YouSaid · the spoken record

Vincent Kitirattragarn

lines on the record: 81
first: 2022-01-24
most recent: 2022-01-24
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 would say a ton of our early success was attributed to luck. For example, the timing of coconut chips, if we had waited in another year to launch coconut chips, it would have been too late. And if we had gone earlier, it would have been too early. So we launched right at the right year. And then getting on the radar of retailers and influencers, like we didn't know that was going to happen, that was lucky. Also, launching at a time where coconut was on trend, like that was lucky. But more recently, we had more to lose if we make mistakes. So we have to put forth the effort to ensure that we're successful. So we test products many times before putting them out in the world because you only have one chance to earn a customer. They don't give you a second chance.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, it's kind of like we gone through, and we mentioned earlier that we were very, very cooperative. And I think there was all this stuff that wasn't processed. And then when you get into a startup with someone as their partner, you're like literally spending 40, 50, 60 hours together. And it almost forced us to untangle this stuff more intensely. And I think we've come through on the other side. And I think our friendship and our bond has never been stronger.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think. It's funny, I'm the older brother, but Andrew's always kind of been a protector. And for that, I'm very, very grateful. But I also feel like some of that, you know, typically as an older brother, that could be a role for an older brother. And if I wasn't able to do that for him at a time where he needed it, right? And for me, you know, whenever we had these conflicts and Andrew would get upset, I closed up. I felt like I couldn't think straight and it wasn't, I just didn't feel safe And so one of those things that we had to work on was how do we manage conflict and then how do we both feel safe in order to resolve it and to move forward?”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it kind of stemmed from me. Our parents had a pretty hard breakup. And I didn't really process any of that until I started going to therapy. And it's interesting because I think a lot of people, I mean, I've heard your podcast, a lot of there's people that talk about like how in a partner and a co-founder relationship, it's important to get a coach. I think for my specific situation with Vincent, it was important for me to get a therapist because what would happen was that a lot of tension would come up with my brother. I remember getting really, really angry at him when he wasn't being defensive with me like against like a sales broker that we were working with. And I remember getting really, really, really angry at him. And it definitely caused rifts in our relationship.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm a little bit more cautious. I've always been more cautious. Always like it's not just thinking about those containers coming in and what that's impacting our Profitability. I think it's just been hard because we've been through so much, especially in the last couple years. That I think I do feel a little bit battered. I do believe in what we've built and what we stand for.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After being from a 400K burn rate. And that's a huge sigh of relief for us because it's not like, hey, like the company isn't going to go under in a couple months if we don't do anything about it. Built a bunch of runway from that. That was a big accomplishment. I would say that we haven't exhaled because right after that, we had these supply chain issues whereby our ocean freight containers have been delayed about seven weeks on average.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And because of stay at home, those sales dropped about 90% pre and post COVID. And even now they're not fully backwood. So, what happens in our industry probably in a lot of other industries is, you know, you start to have sales declines. We couldn't raise money. Our burn rate was like $400,000 per month in the beginning. We had to. To posit”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I think it was also we were in a lot of with our coconut chips and our rice chips, we were in a lot of corporate accounts. Like we have this pretty fanatical backing at Google and Facebook and a lot of those tech companies”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was pretty drastic. I think the data was about 50% drop in our category sales pre and post-COVID. And the thing was that. Deng bars was supposed to be like the biggest growth driver for our brand in 2020. Like it was like our shining star. It was like Supposed to be the driver for most of our growth, but became the driver of our. Decline for that year.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were the best selling bar at Whole Foods in 2019 in terms of unit velocity, so units sold at per store per week. And we were just riding high because We launch this new thing and it finally got something that worked really well”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, which we couldn't figure out how to make chocolate Asian, but this was right after Crazy Rich Asians came out. And Andrew had this idea of like, why don't we just call it Crazy Rich Chocolate because it's rich.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they all have some kind of Asian influence. There's lemon matcha, as you mentioned, toasted coconut, obviously. The almond cookie has one of those almond cookies that you sometimes get in Chinese restaurants, right? And then there's crazy rich chocolate.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The people that were buying our unsweetened coconut ship, which is just made from coconut and salt, were telling us they need more snacks like this because it's perfect for their keto diet. And I looked at the bar space and I was like, nobody's doing a keto bar, why not? And, you know, we have all this credibility from coconut chips, you know, high fat, low carb. So we developed a line of keto bars using cocoa butter and Asian ingredients like matcha. We're like, all right, we're going to put our brand spin on it by introducing matcha to that category and other Asian flavors. And yeah, we started showing it to like Whole Foods Bar buyer and they were like, all right, yeah, let's try it out. Let's bring it in. So we went national in January 2019 at Whole Foods.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we have the family that was helping us with coconut chips. We called them and were like, hey, this is a picture of this package that we bought at the airport. Can you go find out who makes it and go talk to them? And they set it all up for us. So they met with the owner and told them who we were. And he shared with us how much that they sold in the airport, which was 10,000 boxes a day, which is crazy. Yeah. We told them, hey, we want to bring your product to the US and put it under the Dang brand and help work with you on seasonings. And he loved it. And then for testing, we did a lot more consumer testing with that one.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Take a little time, but I'd say that we knew off the bat, I think we were so sensitive to what happened to the onion chips that were like how, like, We got to have more evidence of proof of concept before launching.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and that's the way that it's cooked traditionally as a snack, like on the streets in Thailand and like markets. It's called Katan. And they traditionally have to use watermelon juice because they need to make it stickyer, like the sticky rice. They have to make it stickier. So they need like a slightly sticky sweet solution. And watermelon juice has just the right amount of stickiness to create these discs.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's the Thai rice crackers. I was at the airport in Bangkok and we saw a lot of specifically Chinese tourists walking out with like Different at the time the cartons of these little rice crackers. And if you looked at what they were buying, they were buying like very... Flavors that were good for their market like crab curry. And we thought that it could be an opportunity, so we contacted the supplier. We had a lot of credibility in going to other suppliers in Thailand and having a conversation with them about what it would be like. Reintroduce a similar product in America”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, we tried a lot of different things. And at the end of the day, we kind of learned that people kind of want a less adulterated coconut. Yeah. Kind of similar with coconut water. Like they don't want flavored coconut water. They just want coconut water. So that's what we have today. We've tried so many things that failed, but we had to do that in order to figure it out.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they did a couple things. First, they taught us how to think like them. And as a big stack company, they're interested in what they call stomach share, which is literally getting more of a share of America's stomachs. And to us, kind of running the small stack company, we never really thought in terms like that. But then after a while, it kind of just started to sink in like, oh, yeah, we need to who's our cohort? Like who's actually buying dang? We never really had good information data about our consumer before, but they came to us with loads of data saying, hey, your consumer is highly educated, tends to be female, lives on the coast, has pretty decent household income. Oh, and by the way, you index really high with Asian Americans. But then they also.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I also think it's like I think that works well with people I talk to in the industry on a high margin, high velocity item. I think our item was relatively moderate to high margin and velocity, but then a lot more competition started coming in 2016 onwards with coconut chips.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think hiring a field team first off, people are expensive, right? So Each person maybe $70,000 right in salary. And that's in that payroll, you have to basically sell half a million in order to get that 70K contribution that pays off that person's salary. So, you know, going into store by store and selling displays in, how many of those do you need to get a half a million of revenue? It's a lot.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think we heard actually the opposite also, which was why don't you just focus on coconut chips and make that as big as coconut water? So after we got. An investment, we tried to follow that model of hiring a big field sales team to go into stores. And we thought that that was going to bring us to this next level of growth. Coconut chips and the onion chips, but it didn't work out. Like, we didn't grow.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it was an evolution. So we started out with hey, we're a better for you snack company that takes whole foods that you can identify and turns them into snacks that you can eat. But then looking at it later on, we were like, there's nothing ownable about that. Like that could describe any number of snack companies. And so later on, we realized okay, how do we make it different? And like we had to look at ourselves and say, how are we different than everybody else out there? And one thing that we always relied on was Asian flavors and ingredients. And so we changed that over time to an Asian American snack company that stood for bringing ingredients and flavors from Asia informs that Americans understand like chips and later on bars.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not only that, but we weren't paying ourselves for the first three years. So we had to get outside funding to make a living, you know, up until then. We put every penny of profit back into the company because we wanted it to grow because we believed it would be worth something someday. But after three years of that, we're like, it's too risky to keep going this way.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Were yellow flags in the process, maybe even red flags in the processes of launching this. I think there was so much pressure from the market and from the industry to be like, hey, we need to launch something new and it needs to be dang good that the pressure, I think. Overrode those yellow flags. In the process. Yeah.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have to say that there were other considerations, like the biggest driver was that it wasn't flying off the shelf. I think from the beginning, guy, there was margin concerns. Like we were looking at, I mean, there were some tariffs associated with this onion from Vietnam. I think when we first launched, I think we were looking at something like 20% margins. And we're like, listen, we can do this because this is going to get as big as funyans. Yeah. Like when we sell up to 10 million and we get to scale to the next level, those margins will hit 30 and then they'll hit 40. And everything that's going to work itself out if the velocity comes. The velocity didn't come. The velocity didn't come at all.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were so excited about that we were getting so much positive feedback from the community, just as we did with our coconut chips. We're like, okay, this is going to be a winner. This was going to be the big thing. It failed miserably”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What happened was that we were going around the trade shows these were vacuum fried onion chips. They were pretty clean. And when people tried them at the trade shows, people loved them. And I remember one of our industry friends tried it and he looked up in the air. He was like, oh, dang, they did it again. Like, this is so good.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, using a technology called vacuum frying, which takes out all the atmospheric pressure so that it doesn't collapse when you fry it. And you can spin out most of the oil. So it's like light, flaky, crispy, like onion petal.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We slowly built out the line of coconut chips because people were telling us they want it with the coconut sugar or they want it without sugar at all. So we actually had to create a facility to make an unsweetened coconut chip. But then I was on a trip to Japan and I saw these onion chips in the supermarket. And I was like, oh, this is really cool. It tastes like caramelized onions, which is delicious.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And our company was a mess at the time. I don't have a finance background or an operations background. So, you know, our books are a mess and our products were not shipped in a very efficient way. So we had a lot of things that needed attention.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think from the beginning it was Vincent was really like the front facing visionary handling sales and marketing and product development. I was handling ops finance and accounting. And it still has held to that to this day.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We also wanted to illustrate that it was a natural product without saying the word natural on it. So we used all these earthy tones like tan and green and brown, basically things you would find on a coconut tree.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And from the beginning, I knew that we had to capture people's attention with the name Dang because the logo, we always put that front and center in a very big font. But then also visually, we had to illustrate what to expect in the bag without actually putting a window. So I remember buying coconuts in Thailand when we were there, and they were cheap. They were like a dollar for like five of them. Setting up a photo studio and taking pictures of coconut chips spilling out of the coconut. So you knew that it was something natural product that came actually from the coconut itself.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so how do you get attention right when you're in the store? You have less than a second to grab someone's attention. I think the best way to do that is to create a good package. And there's a saying that your package is your product. You sell in the bag. It's the bag itself because that has to do so many things. It has to educate someone on what's inside, what to expect, what the nutritionals are, you know, attributes like keto paleo.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was too. And I remember, you know, after that, I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. And I remember looking at our website traffic. And it was like up a little bit. But then after the Courtney Kardashian post, our website traffic spiked like a hundred times.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's when I realized wow, like social media is becoming a big marketing tool, right? And this is the power of it. It's funny because the week before we were in the New York Times. So I had sent samples to a bunch of different food editors And then I got a call from Florence Fabrican, who does the front burner section. And she was like, Hey, I think I want to feature your coconut chips.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So at the time, this is 2013, and these are the early days of Instagram. And my phone started blowing up, and I was like, why are all these people texting me? They're like, check your Instagram, check your, check your Instagram. So Courtney Kardashian have found our product at an airport because we were selling at a few airport stores and put a post of it on her Instagram with the caption Flight Sack. And our website traffic just spiked.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Still don't to this day, I don't 100%, but I think they saw us in a store. I don't know which store. So they called me and they're like, hey, you know, can you come present to our produce team? And I remember going in there as a huge conference room. And I gave my presentation about dang and our coconut chips. And they said, we love this and we want to create a premium snack destination in the produce department in all of our stores So they quickly put us into about a thousand safeway stores with like large displays in the produce section, which is the front of the store, 90% of the people walk through that area. Like that was a game changer for us because up until then, it was just, you know, small stores here and there. Small orders from AGB, but that's when I called Andrew, and I was like, I need help.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember my girlfriend at the time told me, you're always working, you don't do anything else And those first few months where we're starting to ship product, and I'm worried about setting up the company by myself, working out my bedroom, I feel like it was just a blur because I would just work a lot. And I remember going to a class on how to start a food business. And they were telling us about all the costs involved with slotting and trade spending and just like all the cost of doing starting a business and thinking to myself, oh my God, this is going to be way more expensive than I thought it would be. And it was just me and it was really lonely. Like when you're starting something and doing all by yourself without anybody to kind of go through it with, it felt like I was kind of alone on doing on my own ship in the middle of the sea.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, so we had to professionalize, and the manufacturers that we worked with were the ones to pack and ship the product to us. So we designed the dang, the first iteration of the dang label. And it was still stickered. We did stickers at the beginning. Didn't print onto bags. I use $23,000 of savings to buy the first 20 foot container in July.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they order $10,000 of the product. How were you financing that? Because I'm assuming when you're an HEB, you cannot hand pack each bag. Now you've got a professionalize the operation. Or am I wrong, where you hand packing them.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had to decide whether or not I wanted to go full time into Dang and really work on it or not. I mean, I think I was probably happy that I got a little severance package, which helped me kind of bridge the gap to start the company.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I remember meeting people at the trade show and asking them, hey, do you want to get a cup of coffee? And, you know, sitting down, I remember one guy at the trade show, he was like, oh, you got business cards. Let's go through them. And he helped me go through a stack of at least 100 business cards and would pull that ones and be like, this is worth. Following up on, like, you don't want to lose this card. That was huge. He helped me kind of figure out the lay of the land. And so when the first container landed in July, we had a bunch of customers who had committed. So we started shipping it out directly to grocery stores. Yeah, like HEB was the biggest one at the time.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we had connected with a few Whole Foods regions with HEB, which is a big grocery store to X Texas. And then also all these smaller independents in the Bay Area that are very progressive and are kind of the leaders when it comes to new products. So buy right grocery and rainbow grocery, Berkeley Bowl and those were some of our first customers. And I was like, okay, maybe we can make this a real thing. Let's order a container load.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we somehow fit four people into a two foot table space, one behind the table and three in front of the table standing the aisles. So we stood in the aisles. We made a wall. And in order to pass through that aisle, you had to go past one of our people and it was me, my dad, my brother, and my girlfriend at the time, now my wife. And nobody got through the wall without tasting some coconut chips.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was definitely on a kind of adrenaline rush for the first few months of just thinking about this. And I was pretty committed to making it a company at that point. And we heard about this other trade show in March 2012 called the Expo Natural Product Expo West. And I didn't know about it until a month before. And I was like, oh, wow, maybe we can get a booth, but they ran out of booths. So what we did was we got two feet of table space in a shared booth with dozens of vendors.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you're clearly Vincent. I mean, tell me take me to 2012, the first sort of five, four, five months of that year. Is this all you're thinking about because you still have another job? Like, you've got a day job working for the startup.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think before we even started it, I remember talking to both of them. My mom said, hey, you're really good with food. I think you should do something with food. And my dad said, if you're going to start something, you should utilize our family in Thailand because we have this huge network there. That could be a competitive advantage. And I ended up doing kind of a combination of the two, which was food with family.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it turned out later that it was actually a good thing because Trader Joe stays in Trader Joe's, right? So it actually helped us with this education component of people not knowing what a coconut chip was. And people shabbat Trader Joe's are also going to shop at Whole Foods and other stores. So it actually helped us a lot.”
2022-01-24 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Dang Foods: Vincent and Andrew Kitirattragarn · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT