How SharkNinja took over the home

22:21Nilay Patel:But, you know, the joke I'm always making on Decoder is that if you tell tell me your company's structure, I can tell you 80 % of its problems. You're describing two big divisions, both of which are growing, both of which are aggressive, launching new products. Inside of them, they have some subdivisions. I'm guessing if the Ninja team steals a bunch of LED lighting engineers from the Shark team, they're not happy about that. That's you. You've got to mediate that dynamic. How do you mediate those resources? How do you allocate them? A lot of it comes down to the needs of the product. Okay. I mean, we really don't look at it by a shark brand rigidly and a ninja product rigidly.

22:56I mean, we start with a product pipeline of ideas and that product pipeline of ideas might be 65 ideas that we start with. And over the course of time, we whittle that down. I mean, we might put something into a prototype, get it into a consumer home. We thought it was a great idea. The consumer says, hey, I'm not that interested in it. We throw it away. You know, we might put something just on a packaging front. We might not even put it into a prototype. We might show them a box front and say, hey, does this get you excited? We might look at something and say, you know, it's great, but it's too expensive.

23:29You know, we don't think it's commercially viable. Maybe it's too early for the consumer. Maybe there's a problem, but the consumer doesn't even know yet that it's a problem. I mean, I'll give you an example. I mean, in the city of New York, they just mandated composting. It's very interesting. You know, a New York apartment is going to have to sit there with their food scraps, putting them into this little plastic bin and this little bag. They're going to have to wait seven days. What do you think happens to that bag at day four and day five? Doesn't smell great. I mean, it doesn't. So we had some young engineers that were super passionate about solving that problem.

24:05The challenge with it, though, is it's not in enough municipalities. The consumer hasn't engaged with it enough to realize what the problems are. So it may be something that is incredible, it might just be something that's two years too early. So we'll kind of put that in the parking lot and we'll say, let's go revisit that when it comes to the next product innovation cycle. So we really do look at it at the product level and not at the brand level or at the company level. And I think that's what really helps us to be able to assess how do we divvy up resources. And the other thing I would say is we use a tremendous amount of outside experts.

24:46This is a company where it does not have to be invented here. We are looking for the best and brightest people to help us solve consumer problems. On any given month, we could be working with as many as 50 outside subject matter experts. They could be on things as little as gear systems. They could be as little as some sort of troubleshooting on a particular heater that we might have. That's something that I don't want to underestimate because in a lot of engineering companies, the engineers feel like, well, hold on, you hired me to solve it. I have to solve it. We're sitting here saying, listen, at the end of the day, we want the consumer to open up the box and enjoy the product.

25:29And the consumer doesn't care whether you made 100 percent of the product internally or whether you brought in five subject matter experts to help. We do, I think, a really, really incredible job of going after and getting the best and brightest people to help us solve these problems. We need to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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29:04Nilay Patel:We're back with Shark Ninja CEO Mark Barokas. Before the break, we were getting into the decoder questions, including how a company that's composed of two big product divisions is actually structured, how resources are shared, or in some cases not shared, and how that ultimately helps a company like Shark Ninja decide what products to make. So now I wanted to talk to Mark about how he makes decisions about what new product categories to enter, which Shark Ninja seems to do at an almost nonstop clip. Get ready. We're about to spend a lot of time talking about vacuum cleaners. I think that really comes to how you think about investing in the core technologies.

29:36Nilay Patel:So I'll just stick with Shark and vacuum cleaners and blow dryers and air purifiers. The core of that technology is high efficiency, small motors. It can move a lot of air. You can express that in multiple different kinds of products. That's a very competitive segment. That's the patent lawsuits, right? It's deeply competitive. You can go buy that core technology. Once you've developed it, the goal is to ramp it over time and take margin out of all that upfront cost. But you're launching into so many new categories. You're going out to buy lots and lots of new core technologies from 50 different subject matter experts.

30:07Nilay Patel:How do you think about managing those life cycles? Where do you think about spending the money on new technologies that will last for a long time and let you take margin out of it? Where do you think the technology is mature and what you need to do is expand the category? I'll go back to the example that you gave on vacuum cleaners because I think that's a good one. We have a patented technology of no loss of suction, vacuum technology, that the consumer can pick up whatever they want in that vacuum, and you're not going to lose any appreciable level of suction over the life of the product. But there are lots of other, as you start identifying the next consumer problem, you start having to then build evolutionary or add-on technologies.

30:48And I want to give you some examples of that I think you might find interesting. While we developed our first vacuum cleaner was called the Shark Navigator. We had great no-loss-to-suction technology. We cleaned carpets better than our competition. And we did it at a fraction of the price. Okay, those were kind of three core things. We found at the time, and this is going back to 2009, that the American consumer was really interested in cleaning carpets. That was the proxy for them of a great cleaning vacuum cleaner. 2010 comes and we say, okay, well, what's the next problem for us to solve? We go into consumer homes.

31:27We watch consumers vacuum. And in the homes that had stairs or multi-level homes, they would plug the vacuum in. They would go and they pull a hose out and they clean the first three steps of the stairs. They'd then unplug the vacuum, walk upstairs, plug it in, and they'd clean the top three steps. The middle three steps would never get clean because the hose would never be able to reach to that. So we looked at that and we said, well, why is the vacuum tethered to this base that's on the ground that's cleaning your floor? What if you could lift it away and you could now walk around with the vacuum cleaner and have 30 feet of travel with the cord?

32:06That product was called the Shark Lift-Away. It's still the number one selling vacuum cleaner in the United States, okay? And it was a problem that we solved. by being able to have vacuums that not only clean on the floor, but clean above the floor as well. So now you say, okay, well, hasn't everything been developed? Well, three years later, we say, well, what's the next problem? The next problem is, how do you clean under furniture? You don't want to move the furniture. I mean, how do you clean under a bed? I mean, imagine what under a bed looks like when you haven't cleaned it for two years.

32:39So we developed something called powered lift away. You picked up the canister off the vacuum. We had power that went down through the hose and went to the nozzle. And you were able now to take your nozzle, just like a canister vacuum, and go anywhere under furniture or under beds. That became the number one selling vacuum cleaner in the United States when it came out. So you say, well, has everything been invented? We then went a few years later and we said, wow, we do a great job at cleaning carpets, but we weren't doing as great a job on cleaning hard floors. With carpets, you need a really aggressive brush roll to clean.

33:17On floors, you need to be able to pick up the fine dust. So we looked at that and we said, well, that's in conflict with one another. What if we developed a vacuum cleaner that had two brush rolls? An aggressive brush roll that cleaned your carpets and a more fluffy brush roll that was able to pick up the fine dust on your hard floors. And that technology was called Shark's Duo Clean technology. And ultimately today, I mean, that's still our best-selling vacuum cleaner. So again, when you keep finding the next problem and the next problem, that leads you into kind of, you know, new technology, new evolution.

33:54And by the way, I mean, all of these things that I just mentioned to you, they're all patents. You know, they're all things that only Shark Ninja does at this point. But we're constantly on this quest to now keep finding what's the next problem, the next problem. And then that leads us into our innovation pipeline.

34:11Nilay Patel:I'm going to push back in just a little bit. The vacuum cleaner market, I know the Decoder listeners quite well. And I know what they're saying to you in their cars as they listen to you. The vacuum cleaner market is pretty mature. It is ferociously competitive. There are products from LG and Samsung and Dyson and you name it. that do all of these things and more in different ways. I hear what you're saying. You see the problems and you kind of innovate to the customers that you see and the problems they have. But the market is competitive. How often do you spend thinking about where the market is going, where the competitors are getting ahead of you and you have to leapfrog them?

34:49Every day. I mean, like, this is what we do. I mean, we're consumer problem solvers. I mean, every day we're trying. I mean, you know, we had 0.0 market share in the vacuum industry in 2008. In the upright vacuum cleaner market in the United States, okay, which is the largest portion of the vacuum cleaner market in the U.S., Shark Ninja has over 40 % market share today. We became number one market share in 2014, and we've never given up that number one market share. Why? Because we're continuing to innovate and innovate and innovate. We're driving up average sell price. You know, where, you know, you could buy a Shark vacuum at$129.

35:29You could buy a shark vacuum at$499. I mean, we are bringing the opening price consumer up into our brand where, okay, we don't have something to, you know, for the$79 consumer. But I think what the consumer looks at is they look at performance, they look at value, they look at quality, and they look at innovation. It's all four of those things together that you've got to be able to bring to the consumer. I think you might have innovation, but the consumer needs all of this and value is a huge component of it. The opening price consumer can step up to$129 Shark vacuum. The high price Sephora Ulta consumer, you know, can buy a$499 vacuum.

36:14But there is no brand that cuts across such a broad price point range and such a broad feature range. And the other thing that I think we do a really effective job of is we want to be the vacuum for you when you move into your dorm room in college. We want to be the first vacuum for you when you get your first apartment, when you get your first house, when you have your family and you've got your first pets, when you wind up being an empty nester. And I think there isn't a brand out there selling corded vacuums, cordless vacuums, robot vacuums, hand vacuums, shop vacuums that is doing such an effective and compelling job of innovating, but also doing it with extraordinary value and great quality.

36:58Nilay Patel:One of the things I think about a lot here is how you grow, right? You're describing people buying lots of vacuums over time. A long time ago, I had the former CEO of Sonos, Patrick Spence, on the show. And I said, is your whole plan that people will just get bigger and bigger houses and you'll sell one more speaker every time? Is that the plan in the vacuum business? People are just going to buy new vacuums at a steady clip? I think the more macro question is, how do we grow and how do we think about growth? Okay. And we think about growth in this three pillar growth strategy. You know, one is gaining share in the existing categories that we're in.

37:29You know, we enter categories and within three to four years, Shark becomes or Ninja becomes the number one or number two market leader in that category. There's still lots of white space within our existing categories. I mean, we're in an industry with an available TAM of$120 billion. You know, last year we were a$5.5 billion business. So, you know, we're less than 5 % of the overall market. Number two is expansion into new product categories. I mean, many companies can say they can expand into new categories, but either the retailer or the consumer doesn't let them go into those new categories.

38:07I mean, they don't see them in those categories. And I think we've been really effective at kind of taking the Shark and Ninja brands into so many different places. And then third is international expansion. I mean, this year, you know, over 40 % of our business is going to come from outside of the U.S. So, you know, when you think about, you know, brands that are really able to scale globally, I mean, we launched 25 new products a year. 20 out of those 25 products we sell in every market. The same product, you know, we look at the consumer from a product innovation standpoint across this matrix, you know, of how does the American consumer think about a product?

38:46How does a European consumer think about the product? How does an Asian consumer think about product? But I think that's an important point to note is that we're not just innovating for one type of consumer. We're innovating for a global consumer.

39:01Nilay Patel:I'm going to ask you the other decoder question, and then I want to talk about expansion, particularly into grilling. This is our grilling episode. We spent too much time on vacuums, man. But here's the other decoder question. How do you make decisions? You've laid out a lot of frameworks here. It's clear you thought about this a lot. What's your framework for making decisions? We have something, and you can go to our website and you can see it. We're very focused on culture. Okay, like culture is our competitive advantage. Okay, it really is. I mean, look, we have 5 ,000 patents. We have great brand names.

39:28We have incredible innovation. What has enabled us to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 21 % a year for the last 17 years? It's the way we think. Okay, and I'd invite you to go onto our website and look at a document called Outrageously Extraordinary. And this idea is that we have this inextricable desire to want to be the absolute best we can be. And what comes with that is this inherent fear of failure. And how do we get rid of the fear of failure? Because you tend to play it safe, you know, when you're worried about failing. And so for us, you know, we set what we call these unimaginably high bars in a game worth playing.

40:10Seldom will you see in Shark Ninja that you'll be sitting in a meeting and saying, let's go after this, where everyone in the room walks out and says, oh, I think we can do that. Most people are going to walk out of the room saying, how the hell are we going to do that? OK, we've just set a bar that seems absolutely impossible. And so we think that courageous leaders, you know, really set an unimaginably high bar in a game worth playing. And even if you fall short to that, you know, you will still do something extraordinary. I mean, if I set out, you know, to say that we want to be number one market share going from zero, you know, and that's our goal and we wind up being number two.

40:49Hey, I mean, we started from zero. So we've got a set of very high bars where it starts with. The second is this idea of leading with a relentless desire to know more. Answers in business are not surface level. People want to have an easy answer to a tough question. The answers lie deep, deep, deep in the business, trying to understand what really is the root cause to the problem. What is the mousetrap that you're going to be able to create that is going to be sustainable, that's not going to be able to be disintermediated by a Chinese factory that might come in and sell a low-cost product on a platform or something like that.

41:30So how do we have this desire to know more or know more than anyone else that is competing against us? We want to be an explorer, not a tour guide. I mean, most of what we're doing, we're in uncharted territories. I mean, my expertise ran out eight years ago, okay? I'm running on fumes when it comes to expertise at this point. I mean, every day we're exploring new territory. I mean, we are, you know, we're pivoting quickly. I mean, we're getting smarter every day. I mean, we use this term in the company, we reserve the right to get smarter. Make a decision, new information comes in, decide tomorrow we're going to change the decision.

42:09I think one of the things that many companies or many leaders get stuck in is they say, I made a decision, so I just have to go in that direction. We want to constantly be on the lookout for, is the decision that we made stupid? I mean, I stood up in front of our town hall, in front of a corporate meeting a number of months ago. there were some questions about some changes that we had made last year. And I said to the organization, I made a change because previously I was being stupid. And I've decided now to be un-stupid. And the concept of un-stupid became something that, you know, went viral around the company.

42:48Where people felt empowered to say, I want to be un-stupid today. We're going down this path. It doesn't seem like we're going to be successful. Let's pivot and let's change. There's no harm. Shark Ninja is not curing cancer. We're trying to delight consumers. We're trying to positively impact people's lives. And so the change that you mentioned is that the way that we were investing dollars in the company. I mean, we have to stay focused in investing dollars in areas of growth. Growth when it comes to product development, growth when it comes to geographic expansion, you know, growth when it comes to, you know, marketing and building awareness for our brands.

43:27I think we got too scattered. I think we went after too many shiny objects. Okay. I think there's lots of great initiatives for a company to go work on, but you also need focus and you need to make sure that like, there are certain things that are, you know, sacred in a company. And that's what requires the investment and everything else might have to kind of wait in line to get done. You just can't do everything at once. And so we had to pull back on some of those things. And we had to make some tough decisions as to where we were going to invest and where we were going to hold for a little while.

44:03And then, you know, we look at it as we go into the next year.

44:07Nilay Patel:This is a perfect tee up to your decision to invest in grills. But I have to know, what'd you pull back from? Was there anything specific? I think we went after a lot of technology projects. We were implementing Oracle in our company. You know, we were replatforming our e-commerce site. I mean, we've got this great partnership with Salesforce, force, you know, and we're launching a new e-commerce site in September of this year. And so there were certain things that were just really mission critical. There were other things that were really just nice to haves. I mean, they were not going to make or break our business.

44:40They were not going to create a competitive advantage. And so we had to make the decision of, you know, what are the things that are most important and what are some things that, you know, now is just not the right time for. We need to take another quick break. We'll be right back.

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46:18Nilay Patel:We're back with Shark Ninja CEO Mark Barokas. For the break, we dug really deep into the company's product development process and Mark's philosophy around investing in new categories, and how those types of decisions get made at a company that moves as fast and in as many directions as Shark Ninja. But now it's time to get to the big topic at hand, grilling, and what it means for a company best known for air fryers and vacuum cleaners to try and compete with some of the most beloved brands in all of home appliances. All right, let's put all this into practice, and let's talk about grills. I love talking about grills.

46:48Nilay Patel:Can you tell? I'm, like, eager to do it. This is one of my favorite episodes of the year to talk about the grill industry. You've laid out a lot of frameworks here, right? You've said we should have to deserve to be in the market. We need something better. You've laid out not wanting to get away from the core areas of growth. The grill market, ferociously competitive, extremely well served, lots and lots of innovative companies. It feels to me like the people who are really into grilling like having lots of different kinds of things as opposed to just one thing. I see it in backyards all over my town.

47:19Nilay Patel:If you got one, you're soon to have two. It's also been disrupted. One of our very first grill company guests was Roger Dahl, who founded Blackstone, the grill company. He's in the middle of buying Weber. He actually couldn't be on this year because there's antitrust. He has to go through FTC review to buy Weber. That's a big disruption, right? He bought the market leader. Why enter this market? Where's the differentiation? How do you think he gets to number one? I think you have to go back to Ninja is the market leader in the kitchen. And we built up a lot of brand equity in air fryers and ovens and cookware and blenders and coffee makers and all kinds of things in the kitchen.

47:56And so three years ago, we decided that it was time for us to go outdoors. We did it through developing a product called the Ninja Woodfire Grill. The Ninja Woodfire Grill was a grill, a smoker, and an air fryer. It was all electric. It sat on your tabletop. And we felt like there was a really unserved need. And I'll give you examples of it. People that live in apartments, they can't have propane, okay, but they can have electric outside. You know, campers and RVs and boats and things like that and tailgates, you know, that you can just plug in. We found that people owned a grill, but they weren't going to invest in another smoker.

48:36And so we found that people would be interested in buying something that was kind of small that could fit on a tabletop next to their outdoor grill, or vice versa. If they owned a smoker, now they could own a grill. And so we felt like, you know, we saw this in the vacuum cleaner business. You have an upright vacuum, you have a cordless vacuum, you have a robot vacuum, you have a hand vacuum. And so we went into the market, and in a very short period of time, we took big market share. I mean, we're the number one selling outdoor grill, you know, electric outdoor grill right now. We sell a number of different versions of it.

49:09We then went into outdoor ovens. And so we've got a really great - Wait, can I just ask again?

49:14Nilay Patel:Sorry, you're just in my wheelhouse. Number one selling electric outdoor grill, that feels like a small part of a huge category. It is, it is. But that's all, I mean, you have to understand, like, you have to enter in a place that the consumer accepts you. And then you have to figure out then what's next. So we go into tabletop grills. We then expand from that into tabletop ovens. OK, and so now we've got this outdoor oven that allows you to cook to 700 degrees and you can roast and you can make pizza in it. And it's, you know, and so so that becomes a nice business for us globally. So then we decide where do we go next?

49:50We're doing great in tabletop. But now, as you said, there's this big market out there, this five billion dollar market around large format outdoor cooking products. So we look at it and we put ourselves in the shoes of the consumer and we say, what's the empathy of the consumer? The consumer goes into the Home Depot parking lot. It's Memorial Day weekend and they go to one of the orange aprons and they say, I want to buy a grill. And the person says to them, well, do you want a grill or do you want a smoker or do you want a pizza oven or do you want a roaster or you want a griddle? Now that becomes the first problem for the consumer.

50:29I got to make a choice. I mean, maybe in your neighborhood, you know, there's multiple grills outside, but this person is saying, I got one to choose from here. What do I do? Do I want a griddle? Do I want a grill? Do I want a pizza oven? Do I want a smoker? Well, so we started with that and said that to us feels like a really credible problem for somebody to solve. It took us two years, but we developed the world's first grill that's powered by propane, electric, and a cyclonic fan. Three things. I mean, there's incredible patents and incredible technology in this product. Now, if you have those three things, what can you do?

51:09You can have incredible temperature control. Now, once I have incredible temperature control and I can move the air and circulate it inside, I can grill, I can smoke, I can be a fully functional pizza oven, I can griddle, and I can roast. The world's first product that's able to do all of those under one hood. And we called it the Ninja Flex Flame. And so we envisioned a world where consumer now goes into the Home Depot parking lot and ask that same question to the orange apron person. And the orange apron person responded, well, sir or ma 'am, you know, you could either have a grill or a smoker or Ninja's got something that does it all.

51:52Now, not just something that does it all and does everything so-so. I mean, grills, you know, like an incredibly professional$1 ,000 plus griller, smokes, you know, as well as a$1 ,000 smoker, you know, does Neapolitan pizza in a few minutes, griddles and has incredible even cooking performance, roasts. And so we came out with that product a couple of months ago, and you can go online and look at it. I mean, it's a 4.6 star rated product. It's doing great. We launched it with an ad campaign with David Beckham. And we think this kind of opens up kind of a whole new global opportunity for us.

52:31Nilay Patel:I got to ask, you said cyclonic fan. There's that fan again. This feels like core technology for you guys. Is it related to the shark fans? Well, sure. I mean, you know, we understand airflow and we understand motors and we understand putting electronics. I mean, Think about your grill 10 years ago, right? You put a bunch of charcoal into a pot and you lit it up and it, you know, had some flame and it grilled for you. I mean, this product's got a cyclonic fan. It's got an amazing amount of electronics in it to have precision temperature control. It has wood fire pellets that allows you to be able to smoke.

53:10It has electrical power. You know, it has propane power. So, again, I mean, it's what would a team of 1 ,300 engineers be thinking about if they wanted to build the absolute most amazing product outdoors? And if you were not willing to have four different products in your outdoor patio, which, you know, I believe kind of most consumers aren't in a position to be able to do that. So we came out with this product. We launched it at$999. And, you know, we think what this product offers is breakthrough innovation, market-leading performance, great quality at an extraordinary value for what it is that it delivers.

53:50Nilay Patel:So I apologize, but I've had a lot of grill company CEOs in the show. This is literally, I'm telling you, it's one of my favorite episodes of the year. Because all of the problems of the grill industry are the problems that every other company has, but we don't think about that industry in the same way. So I would broadly describe the business models of your competitors in the grill industry as breaking into two camps. There's Big Green Egg, which wants to sell you a very expensive product that will last for a lifetime, that you pass down for generations. They're owned by a family foundation. They're not chasing profits in that way.

54:18Nilay Patel:Totally fascinating. There's some high-end grill companies that also think the same way. Then there's everyone else, which is like, we're going to put a hunk of metal outside. In three years, it's going to rust out, and you're going to buy a new one. At$9.99, you can do everything. oh boy, my hunk of metal rusted out and it's going away. That's not a winning proposition. So how do you think about that cycle? Because those are basically the two camps. Are you trying to last forever or are you trying to get replaced on a cadence outside? There's obviously a replacement cycle for the product, but our business is about innovating and putting our products into retirement before their usable life.

54:53It's no different than what Apple does. I mean, when the iPhone 16 comes out and you have an iPhone 14, you don't really need the iPhone 16. I mean, your iPhone 14 is just fine. But there's some technology. It's got three cameras. It's got some other thing in it. There's no difference. I mean, that's what Shark Ninja's model is. I mean, if I relied on replacement cycle, you know, someone would buy a product for me and they'd come back, you know, four years later to buy the next product. I mean, I want the consumer, you know, to get excited about what we do and say, wow, Wow. Air fryers is a great example.

55:26We came out with our first air fryer. It was a four-court air fryer. Did an amazing job air frying your food. We immediately got feedback from consumers that they wanted larger capacity. So we developed a five-court, a six-court, a seven-court air fryer. We then found out from consumers that they were batch cooking. They were making the chicken tenders and French fries for their kids, and then they were putting in the salmon and the asparagus for them. and we said, wow, well, what if we could develop an air fryer that was a dual basket that was actually able to cook two things at the same time in two independent baskets?

56:01And that became the number one selling air fryer in the market. We then, shortly after that, found out that, wow, consumers love that concept, but for some consumers, it took up too much counter space. So we took that side-by-side air fryer and we stacked it on top of each other. And we made the world's first stackable air fryer. Now we found out, wow, consumers go home, they prep their lunch and they take it to the office or they prep their food in the beginning of the week and they kind of meal prep for the week. What if we could develop an air fryer that fits in the palm of your hand? And it's a product called the Ninja Crispy.

56:40And there are consumers now that are taking these glass vessels that you cook in, this healthy cooking glass vessels, they bring them to work, they bring their air fryer pod, And instead of putting their food into a microwave that's going to make it all soggy and mushy and they got to eat it for lunch, they're actually air frying at their desks their food and eating it for lunch. They're meal prepping in the beginning of the week, and then they're just putting their Ninja Crispy on top of it. That's how we think about the business. I mean, whatever we have developed today in the Ninja Flex Flame, I can tell you that two, three years from now, we're going to come out with some innovation that's going to be even better, even more exciting, and it will allow the consumer to make a decision.

57:25Maybe they've got to take that product and give it to a neighbor or give it to their child or, you know, whatever it might be, because Ninja or Shark has come out with the next great innovation.

57:36Nilay Patel:I feel compelled to point out that the core mechanical component of an air fryer is a fan. Just saying it, it pops up over and over again in this conversation. You've got a lot of fan technology. It's wild to see how disparately it can be expressed. You've mentioned software a couple of times, right? It's in the Flex Flame. It's in a lot of the other products. One of the themes on the show that we've run into over and over again is once you start investing in software, that becomes just an exponentially increasing cost, right? The servers have to stay up. The apps have to be updated. Apple's going to keep releasing new phones.

58:08Nilay Patel:They're going to change the design language of iOS on a whim whenever they want to. Is that all in-house for you? Do you contract that out? Because one of the biggest complaints I see with smart grills, smart appliances is, well, I bought this expensive thing. The app broke, and now my grill is useless. I would say that, you know, about 75 % of it is in-house and about 25 % of it is out of house. This is an industry and a market that is changing so quickly. I mean, having an app that is a standalone app on your phone, like Waze, that is a Uber. That's very different than having an app that is connected to some sort of hardware device.

58:48It's a whole different situation. And so we're the first to admit that like, we need to bring lots of great minds around this. And so a portion of that is absolutely outsourced. I mean, as we look at testing and validation, as we look at, you know, development ideas, you know, but we do have a great core team internally that is working on that, that works on that with our robot products, that works well on that with our outdoor cooking products. The concept of an app on a product is very interesting. If I go back six years ago, I remember going to trade shows where every single booth in the trade show just commented, app, we have an app.

59:28And I remember going down once into one of our engineering labs and there was a blender there. A person handed me their iPhone and they said, here, use the blender. And I went on the iPhone and I pressed go for the blender to start. And I said, well, our blenders actually just have one button. Like, unless the app can put my bananas and my strawberry and my protein powder into it while I'm in bed, why do I need an app on this particular product? I mean, I can just fill everything up. I can push a button. And there are sensors that know when the blending is stopping. We have a technology called BlendSense that's able to do that.

1:00:07So I think with apps, the really important thing to understand is when is the app a vanity exercise versus when is the app really bringing true value to the consumer and unlocking something in the product that they wouldn't be able to do if the app didn't exist? I think that's the case with robots. I think there's a case to be able to make in that with outdoor cooking. But as you said, it is very complex putting together an app together with some sort of hardware and making sure that all of those pieces connect for every house that's out there, every router that's out there, every consumer that's using it.

1:00:44And so we've got to work with both in-house and out-of-house people to help us do that. How do you think about that cost?

1:00:50Nilay Patel:There's the consumer experience of, I bought a grill five years ago. They never updated the app. Some of my features went away because they didn't, iOS changed. That's one set of the experiences. From the company perspective, what I hear so often is there's no recurring revenue model for this product that supports ongoing development of this app, right? So you brought up Uber, for example, Uber's business is that app. They spend a lot of money developing that app. Do you have that kind of model in place where you say, okay, here's the ongoing support cost of the Flexflame Grill that will make sure we deliver updates to the app?

1:01:23It'd be interesting for you to know, I mean, we update our robot app nearly every single month. And that is going out to, you know, all of the devices that are out there, it could be a product that somebody bought five years ago. There's constant, constant updates. I mean, as we're looking at data from the apps, you know, as we're getting testing feedback, as we're getting returns information, as we're getting customer service questions that are coming in, I mean, these could be bug fixes. These could be new feature functionality that we're adding into it. But you're not charging like subscription revenue.

1:01:58No, no.

1:01:59Nilay Patel:So how do you think about that cost versus the margin of the product at the one-time sale? We look at it as it's all about positively impacting the consumer. I mean, I need the consumer to have a great experience so that they come back. And when we go into the next category, they say, wow, you know, I had a great experience with this Sharker Ninja product. You know, I'm willing to try them in the next category. You know, you brought up, you know, other outdoor cooking companies, you brought up other companies, you have to understand most companies have a business model where they want to sell you a product and then they want to sell you another product four years later when it comes to the replacement cycle.

1:02:37I want to sell you two products a year. I want to sell you two products a year. I want to sell you a cordless blender. I want to sell you a espresso machine. I want to sell you a LED infrared face mask. I want to sell you, if you have a bad experience with one of our products, I'm going to lose that whole recurring revenue stream from you as the consumer. You know, that I want, I've been doing this for 17 years. I mean, I want to do this for another 20 years. And so over the course of that period of time, there's a finite number of consumers. And every day as a business, you're either gaining loyal consumers or you're losing frustrated consumers.

1:03:16And so it's our job. I mean, when you think about, when you say, well, what's the ROI on that? What's the ROI on happiness? The ROI on happiness for Shark Ninja is infinite. I mean, that's how we've built our business. So it's not even a question as to whether we'll go and do it. You know, the answer is we have to do it. I mean, we have to make sure that our consumers are happy.

1:03:37Nilay Patel:You know, it's really interesting about this conversation. It's, and there's two themes. One is fans are everywhere. And the other one is how much you're willing to talk about costs, things that cost money against growth. You're constantly expanding. You're launching 25 new products a year. It feels like you see growth as the engine that justifies whatever costs come about. Do you see an end to that growth? Hopefully not. Sure. I'm just asking, because at some point, you're going to run into a category problem where you're Apple and you have to make a car. But look, I've been told that now for 15 years.

1:04:12Mark, you have a$500 million business. Could it get any bigger. And, you know, you have a 700 million that can get any bigger. And, and so look, what I would say is, I mean, if, if you've worked at a company that's growing 1 % or declining 2%, it's tough. Inflation's going up three or 4%. There's not much money at that point, you know, to invest and to, you know, innovate and, and to reinvent yourself and all of those things. And we're trying to disrupt ourselves. I mean, we were known as Shark the steam mop company 17 years ago, and then we're Shark the vacuum company. And now if you speak to a college person, they think we're Shark the beauty company.

1:04:54We're constantly reinventing ourselves. And so it's not even so much what growth allows you to be able to do is it allows you to be able to invest. But investing alone is not enough. I mean, it's not enough just to have money to invest. It's, are you willing to disrupt yourself? Are you willing to take your old business model, rip it up, throw it away and start new again? Are you willing to pivot quickly? Are you willing to say that, you know, I'm going down a path that likely is not going to work or that someone else is going to catch up to me? I mean, we go into these categories. I'll invite you after we're done with this.

1:05:33And it does apply to your, you know, air, you know, model. We have a product called the Shark Turbo Blade. It is an indoor fan that has 350 million impressions on social media right now. It is going viral on social media. And when you look at that, you say to yourself, well, Mark, it's a fan. No, it solves an incredible consumer problem, you know, that the consumer didn't even know that they had. But it also creates a category of one. We're not in the fan business. We're in the turbo blade business. We're in the comfort business. You know, I mean, so again, it's just growth is the pathway, but it's the mindset and it's the culture, you know, that allows you to be able to say, I'm willing to rip it all up and start over again because we've got to create a definable competitive advantage.

1:06:27Nilay Patel:There's just something really interesting and honestly refreshing about the idea that you see essentially infinite new categories that will allow you to invest in some of the costs, where I see a lot of your competitors saying, we actually, to preserve our margins, we have to stop investing in a bunch of stuff because Chinese companies are coming or Amazon is available. Amazon at this point is ChatGPT for products, right? You type something in and 5 ,000 suppliers will show up to sell you variations on the same product. The other piece of this, which I think is really interesting, and I want to make sure we spend some time on it here at the end, is how you think about marketing, how you think about the brand, right?

1:07:02Nilay Patel:The brand is getting more upscale. We have a shark vacuum from a thousand years ago. And I know that the plastics you're using now are much higher quality than the one we have that we bought a thousand years ago, right? You're moving up. And a lot of how you're moving up is marketing on social media. Adweek had a story, you guys are spending$700 million a year. That's 11 % of your sales and all that is going to creators and product placement. I look at that and I say, oh, the whole ad industry, which as we're speaking is it can, in France right now, talking about the future of the ad industry.

1:07:32Nilay Patel:I look at your spend and I say, oh, this is the meteorite, right? This is going to hit the earth and everything's going to change. You're at the bleeding edge of it. Why make that bet? How do you think that bet is going, and where do you think it goes from here? Let's go back 16 years ago. At that time, 100 % of our ad spending was on what were called long-form infomercials, 30-minute infomercials. My partner would go on TV. We would run demonstrations. He and I would develop demo ideas that we would do. Now, why? Because we didn't have any money at the time, you know? And so we went on TV, and a certain amount of the sales came to us directly that paid for the advertising expense.

1:08:11But a large portion of the sales went and got sold at retail outlets. And so every brand, every company has to kind of find their white space. So let's start with that. Like when people would say to me, like, you know, well, I mean, you're on infomercials. Well, okay, but that was our way of expressing to the consumer, you know, what was unique or different about our products and the problems that we were solving. And it helped build our brands. I want to go back to the point we talked about, about the online reviews back in 2008. When I was a kid growing up in New York in the 80s, there was a store called Sims and they would say the educated consumer is our best customer.

1:08:50Well, in 1985, there were not many educated consumers, okay? If you had a problem with a product, you returned it to the store and you told your mom or your dad or your friend, you know, hey, I wouldn't buy this product. There was no forum to be able to get the information out. So when the online reviews started, that became a great selling vehicle for us, a great referral vehicle for us. It evolved as you got into 2014, 2015 into Facebook. You'd have these big Facebook group chats. You know, you'd have 30 ,000 people, 40 ,000 people exchanging recipes and ideas. And then, you know, right before COVID, during COVID, it really started evolving into social media, Instagram and TikTok.

1:09:33And today it's so much more than that. I mean, we're gonna spend, you know, the platform that we're gonna have the highest increase on this year will likely be Reddit. We're spending more on Pinterest. We're spending more on YouTube. So it's these ways for consumers and creators to express themselves and for others, for consumers to be able to get information about the product. And so if you go back a number of years ago and you were advertising, you created one message, you created one ad, you ran that one ad at, you know, nine o 'clock at night on NBC. And the only people that saw it were the people that were watching NBC at nine o 'clock at night.

1:10:14Go into the comments section on some of our new products that we launch and go look at them. When is this product coming to Portugal? When's the product coming to Norway? We went and did a really interesting exercise. We went and mapped how does the consumer consume social media all around the world? And you'd be interested to know that, you know, they're not just consuming it in English in the United States and Canada and the UK and Australia. They're predominantly consuming it in English in the Netherlands, in Poland, in the Nordics, in the Middle East. And so one of the things that's really driven kind of the global, you know, expansion of our business is that, you know, there's already pent up demand for our products even before we even bring the product into a market.

1:11:03So I'll give you an interesting example. I mean, we were launching our Ninja Slushy in Norway. it got wind on social media that one of the major retailers was going to have ninja slushy product. And there was a line, the temperature outside was five degrees Fahrenheit. There were 400 people lined up outside of the store to buy the ninja slushy. And that all came from just this social media awareness that kind of has no borders and just permeates all around the world.

1:11:36Nilay Patel:One of the things I think about a lot in the creator economy is there's the organic demand, which you're describing, right? People see things. The content can travel anywhere with regard to borders. And then there's your spend, right? You are spending with creators and influencers. That is a huge part of the market. It is a growing part of the market. There's a ton of excitement there. There's a ton of money there. I see a supply and demand problem in the influencer economy. I think the creator-branded content economy is headed towards a crash just because of supply and demand, right? There's an infinite supply of creators every day and more creators are coming onto these platforms.

1:12:15Nilay Patel:There's AI, which I want to talk about for one second here at the end, that's creating more and more content. There's only so many people with only so many minutes. And you can see the supply is just going to outstrip demand over time. Are you seeing your rates that you're paying influencers go up or down in response to this? I look at it, I think, a little bit differently. And I think what the crash that's going to happen is that those that are not creating compelling content, there's going to be a big shakeout. Okay? And I think that if you're able to build super compelling content, you become very valuable to brands, you know, very valuable to be able to market with.

1:12:56I think there are a lot of people out there that are mailing it in on their content and they're not investing in themselves and they're not evolving and they're not continuously getting better. I mean, you as a creator might be able to do something for a brand and you say, hey, I did this post. But like, I think you really need to be looking at, you know, what's the lifetime value that I could be doing with this brand? not that one post, but what about if I was working with a company that was coming out with 25 new products a year and they called me up every year to do five of their products and to work with them on five of their products, I wouldn't be thinking anymore about the short term impact of how do I just get through that one post and move on to something else?

1:13:41And I think that is what is going to evolve and change over the course of the next year, over the course of the next two years, that I think as the metrics and the data become much more, much faster, you know, much more transparent, I think we already have dashboards in the company that we're immediately able to look at a person and just scorecard them and immediately be able to say, hey, these are creators that we don't want to work with anymore. These are creators that we want to work with tremendously, you know, moving forward. I don't think that that was something that was looked at as closely or managed as effectively as there was this kind of big swoop up.

1:14:23I think you will see that over the next 18 months change considerably. And I think you will find that, you know, the best creators, you know, really rise to the top and there's a real bifurcation of the market.

1:14:34Nilay Patel:When you look at those scorecards and those dashboards, what are the metrics that you're measuring to figure out who's worth working with and who's worth dropping? We're looking at engagement metrics. I mean, you know, we're not just looking at views. I mean, we're looking at engagement metrics. We're looking at, you know, likes and shares and comments. And we're looking at the types of comments. You know, are they commenting about something that you did that got them excited about the product? Or are they commenting about, you know, something that maybe you wore? They like what you wore in the spot.

1:15:01So I think that, you know, there are tools now and there's metrics now that have allowed us to get so much more educated. I mean, if I go back, I remember, you know, even 24 months ago, you know, you'd get excited about, hey, we have a post that had 500 ,000 views. That 500 ,000 views is not the answer anymore. It's drilling down now and really understanding, you know, did a cohort of people engage with that content? Did they get excited about that product? You know, what did they do once they saw it? Did they just scroll to the next one or did it elicit some type of reaction or feedback from them?

1:15:40I think that, you know, the world is getting much, much more educated and intelligent about that.

1:15:45Nilay Patel:So I want to read you this quote from Mark Zuckerberg because what you're describing is a trend I see everywhere, which is this industry is professionalizing. And there's going to be some winners and there's going to be some losers. And it's really interesting to me that your background is in infomercials because I see all of these social platforms as turning into marketing channels. and you're describing the individual creator as something like a new generation ad agency or a marketing firm, right? Where they're independent marketing agencies, they partner with you for a long duration and they think of you as a client and they're trying to deliver results to you.

1:16:16Nilay Patel:And you could see how that would play out, but for AI, because the platforms see that money, they see your$700 million and they want it for themselves. And I say this as explicitly as I'm saying it, because I have Mark Zuckerberg here. He said this on stage at various conferences. He said it to my friend Ben Thompson recently interviewed. I'm just going to read you the quote. This is Mark Zuckerberg. In general, we're going to get to a point where you're a business. You come to us. You tell us what your objective is. You connect your bank account. You don't need any creative. You don't need any targeting demographics.

1:16:48Nilay Patel:You don't need any measurement except read the results we spit out. That's a redefinition of the category of advertising. So he's saying you, Mark, you're going to show up and you're going to say, I just need to sell some grills. and Meta is going to AI generate some advertising, put it in their feeds and deliver you sales. How do you feel about that? I think the professionalizing piece is spot on. I think that the multi-year journey that we go on to develop a product and the insights that we get, you know, by having the product in a thousand consumer homes and all of this feedback that we get prior to launching the product that informs our creative and really allows us to be able to kind of hone the messaging and the testing.

1:17:32I think there's a model out there that people say, you know what? Forget all that. Just put out 10 ,000 pieces of content and see what hits. And the ones that hit amplify and the ones that don't hit go away. I still believe that with what we do and the knowledge by which we gain and the testing by which we do, there is a need for great content, you know, a real understanding of the product, a real understanding of how the product is going to delight the consumer in their home. I think there's a role that kind of, I call it kind of like fishing with a big net, you know, and throwing the net out there.

1:18:12But I also think that it's not going to be as overly simple as the way it's described. I think that's the other pressure on rates though.

1:18:19Nilay Patel:I can feel that coming, right? That the platforms will find a way to take money out of the rates that the creators are getting paid. Like Instagram, for example, today, Instagram creators make no money from Instagram. Their money is almost entirely from brand sponsorships and other integrated marketing. Over time, Meta, I think, wants some of that money. How do you feel about the rates you're paying to your best creators now? And do you think they're going to go up or do you think they're going to go down? You know, it goes back to your, you know, supply-demand conversation and it goes back to, you know, the metrics piece.

1:18:48I mean, I think the people that are doing amazing, compelling content, I think they're probably going to be more valuable and I think they're probably going to be worth more. And conversely, I think there's going to be a whole group of people that you were overpaying for. And now you're going to realize that you were overpaying and you're either going to have to, you know, renegotiate those prices down, you know, or decide, hey, I mean, it's not a fit. I mean, no different than the way you look at TV networks. I mean, there's TV networks that deliver you the viewership that you want, you know, at a certain price.

1:19:28And there's TV networks that, you know, don't deliver it. And so, again, I think this is great for the industry. I think this is great for content creators. I mean, people have said to me, Mark, well, you know, what happens if TikTok gets banned? The content creator community is here to stay. Okay, this is, they will find other platforms. They will go to other places. They will find ways to express, you know, their creativity and what they're doing. They're providing great insight to people. I mean, I got to tell you something. If I, when I go to a city, one of the first things I do is I go on TikTok and I look at, you know, what are the best food places in that city?

1:20:03You know, I mean, there's amazing amounts of content and information that is so useful. So I think in the end, you know, this is going to become great for the content creator community, but it is going to have a situation where, you know, those that are doing great work are going to get paid more and those that aren't, you know, are going to have to work to reinvent themselves.

1:20:27Nilay Patel:Can I ask you kind of an existential question? I know why it's great for businesses that are trying to sell things. I can see that pretty clearly. I know why it's great for the creators. They're making a lot of money, making essentially infomercials. I don't know if it's great for the people who consume media to open all the different apps on their phone that are taking more and more time and kind of be awash in a sea of paid, sponsored marketing messages. Because ultimately, these platforms are just becoming marketing channels, right? That is the money that drives the entire content ecosystem on every single one of these platforms.

1:20:59Nilay Patel:How do you think about that? I mean, you are a consumer of media as well. How do you experience that? We want to be relevant wherever the consumer is engaging and consuming content. We want to be relevant wherever the consumer is choosing to shop. I think that it is the error of any consumer products company to not go where the consumer is going. I think if you head off to a different place where the consumer is not and you just hope that the consumer will go there. I understand about the company's needs and why you're there. I'm asking about you as a consumer of media when you open TikTok or Instagram and it's kind of all marketing messages.

1:21:40Me as a consumer, I mean, I'm consuming content in lots of different ways. I mean, I have my, you know, Apple News Feed, you know, that I open up in the morning. You know, I have my, you know, Bloomberg subscription, you know, that I open up in the morning. I mean, I think it's about, I've got options. I don't have to open up Instagram. I don't have to open up TikTok. You know, I can open it up just for the purposeful things that I want to open it up for, You know, but there are lots of other ways that I can get information. So I think it's really up to the consumer to make that decision. I mean, I'll give you a great example.

1:22:14I mean, you know, we, you know, just put the Shark Ninja brand on Brad Pitt's race car in the Formula One movie. We never thought about investing in Formula One in the past. We never thought of investing in movies in the past. But, you know, we were just at the premiere on Monday and, you know, it's incredible placement that Shark Ninja has. So, you know, social media is one place. I mean, you know, the point is, is that how are we part of culture? Culture could be experiential events. Culture could be movies. Culture could be TV shows. Culture could be outdoor, out of home. You know, listen, I'm fascinated by what LVMH has done on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street.

1:22:56I mean, they're stores under construction. They cover the entire store in a Louis Vuitton suitcase. And you've got people on every corner that are snapping content there in front of it. So, again, I think it's about being relevant where the consumer chooses to ingest content.

1:23:16Nilay Patel:We got to add a Verge subscription to your list of subscriptions that you have. And it's very important to me that we throw that in there. You've given me so much time. This has been great. Last question. and you've got all these new products every year. As you look at over the next 12 months, what's the one that we should all be looking out for? Wow, I mean, you're going to get me in trouble if I tell you what's the one. That's the idea. Right at the end, you get in trouble. I mean, you know, I'm really excited about our beauty business. I think the roadmap that we have coming out in hair and skin, I have two 20-something-year-old daughters.

1:23:47That's just a category that, like, for me, I have a lot of passion for. You know, my wife, you know, is a beauty enthusiast. So I'm really excited about what we're doing in beauty. On the ninja side, look, I'm really excited by what we're doing in the kitchen to bring things to consumers that just makes their homes and their lives better. I mean, I think what we're doing with the Lux Cafe, you know, is incredible. I mean, for the consumer to be able to get drip coffee and iced coffee and espresso and, you know, to be able to froth hot milk and cold milk and dairy milk and non-dairy milk, I think we're doing that in coffee.

1:24:23I think we're doing that in slushies. I think we're doing that in ice cream. I think we're doing that in cooking. So, you know, I'm just so excited. I mean, the roadmap of ideas that we have in Ninja, you know, is really fulfilling on this mission of positively impacting people's lives in every day and every home around the world.

1:24:41Nilay Patel:Mark, this has been great. We're going to have to get you back. There's a lot of stuff I didn't get to talk about that I really want to talk to you about. You're going to have to come back soon, maybe before the next squirrel comes out. Great. Look forward to it. Maybe fan season. I'm telling you, once you start seeing fans, fans are everywhere. Great. Thanks so much.

1:25:23Nilay Patel:podcasts. Decoder is a production of Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Stat. Our editor is Ursa Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. We'll see you next time. The Viore Core Short moves with you. With everyday versatility and classic athletic fit. It's the one short for everything your day brings. Invest in your happiness and get 20 % off your first purchase at viore.com slash 420. That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash K-O-R-E-2-0. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. Labor Day savings are happening now at the Home Depot with select appliances starting at$399.

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