WEBVTT - Chilling Out with the Coolest Cooler 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:15.520 Ryan Grepper was sure he knew how to beat the 0:00:15.560 --> 0:00:18.759 heat with an innovative approach to the old beach standby 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:23.080 the drinks cooler. He added some bells and whistles, updating 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:27.160 the frosty concept with some picky bonus features. To get 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:30.560 things moving, he launched a crowdfunding campaign that was incredibly 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:34.000 successful and earned a lot of ice, but soon found 0:00:34.000 --> 0:00:36.839 out that manufacturing a new product isn't easy and the 0:00:36.880 --> 0:00:40.160 whole process ended up leaving a lot of early supporters 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:43.600 out in the cold. This is the coolest cooler on 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:56.280 the brink. Hey guys, I'm Jonathan Crickland and I'm Ariel Casting, 0:00:56.360 --> 0:01:00.960 and thank you Bill Jeffers for giving us this awesome suggestion. Yeah. Yeah, 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:03.720 this is a one that I have covered on my 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:07.160 show Text Stuff a little bit. I did an episode 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:14.120 about some of crowdfunding's biggest successes and failures, and spoiler alert, 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:18.760 coolest cooler falls into the latter a category. Yeah, sadly. 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:22.040 Sadly because I think the concept is really cool. Yeah, 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:25.839 we're gonna be saying cool a lot and not meaning 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:28.600 it in a punny way. But if you want to 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:31.440 interpret it as a pun, feel free. Yes, but no 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:35.440 I if I were not so thrifty, I was about 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:37.959 to say cheap, but I'm going to say thrifty. I 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:43.759 would have wanted to back this. A lot of people did. 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:46.880 Lots of people backed this product so much so that, 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:49.400 not to skip ahead too much, but it would become 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:54.640 one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns in history. We'll 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:57.800 get to that. But as it turns out, as as 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:01.040 we alluded to in the introduction, things did not go smoothly, 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:06.720 and it was largely a thing due to innocent naivete. 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:10.400 There was a lot of of of underestimating exactly how 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:13.880 hard it is to mass produce a brand new product. 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:16.880 I'd have to agree with you, Jonathan. So let's get 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:19.959 into a little bit of how this product came about. 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:23.480 This Coolest cooler. It was launched in two thousand thirteen 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:26.160 by Ryan Grepper from Portland, Oregon. He used to be 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.200 a medical sales rep uh and he was a self 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.240 described inventor since two thousand and six, which is I 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:36.600 believe around the time that this product started taking form. 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:39.560 He's also um He's still listed as a member of 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:43.120 the CNBC Tech Crowd Council, which is made up of 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:48.200 people who have done a successful crowdfunding campaigns. Yes, his 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:51.800 campaign was successful for the crowd funding part. I was 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:53.600 kind of surprised to see him still on there. But 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:58.960 spoiler alert, guys, coolest cooler is still around. Yeah, but 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:05.200 Ryan Grepper's reputation has taken an enormous beating in the process. 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:09.160 So so his idea initially started off as a pair 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:12.639 of ideas before it merged into transformer like what the 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:15.040 coolest cooler would be? Right? Yeah, he tried to make 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:19.040 a portable blender from a weed whacker, and then he 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:22.200 made a cooler with the car stereo in it. Uh. 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:25.160 And then after he made these these initial prototypes, he 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:26.680 was like, well, I need to make them smaller so 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:30.760 I can bring them places. And he got the inspiration 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:32.400 that if he made it smaller, he could sell it. 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:35.360 And his idea was for the cooler to be a 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:37.680 place where people gather, to have all the things that 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:41.200 make a space somewhere you'd want to hang out. And 0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:47.400 according to CNBC, his early experiments to compile all these 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:50.080 things together didn't work. So well, yeah, I just have 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:53.600 this in my imagination. Now. I know this isn't what 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:56.000 it actually looked like, but in my imagination you have 0:03:56.160 --> 0:04:02.600 like an iglue uh style cooler with a car stereo 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:05.640 duct taped onto it. Like, that's how I imagine these 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:09.360 early versions being That's how I'd do it, just just saying. 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:12.600 But the whole idea was, you know, you've been to 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:15.920 plenty of parties, you've hosted parties. You note as well 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:20.080 as I do, that often a central gathering point for 0:04:20.120 --> 0:04:23.040 a party ends up being the kitchen. It's it's kind 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:25.280 of it's where the food is, the is where the 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:28.760 drinks are. People tend to hover there and then sooner 0:04:28.880 --> 0:04:32.520 or later a party kind of just it's centered there. 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:35.400 It might spin off in other places. So this was 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:37.160 kind of the same concept, was that if you have 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:40.400 all of these elements in a cooler and your outdoors, 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:43.599 the cooler becomes kind of the central focal point for 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:46.359 the party. Yeah, and he had an initial setup for 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:49.600 the cooler, but by the end of his Kickstarter campaigns 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:54.480 plural his cooler. His coolest cooler would include a USB 0:04:54.640 --> 0:05:00.200 charging station, a blender for crushing ice, a waterproof bluetooth speaker, watch, 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:03.960 a proof bluetooth speaker, and LED light for the lid, 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:07.640 dinner wear and storage for it. A cutting board of 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:11.799 bottle opener and all terrain wheels like a bungee cord 0:05:11.920 --> 0:05:15.720 thingy and a little hidi spot for your keys and phone. Yeah. 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:20.680 Also it was cooler. Yeah, it would be kind of 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:23.440 ridiculous if he made this cooler with all these bells 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:27.240 and whistles that didn't actually keep your beverages. It reminds 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:30.360 me of the trend It was before even smart watches, 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:33.719 but the trend where watches were including more and more features, 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:36.600 and the standard joke was what's the time? And then 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:41.720 the person exactly that was that was that was That's 0:05:41.720 --> 0:05:45.040 a longstanding joke in technology. You've seen it in like, 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:48.120 you know, comic strips and things like that, same sort 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:49.720 of thing, Like if you had ended up with the 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:52.720 coolest cooler that couldn't actually keep food cold, that would 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:58.279 be ridiculous. So he initially launched a crowdfunding campaign in 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:02.720 November two thousand thirteen, and he was targeting a specific 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:07.720 kind of of market. He was thinking about people who 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:11.599 liked tailgating, and he was timing it to go along 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:17.160 with the holiday Christmas shopping, uh season. I mean you 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:19.839 think that would be a smart move, right, Yeah, But 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:22.520 it turns out it didn't. It didn't quite pan out. 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:26.000 He did not make his goal on that. Yeah, he 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:31.520 was seeking a hundred twenty five thousand dollars and he 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:37.160 ultimately raised Uh. Well, the campaign met a hundred two 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:42.640 thousand from two backers. But the way kickstarter works is 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:46.320 it's an all or nothing proposal. Do you either make 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:49.360 your goal or you get and you get whatever you 0:06:49.400 --> 0:06:52.720 make plus over, or you make nothing at all. So 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:55.440 if you have a goal of fifty thou dollars and 0:06:55.480 --> 0:06:58.919 you only hit twenty thousand dollars, nobody gets charged, no 0:06:59.040 --> 0:07:03.040 money changes hand ends, and your campaign fails. If you 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:07.400 make fifty thou, then everyone gets charged however much they pledged. 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:11.280 You get your fifty dollars minus kickstarters cut, which I 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:15.360 think is five percent of the actual money earned. Yeah, 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:19.240 and if it makes more than fifty thou dollars, then 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:22.640 you get more than what you had set as your goal. 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:29.920 Kickstarter obviously has a strong incentive to promote the the 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:32.520 campaigns that are doing well. Like if there's a lot 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:34.200 of buzz, it makes a lot of sense for a 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:36.520 kick started to kind of let those closer to the 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:39.200 front thing that's comsion. They get exactly. Yeah, so if 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:41.720 it's a really successful one, then kicks Started gets a 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:44.080 bigger cut, because I mean it's still five percent, but 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:47.160 it's five percent of a much larger number. And so 0:07:47.240 --> 0:07:51.520 that first one didn't work out so well. But the 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:55.200 second Kickstarter campaign was a different story. Yeah. His second 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:58.520 campaign launched on July eighth, two fourteen. He set a 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:05.000 smaller goal, the thousand dollars, which just from the get 0:08:05.000 --> 0:08:07.440 go that seems problematic to me. If you need two 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:09.920 d and fifty dollars to create your coolers, don't set 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:12.080 a lower goal so you meet your goal unless you're 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:17.600 specifically thinking I'm gonna start with a very small shipment, 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:20.720 like if you if you still kept the price point 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:24.520 or your cooler at the same level, but you thought 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:27.680 i'll make a smaller batch, then that might work out. 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:30.400 But as it turns out, that's not what happened. No, no, 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:34.120 So first I want to say it shows you how 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:37.319 small Ryan was thinking, because at his cheapest donation amount 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:40.319 five dollars, you gotta thanks in the promise of having 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:46.280 your name written on Ryan's personal cooler. Court cooler can 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:49.480 only hold so many names unless you're like one of 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:53.520 those grain of rice writers and even then um and 0:08:53.559 --> 0:08:57.200 then the highest level if you donated two thousand dollars 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:00.120 or more, Ryan would come be your personal bartender for 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:02.360 an event in your hometown and give you one of 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:05.280 the first coolers and he would sign that one. And 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:08.560 he didn't have any of space. Yeah, and so you 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:10.680 look at this and you go obviously he was thinking 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:13.600 he'd get a moderate amount of backers two hundred and 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:16.920 eighty or so like his first campaign, maybe a little 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:20.280 bit more because he can't travel to that many people's hometowns. 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:22.640 And and he he had earned more than a hundred 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:26.760 thousand dollars had the campaign succeeded in the previous example. 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:29.320 So even if he got twice as many, you know, 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:31.360 you're still thinking, all right, a hundred thousand, maybe two 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:34.800 hundred thousand dollars, that's more or less on what he 0:09:35.400 --> 0:09:37.080 on par with what he was looking at for the 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:40.880 first time. So he was he was thinking, let's try this, 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:43.760 and he he decided to launch it at a different 0:09:43.760 --> 0:09:47.120 time of year, Yeah, because he was looking at the summer. 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:50.160 He was launching it right around you know, just after 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:54.960 the fourth of July weekend. You're talking about Prime Beach 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:59.360 going outdoor grilling kind of of time frame here. It's 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:02.760 when people are going outside and doing these activities where 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:05.000 they need to have a big cooler or wanting a 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:07.439 cooler they can crawl into and hide from the hot 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:09.960 Georgia summer. Yeah. Especially Yeah, once you get into the 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:14.320 heat and humidity here, you're looking for any relief available. Yeah. 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:18.360 He estimated that the final retail cost of the Coolest Cooler. 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:20.720 This is from the Kickstarter page, which, by the way, 0:10:20.840 --> 0:10:23.720 is still it's still something you can visit. You can 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:26.760 go and check out the Kickstarter page for this, uh 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:31.199 this particular campaign. Kickstar keeps them all. It's no longer active. 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:34.720 Certain parts of the page you cannot access unless you 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:37.560 have donated. Yes, there there are messages that go out 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:39.880 just to backers, so if you are a backer you 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:42.560 have access to those, but the public facing page is 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:46.480 still available. So he estimated that the final retail cost 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:50.120 for the Coolest Cooler was going to be two uh So, 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:53.240 three hundred dollars for a cooler seems like a hefty 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:56.120 price tag, but as it turns out, it was also 0:10:56.200 --> 0:11:00.000 an underestimation of how much he would need to charge 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.960 for that particular invention. I do want to say. I 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:05.840 went online and I did a little bit of research. 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:10.720 Some super high end, super large coolers do cost hundreds 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:15.240 of dollars. So it's not a completely unreasonable price. It's 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:18.600 more than I probably would want to pay for a cooler. Yeah, 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:23.640 I mean, like, so there are products that cater to 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:26.360 people who have way more money than you and I 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:29.640 do and not very much idea of what to spend 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:32.719 it on. I'll put it that way. That's not it's 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:35.240 not to say that those those products are no good 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:40.079 or that they're only marginally better than say, a decent 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:43.360 cooler would run you. I don't know. There are some 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:45.880 of them may be truly incredible and be much more 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:49.640 efficient and managing you know, heat and all that kind 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:53.360 of stuff. I don't know. But uh. He also on 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:55.839 that campaign had an offer where if you were one 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:59.000 of the first fifty people to pledge, you could pledge 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:04.080 a hundred sixty five dollars and get a reserved coolest 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:10.920 cooler of your own. Uh. Those fifty slots disappeared almost immediately, surprise. Yeah, 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:14.480 we cooler is a lot more palatable. Yeah. So then 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:18.360 because they went so fast, and because the West coast 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:20.840 had not even had an opportunity to look at it, 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:23.920 because the campaign went live before most people on the 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:26.000 West coast of the United States had even woken up. 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:30.200 He decided to release another group, this time just twenty 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:34.680 slots for more early bird coolers, and those went super 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:37.760 fast to the next amount you could pledge. Let's say 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:40.000 you missed out on those seventy, which wouldn't be a 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:43.240 big surprise. I mean, they did go super fast. Your 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:45.600 next option would be to pledge at a level of 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.880 a hundred eighty five dollars or more, and that would 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:52.559 put you on the reservation list for your own coolest cooler. 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:56.280 So again you're you're still looking at a hundred fifteen 0:12:56.280 --> 0:13:01.480 dollars off the projected retail. Yeah, you would then also 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:04.360 have to kick in fifteen dollars for shipping, which would 0:13:04.760 --> 0:13:07.960 you could argue push the the price tag for the 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:10.439 coolest cooler to two hundred dollars. And that's how most 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:14.840 websites refer to it. It was a cooler yeah, still 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:17.640 not still not horrible, Still a pretty big discount. Um. 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:20.200 I think it was so popular because he took lessons 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:23.160 that he learned from his first Kickstarter and and really 0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:26.000 marketed the second one, well, he reached out to previous 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:29.880 backers and enthusiasts through email, he hit up social media, 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:32.520 and he did live events all prior to actually launching 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:35.319 this campaign, So anybody who was already excited about it 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:39.240 would then be excited at their friends about it. Yeah. 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:41.360 They would tell people, oh, you know, I tried to 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:43.360 back this last time. It didn't work out. You guys 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:45.480 should get done on this, because think how incredible this 0:13:45.559 --> 0:13:48.520 is going to be. And then it worked because some 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:52.160 news outlets, mostly local ones, were starting to pick it up, 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:55.240 and this would increase as the campaign would launch, and 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:57.440 in fact, it would turn into a frenzy when the 0:13:57.480 --> 0:14:01.800 campaign was starting to get truly successful. So it became 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:07.079 a a self perpetuating cycle, right because the campaign started 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:10.199 picking up steam, it was getting a lot of backers 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:13.720 that in turn was notable enough to get the attention 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:16.480 of the media that hadn't already covered this, which brought 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:19.680 even more people to back it. So it started to 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:22.880 kind of become a spinning boulder down the hill situation. Well, 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:24.920 and it became a spinning baller quickly. It beat its 0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:27.240 school in four days. Within four days that had made 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:29.720 three point two million dollars. Yeah, that's a lot more 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:33.120 than a whole lot. And by the end of the 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:36.480 two month campaign, it had raised thirteen million, two hundred 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:39.600 five th two hundred and twenty six dollars from over 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:44.840 sixty thousand backers, and once it beat out Pebbles Watch 0:14:44.920 --> 0:14:48.040 as the most successful kickstarter of all time at that time, 0:14:48.840 --> 0:14:52.560 it got a ton more press coverage. Time magazine even 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:55.800 named it one of the best inventions of two tho. Yeah, 0:14:56.000 --> 0:14:58.800 they did this in two thousand four. Um. Yeah is 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:02.120 before before this had really even had a chance to 0:15:02.120 --> 0:15:08.800 prove itself. And so then they began to work on 0:15:09.120 --> 0:15:12.120 finalizing the actual design of the products. And now they 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:15.480 got the money to go into the process of making 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:18.120 the thing. Yeah, And they worked with a studio, Fathom 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:22.440 to get their prototype out, which had fifty parts in it. Um. 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:24.640 And this is so that Time magazine could photograph it 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.160 for the article. Yeah. It's hard to take pictures of 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.760 a thing that's largely theoretical. Yeah, I mean they had 0:15:30.800 --> 0:15:33.120 pictures of the original design of the cooler, but this 0:15:33.240 --> 0:15:37.280 was redesigned so um and and through all this so 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:41.200 he has this successful campaign. Ryan thought he had planned 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:44.000 appropriately for supply and logistics ahead of time. He thought 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:46.240 he had sourcing partners in place based on the money 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:50.680 that he made, and he was so optimistic that he figured, 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:55.840 unlike of crowdfunny campaigns that face delays, he would be 0:15:55.880 --> 0:15:58.560 able to avoid them. Yeah he was wrong, and yeah 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:02.440 he was wrong. He had planned on starting to deliver 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:06.280 coolers by February two. But if you know anything about 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:09.880 this story, you know that was are too optimistic. And 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:11.920 if you don't know anything about this story, we'll tell 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:14.080 you about it. First. We're going to take a quick break, 0:16:19.760 --> 0:16:23.800 al right. So Grebber has this crowdfunding campaign. It is 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:30.200 monumentally successful, as an enormous following, lots of enthusiastic backers 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:32.640 who just can't wait to get their hands on this 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:38.080 cooler that can do everything, uh that you can imagine 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:41.560 and be prepared to live their best beach clad lives. 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:44.600 The cooler cannot do everything you could imagine. I don't 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:46.880 think it could walk a puppy for you, nor could 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:49.960 it actually transport you to the beach, but just about 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:55.400 everything else that ever. Yeah, So what happened, Well, he 0:16:55.640 --> 0:17:01.120 immediately started to encounter issues in manufacture ring and this 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:04.199 is a good time to remember that manufacturing has got 0:17:04.240 --> 0:17:06.600 a lot of moving pieces. Right, You've got your whole 0:17:06.600 --> 0:17:10.000 supply chain. Now, it's one thing if you're making a 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:15.680 relatively simple product, where the supply chain is is pretty linear, 0:17:16.000 --> 0:17:18.000 where you know you've you've got you get the raw 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:21.560 materials from one place, it goes into a manufacturing facility, 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:24.240 It then goes into the shipping department of that facility, 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:26.680 and then it goes out to customers. That's really simple. 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:29.480 But the coolest cooler had a lot of different parts 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:32.560 to it. It had these speakers, it had the USB 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:37.200 charging UH outlets, it had a motor for the blender. Yeah, 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:39.000 it's got all these different parts and they were coming 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:41.520 from different places, which means if there's a delay and 0:17:41.680 --> 0:17:44.959 any part of that supply chain, it delays the overall product. 0:17:45.040 --> 0:17:48.760 And there was so the manufacturing facility in China that 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:52.520 made the blender motor, which there was one place that 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:54.439 he sourced for this one place. Only he had no 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:57.679 backups because his specifications for this blender motor were so 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:01.600 high he wanted to be really good auction Um they 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:04.879 went on strike and so it stopped his entire his 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:09.320 entire line of assembly, which also took a really long 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:11.880 time because they had fifty parts, a lot of which 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:14.160 had to be hand assembled. Now, if you've ever looked 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:16.960 at the Coolest cooler online, like you've gone to Amazon, 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:20.399 where you can still see coolest coolers listed, although if 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:23.080 you want one of the classic ones, typically you're looking 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:25.720 at buying it from a reseller. But if you look 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:27.280 at it, you'll see that there are a couple of 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:30.480 different configurations. There's one version of the Coolest Cooler that 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:33.760 has a regular top, doesn't have the blender part, and 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:37.879 it's significantly cheaper than the one that comes with the blender. Well, 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:40.119 the one that was on the Kickstarter page. One of 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:43.760 the backers backed specifically mentioned that the blender was part 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:46.840 of it. So that was a big issue with the 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:52.040 the supply chain for the blender motor all all uh 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:56.080 screwed up. It really put him behind. But even still 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:59.320 he was estimating that by September. By September he could 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:03.480 get everybody there coolers and that did not happen, No, 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:08.080 not at all. Um everything was a lot more expensive 0:19:08.640 --> 0:19:13.200 then he anticipated. Yeah, so that final retail price turned 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:15.960 out to be too low. That and in fact, he 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:17.879 said this over and over again, So one of the 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:21.320 biggest problems he had was that he had underestimated how 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:25.080 expensive it would be to produce these coolers, and that 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:29.200 it was an issue where if you did the math, 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:31.320 there was no way around it. You were going to 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:36.280 lose money on those Kickstarter orders like there was. This 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:40.440 was beyond selling things at cost where you're just covering 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:43.600 the expense of the materials and labor to put the 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:48.200 product together. Now you're actually taking a bath on those sales. 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:54.760 And I mean, it does not take a business major 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:57.840 to tell you that you can't stay in business that way. 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:02.240 You you're bleeding money being in business. You cannot. You 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:04.520 can't make it up in volume. That's just gonna bleed 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:07.520 you out faster. So this is where he had to 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:10.719 start figuring out what do I do about this? Well, 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:16.320 he had another idea that again kind of makes sense 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:18.640 but also made a lot of people angry. He decided 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:21.639 to sell his cooler on Amazon because that way he 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:23.760 could sell it at a higher price than what he 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:27.200 listed on Kickstarter and make up some profit on the 0:20:27.240 --> 0:20:31.479 coolers and then use that money on making and shipping 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:34.320 these individual coolers to people. To get all of the 0:20:34.359 --> 0:20:39.320 coolers for all the Kickstarter people to them. Yeah, because 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:41.480 he didn't have the money to do it. Yeah. So 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:46.600 essentially this was the reason this caused such as a fuss, 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:49.800 is that the people who were backing it on Kickstarter. 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:54.480 I can't speak for everybody, but I notice in general 0:20:54.720 --> 0:20:57.480 that a lot of people act like Kickstarter is an 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:02.080 early access store. That's not what starters. You're an investor 0:21:02.160 --> 0:21:06.440 in an idea, Yeah, and you sometimes investments don't pay off. 0:21:06.480 --> 0:21:08.280 I mean, We've done plenty of episodes of the Brink 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:10.919 where that has turned out to be true. You've backed 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:15.840 some some campaigns that didn't. Let's not go into my 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:19.280 personal history and how many watches I have backed that 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:22.720 never came out. But the campaigns are successful, Yes they were. 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:27.040 I I think there are three different watch campaigns I 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:30.280 backed that did not ever ship. I think that just 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:33.280 makes you an expert on the topic. But again, I 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:37.040 didn't knowing that there was the possibility that somewhere down 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:40.320 the line something like this could happen where I'm giving 0:21:40.440 --> 0:21:44.000 I'm pledging money to a business that I hope succeeds. 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:46.880 But there are a lot of factors out there that 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:49.960 don't have anything to do with the sincerity of the 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:55.800 business owner that can sink a business, right. You also 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:59.440 have people out there who are disingenuous, who are snake 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:02.640 oil salesman, who they're selling an idea but they don't 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:06.720 have any any intention of seeing it through. I never 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:08.960 got the feeling that Grebber was one of those people. No, 0:22:09.119 --> 0:22:13.399 I really think he just lacked the business knowledge to 0:22:13.840 --> 0:22:16.919 set this up to be successful or as successful as 0:22:16.960 --> 0:22:19.439 it was. Maybe if he had the low numbers that 0:22:19.480 --> 0:22:22.640 he expected and the money that he he was originally 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:24.919 estimating for, he would have done fine. Yeah, maybe he 0:22:24.920 --> 0:22:30.040 could have ramped up slowly and grown more organically. But 0:22:30.200 --> 0:22:33.560 the crazy success and the amazing amount of attention that 0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:37.960 was directed towards his campaign really was an albatross around 0:22:38.000 --> 0:22:43.679 his neck. And so the whole goal of any business 0:22:43.760 --> 0:22:47.600 oriented kickstarted campaign is to have usually at least to 0:22:47.680 --> 0:22:51.200 have a sustainable business on the other side of it, right, 0:22:51.520 --> 0:22:55.080 So the whole goal of Coolest Cooler that campaign wasn't 0:22:55.119 --> 0:22:57.560 just to ship out coolers to backers. It was to 0:22:57.640 --> 0:23:01.800 create a viable business where he be selling these coolers 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:05.600 to other retailers and that the people who backed it 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:08.800 their reward for backing it would be getting a cooler 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:12.919 at a discounted price. The problem was that unless he 0:23:13.160 --> 0:23:16.879 was selling them at this higher mark up at these retailers, 0:23:16.880 --> 0:23:21.240 he wouldn't have the money to cover sending out those 0:23:21.560 --> 0:23:26.119 those Backer coolers to the backers. So the backers are 0:23:26.200 --> 0:23:28.879 upset because the thing that they've been waiting for is 0:23:29.600 --> 0:23:33.199 not coming to their to their house when they expected it. 0:23:33.600 --> 0:23:37.200 And somebody else who didn't back the campaign could, in 0:23:37.320 --> 0:23:40.040 theory go out and order one and get one ahead 0:23:40.080 --> 0:23:43.800 of them. Yeah, in two weeks or or a couple 0:23:43.840 --> 0:23:46.280 of days. You have a note here, And I think 0:23:46.280 --> 0:23:49.240 it's true that a big part of the issue was communication. 0:23:49.920 --> 0:23:52.560