Advice Line with Kip Tindell of The Container Store

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4:55Hello, and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show, who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. All right, let's get to it. Joining me today is Kip Tindall. He is the co-founder and former CEO of The Container Store.

5:30Kip, welcome back to the show. Thank you. Really happy to be back. We had a lot of fun last time. I hope we can this time. We did. It was great to have you back. So you were first on the show back in 2024. And of course, you told the story of The Container Store. It's an awesome story. In 1978, you and your friend, Garrett Boone, opened the first container store in Dallas. Your wife, Sharon, joined pretty soon after. And a lot of people don't understand what a big deal it was at the time because back then people couldn't just get containers or corrugated boxes for moving. You had to like go to the trash bins and find flattened boxes if you want to move house.

6:07And so the idea of a store that sold those things was kind of revolutionary. Fast forward, of course, the business expands massively. I think by 2013, you went public and today there are about 100 locations. It's a great story and as always for anyone listening If you missed it, we will put a link to it in the show notes Go back and check it out, it's really fun So Kip, the timing of our original episode was interesting If you remember, because soon after we spoke The Container Store, which you are not involved with at all anymore But it announced it was filing for bankruptcy And then I think a few months ago It was actually acquired by Bed Bath & Beyond for about$150 million.

6:49Now, again, I know you and Sharon stepped away a long time ago from the business, but I was wondering, I mean, you have probably infinite thoughts about what happened, how it happened. I'd just be curious to hear. It was the most fun, wonderful, great, successful business for 43 years. Nobody loved their work more. And we retired about eight or nine years ago, and it hasn't done that well since. Like a lot of entrepreneurs, We, you know, we struggled to find just the right people to sell to and all of that. But retail has also changed, you know, with the advent of Amazon and online. And so it's been interesting.

7:27It is upsetting and painful to watch your baby, which this was definitely our baby, you know, 16 hours a day, seven days a week for 43 years, not do too well here recently. But, you know, not that many businesses last for 50 years anymore. No, that's right. And if you look at all the top businesses 20 or 30 or 50 years ago in the New York Stock Exchange, most of them aren't so great anymore. And that's the thing we learn as we get older is nothing is all that permanent. Yeah, indeed. Indeed. Kip, you briefly mentioned this idea when you talked about Amazon, right? So much has changed in retail.

8:05What do you see happening in retail today that is even more potentially disruptive, that could be the next thing that is going to shape how we shop? Well, the whole frictionless, no people involved definition of service, the difference between the Container Store and Neiman Marcus and companies like that, where you have this individualized, great salesperson selling a solution. I mean, a solution, not an item. That's kind of gone away. And now people are doing it on their own. There's really no people involved. There's no reason to have the highest paid, best salespeople in the industry anymore.

8:47I mean, we would have people come in that have been driven crazy by their toy storage area of their home for four or five years. And in 45 minutes, we could solve that problem for them. And when they left the store, they were elated. But it's hard to do online, and it's not what retail is really all about anymore. Yeah. I mean, you could go into a Home Depot or a container store with what your problem was on ChatGPT or Claude and say, tell me exactly what I need to buy, how I install it. And I guess, you know, it can be done. Although saying that, I still think that there is an opportunity to really offer excellent human to human customer service.

9:30And I think the brands and the stores that do that right might find themselves in a really great position. You know, I have a local hardware store here that I go to that's not as big as Home Depot, but the people who work there are really knowledgeable. And, you know, look, I like Home Depot, but the reality is you go to Home Depot today and it's not always the case that people can really be helpful. Yeah. Since I've retired, I really enjoy great food and great wine. And if the waiter is great enough and really understands the food enough, I can really increase the enjoyment of my meal by how much knowledge that waiter has about the food, asking these detailed questions and whatnot.

10:08Yeah. There's still a lot of that in retail, but I hope it doesn't continue to diminish. And I hope that some people take it forward to have more of that because there's a great joy in life when it occurs. You know, a lot of founders, Kip, ask me about growth, right? And there's differing views and changing views on growth now. For a while, it was grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. Now there's a lot of focus on profitability, which I think is smart. What is your sort of philosophy around growth in retail? And how do you think about it? I mean, the entrepreneur, be it retail or anything, needs to decide how, you know, how fast they can grow without getting away from what brought them there in the first place.

10:47I mean, you know, I always pegged our growth at 20 % a year, which in those days, 20 % growth was astronomically fast. Now, it's not anymore, you know, with technology companies and that type of thing. But, boy, retail back then, 20%. And I just stopped it at 20 % because going faster than that, it would be like the RPM needle getting too far into the red. And we did that for over 40 years. I read every article I can find where there's sort of a nouvelle rebellious attitude that you don't have to grow at all. It helps to grow a little bit because there is inflation. You do want to reward great employees and that type of thing.

11:26But this excessive growth is why so many companies, frankly, don't make it. I mean, be humble enough to figure out what your limitations are, grow at that rate, and then do it for a long, long time rather than trying to grow at astronomical proportions in a short period of time. Yeah. Kip, you know, I think a lot of people, you know, who think about, well, one day, you know, I'll have made it and I can retire. And here you are. You've done it. What are you prioritizing now? I mean, you mentioned travel, of course, and things that you can do, but what about in a bigger way? What are some of the priorities that you and Sharon have kind of established for the rest of your time here on Earth?

12:07Sharon and I built this business together, and I think you should work with the people you love. People say, oh, you shouldn't work with your spouse. You shouldn't work with your friends. Yes, you should. That's exactly who you should work with. It doesn't always work out, but it doesn't always work out to work with people who are not your spouse and not your friends. And we loved it, I think, more than anybody I know loved their work. But now we love retirement even more than that. I mean, the freedom, my God, the lack of stress. I feel like a liberal arts student trying to decide what I'm going to major in.

12:39You know, I could do whatever the hell I want. I love that. It's just incredible. I love that. And I've really, I enjoy people that say that they enjoy growing older. I'm trying to do that. I think I do. I think the 60s are better than the 50s. I think the 50s are better than the 40s. That's got to stop. I doubt the 90s are better than the 80s, right? That's got to stop at some point. But so far, we're loving growing older. So I would just submit to anybody listening that I don't care how much you love your work. Make time in your life for a little bit of retirement because it is just gloriously free.

13:18I love that. All right. Kip, what do you say? Should we take our first call? Yep. Love to. All right, let's do it. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with Kip Tindall, co-founder of the Container Store. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just one line about your business, please. Hi, Guy. Hi, Kip. Before we start, I just want to say thank you so much. I've learned so much from listening to how I built this over the past years, and it's quite surreal to actually be here. Today, I'm Juliette Bruce, and I'm calling from Provence in the south of France. I'm the founder and creator of Cooler Wand.

13:51It's a reusable magic wand with a detachable frozen star that cools hot food and drinks pretty much in seconds, and has surprisingly become much more than that. Well, okay, so thanks for calling, Juliette, and thanks for the kind words. All right, so you are based in France or living in France right now, and you have a – so it's a wand with a – a freezable star on it and you use it to cool drinks? Yeah. Am I getting that right? That's absolutely right. The frozen star of the wand lives in your freezer whenever food or drinks are too hot or someone needs, actually, you know, now someone needs to soothe a bump or an ache or an itch.

14:30It's there. The frozen star cools in seconds without watering anything down. I got it. Okay, okay, so now I'm pretty sure. So this is for children or I guess kid-oriented because it's a wand with a frozen end And it's designed, I'm assuming it's designed for kids. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, originally my market was towards kids. It's a very magical thing. I obviously designed it for my kids myself. I've got three children and they've always had really big problems with hot food. And the idea just came because I thought it already existed. And I had no idea that something like that didn't exist before.

15:05So you created it? Yeah, absolutely, from scratch. So I'm a sonographer originally. I design windows and I create worlds for luxurious brands like Hermes. And I love creating worlds. And so I really thought my kids just needed a magic wand to crawl their food down. And so I just went into production, drew it out and then found, I mean, it was a really crazy road of finding the right people to obviously produce it. And I'm really high on quality, so I didn't want to have it produced with wrong materials because today people really don't want plastics to be badly made. So I've been really, really tight with the production and we produce in Portugal.

15:46Yeah, because Portugal, I remember buying baby food containers that were made in Brazil and Portugal when my kids were, you know, 15, 16 years ago because we would freeze baby food and they were BPA free. So this is basically, it's like when you have a reusable ice cube that you might put in a cocktail. That essentially is the same concept. It's the star. And a kid can get a hot mug of cocoa and just stir that thing in there and it'll cool it down instead of putting an ice cube in, which was always our fix. But then it waters down the drinks. How have you been doing? I mean, where are you? I'm assuming you're selling these on your website only right now.

16:20So far, I've sold direct to consumer through my website, of course, as you said. I place cooler one in nine independent retailers in France and one in Malta right now. I've been initiating discussions with power pharmacies. I've also reached out to cafes, family-friendly spaces, and even hospitals, actually, to test the environments where families can get a natural experience of it. And actually, recently, my son was in hospital, and the first thing he asked me when they asked him if he wanted cold, he asked for his cooler wand. So I realized that it was actually something very emotional and soothing for him.

16:53Yeah. I think the magic of the wand is so cool. And, you know, that's a big part of this. And also, I chuckled, I guess with the heat wave you've had in Provence lately, you can't just wait for the food to cool. It's going to take a while. Well, to be honest, every adult has it out at the moment, I have to say, because calling the temples really helps as well. Juliette, before we dive in further, tell us what your question is for us. Yes. So my question was, I don't have the budget to launch the kind of awareness campaign. a completely new product category probably needs. How do I create enough opportunities for people to discover it so that it has a chance of becoming part of everyday life?

17:36Okay, I want to bring Kip in. Kip, I'm curious from a retail perspective, right? If Juliet was looking to get this into a store, like if somebody put this into the container store, how would a customer discover it? Well, it would be actually well-placed in the container store because you have a very high service level, you know, so that they could relate, you know, the product. I was thinking this is more of a specialty independent retail store product than a mass merchant where there's no service at all. It's very interesting. I guess it's BPA free. Yeah. And I think it's so important that you said you really were particular on that.

18:15And you just need to make that clear to everybody. I mean, particularly parents, right? And so that's – I would say that you need to just quintuple your efforts to make sure everybody understands that that is the materials that you've used. Yeah, I mean, I think that's absolutely critical. You know, Juliette, I mean, this is a challenge, right, with somebody who doesn't have a significant budget. But of course, you know, we all have access to these social media tools. And again, this is something that doesn't necessarily benefit from advertising, but from the demonstration, seeing it in action.

18:50You know, and I can imagine you may already be doing this, but I can imagine literally doing a version of the same video a thousand times just in different ways. You know, I can even imagine like a video of a of a mug of hot cocoa and you have a thermometer in there in that mug and you have the kids start stirring it and you watch the thermometer go down and you're and you just you don't even need to comment. It's like, are you a parent? You have this problem every day. Here's the solution. You know, I'm sure you've got social media accounts and just make that a version of that video again and again.

19:24Infinite video ideas. And I'm talking about like low, you can literally just put an iPhone on a stand, right? I love that. That's a great idea. Build up the fun and magic because God knows we need more fun and magic in the world. That to me is one way. And then the other way is just seeing if you can identify parents of small kids who are influencers, but not mass, not million person influencers, but maybe they have a thousand followers and just message them. See if you can send them one. Yeah, we've had we've had a really, really luck. Actually, I had an influencer who's for ADHD children and who I didn't know.

20:05And she actually bought the product and she talked about it. And actually, that really helped a lot because it was so real and true and not forced or not. And that's what I have trouble with is the fact that I just really want people to find happiness in this tool and not try and sell. You know, when you're in this industry and obviously you create dreams for people and this is what we do in retail or, you know, in advertising. and all this, we're very hard on ourselves on basically what we're supposed to achieve. And obviously, this takes obviously budget. And I'm getting there. I just it's about investment and I believe in it.

20:39So I mean, Hermes, you know, right there, their ad budgets are in the maybe hundreds of millions. I don't even know, tens of millions for sure. But this is I mean, this could be fun. It could be really fun to just make these very simple videos with your kids or friends of your kids or friends of yours. Yeah, our Instagram is doing quite well. I mean, we have quite a lot of traction on there. I mean, I don't know how much it is good traction, but we have a video. It's a half a million views and like 12 ,000 likes. And it's really, they do like that. I'm on that trajectory. I just need to keep pushing and doing what you're saying, like just trying to make it more and more creative.

21:16Lots of times it just takes that relentless pursuit of the things that are working really well right now. and then after what seems like a forever amount of that, you get a few breaks where some big things happen and you get a little bit more scale. You know, being patient has a lot to do with being humble and being okay with it taking a while. And, you know, it actually might take a long time, but that's the surest methodology. And if you do this sure and slow, steady thing, you have much less chance for failure and much better chance, I think, you know, for success. The brand is called Kula Wand Juliet Bruce.

21:53Thank you for calling in. Good luck. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller and another round of advice. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This.

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