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- [00:00]
iHeart Advertising Announcer
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
- [00:05]
Jacob Goldstein
I'm not like a coffee connoisseur, but recently I tried coffee from a company called Perk and I loved it. And I'm not just saying that because this is an ad for Perc though. This is an ad for Perc. I really did think the coffee was delicious. Perc has lots of different coffees to choose from and they color code their bags. The blue bags are mild coffee, the pink bags are wild coffee. You can find the coffee that matches your vibe and get 15% off your next order with promo code problem@perccoffee.com that's P E R C coffee.com promo code
- [00:43]
Chase for Business Advertiser
problem being a small business owner isn't just a career, it's a calling. Chase for Business knows how much heart and effort go into building something of your own. Manage all your business finances, from banking to payments to credit cards, all in one place with their digital tools. Plus access online resources designed to help your business thrive. Learn more@chase.com business chase for business make more of what's yours the Chase Mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply JP Morgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC Copyright 2026 JP Morgan Chase Co. Running for
- [01:19]
Mark Barokas
office means having something important to say. Radio is the most personal medium out there. Voters hear the real you exactly the way you want to be heard. No filters, no AI, just your voice, your message. And it's 1/10 the time and cost of video.
- [01:34]
Jacob Goldstein
Don't just campaign.
- [01:36]
Mark Barokas
Connect with millions all over the country, even thousands in the smallest communities. With radio be on the air in just 48 hours, visit winwithiheart.com that's winwithiheart.com.
- [01:54]
Jacob Goldstein
Pushkin. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is what's your problem? My guest today is Mark Barokas. He's the CEO of Sharkninja. When Mark started at the company in 2008, they sold a mop and a cordless sweeper, largely via infomercial. Today, SharkNinja sells $6 billion worth of stuff every year. Mops and vacuum cleaners, but also ice cream makers and air fryers and blenders and hair dryers. And this thing that's supposedly good for your skin and has lights on it and you put it on your face and it makes you look like a lucha libre wrestler. What I'm saying is they sell everything now and they sell it everywhere. I wanted to talk to Mark because Sharkninja is an innovative company, not in the frontiers of science sense, but in the making a blender that does something you've never been able to do at home before with a blender sense. Also in the designing products to go viral on social media sense. As our editor said, Shark Ninja is like Bell Labs for stuff nobody really needs, but lots of people clearly want. And so there is a lot to learn from the company. In our conversation, Mark and I talked about how the company develops new products, the trade offs it makes between engineering the perfect product and the good enough product at the right price, and why the secret to going viral is schmutz. To start, I asked Mark to tell me about the company's first big, non obvious leap from selling mops to selling a new kind of blender.
- [03:36]
Mark Barokas
We looked at the blender market and we said, you know, what do consumers want to do with blenders? Well, in their home they were doing one thing, but outside their home, American consumers wanted frozen drinks. And you'd go to these Mexican restaurants and you'd get a frozen margarita and they'd be done in these kind of professional big blenders. And you get home and you try to make it and. And a blender had blades that were on the bottom and so you'd put the ice into the blender and the ice would just jump up because it would never get to the blades. And then so you'd add more liquid and add more liquid. And by the time you added a whole bunch of liquid, you no longer had a frozen drink. You had this kind of cold, watery drink. And so we said, well, hold on, if this is what consumers want, we have to solve the problem of making restaurant quality frozen drinks. And we said, why are the blades on the bottom? Why don't the blades go up the top? And if the blades go up the top, you can put a whole bunch of ice in it and you can turn the ice to snow. And we ultimately developed this technology and we would buy bags of ice in gas stations and we'd walk into the Walmart buyer and we would fill the ice to the top of the pitcher and we'd put the blade inside and we turn the ice to snow and we'd pour the pitcher of snow onto the table and we'd say, look at this, feel this consistency. Well, the buyer thought we were crazy at the time, but that was the secret ingredient to making these creamy restaurant quality frozen drinks. And so when we went out and the first time we launched this Ninja Master Prep was in 2009 on QVC and instantly it sold out. In one day, we sold like 40,000 units in one day. It was the biggest success we had ever had in one day in the company's history. And what it was was that the minute we did these demonstrations, consumers immediately said, not, wow, I've never heard of this brand Ninja, you know, or, oh, what an interesting blender. What they said is, they solved my problem. They solved my problem. That's what I want to do with a blender. Well, that is everything that sharkninja stands for today. That when the consumer sees what we've developed, whether it's a fan, whether it's an air fryer, whether it's an outdoor grill, whether it's a skincare mask, whether it's a hairstyler, whether it's a vacuum, what we want is for the consumer to look at the product and say, they solved my problem.
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Jacob Goldstein
I know your partner did infomercials. Did you ever do infomercials? Cause I suddenly feel like I'm watching an infomercial right now.
- [06:17]
Mark Barokas
I did not do infomercials.
- [06:19]
Jacob Goldstein
Is it true that you were going to call the thing that became the Ninja the Fiestaville?
- [06:23]
Mark Barokas
It is true.
- [06:24]
Jacob Goldstein
You could have been Shark Fiestaville instead of Shark Ninja.
- [06:27]
Mark Barokas
We could have been Shark Fiestaville. But, you know, there was a. You know, there was a retailer buyer that said, look, I love the product, but the name is a really dumb name. And they said, you know, go. Go back and come up with something, you know, more. More compelling. And we actually, we looked at the blades. If you've ever seen a Ninja blender and you see the blades that go up, we kind of looked at them, and it was like kind of when we were a kid, you know, you would take a Chinese star and you throw it against a tree or something, and it would stick. And, you know, literally, I think it was like 48 hours after that meeting where they told us Fiestaville was stupid. We said, how? What about Ninja? And we socialized it and people said, oh, you know, Ninja. I don't know. Ninja maybe sounds like a dumb name as well. Look, it ultimately proves to you, I mean, Ninja last year finished at a $3.3 billion brand. We never acquired a dollar of revenue under the Ninja brand.
- [07:23]
Jacob Goldstein
So you've built this giant multibillion dollar business. I read a recent interview with you where you said, you still feel like you're always losing what's going on there.
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Mark Barokas
I mean, every day we're either gaining loyal consumers or we're losing frustrated consumers. And I don't think that success is permanent. I also don't think that failure is Permanent. I think failure is a temporary condition and I think success is a temporary condition. And I think that you earn the right to stay in business every day. You earn the right to generate revenue from the consumer's hard earned dollar every day. And I think that when I go into the office in the morning and I read a one star review about our products, I mean, it ruins my day. I mean, it genuinely does. I mean, at the size of business that we are today, and if you get a five star review, it like puts wind at your sails. And so when I'm saying that I feel like we're losing. I feel like there's so much more that we can do.
- [08:26]
Jacob Goldstein
I want to talk about your product development process in a little bit more detail. And I thought it might be useful to talk about a specific product. And I wondered if we could do the Ninja creami the ice cream maker. Because in part, it seems not obvious. Like this seems like a case that the people of America were not clamoring for an ice cream maker to put on the counter. Where did that come from? And sort of step me through the process of actually making that, turning it into a product.
- [08:53]
Mark Barokas
Okay? So look, product development is like getting little nuggets and insights and kind of trying to put all the pieces together to what we call create a mousetrap. Okay? And that mouse trap has to have.
- [09:08]
Jacob Goldstein
Wait, am I the mouse in that metaphor?
- [09:10]
Mark Barokas
I mean, potentially. Potentially.
- [09:12]
Jacob Goldstein
Are you catching me when I buy your product? You might want to rethink that.
- [09:16]
Mark Barokas
And so the question is, what is that? So we had ethnographic researchers in restaurants and we started looking at how do high end restaurants make ice cream? I mean, are they just opening up a Ben and Jerry's thing and scooping it out? No. I mean, they're actually making ice cream in very, very expensive machines in these restaurants. And they're controlling the ingredients and they're tweaking the ingredients and doing all these things. So that was one data point. There was a second data point where I have two children that both have nut allergies. And you know, I have another child that has a dairy allergy. And so we felt like there was a whole market around people that would be willing in their home to kind of craft ice cream due to dietary restrictions or allergies or things like that. That's the second data point. Okay, that we know. Third data point was that we know that consumers love doing things that kind of bring people together, bring families together. And so the ability for you to be able to make ice cream you know, as a family and is like an exciting thing. Like, everyone gets involved and so there's like a communal aspect to it. So there's those three things that were coming together.
- [10:37]
Jacob Goldstein
Let me ask just before we get farther. I mean, you mentioned there was an expensive restaurant machine, right? Is it right? That part of the story is like it was going off patent, they had some particular intellectual property, and it was going into the public domain. Is that right?
- [10:51]
Mark Barokas
There's lots of machines out there that you can buy in restaurants. I mean, the point was.
- [10:56]
Jacob Goldstein
Yes. What? There was not some intellectual property opportunity that was some part of this.
- [11:01]
Mark Barokas
No, in fact. In fact, the Ninja Creamy has a lot of intellectual property, I'm sure, in it, within it. But. But it was. It was. How is something made outside of the home that tastes so great that the consumer is not able to do it inside of the home? Now, here's something very interesting for you to know. It was never the idea of Shark Ninja to develop protein ice cream. Like, we created this hardware, okay, this Ninja Creamy product.
- [11:28]
Jacob Goldstein
Well, wait, before we. Protein ice cream is like the end of the story, right? I feel like there's a few more things that have to happen first. Like, one is you have to figure out how to turn the $8,000 restaurant machine into a $200 machine, right? How do you do that?
- [11:44]
Mark Barokas
First of all, we start with a target price of what we'd love to sell it. Now, sometimes that target price is, you know, complete pie in the sky where we go to the engineers and we'd say, we'd love to be able to sell this product for $199. And after the engineers, you know, get back off the floor and tell you how dumb you are because, you know, the motor is going to cost this and the PCBA is going to cost this. And the ways we say, okay, like, let's now start figuring it out, like, how large could the size of the pipe be? You know, in order to be able to kind of control all these variables. Product development, it is about managing all of these different requirements. It's not about developing the best product always.
- [12:31]
Jacob Goldstein
It's about the trade offs.
- [12:32]
Mark Barokas
It's the trade offs. And it's about developing the best performance at the best quality, at the best value. And it's the combination of those things. Sometimes product development is actually a vanity exercise. There are times where I go onto Kickstarter and I look at a product and. And the product is amazing. Okay? It is incredible what they've done. And then you look at the price tag and you're like, it's $1,800.
- [12:58]
Jacob Goldstein
Yeah.
- [12:59]
Mark Barokas
And you're like, listen, for $1,800, you're dealing with such a small of a small consumer base. So going back to the creamy example, we had to sit there and for literally months and months it was trade off conversations, my understanding.
- [13:15]
Jacob Goldstein
So it comes out in 2021 in the pandemic. You have this thesis about everybody's home and cooking, which was correct. But it doesn't seem like the creamy really took off when it came out.
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Mark Barokas
Yes. And we started in the second half of 2022 focusing it much more on social media. We started seeding it to lots of people.
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Jacob Goldstein
This is your marketing strategy. Right. This is a good time to talk about that. Like you guys do as much creator marketing as, let's say, anybody, to a first approximation. Right. Tell me about what you did with the creamy and how that sort of reflects more broadly the way you do creator marketing and social media marketing.
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Mark Barokas
Well, well, let's start with the end result is to have consumer organic flywheel going. That's the end result.
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Jacob Goldstein
You don't want to have to keep paying creators forever for a given product.
- [14:05]
Mark Barokas
No. And by the way, it becomes so authentic when thousands of consumers are sharing their insights and are sharing their best recipes. But, but you have to light the organic flywheel. And so you light the organic flywheel by getting creators, chefs, other key opinion leaders that are doing things with the product to start to spur excitement. Now, fortunately for us, by the time that started in the second half of 2022, we already had lots of units out in the market. So we started investing tremendously at that point in social media influencers, social media marketing, and by Christmas of 2022, that started activating the people that had bought the product at the end of 2021 and into 2022.
- [14:58]
Jacob Goldstein
Activating mean it got them to start posting.
- [15:01]
Mark Barokas
Exactly. Sharing recipes, posting, troubleshooting, unboxing. Unboxing is a really exciting thing. I mean, people, there's a whole cottage industry of influencers that just go on and do that. We don't pay that, just do unboxing of our products.
- [15:18]
Jacob Goldstein
Just to make this clear, this is literally people who open products and take them out of the box. And that's the video. I will say I love returning things. I have dreamed of making reboxing videos for other dads who love returning things, but I haven't done it yet.
- [15:31]
Mark Barokas
And on the unboxing, it's like going through first use, like getting the consumer all the way through the unboxing process to the first use. As we got into 2023, again, that started accelerating. I mean, we started finding more and more use cases. The beginning of 2023 is when protein ice cream really started.
- [15:52]
Jacob Goldstein
So was it protein ice cream that really sent the creamy through the roof? Was that what did it?
- [15:57]
Mark Barokas
Protein ice cream was a huge catalyst of being able to do it. And what protein ice cream did was it started this massive creator group of just developing their own ideas. There are, you know, influencers that have channels of just will it creamy.
- [16:14]
Jacob Goldstein
And are you still putting money into it at this point when this is happening? Are you, like, seeing this and be like, oh, yeah, let's put a little money into protein ice cream?
- [16:22]
Mark Barokas
So we. We were putting a lot of money into it in 2023. Okay, here's the interesting thing that turned and it turned on us. I would say the second half of 24, where there was so much organic content being developed that we no longer had to put our own marketing money behind it. Yeah.
- [16:42]
Jacob Goldstein
I have my own creamy journey, and we booked you before this happened. So it's just a coincidence. First of all, you're starting the viral marketing flywheel. Worked on my teenage daughters who know everything they know from TikTok. They asked for a creamy for Christmas. It's great. We made gelato together. Your dream come true. And then it broke.
- [17:07]
Mark Barokas
Wow.
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Jacob Goldstein
Yeah. It just broke. It just broke. Do you want to guess how it broke?
- [17:12]
Mark Barokas
Tell me. I'm anxious to hear.
- [17:14]
Jacob Goldstein
Okay. My daughter, I think she put the bowl in wrong. I mean, she's a teenager. I don't feel like I had. But there's an interesting question to me, which is to what extent? I guess to some extent it's my fault because I'm the dad or whatever. To what extent is it my fault? To what extent is it my daughter's fault? And to what extent is it your fault? Because it, like, it's not like we dropped it. It was not, like, a gratuitous thing.
- [17:35]
Mark Barokas
Yeah.
- [17:36]
Jacob Goldstein
And, like, it seems like it was kind of easy to break it, frankly.
- [17:39]
Mark Barokas
Yeah. Well, listen, here's what I would say. Like, it's all my fault. Okay.
- [17:46]
Jacob Goldstein
Like, I mean, I'm not saying that. I'm truly not.
- [17:48]
Mark Barokas
No, no. Because listen, I mean, if we understand now, like, what your daughter did in terms of, you know, maybe she pushed it in the wrong way and maybe, you know, she got some resistance, overshot it.
- [18:00]
Jacob Goldstein
It's clearly a mistake other people have made. Okay.
- [18:03]
Mark Barokas
And you know, what I would say is that, like, from the time we develop a product, as we're getting consumer feedback on the product, that product is evolving and changing. Okay? We're making constant upgrades to those products. Now, I'll give you a good example. When we came out with our first blender, we dropped spoons and forks into the blender. And to make sure that, like, that wasn't going to break the blender. Because you know what? Something could slip out of somebody's hand and it goes into there. And from a reliability standpoint, the product should be able to stand up to kind of what we call, like, reasonable consumer abuse. Okay. Now, I don't know what your daughter did was reasonable consumer.
- [18:45]
Jacob Goldstein
I think it was reasonable. I think it was reasonable. The bull getting stuck seems like a thing. Although I will say. Let me. Let me say the end of this. I had actually not dealt with it because of course you don't deal with it, whatever. And I was like, I'm interviewing the guy. This better deal with it and see what happens. And so a couple of days ago, I. Whatever. I filled out just the thing online. And it was a Christmas gift. And, like, we didn't have the receipt. And I was like, ah, it's gonna be a pain in the ass. It actually was good, at least so far. I went online a few hours later, later that night, somebody was like, okay, send us a picture of these things. And I did that. And they're like, okay, we're gonna send you a new one. So as far as I know, a new one is on the way. And actually my other daughter, not the one who quasi broke it, she was like, wow, you gotta tell the guy. It's great. So I think a reasonable resolution.
- [19:28]
Mark Barokas
But look, it goes to the example of what I said to you in the beginning about winning and losing. Like, you had an experience. And regardless of whether it's your fault or it's our fault, I want you as a consumer for life.
- [19:40]
Jacob Goldstein
Yeah, it would be better if it hadn't broke. Right. Like, there are lots of other things where you gotta put the ball in. Right. But if you put the ball in wrong, it just doesn't turn on. It's not like broken and stuck forever. Right.
- [19:50]
Mark Barokas
Right.
- [19:51]
Jacob Goldstein
Although presumably this is one of your trade offs. I imagine the engineers were like, oh, we could fix this, this, but it would add $20 to the cost or something. And not to say that you should have chosen the other trade off. To be clear, I'm not. I don't know. But I imagine they knew that it could break in this way. And they couldn't fix it or they couldn't fix it at a reasonable price or without lowering the quality or something. Right.
- [20:11]
Mark Barokas
In the end, I mean, and I'm sure that the person who you randomly sent this in didn't know that you and I were speaking.
- [20:18]
Jacob Goldstein
No, absolutely not. I didn't tell them. No, of course not.
- [20:21]
Mark Barokas
And so the fact that they made it right, you know, kind of lives up to our positively impacting people's lives.
- [20:28]
Jacob Goldstein
The breaking was worse than I expected, but the resolution was better than I expected. And the ice cream is quite good. Like, we'll get a new one and we'll make more ice cream.
- [20:35]
Mark Barokas
And my hope is that your daughter is like, hey, like, the Ninja brand really stood by it.
- [20:45]
Jacob Goldstein
Still to come on the show, what Shark Ninja learned when they sent their employees into to ordinary people's houses to watch them vacuum. I'm not like a coffee connoisseur, but recently I tried coffee from a company called Perc and I loved it. And I'm not just saying that because this is an ad for Perc, though. This is an ad for Perc. I really did think the coffee was delicious. The bag I'm drinking at the moment was grown in Peru. Perc sources coffee from all over the world. They have lots of different kinds of coffee to choose from and they color code their bags. Blue bags are more mild coffee and pink bags are more wild coffee. That Peruvian coffee I'm drinking now is wild. And if you're on the fence, I recommend trying wild. The other morning I had my first sip and I thought of that Will Ferrell line in old school where he hits the beer bong and then he says, once it hits your lips, it's so good. Find the coffee that matches your vibe and get 15% off your next order with promo code problem@percccoffee.com that's P E R C coffee.com, promo code problem. Being a small business owner isn't just a career. It's a calling. Chase for business knows how much heart and effort go into building something of your own. That's why they make your business growth their priority. The team at Chase takes the time to understand your mission, where you are now, and where you want to go. Their broad range of solutions is designed with you in mind so you can bring your ideas to life. From banking to payment acceptance to credit cards, you can conveniently manage all your business finances all in one place with their digital tools looking for tips and advice, their online resources are always available to give you the solutions you need to help your business thrive. See how your business can get stronger and go farther with Chase for Business. Learn more@chase.com business chase for business make more of what's yours the Chase Mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply JPMorgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC Copyright 2026 JPMorgan Chase Co. Run a business and
- [23:03]
iHeart Advertising Announcer
not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next to combine. So whatever your customers are into true crime, sports, comedy, culture, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. And all this reach means everything. Just think about the universal marketing formula. The number of consumers who hear your message times the response rate equals the results. Now let's get those results growing for you. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting. Let us show you at iheartadvertising.com that's iheartadvertising.com or call 844-844 iHeart one more time, call 844-844-IHEART and get podcasting working for you.
- [24:04]
Jacob Goldstein
Tell me about the ethnographic research that you do. Like, in particular, who are the people who do it? What's their background and sort of why are they particularly good at their jobs?
- [24:15]
Mark Barokas
Yeah, so, you know, Steve Jobs always had, you know, a famous line, right, of like, you know, he wouldn't do focus groups. And I don't think it's really a question of, like, not doing focus groups. I think that the consumer doesn't know what's possible, right? They, they just know the world that exists with them. So when we go into 100 consumer homes and we watched them vacuum and eight of those consumers turn the vacuum over, take a knife or a razor blade, slice the hair off the brush, roll, pull the hair out, throw it in the garbage, and at the end of the cleaning session, we say, is there anything you do to improve your vacuum? They say, no, I think it works great. And we said, well, what about when you nearly sliced your hand off and you pulled the hair out? And they start apologizing for it, they start saying, oh, we have two daughters with long hair. We have pets in the house. That's just they've learned to live with the problems of their existing products. They don't know what's possible. They don't know to sit there and say to our researchers, hey, I'd love if the vacuum didn't wrap hair for 15 years. Every two weeks, they slice the hair off the brush roll and they throw it away.
- [25:27]
Jacob Goldstein
I feel like you don't need to be like that insightful to get that one. Like, I feel like not to be a modest, I feel like I might notice that one. Like, what's a subtler thing you guys have noticed?
- [25:38]
Mark Barokas
Well, think about this. Before we came out with Shark's self cleaning brush roll about four years ago, there were 80 years of vacuums that did not have this technology.
- [25:51]
Jacob Goldstein
Fair enough. I didn't notice it. I didn't come out with a self cleaning brush roll. But I imagine the people who you have going out into people's homes notice much subtler things than that. And I'm curious about the subtler end of what they're doing. Sure.
- [26:04]
Mark Barokas
I mean, I'll give you a great example. In 2017, we came out with a product called the Ninja Foodi. At the time, all the rage in kitchens was pressure cooking. People were pressure cooking. Pressure cooking. It had like completely reinvented itself.
- [26:21]
Jacob Goldstein
I mean, see, instant pot. You're not saying the name, but that's what we're talking about, pressure cooking.
- [26:26]
Mark Barokas
And so, and so if you go online, these pressure cookers were getting very good reviews. I mean, 4.5 stars, you know, 4.4 stars. And so there wasn't an obvious problem. We went into consumer homes and we observed that many people were taking the food out of their pressure cooker and were then putting it into the oven under the broiler. And they said, well, a chicken is very tender, but it comes out and it's like, it's not crispy and it's like a little like dull looking. It doesn't look all that appealing.
- [27:06]
Jacob Goldstein
A broiler finish is a nice move. Like if you're cooking, sticking some under the broiler at the end is a move. Yeah, exactly.
- [27:13]
Mark Barokas
And so there was an example where we came back and we said, wow, there's a problem. What if we had a pressure cooker that could crisp? And that was the original Ninja Foodi. It became a huge success for us. Okay. The Ninja Foodi kind of launched a whole new line of cooking products for us. It ultimately became a very, very successful business for us. But that all came out of that little insight. If you would have combed consumer reviews, you would have never seen it in there. If you would have ask consumers, you'd have never seen it in there. It's watching people in their homes doing little things and then saying, well, what if we can combine the whole process for them? Now here's what's something interesting about it. Let's go back to your point on product development. In product development, there was always an approach that we called to A&TOE to A was referred to as the threshold of acceptability on a product.
- [28:14]
Jacob Goldstein
Okay.
- [28:14]
Mark Barokas
So for example, a TOA on a vacuum cleaner might be noise.
- [28:20]
Jacob Goldstein
I see.
- [28:20]
Mark Barokas
You're never, we're never going to have something silent, but you know, how do we make it so that it just gets to a TOA level Quiet enough
- [28:29]
Jacob Goldstein
on any, on any dimension. What is the good enough bar?
- [28:33]
Mark Barokas
Exactly Where a consumer is not going to go online and write a review and say, oh my God, I unboxed this product and I can't believe how quiet it is. Okay. It's so, it's just TOA is what you're going to put into it. Then you've got something called toe. TOE is threshold of excellence. Threshold of excellence is, for example, in a vacuum cleaner. We do an amazing job cleaning, okay. And in particular cleaning carpets. When you use our product for the first time on carpets, the amount of dust and dirt that is in your dust cup, it's a wow. Consumers love seeing their dust cups filled up. They like these big dust cups and then they love to empty them and say, oh my God, I can't believe what was in my carpet there before I bought a shark vacuum. And so a TOE is something that the consumer is going to go online and write a review and say I use my shark. And it is unbelievable. Okay. I can't believe what it pulled out.
- [29:32]
Jacob Goldstein
I get it. So, but like, I feel like you're going somewhere with this, like land this lay on this idea for me.
- [29:37]
Mark Barokas
So now there is a thing called TOV and TOV is threshold of viral or threshold of virality. And that did not exist pre 2004. And so from 2004 onward, we now as we're developing a product, we now look at it from first principles of how is this product going to drive virality? We developed a product that just came out last holiday season called the Shark Facial Pro Glow. It's an at home facial product. This is a product that you go around your face and you put these topicals on and it extracts the dirt from your pores and then it hydrates and moisturizes you. What we found is that what people love is looking inside of the dirty canister, okay. After it's extracted and, and they see gunk.
- [30:33]
Jacob Goldstein
So it's all this schmutz was just in my face. That is the viral thing.
- [30:36]
Mark Barokas
They love schmutz, okay? They love schmutz in a vacuum cleaner dust cup. They love it in a facial gunk tag.
- [30:46]
Jacob Goldstein
That's your real secret. At least on the shark side, that is your secret to billion dollar success. People love schmutz.
- [30:53]
Mark Barokas
Yeah, that's exactly. I mean, we'll develop business cards with that.
- [30:59]
Jacob Goldstein
Okay, let's talk about a few things that haven't worked for you or that you haven't figured out. I mean, you tell the story of sort of success after success, but what's something you did that didn't work?
- [31:08]
Mark Barokas
Back in 2010, we were just getting started in the vacuum business and we developed this Shark Multivac and we became enamored with this. Had massive suction power in this very small, compact vacuum. The reality was, is that it was like an erector set. If you typed in Shark multivac, you could still probably see it. Okay. We couldn't scrub the Internet of the Shark Multivax Erector set.
- [31:38]
Jacob Goldstein
Meaning too complicated.
- [31:39]
Mark Barokas
Too complicated. Not easy. Aesthetically unpleasing, you know, nothing good about it other than the fact that from a performance standpoint, it was a marvel. Okay. In the way. In the way you did it.
- [31:54]
Jacob Goldstein
Interesting. So it's like it was an amazing vacuum, but it sucked, is the interesting juxtaposition. Yes.
