How Hulken Hit $50M Without Raising: Founder Alex Schinasi

Alex Kanazi, co-founder and president of Hulken. You're on your way to 9 figures, but you started with this like whole micro community thing. Can you tell people the approach to launching the brand and how you actually pulled that off and moved from one to the other?

Yeah, I think the funny answer to that question is we didn't actually choose them, they chose us. And I think a lot of founders actually get this backwards. A lot of times they'll build a product, invest a lot of money, think they know their audience and invest heavily in that specific audience and then realize actually I'm trying to, you know, fit a puzzle piece that's not really fitting. And with Hulken, we started, we kind of flipped it on its head in the sense that we created a product that people became obsessed with, that when you use it, it markets itself. You can't ignore it. It's big, it's shiny, it rolls. So these communities started using us and then once we saw a pull, that's when we leaned in and doubled down on them.

And was there, which one kind of stood out first? Like which little community was like—

I think makeup artists is a huge one. And the beauty of makeup artists is that it has this, it automatically just shows the product to 50 more people every time they use it. So they show up to set, the celebrity that they're working with sees the product. So we get a lot of celebrity outreach just from that interaction. Then the set stylist, the fashion stylist, all the set workers started using the product.

But what part of their life, like why did they draw to the bag?

From work. So they're all people that actually schlep a lot of equipment for work.

Oh yeah, really heavy stuff.

Heavy stuff. Like think of fashion stylists, like all the different outfits. Makeup artists will use it for their chairs, their clothing, their, you know, all their tools. So these micro-communities that were using Hulken for work were instrumental because they were using it as a work expense and exposing it to so many more people in the process, creating this, viral flywheel from the get-go.

And go back to your comment on like, did you have a thesis that these were the people that were gonna buy it right away? Or did you, like, you made it for yourself.

Yeah.

Right? Who did you think the initial customer was?

I thought it would be, you know, grocery shopping and laundry, like literally what we were using it for, 'cause it started as a family product. We were using it going to Whole Foods and going to Trader Joe's and things like that. And then when we saw the professional use case, it just made sense because these people are using it daily. They're, again, interacting with so many people, and it just made it all so much easier.

Tell me more about your use case. Were you— you're living in a city. What was the use case where you needed it for your personal life?

So living in New York City, going grocery shopping, dropping my laundry off, and it started as a family product. My brothers, my cousins, everyone was using it. It was a family prototype. So before there was ever a Hulken company, there was actually a Hulken product for many years that we were just using it because we absolutely loved it. But while using it, people would literally stop us on the streets. It's such a head-turner. It's something you can't ignore. And that started, you know, seeding an idea.

How did you make it as a family product? Can you tell 'em? I've never— this is a strange origin to a product. It's like you like, so somebody made this just for you.

So my family background is in manufacturing. So my father and grandfather have always been doing these big industrial manufactured bags. And so my dad was shopping in Paris one day carrying all these shopping bags and thinking, I need a solution to this. I don't want to be carrying all these different bags. And he went back to his hotel room, sketched the Hulk in, literally a rolling tote, which is not a product that existed until we came to market, sent it to his factory, and we got the first prototype that we all started using internally.

And how many years were you using it before it turned into an actual company?

Many years, maybe 5 years.

Oh wow. So you guys had like a family product.

We had a family product. That wasn't a business.

And the market pulled it out of you. It sounds like, it sounds like for several years you're using the product, people are stopping on the street.

Yep.

And at some point you're like, okay, we've gotta do something here. This is getting noticed constantly, right?

Exactly. So it's, it's this process that actually planted the seed for me and my husband thinking when COVID happened, my husband was a full-time drummer or musician in, in New York City. And of course he couldn't play anymore. And we had this product that we thought about launching and, you know, We were like, okay, let's just open a Shopify site, see where it goes. And that started the whole thing really with no expectation. I was, you know, vesting from my first exit. I was about to launch a new startup and it started very slow and steady with no expectations.

Can you, so you guys like surprise find out that it's stylists and makeup and all these people, like these professionals that slept a lot of stuff. At what point did you start to get deliberate and like, oh, who else can we go after?

About 2 years in, but again, it's not even today, we're not going after specific communities, we're letting them find us first. Oh, interesting.

This is such a gem, by the way. Like, you're letting the market pull the product outta you, which is to me— 100%.

Which is the opposite of what a lot of consumer brands do.

And, you know, what's funny is you'll talk about sometimes products in search of a solution, you know, that like, it's like, oh, I've got this great idea. Yours is exactly inverted. Yeah. created a solution for a problem that you had, and then you, the market, every step of the way, the market's been pulling this outta you. People have been saying, hey, how, how do I get one? And you're like, we should build this. And then you have communities that are gravitating towards it. Mm-hmm. And you're like, okay, I'm gonna lean into the people that are already wanting this product. It's such a natural, organic way to grow a brand.

It is. And that's how I've always ran my companies. I've always let, you know, the market tell me which direction to go to, which I think is the best way because you, you just let them actually show up for you. market for you. And that's what we saw very early on, which I think was instrumental in making Halkin a success, is that we had this organic base on social because the product was marketing itself.

Yeah, it stands out. It's like very visually striking.

It's visually striking.

So it lends itself naturally to that.

It's great for social videos. I mean, everybody wants to, like, it spins, it just has this natural flair to it.

Yeah, we definitely have some in our house. It's funny because I saw the, the slate of interviews and we haven't met before this, and so I didn't think I was familiar with your brand. And then the moment that I saw it, I was like, oh, we've got We've got like 4 of these in our house. We bought these as gifts for people.

Isn't it funny?

Yeah. Yeah, because it, like you said, but it is so distinctive. It's like once you see it, you're like, I have never seen a thing that looks exactly like that before.

It's a new category of products. I mean, did not exist. We're not a travel bag, we're not a duffel bag, we're a rolling tote bag for many different things, right? This was never been done before. And now of course you have many dupes and we can talk about that.

Oh boy, that's consumer, man. Yeah.

That's consumer, like you said. So, but it really created a new market that people didn't even know they needed. Okay.

I'm confused on this, like pulling, like let the market pull you. Because in consumer, most of us are like very ad-driven brands

and

we very much like, once we have, once you see like, oh, it's makeup people, like, okay, who else is out there? I'm gonna go start making creative for those people. You're saying you guys don't do that or do you do that?

We don't do that because Hulken is for everyone. Like think about it, the mom, the parent, the sports fanatic, everyone needs a Hulken and that's, Like very much our aspiration is for every household in America, not only to have one Halkan, to have multiple Halkans. And so, when we started Halkan in the early days, we had very, very light ad budget. Yeah. You know, $1,000 to $2,000 a month just to see demand, whatever. And that's what kind of dictated our future growth strategy, 'cause then all these micro-communities started doubling down and we started investing more in the creator-led approach, which is basically free gifting for content, doubling down on the communities that were coming to us, but really tailoring to everyone because we are a brand that speaks to everyone.

This is what we do. We solve problems for people. I was explaining this to my son recently. He's 15. He's becoming more entrepreneurial. I took him on a factory visit, and I was trying to cast vision for him of what is it that dad does and why would you maybe want to be an entrepreneur? And we were watching the factory line, all this stuff being produced. And I was just telling him, hey, this is going on in 100,000 different places. And, you know, we're watching all this product get made. And I'm like, and this is what it takes to help people live the quality of life they live. And it's a really honorable thing we get to do. The way that your products intersected our family's life is my wife and my daughter are involved in dance and theater and pageants and all this stuff. And so they'll have 50, 100 pounds of gear. And my wife is like, you know—

Yeah, how else will she take it out, right? Exactly.

It's like, it's literally impossible. And I'm sure people found a way before, But it's like once you've experienced your product doing those things, you're like, man, I cannot believe I ever did it a different way because this is so much easier. And so like you're just solving a problem for people that hadn't been solved before.

Yeah. And I think going back to your earlier question, it's not that I'm looking for the next community, it's how can I better serve the existing communities that I've got?

Yeah, you go deeper in the ones you have.

Exactly. So now how can I serve the makeup artists better? How can I serve the Dance Moms better? And, you know, expanding product offering based on that.

How would you, how would that look? Can you give us an example of how you increase the product?

So we're, we're actually in the product of launching a makeup-specific product line in a couple months in partnership with a makeup artist. So this is serving, again, a very valuable community for us 'cause makeup artists, again, interact with celebrities. They're everywhere. They're always in the background on sets and in places where Hulkin gets a lot of screen time. And so we want to double down on that, and it's a valuable community for us.

Can you just really quickly go back to the, you said you were coming off your first exit or you were in the earnout or phase of your first exit. Uh, what was the first exit? What's the— what was the company?

It was a B2B software tool and for the home remodeling industry. So I have, I had 2 B2B SaaS companies. This is my first consumer companies, guys. I know. Um, why?

So why

would you come to consumer? I never thought I would do consumer.

Do

you remember what the margins of SaaS were?

I'm the only CPG founder that's doing software. Everyone else is turning to software. I'm doing the reverse. But again, it was accidental. I think the— Hulken surprised me in ways that I didn't think was possible.

