Hydro Flask: Travis Rosbach. How a thirsty surfer changed the water bottle industry

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to How I Built This early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Listening to Audible can open you up to so much. Whether you listen to memoirs, thrillers, or expert advice, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds and new ways of thinking. Listening can lead to positive change in your mood.

your habits, and ultimately your overall well-being. I know I always feel better after listening to a book on Audible. Audible has an incredible selection with over 1 million audiobooks, podcasts, and Audible originals. All in one app. Enjoy Audible anytime while doing other things. Chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. Audible makes it... easy to be inspired and entertained as part of your everyday routine without needing to set aside extra time.

There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.com slash built. I've stayed in awesome homes on Airbnb in places like Athens and Berlin and Rome, and each time these places have given our family a chance to feel like locals.

It's the best way to travel. Picture this. You're spending a cozy evening out of town in a home you booked on Airbnb. The space is thoughtfully designed, and you think, I bet I could host my own home on Airbnb. Your home might be worth it. Most design tools hide the things you need behind a paywall. But now there's a full-featured professional design experience that's completely free. It's called Framer.

Framer already built the fastest way to publish beautiful, production-ready websites, and it's now redefining how we design for the web. With the recent launch of Design Pages, a free canvas-based design tool, Framer is... Framer is where ideas go live, start to finish. Personally, I'm getting tired of paying for multiple tools that I have to switch back and forth between. Framer saves you time and money. Ready to design, iterate, and publish all in one tool?

Start creating for free at framer.com slash design and use code built for a free month of Framer Pro. That's framer.com slash design and use promo code built. framer.com slash design promo code built rules and restrictions may apply We ran out of money. I had about 10 employees at that point. And so I write this letter that says, you know, dear employees, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to close down the business.

Friday morning, I call everybody into the office to tell them that we're closing down. And the phone rings and the lady at the front desk says, there's this guy here who wants to see you. And he says, Travis, I'm here to talk to you. And I said, I'm sorry, I'm not hiring and I'm not even interested. Thank you. And he says, well, I might want to invest.

Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today... How an obsession with finding the perfect water bottle led Travis Ross back to invent a new one, Hydro Flask, which became one of the most popular metal bottles in the country.

Around 2007, Travis Rosbach walked into a sporting goods store looking for something pretty simple, a water bottle, a reusable container that he could take to the beach to keep cold water cold. And that purchase or... should I say attempted purchase, changed his life. Because in that store, Travis could not find the bottle he was looking for. So he started looking deeper. And when he realized the product he wanted wasn't on the market,

He decided to make it himself. People told him it couldn't be done or that it would be too expensive or that he didn't have the right background. To be fair, he didn't. Travis wasn't a design engineer. He wasn't a materials expert. But he had an idea and a stubborn belief that it should exist. And so this is the story of how Travis basically proved the skeptics wrong. But it's also a story about how much time and effort it took to do that.

Because this conversation really gets into the mechanics of building something. The painstaking hours of research and reverse engineering, the risky trip to China to find... just the right manufacturer, the improvising and jerry-rigging that went into making a first prototype.

The company Travis eventually built became Hydroflask. And in just a few years, he and his then girlfriend would go from selling bottles at farmers markets in Portland to seeing Hydroflask become one of the most... popular water bottle brands in the country. Travis Rosbach grew up in the 1980s and 90s in Salem, Oregon. After high school, he joined his dad in the Virgin Islands, where he got certified to become a dive instructor and later a private pilot. And as cool as those jobs were...

Travis was restless. He wanted to start his own business. And eventually, he moved back to the Pacific Northwest and settled in Bend, Oregon. I had a girlfriend at that time and we rented a place. And one of the first nights we were there, we were sitting watching a movie and drinking a bottle of wine and a guy walked into the backyard. So I jumped up and ran out back and he was building a fence at the rental house. And I thought, well, that's...

an idea. I'd never even thought about people building fences before. How do you do this? And he showed me he's using metal pipes and clear cedar. There's no knots. And Bend was really starting to grow. about 2005 or so. And so the fences and the houses were going in everywhere. And I asked him, I said, well, are you doing the subdivisions? And he said, no, I just like to do one house at a time.

I said, well, why don't you do the subdivisions? Cause that's, you know, 200 houses in one go. And he said, nah, I'm not interested. And I said, well, do you mind if I do that? And he said, I don't care what you do. I said, oh, I'm going to do that. So I went back in the house and I told my girlfriend, I said, I want to start a fence company. So we started bend fencing.

All right. This is important because she will factor in later. Your girlfriend's name is Cindy because she will be together for a while and start other businesses. But let's talk about the fence business. What did you know about – like did you know how to build a fence? Not at all. I had no clue. I didn't know a postal digger from a pry bar. So I...

Got on Craigslist and found a guy who worked at the number one fence company in town, Mike's Fence Center. And he was ready to leave there. And I said, well, come on. Come work with me and I'll make you the head guy. And he said, okay. And so we went out and bought a truck and bought all the tools that the supply company told us that we would need. And the day before our first project, he got arrested. And so we were supposed to show up in Sun River and put in the first fence.

Instead, I ended up going to the homeless shelter and found a couple guys that said they knew how to do fences and went down and learned how to build a fence on site. All right. So you start this fence business and who – how are you like competing against established fence companies? I have to assume you were charging less. Well, a lot of the fence companies were still using wood.

And they would say, oh, pressurized wood lasts forever and it's going to be here forever. Well, no, actually not. It rots and it breaks. So we were using stainless steel pipes. and then building wooden boxes around it and then we're also doing clear cedar which had no knots and it just looks beautiful it's a very high-end looking fence and so we were going in to a lot of the high-end

And how would you, given that you had no experience, and I have to imagine you're in Bend, right? That they're established. fence companies who are working with developers who are trusted like how does a guy like you who has no contacts or connections in that world like gain the trust of developers to hire you well we called it bend fencing which actually went quite a ways. A lot of our customers just thought we had been around forever. And why would we not be? We have the name Bend Fencing.

And hired a lot of good people who taught me a lot. And it's a high turnover rate. And so I had to learn pretty quick how to build a fence myself and drill holes in the rock and get through the ice and stuff. So, all right. So you run this business. I think you would end up running it for almost two years. Is that right? Yes. And from what I understand, you're getting burned out doing this. It's just a grind. It's like seven days a week.

You know, 14 hour days, no breaks. Is that a fair description? It exactly was. Yeah, I tried to take off a couple hours on Sunday, but typically that wouldn't work. And I did. I got burnt out and I called. office and I told her I said look I'm gonna kill myself or kill somebody else I have to get out of here and it was it was cold and I was in pain and

I said, either Mexico or Hawaii, but I need to go somewhere warm and I need to go quick. And she called back and said, all right. And when you say she, you're talking about Cindy, your partner. Yeah. And she says, all right. come home and grab your bag. And I took off to Oahu. And I remember landing in Oahu. And as soon as the door opened, I could just feel the aloha. And I called her and I said, you can keep the company or...

You can sell it, but either way, I live here now. She said, where are you? Are you at the bar? Are you drunk? I said, no, I'm still on the airplane. I haven't even got off yet, but I live here. And I spent about nine days on vacation in Oahu. And went back to Bend and said, I'm done. I'm completely out of this. And we put it on Craigslist and sold a couple of weeks later. Yeah, I mean, I understand that impulse of landing in Hawaii and just thinking.

I'm not ever leaving that place because I have been there and it's absolutely incredible. And I felt that before, by the way. But you left behind your fence company, right? So now you had to figure out something else to do. And I guess you decide to start. like a sign making company in Oahu? I did. Yeah. So I, uh, there was sign shops in, in Oahu and there was a lot of them every.

A couple blocks, you'd see a sign on the corner that said sign company or banners or something like that. And there was a huge amount of competition for it. But I wanted to try that. I had a fascination with embellishing.

a substrate and making it different and beautiful. So I thought, well, let's just buy a plotter and start a sign company. A plotter is basically like a large printer. It's like a razor blade that's... computerized and so it cuts vinyl okay yeah all right so here's what what i understand you said that you you noticed a lot of sign shops in in hawaii like you know

All over the place, like every street corner had a sign shop, right? And so why would you get into that business if it was already super competitive? Well, technically what I would see were signs advertising for signs. And so there were very few actual brick and mortar sign shops. It was that a lot of people owned a plotter, and so they would make banners and call themselves the sign company. I see. Okay.

And I thought, well, if the best you can do is cut blue and black vinyl and put it on a white banner, I bet we could figure out a way to do it different and or better than what you're doing. And you're in Oahu. You're living there with Cindy at this point. Yes. Yes. What was her reaction when you said, why don't we buy a plotter and make signs? She was down. She thought that, yeah, that's.

a wild idea, but why not? And sure enough, there's a sign show in Orlando and it's like, it was in a couple of weeks. And so we bought tickets to fly to Florida. And at this big convention, I saw this one booth called Fellers. And there was one guy, Frank, who's the owner. And so I went up and said, Hey, Frank, I want to start a sign company. He goes, well, what do you need? I said, I don't know. Could you tell me?

And he thought I was crazy, but they told us what we needed and what we should buy and shipped it out to Oahu. And the guy showed up and installed the printer. And it was a 64-inch printer.

So we could print banners as opposed to just putting vinyl on top of them. So we could do full color photographic image banners. And where did you, did you get a shop in Oahu? We did. Yeah, we just... got the biggest lease that we could find and afford which was right downtown right by the blaisdale center right by the big coliseum And we did screen printing and embroidery and hats and tablecloths and table throws.

We ended up doing big outdoor signs and we did a lot of like business development, branding, marketing. All right. So this sounds like a pretty good business, but I'm trying to understand.

What happened to it? I mean, why am I not talking to a guy who ended up, you know, starting a chain of sign stores? Like, I mean, you've got a business going. Were you making money? Yes, we were breaking even and slightly pulling ahead. So we were bringing in a couple hundred thousand a year, I'd say yes. All right. So you're doing that job and you like it, but what's going on?

Well, one day I was out and I was running errands and I was thirsty. I'm tired of seeing the plastic wash up on the beaches. I want to get a non-single-use bottle. to drink water. And so I thought, well, I'll just get a Nalgene and then I can reuse it. So I go into the sporting goods store thinking it's pretty simple, 20 bucks. I got a bottle and I'm back to work.

Tomorrow's another day. And there was some employees up front and I said, Hey, where are the water bottles? Right. And the guy takes me back and he shows me this wall that was completely. empty. There were only two bottles left on it. And I said, what happened here? And he said, well, the owner's French and she just got back from France and her dad is a. doctor and he says there's this stuff called BPA.

And we don't know what it is. It's probably not going to be anything. But as a precautionary measure, she decided that she wanted us to take all these bottles off the shelf. Okay, but the Nalgene's, I don't think, at least today, they're BPA-free. Now they are. Yes. I see. OK, I now I see Nalgene stopped using BPA in 2008. So at that time, it's possible that they did have BPA. And I remember this because my first child was born in 2009 and BPA.

thing was was hardcore nobody you know everything was like no bpa free bpa free and and a baby and i was like oh my god i should be really careful about this so okay yeah and i said well who's going to refill this shelf And he said, nobody, there's nobody else doing water bottles. And it hit me right in the back of my head and it came right out my mouth. And I said, I will, I will do that. And decided I was doing water bottles.

Hang on, hang on. OK, so right there in the store, you get struck with this idea, a new idea for business, maybe. But but meantime, you were still running a sign business, right? Right. Yeah. So I get back to the sign company and I asked one of the employees, I said, what do you know about water bottles? And she said, oh, it's SIG. You got to go with this company called SIG.

And I thought, oh, they were aluminum. Yes. Aluminum. I remember those bottles. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, oh, this is great. I don't have to do bottles. I can just stick with signs. This is fantastic. And so I went to Patagonia and I bought one and it was expensive. It was like 20 bucks, you know, for a water bottle. That was a lot of money.

Yeah, but they're good. They're good bottles. I mean, I remember then they had like that little, I think they still make them like that small screw top where you could like hook it on. It looked like it was made for climbers, like you could hook it on a carabiner or something. Yeah. And it had real nice powder coating on it. It was really gritty and I really enjoyed it for about a week. And I realized I couldn't put ice cubes in it. I couldn't put it in the freezer. It was a small opening.

Right, yeah. And they were aluminum, so you couldn't put them in the freezer. Wait, why is that? I don't know that. It would expand and crack. They would basically rip open. I kind of like putting a pop can in the freezer. Right, right, right. I was walking up the stairs and it fell off some books and it dented almost like catastrophically. It just looked terrible. Because it was thin. It was like thinner aluminum. Really thin. Yeah. Yeah.

I thought, well, that's too bad. You know, I just paid a lot of money for it. Now it doesn't look great. A couple of days later, I'm filling it up and I look inside and some of that gold had flaked off. There was a gold liner. Inside the bottle. Yeah. And so I said, okay, well, I guess I really am doing water bottles now. And I called my brother, Jeff, who just started working at REI and Bend.

And I said, hey, Jeff, I need a water bottle. And he goes, clean canteen. They just started. Good brand. Good product. Great product. And so he sends me a clean canteen. And it just. It wasn't ergonomically correct for my lip. And every time I'd take a sip, it dribbled down my shirt. And was it a screw top at that time? I mean, now they've got all kinds of flip tops. Was it just a screw top, like wide mouth bottle?

It was, and it was big enough that I could put ice cubes in it, which was huge, you know, to take to the beach and have cold water on the way there was, was awesome. And then I'd put it in the sand, I'd go surf and I'd come back and it'd be too hot to drink. And, and then I came home and I'd hike a mountain and I get to the top and it'd be too cold to drink. And so I thought my grandpa had an old school.

coffee thermos one of the big old heavy thermoses i remember those and i thought well why can't we take that same technology and make it in a normal sized water bottle that we could actually drink water out of Well, let's talk about the thermos for a moment, because that's been around for a long time, right? And so it's not like the technology didn't exist.

Yeah, it was vacuum insulation. They came up, I can't remember exact year. I almost want to say it was like in the, in the 1900s or even late 1800s, they came up with the vacuum insulation technology. Basically it's like. Between the inner wall and the outer wall, the air has been completely taken out. The part in between those two walls is where they've sucked out all the air. Yeah, yeah. It would provide a vacuum space that no temperature air molecules could transfer.

between so anything on the inside whatever temperature it is it's going to remain that temperature because it doesn't have outside influences affecting it and it doesn't release Like if you have hot liquids, the hot doesn't release through the vacuum. Okay. So –

This experience gets you thinking. You get a clean canteen. Again, it doesn't do the trick. It's not keeping your drink cold. It's not keeping your drink hot. It's not doing what the thermos did. You could buy a thermos, but the thermos was like a big thing. And, you know, you had like the top and you unscrew the top and then you pour the coffee in there and then you drink out of that. And so you're thinking, wait a minute, why isn't there a thermos but for water bottles?

Exactly. And I wanted metal on the inside. I knew I didn't want plastic. And so I figured, and I knew I didn't want aluminum. So I figured, well, why can't we just make them out of double wall vacuum insulated stainless steel? All right. So you. You have this itch that you want to scratch. So what, so what, like, are you still working in the sign shop every day? Are you going in there every day at that point?

Yeah, every day was long days. Our printer was broken. And so it would take us hours and hours to fix it and keep running it. And it was just... It was like I was completely overwhelmed with having to do bottles. And we had a client who would go to the Canton Fair in China. He would help his customers find factories to build their products. I really knew that I had to find a factory and it was probably going to be in China. So I started doing Google.

and found a factory that said, yes, we'll do that. Come on over and check it out. Okay, but did you have a design in mind, or did you just think, all I know is I want this to be double-walled? And I want it to be steel. That's all I know for now. I don't know what – and I know I want it to be a wide enough mouth where I could put ice in it, like unscrew it and put ice in it. Is that all you knew?

It was. And I kind of still figured that somebody was doing it. Surely there must be somebody who's doing this. I can't be the first person who's thought of this, but I knew that I wasn't. able to physically stop until I found that. So when you decided to pursue this, what was your first step? Because I would think if it was me, I would be...

Looking online, I would make contact, I'd get in touch with them, and then maybe I would fly out there. Yeah, I found one that said, yes, we will do that. That's what we do. Okay. So I sold a surfboard. I sold a moped and I took off to Shanghai in May of 2007 and found this factory. I get there and I go in and it's all plastic water bottles. And they show me around. We go through the tea ceremony and everything. And I said, well, where are the insulated and where's the stainless?

And he said, oh, no, we don't do that. Nobody does that. I said, well, surely somebody. And he said, no, there's nobody. And I thought, well, I've sold my surfboard. I've sold my moped. I'm starting to run out of money. I guess I'll just fly back early. And so I start leaving the factory and this guy came up and he grabbed my arm and he said, I have a cousin in Honjo that might be able to help you. Why don't you talk to him?

And so he gave me two pieces of paper. One was to get to the train station. One was to get to Honjo. And I show up in Honjo and I realized. I don't know anybody. I don't know where I am. I don't know who I'm looking for. I don't know what's going on here. And I'm going down the, the escalator and luckily I hear Travis and I said, yeah. And.

Her name was Natalie, and she takes me to this office, and I met her husband, Michael. Who was Michael? Michael was the guy who was the cousin of the guy I met in Shanghai. Okay. Oh, he was a Chinese man. He was, yeah. And Michael was his English name. Correct. And he spoke enough English where he could help you. A little bit. Right. And then the next day we get on the train and we're heading South again. And we show up at a actual water bottle factory where they're doing metal water bottles.

And we go in and Michael says, Hey, you know, Travis wants to do these vacuum insulated bottles. And the guy just laughed. He said, no, there's no way nobody does that. We're not doing that. And so we spent three days. Going from factory to factory trying to find out if they do double wall vacuum insulated bottles. Because a double wall means it's like you make a metal bottle and then you basically, I guess they insert it into another bottle and then.

connect them together or something yeah it's a lot like if you think of a metal fence post you have two different size fence posts and one's inside of the other one and then there's a little copper tube that vacuums out the air in between the two walls. And that requires, I guess, a certain technology on their assembly line that presumably they didn't have because I'm imagining if they could do it, they want to make money. They'd be like, yeah, we could do this.

Right. There was no market. Nobody had asked him for it. So finally, on the very second to last day. We find a factory that had a vacuum and it wasn't very big. It was kind of the size of a motorcycle, which isn't huge for the vacuum world. And they were doing these little vacuum insulated Japanese milk bottles. So wait, like bottles of milk that you buy in the grocery store?

It was more for like kids milk and maybe formula and breast milk. I see for their like lunches or something. Right. Yeah. But they were real small. They were cute. They were, you know, they were Japanese. And so they were just beautiful little containers. And I said, Hey, you know, let's, let's just make them bigger and do water bottles. And he laughed and he looked at me and I wasn't laughing. I was serious. And he said, fine, we'll try it.

When we come back in just a moment, how Travis finally gets some samples made and winds up walking into his local Whole Foods at exactly the right moment. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. One of the coolest things I did last summer was take my family to Athens, where we saw the Parthenon and the Agora and all those amazing neighborhoods and ancient historical sites. And one of the things that made it so awesome was the home we booked on Airbnb.

We literally had a view of the Parthenon from our bedroom window. There was a hot tub on the top floor. We could sit in it. overlooking the entire city and we had a kitchen and access to markets and we were in walking distance from all of the things you would want to see it made the trip so so amazing and when you take your own vacation that's actually a great

to host your home on Airbnb. Your place with your cool art collection and your handy kitchen gadgets. It might just be what someone else needs to feel right at home on their next trip. Plus, your earnings from hosting provide you with another income stream and could even help offset the cost of your next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host.

One of the most surprising things about how I built this is just how many pitches we get every year. Tens of thousands of businesses reach out. hoping to tell their story. Now, while we do try to read most of those pitches, we can't possibly read all, but We choose most of our guests through our own deep research. And that means my team and I spend hundreds of hours digging into companies, what they make, who's behind them, and whether their journey can inspire you.

And that's exactly where Claude has become such an incredible thinking partner in my creative process. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. the thinking partner that works with you to explore the things that fascinate you. Whether you're researching late-night curiosity spirals or working through complex creative challenges,

Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems together. For example, imagine I'm about to sit down with a founder of a snack company. I'll want to know what products they've released, how they've evolved, and which competitors they're up against.

In the past, it could take hours to track down reliable details. We'd search articles, databases, reports. Now, Claude can give me a clear answer in seconds, and then I can decide what to dig into further. It doesn't replace my... process but it sharpens it. And that means I can spend more time doing what I love most, focusing on the human stories, the lessons, the decisions, and the struggles behind the businesses you hear on this show. Experience what collaborative thinking feels like.

like at claude.ai.hibt and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner. I've talked to a lot of new founders who tell me one of their biggest hurdles was finding the right name for their business. Even the name of this show, How I Built This took a lot longer to come up with than you think. Sometimes founders will spend months brainstorming only to find out the domain.

is taken. So you get stuck with two bad options. Pay up to get the name you want, or tack on random words until your domain looks indecipherable. But after all the time spent thinking of a name, you don't want to do that. And thanks to .tech domains, you don't have to. With .tech, you get the name you actually want with no compromises. It instantly tells investors and customers that you're building tech.

CES.tech, the world's biggest consumer tech event, uses a .tech domain, along with hundreds of thousands of tech companies worldwide. So don't waste another minute negotiating. Go to GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, or wherever you buy domains and get your .tech domain today.

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2007 and Travis is in China where he's finally found a factory that might be able to make him a vacuum insulated water bottle. But he and his local guide, Michael, they still have a lot to figure out. We didn't have the molds and the machine, the vacuum wasn't quite big enough to do it. And so... Michael and I...

Spent the next two weeks going from factory to factory and we'd buy two kilos of screws and we'd go buy metal plates and we'd go buy all these parts to build all these machines to build more parts and more machines. What were you, sorry, what did you need to build? Well, we had to modify the inside of the vacuum to hold bigger sized bottles. So not only did we have to get the... molds made for the actual bottles, but we had to modify the vacuum to get the molds inside of it.

Why were you guys doing it? Why didn't the factory do it? They said we could rent time, but that was it. They weren't going to do anything else to help us. They didn't believe in it. They didn't think it would work. They said you could rent time on our line. try it out correct yeah but you had to build the adapters to make this work how did you even know what to do how did you know to build that they showed us they said you know here's here's what we have

But it's not going to work. And we're not willing to work with you to do this because this is a dumb idea. Nobody wants a vacuum insulated water bottle. So we're not putting forth any effort. That's how we came up with all the modifications and everything. And then I took off. I come back to Oahu. And about six months later, we got a call that the samples were ready. And what name do you want to put on it? Do you have a logo? Do you have a name? And we didn't.

And so all hands on deck, all friends and family, what should we call this water bottle company? And my brother came up with the name Hydro Flask. And I hated it. I thought it was a terrible idea. I didn't like the word flask, but we had to have something printed on the bottles. So we went with it and we got the first two samples in November of 2007.

And how much sort of input did you have in the design? You just said, was it just a, I don't know, it was a cylinder with a wide opening that screwed on and off and it was double walled. Like, did you give them any specs about colors, about... powder coating, or did they just kind of make it based on what they thought you wanted? Yeah, I had...

Drove all over the island buying as many bottles as I possibly could. And I bought calipers and I was measuring thicknesses of mouth sizes of bottles and which one was the most ergonomic size to drink out of. put an ice cube in. And so I drew it all out and I'm kind of embarrassed to say, but about five years ago, somebody pointed out that I'd basically just drawn a scuba tank.

And it was the first ones just look like a scuba tank. And it's interesting. You buy calipers to measure the width of the bottle and the width of the metal, which is interesting because. There is, I mean, there's like a lip feel, right? When you're putting a water bottle to your lips, and we don't think about this consciously, but it's like when you have a beautiful wine glass, it's just very thin glass.

It just it's a better way to drink wine. And I think it's the same with a water bottle. Like if it's the right thickness, not too thin, not too thick. But did you give the factory in China those specs or did they just kind of make something and send it to you? Well, both. I gave them the specs. You know, Minute Maid, I liked better than Pepsi, but...

Coke I like better than Sprite. Oh, you're talking about, these are plastic bottles, though. Yeah, I was measuring, like, how big is my lip? How big is the drinking size out of each of these bottles? Budweiser bottles versus Corona bottles versus milk jugs. And once I found what I really liked, I gave them the specs and then they made it the best that they could. But the very first samples, the lip was real sharp and I didn't like it.

Everybody else liked it. And they were insulated. It worked. And it worked. Yeah, we got two. There was a red one and a blue one, 18 and 21 ounces. And went down to Waikiki Beach. and put ice cubes in it and started just handing them to people. And they would get out of the water from surfing and they would see the ice and they'd say, wow, yes, this is something we would buy.

Did you, by the way, roughly how much did it cost to get the samples done? It was about $10,000. And was there a commitment that you would have to make an order after that? Well, we didn't know that at first.

I hadn't thought to ask about a minimum order quantity. I didn't. I don't have an MBA. I don't know these things. You know, I didn't know these things. And we found out later that the first MOQ was $3,000. And how much would that cost you? About $17,000. Okay, so did you have that cash? No, no, we ran out of money. And so I negotiated $1,500 instead. Okay, so...

How did you finance that? Sold everything we had. We sold all of our clothes and furniture. And when you say we, this is you and your girlfriend, Cindy, right? Correct. Correct. She's on board too. You guys are both selling all your stuff to get the cash so you can pay for this order. Right. And then in March of 2008, we moved back to Bend and moved in with my mom. Why not?

stay in Hawaii? It was expensive. And I knew that we needed to have, you know, closer access to airports and big trade shows and things. And Bend has... Kind of been an outdoor mecca for Oregon for quite a while, and it was just kind of really starting to take off as an outdoor place to be. Got it. Okay, and this is 2008.

Financial crisis about to be at a full swing, right? This is the beginning of, I think Bear Stearns happens. And then, you know, and it's going to leave in brothers and it's going to go, this is all going to go, going to all go crazy. But you go back to Ben and you. And to save money, did you say you moved in with your mom? Yeah. Yeah. And my brother had just moved back in and my sister had just moved back in and had a baby. And it was a full house.

Wow. So you get to Ben and the idea is you're going to get this order of bottles and then what? What were you going to do at that point? That part I wasn't quite so sure about. I knew that we had a Portland Saturday market. that sold, you could go and sell your wares. And so I figured, well, we'll start at the Portland Saturday market and see how it goes. Oh, yeah. But when the shipment of 2,500 bottles arrived, were they like individually packaged in boxes?

They were in boxes of 12. Okay. And where did you store all of it? My grandparents have a two-car garage, and my grandpa said we could have one of the two cars until the summer. And so we started out in Salem in the garage. All right. So you've got – they arrive in March of 2008. And the idea was let's start selling these at the farmer's market. Let's set up a table. And by the way, I'm assuming you have a pretty...

Kick-ass sign because you were in the sign business. Your sign is saying, it says hydro flask water bottles, right? Am I right? Yeah, kind of. Like we knew the difference between a table throw and a table cloth, you know? And so we had a table throw that's... said Hydro Flask and we put it up on the Rubbermaid table and we had a little pop-up banner. We had our shirts that said Hydro Flask and hats and stickers. You knew what to do because you had a sign company. Exactly.

And it was hot. It was middle of, I think it was July. And people came and they'd say, what is this? And it's a water bottle. And they'd say, why would I need a water bottle? Well, because it's not plastic. You can reuse it and it's insulated. And we'd put ice cubes inside of them. And I'd put ice cubes in on Friday night and I'd write.

8 p.m. Friday. And then by Sunday, there's still ice cubes in it and people would freak out. And the farmer's market was on Saturday or Sunday? It was on Saturdays and Sundays. Yeah, Saturday, Mark, it's a bit of a misnomer. It's really on Sundays also. Right. So you would have a piece of tape on it and it would say, Friday, 8 p.m. ice. And then on Sunday, people are like, wait, you put the ice in on Friday and it's still this cold?

Yeah, and it was 100 degrees outside. That's a great idea. I love that idea. And how much were you selling the bottles for? We had an 18-ounce that was $19.99, and we had a 21-ounce that was $24.99. OK, and this is 2008. It's the financial crisis is starting. And this is the summer of 2008. So people are starting to get I mean, it's not totally crashed yet, but it's about to.

And again, like I'm thinking $20, $24, what a great deal. But again, I have to go back to 2008. And from a 2008 perspective, that was – probably kind of pricey for people. People were probably like, wait, what? 20 bucks for a bottle? For a metal bottle? Yeah, it was tough because... Oftentimes what they would do is they'd come by, they'd meet us first, and then they'd go shop the whole market. And then if they had any money left over, they would take a chance on us.

So we're selling anywhere from 20 to 50 bottles a day at that point for the two days. And then we'd leave the... Saturday Market would head back to Bend and start doing what's called munching music at Drake Park, where they show a movie and have a bit of a Thursday afternoon get-together. And when you sold them...

And obviously people had seen how it was keeping this ice water cold. Did you offer any kind of warranty or return? What did you say to people? How did you convince them to part with their money for this? water bottle. Because in 2008...

The idea of having a permanent water bottle was not like what it is now where everyone's like, what do you mean? Like in my I can go in my pantry now. We have too many of these things. We've got hydro flasks and swell bottles and yetis. And we got all we got the whole thing.

brand in there uh and i'm sure a lot of people listening are like oh yeah i got a closet full of these things now but then it wasn't like that people just bought a plastic bottle and drank it and threw it away or you know like only only like Really environmentally conscious people were doing this in 2008.

Right, which was a bit of a benefit being in Oregon because we do have a lot of environmentally friendly folks here in the state. But we gave a lifetime warranty and said that if anything happens. We'll take care of it. We'll replace your bottle for you. And that helped a lot. So how were you financing the – I mean, you were selling them. How much –

Probably roughly, what, $5 a bottle? That's what it was costing you to manufacture them and have them shipped? Yeah, yeah, about $5, $25, $5.50, yes. Okay, so you were making $15, $17 per bottle, which is pretty good. And that was enough money, I have to imagine, to be able to finance the next order? Yeah, we just bootstrapped it all. And it was just you and Cindy? Yes.

And then what happened was we were at the Munchin' Music here in Bend and a guy came up and he says, hey, I work with the Bend Bulletin newspaper. Can we do an article on you? Yeah, sure. Fine. So we were on the front page of the business newspaper, Ben Bulletin. And the following Thursday, a guy comes up and he says. Hey, I'm a sales rep and I want to rep Hydro Flask. Wow. Yeah. His name is Brent and he lives in Bend and he's a sales rep. And he wanted to rep.

the bottles in sporting goods stores throughout the Northwest. And what was he selling at the time? What was his other main product? I think he had like skis and socks and other outdoor products. So he was like, hey, I like this product. I want to work with you. How did you even how did you know he wasn't a scammer? I didn't. Yeah, no, he, I said, okay, well, what do you need? And he said, I need 48 bottles. And at that point we were down to.

Less than a thousand. And I was like, I don't know, man. I don't, I don't, I'm not going to just give you free bottles. He wanted the bottle so he could go around and offer them as samples to retailers. Right. And I said, I just don't feel comfortable giving you a 48. I said, I'll give you a 24. And then you tell me how you did with the 24. And he sold 22 of the 24 doors and opened them up.

He sold them to where? To like individual sporting goods stores? Yeah. Just like around in Oregon mainly? Oregon, Idaho, Washington. And – What were these like? These are mom and pop stores, presumably many of them. So they were probably ordering no more than 100 of these bottles at a time. Yeah, we started out with... Our minimum was 12. And then we bumped it up to 20. 12 bottle minimum. Yeah. Because they came in 12 bottle boxes. And as soon as we...

figured that, okay, people are buying 12 and they're starting to reorder. We, we bumped it up to 24 per case and the accounts started getting bigger and bigger. And so we picked up a couple more sales reps on the East Coast and a couple in the Midwest. And pretty soon we started getting more sales reps and opening bigger and bigger accounts. And meantime, you get into...

Whole Foods and then to Dick's Sporting Goods. But that's not nationally. That's just in Oregon initially. Yeah. When we got the first 1,500 bottles in and brought them from Salem over to Bend because my grandpa kicked us out of the garage. I thought, well, we just got a Whole Foods in Bend. What if I just go check it out and see what they say?

And so I walked into Whole Foods and I said, hey, I'm here to sell water bottles. And they sent me back to the lady who buys water. And she said, where's the water? I said, there's no water. It's just the bottle. And she's like, ah, that doesn't make any sense. I said, well, it's a water bottle. She goes, yeah, go talk to Evan. And so I go back and I, there's a man laying on the floor and he's pulling water bottles out of the bottom shelf.

And they were SIG and they had BPA in them. And I said, hey, good news. I'm Travis from Hydroflask. I got these water bottles to replace those. And he says, is there BPA? I said, nope, it's all metal. He goes, okay, fine. How many do you have? We had about six colors. And he says, fine, I'll take a case of each. And so once we got the whole foods order just for that one binned location.

I basically used that all across town. You would say, hey, we're in Whole Foods. Yeah. And people are like, oh, good enough for Whole Foods, good enough for us. And I think it's changed now that Amazon owns it. Whole Foods stores had a lot of autonomy to do that. Now you still see that like local and stuff, but now it's more regional. So you could actually sell into one Whole Foods. And so this one Whole Foods and Bend starts to sell them.

And but how does then as you as this product is kind of gaining some traction, right? Then what's the next step? I mean, was there like a trade show that you could go to? Did you start to cold call or was Brent cold call? I mean, he had connections. Was he going to bigger? And retailers, like what, tell me a little bit about how you start to expand this out into other stores. Yeah, luckily Brent said, hey, you got to go to this thing called the Outdoor Retail Show in Salt Lake City.

And it's where all of the outdoor product companies come to show what's new for the season. We couldn't afford an actual proper booth, but we paid to get in and we... Took a bunch of bamboo and kind of laced and wrapped together a hut to put up our banners. And we were the only water bottle company there. And pretty soon the buyers started coming.

seeing who's selling water bottles. And then with that, we had other sales reps that would come to the booth and they'd say, hey, I have this little tiny region in this area or this massive region in this country. We're sales reps and we want to sell the bottles. So this really was, and again, I can't, I don't know for sure, but it was probably one of the first brands that was doing this, right? My question is for you, and this might be a sensitive question.

Was your design patented? Did you have this protected? Well, what we did was we ended up getting design patents. And so there's utility patents that are like for the insulation. And we couldn't get that because that had already existed. You could not patent the vacuum technology. And so what we did was we design patented the design, the shapes and the sizes of the bottles and made sure that it was on the packaging front and center patent.

pending or patented. And what I found was that a lot of people who maybe would have been competitors saw patented and they figured out, well, they've got the vacuum insulated market. We'll just leave them be. And it helped. for about six or eight months that people just kind of left us alone and weren't really doing double wall vacuum insulated bottles until, oh, it's just design patent. And then they started designing around it.

Right. Because I would imagine as people saw how effective these were, you've got a lot of companies out there that are like, OK, we could do this. We can do this. This technology, they don't own this technology. Yeah, I think Clean Canteen was the first. And when I found out that they were doing vacuum insulation, I thought, oh man, it's over. We're out of business.

they're selling the single wall so well, I'm sure they're going to sell the double wall. And they used the different vacuum technique. They used one that was a little bit easier, a little bit less expensive, and it didn't look as good and it ended up not working as well.

So that gave us a bit more of a runway to run with it. Okay. And so I have to imagine you've got no cash because if the demand is high and you've got to constantly – the money has got to constantly – be recycled out, you have no money, for example, for marketing. Yeah, luckily we had a friend who was a banker and so she could help us find different banks that would give us a line of credit and credit cards. My grandparents took out a second mortgage on their house and we borrowed.

and sold everything that we could just to keep buying more bottles. When we come back in just a moment, money problems bring the business to the brink until Travis gets a visit.

from an unexpected investor. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This. This show is brought to you by American Express. Running a business means making countless choices every day, some small and some that can change everything. The business owners who thrive are the ones who are ready for whatever comes next. And having the right support behind those decisions can make all the difference. That's why so many business owners I talk to choose the American Express.

business platinum card. It's built to help them move quickly and take their business further. And with five times membership rewards points on flights and prepaid hotels booked through AmexTravel.com, you can turn any business trip into a chance to earn more and invest in your business's future. Plus, you get a flexible spending limit that changes as your business does. adapting to where you are and where you're headed next. Because when it comes to growing your business, there's truly nothing.

like Business Platinum. Not all purchases will be approved. Terms apply. Learn more at go.amex.com. Your AI agents make your teams more productive, right? But... If they aren't connected to the rest of your business, how productive can they really make your teams? Any business can use AI. IBM helps you use AI to change how you do business. Let's create smarter business, IBM.

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2009 and Travis is gearing up for his biggest shipment of water bottles yet. 40,000 of them. He spends all of November in China watching them being made, but... When he gets home, he's in for a shock. I get home and the bottles show up and we found that they had rusted and they were not insulated.

So I ended up going right back to the factory in December of 2009 and said, hey, what happened? And we found the machine and we figured out what was wrong. And I negotiated another 40,000 bottles to replace the rusted 40,000 and 120-day payment after they arrived. And so they said, okay, yep, we'll do that. I come home. And in February, we get a call that...

We owed for the second 40,000 bottles, you know, about $250,000. And I said, no, no, I have a net 120 after they land. And they said, nope, you owe us for another 40,000. And so I had a kind of a list of people who had always said they wanted to help us if they could. And I called the list. And finally, I found a local banker who...

was a big Hydro Flask fan and he really believed in it. And he said, all right, yeah, I'll, I'll lend you the 250 to get the second 40,000. All right. So you've got, now you've got this. Good problem and a bad problem, which is you have very little access to cash, but you're selling a lot. And meantime, I think on a personal front, things are kind of breaking down at the company. So let's start, first of all.

I think your relationship with Cindy, who you started this business with, is falling apart. Is that right? Yes. When it got too hard with the rest of bottles, she took off back to Hawaii. But it sounds like you were probably a... on the way to splitting up anyway, because I can't imagine that the water bottles alone was the reason why she left. We had been on and off for quite a while. And I think that just the...

Sheer overwhelm of the situation was enough to send her on her way. All right. Travis, I want to. I want to acknowledge something for a moment here because I know that your perspective during this time was that you felt blindsided and you've talked about. before and in other interviews about feeling betrayed, not just by Sandy, but by some of the other people that were working in the business.

And I can't independently verify all of this here, right? This isn't a documentary or like an investigative report. But I'm curious about something, right? Because you're obviously smart. You're a smart guy. You came up with this idea. You built it. You pushed it forward with a ton of conviction. But when it came to judging the character of the people around you, do you feel like that was an area where you struggled or maybe you just didn't have the tools to do that?

I don't really like HR. I'm not great. I trust people. I just, I take people at face value. It always surprises me still to this day when people are dishonest or they have ulterior motives. And I'm probably not a real good judge of that. You're right, guy. But you were lucky, I guess, with this guy, Brent, because he sounds like he really helped you expand and sell. He was awesome. And he brought in other sales reps.

Unfortunately, what happened was he said that we were not going to be able to get into REI within a year. And I knew that we probably could. And he was adamant that he wasn't even going to try. And so we had to let him go and replace him with a larger firm. But he was instrumental in getting us up and going. OK, so now you've got this complicated situation, which is you've broken up with Cindy, who technically started this with you.

Whether you feel like you did 90% of the work or not, doesn't matter. She still owns half the shares or part of the company. So you guys are splitting apart, but you do have this potentially growing business here.

approaching $12 million in sales by 2011. And I guess you get approached or both of you get approached by somebody who wants to basically... buy you guys out, buy this company from you, an investor named Jim Collis. Tell me what the story is. Well, so after she left and... I started hiring new employees. That second 40,000 bottles came in and we ran out of money. We had about 10 employees at that point and had.

No more money in the bank on a Wednesday night, I remember. And so I write this letter that says, you know, dear employees, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to close down the business. And I was going to read it to him Friday morning. And Friday morning, I call everybody into the office to tell him that we're closing down.

And the phone rings and the lady at the front desk says, there's this guy here who wants to see you. And he says, Travis, I'm here to talk to you. And I said, I'm sorry, I'm not hiring and I'm not even interested. Thank you. And he says, well, I might want to invest. So I call off the meeting and I tell him, yeah, you know, we need 80,000 bottles. And he goes, okay, how much money? I said, how about a million dollars? And he says.

Okay. You know, of course he looked at the books and he did some due diligence and things. It wasn't quite that easy. But he wrote us a check and I was able to buy more bottles. And that's when he came in as an investor and started helping inside the office even with the books. And we hired a CFO at that point and grew.

So this was in 2011, right? And so now you've got some capital behind you. And I mean, look, the story, at least from your perspective, ends not that long after. I mean, you were going to exit. in 2012 and sell your shares. And at that point, you know, it's doing well. It's not what it is today. It's not as huge of a brand today. But I think you're doing about 12 million in sales. Tell me when you start to think to yourself, I just want out. I'm done.

I got to a point where we got REI. We had Whole Foods. We were an international company. We were all over Europe and Asia and starting in on the South Pacific. was a little tired of being on the road and living in hotels and in the factories. And I felt like that season was just drawing to an end. I was tired. And then when...

The investor bought out my partner. Cindy? Right. Yeah. It put him to 51% and I was at 49. And he brought in the corporate playbook and said, here's what we're going to do. And this is what it's going to look like. And I took a look at it and I said, no, I don't want to do that. So negotiated my way out. Okay. 2012 is when you're out. And so.

It's growing. There's potential there. By this point, there's already competitors. There's lots of competitors in 2012. But Hydro Flask is one of the brands out there. One of the first, if not the first, double-walled, insulated. Water bottle. I'm curious. And again, I understand why you would want to be out. It's a grind. But a lot of people would also stay. They would say, OK, I got this investor. Now we can scale.

And maybe I'm not really a CEO type. Maybe I'm more of a creative, visionary type, and I need a professional operations guy. I need professional people to really scale this, and I'll kind of just focus on branding. Something like that. And this happens a lot. So I'm curious if any of those ever crossed your mind. I felt like I'd accomplished everything that I'd really set out to accomplish.

I didn't want to continue down the path of the corporate route. My original goal was to sell 2,500 bottles. I wasn't looking to retire. move out into a castle. And I remember I woke up with just a whole weight that had lifted from my body. And I realized, oh, wait, you're not the Hydroflask guy anymore. And that I did. I separated from them and they changed the quality. They changed the price. They've changed some of the manufacturing techniques.

I don't even really drink out of the bottles anymore. After some of their ad campaigns and things, I've separated myself even further with them. So eventually, Hydro Flask was acquired by Helen of Troy, which is a... You know, they own a bunch of different brands for over $200 million. That was in 2016. And I think they still own it. And it's an international brand.

And you, I think, you sort of started a different business of consulting business, right, for some time. Are you still doing that, like helping small businesses get into manufacturing and things like that? I do. I help do advising for companies that are looking for building their products in factories in the States or in China. But I'm also looking to do another bottle company as well. What kind of...

Yeah, tell me a little bit more about how you would improve on it. Because now it seems like this is a pretty, you know, it's pretty competitive space, right? There's some heavy hitters in the bottle business. And how do you... differentiate something and make it better and make it competitive. I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment. It's a lot like when I saw this sign saying, Hey, I have a banner company. I have a sign company. And I thought, huh.

I bet I could do that better. And basically, I found a way to print on the entire bottle. And so it's typically the best way to... embellish a bottle right now is with the laser engraver. And we started doing that early 2009. We started laser engraving on bottles and it was great. It was cool technology back in 2009, but this is 2025. We're going to.

And it's time that somebody steps up and does something a little bit different. When you think about, you know, whether you have criticisms and issues with what Hydro Flask is today. You can still look at that product wherever you go around the world and say, I invented this. I created this brand. As wild as the story is, as implausible as it is, as weird as it is at times.

you still can say that. And that's pretty amazing. And that's going to be, you know, very likely a big part of your story, right? When your time comes to an end. When you think about this thing that you built and what you were able to build out of it, how much of that do you attribute to luck? And how much do you think has to do with just the grind you put in and the incredible?

hard work and what seemed like endless hours? I think that it was a lot of hard work. I think the luck comes in that it hadn't happened yet. And the world was ready for it. People were ready to start carrying water bottles with them everywhere they went. And so as far as luck goes, I think that that was maybe where the luck was. I always take the good luck when I can get it. It's just sometimes I've had to really look for that luck. That's Travis Rossback, co-founder of Hydroflask.

By the way, Hydroflask is now the official sponsor of the U.S. national snowboard team. It's actually only the second time they've partnered with a major sports program. They also sponsor the U.S. surfing team, which kind of makes sense, right? Snow and surf, cold and warm. Same bottle, same idea. Keep the outside outside.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, sign up for my newsletter.

at gyros.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by Chris Massini with music composed by Ramtina Ablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Murashima. Our audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Casey Herman, JC Howard, Sam Paulson, Catherine Seifer, Carrie Thompson, Andrea Bruce, Ramel Wood, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This and...

Don't stop the podcast just yet, because right now you're about to hear an amazing small business story that you don't want to miss. This segment is presented by American Express with a business platinum membership. The best just got even better. So a few years ago, on a bright, sunny day, Bree Van Leeuwen was on vacation with her husband and kids, celebrating a special milestone.

My little girl, who was turning one, had a cake smashed on the beach in Seaside, Florida. But right after Bree put some sunscreen on her daughter, the party was cut short. In real time on a video, you can see her having a terrible reaction to the sunscreen. So she got welts and blisters. She had a runny nose, itchy, watery eyes. This had never happened before. But this brand of sunscreen was new to her.

And it turned out that this sunscreen had an ingredient called butyloctal salicylate. It's a chemical added to some commercial sunscreens to help boost sun protection. And after testing dozens of other brands and consulting an allergist, Bree realized that her child's skin was sensitive to this specific chemical. And it's a problem for a lot of children.

There are sunscreens Brie could have used without that chemical, like zinc oxide. You know, the thick, pasty white stuff that you can't really rub in? Her kids were not having any of it. The older your child gets, the more they're like, oh, don't put that on. I look white. Don't put that on me. And the truth is, I wouldn't put white, cakey sunscreen on myself and expect to go out and do my day. And yet I was expecting...

my little girl to go out and go to school and walk out the door looking like ridiculous. The alternative was to skip sunscreen altogether, but that was not an option. Melanova runs in my family on both sides, my mom's side and my dad's side. I have aunts and uncles and cousins. It's everywhere in my gene pool. So Brie decided to take matters into her own hands.

she set out to make a mineral-based sunscreen that didn't leave a ghostly white film and that didn't include the chemical that affected her daughter either. I think the best inventor is desperation, and I was a desperate mom that needed something. She founded Chemist to prototype formulas, and it took them weeks to create each new batch.

And then they'd send it off to an independent facility for testing. We failed our SPF test over and over and over again. Every round took months. And at some point I realized, oh. This is why companies do this. This is why companies compromise and they put these ingredients in. One is to save money and two is to save formulation time. But Brie persevered. And finally, after four years of trial and error.

she hit on the right formula. So in 2024, she launched her new brand to the public, Daily Shade Sunscreen. the manufacturing lab watching it be produced was one of the coolest moments of my entire life when i thought if this is what being an entrepreneur is and this is what being an inventor is sign me up because i've never had a feeling like this in my entire life and then to see my children recognize my mom made this for me topped it

Today, putting on daily shade sunscreen is an important part of the morning routine in Bree's household. It's almost funny at this point because my kids will come in the kitchen. Did you brush your teeth? No. Did you put on sunscreen? Yes. And after years of hard work. Brie did more than create a product for her children. She gave them a role model. When I asked my daughters, what do you picture yourself doing when you grow up? Their answer is, I want to own my own company and change the world.

That's Bree Van Leeuwen of Daily Shade Sunscreen. And that's our small business spotlight presented by American Express. To build a business like no other, you need a card like no other. There's nothing like Business Platinum. If you like How I Built This, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music.

Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.