YouSaid · the spoken record

Kat Nouri

lines on the record: 82
first: 2021-11-22
most recent: 2021-11-22
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

“I think as an immigrant and as my mother's daughter, work ethic is a given? And I do believe the harder you work, the luckier you get. But I also believe that the universe has a power and an energy of its own, some of it not in our control. If we embrace those things, whether we call them luck or things that were unlucky, I think that maybe we just like let go of the things we can't control and think of those things that come to us as luck or That just happened because we took a chance.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, and I have to tell you, guy, I mean, my family has been on this ride. I mean, my kids have been on most of my business trips. They've been at all like a lot of my trade shows. They've packed my goods with me. They deserved mommy at some point. And now that they're young adults, I really want to not just be here for my kids. I want to be here for other women and I want to do things that will have a bigger footprint in the money that I was able to make with my passion for something that'll change hopefully the plastic footprint of our society. And I have the ability to do something else that's possibly maybe even bigger.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, but I had to meet who was. I had to meet K Salma. Who's from the Netherlands? And the guy was just the nicest guy and, you know, his DNA is all about sustainability.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, they have it on, it's accessible to everyone. That was important to me. You know, that stasher would be accessible, that it would be affordable, that it would be donated to schools or, you know, all kinds of things that would be recycled through terracycle. Those are programs that they're putting in place that I could have never done. But then I have to tell you guys, COVID happened and every single day I thank my stars that the acquisition happened because I had the responsibility of forty to fifty families in my hands.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they manufacture Ziploc. They have a whole arm of companies that are better for you companies like method and misses Myers and Caldrea and Sunbum. I mean, they have companies that are changing the footprint of the way multinationals do business and the way things are produced. And by the way, just for the record, I didn't get acquired. I brought the acquires to the table. I saw anybody that would have an arm for massive distribution of stasher out and And I weeded them out.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I can't confirm your numbers, by the way, so I wanted Stasher to be in the hands of everyone if it was going to make real change. And guy, it's all about distribution Who has distribution?”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, the thing is you also don't want to, you know, I always told my team this, you know, and they know I didn't watch the copiers like they did because my job was to drive forward and to drive really fast. And their job was to look in the rearview mirror and to always make sure we took care of our customers, like nobody else, and that we had a culture in our company that cultivated everything that we stood for. And people, like, you know, we had millennials in the office. They're no nonsense. Our office was all about what we wanted to see out in the world. And that just spread like fire. You can't copy that unless you're legit.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First to market has the biggest advantage you could have with getting in front of the buyers, being in the market, getting first positioning. It has the biggest advantage of anything. But the other part of that is just keeping everybody away from you so that you can keep like doing things differently. And the way you keep everybody away from you is by zigzagging on the road. And being a B corporation and being a 1% for the planet and being a woman owned business, those things were not things people committed to when they were copying me. I was putting my money where my mouth was. I wasn't a greenwashing company that was trying to make a dime. I existed to make a difference and my team existed to make a difference.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But yeah, but you have to do it because if you don't keep some of the big ones back, you're going to get eaten up. But I do have to say on that note, I want to thank every single copier we've ever had out there because it made me run like the devil was chasing me. And you have to thank your competitors”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were on Red. I had a whole team on Red Point every day that would go on. Their job was to go on the internet and see who was knocking us off and serve them.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my gosh, we spent so much money on patents and that was like well worth everything that we did. Anyone that copied us, we went after.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I had had a video that we had made. I went to LA and we made a video about what the plastics are doing to our planet and how it's affecting human health because we're eating the fish that are eating the microbeads and that our bodies are being consumed with plastic and by 2050 we would have no fish in our oceans and this video was so powerful we all had tears in our eyes The buyer said to me, I represent a category of essentials where there is a lot of this, where I feel like Know why isn't there a more innovative solution to what's going on on our planet with plastic waste? Here you are, and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you succeed. And I was completely stunned. And he said to me, I don't even know what you would be like if you felt good.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I go to sleep and keep telling myself I got this, I got this, it'll be there by the morning. In the middle of the night, I wake up sideways and I can't even move. And the minute I come to stand up, I throw up. And I have major vertigo. There I was, and I had to not only look good, I had to go do a presentation in the account of my life. And I tilted my head sideways and I took a shower and I went downstairs and my brokers and Paul were there and they all like wheeled me in pretty much. And I sat me in a chair before the buyer walked in.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“the airplane. My team worked on it for like three or four months and I ended up standing at my hotel with no end cap that night”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the second time I took my head of product development and engineer, Paul, with me, to my target pitch for the second time. We get to Minneapolis and I fly in with an end cap. My team worked on the end cap for my Three or four months”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I found out through people that what you get in essentials is traffic and what you get in housewears is really you might get an end cap, but the actual volume in sales is less.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had eliminated plastic waste through their bottles. When I went to Target the first round and I got a no, they didn't see the value in $11.99 bag because they didn't see that, you know, they couldn't see through the marketing or through the marketplace, the reception and the perception of the value of the product. And it was a category maker. It wasn't a hard container. It wasn't a tossable single use plastic bag. And so where did it fit? did it fit in the essentials or did it fit in housewares”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we got into Target because what happened is that I threw LinkedIn, found the brokers that represented larger companies and I found out who was reping some of the brands that I really admired out there. companies like Swell that had done a really nice job of going to market.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wanted to, the company went explosive because we were authentic and we were transparent. Not because we were trying to sell something to someone because it was just some gadget that was going to scam someone.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By living in the Bay Area, there's this big perception that VCs and raising money is like your route to success. And one of the biggest things that I have seen in my own friends and from what I had studied has always been that there's no such thing as free money. You can't run your company the way you want if you take someone else's money. And I wasn't about to let anybody ruin my vision because I wasn't I didn't start this company for profit. I started this company so that it would support the change that I wanted to see in the world. And if I was going to do that, the VCs were probably going to tell me that's a really great thing, but you can't donate. You can't rent it this way. You can't hire that person. You can't grow as slower as fast as you want. I didn't want to grow fast for someone else.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did but I mean, it wasn't immediate. It kind of trickled through time. Basically, it gave us like a leverage. People would see it one buyer would tell another, you would send it to a buyer. We started utilizing it as a marketing tool. And I had one friend whose brother had seen the show and he said, I don't care what anybody says, you're a complete badass. And I want you to run the company exactly the way you're running it. And here's a half a million dollars without any questions. So I took the money from my friend's brother. And I didn't have to take the shark's money.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the end we spent like $20, $25,000 on the negotiations and I really wanted to make it happen. I wanted a deal that basically let me still run the company the way I wanted to, and I couldn't get that deal. And I had to walk away.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think it was something like I hadn't valued it myself, but I think they were valuing it like at 2.5 or something like that.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the one thing I knew was my business, and they weren't going to tell me how to do my business. And when it came to them questioning my business and telling me how to do it, I got a little offended and I got a little offensive and it brought my other side out. Can I ask you, your brand specialist, what would you do that would say that that is a better option? It's healthier. How would you do it differently?”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I agree. Maybe that's something that we should definitely put on the packaging. If you told me that and you're one of my buyers, I definitely put it up there.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you've watched Shark Tank. Some of the judges are not that nice and they'll shred. And if you don't know your business inside out, they're going to eat you alive.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Made me so nervous to be judged by the whole world, like to actually put yourself out there, especially as a woman. And here I was, I had to go stand on my own in front of the whole world pretty much to judge me.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I sent things to Shark Tank, I didn't look like a small company. I looked like somebody who had some traction. And so when I did the submission, I was very colorful and I had the tools to show them that it was a company worth looking at.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wasn't interested in that market necessarily. I was interested in the fact that people would get, I had to educate people. Where the value was for this eleven dollar bag, and people weren't getting it from our messaging that was on the packaging, and I didn't know how to message the packaging. Is why I decided to do Shark Tank.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Honestly, I think the real thing was that they didn't think anybody saw the difference between a reusable plastic bag, you know, who's going to pay for your bag. So I didn't get an order from Target directly, but ANOVA gave me a great order and I made a great deal with ANOVA where they had to pay for the molds for the productions because we didn't have them.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What happened is that ANOVA gave us a big order, and ANOVA was already in target. And they needed a souveed bag, and I had a souveed bag for them. So this was a way for me to get into Target, and I went to Targen. I already had an initial meeting with them, and they weren't into my idea at all.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. So I reached out to them and this was really important because they helped me produce my first set of molds. I meet with them and we get our first biggest order from them.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In a heated, like you could put in a pot and then you put a souveed machine in a pot and then you put your plastic bag and your food inside of that bag. And the taste of the food is amazing in it because all the nutrients stays in the bag and the taste and the moisture stays in there. So soused been like something that the French have been doing for a long time. So I reached out. I was looking on LinkedIn, trying to see who the biggest souveed player was. So all of a sudden I see on my LinkedIn that Electrolux has bought ANOVA. And I'm like, electrolux just bought ANOVA. So I reach out to ANOVA and I'm like, I've got your bag for you.