quinnie in? How are we going to launch it? Are we only going to launch it in specialty? Like there's this whole thing going on. That's where, and I was in charge of putting this whole analysis together.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a kind of stroller, okay? Yeah, it's like a high end European stroller back in the day there was buggaboo and Stroller was kind of in the United States, it was kind of stagnant, and you had various licenses that you put on that was like you had a plane stroller over the NASCAR. Dale Earnhardt's like number on the side and be checkered style or big plasticky like Winnie the Pooh things that you saw. And I did all that mass market stuff.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I worked in the high-end stroller market near the end of my career at Safety First, working on bringing the Quinnie line into the U.S.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You could just The whole thing was to give the parts that go in the house to the builder, and the builder would just install them like an electrical outlet in the top and bottom of stairs. And then when you want it, it has my little logo on it. And when you want it, you just look for the logo. It's got our website and you just call us or email us or whatever. And then you measure, we ask for the distance, how wide is it opening, and then we send you a gate. We send you a custom fit wooden gate.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was more like, so I'm in product development all the time. I have ideas, a little frustrated. I guess I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to start a company. And two of what I considered my best ideas, one was a baby gate system. Would be partially built into the house when you buy the house Then you just snap it in when you need the gate. If you have pets, kids, whatever. So I got a patent on that, and I got a patent on the EZ Leaf hauler.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, what I made was monitors and gates. I was in the safety team, but they made sippy cups, they made breast pumps, they made. Kind of like the early stages of a lot of this gear that now is pretty prevalent. And we try to like outsource a lot of what you did. And you outsource the stuff in Asia and then you manufacture it. And it was definitely, I don't know, it's rock bottom because I actually enjoyed the job. You know, it was fun doing what I did, but it was a whole, I didn't have kids. I didn't really know much about the industry, but it was just a product. And career-wise, I went to a dinky little company and make it a lot less money.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My thing was, I didn't want to move. I enjoyed working on product development and sourcing stuff in Asia. And the only companies were footwear companies or juvenile products companies because Hasbro is in. Just south of us in Rhode Island. And because of there, there was a safety first year. Some juvenile products companies had sprung up in the area. And I just looked and the first year's hired me as a project manager.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They just took the whole 3D Foams group and I don't know, maybe I wasn't particularly loved by some people. And so that was definitely a big change for me getting laid off. I didn't see that coming.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so if it wasn't for hockey, we probably that would have been it. Yeah, I was on, she was on her way into Rewalk, I was on my way out.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, like I played in high school too, but whatever. I didn't play in college, tried out, but didn't play. So I just ran pickup skates because it's a fun way to get exercise. It was Friday morning before work, so Lauren's not a lover of getting up early, so I think that was part of the problem. But she came the next week.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, let me see. It was near, yeah, 98, and we were in the gym. And I was doing my setups. She was over doing... She loved to play hockey, and there's no hockey around or whatever. She couldn't find a place to skate. So as I was walking out the door, I said, well, I started the Reebox skate, an old rank near my house. I just started this pickup skate for people who played. And so we'd start a week or two earlier, and I invited her, and she didn't come.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so it was a really cool year and I ended up in a group that called 3D Foam. It's where you make foam and rubber combined together. And that there's no rubber outsold of the shoe. But we were like the cutting edge of that. And I ran a couple marathons in them. They're amazing. You didn't need the rubber outsole. You didn't glue it. You didn't need all these gadgets. And that's the way they're all made now just about. It's comfortable, light, easy to make. So that was the technology I ended up working on.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were in an old shoe factory. We had an elevator that was a cargo elevator, no air conditioning. And the way we did furniture there, when you were done with a piece of furniture, you put it in the lobby. And then when you wanted a piece of furniture, you just went and got it and put it in your desk. So we didn't buy any furniture. So we had somebody in customer service sitting at a second grader desk.”
2021-03-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · UPPAbaby: Bob and Lauren Monahan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT