Advice Line with Kip Tindell of The Container Store

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And I hope that some people take it forward to have more of that because it's a great joy in life when it occurs. You know, a lot of founders, Kip, ask me about growth, right? And there's differing views and changing views on growth now. For a while, it was grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. Now there's a lot of focus on profitability, which I think is smart. What is your sort of philosophy around growth in retail and how do you think about it? I mean, the entrepreneur, be it retail or anything, needs to decide how, you know, how fast they can grow without getting away from what brought them there in the first place. I mean, you know, I always pegged our growth at 20% a year, which in those days, 20% growth was astronomically fast. Now it's not anymore, you know, with technology companies and that type of thing, but it's. Boy, retail back then, 20%. And I just stopped it at 20% because going faster than that, it would be like the RPM needle getting too far into the red. And we did that for over 40 years. I read every article I can find where there's sort of a Nouvelle rebellious attitude that you don't have to grow at all. It helps to grow a little bit because there is inflation. You do want to reward great employees and that type of thing. And so, but this excessive growth is, is why so many companies, frankly, don't make it. I mean, be humble enough to figure out what your limitations are, grow at that rate, and then do it for a long, long time rather than trying to grow at astronomical proportions in a short period of time. Yeah. Kip, you know, I think a lot of people, you know, who think about, well, one day, you know, I'll have made it and I can retire. And here you are, you've done it. What are you prioritizing now? What is, I mean, you mentioned travel, of course, and things that you can do, but what about in a bigger. What are some of the priorities that you and Sharon have kind of established for, you know, for the rest of your time here on earth? Sharon and I built this business together and I love, I think you should work with the people you love. People say, oh, you shouldn't work with your spouse. You shouldn't work with your friends. Yes, you should. That's who, that's exactly who you should work. It doesn't always work out, but it doesn't always work out to work with people who are not your spouse and not your friends. And we loved it. I think more than anybody I know loved their work, but now we love retirement. Even more than that. I mean, the freedom, my God, the lack of stress. I feel like a liberal arts student trying to decide what I'm going to major in. You know, I could do whatever the hell I want. It's just incredible. And I've really, I enjoy people that say that they enjoy growing older. I'm trying to do that. I think I do. I think the 60s are better than the 50s. I think the 50s are better than the 40s. That's got to stop. I think the 60s are better than the 40s. I doubt the 90s are better than the 80s, right? That's got to stop at some point. But so far, we're loving growing older. So I would just submit to anybody listening that I don't care how much you love your work. Make time in your life for a little bit of retirement because it is just gloriously free. I love that. All right. Kip, what do you say? Should we take our first call? Yep. Love to. All right. Let's do it. Welcome to The Advice Line. You're on with Kip Tindall, co-founder of The Container Store. Tell us your name. Where are you calling from? And just one line about your business, please. Hi, Guy. Hi, Kip. Before we start, I just want to say thank you so much. I've learned so much from listening to how I built this over the past years, and it's quite surreal to actually be here. Today, I'm Juliette Bruce, and I'm calling from Provence in the south of France. I'm the founder and creator of Cooler Wand. It's a reusable magic wand with a detachable frozen star that cools hot food and drinks pretty much in seconds. And has surprisingly become much more than that. Well, okay. So thanks for calling, Juliette, and thanks for the kind words. All right. So you are based in France or living in France right now, and you have a. So it's a wand with a freezable star on it, and you use it to cool drinks? Yeah. Am I getting that right? That's absolutely right. The frozen star of the wand lives in your freezer whenever food or drinks are too hot or someone needs. Actually, now someone needs to soothe a bump or something like that. So it's a really cool wand. Or an ache or an itch. It's there. The frozen star cools in seconds without watering anything down. I got it. Okay. So now I'm pretty sure. So this is for children or, I guess, kid-oriented because it's a wand with a frozen end, and it's designed. I'm assuming it's designed for kids. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, originally, my market was towards kids. It's a very magical thing. I obviously designed it for my kids myself. I've got three children, and they've always had really big problems with hot food. And it came. The idea just came because I thought it already existed, and I had no idea that something like that didn't exist before. So you created it? Yeah, absolutely, from scratch. So I'm a sonographer originally. I design windows, and I create worlds for luxurious brands like Hermès, and I love creating worlds. And so I really thought my kids just needed a magic wand to cool their food down. I love that. I mean, it was a really crazy road of finding the right people to obviously produce it. And I'm really high on quality, so I didn't want to have it produced with wrong materials because today people really don't want plastics to be badly made. So I've been really, really tight with the production, and we produce in Portugal. Yeah, because Portugal. I remember buying baby food containers that were made in Brazil and Portugal when my kids were, you know, just like 15, 16 years ago because we would freeze baby food, and they were BPA-free. So this is basically. It's like when you have a baby food container, and you have a baby food container, and you have a baby food container, and you have a reusable ice cube that you might put in a cocktail. That's essentially the same concept. And a kid can get a hot mug of cocoa and just stir that thing in there, and it'll cool it down instead of putting an ice cube in, which was always our fix, but then it waters down the drinks. How have you been doing? I mean, where are you. I'm assuming you're selling these on your website only right now? So far, I've sold direct-to-consumer through my website, of course. As you said, Place Cooler won in nine independent retailers in France, and one in France. So I've been in Malta right now. I've been initiating discussions with power pharmacies. I've also reached out to cafes, family-friendly spaces, and even hospitals, actually, to test the environments where families can get a natural experience of it. And actually, recently, my son was in hospital, and the first thing he asked me when they asked him if he wanted cold, he asked for his Cooler wand. So I realized that it was actually something very emotional and soothing for him. Yeah. I think the magic of the wand is so cool, and, you know, that's a big part of this. It also, I chuckled, you know, I guess with the heat wave you've had in Provence lately, you can't just wait for the food to cool. It's going to take a while. Well, to be honest, every adult has it out at the moment, I have to say, because cooling the temples really helps as well. Juliet, before we dive in further, tell us what your question is for us. Yes. So my question was, I don't have the budget to launch the kind of awareness campaign a completely new product category probably needs. How do I create enough opportunities for people to discover it so that it has a chance of becoming part of everyday life? Okay. I want to bring Kip in. Kip, I'm curious, from a retail perspective, right, if Juliet was looking to get this into a store, like if somebody put this into the container store, how would a customer discover it? Well, it would be actually well-placed in the container store because you have a very high service level, you know, so that they could relate, you know, the product. I was. I was thinking this is more of a specialty independent retail store product than a mass merchant where there's no service at all. It's very interesting. I guess it's BPA-free, yeah? And I think it's so important that you said you really were particular on that. And you just need to make that clear to everybody. I mean, particularly parents, right? And so that's. I would say that you need to just quintuple your efforts to make sure everybody understands that that is the materials that you've used. Yeah. I mean, I think that's absolutely critical. You know, Juliet, what. I mean, this is a challenge, right, with somebody who has. doesn't have a significant budget. But of course, you know, we all have access to these social media tools. And again, this is something that doesn't necessarily benefit from advertising, but from the demonstration, seeing it in action. You know, and I can imagine you may already be doing this, but I can imagine literally doing a version of the same video a thousand times, just in different ways. You know, I can even imagine like a video of a mug of hot cocoa, and you have a thermometer in there, in that mug, and you have the kids start stirring it, and you watch the thermometer go down, and you just. You don't even need to comment. It's like, are you a parent? You have this problem every day. Here's the solution. You know, I'm sure you've got social media accounts, and just make that a version of that video again and again, like infinite video ideas. And I'm talking about like low, you can literally just put an iPhone on a stand, right? I love that. That's a great idea. Build up the fun and magic, because God knows we need more fun and magic in the world. That to me is one way. And then the other way is just seeing if you can identify parents of small kids who are influencers, but not mass, not million person influencers, but maybe they have a thousand followers, and just message them, see if you can send them one. Yeah, we've had a really, really luck, actually. I had an influencer who's a for ADHD children and who I didn't know. And she actually bought the product and then she talked about it. And actually that really helped a lot because it was so real and true and not forced or not. And that's what I find I have trouble with is the fact that I just really want people to find happiness in this tool and not try and sell, you know, when you're in this industry and obviously you create dreams for people and this is what we do in retail or, you know, in advertising and all this, we're very hard on ourselves on basically what we're supposed to achieve. And obviously this takes obviously budget and I'm getting there. I just, it's about investment and I believe in it. So I mean, Hermes, you know, right there, their ad budgets are in the maybe hundreds of millions. I don't even know, tens of millions for sure. But this is, I mean, this could be fun. It could be really fun to just make these very simple videos with your kids or friends of your, you know, kids who are friends of yours. Yeah. Our Instagram is doing. I mean, we have quite a lot of traction on there. I mean, we were, I mean, I don't know how much it is good traction, but we have a video and it's a half a million views and like 12,000 likes and it's really, they do like that. I'm a, I'm on that trajectory. I just need to keep pushing and doing what you're saying. Like just trying to make it more and more creative. Lots of times it just takes that relentless pursuit of the things that are working really well right now. And then after what seems like a forever amount of that, you get a few breaks where some big things happen. And you get a little bit more scale. You know, being patient has a lot to do with being humble and being okay with it taking a while. And, you know, it actually might take a long time, but that's the surest methodology. And if you do this sure and slow, steady thing, you have much less chance for failure and much better chance, I think, you know, for, for success. The brand is called Kula Wand. Juliet Bruce, thank you for calling in. Good luck. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller and another round of advice. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This. And I'll see you next time on How I Built This. So you can get back to the part of the business you actually wanted to do in the first place, which I'm guessing is not paperwork. So if you're a small business owner trying to figure out how to do it, you can get back to the part of the business you actually wanted to do in the first place, which I'm guessing is not paperwork. So if you're a small business owner trying to figure it all out on your own, you don't have to. Head to JustWorks.com and take some weight off your small business shoulders. That's JustWorks.com. Stop making it so hard on yourself. Head to JustWorks.com and start easing those small business worries in just a few clicks. Because you don't have to worry when it just works. Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show is a part of the team. So if you're just patient and humble, humble, which all entrepreneurs struggle with that. But if we're patient and humble, the big things will come. Keep out that stuff that's really working, the channels that are already producing results. And so I'd say more independent retailers, investing in trade shows. Now, because trade shows are fading, we have wholesale websites and all of that. I wouldn't spend the money and time and effort into trade shows. But you mentioned sales representatives, and I would do those. I have a lot of opinions about sales reps. I mean, sales reps are great if they're on commission because they don't cost anything unless they're selling. I guess same advice I give everybody, just focus on the things that are really working. I'm kind of boring in that pursuing humble, slower growth, but that's a good way to keep from going out of business too. Kip, I agree with you. I mean, look, you're doing now half of your business is coming out of business. You're doing half of your business is coming out of business. And I think you want to really analyze who your best wholesale customers are. You want to identify the channels that are producing the highest value and also the most loyal accounts, because basically that's a proven playbook, right? And so when you hire sales reps, you've already identified who your ideal wholesale customer is, and that's who they're going to be chasing. Okay. Yeah. And we've tried to narrow it down to see what type of business is a good customer for us. So we've been doing a cold outreach to some of these businesses and it's turned into a couple thousand dollars worth of sales over the past month. So I think there's potential there. Yeah. And what about direct to consumer? Direct to consumer, our main channel that we use is Etsy. That's where we essentially bought an Etsy business 10 years ago. It does well. Etsy sales, they're okay, but they've been relatively flat for the past couple of years. A lot of competition too on personalization on Etsy, yeah. It is. And with that too, the shipping rates have gone up. It's a lot of competition. So now it's $6.50 to pretty much send any package at minimum. So I can't be selling those $10 items and charge $6.50. Customers don't want to pay that. So yeah. Corporate gifting, it sounds like your product would be great for corporate gifting, but how do you build the corporate gifting thing? What have you learned about that so far? We have some good customers that do corporate gifting, but that's all been inbound. I have not been successful doing any outbound outreach to them. They found us through FAIR and they'll come, they'll buy sometimes four or five, six, 700 units of an item that they want personalized. We'll turn it around within a couple of days and hopefully they come back. I mean, that inbound stuff is terrific. And the key there, and you know, this is to provide the absolute best customer service possible. You know, we did an episode recently on the show about a company called Sweetwater and they are the biggest, they sell more musical instruments than anybody in America. It's the biggest, they sell audio video equipment. You know, Amazon could crush them, but the secret of that business's success, as you'll hear in the episode, is customer service. They are so good at it. It's like Zappos, that Zappos model. And if you're getting that inbound and people are ordering, you know, 700 golf tees or with the company's logo on it, you want to make sure that you are treating them like a first-class customer, you know, like a Michelin three-star customer, right? That's a great way to look at it. And the bigger things come once you do all of the smaller things right. And if you can remember details, you know, one of the things Sweetwater does is their customer, I think they call them customer service engineers. They have index cards. I mean, they're electronic now on every customer. They ask about their kids, they ask about their families and people call up and they'll say, oh, isn't your son now old enough for college? And, you know, they'll say, oh, how, how, how'd the football team do this season? I mean, literally. And people are blown away. And they're like, oh, how'd the football team do this season? I mean, literally. They're blown away by that stuff. No, no. I like that idea. We used to, we, we, after 9-11, we had people come in the store just because they needed somebody to talk to. So we thought we must have a pretty good relationship with our customer that they saw that as, you know, the place to come. And so building that with your customers, it will, it will, it will get hard to do it at that level as you become bigger. But by doing it that way, now you will become bigger, I think. Steady, steady. I love this idea. Also, he mentioned that he bought the business a few years ago. And I'm here from more and more younger people, recent college graduates, who are getting interested in the idea of buying an existing business. Now, this is not a new strategy or tactic, but I think for a long time, people just thought it was boring. But that's really, especially as more and more baby boomers are just looking to retire. A lot of them want to sell their business and many of them want to sell their businesses for a relatively small amount of money. Sometimes are also willing to mentor whoever buys it. And so, you know, I think that's a really good idea. There are some really interesting opportunities out there. Yep. If you can do it, it speeds it up a lot. And to do it all yourself and start it is all consuming. All right. We're going to take another quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This. September is World Alzheimer's Month, but most people never check their brain health until something's feeling off or wrong. I wanted to stop waiting and look at my own data. So I signed up for Function. It provides straightforward blood tests that can give you the kind of information about what's happening inside your body that was simply unavailable to most people just a few years ago. Your focus and mental stamina leave a data trail in your blood, and Function tracks it. Did you know that magnesium is a good source of vitamin C? It's a good source of vitamin C. It's a good It actually supports nerve signaling and focus under stress. And your omega-3 index fuels brain cell membranes and is tied to focus and cognitive performance. You can get tests for these biomarkers and more through Function. Plus, Function members can also get brain-related add-on tests like an Alzheimer's detection test, which measures blood markers that can flag Alzheimer's risk years before symptoms. Check your brain and health the way I do. Function provides 160-plus lab tests for a dollar a day, and member pricing on advanced imaging. Join at functionhealth.com slash built, and use code built25 for a $25 credit. Welcome back to The Device Line, right here on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking your calls with Kip Tindall. He's the co-founder of The Container Store, and Kip, what do you say? Next caller, are you ready? Let's go, Guy. This ought to be great. All right, let's bring in our next call. Welcome to The Device Line. You're on with Kip Tindall, founder, co-founder of The Container Store. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business, please. Hi, Guy. Hi, Kip. My name is Kaitlin Kao, and I'm calling in from Orange County, California. I'm the founder and CEO of Kaomi Sleep, a company creating products that redefine how people experience comfort at bedtime. Our flagship product is the Sherpeness, a fitted bed sheet with soft supportive borders built within the perimeter. Okay, welcome to the show, Kaitlin. So Kaomi Sleep, this is a, and I'm looking at your website now, and I want to describe this for people who are only listening to the show, which is, it's like a soft border, like full rectangular border around your mattress, like baby bumpers in a crib, but for adults, sort of, right? Correct. It's like a fitted sheet that pulls over your mattress, and then the borders on top are sewn within the perimeter so they don't move. So as a teenager, I struggled with anxiety, and every night I built a fortress, of pillows and stuffed animals around me just to feel safe and secure enough to fall asleep. The problem is that by morning, everything had shifted or fallen off the bed, and that's why I created the Sherpeness, because we found that so many other people related to this. So it's like a, I mean, it's not like a weighted blanket, but it's a similar principle, which is you have this kind of comfort around you, right? Like that you are surrounded by these bumpers, and you're sort of inside the bed. Tell me about the business so far. You launched this when, and how are you, and how has it been doing so far? I launched Kaomi Sleep in November 2025, only eight months ago, while attending USC Marshall's full-time MBA program. And in just eight months, we've done $635,000 in revenue. Incredible. Congratulations. All right. Before we jump in further, tell us your question. So the Sherpeness had over 197 million social media views, 100% organically, which allowed us to scale through a pre-order model without raising outside capital. My question is, how do founders turn a viral product into a lasting brand? Okay, that's a big question. Kip, I want to bring you in here. Really cool idea, right? Yeah. I would say that with the exposure you've had, you probably don't need to worry about sales as much as you need to worry about people copying, you know, what you have because of the, you know, container store, and when we had absolutely no money, people were opening stores and calling at Susie's Containers and that type of thing, and we didn't have enough money to hire patent attorneys to defend against that. And so I would think really early on, one of the main things you need to do is to find somebody. Patent attorneys are like golfers. There's Kip Tindall on the golf course and there's Tiger Woods on the golf course. You want Tiger Woods, but maybe they could participate with you in a way, since you're not able to spend all your money on patent attorneys right now, maybe they can share in the future gain while protecting you while you're still vulnerable to all that because you can't afford to protect it. Yeah. Caitlin, what kind of protections are you working on at a given place? Right now we have a provisional patent for the Sherpa Nest, and then we also have the Sherpa Nest pending a trademark. And we actually have experienced a lot of scams and copyright infringements. I think we had over 113 different accounts scamming other people using our product and images. And we have been able to successfully take some of them down just by serving them. And so that's what we've been doing so far to protect our brand. I'm not sure how scalable or sustainable that is, but I totally agree with you, Kip, that it's something we need to look out for. Yeah. I mean, listen, this is both a good and bad problem to have. Not only what Kip was talking about, but the virality problem. Because we've seen this and we've had versions of this question on the advice line where you just put something out there and it just hits. And then the concern is how do you capture that for the long-term? Right. Because the algorithm changes or virality is borrowed attention, right? And so the question is, and it's a good question, is how do you, it's not how do you maintain that momentum? You won't be able to get 197 million views again and again and again, but it's how do you capture as much as you can and build a brand around the feeling of what you're talking about and not the product? Because the feeling is security. I guess one of the things I would do aside, from just really leaning into as much as you, as many videos and as much of that as you can is other sort of secondary items, right? Like different patterns or fabrics or maybe pillows. Maybe you're thinking about these things already, different kinds of, but I would really start to think about, okay, we're building a sleep brand here. Just like Eight Sleep is a sleep brand, these meditation apps are kind of their sleep brands. How can we be a 360 degree sleep brand with this as our hero product? People are spending a lot of money on sleep. And that to me is where the opportunity is. That's a great idea. Totally agree. I think you have a great tailwind in that the world is really interested in getting more sleep now. We've identified that as perhaps the most healthy thing you can do for your health and the viral thing. Great. Embrace it. I still think you should get seven or eight hours sleep, but maybe this is the time that you just really redouble your efforts to relentlessly pursue those things that seem to be working the best. Forget about the things that you haven't thought of yet that you think might catapult it to the next level. Those things usually aren't there or around the corner or they're coming later if you'll just do an even redoubled, better job pursuing the things that seem to be working the best. That's true. And when it comes to the knockoffs and the copycats, I mean, it's going to happen. I would be really careful not to let it distract you and obsess you because as we've seen on the show in the past, it can really damage businesses. TRX, they fought copycats for so long. Eventually it was okay, but it can really consume you. I would focus really on building the brand as the sleep brand. That's definitely something I'll look into. Yeah. It's a really cool idea. It's the brand's called K.O. Me Sleep. Caitlin K.O., thank you so much for calling in. Thank you so much for the advice. Yeah. Good luck. I love when people come up with just original ideas that, you know, things that you just haven't seen before. And I should be careful when I say original because, of course, you know, everything is derivative of something else, but still like, this is cool. I haven't seen something like this out there. A cozy, right? Yeah, it's cool. From our own experience, you know, it's very original, very personal, and I think that's going to help her do very well. Yeah, for sure. Kit, before I let you go, a question for you. If you could go back now to when you and Sharon and Garrett were starting out, knowing what you know now about the business, retail business, what would have been helpful, do you think? What could you have told yourself back then that would have been helpful? Everybody said that we were admirably patient. You know, we weren't in a hurry to have a thousand stores or anything like that. We were patient and we were right. And Tiger Woods, when he's leading a golf tournament, I work with a nonprofit group that sponsors a tournament here in Dallas. And when Tiger was winning the tournament, he wouldn't go running around at night like everybody else. He went to the driving range and practiced more, you know, and so just that type of relentless humility, you know, driving to be even better than you've been in the past and patience. I think that builds a business more truly than anything else. Yeah, it is great advice. That's Kip Tindall, co-founder of The Container Store. Kip, thank you so much for coming back onto the show. It was great being with you again. All the best to you. It's great to have you. And by the way, if you haven't heard Kip's original How I Built This episode, go back and check it out. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. And here's one of my favorite moments from that interview. July 1st, 1978, the first container store, I guess, is opened. Do you remember people walking into the store in those early days saying, you're charging for empty boxes? Yeah, a lot of people said that. My father had a birthday party and I was the bartender and, you know, they're like, son, you're going to open a store selling empty boxes? You know, that's going to be really hard, you know, and it was humiliating. And boy, trying to explain it before we actually put the products on the shelves and open the store was embarrassing. Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to check out my newsletter you can sign up for it for free at GuyRoz.com. Each week it's packed with tons of insights from entrepreneurs and my own observations and experiences interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs ever. And if you're working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one minute message that tells us about your business, the issues or questions you'd like help with, and hopefully we can help you with them. And make sure to tell us how to reach you. You can send us a voice memo at hibtid.wondery.com or call us at 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there. And we'll put all this in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Alex Chung with music composed by Ramtina Rablui. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley. Our production staff also includes Carrie Thompson, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, JC Howard, Sam Paulson, Chris Messini, Catherine Seifer, Neva Grant, and many more. Thank you so much for watching. and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. We get support from Engine. A lot of founders start with a product or an idea. But at some point, the business becomes something else. Think about Brian Scudamore. He started 1-800-GOD-JUNK with one truck and a vision to make junk removal a real brand. That worked. And then it became hundreds of crews across multiple cities, trucks on the road every day, routes changing by the hour, and a team that had to be in the right place. Before the customer even called. Or Beryl Stafford, who started Bobo's by baking oat bars in her kitchen. Next thing she knows, she's flying to retail meetings, demoing at trade shows, managing distributors coast to coast, running a national food brand out of what used to be a family recipe. Or Tom Hale, who built backroads around the idea that active travel could be a premium experience. That means guides in six countries, gear shipments, guest logistics, thousands of moving, and even moving pieces that all have to land before a single trip begins. Different businesses, same truth. Here's what I've noticed after talking to hundreds of founders. The hard part is rarely the big idea. It's what happens when the idea works. Suddenly, you've got people on the move, and all the logistics that come with it. That's the real test. And that's why I think NGIN is worth knowing about. NGIN is the fastest growing modern travel and spend platform in the country, built for small and medium-sized businesses. It's the fastest growing travel and spend platform in the country, built for small and medium-sized businesses. The average business traveler spends 45 minutes booking a single trip on a legacy platform. With NGIN, that drops to as little as two and a half minutes. Last year, NGIN customers saved $318 million on travel, average savings of 26% on hotel bookings, no contracts, no booking fees. More than 1,000 businesses join NGIN every month. Join them and get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at engine.com slash built.