#209: Hexclad – From Auditions to Non-Stick Podcast Por arte de portada

#209: Hexclad – From Auditions to Non-Stick

#209: Hexclad – From Auditions to Non-Stick

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 What would you do if you were a starving actor that just lost his last orange? Start a cookware Company of course. Dave Young: Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick in business partner Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those. [Eco Office Ad] Dave Young: Welcome back to The Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here alongside Stephen Semple and we're talking empires. Empires, businesses that started from scratch and are now, well, as the title suggests, empires, kind of the whole idea. I saw that we were listed in some top lists in Canada as well, like top business podcasts and top reverse engineering podcasts. I thought that was a cool, that's the list that I'd rather be on anyway. Stephen Semple: Well, we were higher ranked on that one, so there you go. I think it was number two or three on that, wasn't it? Dave Young: It didn't even know it was a thing. Stephen Semple: Yeah, pretty exciting. Dave Young: So today, you whispered in my ear that we're talking about the HexClad Corporation. Stephen Semple: HexClad. Dave Young: These are the pots and pans. People with the, apparently according to ads that I've caught glimpses of are now the perfect pans. They think they've built a better mousetrap. Stephen Semple: Yeah, and it is interesting. If you take a look at them, if you've ever seen them, they actually have this pattern in them, and there's now a bunch of knockoffs, of course. But the whole idea is with the raised surface of stainless steel, you can actually, the pan will brown, because a lot of nonstick pans don't brown very well. So the whole idea is you can get a nice searing with them. And also the way it's constructed, the nonstick surface is better protected. Dave Young: So you're not going to scrape the Teflon right off the bottom of your pan with your eggs. Stephen Semple: It'll withstand higher heat. You can put it in a 500-degree oven. So in many ways, one could argue with those things that that is a better nonstick pan. Dave Young: Sure. So who, what, when did this happen? Stephen Semple: So they were founded in December of 2016 by Danny Winer and Cole McCray. And boy, I'll tell you very much a bootstrapped backyard business when they started. And in 2024, it's estimated the business did 500 million in sales, have become $1 billion brand. Dave Young: How do you build Teflon pans, nonstick pans as a backyard kind of thing? Stephen Semple: Well, that's what we're going to learn here. Now, here's the other interesting thing. They now do cookware and knives and accessories and all that other stuff, but they started basically with pots and pans and Danny's first business was, he was an actor. Dave Young: Oh, okay. Well, that makes perfect sense. Stephen Semple: Doesn't it? Dave Young: Sure. Stephen Semple: So Danny started off as an actor. That was his goal, and he moved to LA, of course, lots of auditions. And there's a certain point when you're doing that, one of the things that starts to creep in is that sense of that feeling of failure. So he's struggling a little bit with that. And then in 1994, he's in a really bad car accident, literally shatters his leg and does some damages to the vertebrae. He's doing lots of rehab, many months with a cane, and there's no way to act and he has to figure out how to recover and make money, and he's never felt so poor. One day he's coming home, and this is literally his worst moment. He's coming home. He has this home that's on the side of a hill and he has no money and he couldn't work yet.
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