> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Evan Dash, CEO of StoreBound and founder of Dash kitchenware. Evan shares his unconventional journey from firefighter to entrepreneur, building a brand that surpassed $1 billion in sales. He discusses leveraging brick-and-mortar retail expertise, the importance of a content-first strategy, and hiring people who genuinely care. Evan also highlights his partnership with his wife Rachel, strategies for DTC brands entering retail, and AI’s growing role in business operations.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Introduction and Setting the Stage
Evan discusses generational shifts in kitchenware preferences and the initial marketing approach for Dash.

00:00:22 Podcast Introduction
Host introduces the E-com Breakthrough Podcast and sets up the episode’s focus.

00:00:35 Guest Introduction: Evan Dash’s Background
Evan’s journey from firefighter to CEO, and the founding of Dash kitchenware.

00:01:51 Personal Connection and Product Recognition
Host shares personal experience with Dash products and introduces the main interview.

00:02:19 Evan’s Entrepreneurial Journey
Evan recounts his unconventional path from firefighting to retail and business.

00:04:01 Lessons from Retail and E-commerce Evolution
Evan discusses his retail background, the fall of legacy brands, and the rise of e-commerce.

00:05:57 Transition from Corporate to Entrepreneurship
Evan explains how being fired led him to start his own business with his wife.

00:07:45 Working with a Spouse: Partnership Insights
Evan and the host discuss the dynamics and benefits of building a business with their wives.

00:10:02 Travel and Business Partnership Benefits
Evan shares the advantages of traveling and working closely with his spouse.

00:11:21 Launching Dash: Retail-First Strategy
Evan explains why Dash started with a retail-first approach and the challenges faced.

00:12:11 Early Product Experiments and Brand Naming
Evan describes initial product ideas, licensing, and the decision to use his last name for the brand.

00:14:30 Content-Driven Brand Building
Dash’s early focus on content creation, social media, and appealing to younger consumers.

00:16:37 Retail Placement and Cash Flow Challenges
How Dash leveraged retail relationships for credibility and managed cash flow pressures.

00:17:47 Retail Flywheel and Industry FOMO
The impact of early retail success and how it led to more opportunities.

00:18:35 Product Flops and Risk Mitigation
Evan discusses product failures, the importance of sell-through, and strategies to minimize risk.

00:22:07 Crowdfunding and Retailer Relationships
Using Kickstarter/Indiegogo to test products and proactively managing retailer relationships.

00:24:30 Advice for DTC Brands Entering Retail
Evan’s recommendations for DTC brands looking to expand into retail.

00:25:08 Learning New Channels and Building Expertise
The importance of becoming an expert in new sales channels and hiring for knowledge gaps.

00:27:02 Brokers vs. Direct Outreach in Retail
Pros and cons of using brokers versus direct outreach for retail expansion.

00:28:14 Focus, Time Management, and Agency Pitfalls
The risks of losing focus, the value of time, and challenges with agencies.

00:29:37 Hiring Smart People and Building Teams
How hiring smarter people and building strong teams drives business growth.

00:30:36 Culture of Caring and Core Values
Evan’s approach to company culture, hiring for care, and building a values-driven organization.

00:34:15 Defining “Care” in Company Culture
What “care” means at Dash and how it’s embedded in the company’s DNA.

00:35:16 Empowerment, Trust, and Winning Hearts
Pairing care with empowerment, trust, and a focus on winning hearts internally and externally.

00:38:20 Culture as a Competitive Advantage
How culture and core values translate to consumer experience and business success.

00:39:16 AI in Business: Human vs. Automation
Evan’s perspective on AI, its role in efficiency, and why humans remain central.

00:40:17 AI as a Multiplier, Not a Replacement
How Dash is adopting AI to boost productivity while maintaining a human-centric approach.

00:41:28 Final Thoughts and Book Recommendation
Evan recommends his book and offers to connect with listeners.

00:41:49 Three Actionable Takeaways
Host summarizes key lessons: domain expertise, caring culture, and hiring smart people.

00:45:08 Rapid-Fire Questions: Book, AI Tool, Inspiration
Evan shares his favorite book, AI tools, and sources of inspiration in CPG and fashion.

00:48:34 Closing and Contact Information
How to connect with Evan and Dash; episode wrap-up.

Tools and Websites
“Kickstarter“: “00:23:27”
“Indiegogo“: “00:23:27”
“ChatGPT“: “00:46:15″Books
“A Dash of Good by Evan Dash“: “00:01:00”
“Shoe Dog by Phil Knight“: “00:45:15”
“The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber“: “00:00:58″Videos
“Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead“: “00:20:59″Social Media
“Instagram“: “00:48:39”
“LinkedIn“: “00:48:39”

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started my business in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com and in your subject line say “strategy audit” for the chance to win a $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit at no cost!

Transcript:

Evan Dash 00:00:00  What was interesting is that the younger generation didn’t want what was on their parent’s countertop. So when we launched, we set ourselves up like a marketing agency, and this was even before we knew what we were selling. Exactly. And what what our retail distribution strategy was going to be. We felt that we needed to find white space, fill it, and create amazing content around it.

MC 00:00:22  Welcome to the E-com Breakthrough Podcast. Are you ready to unlock the full potential and growth in your business? You’ve already crossed seven figures in sales, but the challenge is knowing how to take your business to the next level.

Josh Hadley 00:00:35  Do you want to know what it takes to build your business to $1 billion in revenue? Well, today’s guest has the answer for you because he’s done it himself. Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley. I scaled my own brand from 0 to 8 figures in sales, and now my mission is to take it to over nine figures on my journey to nine figures. I bring you the unfiltered conversations with the smartest minds in eCommerce.

Josh Hadley 00:00:58  Past guests include Ezra Firestone, Kevin King, and Michael E Gerber, author of The Myth Today. I am super excited to introduce you all to Evan Dash. Evan is the CEO of StoreBound and author of the bestselling book A Dash of Good How They Turn a Business Based on Values into a Valuable Business. Evan’s journey took him from a firefighter to a business executive before becoming a household name in the kitchenware industry. Alongside his wife, Rachel, they launched Dash, their namesake kitchenware brand. Under Dash’s leadership, the company skyrocketed to success, achieving sales of over $1 billion. $1 billion and becoming the world’s largest producer of waffle makers, popcorn poppers and egg cookers. With over 100 million units sold before its 10th anniversary. Dash negotiated a majority sale of his company to Groupe Seb, the $8 billion global leader in the housewares industry. With that introduction, welcome to the show, Evan.

Evan Dash 00:01:50  Thanks for having.

Josh Hadley 00:01:51  Me. Evan. Super impressive what you’ve been able to build with Dash. I remember we met at innovate last year and at first I was like, Is this guy is this the one that I keep seeing that my kids.

Josh Hadley 00:02:02  We go into target and they’re like, I want the Mickey Mouse waffle maker, I want this. And sure enough, you were the man behind all of those ingenious products that my kids are always raving about. And I’m happy to say we are using your products every single weekend as I make waffles for the kids.

Evan Dash 00:02:18  I really appreciate that.

Josh Hadley 00:02:19  It’s it’s great to have you on the show here, Evan, and absolutely incredible what you built. And I would love to have you kind of kick this off with just kind of giving the listeners a quick overview of what your journey into creating $1 billion business, because that’s no small fee. And you came from a different background, being a firefighter and not necessarily having the educational background that a lot of people think is like the traditional path. So why don’t you tell us a little bit more about how this ever got started?

Evan Dash 00:02:47  Yeah, I mean, my, my background and my journey was anything but traditional. I was kind of a screw up in school. I failed out of college twice and got a job with the local fire department in Pennsylvania and worked at that for several years and absolutely loved it.

Evan Dash 00:03:02  And I actually tell people today that it was that training in the fire department that really prepared me and got me ready for business, and that everything I needed to learn about business, I learned on a fire truck, and it was all about learning a learning a trade, developing expertise, building strategy, building contingency plans, having strong communication, camaraderie and similar to the business world that I eventually got into. there’s a lot of fires put out, probably more so on the business side than on the the fire department side. And ultimately, what I realized about the fire department is that when you boil it all down, you’re really only called out to do a job when somebody’s having a bad day. And if you’re you’re your success is basically measured on whether or not you improve somebody’s day, whether you enrich their lives. I took the same approach within business, and I think that combined with the ability to keep a cool head taken a full situation, not make rash decisions. That was a winning, winning combination for me.

Evan Dash 00:04:01  So I went from the fire department to big American retail. My dad was a retailer and told me you shouldn’t go into retail. So I said to you, I’ll show you, I’ll show you. And tried to follow in in his footsteps and went into department store retail, started working for Lord and Taylor, which is I mean, it’s amazing to see the full circle that that’s come with the e-commerce world, because the Lord and Taylor flagship, one of the most iconic buildings in Manhattan, is now owned by Amazon. First it was, you know, Lord and Taylor went bankrupt as part of, I guess at the time, the Hudson’s Bay Trading Company, which was the oldest company in North America and like so many other companies, didn’t evolve fast enough and became a casualty of the retail apocalypse that was really brought on by by e-commerce and driven driven forward that way. So Lord and Taylor’s flagship was first sold to WeWork, which was started by, you know, two dudes in Brooklyn who grew it to a multi-billion dollar business.

Evan Dash 00:04:57  And then that collapsed and just kind of shows how something that took over a hundred years to build can come crashing down so quickly. And for me, that was an amazing lesson in, in my my retail journey, I went from Lawton Taylor to Macy’s. I was part of the group that helped to launch Macy’s and the underlying fulfillment systems. So I was always a really fascinated with e-commerce, but it wasn’t my specialty. I mean, my specialty was really brick and mortar retail. It’s what I understood. And in 2010, when Rachel and I launched StoreBound and actually put our last name onto products in the kitchen electric space, we started to look for investors. And at the time, investors said to us, you’re not an ecom brand. So what we were doing was not sexy at all. But we’ve had an amazing, I mean, now roughly 16 year run or 15.5 year run and have grown the business exponentially. And I think it’s a lot of that early background and the decisions that we made along the way, that’s allowed us to be a really strong, solid company today that’s well diversified.

Josh Hadley 00:05:57  I love that journey. My question is how? How did you get the idea to say, hey, we’re going to put our name on, you know, kitchenware brands and we are going to lead with the, you know, retail first strategy. Obviously you had the retail background, but what made you jump ship because you obviously were succeeding in your corporate career, so to speak. So what what was the preemptive motive there?

Evan Dash 00:06:18  Yes. So I didn’t jump ship. I was thrown off the ship. I had risen through the ranks really quickly. I was senior VP at Macy’s. I was the youngest person on their executive committee, and it went to my head, and I didn’t play nicely in the sandbox. And looking back at it in hindsight, I thought that my results justified, you know, the means of how I got there. And ultimately I had a boss that just two of us didn’t get along, and I thought that that was okay. And looking back on it in hindsight, they should have thrown me out a lot sooner.

Evan Dash 00:06:48  But ultimately they fired me and it really it empowered me to be able to take that move, start my own business. I knew enough about myself at the time that I didn’t have what it takes to do it alone. I’m a big picture guy. I my head tends to be a lot in the clouds, and I’ve always surrounded myself with amazing executives, and fortunately for me, that was the other person in my relationship. So I have, you know, credible, incredible marriage, wonderful wife, business partner. And she is everything that I’m not in business and, and vice versa. And it’s just been really an incredible, incredible partnership. But I never would have left the corporate world. I envisioned myself doing the the, you know, eventually running the company, doing those you probably see on my screen down below on the street. That’s the New York Stock Exchange. You know, I pictured myself ringing the bell doing the investor earning calls. And I’ve never been more grateful for getting the opportunity to reinvent my life as an entrepreneur.

Josh Hadley 00:07:45  There’s so many lessons to pull out of all of that. And when life throws you a curveball one way right, it opens the door to, you know, a whole new level where you can take your life. And and I love what you guys have been able to do with that. But I especially love the aspect that, like, your wife is your business partner and you guys built this together because that’s what we’re doing with my own brand. My wife is the designer and we work hand in hand together. She designs all of our products, and then I’ll run more of the business side of things. But it’s so fun. And yet you probably get asked this all the time, Evan. Which is like, how is it working with your wife? Do you guys hate each other at the end of the day? Or like, I can’t imagine working with my spouse, but for me at least. And I’d be interested to get your take on this. But for me, I can’t think of life any other way.

Josh Hadley 00:08:28  Like if I had a spouse that was not as like all in in business and trying to grow the business and grow the brand and seeing the future that we could go accomplish together, I’d be like, I don’t know, what else do we talk about on date nights? And what else do we do in the evenings rather than just sit around and watch Netflix because, like, we’re just always building together. And I personally think it draws us closer together than anything. I mean, what’s your take, working with your wife.

Evan Dash 00:08:51  My take? I mean, for me personally, I’m in the same boat as you. It is the greatest experience. And it’s the only reason that that we’re as successful as we are. On the flip side of it, I know so many people who work together as couples, and I would for the vast majority of people, I would not recommend it. Rachel and I are together 24 over seven. We travel together. I mean, I always say I am, I have constant supervision.

Evan Dash 00:09:13  If we had a wider lens, you’d see that I am being supervised right now. I’m like, you know, I feel like sometimes I talk to people like I’m a hostage, you know, and they’re watching from off camera. But no, seriously, it’s been amazing. We when you start a business, you work on it 24 over seven. I mean, it is it takes everything from you. And I don’t think I could have been in a relationship and building a business if we weren’t building it together. I also don’t think I would have been successful doing it without somebody who truly compensates for every weakness that I have, and vice versa. I’m the one who’s on the podcast. I’m the one who’s in front of the room talking to the people. She’s the one who’s making everything happen. We. We both are. We share the same values, but we work totally differently. And for us, it’s the really the perfect blend. I always tell people when we wake up in the morning, somehow we kind of wake up at the same time.

Evan Dash 00:10:02  I open my eyes and I’m just excited, and I feel like this day is filled with possibilities and I can’t wait to see where it goes. And I say to people that Rachel is the Michael Jordan of worrying. She wakes up in the morning, she opens her eyes and she goes, what’s going to go wrong today? And I think that blend of the a realistic view and worrying versus some carefree, you know, I write about it in my book a little bit about how, you know, Simon Sinek always talks about, you know, visionary and the operator and that it really takes both, you know, and would Steve Jobs have been Steve Jobs without Steve Wozniak? Probably. Probably not. So for me, it’s been an amazing, amazing path. The other piece of it is just the amount of travel that you do, and particularly being an omnichannel brand and being an entrepreneur involved in product development. We were in China up to eight times a year. We were flying all over the country to visit our customers.

Evan Dash 00:10:57  There is something so wonderful about not fighting with the person next to you over the armrest, about knowing that she’s going to eat my salad and I’m going to eat her cookie on the flight, you know, and just being able to to travel and hold hands when there’s turbulence and and that’s true whether it’s turbulence in the air or turbulence in the business, it’s just an incredible, incredible experience for us. And it really is a multiplier of the success that we’ve had.

Josh Hadley 00:11:21  So well articulated there and love what you guys have, have done and building it together. I also love it too, like being able to travel together with your wife and you’re building something like there’s just a lot of memories that get created that way. Now, Evan, let’s turn our attention now to how you got, you know, dash off the ground. How did you leverage your experience in brick and mortar retail to start with what you called the unsexy playbook of getting products off the ground because you didn’t come at this with a D to C first approach.

Josh Hadley 00:11:49  So tell me a little bit more about that. What that looked like. And especially knowing our audience is mainly D to see first brands. And very few of them are in retail. But I think all of us are a little envious of you where you’re so diversified. We all want to be able to say, hey, yeah, we’re doing well on Amazon, but also in a bunch of different brick and mortar stores and things like that. So tell me a little bit more about that game.

Evan Dash 00:12:11  Yeah, I mean, I think everything’s everything’s cyclical and every successful business looks like they’re crushing it from the outside and that everything’s been been easy and they’ve made all the right decisions. I think there is a lot of things that were decisions for us early on that we’re born really from our knowledge, our expertise and our comfort level versus that. It was some incredible plan that we could really foresee the future. So when we started out, we threw a lot of things against the wall. We came up with a food storage line called Snack Saver.

Evan Dash 00:12:40  We licensed the Maytag brand from whirlpool to put it on irons. We we created the world’s first non-electric washing machine that we thought we would sell to every third world country around the world as a new age washing machine. And one of the things that we threw against the wall was we always knew from our buying backgrounds and retail backgrounds that we felt that there was an opportunity in small, small kitchen appliances. And for us, we thought we needed a brand. We entertained licensing a lot of different licensing things. It was kind of a last resort to put our name actually onto the product. And I really, especially with being so known in the industry, I didn’t want people. I was really fearful of everybody saying, oh my God, you have such an ego. What do you think? You’re a celebrity chef now you’re putting your name on the product. But what what we what we talked about with our group of designers and creatives is they said, stop thinking about it as your name. It’s a great kitchen word.

Evan Dash 00:13:37  And they created a little stop motion video, dash of color, dash of flavor, healthy food and a dash. I talked to my IP attorney who said, hey, it’s your last name, you’ve got some built in IP rights. Also think you should do it. Plus, I think it’s an amazing name for a kitchen brand, so we actually move forward with it. Interesting thing at the time is that this was in 2010. We launched the brand around 2012. What we didn’t understand at the time is we felt that the only way into a heritage category like this, where we were competing against giant brands that were still around, from the brands that my parents registered for 50 years ago when they got married, like Hamilton Beach and Proctor Silex, Mr. Coffee, rival, Crock-Pot, Cuisinart. You know, all of these amazing, amazing, iconic heritage brands. What was interesting is that the younger generation didn’t want what was on their parents countertop. So when we launched, we set ourselves up like a marketing agency.

Evan Dash 00:14:30  And this was even before we knew what we were selling. Exactly. And what what our retail distribution strategy was going to be. We felt that we needed to find white space, fill it, and create amazing content around it. So we set ourselves up like a content production studio rather than a product development house. The product development piece came easy to us because we were doing that for years. But early on, unlike our competitors who were all using big agencies, we hired a photographer, videographer and a food stylist and and a personality. And every day we were creating content. And at the beginning, what what was I mean, the only way we could get the word out about this unknown kitchen brand was all we could afford to do was put it on social media. So when we started selling the products, we put it onto social media and it was never about buy this product. It was making things that looked fun. And then there’d be conversation about the product in the in the comments. But what we underestimated at the time was that this unknown brand that was doing things that made people smile would become social currency.

Evan Dash 00:15:38  So at the time, our boys were maybe ten and 11 somewhere, somewhere in there. They. We could see through their eyes how content was so important. Discovery was so important. And they were becoming. The new influencers might not have been influencers on social, but they were influencing their parents. Their parents would try to push them toward one thing, and they were like, no, that’s not cool, it’s XYZ. So they the younger generation at the time, millennials really embraced our products and started influencing my generation. So we grew really quickly that way as we grew, though, you know, just getting into a little bit of the financial piece of it is we came out of the gate, we had relationships with retailers. We the brand was starting to get known, and we were able to get get retail placement quickly and circle circle back to that. But the interesting piece was that because we were looking at retail first, because it’s what we knew, Rachel, from that Bath and Beyond me for Macy’s, that’s where our relationships were.

Evan Dash 00:16:37  We wanted to sell thousands of pieces at a time in container quantities or truckloads to big retailers who already had those pipelines who we thought would build credibility for us. The fact that our brand is sitting at Macy’s or sitting in bed, Bath and Beyond. At the time, that was the credibility builder for our brand. What happened was the the sales started to take off, started to grow exponentially. And that put this weight of cash flow on us because retailers were reordering and they hadn’t even paid for the first order yet. So we started speaking to investors. And at the time, DTC brands were growing like crazy. They were darlings of the venture community, and investors were not particularly interested in us because our business model wasn’t sexy. We were selling to these, to the dinosaurs of of retail. So it really there was so much that happened because we were bootstrapping the company and because of what our backgrounds were that really forced us into making what we felt was the smart decision, or the way to get this business off the ground, rather than trying to learn something new and trying to become experts in e-commerce all of a sudden, and then working shoulder to shoulder in the garage, shipping packages to individual consumers.

Evan Dash 00:17:47  We went into big department stores and we showed them what we were doing on social and how we were attracting a younger consumer, and that for us became rocket fuel in the business. And once you get that first breakthrough in retail, it tends to be a fast follow industry where everybody has the fear of missing out and they’re all looking at it, okay, Macy’s has this big promotion and they’re running advertising. I want that brand. So retailers started to reach out to us in the process also.

Josh Hadley 00:18:12  Well once you get that flywheel going that’s definitely helpful when they start coming to you rather than you having to sell yourself to them over and over again. Evan, there’s a lot to unpack from there. I heard at the very beginning you talked about like you were just you were trying to do a bunch of different products, and you’re almost throwing things at the wall to see what would stick. you said like, hey, we started to take off exponentially. Well, tell me, like what that looked like.

Josh Hadley 00:18:35  Did you have some flops in retail? Like, what was it? And I know this from my experience at least talking to other people, which is that’s that’s great. You got into retail, but your problems have only just begun because now you got to actually drive sell through, because if you don’t drive, sell through, you’re going to now eat all of that inventory. Those, you know, containers full of inventory that you just shipped into them, and you’re probably not going to get another Po from them. And now you’ve tarnished your name not only with maybe target, but now Walmart’s never going to pick you up because they saw that you had no sell through. So that’s one of the key components of retail as you know is like sell through. So tell me like what did that look like? You were I haven’t ever seen that washing machine, but I’ve seen the waffle makers. So tell me, like, what did that look like from posting a bunch of different products, what actually began selling through, and how did you get traction where you were not a household name brand right out of the gate?

Evan Dash 00:19:26  Yeah.

Evan Dash 00:19:27  So we had we had traction on a lot of things. And what what the benefit that we had was, is that we worked in retail for so long. We were experts in our category. We knew where the white space was. We knew the prices where things had to be sold. We knew the features, and on top of it, we bought from every person we were competing against or every company we competed against. So we we started the business with a playbook. We were not these entrepreneurs who had an idea that was trying to commercialize it, in fact, for years. And I write about it in my book, I had entrepreneurs coming to me to try to sell to me at Macy’s for years and years, and there would be times where somebody who had a cool product that if it was from a large company, I would have bought. I took mercy on them and passed on it, because I knew that my company would put them out of business for the reasons that you talked about.

Evan Dash 00:20:14  If you didn’t achieve the sell through, or they didn’t understand all the charges involved, or the chargebacks or the risk, or how long it would take to get paid. So there that for us, we started with a playbook, but we didn’t have a breakout success until we launched Dash in the market. And I think that the reason that it really took off is because we started in a, at a category at the time of juice extractors where there was a big trend in the market toward juice extractors. We knew that. We knew that there was shortage of supply. There was a documentary that had come out called fat, Sick and Nearly Dead about a guy who changed his whole health outlook by drinking juice, that he made it at home. And it was a great documentary, but it was driving huge demand in the category. So we launched ourselves really around being a healthy, family first brand. We created content around it, and we knew what the features were that people were looking for, the design aesthetic and what the price point had to be.

Evan Dash 00:21:09  And on top of it, it helped that I was able to call a friend at just about any big retailer because like every industry, once you’re inside the industry, it feels pretty small and you get to know all the key players. And we knew where where we could sell it. We also understood the ramifications of launching it, this in this retailer versus that retailer and taking it a little bit, a little bit full circle. With e-commerce. We made a very deliberate decision that we would not sell to Amazon initially because we felt like that would take away the control of the brand that we had. And we felt that every retailer that we were going in and speaking to was so worried about Amazon. So for us to be able to walk in and say, we don’t sell to Amazon, we’re not planning to let’s build something epic together, and then we won’t have to look at widening that distribution into Amazon. At the time, it really became, you know, everything. All these little building blocks started to come together to stack up into what what we look back at was a winning strategy in the process, though.

Evan Dash 00:22:07  To your question, before we had lots of flops. So if we have if one out of three products does well, I’m really happy like that to me. I’m batting 300 and I’m getting into the Hall of Fame at the end of my career. So we try to mitigate risk. We try to understand, you know, not go after something too big until we’ve tested it. So we tried to figure out ways that we could mitigate risk. So one of those ways early on was crowdfunding. So for us we we were able to work with our factories and get them to invest in the tooling or give us credit terms, things like that, because we had great reputations. They knew us. They saw that we were growing. What we didn’t know is that there were certain products that we wanted to bring out to the market, that we just weren’t sure how the market would, would accept it. So what most people do is they go to a trade show and they show it. And when buyers are a trade shows, they, you know, there there’s the lights and everything looks amazing.

Evan Dash 00:23:00  And they give feedback and they may be interested in something or appear to be interested in something at a trade show. By the time you circle back to them and you bring it into their office and you show it to them, they’ve forgotten about that at the trade show. They’ve seen other cool things and they may not buy it. So for most companies, they can invest $1 million easily trying to commercialize a product before they even launch it, and then find out there’s not an interest for us putting concepts onto Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Yeah, it was great when people backed it and we got that money up front, but the bigger piece was we looked at it as if somebody is willing to take out their credit card, a consumer and buy a product that doesn’t exist yet and do it at scale. That, to me is a winner. So we tried to do everything humanly possible to mitigate risk along the way. And then when we did have flops, we were very quick to clean it up with the retailer.

Evan Dash 00:23:51  So we are fanatics about checking our retailers selling. I want to make sure that my entire sales team knows the ins and outs of our selling before our retail buyers ever do, and that we go to them if something’s not selling right, and we recommend taking the price, the price down, we merchandising it, send it back and we’ll liquidate it and send them something in return. We want to be incredibly proactive and not put our head in the sand about any problems that we have. We want to eliminate small problems before they become big problems. It’s also a reputation builder. When retailers see that you operate that way, they the the walls of trust come down and they they’re a lot more willing to really step out and try to build a partnership with you.

Josh Hadley 00:24:30  Fantastic advice. My question for you here, Evan, is let’s take these DTC first brands that maybe want to get into retail. What would be your recommendation? Because like, obviously you had so many advantages working in your favor where you already have the contacts, you already knew the white space that existed, you already knew the price points, what would sell through, what maybe would not sell through.

Josh Hadley 00:24:52  So like, you had so much going for you. What if somebody is coming from a DTC first background and they’re like, I don’t even know the first thing about retail. All I know is I’ve got a good product. It’s got some amazing momentum, maybe on TikTok shop and on Amazon. We’re raising a lot of noise around here. What would be your advice for them?

Evan Dash 00:25:08  I mean, my my advice is the same thing that we did in the reverse is to become an expert in it. So we were not an e-commerce brand. We were not even selling to Amazon. I literally I, I did a keynote at a, at a Smart Kitchen summit back in 2017, and I came off the stage and the team from Amazon accosted me admiring you on on Amazon. After the conversation with them, I said, you know what? I’ve got to learn everything that I can about this platform and understand what value I can bring so that it’s productive for them. It’s really easy to get caught up in just selling something.

Evan Dash 00:25:43  I don’t care about sales, you know? And I don’t care about orders. I care about reorders. So that that for us is the lifeblood. So what I did was I started to immerse myself in everything that I could around, around e-commerce and started to learn everything that I could and make a decision over what the right approach was. I think I’d recommend the same thing to anybody who’s an e-commerce expert looking to get onto the shelves of a retailer. At the end of the day, if you’re able to effectively tell your story on ecom or on social, you should be a great candidate for brick and mortar retail. But then it becomes an idea of who’s the right retailer, how does the pricing need to be, and how does it need to work? What’s the business model for it. So you can either do that by doing some networking, talking to people who are in it, or hiring somebody who has some expertise with us with that. So I mean, for me here, I hired people who had some expertise in e-commerce, but I also hired people who had this incredible thirst to learn something new.

Evan Dash 00:26:42  And that combination was really a great thing. But it really comes down to what’s the right product for the retailer? Who’s the right retailer to launch with? How does it need? How does the financial transaction work and how do I manage it? I mean, it it’s it’s not that dissimilar. It just takes a little bit of demystifying some of the nuances.

Josh Hadley 00:27:02  Would you recommend sellers work with brokers from the get go or is it starting to, you know, bang the doors yourself? And lots of cold outreach as the owner and brand owner themselves.

Evan Dash 00:27:13  Yeah, I think that’s a that’s something that only the owner of the company can ask themselves because everything’s a trade off. You know, at the end of the day, we all have the same amount of time in a day, and that is the most valuable thing. I was actually on a call right before this with a tech provider who was trying to make a pitch to me and said, you have you’ve nothing to lose by trying it. And I said, I have the biggest thing to lose my time and my focus from what I’m what I’m working on, that is the biggest risk to me.

Evan Dash 00:27:38  So if somebody has the time and inclination to do it, they should absolutely do it. If it’s going to distract them from, you know, really where their bread is buttered and put their existing business at risk, then they should try to work with somebody who might be able to accelerate that or take a lot of the work off of it for them. But I’m a big proponent of everything that we can do ourselves. We do ourselves outside of things that tend to be more of a commodity, like logistics and warehousing or various systems. But anything that is truly business related, we try to control that internally because we’ve never had a third party do it the way that we do it.

Josh Hadley 00:28:14  I totally agree with that. Any agencies that I’ve ever worked with from marketing agencies, even a TikTok shop agency that we’ve worked with at the beginning, like failed miserably. And so I think there to your point, there is like a lot of value that comes from working with the best in the business. But you also touched on something that I think is extremely important that the audience needs to like, hear and reiterate over and over again, which is, you said the biggest cost in the biggest risk is your time more than anything.

Josh Hadley 00:28:42  And it’s the and it’s removing your focus off of what’s already, you said, what’s already buttering your bread for you. And I hear this story way too many times in the e-com space. Somebody is crushing it on Amazon. Maybe they’re doing five, maybe $10 million on Amazon. And then they’re like, but TikTok shop is the new sexy shiny object. So I’m going to go over there. But what happens is they haven’t built up the team and the systems over on Amazon. And so as soon as they shift their focus to another business venture, quote unquote, and they’re like, I gotta go figure out TikTok shop, just like I figured out Amazon from the early days, it’s like, okay, that’s fine. You can go do that and you’ll probably be successful. But what ultimately happens is Amazon starts to get year over, year declines. You start losing market share because you’ve taken your eye off the ball and nobody that you don’t have a team or system or operations set up to like, keep what you’ve already built, established and running like a well-oiled machine.

Josh Hadley 00:29:37  And so that’s something that you touch on in your book, which I think is really important that we we need to address, which is Evan, you’ve done such a great job of like scaling out this brand, but it hasn’t just been yourself or even your wife doing everything in the business. You said you hire really, really smart people, and you’re probably not the best guy to be talking to about, hey, what’s the best DTC strategy? How do I get how do I get viral on social media? You can give me some pointers, but you have experts now on your team that like, could probably run circles around you. And ultimately that’s what I’m trying to do with my own business as well, is like hire people smarter than me that could run circles around me in very specific niches and areas of the business. So talk to me about like, how do you go find these type of people? What what type of skills and qualities are you looking for? And is that still relevant in the age of AI where people are saying you don’t need any humans anymore.

Josh Hadley 00:30:30  You could go build a $100 million brand with just you and a bunch of bots working for you. So, Evan, what’s your take on that?

Evan Dash 00:30:36  Yeah, I’ve heard a lot of people say that. And as the further we get into it, the more I realize that that is nowhere in our future. And and we’ve kicked off a lot, a lot around AI, which we can talk about later. But, I mean, first and first and foremost, when we met at innovate, for me, being at an event like that, I absolutely love it because hands down, I am the dumbest person in that room. I mean, I, I am in awe of the the subject matter expertise that that people have in in that room. And I’m just trying to sponge as much as I can. I feel like that in my office. I mean, so from the from the outset, Rachel and I talked so much about culture. We both worked in big corporations where it was in like chew up, spit you out type of type of culture, and it’s a great place to learn.

Evan Dash 00:31:23  I mean, we both got great foundations, but we also had this simple philosophy that we could build a company where people really enjoyed working, where they felt valued, and we could still get the same, if not better, if not better results. So from the beginning we we essentially said that we have one truly core non-negotiable when we’re hiring. And I go into this in detail in the book, but to give you the gist, it’s we we hire people who care. And what we found is that you can take a reasonably intelligent person and teach them to do just about any job in our company. We can’t teach somebody to care. We can’t. We can want them to care. It doesn’t doesn’t matter. So so much of the interviews that we have with people might be, might seem like we’re just making small talk, and it might be the easiest interview the person has because we’re asking them questions about their family. And you know what? Trying to understand what sacrifices they make for their family.

Evan Dash 00:32:17  We’re trying to understand what sacrifices they make for their coworkers and relationships with coworkers. We like to understand what where do they live? What’s in disrepair? How long has it been in? In disrepair? What do they do for other people? And we try to get down to really understanding. Do they have that underlying gene that makes them care? Because if they do, and we bring them in and they’re passionate about what they do, they are going to be freakin stoppable. If they don’t care. They’re going to make this a worse place and they’re going to become, you know, that one toxic employee that can wind up poisoning everything and really sap our culture, our productivity, all of that. So, I mean, that really for us is the the true underlying peace. There are certain jobs where we love to bring in people who are true experts in the field. What I found over the years is that the the more expertise that somebody has in something, the more they tend to have blinders on.

Evan Dash 00:33:12  The more they tend to be set in their ways. So typically when you combine that subject matter expertise with somebody who cares, they they’re looking further out. They make they are always striving to make things better. So that’s really been the biggest the biggest piece for for us. And it’s we’ve gotten to a point where Rachel and I can want the culture to be great, but it takes everybody. And that’s something that we impress on every single team member when they start with the company, is that this culture is only great when every single person makes it a great culture.

Josh Hadley 00:33:44  I love that, I think it’s so well said. Evan. What does it mean to care? Is it caring of other people? Is it care like is it? Is it kindness? Is it selflessness? What does it mean to care? Because we also have something, a core value in our business which is extreme ownership, which I think is synonymous almost with it because it’s like, do you care enough to like, spend your shower time working on that idea where if something’s broke, you’re going to like, you care enough or you have enough ownership to want to go fix it.

Josh Hadley 00:34:15  Tell me a little bit more about like, what does this care mean to you?

Evan Dash 00:34:18  Yeah. So I think care’s kind of the easy The easier part of it, you know, caring, is you don’t come in here trying to make somebody’s day worse. You care about your workspace. You care about the results of the company. You care about the company’s resources. You care about the decisions that you’re making, everything that you care about, you’re trying to make better. You have this fear of making something, making something worse in a way so that you care about your coworkers in a way that if somebody needs help, you step in to help. When something’s high priority, you step and you work late, you you help get it done for them. That’s the caring piece. The caring piece alone doesn’t take you it. It’s the right. It’s the right characteristic. But unless you pair it with managers who provide trust and empowerment, that caring piece can turn negative pretty quickly. Because one of the double edged swords of people who care is that when things don’t go their way or things are getting worse, they get really upset about it and they can run very hot and cold.

Evan Dash 00:35:16  So pairing caring with trust and trust and empowerment is a really is a really big deal. And that’s something that I struggled with a lot at the beginning. It was letting letting go of things and really trusting and empowering people to do it. And you know, that next step of trust and empowerment is making sure that you inspect what you expect, that you’re just you’re seeing how things are unfolding. You’re helping to course correct as it’s happening. You’re providing useful, constructive feedback which people who care love to love to get, typically because they want to continue to improve. So it’s a it it’s not as simple as any any one thing. And it’s really building an entire kind of self, almost a self-correcting culture where everybody embraces these, these, these traits and no matter who I mean, the best people have bad days. So making sure that people are there to, to uplift, you know, the other thing that we talk about with people is, yeah, kindness is really important. We want people to to to care and be be kind.

Evan Dash 00:36:15  We provide everybody with 12 paid days off per year, in addition to all their regular PTO to work on charitable initiatives in their communities. So you know that that piece of it also. But then caring also extends to making sure that people understand, no matter what job they have with the company. We’re a consumer products company, and we live and die by the experience that consumers have with our product and the experience that they have with the company. So we want to make sure that every person has a say in our products or out of the box experience, our instruction manuals. You know how the product performs. Because our product development people may get incredibly technical, they may be too close to it. So we want people who are consumers to to weigh in. And ultimately that’s caring about the the company and the experience and caring about the consumer. And from the beginning of the company, just to really distill it down, we Rachel and I said, like, we’re we’re in this to win hearts. As long as we win the hearts of everybody we interact with, we are going to build a successful business because we understand enough about the industry and we have enough business acumen.

Evan Dash 00:37:22  But it all comes down to winning hearts. We have to win the hearts of the people who work with us here in the office. You know our team, we have to and they have to love working with us and working together. We have to win the hearts of our retailers who take a chance on this unknown brand of stock in their stores. They have to love working with us, and the consumer has to absolutely love the experience of getting our products to feel like they got a great value, that they’re that we’re there to care, that if they have a problem with something, that we don’t put them through the the paces of trying to get a resolution, we just solve the problem, no questions asked. And we felt like if we can instill that in the culture every single day, that kind of winning hearts mindset, we are going to be wildly successful and at the time, wildly successful for us, meant we will own our own calendars, decide what to work on, decide who to work with, and make enough of a living that we don’t have we don’t have personal financial pressure.

Evan Dash 00:38:20  That that was success.

Josh Hadley 00:38:21  Well, you’ve definitely achieved that and more and that care that you have for your products and ultimately that’s immersed throughout your culture shows up on the store shelves. And that’s what’s super impressive, is that I think, like culture and the core values that you establish are one of like the unsung heroes of any business that really succeeds in so many people. Just like it’s like, oh, that’s the that’s the artsy, fluffy stuff that HR likes to talk about. And it’s like, no, like if the owners really, truly believe those values and then embed it in the organization, that’s that’s how every decision is made and that’s what gets ultimately carried out into the consumer’s hands. And so I love how you articulated that. Now as we wrap things up. Evan, give me your take on on AI then, like you said initially, you know, maybe it’s not going to be true, that there’s one guy and a bunch of bots at $100 million brand. Is is hiring humans still relevant today.

Josh Hadley 00:39:16  But you also said you’re still incorporating AI. So how do you how do you how are you counterbalancing both of those initiatives right now?

Evan Dash 00:39:23  Yeah. So we are going to be very aggressive about adopting AI. We have started to become aggressive. We’re in the stage of getting excuse me, as many as many small wins as possible proving concepts. But with everything that we see, we are a human business where humans make the magic happen. We need to use AI to get the greatest efficiency that we can, so humans can spend more time thinking and pushing things forward, and then directing the the AI on on what to do. And there’s also this multiplier impact that that I think is really that we’re at the dawn of with content creation, where I think everybody’s output on our creative team, we are on the cusp of being able to multiply it by a factor of probably at first six, then 12, then 50, then 100. We’re creating a lot of jobs around AI, and that’s where we’re looking to do the hiring and to build out the team.

Evan Dash 00:40:17  So maybe in the future there’s opportunity to streamline the organization. But we don’t look at it that way. This is a human business where humans make it happen, and I think that it’s going to be a big job boom for for us and for those in our industry that look at it as a way to just get things done and cut costs. I really can’t wait to compete against people doing that.

Josh Hadley 00:40:41  I love that I share that same sentiment. I don’t think human innovation or human intelligence is going extinct anytime soon. I love that you said that the the leaders, right, or the team members are going to be ten x, maybe 100 x more efficient and 100 x the output, but they are directing the AI. And that’s the exact same sentiment that I have here is it’s not about replacing people, it’s about, hey, we can move a lot faster, we can increase our output. And thus things are going to grow. And as things grow, we will hire additional humans to then go manage additional AI and additional streamlines of revenue that we have incorporated into the business.

Josh Hadley 00:41:21  So thank you. Articulated things well there. Evan, is there anything else that you feel like you needed to share with the audience today that we haven’t yet addressed?

Evan Dash 00:41:28  I mean, I would say I do a lot of a lot of speaking to people who are successful entrepreneurs, budding entrepreneurs, corporate people. There’s so much from my story that I go into in my book A Dash of good. I recommend that people, people pick it up. It’s available on Audible or Amazon, and I’m always happy to talk to people. And you can find me on LinkedIn.

Josh Hadley 00:41:49  Fantastic. Evan, as we wrap things up, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. Here are the three actionable takeaways that I noted. You let me know if I’m missing something, but action item number one is every entrepreneur has a little bit of domain expertise, and in Evan’s story, he shared his domain expertise as he came up through retail. And so he saw the white space that was opened there.

Josh Hadley 00:42:13  And he knew the price points. He knew what would cause sell through. And so he doubled down on that. Although he had other people saying, dude, what are you doing? It’s all about DC. In today’s day and age, like nobody’s going to value your business well, if you’re just in brick and mortar. But he kept doing where he had domain expertise until he built it big enough to where he had a good system sitting behind it. He had a good operation behind it. And sure enough, like the story concludes here with you are on Amazon now, right? As a one piece seller. It’s not that it was a no forever to diversifying and selling on all these different channels, but you started where you knew you could win, and then you kept winning and optimizing the business until it became a system. Then you were able to take it to the next stage. So for the listeners, if your domain expertise is starting on Amazon, keep doubling down there until you’ve been able to systematize that business, until you’ve got your operations and you’ve got somebody that is your right hand man or woman that’s running that so that you can go pivot and point your focus on the next avenue of growth for your brand.

Josh Hadley 00:43:14  Action item number two is I love what you talked about in terms of. Care. And what you shared is not just care as a culture word, but you demonstrated care throughout the entire Genesis, Genesis of the brand. You said from the onset, I wanted to ensure that the retailers were having a good experience, and if something wasn’t selling through, we were going to take it from them. We’re going to liquidate it and we’re going to give them something new. You cared enough about the ultimate end customer experience. You knew what those needs were. It was the juicer at the time was the big opening for you guys, and you took advantage of that by caring enough about the end consumer, about your relationships with those retailers. You weren’t transactional. And I think too many people that, you know, get sold on the course of, oh, go, go make $1 million business on TikTok shop or on Amazon over the weekend. That’s just a transactional method, you know, mindset. And those are the brands that I think go extinct faster than others.

Josh Hadley 00:44:11  And that’s why I think Dash continues to grow. And you guys. You know, become more of a global household name because of that caring right from the onset. And then my third and final action item, the biggest ROI that still exists, and I think will continue to exist for all human time, is hiring really smart people, because bringing in the one right person can have an infinite ROI. And so it’s surrounding yourself with really smart, capable people to where you feel like you are learning every day. And Evan, you said this best. It’s not only just going and showing up in the right rooms and, you know, mastermind groups, so to speak. That is good. But it’s where do you show up every day. It’s your work. And so are you surrounded with people that you actually learn from in your work. And I think that that’s kind of like the ultimate litmus test if you’ve hired really good teammates, is are you learning from them? Evan, those are my takeaways for the listeners.

Josh Hadley 00:45:05  Anything else you would add or something I missed here?

Evan Dash 00:45:07  You nailed.

Josh Hadley 00:45:08  It. Awesome. Well, Evan, my final three questions for you here. Number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Evan Dash 00:45:15  I mean, I actually love the book Shoe Dog by Phil Knight because the story is so similar to to my story, and he went through so many of the same kind of trials and tribulations, and I read it at a time that, you know, I didn’t know whether we were going to make it or not make it. There were a lot of years where we were just amassing debt. And, you know, every year we were like, well, maybe next year will be the first, like year that we can start to take money out of the company. So seeing that a company like Nike, that the founder went through, so many of the same trials and tribulations made me feel like just so, so empowered. That was a that was a great one for me.

Josh Hadley 00:45:50  Well, and I would also add your book as being a very influential book. So I would also recommend a dash of good, because I think what you’ve done is you, you articulated how your, the value of your business really grows through the core values that you emulate as the owner and leader. So I’m going to add that one in there. So people got two books to read from there. Evan, next question is about AI. What’s your favorite AI tool and how have you been using it?

Evan Dash 00:46:15  So my I am right now, I am just looking at everything that everybody is using. I’ve been doing anything from animating old pictures and sending them to my parents, and they think I’m a witch, you know, to doing whatever I can to help rewrite things, think through things. I personally, I am using a lot of ChatGPT in my role running the company to just to help write things, streamline, analyze. As a company, we are trying almost every tool out there, and I think that in 3 to 6 months from now, we can have another conversation about it and and get a lot more technical and granular.

Evan Dash 00:46:50  But right now, I’m in a major learning learning phase where I’m trying to see that the pros and cons of every different tool out there.

Josh Hadley 00:46:58  For sure. I mean, we are still in the infancy stage of AI, and I know it’s easy to feel like everybody is behind, but like, we’re still at the infancy stage and, you know, every month, every day that goes by, there’s new developments. And suffice it to say, what we’re looking at right now with AI is the worst. It is, right. It’s only going to get better and better. And so the best time to start and just diving in is today.

Evan Dash 00:47:20  It’s the it’s the worst and it’s the best. It’s the worst that it’s going to be. But it’s the least expensive. It’s going to be.

Josh Hadley 00:47:26  That’s 100% very true. Evan, final question. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-comm CPG space that other?

Evan Dash 00:47:34  That’s what I’d say overall. I mean, there really, I don’t have a one single person.

Evan Dash 00:47:39  My wife and I are huge fans of the fashion industry. We have fashion backgrounds and we are in awe of fashion designers who, season after season, have to completely reinvent their lines and get judged on the value of what their creations are. So for us, that’s a really inspiring thing. We go to Paris and Milan fashion weeks, we become friends with a number of high end, high end and high profile designers. And for us, that’s really an amazing, Amazingly inspirational type of approach to business where you cannot rest for a second and you are constantly reinventing and innovating. And that for us, is something that we always look toward for inspiration.

Josh Hadley 00:48:17  Well, and I remember your shoes stuck out like a like a shiny object. Their inspire or innovate when we met. And so I could see where you glean a lot of that from as a source of inspiration. So love to see how that’s embedded in your culture as well. Well, Evan, this has been fantastic. Thank you again for your time.

Josh Hadley 00:48:34  If the listeners want to reach out to you, follow your brand or buy some of your products, where’s the best place to do so?

Evan Dash 00:48:39  I it’s by Dash. Same thing on Instagram. And you can find me personally on LinkedIn and always happy to have a chat.

Josh Hadley 00:48:48  Awesome. Thanks again for your time today, Evan.

Evan Dash 00:48:50  Great being here.

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