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Competitor LitterMaid offered approximately $200,000 to buy the Litter-Robot patents
“One was from our, the competitor litter made. And if I recall, I think it was a number around 200,000 to buy the patents.”
Baxter: Automatic litter boxes require sifting waste rather than mechanical raking
“The litter maid was, and again, not to trash them or anything, but it was a very literal approach to the problem. But, It doesn't really break down into its functions and, you know, how can we best solve this problem? And that's what I tried to do. I tried to …”
Low early sales volume enabled vital product iteration for the Litter-Robot
“I mean, we would have certainly taken more volume if we could have gotten it, but it was kind of a blessing that the volumes were low because it allowed us to kind of take our time and learn and to adjust some things about the product.”
Baxter financed Litter-Robot retooling via supplier credit and a 12% loan
“Without a bank loan, without, you know, investors, I was actually able to retool the product by amortizing the cost of the tooling with one supplier that I worked with, and then I was able to take out a loan A two-year loan at 12% interest with another supplie…”
Shipping Litter-Robots overseas cost the same as assembling them locally
“We studied this, and we found out that what it would cost us to ship the product from overseas to our warehouse is what it would cost us to assemble it locally.”
Whisker was valued at $55 million during its 2019 private equity deal
“Well, the business at the time was valued at fifty-five million.”
Baxter's father refinanced his home to invest $35,000 for 35% of Whisker
“And so for 35,000 dollars which they actually had to refinance their home to get the cash for that 35,000 dollars, he got 35% of the business.”
Whisker adopted early e-commerce out of necessity due to low profit margins
“We were into e-commerce very early, just kind of by necessity due to the size of the product, and we didn't have a lot of margin in the product either.”
Whisker generated no profit for its first five years in business
“There was no profit for the first five years.”
Baxter self-funded Whisker's first five years with $350,000 from his consulting business
“At that time, I think I had dumped about 300 to 350,000 dollars into the business just to keep it alive. And that was all coming from the other business.”
Retailers demanded 50% margins when the Litter-Robot only yielded 30%
“Most of the retailers wanted 50 points on the product and there just wasn't a way that we could Provide that. We were maybe making 30 points at most on the product at the time.”
Whisker had sold approximately 50,000 Litter-Robot units by 2010
“By 2010, we had sold probably about 40 to 50,000 units.”
Pondera Holdings purchased exactly 50% of Whisker in 2019
“They actually bought 50% exactly. Of the company, and then Jacob and I own the other 50%.”
Whisker generated approximately 80% of its sales direct-to-consumer
“I think we were doing about 80% direct to consumer, and international was maybe five to eight percent, something like that, and the rest was, you know, the small amount of retail that we had at the time, so yeah, direct to consumer is a huge part of our busine…”
Baxter recognized he wasn't the right CEO to scale Whisker past $150M
“So it, for me, it was just recognizing that I'm not the guy that probably is the best person to take the business from, you know, a hundred and fifty million forward.”
Baxter was the sole Litter-Robot assembler for its first four months
“You know, the building, the product we did that in Pontiac, Michigan for a while, and I was actually the sole assembler for probably the first three or four months.”