YouSaid · the spoken record

Roger Dahle

lines on the record: 68
first: 2021-07-20
most recent: 2021-07-20
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'll remain broadly distributed, but the social media part of it and the direct to the consumer, I'm going to let the natural course take place. In other words, in my industry, if 15% is direct to the consumer, I'm not quoting a number, just pulling one out. But if 15% is direct to the consumer and over time that goes to 40% direct to the consumer, I'll follow that trend. But I don't necessarily see myself driving that trend and saying we're going to end our relationships with our retailers and go direct to consumer only. I'm not doing that at all. I love my relationships with my retail customers. They've been awesome partners. They've been really, really good to us.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is freaking awesome. It keeps me awake at night, the excitement and the different product lines that we're going to come out with, the expansion of our product, different retail price points, different features. We were the first guys to put a deep fat fryer on a product that went outside, and then we came out with an air fryer the next year, and now we've come out with electric griddles. That is not even the tip of the tip of the iceberg of what we've got in the pipeline. without tipping my hat too far, you will see a tremendous amount of new product comes out that will come out over the next. Year to five years. Our development pipeline is very full”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we're going to continue. That's a really fun question for me, and I have to check myself so I don't give away all the competitive secrets that we're working on. Oh, come on. It's friends. Yeah. But what's in our development pipeline is...”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Interesting question. Well, you know, it makes sense on a pellet grill because you're cooking over such a long period of time and you don't want to go out and quote unquote tend to the fire as often as you might need to if you didn't have a way to monitor what was going on, temperature, you're getting low on pellets, all those kind of things that they can monitor. If it makes sense for us to have some kind of app that would help you cook better on the griddle, we would definitely come out with that. We haven't thought of what that is yet because you cook so fast on our griddle. You know, in 15 minutes you're done. You're not going to throw some food on the grill and walk in the house and start watching the game and get beeped on your phone to go out and flip the steaks or something. It just doesn't make sense. I don't know the answer to that question. What they're going to miss next or that's a hard question for me to answer.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the things that's really interesting that's happening in this right now is Traeger. We've mentioned several times, very popular. Have a lot of computer stuff going on with their pellet smokers, right? There's an app, there's Bluetooth, you can monitor it from five states away if you want to with some of them. Weber came out with similar features. That product was a bust, which is really funny to me, right? I mean, at the end of the day, you're just lighting a fire and putting some food over it and cooking it. But because Traeger was a ground up product, they integrated the computer stuff from the beginning. This is just a classic disruption story to me, as told through charcoal grills or pellet grills or what have you.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and it would have been really easy for us to do. We've had a lot of our customers request that we have a Blackstone pellet grill. But again, we're really disciplined. And it's hard for me because I'm such an entrepreneur. It's saying no is a really challenging thing for me to do. But I'm not going to put my name just on a quote-unquote knockoff pellet grill. I won't do it. If we come out with a pellet grill, there'll be a very specific reason why we do. And it will be a, call it a blackstone reason why we do it. But yeah, we think about it every day. We look at product expansion. We look at the category. We look at the way people cook food. But that will definitely be driven by what does my end user customer want from us.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How I want to cook and what I want to cook, then who's my competitor? And Traeger, we really look at pellet grilling or charcoal grilling, smoking the food like a green egg or even an offset smoker, some of those kinds of products, as a style of cooking food and a method of cooking food. And it's awesome. A pork shoulder out of a Traeger or a brisket. It tastes phenomenal, but it could take six to 14 hours of cooking time. We look at smoking food as more of an event that happens maybe once a month or maybe once a week if you're a real dedicated cook. Now, to your other point, the consumer is absolutely, in our opinions, and it's definitely a trend, and this is a wonderful trend for us, they're spending more time in the backyard, and they're paying a lot of attention to what they cook and how they can cook it. So it's not uncommon at all for the consumers now to have multiple units of cooking.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On one hand, I look at anybody as my competitor because we all live on a budget and we all have only so much money to spend. And when it's time to budget for an outdoor appliance, I got $800 or $500 or $300. What am I going to go spend it on? So in a sense, everybody's my competitor. But beyond that, beyond the budgetary part of it, when you get to”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our main sweet spot right in that $2 to $500 range right now as of today. But we'll be introducing, we are introducing some higher price points and we even have some items that retail for a thousand bucks right now. And we will see more of a push in that direction for sure. Two reasons. One, the consumer wants more features on it. Like I mentioned, they want more of a patio looking griddle. Mom likes it with a hood and with a cart so she doesn't see the griddle when it's not in use. And the propane tank. And then second, just prettier, better, and because of supply chain issues and cost increases, our retail price points will be increasing over the next 12 months.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's interesting because if a factory has enough automation with their equipment, I can get to some retail price points probably in the $700 price point and up. So that's coming down before it was $1,500 an up, but it's definitely coming down right now.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Overall production, we need to increase that. Our main factory is in China and it is an extremely large facility. And when I went there in 2014 for the first time, and they were just finishing the manufacturing of this facility, I thought I could give them maybe two weeks production a year because this facility was so big. But now we filled it up and we need more capacity than they can give us. They've added on to the factory and built multiple more buildings and production lines and powder coat lines and fabricating lines. So they'll catch up, but we're going to diversify a little bit outside of mainland China. I think that's pretty common for my industry. We're looking at Vietnam and some other countries in Asia. And we're also looking at the United States. And as we start introducing product that sells at higher retail price points, that lends itself to some manufacturing in the U.S. That I'm actually quite excited about.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“52 degrees because they think that's the best pancake, they can do that on our e series. So that was kind of the genesis behind it. But just in the long run, you know, I worry a little bit about the future of using propane potentially. And there could be some states who start coming out with green initiatives where charcoal and smoke and even potentially propane may be viewed negatively. And so I want to be in a position where it doesn't matter how I heat my griddle plate up. I just need it to get hot so I can cook food. And that's really kind of the initiative behind the electric series.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The genesis of the idea is we wanted to be the first company to introduce an outdoor indoor electric griddle. So you can use an outdoors. It's designed to stay outdoors if you wanted to, and you can take it inside and put it on the countertop in the house. Really inside the house right now, the only really offerings you have are extremely cheap electric griddles that you buy at discount retail. There's really not a good electric indoor griddle, in my opinion, until we came out with ours. And it's a completely different demographic almost. It's sleek. It's very contemporary looking. It has an awesome electronics panel on it with LED readouts. It's gorgeous. It's easy and you can set temperature and you can see what temperature you set it to. So somebody who's really precise in cooking and they want to cook a pancake at 300.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We actually do have chips, we have a new electric griddle, and we just came out with a 17 inch earlier this year, and we're now just barely shipping the 22-inch electric griddle. And they both have chips, and we've definitely been affected by the chip shortage on those two items.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it's been pretty linear. The bigger you get in revenue, the margins continue to get squeezed, competition comes in, as you mentioned earlier, and that can put pressure on your margin. And then just with the raw commodities that have gone up exponentially almost over the last 18 months, that definitely puts pressure on your margin, but we are very profitable as a company.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Staying home and they're cooking more at home and they're doing all those things that help our whole industry. Housing is a big part of us, new housing starts or a big industry stat that we look at and try to stay on top of. That's a positive for us. But Blackstone has been growing not necessarily because of the pandemic or anything else. We've been experiencing growth because the consumer is learning that cooking on a griddle is really, really fun and there's so much food you can cook on it. That's really why we're growing.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's difficult to answer because there's not a lot of good research data in our industry. Some of the sources where we used to get industry information don't exist anymore. And we get bits and pieces and we put it together and try to figure that puzzle out as best as we can. But I think pre-COVID, we were starting to take market share away from the traditional gas and charcoal grill industry. On one end and on the other end, the Traegers and the Pella Grill guys of the world were taking it away on the other end. And so they were kind of getting squeezed in the middle. But since the pandemic and COVID, I think that the pie has gotten bigger for everybody because I have professional relationships with a lot of my competitors and they're very, very good people. And right now I know for the last two years the gas industry has increased in sales. So I think the pie's gotten bigger. People are...”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really, what's been the most challenging for us has been the supply chain, especially right now, and just predicting and forecasting and coming up with the right amount of inventory we need to satisfy the demand. It's been really challenging, and we really don't know the answer to that question, quite frankly, because we've never had enough inventory where kind of at the end of our seasonality period we had too much inventory left on the shelves. We've never had enough. So we don't know how much is really enough. Number one, and number two, some of our other retailers are picking up some competitive product only because they might think we're more loyal to one retailer versus another, which isn't true. We're trying to satisfy the demand as best as we can with all of our customers. And, you know, as you grow a category and you develop a new niche in the category like griddle cooking, of course, all the other competitors are going to look at that.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we definitely will defend our patents, and we've done so successfully now three or four times on our rear grease management system and all the other patents that we have. I have kind of an aggressive attitude on patent and intellectual property. We spend so much time and hard work and effort and money developing new products. So when people knock me off, it's one of the things that kind of sets me off. So our patent attorneys make a lot of money and we'll continue to do so. But we love innovation and that's what drives us and motivates us every day is coming out with new items. So far, the industry has kind of knocked us off, you know, like we have a 17 inch. They came out the 17 inch. We have a 22, a 28, a 30, a 36. You know, these sizes aren't magical. It's just what we designed and came up with at first to use. And it's just funny. I think Coco Chanel said it best. If you want to be original.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's kind of funny. I've sat on airplanes before and I've had on a shirt with my Blackstone logo on and they, oh, you work for Blackstone. And I know where this is going. And I'm like, yeah, yeah. What do you do? Oh, I'm the CEO. And I've had people set up and pay attention to me like never before. So I've played with that a little bit on occasion.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is a key part of it without any question, and our customers are very loyal to their brand, and they seek out a Blackstone cover and Blackstone tools and accessories. And then the other thing really is being driven by innovation and knowing first what the customer is looking for and not just copying second. And yeah, we're going to get copied. We're already copied and knocked off. And someone can always build it for cheaper and sell it. That's fine. That's a free marketplace that we live in, but it's not a blackstone. And the consumer has really resonated to this brand and will continue to drive our business because of that. They're loyal to the brand.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On spices just to try to drive revenue. We'll never do that. In addition, we have come out this year with a whole line of sauces. We call it Sirin Serve. And what we found is if we used a traditional barbecue sauce on a griddle because of a high sugar content, the sauce would burn because sugary foods burn faster. And if you have a traditional gas grill, most of that stuff drips through onto the flame so you don't have a problem with it. But on a griddle, you do. So we had to design and come up with and market and manufacture a whole separate line of sauce that works for griddle cooking. And the consumer is loving it and responding to those flavors in a big way. So that's a consumable and we'll continue to expand into consumables. As they make sense, we have hundreds of ideas, but we won't label slap. It just won't do.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our tools are used for specific reasons. We have a crate kit. You need certain tools to make a crepe on a griddle, and we have those for you. We have a breakfast kit that has a pancake dispenser. We have a hamburger smash kit that works awesome if you want to make smash burgers. We have a taco rack. We have warming racks. We have domes for steaming and melting cheese. And all of these accessories really lend themselves to griddle cooking. And by the way, other people buy them for their traditional gas grills because they're awesome accessories. And then the other thing for recurring revenue that we're getting into is consumables. I don't know if you've seen our spices that we've come out with right now, but we have almost 15 different flavors of spice brands. And they're formulated really for griddle cooking in certain foods that you cook on the griddle. Again, we're not just label slapping and throwing stuff.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, our recurring revenue is called product innovation. And then you hit on the second part of it, the accessories part of it. We absolutely have the best attachment rate for accessories in this industry and maybe in any industry. Most of our end user customers buy between three and seven accessories for their griddle. And then the longer they stay with us as a customer, they continue to come back and buy more accessories. And all of our accessories, again, are driven by what our end users want to use on their griddle. And griddle cooking lends itself to such an awesome array of different accessories because you're cooking different foods. We're not just throwing tools at you and hoping that you buy some of them and they stick or we're not selling three foot spatulas as a Father's Day promotion because it's gimmicky.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have the greatest answer to that question ever possible. You're not going to just own one Blackstone. You're going to buy a small one for your camper. You're going to buy one for your cabin. You're going to buy one that you travel with. You're going to buy one that sets on your patio. And then we come out with a new one that includes an air fryer. And then you got to have French fries with your hamburger so you sell your old one and you buy a new one from me.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That to different type of retailers who have those type of customers. So again, for me, it's really driven by what my end user wants. And then we build those products and see where they fit. And it naturally works itself into a nice strategy of go-to-market at retail.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As far as diversifying our product line and selling those different product lines to different retail customers, that's definitely part of our distribution strategy and go-to-market strategy for sure. But it's also mainly driven by demand from our customers. And everything we do is focused 100% on what our end user customer is demanding, not so much what the retail customer is demanding. For example, we have retail customers who hate looking at a propane tank. They want a cabinet. They want storage. They want doors and drawers. And for a long, long time, we didn't offer that to our end user customer. And so we've started offering cabinet units at a little bit higher retail price points. And they've been extremely successful. And we'll continue to move in that direction with product development. And it just lends itself for different retail selling price points to differentiate.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Flipping to that right now. I was counseled by a lot of people not to do traditional TV marketing and advertising, but I believed in it and I think it really helped our brand initially when we started it. But just this last year, really maybe the last 18 months, we're starting to flip our ad budget spend more to social marketing. So, I see that trend for us headed definitely in that direction. But every industry is a little bit different in every category of product is a little bit different on how it reacts to the social marketing versus traditional TV spend.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, they'll get promoted or move on to the next category. I think it's maybe part of their development for their merchandising team and their employees in general. But right now we have good relationships with management at Amazon that I'm actually quite happy about.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're helpful. I'd like them to be a little more aggressive, but I'd like everybody to be a little bit more aggressive. I'm pretty passionate about my patents. And they're like, you know, have your attorney call and we'll figure it out”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So to me, that's probably the biggest challenge with Amazon is just dealing with all the little knockoff guys that just flourish on Amazon. They watch us like a hawk and they watch other consumer products. And they're very creative and they come up fast and a lot of them violate our patents. And we have a hard time even running some of these small companies down because they just don't exist someplace. So that's definitely a challenge with Amazon. But every retailer has its challenge and you just have to deal with it and figure it out.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Amazon is definitely challenging, but again, it's a relationship that I really like and it's one that I need to develop further, quite frankly, so that we avoid some of those issues. Hardest thing for me about Amazon is everybody can sell anything they want on Amazon. As we're a retailer, once you've a brick-and-mortar retailer, once you've gained selection with your product line, they add and take away on an annualized basis. But with Amazon, a competitor can pop up 24-7, and they do.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our industry and our category is still mainly sold at brick and mortar retail, outdoor cooking. And I suspect maybe over time that trend will flip, like a lot of other trends have flipped. But right now a high majority of our product, and that's true for me, that's true for Weber, for all outdoor cooking products, is sold at brick and mortar retail. There are a few companies out there who only have a direct-to-consumer model, but they're smaller businesses in this category. So we're going to continue to support our retailers and drive our customer to their locations to pick the product up and buy it. Our boxes are big and heavy. They're difficult to ship. Some of the items are difficult to assemble, and a lot of retailers offer those services, delivery set up, and take all the packaging away. So that's a big advantage for them. We are definitely seeing, and I think this part was helped by the pandemic,”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh no, we'll definitely go international. I just don't have the bandwidth right now to get us there, but we have customers call us all the time from foreign countries. We are expanding right now into the Middle East, which is interesting. But they have a lot of similarities with big family groups and family gatherings and cooking as an event, so we'll expand there across the border into Mexico. We have a lot of demand for our product there. It's really one of the cool things about our product as we are so diverse in our demographic. We are doing okay in Canada, but we need to expand there. In fact, we just hired an international sales manager, first one in the company, this week. So within a year, within two years, within five years, I expect us to have a pretty nice presence worldwide.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I don't have any pressure in that direction. My Chinese partners, my Taiwanese partners, it's a father and a son team and dad is about 75 years old. He is ready to retire. And his son, who is who I work with on a daily basis, is early 40s, and he has no desire to retire and wants to keep going together with me. But dad wants to retire. And so there's conversations about how do we let dad take his chips off the table and let him retire financially. So we're having those conversations right now. There's a lot of options on how we can accomplish that, and we're exploring those options as we speak.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know, the answer to that question right now. We've definitely had conversations about that as a possibility. It exists as a possibility is probably how I state that as of today.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Me, and I do have a partner. I have my manufacturer in China, is actually my partner. They're Taiwanese. And so we have a great partnership that's worked really, really well, and they've helped a lot with the financing of the growth.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I might know him. He's probably called me. Yeah, we've definitely had conversations with folks in the past, but as far as what's in our future, I know what motivates me and I know that I'm going to stick around and keep doing this for a number of years. I have no desire to retire, take a pile of cash and sit on a beach someplace. That's about the most boring thing I could think of.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We definitely have been noticed by the investment community, venture capitalists call quite frequently lots of different groups have called quite frequently.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the big trends in the industry right now is consolidation across every category I can think of. Have the Weber's and Tragers of the world come to you and said, hey, we want to acquire Blackstone and give you a lot of money and let you grow as fast as you can.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A little bit, but what's interesting is of the employees here are great researchers for us. It doesn't matter if they're in accounting or if they're in customer service, but our warehouse staff, our accounting staff, our obviously product development staff, our sales teams, everybody gathers information. We're all really, really passionate about our brand and about our product line. And so we're always got 200 people always looking online at our competitors, the industry, cooking, what's cool, what's motivating us. We all look at it all the time.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Asting Domes was one that comes right to mind. A lot of people would go out and buy a cheap aluminum cake pan, if you will, and use it as a faceding dome. We knew that we needed that product, but the users got to it first. Different spatulas, some of them have quite a bit of flexibility in them. Some of them are quite stiff. Chefs use those for different reasons. It's very disciplined. One of the things that the users came out with is when you're done cooking on a griddle, you don't want to leave it exposed to the elements. And we sell soft covers, you know, fabric covers that cover them, but rain can eventually leak through and moisture can get through. So our users started just bending sheet metal and making a lid to go on top of the griddle after use. We refer to them as a hardcover. That was another one that really came from our users that we watched on social media.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“24 7. Absolutely. I mean, we see product development on social media. Our customers get to what they need for a Blackstone sometimes before we do. We're catching up because I've hired a lot of people into product development and we're catching up and getting ahead. But there's a lot of creative people in this country and they'll buy a product and tweak it and make it better and come up with a cool idea and it's awesome. And so yeah, we watch social media a lot.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Word of mouth. And so I got to believe that TikTok with 1, almost 80,000 followers now, that's word of mouth, right? So that's the number one way people are hearing about our product. It really, quite honestly, surprised us as well. But if that's the case, I'll continue to spend money on these platforms because people are talking about us. They're watching us. They're watching people cook food. They want to try that recipe. They're intrigued by it. And then the other thing that happens all the time, somebody buys a black stone like you. You have some friends and neighbors over. You cook food for them and they're like, oh my gosh, that was the coolest. What is that thing? Where'd you get that? There again is our word of mouth that's kicking in falls in a huge way. So again, it's my total budget span for marketing that I that I think really drives all of these things. And so that's my return on my investment is my”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's kind of hard to figure that out because here's an interesting thing. Every year we do a market survey with end users of our product and people who've never heard of us before, and we ask a lot of questions and we get that research back. We get our net promoter score that way, so on and so forth. What we found last year was truly fascinating. With all the money I've spent on television and all the money we've spent on social media, guess which is the number one way people are hearing about Blackstone?”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tell me specifically about TikTok, though. You said it's gone crazy in the last year and a half. I think that's certainly where I came across the product. It is a viral sensation on TikTok. Is that generating a lot of return for you?”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is not a sophisticated answer, and you may cringe at my answer, but it's just really kind of a gutshot feel, in all honesty. We know that if we go out and do the right thing, the customer's going to look at and say, oh, that wasn't staged. They're not doing this to try to get back in my pocketbook. And that kind of breaks all the rules for advertising and social media spend, right? You're trying to look at ROI and all, you know, we spent 50 bucks. We better generate 150 in sales and all of these kind of numbers. I've just kind of thrown that all out the window. I'm going to spend this much money on my marketing, and we're going to figure out the best way to get our message out to our customer. That's how we do it. We have a certain amount of money to invest in our marketing efforts, and we're going to go spend that money.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You've got an app that requires software development. You're producing a TV show that runs on an app. You've got Facebook, which is where you're seeing your best return is. You've got a team of people making YouTube videos. You've got TikTok where it seems like there's a lot of awareness, but maybe not a lot of return. How do you balance that set of investments?”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I agree with that. It's definitely coming. But there again, what's our motive for doing that, right? Obviously, we want people to be more exposed to the brand and to the product. And what a great way to do it, because Bruce definitely has a following of millions of people who watch his show and who follow him and watch him and everything that he does. And it's authentic. This is not staged. This is not fake. This is just him out doing his thing. And if we can stay true to our brand in that fashion, we're going to be successful”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alligator man, he was on, and he was one of those swamp people that would go and catch alligators Contacted us, and we just love Bruce Mitchell. He's just awesome. And we've created now, I think we've got two shows done, two or three shows done that we're streaming on Amazon Firestick and Roku. And it's him. It's just him going out and doing his thing and cooking food and being Bruce. Blackstone is, again, subtly advertised in the background as the product that he cooks the frogs that he catches and puts them on the Blackstone or the crawfish or the alligator. And it's him. He's just real life living in the swamps in Louisiana. And it's awesome. We love that kind of content because he's a real guy.”
2021-07-20 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Blackstone became the darling of grill TikTok with CEO Roger Dahle · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT