Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry

[Music] We ran out of money. I had about 10 employees at that point. And so I write this letter that says, "Dear employees, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to close down the business." And Friday morning, I call everybody into the office to tell them that we're closing down. And the phone rings and the lady at the front desk says, "There's this guy here who wants to see you." And he says, "Travis, I'm here to talk to you." And I said, "I'm sorry, I'm not hiring and I'm not even interested, thank you." And he says, "Well, I might want to invest." [Music] Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Ross and on the show today, how in obsession with finding the perfect water bottle led Travis Ross back to invent a new one, Hydroflas, which became one of the most popular metal bottles in the country. [Music] Around 2007, Travis Ross back walked into a sporting goods store looking for something pretty simple. A water bottle, a reusable container that he could take to the beach to keep cold water cold. And that purchase, or should I say, attempted purchase, changed his life. Because in that store, Travis could not find the bottle he was looking for. So he started looking deeper. And when he realized the product he wanted wasn't on the market, he decided to make it himself. People told him it couldn't be done, or that it would be too expensive, or that he didn't have the right background. And to be fair, he didn't. Travis wasn't a design engineer, he wasn't a materials expert. But he had an idea and a stubborn belief that it should exist. And so this is the story of how Travis basically proved the skeptics wrong. But it's also a story about how much time and effort it took to do that. Because this conversation really gets into the mechanics of building something. The painstaking hours of research and reverse engineering, the risky trip to China to find just the right manufacturer, the improvising and gery rigging that went into making a first prototype. The company Travis eventually built became hydroflask. And in just a few years, he and his then girlfriend would go from selling bottles at farmers markets in Portland to seeing hydroflask become one of the most popular water bottle brands in the country. Travis Rossback grew up in the 1980s and 90s in Salem, Oregon. After high school, he joined his dad in the Virgin Islands, where he got certified to become a dive instructor and later a private pilot. And as cool as those jobs were, Travis was restless. He wanted to start his own business. And eventually, he moved back to the Pacific Northwest and settled in Bend, Oregon. I had a girlfriend at that time and we rented a place. And one of the first nights we were there, we were sitting watching a movie and drinking a bottle of wine and a guy walked into the backyard. And so I jumped up and ran out back and he was building a fence at the rental house. And I thought, well, that's an idea. I'd never even thought about people building fences before. How do you do this? And he showed me he's using metal pipes and clear cedar. There's no knots. And Bend was really starting to grow about 2005 or so. And so the fences and the houses were going in everywhere. And I asked him, I said, well, are you doing the subdivisions? And he said, no, I just like to do one house at a time. I said, well, why don't you do the subdivisions? Because that's, you know, 200 houses in one go. And he said, no, I'm not interested. And I said, well, do you mind if I do that? And he said, I don't care what you do. I said, well, I'm going to do that. So I went back in the house and I told my girlfriend, I said, I want to start a fence company. So we started bent fencing. All right. This is important because she will factor in later your girlfriend's name is Cindy because she will, you will be together for a while and start other businesses. But let's talk about the fence business. How did you know about, like, did you know how to build fence? Not at all. I had no clue. I didn't know a postal digger from a pry bar. So I got on Craigslist and found a guy who worked at the number one fence company in town, Mike's fence center. And he was ready to leave there. And I said, well, come on, come work with me. And I'll make you the head guy. And he said, okay. And so we went out and bought a truck and bought all the tools that the supply company told us that we would need. And the day before our first project, he got arrested. And so we were supposed to show up in Sun River and put in the first fence. And instead I ended up going to the homeless shelter and found a couple guys that said they knew how to defences and went down and learned how to build a fence on site. All right. So you start this fence business and and and who, you know, how are you like competing against established fence companies? I have to assume you were you were charging less. Well, a lot of the fence companies were still using wood. And they would say, oh, pressurized wood lasts forever. And it's going to be here forever. Well, no, actually not. It it rots and it breaks. So we were using stainless steel pipes and then building wooden boxes around it. And then we're also doing clear cedar, which had no knots. And it just looks beautiful. It's a very high end looking fence. And so we were going in to a lot of the high end subdivisions. And how would you given that you had no experience and I have to imagine you're in bed, right? That they're established fence companies who are working with developers who are trusted. Like how does a guy like you who has no contacts or connections in that world like gain the trust of developers to hire you. Well, we called it bend fencing, which actually went quite a ways a lot of our customers just thought we had been around forever. And why would we not be we have the name bend fencing and hired a lot of good people who taught me a lot. And it's a high turnover rate. And so I had to learn pretty quick how to build a fence myself and drill holes in the rock and get through the ice and stuff. So, all right. So you run this business. I think you would end up running it for almost two years. Is that right? Yes. And from what I understand, you're getting burned out doing this. It's just a grind. It's like seven days a week, you know, 14 hour days. No breaks. Is that a fair description? It exactly was. Yeah, I try to take off a couple hours on Sunday, but typically that wouldn't work. And I did. I got burnt out and I called the office and I told her I said, look, I'm going to kill myself or kill somebody else. I have to get out of here. And it was it was cold. And I was in pain. And I said, either Mexico or Hawaii, but I need to go somewhere warm and I need to go quick. And she called back and said, all right, come when you say she you're talking about Cindy your partner. Yeah. And she says, all right, come home and grab your bag. And I took off to a Wahoo. And I remember landing in a Wahoo. And as soon as the door opened, I could just feel the aloha. And I called her and I said, you can keep the company or you can sell it. But either way, I live here now. Wow. She said, where are you? And yet the bar you drunk, I said, no, I'm still on the airplane. I haven't got off yet, but I live here. And I spent about nine days on vacation in a Wahoo and went back to Bend and said, I'm done. I'm completely out of this. And we put it on Craig's list and sold a couple weeks later. Yeah, I mean, I understand the impulse of landing in Hawaii and just thinking, I'm not ever leaving that place because I have been there. And it's absolutely incredible. And I felt that before, by the way. But you left behind your fence company, right? So now you had to figure out something else to do. And I guess I guess you decide to start like a sign making company in a Wahoo. I did. Yeah. So I, there was sign shops in in a Wahoo. And there was a lot of them. Every couple blocks, you'd see a sign on the corner that said sign company or banners or something like that. And there was a huge amount of competition for it. But I wanted to try that. I had a fascination with embellishing a substrate and making it different and beautiful. So I thought, well, let's just buy a platter and start a sign company. A platter is basically like a large printer. It's like a razor blade that's computerized. And so it cuts vinyl. Okay. Yeah. All right. So here's what what I understand you said that you, you noticed a lot of sign shops in in Hawaii like, you know, all over the place like every street corner had a sign shop, right? And so why would you get into that business? business if it was already super competitive? Well, technically what I would see were signs advertising for signs. And so there were very few actual brick and mortar sign shops. It was that a lot of people owned a plotter and so they would make banners and call themselves the sign company. I see. Okay. Well, if the best you can do is cut blue and black vinyl and put it on a white banner, I bet we could figure out a way to do it different and or better than what you're doing. And you're in in Oahu, you're living there with Cindy at this point. Yes. Yes. What was her reaction when you said, why don't we buy a plotter and make signs? She was down. We thought that yeah, that's a wild idea, but why not? And sure enough, there's a sign show in Orlando and it's like it was in a couple weeks. And so we bought tickets to fly to Florida. And at this big convention, I saw this one booth called Fellers and there was one guy, Frank, who's the owner. And so I went up and said, hey, Frank, I want to start a sign company because what do you need? I said, I don't know. Could you tell me? And he thought I was crazy, but they told us what we needed and what we should buy and shipped it out to Oahu and the guy showed up and installed the printer. And it was a 64 inch printer. So we could print banners as opposed to just putting vinyl on top of them. So we could do full color photographic image banners. And where did you get a shop in Oahu? We did. Yeah, we just got the biggest lease that we could find in a Ford, which was right downtown, right by the Blazedale Center, right by the big call of CM. And we did screen printing and embroidery and hats and tablecloths and table throws. We ended up doing big outdoor signs and we did a lot of business development, branding, marketing. All right, so this sounds like a pretty good business. But I'm trying to understand what happened to it. Why am I not talking to a guy who ended up starting a chain of sign stores? You've got a business going. Were you making money? Yes, we were breaking even and slightly pulling ahead. So we were bringing in a couple hundred thousand a year. I'd say yes. All right. So you're doing that job and you like it. But what's going on? Well, one day I was out and I was running errands and I was thirsty. I'm tired of seeing the plastic wash up on the beaches. I want to get a non single use bottle to drink water. And so I thought, well, I'll just get an algae and then I can reuse it. So I go into the sporting goods store thinking that's pretty simple. Twenty bucks. I got a bottle and I'm back to work and tomorrow is another day. And there was some employees up front and I said, hey, where are the water bottles? Right. It takes me back and he shows me this wall that was completely empty. There were only two bottles left on it. And I said, what happened here? And he said, well, the owner's French and she just got back from France and her dad is a doctor and he says there's this stuff called BPA. And we don't know what it is. It's probably not going to be anything. But as a precautionary measure, she decided that she wanted us to take all these bottles off the shelf. Okay. But the Nalgene's, I don't think at least today they're BPA free. Now they are, yes. I see. Okay. Now I see Nalgene stopped using BPA in 2008. So at that time, it's possible that they did have BPA. And I remember this because my first child was born in 2009 and the BPA thing was hardcore. But you know, everything was like no BPA free, BPA free and a baby. And I was like, oh my God, I should be really careful about this. So okay. Yeah. And I said, well, who's going to refill this shelf? And he said, nobody, there's nobody else doing water bottles. And it hit me right in the back of my head and it came right out my mouth and I said, I will, I will do that. And decided I was doing water bottles. Hang on, hang on. Okay. If they're in the store, you get struck with this idea, a new idea for business maybe, but meantime, you were still running a sign business, right? Right. Yeah. So I get back to the sign company and I ask one of the employees, I said, what do you know about water bottles? And she said, oh, it's SIG. You got to go at this company called SIG. And I thought, oh, they were aluminum. Yes. Aluminum, I remember those bottles. Yeah. And I was like, oh, this is great. I don't have to do bottles. I can just stick with signs. This is fantastic. And so I went to Patagonia and I bought one and it was expensive. It was like 20 bucks, you know, for a water bottle. That was a lot of money. Yeah. But they're good. They're good bottles. I mean, they, I remember them. They had like that little, I think they still make them like that small screw top or the, you go like, hook it on a, it looked like it was made for climbers. Like you could hook it on like carabiner or something. Yeah. And it had real nice powder coating on it. It was really gritty and I really enjoyed it for about a week. And I realized I couldn't put ice cubes in it. I couldn't put in a freezer. Right. It was small opening. Right. Yeah. And they were aluminum. So you couldn't put them in the freezer. Wait, why is that? I don't know that. Why can't you put them in the freezer? It would expand and crack. They basically rip. Oh, right. Okay. I can't like put in a pop can in the freezer. Right. Right. Right. And I was walking up the stairs and it fell off some books. And it dented almost like catastrophically. It just looked terrible. Because it was thin. It was like thinner aluminum. Really thin. Yeah. And I thought, well, that's too bad. You know, I just paid a lot of money for it. Now it doesn't look great. A couple of days later, I'm filling it up and I look inside and some of that gold had flaked off. There was a gold bliner inside the bottle. Yeah. And so I said, okay, well, I guess I really am doing water bottles now. And I called my brother, Jeff, who just started working at REI and BIN. And I said, hey, Jeff, I need a water bottle. And he goes, clean canteen. They just started. Good brand. Good product. Great product. And so he sends me a clean canteen. And it just wasn't ergonomically correct for my lip. And every time I take a sip, it dribbles down my shirt. It was at a screw top at that time. I mean, now they've got all kinds of flip tocks. Was it just a screw top like wide mouth bottle? It was. And it was big enough that I could put ice cubes in it, which was huge, you know, to take to the beach and have cold water on the way there was awesome. And then I'd put it in the sand. I'd go surf and I'd come back and it'd be too hot to drink. And then I came home and I'd hike a mountain and I'd get to the top and it'd be too cold to drink. And so I thought my grandpa had an old school coffee thermos, one of the big old heavy thermos is. I remember those. And I thought, well, why can't we take that same technology and make it in a normal sized water bottle that we could actually drink water out of? Well, let's talk about the thermos for a moment because that's been around for a long time, right? And so it's not like the technology didn't exist. Yeah, I was vacuum insulation. They came up. I can't remember exactly. I almost want to say it was like in the in the 1900s or even late 1800s, they came up with the vacuum insulation technology. Basically, it's like the between the inner wall and the outer wall, the air has been completely taken out. The part in between those two walls is where they've sucked out all the air. Yeah, yeah, it would provide a vacuum space that no temperature air molecules could transfer between. So anything on the inside, whatever temperature it is, it's going to remain that temperature because it doesn't have outside influences affecting it. And it doesn't release, like if you have hot liquids, the hot doesn't release through the vacuum. Okay. So this experience gets you thinking like you get a clean canteen again, it doesn't do the trick. It's not keeping you're drink cold. It's not keeping you drink hot. It's not doing what the thermos did. You could buy a thermos, but the thermos was like a big thing and you had the top and you unscrew the top and then you pour the coffee in there and then you drink out of that. And so you're thinking, wait a minute, why isn't there a thermos but for water bottles? Exactly. And I wanted metal on the inside. I knew I didn't want plastic and so I figured, and I knew I didn't want aluminum. So I figured, well, why can't we just make them out of double wall vacum insulated stainless steel? All right. So you have this itch that you want to scratch. So what, like are you still working in a sign shop every day? Are you going in there every day at that point? Yeah, every day was long days. Our printer was broken and so it would take us out. hours and hours to fix it and keep running it. And it was just, it was like I was completely overwhelmed with having to do bottles. And we had a client who would go to the Canton Fair in China and he would help his customers find factories to build their products. I really knew that I had to find a factory and it was probably going to be in China. So started doing Google and found a factory that said, yes, we'll do that. Come on over and check it out. - Okay, but did you have a design in mind or did you just think all I know is I want this to be double walled and I want it to be steel. That's all I know for it. I don't know what, and I know I want it to be a wide enough mouth where I could put ice in it, like unscrew it and put ice in it. Is that all you knew? - It was and I kind of still figured that somebody was doing it. Surely there must be somebody who's doing this. I can't be the first person who's thought of this. But I knew that I wasn't able to physically stop until I found that. - So when you decided to pursue this, what was your first step? Because I would think it was me, I would be looking online, I would make contact, I'd get in touch with them, and then maybe I would fly out there. - Yeah, I found one that said, yes, we will do that. That's what we do. - Okay. - So I sold a surfboard, I sold a moe pad, and I took off to Shanghai in May of 2007, and found this factory, and I get there, and I go in, and it's all plastic water bottles, and they show me around, we go through the tea ceremony and everything, and I said, well, where are the insulated, and where's the stainless? And he said, oh, no, we don't do that, nobody does that. I said, well, surely somebody, and he said, no, there's nobody. And I thought, I've sold my surfboard, I've sold my moe pad, starting to run out of money, I guess I'll just fly back early. And so I start leaving the factory, and this guy came up and he grabbed my arm, and he said, I have a cousin in Hanjo that might be able to help you. Why didn't you talk to him? And so he gave me two pieces of paper, one was to get to the train station, one was to get to Hanjo, and I show up in Hanjo, and I realized, I don't know anybody, I don't know where I am, I don't know who I'm looking for, I don't know what's going on here. And I'm going down the escalator, and luckily I hear Travis, and I say, yeah, and her name is Natalie, and she takes me to this office, and I met her husband, Michael. - Who is Michael? - Michael was the guy who was the cousin of the guy I met in Shanghai. - He was a Chinese man. - He was, yeah. - And Michael was his English name. - Correct. - And he spoke enough English where he could help you. - A little bit, right. And then the next day we get on the train, and we're head south again, and we show up at an actual water bottle factory where they're doing metal water bottles. And we go in and Michael says, hey, you know, Travis wants to do these vacuum insulated bottles, and the guy just laughed, he said, no, there's no way nobody does that, we're not doing that. And so we spent three days going from factory to factory, trying to find out if they do double wall vacuum insulated bottles. - Because a double wall means it's like, you make a metal bottle, and then you basically, I guess they insert it into another bottle, and then connect them together or something? - Yeah, it's a lot like, if you think of a metal fence post, you have two different size fence posts, and one's inside of the other one, and then there is a little copper tube that vacuums out the air in between the two walls. - And that requires, I guess, certain technology on their assembly line that presumably they didn't have, because I must imagine if they could do it, they want to make money, they'd be like, yeah, we could do this. - Right, there was no market, nobody had asked them for it. So finally, on the very second to last day, we find a factory that had a vacuum, and it wasn't very big. It was kind of the size of a motorcycle, which isn't huge for the vacuum world. And they were doing these little vacuum insulated Japanese milk bottles. - So wait, like bottles of milk that you buy in the grocery store? - It was more for like kids' milk and maybe formula, and pricey milk. - I see for their lunches or something. - Right, yeah, but they were real small. They were cute. They were, you know, Japanese, and so they were just beautiful little containers. And I said, hey, you know, let's just make them bigger and do water bottles. And he laughed and he looked at me, and I wasn't laughing, I was serious. And he said, fine, we'll try it. - When we come back in just a moment, how Travis finally gets some samples made, and winds up walking into his local whole foods at exactly the right moment. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raaz, and you're listening to how I built this. (upbeat music) (soft music) Hey, welcome back to how I built this, I'm Guy Raaz. So it's 2007, and Travis is in China, where he's finally found a factory that might be able to make him a vacuum insulated water bottle. But he and his local guide, Michael, they still have a lot to figure out. - We didn't have the molds, and the machine, the vacuum wasn't quite big enough to do it. And so, Michael and I spent the next two weeks going from factory to factory, and we'd buy two kilos of screws, and we'd go buy metal plates, and we'd go buy all these parts to build all these machines, to build more parts and more machines. - What were you, sorry, what were did you need to build? - Well, we had to modify the inside of the vacuum to hold bigger sized bottles. So not only do we have to get the molds made for the actual bottles, but we had to modify the vacuum to get the molds inside of it. - Why were you guys doing it? Why didn't the factory do it? - They said we could rent time, but that was it. They weren't gonna do anything else to help us. They didn't believe in it. They didn't think it would work. And they thought, well-- - They said you could rent time on our line and try it out. - Correct, yeah. - But you had to build the adapters to make this work. How did you even know what to do? How'd you know to build that? - They showed us, they said, here's what we have, but it's not gonna work, and we're not willing to work with you to do this, because this is a dumb idea. Nobody wants a vacuum insulated water bottle, so we're not putting forth any effort. That's how we came up with all the modifications and everything. And then I took off, I came back to Oahu, and about six months later, we got a call that the samples were ready. And what name do you wanna put on it? Do you have a logo? Do you have a name? And we didn't. And so all hands on deck, all friends and family, what should we call this water bottle company? And my brother came up with the name Hydroflask, and I hated it. I thought it was a terrible idea. I didn't like the word flask, but we had to have something printed on the bottles, so we went with it. And we got the first two samples in November of 2007. - And how much sort of input did you have in the design? You just said, was it just a, I don't know, was it a cylinder with a wide opening that screwed on and off, and it was double-walled? Like did you give them any specs about colors, about powder coating, or did they just kind of make it based on what they thought you wanted? - Yeah, I had drove all over the island, buying as many bottles as I possibly could, and I bought calipers, and I was measuring thicknesses of mouth sizes of bottles, and which one was the most ergonomic size to drink out of and put an ice cube in. And so I drew it all out. And I'm kind of embarrassed to say, but about five years ago, somebody pointed out that I'd basically just drawn a scuba tank, and it was the first ones just look like a scuba tank. - And it's interesting, you buy calipers to measure the width of the bottle and the width of the metal, which is interesting, because there is, I mean, there's like a lip feel, right? When you're putting a water bottle to your lips, and we don't think about this consciously, but it's like when you have a beautiful wine glass, it's just very thin glass. It's a better way to drink wine, and I think it's the same with the water bottle, like if it's the right thickness, not too thin, not too thick, but did you give the factory in China those specs, or did they just kind of make something and send it to you? - Well, both. I gave them the specs. I, you know, minute made, I liked better than Pepsi, but Coke I liked better than Sprite. - Oh, it's talking about, these are plastic bottles though. - Yeah, I was measuring, like, how big is my lip? How big is the drinking size out of each of these bottles? Bud wiser bottles versus corona bottles versus melt jugs? And once I found what I really liked, I gave them the specs. and then they made it the best that they could, but the very first samples, the lip was real sharp, and I didn't like it, but everybody else liked it, and they were insulated, it worked. - And it worked. - Yeah, we got two, there was a red one and a blue one, 18 and 21 ounces, and went down to Waikiki Beach and put ice cubes in it, and started just handing them to people, and they would get out of the water from surfing and they would see the ice and they'd say, "Wow, yes, this is something we would buy." - Did you, and by the way, how, roughly, how much did it cost to get the samples done? - It was about 10,000. - And was there a commitment that you would have to make an order after that? - Well, we didn't know that at first. I hadn't thought to ask about a minimum order quantity. I didn't, I don't have an MBA, I don't know these things, I didn't know these things, and we found out later that the first MOQ was 3,000. - And how much would that cost you? - About $17,000. - Okay, so did you have that cash? - No, now we ran out of money, and so I negotiated 1,500 instead. - Okay, so how did you finance that? - Sold everything we had, we sold all of our clothes and furniture, and that's really-- - Hey, we, this is you and your girlfriend Cindy, right? - Correct, correct. - She's on board too. She's, you guys are both selling all your stuff to get the cash that you can pay for this order. - Right, and then in March of 2008, we moved back to BAND and moved in with my mom. - Why not stay in Hawaii? - It was expensive, and I knew that we needed to have closer access to airports and big trade shows and things. And BAND has kind of been an outdoor mecca for Oregon for quite a while, and it was just kind of really starting to take off as an outdoor place to be. - Got it, okay, and this is 2008 financial crisis about to be a full swing, right? This is the beginning of, I think Bear Sterns happens that, and then, you know, and this is gonna leave in brothers and this is gonna go, this is gonna go crazy, but you go back to BAND and you, and to save money, do you see you moving with your mom? - Yeah, yeah, and my brother had just moved back in and my sister had just moved back in and had a baby, and it was a full house. - Wow, so you get to BAND, and the idea is you're gonna get this order of bottles and then what, what are we gonna do at that point? - That part I wasn't quite so sure about. I knew that we had a Portland Saturday market that sold you could go and sell your, your wares. And so I figured, well, we'll start at the Portland Saturday market and see how it goes. - Okay, but when the shipment of 2500 bottles arrived, were they like individually packaged in boxes? - They were in boxes at 12. - Okay, and where did you store all of it? - My grandparents have a two car garage, and my grandpa said we could have one of the two cars until the summer, and so we started out in Salem and in the garage. - All right, so you've got, they arrive in March of 2008, and the idea was let's start selling as the farmer's market, let's set up a table. And by the way, I'm assuming you have a pretty kick ass sign 'cause you were in a sign business, your sign is saying, it says hydroflask water bottles, right? Am I right? - Yeah, kinda, like we knew the difference between a table throw and a table cloth, you know, and so we had a table throw that said hydroflask and we put it up on the rubber made table, and we had a little pop up banner. We had our shirts that said hydroflask and hats and stickers. - You knew what to do 'cause you would have a sign company. - Exactly. And it was hot, it was middle of, I think it was July, and people came and they'd say, what is this? It's a water bottle, and they'd say, why would I need a water bottle? Well, 'cause it's not plastic, you can reuse it and it's insulated, and we'd put ice cubes inside of them, and I'd put ice cubes in on Friday night and I'd write 8 PM Friday, and then by Sunday, there's still ice cubes in it, and people would freak out. - And the farmer's market was on Saturday or Sunday? - It was on Saturdays and Sundays. Yeah, Saturday market's a bit of a misnomer, it's really on Sundays also. - Right. So you would have a piece of tape on it, and it would say Friday 8 PM ice, and then on Sunday people would be like, wait, you put the ice in your Friday, and it's still this cold? - Yeah, and it was 100 degrees outside, and they were like, great idea. - I love that idea. And how much were you selling the bottles for? - We had 18 ounce that was 1999, and we had a 21 ounce that was 2499. - Okay, and this is 2008, it's the financial crisis is starting, and this is the summer of 2008, so people are starting to get, I mean, it's not totally crashed yet, but it's about to. - Yeah. - And again, like I'm thinking 20 bucks, 24 bucks were a great deal, but again, you gotta have to go back to 2008. And from a 2008 perspective, that was probably kind of pricey for people. People were probably like, wait, what, 20 bucks for a bottle? For a metal bottle? - Yeah, it was tough, because oftentimes, what they would do is they'd come by, they'd meet us first, and then they'd go shop the whole market, and then if they had any money left over, they would take a chance on us. So we're selling anywhere from 20 to 50 bottles a day at that plant for the two days, and then we'd leave the Saturday market, would head back to Bend and start doing what's called Munchin Music at Drake Park, where they show a movie and have a bit of a Thursday afternoon get together. - And when you sold them, and obviously people had seen how, how you know, was keeping this ice water cold. Did you offer any kind of warranty or return? Like what'd you say to people? Like how did you convince them to park with their money for this water bottle? 'Cause in 2008, the idea of having a permanent water bottle was not like what it is now, where everyone's like, what do you mean? Like in my, I can go in my pantry now, we have too many of these things. We've got hydroflasks and swell bottles and yetis, we've got all, we've got the whole thing, we've got every brand in there. And I'm sure a lot of people are listening to like, oh yeah, I got clausifull these things now. But then it wasn't like that. People just bought a plastic bottle, drink it and threw it away. Or you know, like only like, really environmentally conscious people were doing this in 2008. - Right, which was a bit of a benefit being an Oregon, because we do have a lot of environmentally friendly folks here in the state. But we gave a lifetime warranty and said that if anything happens, we'll take care of it, we'll replace your bottle for you. And that helped a lot. - So how are you financing the, I mean, you were selling them, how much they're, probably roughly, what, $5 a bottle? It was costing you to manufacture them and have them shipped. - Yeah, yeah, about $5, $25, $5.50, yes. - Okay, so you were making $15, $17 per bottle, which is pretty good. And that was enough money I have to imagine to be able to finance the next order. - Yeah, we just bootstrapped it all. - And it was just you and Cindy? - Yes. And then what happened was we were at the Munchin Music here in Bend, and a guy came up and he says, "Hey, I work with a Bend Bulletin newspaper. "Can we do an article on you?" Yeah, sure, fine. So we were on the front page of the business newspaper, Bend Bulletin. And the following Thursday, a guy comes up and he says, "Hey, I'm a sales rep and I want to rep Hydroflask." - Wow. - Yeah, his name is Brent and he lives in Bend and he's a sales rep. And he wanted to rep the bottles in sporting goods stores throughout the Northwest. - And what was he selling at the time? What was his other main product? - I think he had like skis and socks and other outdoor products. - So he was like, "Hey, I like this product. "I want to work with you. "How did you even, how did you know he was in a scammer?" - I didn't. - You didn't? - Yeah, no, he, I said, "Okay, well, what do you need?" And he said, "I need 48 bottles." And at that point, we were down to less than 1,000. And I was like, "I don't know, man. "I don't, I don't, I'm not gonna just give you free bottles." - He wanted the bottles so he could go around and offer them a samples to retailers. - Right. And I said, "I just don't feel comfortable giving you 48." I said, "I'll give you a 24." And then you tell me how you did with the 24. And he sold 22 of the 24 doors and opened them up. - He sold them to wear to like individual sporting - sporting stores. - Yeah. - Just like around in Oregon, mainly. - Oregon, Idaho, Washington. - And what were these like, these are bomb and pop stores, presumably many of them. So they were probably ordering no more than 100 of these bottles at a time. - Yeah, we started out with, our minimum was 12. And then we bumped it up to 20. - Well, bottle minimum. - Yeah, love it. - As they came in 12 bottle boxes. And as soon as we figured that, okay, People are buying 12 and they're starting to re-order. We bumped it up to 24 per case. And the accounts started getting bigger and bigger. And so we picked up a couple more sales reps on the East Coast and a couple in the Midwest. And pretty soon we started getting more sales reps and opening bigger and bigger accounts. - And meantime, you get into whole foods and then to dig sporting goods, but that's not nationally. That's just in Oregon initially. - Yeah, when we got the first 1500 bottles in and brought them from Salem over to Bend because my grandpa kicked us out of the garage, I thought, well, we just got a whole foods in Bend. What if I just go check it out and see what they say? And so I walked into whole foods and I said, "Hey, I'm here to sell water bottles." And they sent me back to the lady who buys water. And she said, "Where's the water?" I said, "There's no water, it's just the bottle." And she's like, "Ah, that doesn't make any sense." So I went to a water bottle. She goes, "Yeah, go talk to Evan." And so I go back and I, there's a man laying on the floor and he's pulling water bottles out of the bottom shelf and they were sig and they had BPA in them. And I said, "Hey, good news. I'm Travis from Hydroflask. I got these water bottles to replace those." And he says, "There are BPAs." I said, "No, it's all metal." He goes, "Okay, fine. How many do you have?" We had about six colors. And he says, "Fine, I'll take a case of each." And so once we got the Whole Foods order, just for that one-bind location, I basically used that all across town. You would say, "Hey, we're in Whole Foods." Yeah, and people are like, "Oh, good enough for Whole Foods, good enough for us." And I think it's changed now that Amazon owns it, but Whole Foods, like stores, had a lot of autonomy to do that. Now, you still see that, like, local and stuff, but now it's more regional. So you could actually sell into one Whole Foods. And so this One Whole Foods in Bend starts to sell them. And, but then as this product is kind of gaining some traction, right? Then what's the next step? I mean, was there like a trade show that you could go to? Did you start to cold call or was Brent cold call? I mean, he had connections. Was he going to bigger retailers? Like, what, tell me a little bit about how you start to expand this out into other stores? Yeah, luckily Brent said, "Hey, you got to go to this thing called the Outdoor Retail Show in Salt Lake City." And it's where all of the outdoor product companies come to show what's new for the season. We couldn't afford an actual proper booth, but we paid to get in, and we took a bunch of bamboo and kind of laced and wrapped together a hut to put up our banners. And we were the only water bottle company there. And pretty soon the buyer started coming and seeing who's selling water bottles. And then with that, we had other sales reps that would come to the booth and they'd say, "Hey, I have this little tiny region in this area, or this massive region in this country, and we're sales reps, and we want to sell the bottles." So this really was, and again, I can't, I don't know for sure, but it was probably one of the first brands that was doing this, right? My question is for you, and this might be a sensitive question. Was your design patented? Did you have this protected? Well, what we did is we ended up getting design patents. And so there's utility patents that are like for the insulation, and we couldn't get that because that had already existed. You could not patent the vacuum technology. Correct. And so what we did was we designed patented the design, the shapes and the sizes of the bottles. And made sure that it was on the packaging, front and center, patent pending or patented. And what I found was that a lot of people who maybe would have been competitors saw patented and they figured, oh, well, they've got the vacumant-slated market will just leave them be. And it helped for about six or eight months that people just kind of left us alone and weren't really doing double-valve vacumant-slated bottles until, oh, it's just design patent. And then they started designing around it. Right, because I would imagine, as people saw how effective these were, you've got a lot of companies out there that are like, OK, we could do this. We could do this technology there on this technology. Yeah, I think CleanCantene was the first. And when I found out that they were doing vacum insulation, I thought, oh, man, it's over. We're out of business because they're selling the single wall. So well, I'm sure they're going to sell the double wall. And they used the different vacuum technique. They used one that was a little bit easier, a little bit less expensive. And it didn't look as good. And it ended up not working as well. So that gave us a bit more of a runway to run with it. OK. And so I have to imagine you've got no cash. Because if the demand is high, and you've got to constantly-- the money's got to constantly recycled out, you've no money, for example, for marketing. Yeah, luckily we had a friend who was a banker. And so she could help us find different banks that would give us a line of credit and credit cards. My grandparents took out a second mortgage on their house, and we borrowed and sold everything that we could just to keep buying more bottles. When we come back in just a moment, money problems bring the business to the brink until Travis gets a visit from an unexpected investor. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raaz, and you're listening to How I Built This. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raaz. So it's 2009, and Travis is gearing up for his biggest shipment of water bottles yet. 40,000 of them. He spends all of November in China, watching them being made. But when he gets home, he's in for a shock. I get home and the bottles show up. And we found that they had rusted, and they were not insulated. So I ended up going right back to the factory in December of '09 and said, hey, what happened? And we found the machine and we figured out what was wrong. And I negotiated another 40,000 bottles to replace the rusted 40,000. And 120-day payment after they arrived. And so they said, OK, yep, we'll do that. I come home. And in February, we get a call that we owed for the second 40,000 bottles, about $250,000. And I said, no, no, I have a net 120 after they land. And they said, no, you owe us for another 40,000. And so I had a kind of a list of people who had always said they wanted to help us if they could. And I called the list. And finally, I found a local banker who was a big hydroflask fan. And he really believed in it. And he said, all right, yeah, I'll lend you the $250,000 to get the second 40,000. All right. So you've got-- and now you've got this good problem in a bad problem, which is you have very little access to cash, but you're selling a lot. And meantime, I think on a personal front, things are kind of breaking down at the company. So let's start, first of all, I think your relationship with Cindy, who you started this business with, is falling apart. Is that right? Yes. When I got too hard with the rusted bottle, she took off back to Hawaii. But it sounds like you were probably on the way to splitting up anyway, because I can't imagine that the water bottle's alone was the reason why she left. We had been on and off for quite a while. And I think that just the sheer overwhelm of the situation was enough to send her on her way. All right. Travis, I want to acknowledge something for a moment here, because I know that your perspective during this time was that you felt blindsided. And you've talked about before, in other interviews, about feeling betrayed, not just by Cindy, but by some of the other people that were working in the business. And I can't independently verify all of this here. This isn't a documentary or an investigative report. But I am curious about something, because you're obviously smart, you're smart guy. You came up with this idea. You built it. You pushed it forward with a ton of conviction. But when it came to judging the character of the people around you, do you feel like that was an area where you struggled or maybe you just didn't have the tools to do that? I don't really like HR. I'm not great. I trust people. I just take people at face value. It always surprises me still to this day when people are dishonest or they have ulterior motives. And I'm probably not a real good judge of that. You're right, guy. But you were lucky, I guess, with this guy Brent, because he sounds a key to he really helped you expand and sell. He was awesome. And he brought in other sales reps. Unfortunately, I don't know. What happened was he said that we were not going to be able to get into REI within a year. I knew that we probably could. He was adamant that he wasn't even going to try. We had to let him go and replace him with a larger firm. But he was instrumental in getting us up and going. Now you've got this complicated situation, which is you've broken up with Cindy, who technically started this with you. Whether you feel like you did 90% of the work or not, doesn't matter. She still owns half the shares or part of the company. So you guys are splitting apart. But you do have this potentially growing business here, approaching $12 million in sales by 2011. And I guess you get approached, or both of you get approached by somebody who wants to basically buy you guys out, buy this company from you, an investor named Jim Collis. Tell me what the story is. Well, so after she left, and I started hiring new employees, that second 40,000 bottles came in, and we ran out of money. I had about 10 employees at that point, and had no more money in the bank on a Wednesday night, I remember. And so I write this letter that says, you know, "Dear employees, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to close down the business." And I was going to read it to him Friday morning. And Friday morning, I call everybody into the office to tell him that we're closing down. And the phone rings and the lady at the front desk says, "There's this guy here who wants to see you." And he says, "Travis, I'm here to talk to you." And I said, "I'm sorry, I'm not hiring, and I'm not even interested, thank you." And he says, "Well, I might want to invest." So I call off the meeting, and I tell him, "Yeah, you know, we need 80,000 bottles." And he goes, "Okay, how much money?" I said, "How about a million dollars?" And he says, "Okay, you know, of course he looked at the books, and he did some due diligence and things. It wasn't quite that easy." But he wrote us a check, and I was able to buy more bottles. And that's when he came in as an investor and started helping inside the office, even with the books, and we hired a CFO at that point and grew. So this was in 2011, right? And so now you've got some capital behind you. And I mean, look, the story, at least from your perspective, ends not that long after. I mean, you were going to exit in 2012 and sell your shares. And at that point, you know, it's doing well. It's not what it is today. It's not as huge for a brand today, but I think you're doing about 12 million in sales. Tell me when you start to think to yourself, "I just want out. I'm done." I got to a point where we got REI. We had Whole Foods. We were an international company. We were all over Europe and Asia and starting in on the South Pacific. And I was a little tired of being on the road and living in hotels and in the factories. And I felt like that season was just drawing to an end. I was tired. And then when the investor bought out my partner -- Cindy? Right. Yeah. It put him to 51 percent. I was at 49. And he brought in the corporate playbook and said, "Here's what we're going to do." And this is what it's going to look like. And I took a look at it. And I said, "No, I don't want to do that." So, negotiating my way out. Okay. 2012 is when you're out. And so it's growing. There's potential there. By this point, there's already competitors. There's lots of competitors in 2012. But Hydroflask is one of the brands out there. One of the first, if not the first, double walled, insulated water bottle. I'm curious -- and again, I understand why you would want to be out. It's a grind. But a lot of people would also stay. They would say, "Okay, I got this investor. Now we can scale." And maybe I'm not really a CEO type. Maybe I'm more of a creative, visionary type. And I need a professional operations guy. I need professional people to really scale this. And I'll kind of just focus on branding. Or something like that. And this happens a lot. So I'm curious if any of those ever crossed your mind. I felt like I had accomplished everything that I'd really set out to accomplish. And I didn't want to continue down the path of the corporate route. My original goal was to sell 2,500 bottles. I wasn't looking to retire and move out into a castle. And I remember I woke up with just a whole weight that had lifted from my body. And I realized, "Oh, wait. You're not the Hydroflask guy anymore." And that I did. I separated from them. They changed the quality. They changed the price. They've changed some of the manufacturing techniques. I don't even really drink out of the bottles anymore. After some of their ad campaigns and things, I've separated myself even further with them. So eventually, the Hydroflask was acquired by Helen of Troy, which is a, you know, they own a bunch of different brands. For over $200 million, that was in 2016. And I think they still own it. And it's an international brand. And you, I think, you sort of started a different business of consulting business, right, for some time. Are you still doing that, like helping small businesses get into manufacturing and things like that? I do. I help do advising for companies that are looking for building their products and factories in the States or in China. But I'm also looking to do another bottle company as well. What kind of, yeah, Tommy a little bit more, but how you would improve on it? Because now it seems like this is a pretty, you know, it's pretty competitive space, right? There's some, there's some heavy hitters in the, in the bottle business. And how do you differentiate something and make it better and make it competitive? I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment. It's a lot like when I saw this sign saying, hey, I have a banner company. I have a sign company and I thought, huh, I bet I could do that better. And basically I, I found a way to print on the entire bottle. And so there it's typically the best way to embellish a bottle right now is with the laser engraver. And we started doing that early 2009. We started laser engraving on bottles. And it was great. It was cool technology back in 2009. But this is 2025. We're going to 2026 and it's time that somebody steps up and does something a little bit different. When you think about, you know, whether you have criticisms and and challenge issues with what hydroflask is today, you can still look at that product wherever you go around the world and say, I invented this. I created this brand. As, as wild as the story is, as implausible as it is, as weird as it is a time. Like you still can say that. And that's pretty amazing. And that's going to be, you know, very likely a big part of your story, right? When you're when your time comes to an end. But when you think about this thing that you built and, you know, what you were able to build out of it, how much of that do you attribute to luck and how much do you think has to do with just the grind you put in and incredible hard work? And, you know, it seemed like endless hours. I think that it was a lot of hard work. I think the luck comes in that it hadn't happened yet. And the world was ready for it. People were ready to start carrying water bottles with them everywhere they went. And so as far as luck goes, I think that that was maybe where the luck was. But I'll always take the good luck when I can get it. It's just sometimes I've had a really look for that luck. That's Travis Rossback, co-founder of Hydroflask. By the way, Hydroflask is now the official sponsor of the US National Snowboard team. It's actually only the second time they've partnered with a major sports program. They also sponsor the US surfing team, which kind of makes sense, right? Snow and surf, cold and warm, same bottle, same idea, keep the outside, outside. Hey, thanks so much for listening to The Show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of The Show. And as always, it's free. And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, sign up for my newsletter at gyros.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by Chris Messini with music composed by Rumtina Rablewie. It was edited by Niva Grant with research help from Claire Marishima. Our audio engineer was Jimmy Keely. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Casey Herman, JC Howard, Sam Paulson, Catherine Cipher, Carrie Thompson, Andrea Bruce, Ramelle Wood, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raaz and you've been listening to my song. how I built this and don't stop the podcast just yet. Because right now, you're about to hear an amazing small business story that you don't want to miss. This segment is presented by American Express with a business platinum membership, the best just got even better. So a few years ago on a bright sunny day, Breavann Looen was on vacation with her husband and kids, celebrating a special milestone. My little girl who was turning one had a cake smash on the beach in Cisadora. But right after Breavann put some sunscreen on her daughter, the party was cut short. In real time on a video, you can see her having a terrible reaction to the sunscreen. So she got waltz and blisters. She was had a runny nose, itchy, watery eyes. This had never happened before, but this brand of sunscreen was new to her. And it turned out that this sunscreen had an ingredient called butyl optocelously. It's a chemical added to some commercial sunscreens to help boost sun protection. And after testing dozens of other brands and consulting an allergist, Bre realized that her child's skin was sensitive to this specific chemical. And it's a problem for a lot of children. There are sunscreens Bre could have used without that chemical like zinc oxide. You know, the thick, tasty white stuff that you can't really rub in, her kids were not having any of it. The older your child gets the more they're, "Oh, don't put that on, I'll look white, don't put that on me." And the truth is I wouldn't put white, cakey sunscreen on myself and expect to go out and do my day. And yet I was expecting my little girl to go out and go to school and walk out the door looking like ridiculous. The alternative was to skip sunscreen altogether, but that was not an option. Melano runs in my family on both sides, my mom's side, at my dad's side. I have ants and uncles and cousins. It's everywhere in my gene pool. So, Bre decided to take matters into her own hands. She set out to make a mineral-based sunscreen that didn't leave a ghostly white film. And that didn't include the chemical that affected her daughter either. I think the best to invent her is desperation. And I was a desperate mom that needed something. She found a chemist to prototype formulas and it took them weeks to create each new batch. And then they'd send it off to an independent facility for testing. We failed our SPF test over and over and over again. Every round took months. And at some point I realized, oh, this is why companies do this. This is why companies compromise and they put these ingredients in. One is to save money and two is to save formulation time. But Bre persevered. And finally, after four years of trial and error, she hit on the right formula. So in 2024, she launched her new brand, The Public, Daily Shade Sunscreen. Standing in the manufacturing lab, watching it be produced was one of the coolest moments of my entire life when I thought, this is what being an entrepreneur is. And this is what being an inventor is, sign me up. Because I've never had a feeling like this in my entire life. And then to see my children recognize my mom made this for me, talked it. Today, putting on Daily Shade Sunscreen is an important part of the morning routine in Bre's household. It's almost funny at this point. It's my kids' old communication. Did you brush your teeth? No. Did you find the sunscreen? Yes. And after years of hard work, Bre did more than create a product for her children. She gave them a role model. When I asked my daughters, what do you picture yourself doing when you grow up? Their answer is, I want to own my own company and change the world. That's Bre Van Lewin of Daily Shade Sunscreen. And that's our small business spotlight presented by American Express. To build a business like no other, you need a card like no other. There's nothing like business platinum.