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When we started Hulken, I didn't look at it as a fashion brand from the get-go. I looked at it as a machine. Like, how can we get this product to be profitable? What's my leverage? Where's the friction? And I think in many ways I didn't come with any preconception of how should a CPG brand be built. And I think that was very helpful.

What, uh, if you were to tell people like, this is what I expect, this is what we want Hulken to become known for. What is that?

We wanna help people, Schlep, obviously we wanna bring value, but we also wanna bring connection. I think, again, going back to the community piece, we see that we bring value to these communities and, you know, their surroundings, and I think that's what we wanna be known for.

Okay.

So from this, these early days of like, you started out slow, very little ad budget, the market starts pulling you in.

Mm-hmm.

Was there a moment where you realized like, oh, this is actually gonna be a real business, we need to focus on this?

Yeah, I mean, think about it. I was, I had raised $3 million for a new SaaS company. You know, Hulken started making, I think about $1 million a month and that's when we thought, okay, you know, this is starting to be in the 8 figures, that's starting to look interesting. And about a year later we exited that business and that's when I went all in thinking like, this has more traction than anything I've built before and we have to double down.

And you're, From what I've read, like your team is quite small even still.

Yeah.

Can you just give us some context on like how that's ramped over time?

Yeah.

And just your philosophy on this, like just team and team building, especially in consumer. I think this is a hot topic, right?

Yeah, totally. I think we were always intentionally small. It's just how I like to operate. Now it's kind of trending with AI and all that, you know, small teams win and all this, these things. But for us, basically my husband was running this full-time by himself with the manufacturer. For the first 3 years.

Oh, wow.

Until like way into 8 figures, I would say about $30, $40 million at this point.

Wow.

And when we joined in, that's when the complexity started happening too. So I don't think there's a strict revenue number where the headcount matters. I think the complexity number is what matters, right?

What made it more complex? What happened?

So obviously going omnichannel, I think for every channel, every geo, every SKU that you add adds complexity. And that's something that for the longest time, Hulken didn't have. For the longest time, it was 1 product, 3 sizes, 4 colors, and that was the first 4 years of Hulken, and that didn't have the nearly the same complexity that we're dealing with today where we're omnichannel, we're introducing new partnerships, new collabs, new types of Hulken, trims, sizing, colors, and that adds complexity. We're now global, and so, yeah, we do have to increase the headcount.

Yeah. I think this is a very underrated point that you're making. Um, obviously we're very omnichannel with the companies that I run. Mm-hmm. Simple Modern especially. And I very much underestimated the level of complexity it would add to the business. And this is one of the reasons why bigger is not always better. You know, like I think so often—

Bigger is almost never better.

Well, I don't know if I would say that, but like it would, the assumption is that growth and, and size and more scale revenue-wise is always good.

Yeah.

But if you don't understand the trade-offs that are gonna come with that.

Mm-hmm.

And like you said, you were able to, with one person, you know, get to $30 or $40 million in revenue, which is really remarkable in and of itself. But that as you add these additional, uh, outlets, like it's just going to scale your complexity in ways that you might not anticipate. And so founders need to know that before they need to walk in eyes wide open. One of my big things is like, know the trade-off that you're signing up for. Yeah. And it sounds like that's what you're saying. You experienced that. And, and that means bigger teams, that means slower communication, slower velocity.

100%. It's, you know, the minute we launched at Target, we pitched to Target in June. We launched nationwide in November. Wow. Team of 5.

Like, that's so fast actually for Target. You launched in June and you launched in November.

That's so fast for Target.

That is crazy. They've been, they've been doing this a long time. I really wanted them at Target. Like, they do not launch that quickly.

I don't know how we pulled it off. We did. We had the inventory, but we had never done, you know, packaging, you know, end caps. We had no idea. So all these learning curves. had to be figured out. And of course, that's when we hired our head of ops and that's, we just, there's no way around it, right? And I don't think there's like, I don't think our model is universally right for every company. I just think we made it work because the complexity was not so drastic from the get-go.

What's the team look like today? How many people are there?

So, we're a team of 9, actually, as of today, we just have our 9th employee starting today. She, we have mostly ops, I would say 3 ops, 3 marketing and growth, and 2 on the product development.

Do you do customer services outsourced?

Outsourced in the DR. We use a great company. They're called Horatio. They're incredible. So yeah, customer service is outsourced. So is SEO, email. A lot of different agencies. I'm not interested in having all capabilities in-house. I want to make sure I have access to the best capabilities. If that means having it in-house, great. If it doesn't, I'm super open to the agency model.