- [32:00]
Mark Barokas
Yes. We launch it into the market and it is a disastrous failure. Okay. At a time when our business was much, much smaller, we knew it was going to be a failure right away. We went to retailers proactively, we cleaned it up, we said, we're going to liquidate the price down. It took us about a year to sell through all the inventory. But we looked at that and we did a post mortem of that. And instead of saying never speak about the Shark Multivac again, we said, like, there's something in this thing that's amazing. But the way we executed it was totally wrong. And so we ultimately said, there's something is exciting. Why? Every vacuum is designed to just clean floors. We want to develop vacuums that clean the floor, but also allow you to go above the floor everywhere. And in all other vacuums that was done with a hose. And so it gave birth to a product called the Shark Lift Away. The Shark Lift Away was developed in 2011. It became the number one selling vacuum cleaner in the United States in 2013, and the Shark Lift Away is still the number one selling vacuum cleaner in the United States. And this all came from all the Technology that was in that shark multivac. So I pointed out, because when you say, like, failing, we fail every day. Like, I don't have to go beyond today. Okay. To give you examples of failing. Okay.
- [33:30]
Jacob Goldstein
What failed today?
- [33:32]
Mark Barokas
What failed today?
- [33:33]
Jacob Goldstein
We.
- [33:33]
Mark Barokas
We were developing product, we're launching in Spain and we realized that the packaging that we sell in Spain doesn't have anything in Spanish. But we just launched in Spain last holiday season. I mean, three months ago. Our business is growing fast. We didn't take a step back and say, hey, wow. I mean, our packaging is not in Spanish. I mean, we're not catering to the Spanish consumer. I walked out of a meeting 3 hours ago where this insight was served up by none other than our sales leader in Spain that was trying to work around this. And we stopped the meeting and we said, timeout, like, we need to fix this. Like, we need to fix this yesterday. So you look at that and you say, like, how did we get to a place where we launched the product into the market and, you know, we don't know Spanish language on the packaging.
- [34:29]
Jacob Goldstein
Yeah.
- [34:30]
Mark Barokas
Now here's the thing. Like I said to you in the beginning, failure is all temporary. Okay? Failure is a temporary condition. Like, we're going to change this. We're going to react quickly, we're going to move, we're going to get it done, we're going to get it into the market. I know consumers in Spain are loving our products and they're engaging with us tremendously on social media. But, you know, they're seeing Spanish language social media and then the product showing up in their house and it's showing up in their house in English or in French or in German or something. And so we gotta do right by the consumer.
- [35:03]
Jacob Goldstein
What's a category that you wanna get into but you haven't figured out?
- [35:07]
Mark Barokas
I mean, there's so many. I mean, you know, what's your white whale?
- [35:11]
Jacob Goldstein
What's like, what's. There's gotta be one that you're like, come on, I really want to make X. What's X?
- [35:17]
Mark Barokas
There are a number of things in the roadmap. I think the wellness category is ripe for disruption.
- [35:25]
Jacob Goldstein
Okay, what does that word mean in the context of your business?
- [35:29]
Mark Barokas
So we got into skin care and like, our skin care business is growing tremendously globally. I think that opens up the next doors for us. Scalp, you know, other places in the beauty space, like people's feeds are not just about skin care. Let's look at, like, what are people engaging with? They're engaging with health. They're engaging with wellness, they're engaging with kind of what are ways to kind of improve the quality of my life. I think sleep is a really interesting category for us to consider and think about. So here's the thing. If I had one core technology, I would be landlocked. If I took that core technology, I applied it to a bunch of different things, and I was done. Okay? There was no other place for me to put it. My core technology is I want to go find the next consumer problem to solve, and I think there's an unlimited number of problems to solve.
- [36:27]
Jacob Goldstein
We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round. I'm not like a coffee connoisseur, but recently I tried coffee from a company called Perc and I loved it. And I'm not just saying that because this is an ad for Perk, though. This is an ad for Perc. I really did think the coffee was delicious. The bag I'm drinking at the moment was grown in Peru. Perc sources coffee from all over the world. They have lots of different kinds of coffee to choose from and they color code their bags. Blue bags are more mild coffee and pink bags are more wild coffee. That Peruvian coffee I'm drinking now is wild and if you're on the fence, I recommend trying wild. The other morning I had my first sip and I thought of that Will Ferrell line in Old School where he hits the beer bong and then he says once it hits your lips, it's so good. Find the coffee that matches your vibe and and get 15% off your next order with promo code problem@percoffee.com that's P E R C coffee.com promo code problem
- [37:36]
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- [39:34]
Jacob Goldstein
Let's finish with the lightning round. Slightly more random. What's the most things in one that you think a home appliance could be?
- [39:43]
Mark Barokas
We have a product that's a 13 in one.
- [39:46]
Jacob Goldstein
So wait, you have right now on your website, the ninja 14 in one possible cooker pro.
- [39:53]
Mark Barokas
Okay, so 14 is now the new benchmark. I'm confident we can go to 16.
- [39:58]
Jacob Goldstein
What's one appliance or device you wish you guys had invented?
- [40:04]
Mark Barokas
I mean, you know the iPhone. I mean, this is something.
- [40:07]
Jacob Goldstein
The iPhone. Good one. I like your thinking big. The iPhone, that's a good one.
- [40:10]
Mark Barokas
That people can't live without. I mean, I. Look, I think there's a lot of people that can't live without their Ninja Creamy. And we've read consumer reviews. I can't live without it, but I think. I think the iPhone does a pretty good job of that.
- [40:23]
Jacob Goldstein
That is an extremely strong answer. What's a tip for me if I want to tell real user reviews from fake reviews?
- [40:31]
Mark Barokas
Look, I think there's an authenticity element that you can see as people are talking about a product or particularly when they're writing about a product. I think that people can read through somebody that is reading off of a script versus somebody that has had some aha moment.
- [40:52]
Jacob Goldstein
What's one thing you learned selling T shirts as a student at the University of Michigan?
- [40:57]
Mark Barokas
The consumer. I mean, if. If you do right by the consumer, you know, and the consumer feels like they're getting value, they are going to keep coming back to you. I Mean, I, I, I remember I was selling T shirts. They were $5 a piece at JCPenney. Okay. And you know, there were other brands at the time that were selling, you know, fifteen twenty dollar T shirts. And I was. And I remember, like, I never aspired to sell, like the highest end things. I aspired to have something that delivered extraordinary value to the consumer. And even at that time, I remember I was buying Hanes Beefy Tea T shirts.
- [41:37]
Jacob Goldstein
Those were good T shirts. I remember his V50T.
- [41:39]
Mark Barokas
They were good quality. And I remember there was a competitor at the time that was selling 50, 50 polyester cotton T shirts. And mines were Hanes beefy tea at $5 screen printed.
- [41:53]
Jacob Goldstein
Actual shark versus actual ninja battle to the death.
- [41:57]
Mark Barokas
Who wins? That's like asking, like, which one of your kids would win or something.
- [42:02]
Jacob Goldstein
Come on. No, but it's not the metaphor. Not the metaphor. Set aside the company.
- [42:06]
Mark Barokas
Look, a ninja's pretty cunning. I mean, so, you know, it's hard
- [42:11]
Jacob Goldstein
to go, how much water is there? Seems like the obvious question to me. Right? Like, the more water, the worst for the ninja. Thank you for your time. It was delightful to talk with you.
- [42:21]
Mark Barokas
Same here. Thanks for having me.
- [42:28]
Jacob Goldstein
Marc Baroccas is the CEO of Shark Ninja. Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang and Leah Rose. It was edited by Lydia Jean Kot, and it was engineered by Sarah Bruguerre. You can email us at problemushkin fm or please do email us. You can also find me on LinkedIn. I'm on XacobGoldstein. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week with another episode of what's yous Call? I'm not like a coffee connoisseur, but recently I tried coffee from a company called Perc, and I loved it. And I'm not just saying that because this is an ad for Perk, though. This is an ad for Perkins. I really did think the coffee was delicious. Perc has lots of different coffees to choose from and they color code their bags. The blue bags are mild coffee. The pink bags are wild coffee. You can find the coffee that matches your vibe and get 15% off your next order with promo code problem@perkcoffee.com that's P E R C coffee.com promo code problem.
- [43:42]
Mark Barokas
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Jacob Goldstein
Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date? Oh, no.
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Mark Barokas
We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.
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Jacob Goldstein
We're married.
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Mark Barokas
Me to a human, him to a bird.
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Jacob Goldstein
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league anyways.
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Mark Barokas
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com.
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Jacob Goldstein
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Mark Barokas
Liberty.
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Jacob Goldstein
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Mark Barokas
And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row
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Jacob Goldstein
at a comedy show. Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date? Oh, no.
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Mark Barokas
We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.
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Jacob Goldstein
We're married.
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Mark Barokas
Me to a human, him to a bird.
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Jacob Goldstein
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league anyways.
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Mark Barokas
Only pay for what you need at libertymutual.
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Jacob Goldstein
Com. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.
- [44:40]
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