Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: John in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you here? In the United States?
Speaker 1: It is currently Memorial Day, which means that we're not
Speaker 1: in the office today, So I was going to play
Speaker 1: a rerun, but I thought maybe we'd try something a
Speaker 1: little different. Uh. Some of you may know that a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, I used to host a show
Speaker 1: with Ariel Casting called Business on the Brink, and we
Speaker 1: covered businesses that had kind of a pivotal moment where
Speaker 1: either they made some choices that got them out of
Speaker 1: severe trouble or they descended into chaos. And it was
Speaker 1: a fun series to do. We did it for a
Speaker 1: couple of years, and I thought it would be great
Speaker 1: to play one of those episodes today. So what you're
Speaker 1: about to hear is a Business on the Brink episode
Speaker 1: which originally published on July two thousand nineteen. It is
Speaker 1: called Chilling Out with the Coolest Cooler and I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy. Ryan Grepper was sure he knew how to
Speaker 1: beat the heat with an innovative approach to the old
Speaker 1: beach stand by the drinks cooler. He added some bells
Speaker 1: and whistles, updating the frosty concept with some techy bonus features.
Speaker 1: To get things moving, he launched a crowdfunding campaign that
Speaker 1: was incredibly successful and earned a lot of ice, but
Speaker 1: soon found out that manufacturing a new product isn't easy
Speaker 1: and the whole process ended up leaving a lot of
Speaker 1: early supporters out in the cold. This is the coolest
Speaker 1: cooler on the brink, Hey, guys on Jonathan and I'm
Speaker 1: Ariel Casting, and thank you Bill Jeffers for giving us
Speaker 1: this awesome suggestion. Yeah, yeah, this is a one that
Speaker 1: I have covered on my show Text Stuff a little bit.
Speaker 1: I did an episode about some of crowdfunding's biggest successes
Speaker 1: and failures, and spoiler alert, coolest cooler falls into the
Speaker 1: latter category. Yeah, sadly. Sadly because I think the concept
Speaker 1: is really cool. Yeah, we're going to be saying cool
Speaker 1: a lot and not meaning it in a punny way.
Speaker 1: But if you want to interpret it as a pun,
Speaker 1: feel free. Yes, but no, I if I were not
Speaker 1: so thrifty, I was about to say cheap, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to say thrifty. I would have wanted to back this.
Speaker 1: A lot of people did. Lots of people backed this
Speaker 1: product so much so that not to skip ahead too much,
Speaker 1: but it would become one of the most successful Kickstarter
Speaker 1: campaigns in history. We'll get to that. But as it
Speaker 1: turns out, as as we alluded to in the introduction,
Speaker 1: things did not go smoothly, and it was largely a
Speaker 1: thing due to innocent naivete. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: of of underestimating exactly how hard it is to mass
Speaker 1: produce a brand new product. I'd have to agree with you, Jonathan.
Speaker 1: So let's get into a little bit of how this
Speaker 1: product came about. This coolest cooler. It was launched in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen by Ryan Grepper from Portland, Oregon. He
Speaker 1: used to be a medical sales rep uh and he
Speaker 1: was a self described inventor since two thousand six, which
Speaker 1: is I believe around the time that this products started
Speaker 1: taking form. He's also um He's still listed as a
Speaker 1: member of the CNBC Tech Crowd Council, which is made
Speaker 1: up of people who have done a successful crowdfunding campaigns. Yes,
Speaker 1: his campaign was successful. Yes for the crowd funding part.
Speaker 1: It's kind of surprised to see him still on there.
Speaker 1: But spoiler alert, guys, coolest Cooler is still around, but
Speaker 1: Ryan Grepper's reputation has taken an enormous beating in the process.
Speaker 1: And so so his idea initially started off as a
Speaker 1: pair of ideas before it merged into transformer, like what
Speaker 1: the coolest cooler would be? Right? Yeah, he tried to
Speaker 1: make a portable blender from a weed whacker, and then
Speaker 1: he made a cooler with the car stereo in it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then after he made these these initial prototypes, he
Speaker 1: was like, well, I need to make them smaller so
Speaker 1: I can bring them places. And he got the inspiration
Speaker 1: that if he made it smaller, he could sell it.
Speaker 1: And his idea was for the cooler to be a
Speaker 1: place where people gather, to have all the things that
Speaker 1: make a space somewhere you'd want to hang out. And
Speaker 1: according to c NBC, his early experiments to compile all
Speaker 1: these things together didn't work. So well, yeah, I just
Speaker 1: have this in my imagined y. Now, I know this
Speaker 1: isn't what it actually looked like, but in my imagination,
Speaker 1: you have like an iglue uh style cooler with a
Speaker 1: car stereo duct taped onto it. Like that's how I
Speaker 1: imagine these early versions being that's how I'd do it,
Speaker 1: just just say it. But the whole idea was, you know,
Speaker 1: you've been to plenty of parties, you've hosted parties. You
Speaker 1: note as well as I do, that often a central
Speaker 1: gathering point for a party ends up being the kitchen.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of it's where the food is, be
Speaker 1: is where the drinks are. People tend to hover there
Speaker 1: and then sooner or later a party kind of just
Speaker 1: it's centered there. It might spin off in other places.
Speaker 1: So this was kind of the same concept was that
Speaker 1: if you have all of these elements in a cooler
Speaker 1: and your outdoors, the cooler becomes kind of the central
Speaker 1: focal point for the party. Yeah, and he had an
Speaker 1: initial setup for the cooler, but by the end of
Speaker 1: his Kickstarter campaigns plural uh his cooler. His coolest cooler
Speaker 1: would include a USB charging station, a blender for crushing ice,
Speaker 1: a waterproof bluetooth speaker, watch aproof bluetooth speaker and l
Speaker 1: e ed light for the lid, dinner wear and storage
Speaker 1: for it, a cutting board, a bottle opener, and all
Speaker 1: terrain wheels like a bungee cord thingy and a little
Speaker 1: hidy spot for your keys and phone. Yeah. Also it
Speaker 1: was cooler. Yeah, it would be kind of ridiculous if
Speaker 1: he made this cooler with all these bells and whistles
Speaker 1: that didn't actually keep your beverages. It reminds me of
Speaker 1: the trend it was before even smart watches, but the
Speaker 1: trend where watches were including more and more features, and
Speaker 1: the standard joke was what's the time and then the
Speaker 1: person time exactly? That was? That was that was That's
Speaker 1: a longstanding joke in technology of seen it in like
Speaker 1: you know, comic strips and things like that, same sort
Speaker 1: of thing, like if you had ended up with the
Speaker 1: coolest cooler that couldn't actually keep food cold, that would
Speaker 1: be ridiculous. So he initially launched a crowdfunding campaign in
Speaker 1: November two thousand thirteen, and he was targeting a specific
Speaker 1: kind of of market. He was thinking about people who
Speaker 1: liked tailgating, and he was timing it to go along
Speaker 1: with the holiday Christmas shopping uh season. I mean you
Speaker 1: think that would be a smart move, right, yeah, But
Speaker 1: it turns out it didn't. It didn't quite pan out.
Speaker 1: He did not make his goal on that. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was seeking a hundred twenty five thousand dollars, and he
Speaker 1: ultimately raised uh well, the campaign met a hundred two
Speaker 1: thousand from two backers. But the way kickstarter works is
Speaker 1: it's an all or nothing proposal. You either make your goal,
Speaker 1: or you get and you get whatever you make plus over,
Speaker 1: or you make not thing at all. So if you
Speaker 1: have a goal of fifty thou dollars and you only
Speaker 1: hit twenty thousand dollars, nobody gets charged, no money changes hands,
Speaker 1: and your campaign fails. If you make fifty, then everyone
Speaker 1: gets charged however much they pledged. You get your fifty
Speaker 1: dollars minus kickstarters cut, which I think is five percent
Speaker 1: of the actual money earned, and if it makes more
Speaker 1: than fifty thou dollars, then you get more than what
Speaker 1: you had set as your goal. Kickstarter obviously has a
Speaker 1: strong incentive to promote the the campaigns that are doing well. Like,
Speaker 1: if there's a lot of buzz, it makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense for a kick started to kind of put
Speaker 1: those closer to the front thing they get exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if it's a really successful one, then kicks Started
Speaker 1: gets some bigger cut, because I mean it's still five percent,
Speaker 1: but it's five percent of a much larger number. And
Speaker 1: so that first one didn't work out so well. But
Speaker 1: the second Kickstarter campaign was a different story. Yeah, his
Speaker 1: second campaign launched on July eighth. He said a smaller goals,
Speaker 1: which just from the get go that seems problematic to me.
Speaker 1: If you need two dred and fifty dollars to create
Speaker 1: your coolers, don't set a lower goal so you meet
Speaker 1: your goal unless you're specifically thinking, I'm gonna start with
Speaker 1: a very small shipment, like if you if you still
Speaker 1: kept the price point for your cooler at the same level,
Speaker 1: but you thought I'll make a smaller batch, then that
Speaker 1: might work out. But as it turns out, that's not
Speaker 1: what happened. No, no, So first I want to say
Speaker 1: it shows you how small Ryan was thinking, because at
Speaker 1: his cheapest donation amount five dollars, you gotta thanks in
Speaker 1: the promise of having your name written on Ryan's personal cooler.
Speaker 1: Court cooler can only hold so many names unless you're
Speaker 1: like one of those grain of Rice writers. And even then,
Speaker 1: um and then the highest level, if you donated two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars or more, Ryan would come be your personal
Speaker 1: bartender for an event in your hometown and give you
Speaker 1: one of the first coolers. So and he would sign
Speaker 1: that one, and he didn't have any of space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you look at this and you go obviously
Speaker 1: he was thinking he'd get a moderate amount of backers
Speaker 1: two hundred and eighty or so like his first campaign,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit more because he can't travel to
Speaker 1: that many people's hometowns. And and he he had earned
Speaker 1: more than a hundred thousand dollars had the campaign succeeded
Speaker 1: in the previous example. So even if he got twice
Speaker 1: as many, you know, you're still thinking, all right, a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand, maybe two hundred thousand dollars, that's more or
Speaker 1: less on what he on par with what he was
Speaker 1: looking at for the first time through. So he was
Speaker 1: he was thinking, let's try this, and he he decided
Speaker 1: to launch it at a different time of year, yeah,
Speaker 1: because he was looking at the summer. He was launching
Speaker 1: it right around you know, just after the fourth of
Speaker 1: July weekend. You're talking about prime beach going outdoor grilling
Speaker 1: kind of of time frame here. It's when people are
Speaker 1: going outside and doing these activities where they need to
Speaker 1: have a big cooler or wanting a cooler they can
Speaker 1: crawl into and hide from the hot Georgia summer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially Yeah, once you get into the heat and humidity here,
Speaker 1: you're looking for any relief available. Yeah. He estimated that
Speaker 1: the final retail cost of the Coolest Cooler. This is
Speaker 1: from the Kickstarter page, which, by the way, is still
Speaker 1: it's still something you can visit. You can go and
Speaker 1: check out the Kickstarter page for this, uh this particular campaign.
Speaker 1: Kickstar keeps them all. It's no longer certain parts of
Speaker 1: the page you cannot access unless you have donated. Yes,
Speaker 1: there there are messages that go out just to backers,
Speaker 1: so if you are a backer, you have access to those,
Speaker 1: But the public facing page is still available. So he
Speaker 1: estimated that the final retail cost for the Coolest Cooler
Speaker 1: was going to be two uh So, three hundred dollars
Speaker 1: for a cool or seems like a hefty price tag,
Speaker 1: but as it turns out, it was also an underestimation
Speaker 1: of how much he would need to charge for that
Speaker 1: particular invention. I do want to say, I went online
Speaker 1: and I did a little bit of research. Some super
Speaker 1: high end, super large coolers do cost hundreds of dollars,
Speaker 1: so it's not a completely unreasonable price. It's more than
Speaker 1: I probably would want to pay for a cooler. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, so there are products that cater to
Speaker 1: people who have way more money than you and I
Speaker 1: do and not very much idea of what to spend
Speaker 1: it on. I'll put it that way. That's not it's
Speaker 1: not to say that those those products are no good
Speaker 1: or that they're only marginally better than say, a decent
Speaker 1: cooler would run you. I don't know. There are some
Speaker 1: of them may be truly incredible and be much more
Speaker 1: efficient and managing you know, heat and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. I don't know. But uh. He also on
Speaker 1: that campaign had an offer where if you were one
Speaker 1: of the first fifty people to pledge, you could pledge
Speaker 1: a hundred sixty five dollars and get a reserved coolest
Speaker 1: cooler of your own. Uh. Those fifty slots disappeared almost immediately,
Speaker 1: no surprise. Yeah, well, one cooler is a lot more palatable. Yeah. So, then,
Speaker 1: because they went so fast, and because the West coast
Speaker 1: had not even had an opportunity to look at it,
Speaker 1: because the campaign went live before most people on the
Speaker 1: West coast of the United States had even woken up,
Speaker 1: he decided to release another group, this time just twenty
Speaker 1: slots for more early bird coolers, and those went super
Speaker 1: fast to the next amount you could pledge. Let's say
Speaker 1: you missed out on those seventy, which wouldn't be a
Speaker 1: big surprise. I mean, they did go super fast. Your
Speaker 1: next option would be to pledge at a level of
Speaker 1: a hundred eighty five dollars or more, and that would
Speaker 1: put you on the reservation list for your own coolist cooler.
Speaker 1: So again you're you're still looking at a hundred fifteen
Speaker 1: dollars off the projected a retail price. You would then
Speaker 1: also have to kick in fifteen dollars for shipping, which
Speaker 1: would you could argue push the the price tag for
Speaker 1: the coolest cooler to two hundred dollars. And that's how
Speaker 1: most websites refer to it, like it was a two cooler.
Speaker 1: Yeah still not still not horrible, Still a pretty big discount. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it was so popular because he took lessons
Speaker 1: that he learned from his first Kickstarter and and really
Speaker 1: marketed the second one well. He reached out to previous
Speaker 1: backers and enthusiasts through email, he hit up social media,
Speaker 1: and he did live events all prior to actually launching
Speaker 1: this campaign, So anybody who was already excited about it
Speaker 1: would then be excited at their friends about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they would tell people, Oh, you know, I tried to
Speaker 1: back this last time. It didn't work out. You guys
Speaker 1: should get done on this, because think how incredible this
Speaker 1: is gonna be. And then it worked because some news outlets,
Speaker 1: mostly local ones, were starting to pick get up, and
Speaker 1: this would increase as the campaign would launch, and in
Speaker 1: fact it would turn into a frenzy when the campaign
Speaker 1: was starting to get truly successful. So it became a
Speaker 1: a self perpetuating cycle, right because the campaign started picking
Speaker 1: up steam, it was getting a lot of backers that
Speaker 1: in turn was notable enough to get the attention of
Speaker 1: the media that hadn't already covered this, which brought even
Speaker 1: more people to back it. So it started to kind
Speaker 1: of become a spinning boulder down the hill situation. Well,
Speaker 1: and it became a spinning baller quickly. It beat its
Speaker 1: school in four days. Within four days, that had made
Speaker 1: three point two million dollars. Yeah, that's a lot more
Speaker 1: than a whole lot, And by the end of the
Speaker 1: two month campaign it had raised million, two hundred two
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty six dollars from over sixty thousand backers,
Speaker 1: and once it beat out Pebbles Watch as the most
Speaker 1: successful kickstarter of all time at that time, it got
Speaker 1: a ton more press coverage. Time magazine even named it
Speaker 1: one of the best inventions of two thousand fourteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did this in two thousand fourteen. Um is before
Speaker 1: before this had really even had a chance to prove itself.
Speaker 1: And so then they began to work on finalizing the
Speaker 1: actual design of the products. And now they got the
Speaker 1: money to go into the process of making the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they worked with a studio, Fathom to get their
Speaker 1: prototype out, which had fifty five parts in it. Um
Speaker 1: And this is so that Time Magazine could photograph it
Speaker 1: for the article. Yeah. It's hard to take pictures of
Speaker 1: a thing that's largely theoretical. Yeah, I mean they had
Speaker 1: pictures of the original design of the cooler, but this
Speaker 1: was redesigned. So um and and through all this, so
Speaker 1: he has this successful campaign. Ryan thought he had planned
Speaker 1: appropriately for supply and logistics ahead of time. He thought
Speaker 1: he had sourcing partners in place based on the money
Speaker 1: that he made, and he was so optimistic that he
Speaker 1: figured unlike of crowdfunding campaigns that face delays, he would
Speaker 1: be able to avoid them. Yeah he was wrong, and
Speaker 1: yeah he was wrong. He had planned on starting to
Speaker 1: deliver coolers by February two fifteen. But if you know
Speaker 1: anything about this story, you know that was far too optimistic.
Speaker 1: And if you don't know anything about this story, we'll
Speaker 1: tell you about it. But first we're going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Al right. So Grebber has this crowdfunding campaign.
Speaker 1: It is monumentally successful and as an enormous following lots
Speaker 1: of enthusiastic backers who just can't wait to get their
Speaker 1: hands on this cooler that can do everything, uh that
Speaker 1: you can imagine and be prepared to live their best
Speaker 1: beach clad lives. The cooler cannot do everything you could imagine.
Speaker 1: I don't think it could walk a puppy for you,
Speaker 1: nor could it actually transport you to the beach, but
Speaker 1: just about everything else, everything, Yeah, you're so, what happened? Well,
Speaker 1: he immediately started to encounter issues in manufacturing. And this
Speaker 1: is a good time to remember that manufacturing has got
Speaker 1: a lot of moving pieces, right, You've got your whole
Speaker 1: supply chain. Now, it's one thing if you're making a
Speaker 1: relatively simple product, where the supply chain is is pretty linear,
Speaker 1: where you know you've you've got You get the raw
Speaker 1: materials from one place, it goes into a manufacturing facility
Speaker 1: and then goes into the shipping department of that facility,
Speaker 1: and then it goes out to customers. That's really simple.
Speaker 1: But the coolest cooler had a lot of different parts
Speaker 1: to it. It had these speakers, it had the USB
Speaker 1: charging outlets, it had a motor for the blender. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got all these different parts and they were coming
Speaker 1: from different places, which means if there's a delay and
Speaker 1: any part of that supply chain, it delays the overall product.
Speaker 1: And there was so the manufacturing facility in China that
Speaker 1: made the blender motor, which there was one place that
Speaker 1: he sourced for this one place, only he had no
Speaker 1: backups because his specifications for this blender motor were so
Speaker 1: high he wanted to be really good production. Um, they
Speaker 1: went on strike and so it stopped his entire his
Speaker 1: entire line of assembly, which also took a really long
Speaker 1: time because they had fifty five parts, a lot of
Speaker 1: which had to be hand assembled. Now, if you've ever
Speaker 1: looked at the Coolest Cooler online, like if you've gone
Speaker 1: to Amazon, where you can still see coolest coolers listed,
Speaker 1: although if you want one of the classic ones, typically
Speaker 1: you're looking at buying it from a reseller. But if
Speaker 1: you look at it, you'll see that there are a
Speaker 1: couple of different configurations. There's one version of the Coolest
Speaker 1: Cooler that has a regular top, doesn't have the blender part,
Speaker 1: and it's significantly cheaper than the one that comes with
Speaker 1: the blender. Well, the one that was on the Kickstarter page,
Speaker 1: the one that the backers backed specifically mentioned that the
Speaker 1: blender was part of it, So that was a big issue.
Speaker 1: With the the supply chain for the blender motor all
Speaker 1: all uh screwed up. It really put him behind. But
Speaker 1: even still he was estimating that by September. By September
Speaker 1: he could get everybody their coolers, and that did not
Speaker 1: happen either, not at all. Um everything was a lot
Speaker 1: more expensive then he anticipated. Yeah, so that final retail
Speaker 1: price turned out to be too low. That and in fact,
Speaker 1: he said this over and over again. So one of
Speaker 1: the biggest problems he had was that he had underestimated
Speaker 1: how expensive it would be to produce these coolers, and
Speaker 1: that it was an issue where if you did the math,
Speaker 1: there was no way around it. You were going to
Speaker 1: lose money on those Kickstarter orders like there was. This
Speaker 1: was beyond selling things at cost where you're just covering
Speaker 1: the expense of the materials and labor to put to
Speaker 1: the product together. Now you're actually taking a bath on
Speaker 1: those sales. And I mean, it does not take a
Speaker 1: business major to tell you that you can't stay in
Speaker 1: business that way. You you're bleeding money being in business.
Speaker 1: You cannot You can't make it up in volume. That's
Speaker 1: just gonna bleed you out faster. So this is where
Speaker 1: he had to start figuring out what do I do
Speaker 1: about this? Well, he had another idea that again kind
Speaker 1: of makes sense but also made a lot of people angry.
Speaker 1: He decided to sell his cooler on Amazon because that
Speaker 1: way he could sell it at a higher price than
Speaker 1: what he listed on Kickstarter and make up some profit
Speaker 1: on the coolers and then use that money on making
Speaker 1: and shipping these individual coolers to people to get all
Speaker 1: of the coolers for all the Kickstarter people to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he didn't have the money to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So essentially this was the reason this caused such a
Speaker 1: fuss is that the people who were backing it on Kickstarter.
Speaker 1: I can't speak for every body, but I notice in
Speaker 1: general that a lot of people act like Kickstarter is
Speaker 1: an early access store. That's not what Kickstarter is. You're
Speaker 1: an investor in an idea, yeah, and you sometimes investments
Speaker 1: don't pay off. I mean, we've done plenty of episodes
Speaker 1: of the Brink where that has turned out to be true.
Speaker 1: You've backed some some campaigns that didn't. Let's not go
Speaker 1: into my personal history and how many watches I have
Speaker 1: backed that never came out. But the campaigns are successful,
Speaker 1: Yes they were. I think there are three different watch
Speaker 1: campaigns I backed that did not ever ship. I think
Speaker 1: that just makes you an expert on the topic. But again,
Speaker 1: I didn't knowing that there was the possibility that somewhere
Speaker 1: down the line something like this could happen where I'm
Speaker 1: giving I'm pledging money to a business that I hope succeeds.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of factors out there that
Speaker 1: don't have anything to do with the sincerity of the
Speaker 1: business owner that can sink a business. Right. You also
Speaker 1: have people out there who are disingenuous, who are snake
Speaker 1: oil salesman who they're selling an idea but they don't
Speaker 1: have any any intention of seeing it through. I never
Speaker 1: got the feeling that Grebber was one of those people. No,
Speaker 1: I really think he just lacked the business knowledge to
Speaker 1: set this up to be successful or as successful as
Speaker 1: it was. Maybe if he had the low numbers that
Speaker 1: he expected and the money that he he was originally
Speaker 1: estimating for, he would have done fine. Yeah, maybe he
Speaker 1: could have ramped up slowly and grown more organically. But
Speaker 1: the crazy success and the amazing amount of attention that
Speaker 1: was directed towards his campaign really was an albatross around
Speaker 1: his neck. And so the whole goal of any business
Speaker 1: oriented kickstarted campaign is to have usually at least to
Speaker 1: have a sustainable business on the other side of it, Right,
Speaker 1: So the whole goal of Coolest Cooler that campaign wasn't
Speaker 1: just to ship out coolers to backers. It was to
Speaker 1: create a viable business where he would be selling these
Speaker 1: coolers to other retailers and that the people who backed it,
Speaker 1: their reward for backing it would be getting a cooler
Speaker 1: at a discounted price. The problem was that unless he
Speaker 1: was selling them at this higher mark up at these retailers.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't have the money to cover sending out those
Speaker 1: those backer coolers to the backers. So the backers are
Speaker 1: upset because the thing that they've been waiting for is
Speaker 1: not coming to their to their house when they expected it.
Speaker 1: And somebody else who didn't back the campaign could, in theory,
Speaker 1: go out and order one and get one ahead of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in two weeks or or a couple of days. Uh,
Speaker 1: you have a note here. And I think it's true
Speaker 1: that a big part of the issue was communication. There
Speaker 1: are their notes and their comments about out, we haven't
Speaker 1: heard anything. And so they did do a live stream
Speaker 1: to say, look, you guys, we need fifteen million more
Speaker 1: dollars than we expected. We're trying to get it through
Speaker 1: selling coolers so that we can get you your rewards.
Speaker 1: They and they did, they send out some rewards early on,
Speaker 1: and it just it got too big for them. Well,
Speaker 1: and and that also ended up being an issue, like
Speaker 1: there was no good way for Creeper to get out
Speaker 1: of this because he owed something like sixty thousand people
Speaker 1: these coolers and he could only do them in batches.
Speaker 1: And so what would happen is you would send out
Speaker 1: you would have this company sending out coolers to backers
Speaker 1: in these smaller batches, but the media focus was on
Speaker 1: how many people were still waiting for a cooler. It
Speaker 1: wasn't saying, coolest cooler has made good on you know,
Speaker 1: ten thousand of the pledges and is working hard to
Speaker 1: get the other fifty thousand. It was instead it was
Speaker 1: fifty thousand people are still waiting for their coolers, which
Speaker 1: wasn't doing him or his company in favors. So again, like, yes,
Speaker 1: the mistake was his. We're not gonna lift all responsibility
Speaker 1: off of him and say like he was a victim
Speaker 1: in all of this. But at the same time, I
Speaker 1: think the way it unfolded, it was pretty much a
Speaker 1: worst case scenario for him to have to deal with
Speaker 1: on top of all just the production headaches he had.
Speaker 1: Well he does, he does. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: victim blaming or a little bit of shaming, but he
Speaker 1: he has been noted to say that he thinks part
Speaker 1: of what hiss delayed him so long is that when
Speaker 1: he put the coolers on Amazon, all of these backers
Speaker 1: went on and made these horrible reviews because they said
Speaker 1: they didn't have their coolers and he's like, guys, you're
Speaker 1: shooting yourself in the foot here. Yeah, it's it's just
Speaker 1: delaying when I can get enough money to make good
Speaker 1: on the promise I've made you. But then again, if
Speaker 1: I were said, hey, if you pay nine dollars, will
Speaker 1: get you your cooler quicker than you're paying the quote
Speaker 1: unquote retail price for the cooler at which point, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was something else that came up with that.
Speaker 1: He said. One solution to the problem they had was
Speaker 1: that if you were a backer and you wanted your
Speaker 1: cooler faster, you could get it by giving an extra
Speaker 1: nineties seven dollars to the company. That would make up
Speaker 1: enough of the difference for him to be able to
Speaker 1: put those people on a priority list and they would
Speaker 1: get their coolers faster. But you didn't have to do that. Again,
Speaker 1: the way a lot of news outlets reported this, it
Speaker 1: sounded like if you don't cough up the nineties seven dollars,
Speaker 1: you're never going to get your cooler. That wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: It was if you want your cooler now, you have
Speaker 1: to pay almost an extra hundred dollars. If you are patient,
Speaker 1: you can wait and it may take a while. But
Speaker 1: at least in theory, you will eventually get it. I
Speaker 1: wonder if some of those news outlets reporting it where
Speaker 1: the reporters maybe had backed it and we're feeling a
Speaker 1: little sore. I mean, probably not. It was, it was
Speaker 1: It's very easy to get the the idea that the
Speaker 1: company was eating backers dry. But again, the more I
Speaker 1: look into it, the less I feel like that's the case,
Speaker 1: and the more I feel like there was no good
Speaker 1: pathway out of this this whole Okay, So, after all this,
Speaker 1: they started shipping in July of two more coolers. They
Speaker 1: had enough money to restart shipping, and they hoped they'd
Speaker 1: be done by October of two thousand fifteen. Uh, how
Speaker 1: did that turn out? It didn't. Yeah, there's so, I mean,
Speaker 1: there are still lots of people waiting for their coolers.
Speaker 1: I'll give a kind of figure in a second. But
Speaker 1: they began to sell the model of the cooler that
Speaker 1: was covered by the kick starry campaign for four hundred
Speaker 1: eighty five dollars on their site, which if you look
Speaker 1: at the if you look at the initial projected retail
Speaker 1: price of I'm pretty sure is more than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm an English major. It that's a lot for a cooler. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just shy a five hundred bucks. But it also shows
Speaker 1: that this cooler and all the parts that were necessary
Speaker 1: in order to put it together and to have it
Speaker 1: do all the things that was supposed to do, that
Speaker 1: it was way more expensive to produce than what he
Speaker 1: had anticipated. And it's about again we'll get into lessons
Speaker 1: at the end of the episode, but one thing this
Speaker 1: immediately tells you is that whenever you are thinking about
Speaker 1: really any business endeavor, but particularly if you're making something physical,
Speaker 1: you should grossly overestimate how much it's going to cost
Speaker 1: you to make it, because it will prepare you better
Speaker 1: to when you encounter those problems to manage them well.
Speaker 1: And then if you do have if you do have
Speaker 1: a surplus at the end of it, if everything goes
Speaker 1: as you expected and not as you planned for, and
Speaker 1: then you can either give it back to your supporters
Speaker 1: or you can invest it in your company to be
Speaker 1: more successful. Um, make sure you talk to other people
Speaker 1: who know are doing instead of just like your own
Speaker 1: research is good, but also talk to industry experts. But
Speaker 1: you know, I'd have to imagine that there were there
Speaker 1: was fallout beyond just angry consumers from all of this
Speaker 1: failure to deliver product. Oh yeah, you had. You even
Speaker 1: had people who were ordering it and uh and you
Speaker 1: know they're actually purchasing it online and getting it ahead
Speaker 1: of time, who were reviewing it and saying the cooler
Speaker 1: is fine, like it's there's nothing wrong with it, but
Speaker 1: it might not be cool enough to justify the cost.
Speaker 1: So again that ends up hurting sales, which makes it
Speaker 1: even take even longer to to make good on these
Speaker 1: these kickstarter backers. So it's a domino effect, right, or
Speaker 1: ripple effect if you prefer. It's a ripple effect. If
Speaker 1: something goes wrong at ripples out and it effects and
Speaker 1: ultimately the people that it is affecting the most, at
Speaker 1: least in the eyes of the backer, are the backers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which led to some legal troubles, but we're going to
Speaker 1: tell you about that right after this break. Okay, So
Speaker 1: when we started talking about Grepper and his ideas, we
Speaker 1: mentioned that he is from Portland, Oregon. That's where he
Speaker 1: was operating out of. And Oregon has been the home
Speaker 1: not just of Grepper but of some of Grepper's biggest woes. Yes,
Speaker 1: he got a whole bunch of consumer complaints to the
Speaker 1: Oregon Department of Justice. Three hundred fifteen incidents of complaints
Speaker 1: were filed with that d o J in Oregon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you've got an issue with the company, you've
Speaker 1: got to file it where that company is. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: from people outside of Oregon complaining to Oregon, UH, and
Speaker 1: the complaints stated that the Coolest Cooler was being negligent
Speaker 1: in delivering their product. So that was enough to to
Speaker 1: inspire the d O JAY and Oregon to launch an
Speaker 1: investigation in twos s. So UH kickstart, by the way,
Speaker 1: their policy states that any successful campaign is supposed to
Speaker 1: either deliver the awards to backers that were promised or
Speaker 1: offer refunds to backers. And so part of the problem
Speaker 1: here was that Coolest Cooler, at least according to these complaints,
Speaker 1: was refusing to refund money to backers who were discontented.
Speaker 1: I mean they didn't have it. Yeah. But the problem
Speaker 1: that is kickstarters own policy is that if you successfully
Speaker 1: fund your project, you either have to make good on
Speaker 1: these rewards or offer up the refund to your backers.
Speaker 1: So it's what gave a foothold for the d o
Speaker 1: J to really kind of look into what was going on. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: in two tho um, Coolest Cooler did try to a
Speaker 1: piece people again. They added a tracking tool to their
Speaker 1: website for backers to track where the progress of their
Speaker 1: delivery was, like it hasn't even been made yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could see your place in line basically. But then
Speaker 1: they also weren't going in chronological order of who backed
Speaker 1: and shipping these things. They were going by address, which
Speaker 1: makes sense from a bulk shipping standpoint. Yeah, but not
Speaker 1: great if you happen to be like if you had
Speaker 1: prided yourself on being one of the first, like let's
Speaker 1: say that you were one of those first seventy, like
Speaker 1: you were an early bird backer, but because of your address,
Speaker 1: you were not at the top of that list. You
Speaker 1: might think, what the heck, I'm the reason. I'm part
Speaker 1: of the reason why this campaign was so successful. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: They also tried to put on that tool on their
Speaker 1: website where all of the money raised had gone, to
Speaker 1: give some transparency to people. I'm guessing that didn't really
Speaker 1: help much because there are employees of Coolest Cooler that
Speaker 1: we're getting docs and Ryan's family even got some threats
Speaker 1: from some angry consumers. Yeah, people man, when they don't
Speaker 1: get what they expect, they can turn real ugly, real fast.
Speaker 1: And I mean I get the frustration. Trust me, I
Speaker 1: get the frustration of backing a campaign and not getting
Speaker 1: what you were promised when the campaign funds. I also,
Speaker 1: in at least one of those instances, did not get
Speaker 1: a refund, nor did I get my reward. Uh. The
Speaker 1: I cannot have any recourse for that because the company
Speaker 1: that was supposed to make the thing I backed no
Speaker 1: longer exists, So there's no one for me to get
Speaker 1: money from at this point. It's just it's the risk
Speaker 1: of investment. Yeah, you got to know going in that's
Speaker 1: again you have to remember it's not a store, right.
Speaker 1: So but there are people who they have that expectation
Speaker 1: and they're like, well, I bought this product and you
Speaker 1: won't give it to me, so therefore I it's fair game.
Speaker 1: I'm allowed to do whatever I want to strike out
Speaker 1: at you because you have taken my money, which you know,
Speaker 1: so these people who filed with the organ Department of
Speaker 1: Justice took a much Yeah, I'm more responsible and less
Speaker 1: like psycho U unsympathetic approach. Yeah yeah, so how did
Speaker 1: that turn out? Um? Well, you know, at least turned
Speaker 1: out well for some of the backers. The Oregon Department
Speaker 1: of Justice did find that Coolest Cooler was or at
Speaker 1: least was approaching the point of saying that the Coolest
Speaker 1: Cooler was negligent, but Grepper was able to settle the case.
Speaker 1: But the settlement, of course, came with some pretty strong
Speaker 1: agreements that he had to abide by. One of those
Speaker 1: was that uh he was going to have to ship
Speaker 1: Coolest Coolers to Oregonians who had backed the campaign that
Speaker 1: included eight hundred seventy three backers in the state of Oregon.
Speaker 1: He also agreed that if backers in general did not
Speaker 1: receive their coolers by the middle of twenty twenty, so
Speaker 1: we still have some time to go. Yeah, although, like
Speaker 1: while we're researching this episode, there are people actively posting
Speaker 1: on the Coolest Cooler kickstarter page, I haven't gotten my cooler. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well there's thousands of them alert. But that anyway, if
Speaker 1: he does not get the coolers to the backers by
Speaker 1: mid twenty twenty, for every backer who has not received
Speaker 1: his or her cooler, they will receive twenty dollars from
Speaker 1: Grebber and no matter if the company goes into bankruptcy
Speaker 1: or if it's still solvent, he will owe that money.
Speaker 1: If the company goes into bankruptcy will not protect him
Speaker 1: from that that obligation. He will still have to pay
Speaker 1: the twenty bucks per person. Well, and I know people
Speaker 1: were not happy about this. I mean, obviously they hope
Speaker 1: to get their cool Some of them don't even anymore,
Speaker 1: like I don't care about this cooler anymore, And twenty
Speaker 1: is a small amount of their investment back, but it's something. Well,
Speaker 1: and you know, the idea would be that assuming company
Speaker 1: was still solvent, that even with the twenty dollars being sent,
Speaker 1: it would still the cooler would still be on its
Speaker 1: way at some point. Um, so it's not like here's
Speaker 1: twenty dollars now you don't get your cooler. Yeah, assuming
Speaker 1: that the company is still around. Of course, if it
Speaker 1: were bankrupt, then it's just coming out of Grabber's personal funds.
Speaker 1: I assume. After this settlement, Grabber actually wrote a letter
Speaker 1: to people and he put it on the Kickstarter as
Speaker 1: an update to all the backers, and he explained their
Speaker 1: plan and he explained their strategies for going forward to
Speaker 1: get this done, things like going international and things like
Speaker 1: that more investors and stuff, but he was really salty
Speaker 1: about it. He's like, I feel vindicated that this is
Speaker 1: how the Oregan Department of Justice ruled that we aren't shysters.
Speaker 1: We generally want to get you your product, but we
Speaker 1: just we can't, and you're hurting our progress, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like like the you know, we're trying to do good
Speaker 1: on the agreement we had, but the more you guys
Speaker 1: put up a fuss, the harder it is for us
Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, it's kind of like, uh, like
Speaker 1: you've promised a toddler that you're gonna go to the
Speaker 1: water park in the afternoon, but it's still in the
Speaker 1: morning and you need to do some errands, and the
Speaker 1: toddler starts having a melt down. You're like, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to go to the water parks. Says yes,
Speaker 1: we're going to the water park, but first we have
Speaker 1: to run errands. But I want to go to the
Speaker 1: water park. I mean, mind you if I had been
Speaker 1: promised to go to the water park in two thousand
Speaker 1: fourteen and I hit two thousands sixteen, it's a very
Speaker 1: long afternoon. Areal very long afternoon when you're a toddler
Speaker 1: time stretches before you like an infinity. Yeah, that's true. Anyhow,
Speaker 1: in two thousand seventeen, there was actually a petition filed
Speaker 1: on change dot org to get them to stop selling
Speaker 1: their coolers until the backers got their's again, which makes
Speaker 1: no sense. It's it's hurting the process to get you
Speaker 1: your cooler. Yeah, that is kind of crazy, like the
Speaker 1: idea that hey, stop stop doing this thing you're doing
Speaker 1: that is helping fund actually getting coolers to backers, and
Speaker 1: get coolers to backers without any funds. That's not the
Speaker 1: way the world works. No, no, but Grepper, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously didn't listen to that. The petition didn't well, I
Speaker 1: mean it's a petition. It's a petition, doesn't doesn't have
Speaker 1: any holding value over anything other than letting you know.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people who are ticked off enough
Speaker 1: to fill out a form. So, in addition to trying
Speaker 1: to boost international sales, get more investors, reduced production costs,
Speaker 1: all of which are great ideas, although hard to get
Speaker 1: investors when you've got a bad reputation UM, Greber started
Speaker 1: innovating more to try to get more money. So he
Speaker 1: made peripherals like batteries, and solar panels and charging chords
Speaker 1: for the coolers. He made a soft sided cooler, which
Speaker 1: is expensive for a soft stadic cooler, but apparently is
Speaker 1: like super magnetic. It's also less expensive than the full
Speaker 1: coolest cooler is yes, and it has like a universal
Speaker 1: attachment thing you said, you can put on your bike
Speaker 1: or your backpacker. But the whole idea was that he
Speaker 1: could use profits from that or revenue from the sales
Speaker 1: of those products to help again make good on these backers.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that that should the day come
Speaker 1: when Grebber is able to send off that final backer cooler,
Speaker 1: it will be an enormous weight of his shoulders. So, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: how many people would you suppose don't have their coolership? Well,
Speaker 1: it's tough to say because there's not really an ongoing
Speaker 1: tally that I could find anywhere. But in ten late eighteen,
Speaker 1: there was an article that stated as many as twenty
Speaker 1: thousand people were still waiting for their coolers. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a lot of people. So it's about a third of
Speaker 1: the backers who who pledged at a level that was
Speaker 1: enough to get a cooler in the first place, So
Speaker 1: two thirds got their coolers. A third are still waiting. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's tough. And there was an article and so
Speaker 1: the oregon Ian was the newspaper that published the report
Speaker 1: that said twenty thod people were still waiting. A few
Speaker 1: months later, they published a second article that stated that
Speaker 1: during the most recent quarter, according to a statement from
Speaker 1: Coolest Cooler, the company had shipped precisely zero coolers tobaccers
Speaker 1: in that most recent quarter, meaning that they weren't able
Speaker 1: to do any in that three month period. So obviously
Speaker 1: every month that goes by is bringing them closer to
Speaker 1: that mid twenty twenty deadline that they need to make.
Speaker 1: And um, there have been a lot of other things
Speaker 1: that have happened over the last couple of years that
Speaker 1: have added complications. For example, you probably are familiar that
Speaker 1: there have been some issues about tariffs and China, as
Speaker 1: as the United States of America has enacted certain policies
Speaker 1: that have instituted these tariffs that in turn ends up
Speaker 1: impacting the supply chain and manufacturing plan for the Coolest Coolers,
Speaker 1: So which that is not Grabbers fault. Now, there's nothing
Speaker 1: he can do about it other than like trying desperately
Speaker 1: to find a way to still stay within budget and
Speaker 1: be able to continue production. It's not like it halts production,
Speaker 1: but it makes production more expensive. And since that was
Speaker 1: the problem in the first place, in addition to the
Speaker 1: timing issues with things like the strike, uh, that does
Speaker 1: not make his life any easier. Yeah. Um again. I
Speaker 1: really think the lesson here is give yourself buffer, give
Speaker 1: yourself a leg up, overestimate, like you said, how much
Speaker 1: it's gonna call you talk to people. Give yourself a
Speaker 1: longer deadline too. You know, if backers know that going in,
Speaker 1: they might be okay with that. Yeah. It's it's when
Speaker 1: you start changing things and people had. It's when you
Speaker 1: set certain expectations and then you have to change those expectations.
Speaker 1: That's always a problem, and I've seen it on multiple
Speaker 1: Kickstarter campaigns, and it almost always happens with stuff that's
Speaker 1: related to producing something physical. And it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be complicated either. I've backed Kickstarter campaigns that were producing
Speaker 1: things like a deck of cards, but then there are
Speaker 1: printer issues, their quality control issues, and these things slow
Speaker 1: everything down and they increase the costs because you have
Speaker 1: to pay for another production run because if it's not
Speaker 1: going to meet the expectations, of your backers. Then you're
Speaker 1: going to have problems that like you, you either ship
Speaker 1: nothing and you tell your backers were sorry, but the
Speaker 1: quality was not up to our standards, so we're going
Speaker 1: to go back and try it again, or you end
Speaker 1: up shipping something that is of substandard quality and your
Speaker 1: backers get upset anyway because they're like, I backed this.
Speaker 1: That was a waste of money and a really long wait.
Speaker 1: And also you know the lesson for you, uh you
Speaker 1: know you've listened to this episodes, so you know, but
Speaker 1: realize that you're making an investment. It's almost like loaning
Speaker 1: money to your family or friends where you shouldn't. You're
Speaker 1: hoping to get something back, but you may not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you need to You need to ask yourself, like, can
Speaker 1: I make this pledge if this campaign is successful? Is
Speaker 1: it okay if this money never comes back to me?
Speaker 1: Like if I if I make this pledge, and what
Speaker 1: for whatever reason the actual endeavor fails despite the campaign
Speaker 1: being successful. Am I okay with taking a loss of this?
Speaker 1: If I'm not, then maybe I should just wait until
Speaker 1: it's for public consumers. Yeah, exactly. So in this case
Speaker 1: with Coolest Cooler, if you saw it and you thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: that sounds really awesome and I would love to have
Speaker 1: one of these, and it would be nice to get
Speaker 1: it for a discounted price, but I'm also aware of
Speaker 1: the potential pitfalls that can be in the way of production.
Speaker 1: Then you might think, well, is it is it worth
Speaker 1: potentially saving a hundred fifteen dollars off the projected retail
Speaker 1: price or is it better for me to wait, because
Speaker 1: it could be that instead of saving a D fifteen dollars,
Speaker 1: I'm throwing away a D five. Yeah, policies are great,
Speaker 1: but the truth of the matter is, no matter how
Speaker 1: well intentioned the inventor or the founder of the kicks starter,
Speaker 1: if they end up going bankrupt due to misfortune, not
Speaker 1: even poor planning, but just misfortune and end up living
Speaker 1: under a bridge, you they can't refund you. It's it's
Speaker 1: just the way it is. Um It's It's also interesting
Speaker 1: to point out that crowdfunding has largely changed over the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, where we're seeing more and more
Speaker 1: established companies using crowdfunding, and they're not using it to
Speaker 1: raise the money needed to make whatever the thing is.
Speaker 1: Often the thing has already made. They're using it to
Speaker 1: kind of judge the reception of whatever that thing is
Speaker 1: so that they know how much of it to make
Speaker 1: or whether or not it's going to be a successful product.
Speaker 1: And so it's it's changing where it was kind of
Speaker 1: aimed at the individual creator originally, like this was an idea,
Speaker 1: Like you have an idea for something, you launched this
Speaker 1: crowdfunding and paign to get the money you need to
Speaker 1: to actually bring that something into reality, and then you
Speaker 1: ship off or you start selling or whatever. Now it's
Speaker 1: companies are using it almost as a marketing tool, and
Speaker 1: so it's it's dramatically changed how crowdfunding is working in
Speaker 1: the like I said, in the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: But we still have these issues and uh, and there
Speaker 1: are no shortage of crowdfunding campaigns that do come across
Speaker 1: as kind of scammy, so that's also good. Although to
Speaker 1: be fair, both Kickstarter and indigo Go and others have
Speaker 1: gotten a lot better at weeding those out. Although indiego go,
Speaker 1: you can get your funding amount even if you don't
Speaker 1: magic Yeah, if you don't. If you said you can,
Speaker 1: you can choose if you set let's say you set
Speaker 1: a ten thousand dollar goal, but you only raise five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, and it's on indiego Go, you can choose
Speaker 1: to accept any amount raised even if you haven't met
Speaker 1: your goal, but it's with a heftier fee taken out.
Speaker 1: For indie go Go, they take a much larger percentage
Speaker 1: of the money, so you get you get even less.
Speaker 1: So if you ask for ten thousand dollars and you
Speaker 1: end up getting five thousand dollars, you might only end
Speaker 1: up with four thousand dollars. So it's it's one of
Speaker 1: those things that it's kind of a slippery slope issue. Um,
Speaker 1: we have a couple of fun facts and I just
Speaker 1: read them and now I'm angry. I'm sorry, Jonathan. The
Speaker 1: first is Ryan Grabber has backed his own kickstarters. Uh,
Speaker 1: he backed the potato salad kickstarter. That's the one that
Speaker 1: gets me mad. It is because Jonathan had a kickstarter
Speaker 1: around the same time and his didn't get funded. But
Speaker 1: this dark potato salad kickstarts choke. The potato salad was
Speaker 1: a choke and then it got it got ridiculous. Not
Speaker 1: just backing it was again like a crazy viral success
Speaker 1: for a joke potato salad. I mean, the guy did
Speaker 1: take all the funds and make a major party out
Speaker 1: of it. All props, all props to that guy and
Speaker 1: and his cooke and the fact that it brought joy
Speaker 1: to people. But I am I am unapologetically envious because
Speaker 1: I had a project. It was near and dear to
Speaker 1: both of our hearts. It was that I was really
Speaker 1: hoping I could get funded and uh. It also managed
Speaker 1: to buck another trend. It funded about halfway to where
Speaker 1: it needed to be. But it was on Kickstarter. It
Speaker 1: was make or break. And the reason why I say
Speaker 1: it broke some trends is that generally speaking, on Kickstarter,
Speaker 1: if you reach a certain level, a certain percentage of funding,
Speaker 1: and I want to say it's somewhere around that, of
Speaker 1: campaigns that hit their gold during the campaign, we'll we'll
Speaker 1: get all the way to funding by the end. Mine
Speaker 1: was not one of those. Now I'm really sad about
Speaker 1: that too. So we'll move on to our last fact
Speaker 1: and then we'll wrap things up. The original version of
Speaker 1: the Coolest Cooler had an attached grill, yeah, which turns
Speaker 1: out probably not the best idea for a product that's
Speaker 1: mostly made out of plast It was nixed for safe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You can't imagine a grill working too well. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can maybe have like a stand alone little stand
Speaker 1: and grill that you could put over a fire pit
Speaker 1: or something, but even then you don't have to have
Speaker 1: it cool down enough to be able to put it
Speaker 1: against a plastic cooler. Um. So that wraps up our
Speaker 1: discussion about coolest cooler. But before we go and wrap
Speaker 1: everything up for the episode, we also wanted to give
Speaker 1: an update about a previous topic that we've covered. We
Speaker 1: did an episode about Toys r Us and we talked
Speaker 1: about how at the end of that episode, we talked
Speaker 1: about how UH there was an effort to kind of
Speaker 1: bring these sort of pop up stores to life and
Speaker 1: inside of targets and things like that, and the Toys
Speaker 1: r Us name might not be totally gone. And now
Speaker 1: we've gotten word for the heads up as of the
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast, which is on June one, two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, that there is a sincere effort to bring
Speaker 1: back UH a larger version of Toys r Us, although
Speaker 1: not at the full size of the older toy stores. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there will be about the third of the size of
Speaker 1: the old toy stores, with more experience points, play areas
Speaker 1: and things like that, and also they're looking at bringing
Speaker 1: back their e commerce site. They're hoping to be back
Speaker 1: by the holiday season of two thousand nineteen, so we'll
Speaker 1: have to see if that happens. Yeah, and if it does,
Speaker 1: we'll do another update where we'll talk about maybe we'll
Speaker 1: have to do an episode at some point. It's all
Speaker 1: follow ups on I was thinking the same thing. Clearly,
Speaker 1: Canadian would be another one. Thanks for the shout out, clearly,
Speaker 1: we greatly appreciate it. Awesome. I still haven't received any
Speaker 1: crates of drinks or anything. You don't listen to him.
Speaker 1: I totally gave him a BlackBerry, clearly Canadian. That's not
Speaker 1: a crate. That was one drink and it was from you,
Speaker 1: not form. Clearly, not that we do this to get
Speaker 1: stuff from companies. We're just joking. We don't expect nor
Speaker 1: do we deserve anything from anybody. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: that episode of Business on the Brink that came out
Speaker 1: back in two thousand nineteen. Yeah, that's is no longer
Speaker 1: in production. You can still find all the episodes online,
Speaker 1: so if you want to take a quick look and
Speaker 1: see if there are any topics that interest you. We
Speaker 1: did have a habit of getting a little playful with
Speaker 1: the titles, so you might have to look at the
Speaker 1: descriptions to see what the actual episode is about. I
Speaker 1: apologize for that. We just made our own fun, but yeah,
Speaker 1: take a listen to those episodes. Let me know if
Speaker 1: there are any that you would like me to do
Speaker 1: a tech Stuff episode on. Because we were mostly focused
Speaker 1: on the business side, not as much on the tech side.
Speaker 1: If you want me to cover some of these, let
Speaker 1: me know, and you can do that by using the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app. You can navigate to the tech
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast and you can use the little microphone icon
Speaker 1: to leave a voice message that can be up to
Speaker 1: thirty seconds. You can also let me know whether or
Speaker 1: not you would like me to use the audio in
Speaker 1: an episode. I won't unless you tell me, or if
Speaker 1: you prefer, you can reach out to me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show is tech Stuff hs W
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tex Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
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