What, what is most important to you to have in-house?

Brand growth and ops.

How, how do you determine? I'm curious.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk like criteria.

You, you said, I wanna be the best at this. So how would you even know that, that like, uh, we could do this better than the options out there in-house? I'm, I'm curious.

Yeah, that's a great question. I, I think, listen, it's kind of our DNA and like the makeup of the actual team. 3 of the people on the team out of 9 are people that I worked with previously on my past companies. So we're very intimate. We know each other extremely well. And, you know, I think owning brand is very important because especially in the world of dupes and people wanting to replicate what we're doing, I think that's what stands us, you know, apart. And ops, especially when you go omnichannel, is obviously something we wanted to have in-house and— Sure. The complexity that comes with that.

Can you expand on, you say you wanna own brand internally. What are the activities that sort of like make up brand? This is a very hot topic for people in consumer. It's like, what is brand?

Oh my gosh. Yeah, I know. And it's interesting because we used to kind of have it all in one bucket. We created content for growth and for brand and, you know, invest in photo shoots and AI content and this and that. And then this year actually we changed that and we realized, The growth team will ask, you know, will this consumer buy this? Whereas the brand team will ask, will this consumer care about this? And the type of content that we create for both scenarios is drastically different. So, this year we actually intentionally started dividing those teams, which up until now, honestly, were one of the same. And I think it makes a big difference. With growth though, as you know, there's immediate quantification. We understand our CAC, we understand the economics, it is measurable. With brand, it compounds and we're playing the long-term, long-term game here. We wanna become this legacy brand that people know, not just for the practicality and the usability of the product, but for something that really means something and becomes a cultural icon.

Can you go a little to take it over to the business side then, like enterprise value, um, and brand?

Yeah.

And why you think this, like investing over there is so important?

Look at Target.

Yep.

Target was selling a $10 dupe of Halkan, a rolling tote for $10, very cheap looking, not even close to what we have. But when we pitched to them, they wanted us on shelves alongside that $10 dupe because we brought the brand value and the brand equity that they're looking for. They know we have, we can bring the foot traffic. They know we bring an allure that they're not able to get on their own. Sure. So, I do think the brand value helped us get into retail. Same with Costco. Costco is known for having a, a Hulken dupe and they still took the call, signed the POs.

Yeah.

And we're launching there in a couple weeks.

Price difference, just for people listening or watching, $10 dupe and Hulken is priced around like range.

$100, $120 AOV.

So you're literally like 10, 10 times the price.

10x. And we're the top of the basket size at Target.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and with Costco, their dupe was $59 and we're gonna retail at $99.

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Do you think like that's a similar machine towards brand?

Yeah. It's just like everything's measurable in software. Oh, okay. Every interaction is just like, it's a click, it's a thing. Yeah. It's a, You know, and then brand over here is this like ethereal, I don't know, it feels right.

So I have a question on this front. What is the single best thing you feel like you've done for brand? Like one thing where you were like, I didn't know at the time, but then it was obvious qualitatively that that propelled the brand forward.

The Supreme collab was one that really propelled us forward and also made us exposed to a more male audience, which, you know, we're primarily female. I would say 80% female at this point. And Supreme was the first time that I would get, you know, guy friends calling me up like not believing what I did or like take Hulken seriously.

So I

think it exposed us to a very interesting new audience, but it also just increased the brand equity. Like nobody partners with Supreme, not even once, let alone twice.

Yeah.

The founder of Supreme wanted to run it a second time. And I think that again speaks to the power of the brand and what we built. But this like, Yeah, is one of the best partnerships that we've done.

What's the biggest mistake you think you've made on brand?

Oh my God. A lot of influencers will reach out and ask for these big checks for events, sponsored events, and, you know, very little comes out of that. I think you have to be very picky and think through like, is this actually gonna bring me value either through connection, exposure, or volume?

Well, let's go there then. So the creator influencer thing, 'cause if you, Start out with like stylists and some of them probably have Instagram accounts. They're probably pretty popular, right? All of them. So how do you guys approach creator influencer partnerships then?

So for the longest time, I would say until this year, until 2026, we would exclusively do gifted partnerships.

Wow.

So we would gift product and, you know, it's a $100 product between $100 and $140. And in exchange for content, no strings attached, just lots of content. And only this year we've allocated some budget towards influencers, mostly because people just want the product and want to use it. And I think that's how it's represented in, in the most authentic way.

Okay. So when did you start leaning into paid more heavily?

2 years in. So that's when we saw that hockey stick growth, right? We went from $700K to 3 million to 15. And that year is when we started investing in paid, because we had at that point such a solid foundation of organic social that we just poured gasoline on something that was already working. I think that's super important for any brand starting is to have that organic base before you actually spend a ton on Meta. And that's how we got the great CAC that we had and the great ROAS that we had because we had a very solid base to begin with.

Yeah. Uh, ads work better if you give it surface area.

100%.

Right? If there's no surface area, it's like, uh, pouring gas on, on no fire.

Yeah.

No. It's like all you're doing is soaking the ground.

But every, everything you've done has been organic. Follow the market.

Yep.

And double down on what the market is telling you.

Exactly.

Which is such great advice. I mean, you really can't go wrong when that's the approach that you're taking.

And that's what we do with every new product we add, right? So we're launching a new tote bag, so we do pre-orders and we see the market reaction. I'm not interested in launching products that are not going to do well. So I think that I take from software, right? We're used to launching a new feature on Monday, iterating on Tuesday, and throwing it out if it doesn't work by Friday. And that was really hard for me at first in CPG is that, oh my God, we gotta develop this product for 6 months and then maybe get a prototype and then take it to market without even knowing if there's demand for it. And I think there's a ton of value of starting small, even at our scale, approaching 9 figures, We're not just blindly launching products, right? We always get a sense of demand and then double down on it if it's successful.

Have you killed several things because they didn't—

Yeah, of course. And I think that's probably the challenge that we have right now is we're known for one hero product and how do we bring the same level of practicality and style to other parts of our consumer's life? And we haven't figured that out. You know, we just launched a tote bag last week. Are we gonna continue to launch more industry-specific products like the beauty mat and the makeup products? But I think everyone should always get a sense of how their products are gonna land before doubling down on them.

So hard to kill things.

Well, it's hard to kill things. And I think in this business, like we're in, we're all, the common thing is we're all in durables. Like these products last a while, they're well made, which just means our LTV sucks. Right? So like you get a customer and it's like, great, I bought one Health+Mind. Do

I

need to? You know, like it's a big bag, it does a lot of things, it seems like it's pretty high utility. So you must be thinking like, I need things that I can sell to these people again.

Yeah, 100%. So I'm always thinking about that is how to increase repeat purchase or how to increase new customers. And we're always, for the new customer side of things, of course we're trying to find creative ways not to depend on Meta. Yeah. And that's why we do all these collabs, which was a huge growth driver for us in 2026, is to actually acquire net new customers that we otherwise wouldn't have acquired.

Yeah.

And then talk about that. What, why are collabs so effective? Because I do think this is one of the trends.

Yeah. And then one of the trade-offs.

One of the, yeah. I mean, like, we're seeing this a lot in hydration as well. Yeah. Collabs are, are becoming really a dominant driver of, of brand attention and, and even acquisition. So why do you think they're so effective?

They're effective because they increase your brand equity. You have to pick the right partner, of course, but they also increase your reach. So, we saw the last 2 collabs we had this year, we had 60% net new customers out of these collab collections, and there's a sense of scarcity, which always works in marketing. So, it increases, people talk about it, the press outreach doubles. I mean, there's just a lot of value around creating newness for your existing base, but also for acquiring a new one.

Do you, when you do a new collaboration, do you deliberately create scarcity with it? Like, do you say like, I'm gonna limit the number of pieces I make with this person and then I'm gonna tell the market that there's like, there's X amount of them. So you use it more for noise and reach and not so much for sell-through?

We always sell through. I've made the mistake. Our very first collab, we actually had no end date. It was like an endless line that lasted 2 years and, you know, it worked So, well, but we learned a lot from that. And now, so we always put an end date.

Yeah.

We always put a, you know, a certain number of, of pieces. And I mean, that's needed if you wanna make sure that, again, you have this sense of scarcity.

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What percentage of demand would you aim for if you knew the number of units that you could sell? Would you do 80% of that, 60% of that, or do you or would you try and do almost exactly 100% of that? How would you order it if you?

I think 80% of that. I think you want to have a little bit of frustration there for those that

yeah, you

want to be able to

say like sold out, sold

out, sold out.

You actually want to create the frustrate. I have never put. use that word, but yes, you actually want, you want to frustrate people.

Yeah. And you want people to feel like, shit, I missed that. What's the balance of like leaving meat on the bone and people being like, oh, I wish I could have gotten it?

You want them to show up for the next one. So I think it's important.

Yeah. Yeah. And then, but then that runs counter to the, like, you do the collabs in the first place because they generate reach. Like we did, we do a lot of these at Pela. Uh, we find like creators that are sort of brand aligned. Um, like we had this one guy, Ollie, Ollie Smithers, he's like the nicest sounding young British man, takes beautiful pictures, like a tattoo artist. So, we did actually like a product line with him. He has like 1.2 million Instagram followers. Dude, we had like 90% net new visits from that campaign. But we boxed it into like, we can only run it for 3 months, right? But then the trade is, it creates a lot of like work in the company.

