Costco

“Virtually in, in the northern hemisphere and are only. We were selling direct in places where we could, but they were basically 90% of our distribution.”

“The answer was yes, and that was Costco. The CEO of Costco was a man named Jim Senegal, and Jim said, I will not sell trampolines.”

“So we're now in A little over 16,000 retailers were in places like Kroger and Costco and Target and Walmart”

“And we skipped apart guy, which is in 2008, we decided to build our own factory in China because we weren't satisfied with the quality. So I invested about five million dollars in building a Chinese factory.”

“The CEO of Costco was a man named Jim Senegal, and Jim said, I will not sell trampolines.”

“Worked out to be about 3265 pieces in oh five.”

“Virtually in, in the northern hemisphere and our only. We were selling direct in places where we could, but they were basically 90% of our distribution.”

“Guy, we presented to Costco's lawn and garden department seven years in a row and got turned down every single year. They've just announced they're launching us this coming spring spring, 20, 22, seven years later, same exact merchant as well.”

“But unlike retail stores or food service accounts, they pay you within 15 days. So you have not paid your vendors yet, and you get the money from Costco. So they're an excellent, excellent company to deal with, especially in your growth period.”

“We didn't have money to buy data. For example, you know, there's lots of companies that will sell you data of where this demographic a person is. And this is this, that the other we would follow the lead a lot of times of Costco's or of Whole Foods, where we s…”

“They have an incredible ability to target actually down to the entire, to the exact store. So sometimes you'll see stuff that's, you know, specific only to five Costco's in the entire country.”

“There was a whole period of time where Michael and I were negotiating with the likes of Costco and others, just literally trying to buy Garmins so that we could Either sell them or give them away to friends so that we could get people onto the platform.”

“We got to a hundred million without Costco, Walmart, Amazon, any of those big retailers that are usually a big part of it.”

“Just because it's limited SKUs and just a massive display, you almost get this like billboard effect with your packaging that you don't necessarily get a regular grocer because you have potentially two to three SKUs on shelf in a way bigger category with more …”

“I remember the check was about a 100,000 dollars, which for us at that moment, because they were first and the terms are so great it actually came in much quicker than some of our retail customers, and we needed that cash to keep up with the demand.”

“So the pillars of curated assortment membership model to enable better pricing, And then private label to cut out steps in the supply chain and introduce higher quality products that are also better pricing. That was kind of the trifecta.”

“They have an order of magnitude fewer items in there, which actually creates for a better discovery process. And of course creates for better economics on their side.”

“Jim Senegal, the Costco guy, and I had a running debate for years. We had 10,000 products. He said, you should have 1500 products.”

“This year we should do almost four because we're actually getting into Costco, which is exciting.”

“Around, I think, 2004, 2005, I used to sell computer monitor at Costco, so I know the people a little bit. I had a connection there, so at the time, Costco had no market share for TVs.”

“People like Sony and Panasonic, and they don't want to deal with Costco. They give Costco the leftovers because it's, ah, they want to protect their existing dealership with Circuit City and Best Buy.”

“At that time their break even is around nine and a half percent. And they don't want to make money on merchandising anyway. They just want to make money on membership fee, right?”

“They were, they would buy like 2400, sell it for 2500 dollars.”

“And in the road shows, your schedule, they're 10 day events. So I think when we finished, we were flirting with Around 40,000 U.S. Dollars in that 10 day period.”

“Did any retailer in America believe that trampolines were dangerous, and so dangerous that they wouldn't sell them? The answer was yes, and that was Costco. The CEO of Costco was a man named Jim Senegal, and Jim said, I will not sell trampolines.”

“Where a Costco, you could walk in, and we would commit to a four-day road show Thursday through Sunday, and you'd set up your 10 by 10 booth, And we could move anywhere from a really slow moving Costco, you know, 12,000 dollars in revenue in those four days to…”

“In our case, you know, we had product problems that ended up coming out shortly after We passed this up. Had I not passed it up for that reason, there would have never been a T-Rex.”

“Costco likes to find the newest best thing and be the first to market with it. They will bring you in and then want the customer to miss you and then be excited when you're back.”

“We have a little bit of co-packing, but mostly we do all of our own baking. And when things get very busy, when we're heavy with Costco, we use our co-packer.”

“Our first order was actually for Costco for a contract manufacturing brand, and it was 300,000 bars.”