YouSaid · the spoken record

Tristan Walker

lines on the record: 98
first: 2016-08-22
most recent: 2016-08-22
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 went to Stanford for business school, and Mark Leslie for Varitas was one of my professors. And he said something that really stuck with me. He said, Tristan, there are only three reasons people started company. Number one is to get rich. Two is to build a great company. And three is to change the world”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it's great that there was a problem. There was clearly a problem coming. And the joke I always make is that. If all these companies were Russian female gymnasts, they'd get a 10 on the dismount. Great, but it's not hearing Yahoo talk about this is a great success. I'm like, no, it's not. It's actual failure dressed up as”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not only that they're cheap, is that like cheap. Oh, sheep, yeah, yeah, cheap because the numbers are like, but I mean, I always look at something sometimes when there's a sale, everyone's like, yay, and I'm like, is that really a success? You know, it was interesting. I always talk about”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, not really. Well, think about it, it's very accretive for Unilever's business. They don't have any shave brands. And for Dollar Shave, they want to grow their business. So more power to them. I care about our company operating independently. I care about fulfilling the vision that we have for the company. I care about building a family of brands. But congratulations to Doom, and that's an amazing feat. And for the industry, it's funny is people woke up. I kind of tweeted something yesterday, all these health and beauty products companies starting to raise money. And I was like, remember, 31 days ago when no one cared about health and beauty in retail. And that's completely changed for some reason.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think with time, folks will start to understand it once we launch a new brand, folks will really start to understand it. And our point of differentiation outside of just the products themselves relative to the Procter& Gambles, Unilever, et cetera, is technology. Kind of when I think about that whole idea of personalization, really the only way to do that is through technology. And when you think about a lot of these large incumbent companies with $90 billion in revenue and channel conflict issues and their retailers are going to get pissed if they start selling online, et cetera, they're stuck And that's why folks like us and Dollar Shave can succeed. Because we find those holes in race right after.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Walmart, they're pretty smart themselves, right? And they do pretty well for themselves. So look, I mean, I think for us, we just want to have that clear point of differentiation. We'll continue to. We don't care to really compete with the Amazons of the world. I think when a lot of folks think about Walker and Company, they think about Bevel, but Walker Company is bigger than Bevel. Right, that's what, yeah.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Competing is hard. I mean, that's why we don't try to, right? Anyone who tries to compete with Amazon is going to have a tough time. And it's not only Amazon, it's Walmart.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“$3.3 billion sale, I think, is pretty awesome. I don't know enough about their economics or otherwise or what his ambition was.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I fundamentally believe that to be true. Well, I mean, it's a long time, but let's think about it. Procter Gamble is 175 years old. Johnson& Johnson is 125 years old. Unilever is 60 years old. What other CPG companies have that much legacy?”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not making enough impact? Yes. It's always a worry. I mean, I want to make outsized impact. I've been consistent ever since I started this company. I want to build a company that's around 150 years from now.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're going to take on Amazon. We're going to do this. We're going to be an independent business. Raise an enormous, probably too much amount of money. And didn't make a meaningful enough impact Is that a worry of yours?”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My son, he's two years old. He has to use the same baby lotion or shampoo as other babies, right? But my son has eczema, his own physiology requires something unique different. And there's really been no semblance of any personalization in the industry. Not only that, what's even more frustrating is folks really don't know what these products are doing to them. A lot of health and beauty products companies will say, hey, we'll personalize. So you go to a website, you fill out a survey, you can change the fragrance, and then you use it, and you still have no idea what it's doing to your hair, skin, et cetera. Sure. We want to change that fundamentally. And I think what we're going to build and what we're going to show the world next year will be something pretty special. It will fundamentally change the way folks think about health and beauty, hopefully.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we're not sharing that specifically, but I'll tell you the direction that we're going and where I get really excited. If you think about health and beauty, everyone's physiological makeup is unique, right? And I feel like that needs to be respected. When you think about health and beauty in general,”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Product, or do you have to develop them? We can do either. I just care about getting to that vision as quickly as possible.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hi, Jason. My vision for the company I want everybody on the planet to experience a walk on company brand. Full stop. And if that takes our having to be nationwide to do that in various retail channels, then great.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Touching it, seeing it, it's more premium pricing, so we're trading up the category, introducing people to new way to shave. So that's a story for Target that they want, new customers to their doors still being productive, and kind of getting the right stores as necessary. So for us, is it FM? Is it affluent? Is it mass market, right? The more important thing that we want to be in is right, right? And it's”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So here's what's hilarious. When we first started, we started in a select group of urban kind of African American targeted stores. Here's what we found. We found that well north of 50, around 60% of our customers, at least in the target channel, are not black, right? They're white men We've also found that some 40 to 50 percent of our customers in that channel are millennials, right? And most target customers are not. We've also found that our average ticket size in the target channel is 2x our competitors, right?”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, there's no insult necessary. I think there's a couple things. Number one, we want to be in the right stores, right? It doesn't matter that you're nationwide. It matters that you're productive. And look, we've been growing. We didn't start in the number of stores that we're in currently. The reason why we've continued to grow the number of doors is because Target says, wow, this thing is working, right? And here's what we know.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now you've done a lot online and again, social and other ways to reach people Talking about Target because you didn't get an all. Why didn't you get in all the stores and why did Harry's? And you may insult Harry if you feel like it.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Touche. Yes, yes. A lot of our customers are shaving for either the first time ever or the second time ever because a lot of them are just scared to use razors on their faces. They've been dealt a false bill of goods in the past by a lot of multi-blade manufacturers who say get a close shave, but the closer the shave, the worse it is for folks who suffer from this issue. So the fact that folks use our product and 24 hours later wake up not broken out, like that's a moment to talk about it, right? So our ability to kind of acquire sales through just that social connection, I think, is amazing to Target, right? Three, you know, we promote a lot on like urban hip-hop podcasts, et cetera, and that goes back to some of that authenticity that we talk about. We don't spend too much in advertising at the company. We've been able to scale just primarily on the social.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct, and Target as well. So going back to that kind of statement about cultural impact, word of mouth is so incredibly important. The other thing about for the Bevel Shave system.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you heard it in a song. That's a great, great. All right. So, a couple ways. Number one, the overall majority of our customers come in organically, right? So it's”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It just raises awareness. Hopefully both. It gives us credence and authenticity. So now when folks make the decision, what trimmer should I buy? They might think twice.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think so a lot. Especially when we have a thesis for this thing, I fundamentally feel if you think about culture. I have this belief that all global cultures led by American culture, which is led by black culture in the US. You think food, music, dance, et cetera. So moments like this, right, where it's on DJ Khaled's album, he talks about using our trimmer for his haircut. He says it's a major key, right? It's DJ Kalut. It's just such a culturally authentic message. And if you kind of run any search on Twitter or anywhere else about just Bevel, you'll see not only that lyric getting quoted to the umpteenth, but folks now willing to buy it. And that's super exciting. And we expect to see a lot more of that in the future.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's, oh, thank you. I was waiting for this moment my entire life. He says my signature fade with the bevel blade. That's a major key. And what's so great about that is NAS is so well known not only for his kind of cultural influence and hip-hop, but his haircuts. It's just so iconic. And, you know, Bevel is the trimmer that he uses for that.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But his album was coming out that Friday, so I guess he had a special show. And we were standing right outside in the kind of main office area. And we were listening to it because DJ Khaled always kind of snapchat his entire lie.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the videos coming out. I thought you said you were surprised. We weren't surprised. No, we weren't. I kid you not. So Thursday. No, well, hey, Thursday evening two weeks ago.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What are you talking about? Stop speaking to me. But he likes to talk about Airbnb, right? Like five years ago, six years ago, no one would ever thought that strangers would have, you know, it's crazy. But now it's a $30 billion. Company, right? And when I was going around, ER and JSON hearts, and I pitched things like building a bank and fixing freight and trucking and all this stuff. And everyone would say, yeah, you have to do it. That's awesome. Great idea. And then Ben would say, it's terrible idea. And it wasn't until I came up with this one, Ben was like, that's an amazing idea. And everyone else on Santo Road was like, it's terrible. And only then I knew I had something.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was sort of weird. It was irritating. Well, even more so, it's like a lot of VCs will say, all right, I want to invest in people first. Pedig Big opportunity. It's like check, check, check. I knew all these folks. They all said that they wanted to kind of be a part of my journey. And once I started to tell them something that they couldn't understand, that all went out of the window. Which is interesting because the one thing that Ben Harz would always teach me, and it wasn't until I started to hear the no's that I knew I had something pretty special, because he'd always say, Tristan, usually what looks like good ideas or bad ideas and what looks like bad ideas are good.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a lot of folks are unwilling to acquire the context required to actually understand this stuff. It's no different from any of the folks who get pitched Pinterest, for instance. And they'll pass on it because they're not willing to sign up for the service themselves or they might say something along the lines of, well, my daughter uses it, so I think it's pretty good, right? That's just so ignorant and naive, I think. And we get a lot of that.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, of all the folks that I pitch, we've probably been turned down by 99% of the people. Really? Do you know why?”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'll never forget she looked at me and she said, Tristan, I'm not sure issues related to shaving irritation are as big a societal issue as issues related to acne. At which point I thought, hmm, I understand why you're probably saying that? But she had no context. All she had to do was get on the phone with 10 black men, nine of them would have said this is the worst thing I've ever had to deal with my entire right. Should have just gotten the phone with 10 black women, and they would have said the same thing. They could have done the same thing for white women and men. Three or four of them would have said the exact same thing. So it was just frustrating because just having to deal with that issue my entire life and having someone not willing to acquire the context to understand this, that's part of the problem.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, actually it was not. Wow. A woman of color actually My very first pitch is someone I really, really, really respected And I went to go to the pitch, and I'll never forget it was like slide 14, and I had a photo of Proactive, the acne system. And I talked about Bevel because we have a lot of kind of similarities in that code. And solving an acute problem, et cetera.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not different from a Fitbit or you're exactly right. I think number one, it's just having to explain that the market is big. Right. Over and over and over and over again. That's to investors, that's to consumers, that's to colleagues, that's to friends, that's to potential employees. And we're getting better and better and better and better and better at doing that. With the dumbest question you have.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think so Just think about that for a second. So, what is the difficulty you face then? Only because I'm thinking of, you know, again, we'll get to Dollar Shave Club and Harris and stuff, but they sort of shoved past everybody, which is, you know, and again, your product's got great reviews and people like it. Talk a bit about the challenges you face as you're trying to build a product. Obviously, creating a hardware product is difficult.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think so. Let's think about it this way. Number one, I think the health and beauty products industry is a $400 billion industry, and people of color are the majority of the world. Additionally, in every single health and beauty products category, we over-index and spend. And what's so frustrating to me, I think, a lot of folks kind of look at our business and say, oh, it's such a niche opportunity. How is that possible if we're the majority of the world? Some stats for you that might be helpful. If you think about skincare cosmetics, we spend 2x more than anyone else in the categories. You think about hair care, and I'll just kind of limit this specifically to black women in the US. Black men in the U.S. are 7% of the country and 35% of all hair care spend. Just think about that for a second. And we're still relegated to the second class citizen experience. So as the market big, yes, I think it's the biggest, one of the biggest.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like that kind of thing. But we'll get to that in a second. So we're going to come out with our second brand early next year, right? So I think it's pretty quick when you consider a lot of the large incumbents taking over 24 months to launch any new soft good. Think about it. We launched this trimmer inside of a year, an electric trimmer. That's your wrong. Yeah, exactly. And look, it's going as well as I could have ever hoped. If you think about the bevel-shave system itself, over 98% of people keep coming back to us every single month. You think about what we're doing in Target. We're growing 5 to 10% a week since we've launched in that channel. We're going to launch this new brand. Our team is strong, right? I think we have not only a vision, but an execution plan and roadmap that, you know, a lot of other folks, at least in our space, can't continue.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, let's put a couple things into perspective. The Bevel product has only been in the world for a little over two years. We launch Bevel inside of six months on kind of the little money that we raised the first time, $2 million. We've been growing pretty quickly. We're in target currently. I want to talk about.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it's something more. It's communicating with our customers in ways that they haven't been communicated to before, right? Really rich in culture, authenticity, among other things. And I think that's why we've nailed it and why our consumers love us so much.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, it's a great, fantastic. That's the first time anyone's asked me that question. I love it. So for a lot of the kind of black-owned companies that have kind of catered to this community, a lot of them get sold to the large incumbent conglomerates. The Procter& Gamble. Exactly. And what happens is it gets kind of pulled into this bureaucratic kind of way of doing business. And folks lose sight of the authenticity that they're bringing to their consumers. Not to mention, you know, I got to think about my background too. Before I started this company, I worked at Foursquare. Before that, I was at Twitter. So I got a sense for what technology can do to really disrupt industries in the aggregate. And I really want to build, at least for our community in the health and beauty product space, really the most authentic, technologically advanced”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. So even with the bevel shaved system, it's a problem up to 80% of black men and women have, but 30% of everyone else, right? So we're focusing on building a family of brands that solve really acute health and beauty problems that folks of color over index on. Right. But everyone has. Right.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. So it repels all these impurities, right? So if you think about it, if you go to your barber and he's trimming up your hair, he's using the same trimmers on everyone else's hair on your face, which is disgusting, right? And we've completely gotten rid of that issue for our consumers. So there's a whole bunch of just functional technological people of color. No, so this, so this is for anybody.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, so about six months ago now, we just recently introduced a new product, an electric trimmer. We fundamentally believe it's the world's most advanced trimmer about a year before taking pre-orders in January. We started this journey and we built this very beautiful trimmer in less than a year. Thank you. And it's replete with tons and tons of innovations, snap on, snap off blade. Usually most trimmers require a screwdriver. You have to unscrew the blade to sharpen it. We have a patent pending thumb wheel to allow you to adjust the sharpness of the blade however you need. It comes with a proprietary coating to make it oleophobic, hydrophobic. It repels dirt, oil.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. So Bevel is the first and only N10 shaving system designed to help reduce and prevent shaving irritation, razor bumps, et cetera. You know, this is a problem that's been around for over 100 years, and we're really the first brand to do so. So it's complete with the six-part kit. It comes with a single blade double-edged safety razor, restoring balm, shave cream, priming oil, shaving brush. And we ship up to 60 blades each shipment for our customers. So it's a full-on kit with proprietary formulations to help mitigate this very important issue for folks.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so Walker and Company, we're designing Health and Beauty Solutions and we're building a family of brands to do just that. Bevel is just the first manifestation of kind of this larger vision to build this family of brands. So explain”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And some celebrities too. And, you know, this really started with one vision that we had, and that was to make health and beauty simple for people of color. I kind of reflected back on my entire life, you know, walking down those aisles, being relegated to the second class shopping experience, and being frustrated, particularly considering how much money I spend on this stuff. And it's not only me, it's just our demographic group in general, how culturally influential a group we are, and looping in Latino Asian consumers, we're the majority of the world, right? Let alone in this country, we're the majority of this country in 20, 30 years. So there's a fundamental problem there. And I felt that it was a wide open opportunity to do something really special for an incredibly underserved community.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So we raised $33 million to date across three rounds from folks like Andreasen Harrow at Google Ventures Upfront Ventures among others. IVP.”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was. They did well for themselves. They did okay. They did just fine Well, there's so few of them now”
2016-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Tristan Walker, CEO, Walker & Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT