YouSaid · the spoken record

Philip Krim

lines on the record: 118
first: 2021-06-28
most recent: 2021-06-28
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

“Over time, it got more and more focused on mattresses. So, yes, we ended up exclusively in the latter part of the business only focusing on mattresses.”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. So I ended up taking five years to graduate from Texas because I was balancing school with running the company. I grew up on Merrick Drive, so decided to start the Merrick Group. Sounds like a.”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that's where I dug into the industry and just started to learn the dynamics, which is that for the last several decades, it's been a very tightly controlled industry. And when things are an oligopoly or a duopoly or a monopoly, that's when you're able to really protect pricing, protect margins. And you see it in other industries. You see it in the razorblade business. You see it in the eyeglass business. Very tightly controlled on the manufacturing side. It's a business that private equity had loved to own, love to protect. It was very predictable from a volume side. And so that's what allowed them to have big margins and brands mattered here. And so brands also drove higher margins, Seely, Surda Simmons. These brands have been around for 100 plus years. And that allows you to take margin over time.”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Mattresses realized they had big margins. It's also an industry that was very slow to embrace the internet. They were doing a lot of direct response advertising, you know, temperedex, sleep number back then were growing their businesses through direct response advertising. And so I saw that the more these guys advertised on TV and radio, it drove people to search for these brands online. But these guys didn't even have e-commerce capabilities back then. And so we could sell products that competed memory phone products, adjustable air mattresses. And we could be early in the industry. And it was very profitable because these guys weren't competing there.”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, in the beginning, it was just me. I was answering phones, taking live chats, taking the orders, working with the vendor, just doing everything. I mean, I think that's one of the ways that I learned just about every part of the business.”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, over time, I had employees, and then my family also helped. So at one point, I had a conversation that didn't go exactly as planned, but I went to my parents saying how I thought I should take a break from school and work on the business because it was growing quickly. And I was enjoying it. And they shut that idea down immediately, but the compromise we worked out is that they would help me with the business. And so ended up getting my family involved. And we at one point had, you know, I don't remember our peak, but like 20, 30 employees involved.”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know it's funny. I remember in my early 20s, I went to a Celtics game in Boston with some of the guys that I had been buying from for years, and I guess it was my turn to go buy the beers, but in the garden, you can't buy beer until you're 25. And so I had to come back empty-handed. And it was like an acute reminder of my youth in business.”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wish I remembered the specifics. I remember just trying to call up companies, but it was just trying to understand who was willing to do the fulfillment and call up the company and see if you could convince them. Oftentimes they didn't realize that I was a...”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was cheap enough where I could kind of do it using misappropriating some student loan money and starting it with credit cards. So it was something I did it all myself. I had no money. It was on scholarship for school. And so was able to kind of just put it together with some sweat equity, I guess, and get it going. And then the nice thing about the model, which was true also for Casper when we started it, is just a negative cash conversion, which is a fancy way of saying customers give you the money to buy the goods before you have to put the money out.”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. No, this was a portfolio of different websites. So I would generally try to build a targeted website for the specific product or manufacturer that I was working with. And it's actually at the time, I think at the time, Wayfair was doing something similar”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was early days. This was kind of post. And then I would go look for manufacturers that would ship directly to the customer if I gave them an order. And then the manufacturer would charge my credit card and do the fulfillment and I would charge the customer's credit card through my merchant account. And I worked with dozens of different manufacturers who would sell everything from window blinds where people would give us their measurements and it would be made to order eczema cream to help children with eczema sofas or futons to how to play poker software all the way through to mattresses. So I've actually been around the mattress side of things sincerely 2000s as well. But at the time it was really just anything I could find where I could figure out that people were searching for it and I could find a manufacturer who would do the fulfillment. I could do the rest from my dorm room.”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. At the time, I didn't say, oh, I'm going to go start my business. What should I start? It was more of, well, I don't really want to get a traditional summer job and sit in an office all summer, what are ways that I could use the internet to make money in a non-traditional way, I guess, at the time. And so I learned what dropshipping was. I learned about HTML and how to build websites using HTML. And so I figured out that if I built a website and could market the website online, others could do dropshipping to do the customer fulfillment. And that could be a way to make money. So just started messing around with that.”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very much knew that I wanted to do business. I didn't think it was going to be kind of the entrepreneurial path. I thought it was going to be more kind of the finance path. I recall fondly playing the stock market when I was in fifth grade and during the dot-com mania and just being looking at the stock market quotes in the newspaper every day and probably have read the Wall Street Journal since elementary school and so I started UT as a finance major but obviously kind of pivoted as I started tinkering around with doing my own things and then ultimately did go down the entrepreneurial journey while I was in school and post school.”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Brand, but is now known as a sports brand. Philip grew up in Sugarland, Texas, where his dad was an entrepreneur who tried out all kinds of business ideas. As a kid, Philip knew he would do something in the business world which was his plan when he started college at the University of Texas.”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As a mattress actually matters to consumers. He and his partners launched Casper as a way to make buying a mattress simpler, a mattress that could be ordered online, compressed into a box, and delivered to your door. And Casper kind of created the model for the way many DTC mattress companies manufacture, market, and deliver their products today. Casper's rise was meteoric at one point, private investors valued the brand at over a billion dollars. But since its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020, Casper's market value has dropped by half. And while all of this has certainly rattled Philip Krem, he's also an ambitious CEO with plans to make Casper much bigger than a mattress brand. He wants it to be a sleep brand. Sort of how Nike was once a”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Except that model has proved to be a lot harder than it sounds. Customer acquisition costs are really high, and unlike ten years ago when the DTC model really took off, there is a lot of competition now. Orby Parker isn't the only one selling glasses directly to consumers anymore, and all Birds is now among dozens of DTC shoe brands. Same goes for mattresses. Today, there are at least one hundred seventy direct to consumer brands that sell mattresses online. It's a crowded and confusing marketplace. But when Philip Krim and his partners launched Casper mattresses in twenty fourteen, there were just a handful of these types of businesses. Phillip was part of a wave of entrepreneurs who saw that the experience of buying something as mundane but important”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I never expected to see so many competitors come at us from so many different angles and that so many of them would just try to copy what we were doing and be fast followers and really just take everything we were trying to be innovative with and immediately buying a mattress online became even more overwhelming and confusing than buying a mattress offline.”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, one of my favorite parts of traveling is getting a feel for a neighborhood, the way locals do. A few summers ago, I was in Rome and stayed in an apartment I booked on Airbnb. It was tucked in a quiet neighborhood just outside the Roman forum. Every morning I'd walk to the corner cafe, grab an espresso, and just watch the world go by outside. I even managed to chat with the owner about the neighborhood he lived in for nearly forty years. And he got me thinking about my own neighborhood. There are incredible hiking trails and great restaurants and, of course, the beach. And when I'm traveling this summer, listing my own place on Airbnb could be a really smart way to let someone else experience the area the way I do, like a local. Listing your home on Airbnb while you're traveling is a great way to make some extra money. You could put the money toward your next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much”
2021-06-28 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Casper: Philip Krim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT