The Ledger
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Curt Richardson: Effective company leadership cannot function through a partnership
“I didn't feel like leadership Could happen very well through a partnership. Leadership really needed to come from one person.”
OtterBox bootstrapped hardware tooling with $4M in high-interest private debt
“I had a minimum of like a hundred grand. So, I mean, we borrowed up to three and a half to four million dollars, I think, somewhere in that, and we were paying that much interest, but we needed that to build the tooling, to build the products, to go to the sho…”
Curt Richardson claims OtterBox runs one of America's best supply chains
“I mean, today I would say Otter probably does supply chain better than just about any business in the United States.”
OtterBox profit grew despite revenue drops from slower phone upgrade cycles
“People don't buy phones as often. So, ah, as far as overall revenue, we've dropped. But as far as overall profit, we've come up.”
Richardson: Founders often outgrow their operational skill sets as companies scale
“I think any entrepreneur many times hits a size of a business where it's like, okay, this is beyond my skills. I'm great at startup, but this has turned in operational.”
Richardson: Early OtterBox refused to spend capital on unmeasurable advertising
“My philosophy early on was, I'm not going to spend money on advertising unless I can measure it. Because if you can't measure it, you have no clue where that money's going.”
OtterBox's Defender was the very first protective case designed for the iPhone
“The Defender was really what launched Otter, and that was the first case for the iPhone as well.”
OtterBox revenue exploded from $5M to $575M over five years
“We grew 1100% in five years. We went from five million to five hundred and seventy-five million in five years in revenue, and that's just crazy.”
OtterBox launched to build small waterproof utility cases, competing with Pelican
“There was Pelican products out there that made the big boxes, but nobody had small boxes.”
Curt Richardson: OtterBox reached $1.1 billion in peak revenue
“So, you know, when we grew, we went clear up to 1.1 billion in revenue.”
AT&T's planned three-month OtterBox retail test sold out in three days
“So, he said, but we'll do a test. So they did a test, and they were going to do a three-month test. Well, I think they did a three-day test, because they all sold out. They sold like crazy.”
Bain Capital passed on buying OtterBox, doubting the phone case market
“We worked with Goldman, and we worked with, I still remember talking to an old guy at Bain Capital, and his name was Josh, so Josh, if you're listening He said, well, I don't know where Case will be in five years.”
Curt Richardson bought out his OtterBox co-founder for $350,000 in 2002
“I bought him out for three 50 and I still owed the bank about a half million bucks.”
OtterBox received its first $1M purchase order from AT&T for BlackBerries
“I remember getting our first million dollar PO from AT&T. For the BlackBerry.”
OtterBox manufactures over 100,000 protective phone cases every single day
“By the way, the company's best-selling case is still The Defender, and Kurt says this year OtterBox will make thirty-nine million cases in total, or more than a 100,000 every single day.”
OtterBox gives every employee a two-day professional life planning session
“Now, one thing we do for every otter that's been At OtterBox or any of our other companies, we give them a life plan after a year. So much like a Strat-Op, they get to spend two days with a life planner and really discover what they want.”