It's a lot of work, that product development.

The back and forth, the, oh God.

Listen, we didn't have a, a product designer on the team until January this year, literally.

Oh wow, this year?

This year we had a product designer and a product developer that started today.

Who did the product design?

The factory.

Oh wow.

With us. I mean, we tell them do this, do that. Again, it was a very simple collection, right? We just had a handful of bags, but now these collabs, it's very time intensive on the team.

Well, it's just like the omnichannel thing. It's like, yeah, it sounds great, but you're also, there are trade-offs. Like it's going to be more supply chain complexity and more headcount.

And I think all of this comes from a place of, okay, we're hitting mid How do we get to the 9-figure number and beyond? And it's finding new ways to grow, whether it's through partnerships, through omnichannel approach, 'cause, you know, like a lot of brands, we're hitting some sort of ceiling with Meta, and because we're self-financed, it's not that we're able to push past that.

Yeah, and again, this is a durables problem right now with Meta. It's, we can't spend as much as the guys in subscription or consumable where like they can just eat it on the first purchase. We literally, we gotta make money on—

Yeah, you'll see people posting 0.5 ROAS and you're like, that's cute. I don't know that— What do you do with that? It's great that you can make that work.

That is insane.

Yeah. But when you're in durables, it's like, okay, I—

Absolutely not.

It's gotta be over 2, you know, like there's no margin level where I, I, in any way. So I, I think you're right, Matt. We're like kind of structurally disadvantaged to a lot of the people bidding in those auctions.

Yeah. That's a very good point.

We are. I think, uh, with Pela, I think I've mentioned this on the show before, but with Pela, the, we can run our ROAS down quite a bit. We have a lot of margin. Number one, it's a small product. Number two, we own our factory. All those things are great for us. It's great. Uh, but the reason we run sort of like a 1-day click down and we're okay with what would look like a subscription, not a 0.5, but like still gotta be over 1, um, is word of mouth is so strong.

Yep. Yeah.

And we have enough data to show that like, oh, I've like, we've acquired 3 million customers or some stupid number at this point. Um, but we know that everyone that we put out in the world, if that person is kind of brand aligned and mission aligned, They bring their friends.

I literally just got a text from my wife. She's like, oh, I love Holkin. 'Cause I told her that's what we were doing. Oh yeah. But she literally bought several of your bags as gifts. I know because this is it. I handed them out.

This is it.

This is where the repeat purchase happens, right? Absolutely. You may not buy 15 Holkins for yourselves, but you will buy one for your cousin, your sister that's visiting, your mom.

Yeah.

And that's kind of the repeat purchase that we're seeing.

I think this is actually a really good place to, to talk about for a little bit when you are in durables, like You have to have word of mouth, I think, when you're in durables.

And giftable.

Yes, it has to be giftable. And you have to, you have to have customers that are evangelistic about it or it's going to be really tough to grow because you don't have the same growth levers at your disposal that some of the other companies have. We, we came to the conclusion pretty early on with Simple Modern, I think this was the insight of like bottles in hands, like brand growth was directly tied to how many bottles we could get in people's hands. Because when you're carrying the bottle around, other people see it, you're talking to other people about it, and that That was, like you said, for every bottle we got out there, there's, for every phone case you got out there, there's other ones being sold. And so we really started to try and optimize around units moved. And, and that is actually what pushed our flywheel. Sounds like it's similar for you.

Yeah, I think it's one of the most underrated growth tactics actually, the, the create a product that people talk about and like to show off. I mean, that's such a good, I always think of underwear brands and perfume brands. Like how do they actually create any sort of word of mouth effect? Like it's actually insane.

Yeah, the reason I invested in Pela in the first place originally, people thought I was stupid. It's like, you're coming out of a software services company and you're going into consumer, why? And I'm like—

She doesn't think consumer.

Yeah, I know.

We're nuts, why?

Sometimes I'm like, I'm gonna go back to software, screw this. But the thing that I liked about the product category, even though it was so commoditized, was, and the reason I made the choice to invest, was we were out for dinner in Toronto and at the restaurant, I'm like, everybody's phone was on the table.

Right. That's your building block.

And face down. And I'm like, oh, that's it. I'm like right there. So like, I could totally build around that. I'm like, that's such a visible product in people's lives. I'm like, phones are pretty important. At that time, I saw a stat too that said that people would rather lose their wallet than their phone.

One of the places that we've looked is post-purchase survey and saying, how did you hear about the brand? Or why did you purchase today? And if you're seeing a lot of people identify, I was told about this by a friend or family member.

We keep that number, I heard about it from a friend, at about 35%.

Oh, cool.

That to us has always been like, if it drops below that, I'm spending too much money on paid.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's true.

Right? And like the financials are probably not gonna look good in 3 months.

You should probably do that too.

Um, okay, so walk me through marketing as, as the company has grown.

Uh,

starts out very organically. You introduce paid. Can you just like digital marketing, right? So not the omnichannel stuff. What have you added that you're like, this is particularly interesting? Like we really wanna push on this.

Yeah, so I think creator affiliates is probably the next—

Oh yeah, for you guys.

Growth channel that I'm excited about. This year has been a bit tricky from an inventory standpoint, so there's a lot of direct-to-consumer initiatives that I'm not able to pour gas on yet, but we're seeing a ton of traction on, on that front because we're such a creator-first product. and it's one that, you know, if we have good margins that creators can make quite a bit of money on, you know, it's a $140 AOV. And that's one that I'm personally excited about because I know there's traction. I know that creators love talking about us and it's one that can be profitable and scalable. Oh,

and it's so visual for social content. The reason it works on organic for you is like a creator can easily show that off.

Yeah.

Oh, okay. So then how, Your, your Instagram is a proxy, 'cause you guys are very good at social.

Mm-hmm.

Who does that?

So we have an outsourced agency. Come on. That does that. Yes. For us, we're actually now thinking of bringing someone in for that. Um, but there's—

Does it seem like that would be brand?

Yeah. Yeah, no, it is, but it's all led by our chief brand officer that's in-house. So, you know, they execute her vision and they execute on what we think is good and aligned for the brand. But yeah, so that's outsourced. We now have a new tool to moderate social that's all AI-driven, which is incredible, called Pinpoint. I highly recommend them. So that alone like drastically reduced the amount of hours that our social team has had to spend answering comments, replying to DMs. And, you know, I think that's just, again, another tool that can just make the team more efficient.

Within an hour of Winks being live, we got knocked off. See, every fake company or listing using your brand's name is a new customer complaint and stolen revenue. Your product photos appear in marketplaces you don't sell in, fake sites are outranking you on Google Ads. Man, if you've been in the business long enough, you know this is true. PodKey's Trusted Reporter status means expedited review on hundreds of platforms and a 98% success rate. New customers average 2,000+ takedowns in just 2 weeks. That should tell you something. A U.S.-based team, support with replies in the hour. Jones Road has been a longtime user of Podki. Cody watched the copycats come down from the dashboard himself. Repeat offenders get linked across channels so a seller pulled off of Amazon can't just relaunch on TikTok Shop. Get a free 90-second scan at podki.com/9operators. That's podki.com/9operators and see what's running against your name today. If your name is worth copying, it's probably worth protecting. You mentioned this inventory is particularly difficult this year. What does that mean?

Yeah.

Why is it hard?

So, we are launching in Costco in a couple weeks. Yeah, that'll be— Which is the biggest—

Do they buy a lot of inventory?

Yeah, they're hard to work with. I understand.

It's the biggest PO we've ever received. And, you know, when I think of an oh shit moment in our company's lifetime, I think it's when my husband and I woke up one morning thinking, oh my God, we literally do not have any D2C inventory coming our way for the next 3 months.

Whoa.

So we're just now coming out of it, but the last 3 months were painful. It's always—

Because you're self-financed.

Because we're self-financed, but also because the production wasn't ready, right? Like we threw this massive 170,000 units—

So you outkicked your manufacturing. Order.

Yes. We basically were not ready from a manufacturing standpoint. So throw in the war and the costing and all the supply chain issues on top of that. By the time the manufacturing had ramped up, a lot of their capabilities had to be targeted at the Costco PO versus creating inventory for D2C, for Amazon, and for the holiday season. So, we found ourselves with, you know, quite an empty inventory on all fronts outside of retail.

Another thing that comes with having a lot of channels. So, really practically for us, the way that we've experienced the same problem is that our retailers will reach reset their shelf, and both of our major retail partners would tend to do that in early summer. And so when you kind of work out the math, the way that that ends up playing out is either right before Chinese New Year or right after is completely blocked off for mass retail production. We have a pretty big kids business, and you need that inventory being built during that period. That's tough. Exactly. And so it's just another example of the trade-offs. It's not even just the size of your team, is that sometimes you get like bottlenecks.