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it's that heat resistant too. So basically I reached out on LinkedIn and I wanted to see I had a friend her name was Laura Sher and at that point she was another social entrepreneur and she said cat there's this really cool concept. It's called sous in the world.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they didn't see the value of, you know, you have to give the consumer the value. And I'm like, well, you could use it thousands of times. You can cook in it. You can freeze in it and you can use it thousands of times instead of that. And at the end of the day, you would actually end up saving money.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly And I was on LinkedIn again. And I saw that people weren't getting that these. They're like, what's the difference between like at this point, the plastic free movement was nowhere yet. And people were asking, well, what's the difference between like if I use a reusable bag than if I use your bag? So I had to really like get that across. I'm like, okay, how do I get the function of this thing? Here I was with a bag that was at that point when we were launching, it was $10.99, so $11 bag.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, I hang around with a lot of people from the natural products world. They stash a lot of things, you know? And they had a lot of influence. And, you know, when I was hanging out with them, and they loved, we loved the idea of coming up with something whimsical with a very heavy topic of plastic waste.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you can put fillers and byproducts and chemicals and any kind of crap you want into silic And make it cheaper And if you're using a platinum form of silicone and its food grade, you're definitely paying a lot more for the material.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Single use bags, and I'm like, what are we doing? Like, why is this happening in our community? Like, where's all this going?”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were trying to like sew the silicone into a bag and then put a zipper on it. They were beautiful, but then again, I was going back into the industry that wasn't exciting me anymore, which was the high end, you know, design industry. And I love design and I love the function of things, but I wanted something to actually could be consumed by the masses that could actually make a difference and sell in volume.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So my aha moment was definitely as I was trying to make a bag with my silicone product and with some fabrics with some friends of mine at Graffen Lance, we were trying to...”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And at one point, Ahmad turned around and said to me, I'm just not going to support you anymore, be your advisor if you don't think of some other way to produce something that actually has the ability to have change.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So I met Ahmed and Rheim at a natural product show through my mom. And my mom was a nutritionist and she's super holistic and my passion was always so connected to food. And here I was producing a product that had to do with things that were at the table, but they didn't have to do with. All this good nutrition that I loved and I was raised with When I started hanging out with Ahmed and the organizations he was involved with. Corporations. You know, at this point, you know, my mom's whole, you know, holistic, you know, Buddhist side kicked in of are you just going to take your care of yourself and your family? I mean, this guy Ahmed is all about community and he's hanging out with all these organizations that are going to change the world. Why can't you sort of like look into producing something that could have real impact?”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I didn't get Antsy at all. I was making money at that point and everybody was making money. We were doing fine. But what happened at this point is that I met a friend of my mom's at a natural product show named Ahmed Rahim.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and he believed in me, I mean, he had all the tools that I didn't have. He always joked that I paid him in Persian food. And he was my, he knew I was that crazy entrepreneur that sort of like flew by the seat of my pants. And he was that very calm, cool cucumber. He never got excited about anything and he never got overwhelmed by anything. And I really needed that.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is Mike and he would come to my house and come upstairs, I'd have dinner for him, and he would just start digging in and he would he was like my everything. What are you doing with this retailer? Why are you just focusing on this one retailer that you're selling this gear to? Let's get rid of that skew. And at this point, something else happened after I met Mike. First of all, Mike cleaned up my books, helped me get an SBA loan, helped get our financials straightened out, got inventory under control. And I don't even know how I would have done it without him, honestly, all the way through. He was absolutely my pillar of strength.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he would stay up with me from Thursday evening. Everybody knew I had Thursday evenings for like 10, 15 years straight. where Mike would come to the house.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. That was one thing. One of the buyers turned around and said to me, you know what the problem with your product is? I said, what? He says, they last forever. Because you buy it once. And, you know, we were, I was doing really well when I say when I was that I was doing really well is that I didn't have to worry about having a few employees and paying myself anymore and affording a space. And by this time, I had brought in a CFO. He was working with me once a week, and we would stay up from Thursday.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I got in, and when I did get in, it was so minimal and effort was so much. And the process for shipping to them took like an employee of its own. I didn't have the manpower at that point. And honestly, the independent designers or the independent retailers did so much more for us because they could explain the product in person. And so their sales volume was so good. I didn't really need to be in those stores.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably, I would say somewhere between twenty and fifty thousand on my first show. And I remember calling my husband right when Kit walked away and she came in, she walked into the show at the last ten minutes of the show. And I said, honey, I think I have something.”
2021-11-22 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT