YouSaid · the spoken record

Travis Rosbach

lines on the record: 80
first: 2025-11-24
most recent: 2025-11-24
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 that it was a lot of hard work. I think the luck comes in that it hadn't happened yet and the world was ready for it. People were ready to start carrying water bottles with them everywhere they went. And so as far as luck goes, I think that that was maybe where the luck was, but I always take the good luck when I can get it. It's just sometimes I've had to really look for that luck”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Guess I'm just a glutton for punishment. It's a lot like when I saw this sign saying, Hey, I have a banner company. I have a sign company. And I thought, huh, I bet I could do that better. And basically I found a way to print on the entire bottle. And so it's typically the best way to. Embellish a bottle right now is with the laser engraver, and we started doing that early 2009. We started laser engraving on bottles. And it was great. It was cool technology back in 2009, but this is 2025. We're going to 2026, and it's time that somebody steps up and does something a little bit different.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do. I help do advising for companies that are looking for building their products in factories in the States or in China. But I'm also looking to do another bottle company as well.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I felt like I had accomplished everything that I'd really set out to accomplish. And I didn't want to continue down the path of the corporate route. My original goal was to sell 2,500 bottles. You know, I wasn't looking to retire and move out into a castle. And I remember I woke up with just a whole weight that had lifted from my body. And I realized, oh, wait, you're not the hydroflask guy anymore. And that I did. I separated from them and they changed the quality. They changed the price. They've changed some of the manufacturing techniques. I don't even really drink out of the bottles anymore. After some of their ad campaigns and things, I've separated myself even further with them.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I got to a point where we got REI. We had Whole Foods. We were an international company. We were all over Europe and Asia and starting in on the South Pacific. And I was a little tired of being on the road and living in hotels and in the factories. And I felt like that season was just drawing to an end. I was tired. And then when the investor bought out my partner, Right, yeah. It put him to 51%, and I was at 49. And he brought in the corporate playbook and said, here's what we're going to do. And this is what it's going to look like. And I took a look at it and I said, no, I don't want to do that. So negotiated my way out.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I call off the meeting and I tell them, yeah, you know, we need 80,000 bottles, and he goes, Okay, how much money? I said, how about a million dollars? And he says, okay, you know, of course he looked at the books and he did some due diligence and things. It wasn't quite that easy. But he wrote us a check and I was able to buy more bottles. And that's when he came in as an investor and started helping inside the office even with the books. And we hired a CFO at that point. and grew.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so after she left and I started hiring new employees that second 40,000 bottles came in and we ran out of money. I had about 10 employees at that point and had no more money in the bank on a Wednesday night, I remember. And so I write this letter that says, you know, dear employees, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to close down the business. And I was going to read it to him Friday morning. And Friday morning, I call everybody into the office to tell them that we're closed and down. And the phone rings and the lady at the front desk says, there's this guy here who wants to see you. And he says, Travis, I'm here to talk to you. And I said, I'm sorry, I'm not hiring and I'm not even. And he says, Well, I might want to invest.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was awesome, and he brought in other sales reps. Unfortunately, what happened was he said that we were not going to be able to get into REI within a year. And I knew that we probably could. And he was adamant that he wasn't even going to try. And so we had to let him go and replace him with a larger firm. But he was instrumental in getting us up and going.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't really like HR. I'm not great. I trust people, I just take people at face value. It always surprises me still to this day when people are dishonest or they have ulterior motives. And I'm probably not a real good judge of that. You're right, guy.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had been on and off for quite a while. And I think that just the sheer overwhelm of the situation was enough to send her on her way.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I had a kind of a list of people who had always said they wanted to help us if they could. And I called the list and finally I found a local banker who was a big hydroflask fan and he really believed in it. And he said, all right, yeah, I'll lend you the 250 to get the second 40,000.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I get home and the bottles show up, and we found that they had rusted and they were not insulated. So I ended up going right back to the factory in December of 2009 and said, hey, what happened? And we found the machine and we figured out what was wrong. And I negotiated another $40,000 bottles to replace the rusted 40,000 and 20 day payment after they arrived. And so they said, okay, yep, we'll do that. I come home in February, we get a call that we owed for the second 40,000 bottles, about 250,000 dollars. And I said, no, no, I have a net 120 after they land. And they said, nope, you owe us for another $40,000.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, luckily we had a friend who was a banker, and so she could help us find different banks that would give us a line of credit and credit cards. My grandparents took out a second mortgage on their house and we borrowed and sold everything that we could just to keep buying more bottles.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think Clean Canteen was the first. And when I found out that they were doing vacuum insulation, I thought, oh man, it's over. We're out of business because they're selling the single wall so well. I'm sure they're going to sell the double wall. And they used the different vacuum technique. They used one that was a little bit easier, a little bit less expensive. And it didn't look as good and it ended up not working as well. That gave us a bit more of a runway to run with it.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so what we did was we designed Patton did the design, the shapes and the sizes of the bottles and made sure that it was on the packaging front and center patent pending or patented. And what I found was that a lot of people who maybe would have been competitors saw a patented and they figured, oh, well, they've got the vacuum insulins market. We'll just leave them be. And it helped for about six or eight months. Until, oh, it's just design patent, and then they started designing around it.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, what we did is we ended up getting design patents. And so there's utility Patents that are like for the insulation, and we couldn't get that because that had already existed.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, luckily, Brent said, hey, you got to go to this thing called the Outdoor Retail Show in Salt Lake City. And it's where all of the outdoor product companies come to. Show what's new for the season. We couldn't afford an actual proper booth, but we paid to get in and we took a bunch of bamboo and kind of laced and wrapped together a hut to put up our banners. And we were the only water bottle company there. And pretty soon the buyers started coming and seeing who's selling water bottles. And then with that, we had other sales reps that would come to the booth and they'd say, hey, I have this little tiny region in this area or this massive region in this country. And where sales reps and we want to sell the bottles.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have we had about six colors? And he says, fine, I'll take a case of each. And so once we got the whole foods order just for that one bend location, I basically used that all across town.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, when we got the first 1,500 bottles in and brought them from Salem over to Bend because my grandpa kicked us out of the garage, I thought, well, we just got a Whole Foods in Bend. What if I just go check it out and see what they say? And so I walked into Whole Foods and I said, hey, I'm here to sell water bottles. And they sent me back to the lady who buys water. And she said, where's the water? I said, there's no water. It's just the bottle. And she's like, that doesn't make any sense. I said, well, it's a water bottle. She goes, yeah, go talk to Evan. And so I go back and I, there's a man laying on the floor. And he's pulling water bottles out of the bottom shelf. And they were sig and they had BPA in them. And I said, hey, good news. I'm Travis from Hydroflask. I got these water bottles to replace those. And he says, their BPA? I said, nope, it's all metal. He goes, okay, fine. How many?”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And as soon as we figured that, okay, people are buying 12 and they're starting to reorder. We bumped it up to 24 per case. And the accounts started getting bigger and bigger. And so we picked up a couple more sales reps on the East Coast and a couple in the Midwest. And pretty soon we started getting more sales reps and opening bigger and bigger accounts.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we started out with our minimum was 12. And then we bumped it up to 20. Will bottle minimum? Yeah. Because they came in 12 bottle boxes.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And I said, I just don't feel comfortable giving you 48. I said, I'll give you a 24. And then you tell me how you did with the 24. And he sold 22 of the 24 doors and opened them up.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't, yeah. Yeah, no, he said, okay, well, what do you need? And he said, I need 48 bottles. And at that point, we were down to less than a thousand. And I was like, I don't know, man. I'm not going to just give you free bottles.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, his name is Brent, and he lives in Bend, and he's a sales rep. And Wanted to rep the bottles in sporting goods stores throughout the Northwest.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And then what happened was we were at the Munch and Music here in Bind, and a guy came up and he says, hey, I'm worth, I work with the Bind Bulletin newspaper. Can we do an article on you? Yeah, sure, fine. So we were on the front page of the business. Newspaper, Ben Bulletin. And the following Thursday, a guy comes up and he says, hey, I'm a sales rep and I want to rep hydro flask.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, which was a bit of a benefit being in Oregon because we do have a lot of environmentally friendly folks here in the state, but we gave a lifetime warranty and said that if anything happens, Will take care of it. We'll replace your bottle for you. And that helped a lot”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was tough because oftentimes what they would do is they'd come by, they'd meet us first, and then they'd go shop the whole market. And then if they had any money left over, they would take a chance on us. So we're selling anywhere from 20 to 50 bottles a day at that plant for the two days. And then we'd leave the Saturday market, we'd head back to bend and start doing what's called munching music at Drake Park, where they show a movie and have a bit of a Thursday afternoon get together.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly, and it was hot, it was middle of, I think it was July People came and they'd say, What is this? And it's a water bottle. And they'd say, why would I need a water bottle? Well, because it's not plastic. You can reuse it and it's insulated. And we'd put ice cubes inside of them. And I'd put ice cubes in on Friday night and I'd write 8 p.m. Friday. And then by Sunday, there's still ice cubes in it. And people would freak out.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, kind of. Like we knew the difference between a table throw and a tablecloth. You know, and so we had a table throw that said hydra flask and we put it up on the rubber made table and we had a little pop-up banner. We had our shirts that said hydro flask and hats and stickers. You knew what to do because you had a sign company.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My grandparents have a two car garage, and my grandpa said we could have one of the two cars until the summer. And so we started out in Salem in the garage.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That part I wasn't quite so sure about. I knew that we had a Portland Saturday market that sold you could go and sell your wares. And so I figured, well, we'll start at the Portland Saturday market and see how it goes.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. And my brother had just moved back in, and my sister had just moved back in and had a baby. And it was a full house.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was expensive, and I knew that we needed to have. Closer access to airports and big trade shows and things. And Bind has kind of been an outdoor mecca for Oregon for quite a while. And it was just kind of really starting to take off as an outdoor place to be.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we didn't know that at first. I hadn't thought to ask about a minimum mortar quantity. I don't have an MBA. I don't know these things. I didn't know these things. And we found out later that the first MOQ was 3,000.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we got two. There was a red one and a blue one, 18 and 21 ounces, and went down to Waikiki Beach and put Ice Cubes in it and started just handing them to people. And they would get out of the water from surfing and they would see the ice and they'd say, wow, yes, this is something we would buy.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was measuring how big is my lip, how big is the drinking size out of each of these bottles, Budweiser bottles versus corona bottles versus Milk jugs Once I found what I really liked, I gave them the specs and then they made it the best that they could, but the very first samples, the lip was real sharp and I didn't like it, but everybody else liked it. And they were insulated. It worked.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, both. I gave them the specs, a minute made I liked better than Pepsi, but Coke I liked better than Sprite. Oh, you're talking about...”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I had drove all over the island buying as many bottles as I possibly could, and I bought calipers and I was measuring thicknesses of mouth sizes of bottles and which one was the most ergonomic size to drink out of and put an ice cube in. So I drew it all out. And I'm kind of embarrassed to say, but about five years ago, somebody pointed out that I'd basically just drawn a scuba tank. It was the first ones just look like a scuba tank.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we had to have something printed on the bottles. So we went with it and we got the first two samples in November of 2007.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They showed us. They said, you know, here's what we have, but it's not going to work, and we're not willing to work with you to do this because this is a dumb idea. Nobody wants a vacuum insulated water bottle. So we're not putting forth any effort. That's how we came up with all the modifications and everything. And then I took off. I come back to Oahu. About six months later, we got a call that the samples were ready. What name do you want to put on it? Do you have a logo? Do you have a name? And we didn't. And so all hands on deck, all friends and family, what should we call this water bottle company? And my brother came up with the name Hydroflask. And I hated it. I thought it was a terrible idea. I didn't like the word flask.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They said we could rent time, but that was it. They weren't going to do anything else to help us. They didn't believe in it. They didn't think it would work. And they thought, well,”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we had to modify the inside of the vacuum to hold bigger sized bottles. So not only do we have to get the molds made for the actual bottles, but we had to modify the vacuum to get the molds inside of it.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We didn't have the molds and we and the machine, the vacuum wasn't quite big enough to do it. And so Michael and I spent the next two weeks going from factory to factory and we'd buy two kilos of screws and we'd go buy metal plates and we'd go buy all these parts to build all these machines to build more parts and more machines.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, yeah, but they were real small, they were cute. They were, you know, they were Japanese, and so they were just beautiful little. Containers. And I said, hey, you know, let's just make them bigger and do water bottles. And he laughed and he looked at me and I wasn't laughing. I was serious. And he said, fine, we'll try it.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was no market, nobody had asked him for it. So finally, on the very second to last day, we find a factory that had a vacuum and it wasn't very big. It was kind of the size of a motorcycle, which isn't huge for the vacuum world. And they were doing these little vacuum insulated Japanese milk bottles.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's a lot like if you think of a metal fence post, you have two different size fence posts and one's inside of the other one. And then there's a little copper tube that vacuums out the air in between the two walls.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A little bit right, and then the next day we get on the train and we're heading south again and we show up at an actual water bottle factory where they're doing metal water bottles and we go in and Michael says, hey, you know, Travis wants to do these vacuum insulated bottles. And the guy just laughed. He said, no, there's no way nobody does that. We're not doing that. And so we spent three days going from factory to factory trying to find out if they do double wall vacuum insulated bottles.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I thought, well, I've sold my surfboard. I've sold my moped. I'm starting to run out of money. I guess I'll just fly back early. And so I start leaving the factory. And this guy came up and he grabbed my arm. And he said, I have a cousin in Hanjo that might be able to help you. Why don't you talk to him? And so he gave me two pieces of paper. One was to get to the train station. One was to get to Honjo. And I show up in Hanjo and I realized I don't know anybody. I don't know where I am. I don't know who I'm looking for. I don't know what's going on here. And I'm going down the escalator. And luckily I hear Travis. And I said, yeah. And her name was Natalie. And she takes me to this office and I met her husband, Michael.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I found one that said, yes, we will do that. That's what we do. So I sold a surfboard. I sold a moped, and I took off to Shanghai in May of 2007 and found this factory. And I get there and I go in and it's all plastic water bottles. And they show me around. We go through the tea ceremony. And I said, Well, where are the insulated and where's the stainless? And he said, Oh no, we don't do that. Nobody does that. I said, well, surely somebody. And he said, no, there's nobody”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was, and I kind of still figured that somebody was doing it. Surely there must be somebody who's doing this. I can't be the first person who's thought of this, but I knew that I wasn't able to physically stop until I found that.”
2025-11-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT