How HexClad Turned Cookware Into a Billion Dollar Brand (with Danny Winer)

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Brands like Kitch use triple whale, book a demo at triple whale.com/limitedSupply. That's TRIP LEWHALE.com/limitedSupply. Welcome back to another episode of Limited Supply, I'm your host Nick Sharma, and today we've got an awesome episode. I've got an interview with Danny Weiner, Danny's the founder of Hexclad Founder and CEO.

“He has an incredible story growing this thing from really a bootstrapped nothing, right?”

A brand that he created and founded and really source the product all on his own. All the way to doing nine figures of revenue every year, still growing at a pretty impressive pace year over year, co-founders with Gordon Ramsay, and very omnipresent. When you think about the Yankees game, Hexclad is there. When you think about Costco, road shows, Hexclad is there.

When you think about the top chefs in the world, Hexclad is there.

So it's a very impressive story, Danny did it all really by himself and with an amazing

team behind them. So, hearing his story was really invigorating and also just hearing about what he's doing going into Q4. So, give this episode a listen, also if you're in New York, I'm going to see you tomorrow at the Q4 Summit at Capitale.

If you need a ticket still, shoot me a message on Twitter or by email, but enjoy this episode with Danny and I'll see you at the end. All right. Boy.

“Do you guys realize how big of a popular deal this is?”

This guy is a billion dollar, because it's a unicorn, literally a billion dollar company. I like the way that sounds. You like that? Yeah. I didn't sound like that a few years ago.

Yeah. Danny, I'm honestly truly so honored that you're here. I feel like you rarely do these types of talks and for you to come out here to New York City. All the way from LA to do this is very grateful. Well, it's my pleasure.

I mean, Nick, you and your team have been on the journey with us for quite a while. So it's kind of like a family of that for us. Yeah. I agree. Uncle Danny.

I love it. All right, Danny.

You first question, you built this billion dollar business.

Not just a business, but truly a brand over the last 11 years.

“And I think, hex time has now become synonymous with the word cooking or creativity or”

joy, excitement. How did you do this? Yeah. I have no fucking idea. You know, I grew up in an Italian and Jewish household.

So for all the Italians and Jews out there, there's a lot of food involved. I think we all know that. So food was central to to my family's life who did everything around the table. We celebrated the birth of a child. We at a funeral, we all ate together.

So that was really important. And my grandmother, who's an Italian immigrant, she was, of course, being good to studying in Catholics. She was one of 15 children and she was told you got to quit school in the eighth grade because education is for boys.

You need to go out and work at eight. So she sold vegetables and she wanted to be a chef for whole life. She wanted to be a chef. She had no education. And eventually she became the first female head chef from Buffalo, New York in the 1950s.

But she kind of instilled this passion for the food space. And being a chef, I'm not talented enough, I'm also not crazy enough to do it. I wanted another way into it. And so I was interested in the cooking and servicing a cook in the celebration of food. So this kind of was in the back of my mind when I started, decided I needed to start my own

company going into the food space was kind of natural. I'd actually worked for another cookware company. And I remember when I went to the owner of that company, I went to him with Facebook up on my screen. This is like 2010 and I go, if we're going to survive, this is where we need to be.

We got to start a community and he did one of these hands to the face and he goes, trust

me kid, this Facebook thing, it's never going to last.

So I walked out of there, my co-founder and I went to the gym that night and we're like, we got to start our own company.

And I'm also curious, speaking of the impetus. I feel like hex flat has become the Harley Davidson of cooking and I chose Harley Davidson because I feel like everybody can picture that brand so easily and so clearly. What do you think a lot like when you were building the brand or or ideating on how you're going to go to market like what enabled you to have such a strong component of storytelling

around the product, right? It's not, it's not just a cookware company. It's a cooking company. You know, I'm so glad you asked this question. I was, I was out there before and I'm like, I hope he asked something about this because

it's often overlooked, you know, like I'm not the best numbers guy in my company by far. But what I'm a good, what I'm good at is storytelling.

“And when we found this technology, one, it had to have a story told, right?”

Because how do I explain what these hexagons are? Why are they on there? You don't have a pan at home. That looks like this way. So I needed to tell the story, but what I also needed to do was diagnose what our brand was.

And then come up with different ways to present that that brand very, very clearly. And it is great that you picked Harley Davidson because in 2015, 16, when I was just finding that technology, I'm like, this is badass cookware. That's what it is. It's badass cookware.

And that became like our line inside. We're badass. And the good thing about being a badass doesn't need to drive a Harley. Grandma's a badass because she takes care of the whole family. And a kid who's 10 years old learned to make their first grilled cheese is a badass. And a single mom's a badass, there's a badass inside of all of us.

And I wanted to be the cookware for those people. So that was the foundation of everything we started doing when we sold our first frying pan. I still have the email.

Brats, one 10 inch pan sold in November, 16, that's amazing.

There's so many things I have on my mind now, but I'm trying to stay on track here. You know I'll wander off. Yeah, no. Anyway. Okay.

I want to go here next. Harley talked about novelty this morning. novelty is something that drives the biggest form of awareness of engagement of customers coming back and purchasing. Hexclad has just been launching product after product after product.

“And, and prior to Hexclad, I believe you also had a business where you were selling juicers, right?”

That's my uh, dirty little secret. Yeah. Yeah. Some curious. So you had this juicer business and then you had Hexclad.

I'm curious what insights you brought to Hexclad and then, you know, launching product after product. Like what have you learned around building the business of Hexclad with product launches and novelty? Lots of impact there. Yeah. I'll start with the juicer because it was an enormous failure.

Um, it is the best thing that ever happened to me. Because I was in a cookware company. I didn't want to compete against my friends. So first, I love juicing. So my partner and I, we decided to find the best cold press juicer.

And boy, did we misread the market? Um, it's so valuable. To, to ask people questions because I didn't do it.

Because after the juicer failed, everybody was like, I never thought that juicer thing would work.

And so we went to market and it was the most humbling experience because it did okay in like 15. And it was this quick. I like it. It went Tuesday at 5 p.m. I was in the juicer business.

Wednesday morning at 8 a.m. We were out of the juicer business. And like it was, I was embarrassed for my friends. I was, it was, um, it was incredibly humbling. But I learned so much.

So what it did was I took what I misread. What I did was, I was going to try to impose my will on the consumer. And you can't, you can't do that. You have to respect the consumer. So when I went in with Hexclad, what I did was I listened to what were the pain points.

Okay. What was, you, you said novelty. Well, we had a very novel product. And the reason why, and if anybody has ever heard me talk or has read an article or something, I couldn't get any funding for Hexclad.

And nobody believed in it for two reasons. They said, cookware is too competitive, there's too much competition.

And then I said, we're going to be the first D to C cookware brand.

No, like D to C people don't buy cookware that way. I'm like, yeah, not yet. Um, and they go, what do you know about, you know, e-commerce? I go very, very little. But I know that's the way I want to approach the marketplace.

And I know how to tell the story. So I can do the branding. I can do the strategy. I can do all that. I'll learn the nuts and bolts of e-commerce.

But I'll find some really smart people to hold me with that.

“And that was like the best thing that I did.”

So we had a novel approach and a novel product. And the last thing I'll say on it because I know I'm ran blind. It is, uh, as we come to market with new things, we try to remember that uniqueness.

you've seen our pepper mill. It's the best pepper mill ever. It's a weapon. It is a weapon. And so we reinvented the wheel a bit there.

Our knives. You can't reinvent the knife. So what are they? They're sexy. They're badass.

So they just look fucking great in your kitchen. So we're going to do one of those two things. So we feel like that was kind of a novel approach. And if it isn't, doesn't fit into either of those categories. It stays like in the drawing room, you know?

I feel like Hacks Glad is done. Such a good job becoming this media company versus just a cookware company. And, you know, if I open TikTok and I see, uh, chef's whether it's Nick Di Giovanni or it's a random creator who's cooking at home. They're using Hacks Glad.

If I go to the Yankees game behind first base is Hacks Glad.

If I open, uh, if I turn on Fox, I see every cooking show is using Hacks Glad. How did you, how did you get to a point or when did you get to the point where Hacks Glad

“became a media company first that sold cookware versus just a product's company?”

So, you know, obviously you got to start with product. But are you just going to be a product? They're products out there that are just products. Then there are products that become brands, right? And you want to be a brand.

Then you go, but when do you become more than just a cookware brand? So our goal was to be a lifestyle brand. And what we felt was content was key to that. That was a few years ago. In fact, that's right, Ron, you know, my, the president of our company Jason.

He and I sit around and will strategize every year. Like, what's our goal for this year? And a few years ago, we're like, we want to be a content company as well. And that we felt was going to be absolutely vital for us to be considered a lifestyle brand. So we were already doing certain things.

I mean, you know, part of obviously being a commerce brand, we, you know, was influence

to work at it. Then I always, like, I'm somebody who always wants to think on a very grand scale.

So I'm like, I want to work with the best chefs in the world. I really don't see too many cookware companies actually doing that. So we were sending stuff to Michelin-starred chefs. We were trying to be getting those circles. Like, we snuck into the first, Michelin, well, not the first one.

The first one, that since we were in market, when they award the Michelin stars.

“And we're just walking around where the heck's that guy?”

And we knew who the hell we were. But we made friendships. And then that eventually led to the grand daddy of law, which was when Gordon Ramsay became a partner in the company. Could you talk a little bit about the Gordon partnership? How did that come about? And, you know, what kind of credit do you think you could give

to Gordon in becoming a billion dollar brand? You know, it's, it's hard to quantify if you're handing out credit. Like, there was a lot of smart things done in a lot of mistakes. Luckily, you know, we were good at recognizing mistakes rather quickly. But with Gordon, it was pretty simple. It was the summer of 20.

And the guy who was managing our Instagram account, he called me and he goes, "Do you know, Gordon Ramsay's following us on Instagram?" I'm like, "No." He's like, "Should I reach out?" I'm like, "Yeah." So he sent a message and we got our spots.

And we're like, "Oh, yeah, Gordon's got to somebody sent Gordon a pan and he really likes it. Can we send over some more? Sure, send over some more." Either way, he's Gordon involved with the cookware company. I don't think so. But to less than a week later, I'm on a call with Gordon's business manager in the UK.

And we started the conversation. And it seemed like in that first call, we got along. Like, he made this comment. He goes, "Listen, Gordon's very, very busy."

“So if you wanted to do a commercial, I think he would do one.”

And you could pay him like 2 million bucks. I'm like, "Well, I don't really have 2 million bucks flying around." He goes, "But I think he'd like to be more involved." Gordon's very hands on. He goes, "When Gordon gets involved, you're going to get more than you bargained for."

And I'm like, "Is that a promise or a threat?" He goes, "Boat." And I'm like, "And it kind of is." So Gordon wound up half a call with him. He's like, "I love you fucking pans."

I can't do British accent. I wish I could. Maybe that's why I'm a failed actor. But he's like, "Fucking great pans." We're going to cook risotto and my restaurant.

And we just like had this amazing synergy from that first-first meeting.

And then obviously the lawyers need to take over and negotiate and come up with the deal. And Gordon got involved. And he goes, "I don't even know if you're going to sign the deal." And he's sent over a video he made for us.

I'm ready to show everybody what I use at home. We didn't even have a deal with him yet. But he's like took that chance on us. And he's awesome. He calls me like, "I'm like, "Dude, you're stalking me almost."

But he wants like he wants the numbers. He's like, "You know, he'll be like, "Hus prime day going."

But it's like, "Wow, the biggest chef in the world,

one of the biggest stars in the world." She's that invested in the company that, you know, I started. And it's like, it's a lot of pinch me moments. You know, every now and then I'll wake up,

like some hotel and I'll be like, "Wait a minute." And I still back at that old company. It was at all a dream. But because of that involvement, it's obviously put a hex-clad on the map.

And you know, where would it be? I think it would still be a big company without Gordon. I think the reason why we are the fastest-growing cookware pretty much globally now at this point.

I think that that's because of the association

and the great partnership with Gordon. You can spend an hour working through your ad budget with AI and still have to make every change yourself. Triple Wells Moby uses your business data

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at all. And hex-clad, I believe, started heavily in Costco through road shows and touring Costco's. And you mentioned Prime Day as an opportunity where hex-clad does huge numbers.

We're going into Q4 now. I'm curious, what are your thoughts on sales? And promotional strategy. So we obviously like many companies. A significant amount of revenue.

I don't want to say the exact number. But a significant amount will happen in November, December. And obviously, there is a Prime Day bump. I actually believe in promotions. I hate to even call them discounts.

Discount reminds me of like bruised fruit at the market. So we come up with a strategy early on because obviously with our product, we have to produce months in advance. So we come up with an offering strategy. You know, four things like Prime Day.

So a couple times a year, we do have what we call a promotion. What we want is we want to come with something that's very compelling. Now, obviously, you spend the year filling up the funnel. But there's also that there's people that I wouldn't even say, say, are in the funnel at any point that I have to buy something.

I got to get my wife something or I've got to get somebody something. And guess what? They listen to Gordon Ramsay or maybe they listen to one of our Michelin-starred chefs or they see Helly Bieber using our cookware or, you know, Courtney Cox or all these celebrities that by the way, we don't pay it. The only one we've done any partner with is this Helly Bieber.

And after she used our stuff for a couple years. So our strategy is to come up with certain promotions to because we actually. But we have a rather significant AOV as you know. Our LTV is almost double our AOV. And we know that we're going to get you back because you're satisfied with the product.

So I do feel that without cheapening your brand. Compiling promotion will bring somebody into the fold.

“And now I want to own that when I think of us.”

Like somebody said to me, are you, do you want to be the apple in the kitchen space? I'm like, no, I don't want to be apple because apple buys shit that wears out in three years and they got to buy it again. And if you're part, you know, I'm about to call it a call. But then I keep buying the phone over and over again.

So I guess I'm part of the cult too. But what I want to do is give you something that you're going to use for a lifetime. All our products have lifetime guarantees. So I don't want you to buy it again. What I want you to do is I want you to buy my knives or I want you to buy my temper mil

or I want you to buy my cutting boards. So some people say that's a stupid strategy. I don't believe them planned off so lessons. So often I'll go the company that from when I was young was Sony. Like my dad, my uncle, they would just go by Sony products.

Because they knew Sony was good and they backed the product. So you didn't have to, you know, at that time go buy a magazine to do your research. You just go to, you know, whatever best buy and you go, we're Sony and you take it. I would like people to look at it like look at us like that and go, oh, if it's for the kitchen. I'm just going to buy hexelat stuff because it's the best.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I would say as your business is grown, you're now billion dollar business.

You know, we're all had in same growth over the last few years too, which is wild. Yeah. But you touched on it a little bit. But how are you as a billion dollar business? How are you finding new audiences of customers at that same level of scale,

“which is still allowing you to keep growing at such a consistent rate?”

So, you know, with this, I kind of look at it like three ways.

I can get the new customer with the hero product.

“I can retain my existing customer and bring him into new categories that we started.”

And then I can open new marketplaces. So it has cloud, we've done all three. Now, the great thing is we know our average customer, it's cookware. So probably it is, you know, over 35 is our average age before somebody invests in cookware. Though we keep skewing younger and younger, which is really interesting.

Because most cookware companies like their average customers like 45, 48. So it's somebody's becoming 35 every day. So I need to start interacting with that person at a young age, which is why I'm like, we do, we do challenges on master chef Junior. You know, we'll, we'll, we'll see product to, to 10 year old influence.

Or, you know, because we want people to know when you get to the point that you're going to have that product. You go to hexclad because they're the best, just like you want an iPhone when you're 10 years old. So we are working on developing a new customer base. What we're not doing is looking for new sales channels. We have one retail partnership you mentioned.

We do work with Costco and it's been amazing.

And everything else is either hexclad.com or Amazon. And the other two things is are, if you keep bringing new quality products to market and you take care of your customer, it drives me crazy when people don't have the utmost respect for your customer. It's like, I will bend over backwards. I still do customer service calls.

You know, don't need to do them anymore. But I will do them or I'll write people in email. Sometimes somebody, you know, I can't answer all of them. I get people on LinkedIn complaining about a pan and I'll respond to them sometimes. But I wanted people to know because I've had people then screenshot it and put it up on Facebook to see you reached out to me.

When I treat the customer that way, they keep buying new products. And then you open new markets. We have an amazing product. I'll do this.

I'll pat myself on the back.

I didn't invent the technology. I created the company based on that technology. What I do is as we're opening new markets, you're up now. We're crushing UK Australia. We are launching in China.

We just launched in Japan this year. We will be launching in the Middle East in South Africa. Possibly India at the very end of the year. So we're opening these new territories as well. So what?

So our strategy, which is really great. Has like crossed geographies. Anyway, which you get. And by the way, it doesn't hurt that they know Gordon everywhere. He showed up in Korea and it was like the Beatles and good going to chase stadium.

Like they were mocked like to see him. So it's kind of like a cheat code. That's amazing.

“Are there any specific tactics or channels you're doubling down on this Q4?”

Well, listen, Q4 for us, really. That's like the hexclad.com season. You know, the best promotions and the most creative promotions. You will find there. We'll, you know, we'll, every channel will, we'll see a bump.

Obviously. But where we try to do is like, we want to get people there because obviously, we own the relationship there. And that's like, that's the key. You know, Costco doesn't want to share their relationships.

Amazon doesn't want to share the relationships. So we want to start that relationship there. So our spend is directed there. We spend less on Amazon during that period. We will actually up a spend with Costco's dot Costco dot com a little bit.

And now that Costco dot com actually becomes a bigger player in the e-commerce space. We do pay a little more attention to that than say we did a few years ago. Yeah, it's wild.

“What percentage of sales are now online for Costco target Walmart?”

It's, it's insane. I remember when when Costco, Costco is this oddest, like, oddest bird to me because like, it should not be cool. It's like the least cool thing.

But it's kind of cool. Like, you go watch people are walking around with their dollar 50 hot dog. And then they're going to back to get a little sample of cheese. And like, I live in LA. And there'll be a guy driving his roles, Royce.

And he's just there to eat the free ticketos in the back of the store. And this is just, just confounds me a bit. But then they'll buy Costco has $100,000 ring in the store. So like, they'll buy $400 cookware, no problem.

It's like going in a time machine back like 20 years. It even breaks all the time.

I mean, but the revenue is incredible.

It's, yeah, I don't get it, but keep doing it Costco. Yeah, cause of your Costco. Big, uh, a lot of Indians love Costco too. Good deal. Absolutely, dude.

I'll tell you, it's for first generation Americans love the Costco deals. Yeah, they do. All right, Danny, last question here. Yeah. Quarter four, take home tip.

You've got hexclad.com's biggest season coming up. What, what is one or two things that you think you've mastered with hexclad in Q4 or during these types of periods that you can share with the rest of the audience? I don't know if this is definitely going to, going to transfer to everyone. I don't know how many of you have your own company are trying to start one,

want to learn how to start it. But Q4 for us, we look at Q4 as it's a 12 month period. And for us, this is key. If you're going to be a company that does 30, 40, 50, 60% of your revenue in Q4, you have to start planning the seeds early for that.

I don't mind that the work I'm doing in January and February and March will not be realized until Q4.

“And I think you have to be patient with that because you will get the rewards.”

If you have a good product and you're treating your consumer with that respect, they will stick out during that consideration period.

And to me, that's the key thing.

I think a lot of people come in and they won all year long. They're like, I got to get the money now, I got to get it now. And there's something I just said it outside before I came up talking about this. Realizing what your short term goal and what your long term goal is key in your business. This will permeate through every aspect of your business because very often,

people take their long term goals and they don't have the patience for them. And they make them a short term goal. If you are playing the long game and always be playing the long game, that's the only way you retain a customer.

“That's the only way you build a brand you go from being a product to a brand.”

If you don't play the long game, you will wind a probably failing at some point. Because if you're just here for today, the customer can smell that like body odor on you. They know you're trying to get the money to that. And so for our few, Q4 strategy, it's real simple. Once we come up with what we want to present them from a product offering perspective, it's about planning seeds, March, April, May, June, July.

So we for a bad analogy reap the harvest in Q4. I love it. Danny, thank you so much for being here. It's my pleasure, buddy. Thank you. All right, now listen, September 24th in New York City,

I'm hosting the third Q4 summit. Okay, it's free to attend.

It's going to be about 500ish brands in the room. We're going to have programming all day. We're going to have breakout sessions. It's going to be a very special room. You can attend for free.

Okay, just go to econfounders.com/Q4. Fill out the form for a ticket. My team will review it. And we'll make sure you get a ticket in your in the room. But September 24th, I want to see you there.

If you have any questions, shoot me a DM on Twitter. Otherwise, I'll see you there. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next time to cut through the noise on CPG, retail, and e-commerce.

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