The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 16 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Josh Udashkin: Building a consumer brand requires a physical retail footprint
“I think it's very hard to build brand, which is, you know, first and foremost, what we're up to here without some type of You know, physical footprint or place for consumers to interact with you being, you know, even your retail associate and how they're train…”
Udashkin: Traditional luggage brands assemble generic parts into 'cyborg shells'
“The luggage business is kind of a Mr. Potato Head business, I call it, The traditional brands, the companies take catalog parts from a number of different factories, and then they put them together on some randomly designed cyborg shell. And then they spit it …”
Udashkin: Pure direct-to-consumer strategy does not work for every category
“I'm not really a big believer in the whole direct-to-consumer narrative in every single category. I think omni-channel retail for me is the way to go, and for others”
Udashkin: Crowdfunding platforms generate sales but fail to build lasting brands
“It's starting to become, first of all, very, very difficult to build a brand off of those platforms. I think they're good at generating a certain level of sales, but then you never actually build, you know, a brand or any type of marketing funnel or really fig…”
Josh Udashkin: The luggage category lacked strong brands and consistent pricing
“There were very few great brands. There are a couple of luxury products. You know, the merchandising seemed all over the place. The pricing seemed all over the place.”
Udashkin: Hardware founders fail by prioritizing product development over brand values
“Whenever I talk to people starting these things who are so focused only on the product And getting it out the door, and you know, whatever it's going to be named, that they forget that in order to build something, you need to communicate your values, and it ne…”
Udashkin: A hardware startup is effectively multiple companies in one
“It's multiple companies in one. So you have a luggage firm, you have an electronics firm, you have mobile development, firmware development, then you have all the things around building a brand. Then you're a retailer, you're a distributor, you're a marketer, …”
Udashkin refuses meetings with VCs inexperienced in hardware investing
“I tend to generally stay away even when I get a request for a meeting. Don't really want to be their first foray into investing in a hardware company.”
Udashkin: Hardware founders should secure manufacturing partners before pitching VCs
“My advice to entrepreneurs is, you know, do the sourcing work, and a lot of the things around VC will come easier, because they're really the people that are going to invest in building your prototypes.”
Udashkin: In-app support is the future of customer experience
“When you can communicate with your customer at the touch of a button on an application, that's the customer experience of the future. Instead of having to dial one eight eight eight and get somebody on the line and coordinate some type of return for us, it's, …”
Udashkin: Aldo's power SKUs generated 70% of total product sales
“We had these power SKUs that really were selling 70% of the assortment, so we would make a couple of products, they would turn into bestsellers, and the bestsellers were really carrying the entire business”
Udashkin: Aldo.com outperformed physical store sales tenfold
“You know, we said at Aldo that aldo.com was our number one store by tenfold and very, very efficient store at that.”
Raden hired former Beats by Dre designer Kenny Sweet for luggage design
“I met Kenny Sweet who had worked on the Beats project for a number of years, and we really vibed, and I had this merchandising concept around a single almost unlined product, you know, that was very stark and looked like many of the products that we've been bu…”
Udashkin: Global luggage market is a $40 billion annual business
“The industry in our case is a forty billion dollar a year business globally.”
Raden sold out initial inventory, driving shipping delay to 15 days
“We sold out of all the product that we had made, even with venture funding and working capital funding and everything else, and so now we're You know, 15 day shipping times when really we're meant to be a same day or second day business.”
Udashkin: Raden's five-year roadmap centers on mobile travel software
“Most of our roadmap is really around the mobile experience and really connecting with a travel experience that engages users of our product and provides them with all sorts of other information about where they're going and the airports that they're traveling …”