It was a huge bottleneck for us. We manufacture in India and— I was,

I was gonna ask you, where is your supply chain?

Yeah. Yeah. India and Hungary. And we just weren't ready for it. And at the same time, you don't wanna say no to Costco and, you know, it's a life-changing PO and it's like the next stage of growth for us. Same time, you are compromising on something and it meant we had to sacrifice our direct-to-consumer channel, which is really painful. And as you know, you spend on Meta, you have to reduce your spend. Oh yeah. And then you have to ramp it back up. And so, It was definitely a sacrifice that we had to do to go omnichannel. We'll see if it was the right move. You know, time will tell, but it was a hard year.

Anytime you add a channel, it is going to be somewhat cannibalistic, right? But the hope is that—

You're hoping that you just grow a little bit more.

On the net, yeah, on the net you're bigger, but this is a great example of how that's true. Like D2C is definitely already decelerated because you're going into Costco.

Exactly.

And then there will be some people that buy in Costco instead of D2C. And so that's just the reality of it, but also They're bringing a lot of distribution to the table. It seems like a pretty good bet to me that that's going to net grow the business, but people should walk into it eyes wide open that, yeah, there, there are going to be trade-offs and there's gonna be places where it actually slows down.

And you have to be ready for a Costco-sized PO just as a business. I think they even have an internal rule that you need to be minimally at a, you know,

you need to be at a certain size.

Yeah. They can't be more than 20% of your total.

'Cause it's also, they're like, their reverse logistics is crazy and their guarantees on your product from returns is insane. So like, They kind of need you to be of a certain size to absorb them. Yeah.

The last thing they want to do is they don't want to bankrupt you.

No, they really don't. They're actually pretty good to work with.

Walmart in particular got a bad reputation at a particular point in time because there were some companies that probably were too dependent on them. And so I think all of the retailers have built this into their corporate ethos of like, hey, we're not going to be responsible for a company going under because they They outkick their coverage.

Oh, for sure. Have you, uh, had to slow down the DTC business before in the last years, or is this a new thing for you?

We always had an issue with scarcity and inventory planning, meaning the demand has been so drastic since launch that we basically always, uh, catch up with inventory. And so the holidays come around and we find ourselves completely drained. We start January with a ton of pre-orders and then it takes a lot of time to catch up.

Yeah.

And again, I think it's a balance of of us as entrepreneurs wanting to hit targets and grow, grow, grow. And I think part of that comes from my background in kind of VC-funded startups where you gotta grow at all costs, you gotta hit those numbers, gotta hit the 9 figures ASAP. And part of that meant that, yeah, we, we just oversold and then you have to catch up and deal with shipping a lot of stock that is already sold much later. And so I think, I think, yeah, that's definitely one of the growing pains of like a very fast-growing, Yeah. self-funded business.

Yeah, and in consumer, if you care about brand and you care about longevity, speed is actually not something that you want a lot of.

Yeah.

Like you, 'cause brands can become overexposed.

100%.

Like you can grow way too fast. No, I— It's not software, it's like—

That's something I have to debug in myself, right? Yes, right. I'm still like speed, speed, speed. Like we gotta act fast, we do this. Like we launched a new product that we designed in April, we're launching now. Like I think speed is great in a lot of ways, and that's one of the best things I took from software. But also, like you said, like it's just a different, thing in consumer.

Yeah. You said you're trying to build, you know, a multi-decade brand. And I love the maxim that the speed that something is built is the same speed it can be disrupted. Exactly. And so like, we have to kind of like debug our own brains here, that it's like, if I'm really trying to build something that can last decades, I need to expect that it's going to take time and that I can't just speedrun this thing, you know? And, and I have the same, you know, I'll have the same problem. So what do you do to slow yourself down sometimes? We're all so driven. How do you do it?

I don't know. I think that's the curse of being a founder in many ways. Like there's always a next thing, right? I'm always thinking what's next, what's next, what's next? And we just need to figure out a way to understand there's no end to what we're doing, right? Like we're gonna be doing this forever. If we don't build this, we're gonna be building that. And I think we just need to figure out how to enjoy life in the process and think figuring out that part, but just also understanding that it's not an end-all be-all. And, you know, if it doesn't work out, something else will pop up.

Do you, uh, do you try to detach your identity from like fast growth and more like attach it to like enduring brand as part of that?

Yes. And I think for 2027, for example, especially after a tough inventory year like this one, the big question is, do we wanna optimize for growth or for, you know, EBITDA profitability? Yeah. And like, Both are great and ideally you get both, but I always, you know, play with that and wonder like, what's better for us as a, as a business? And should I take my time and not, you know, grow faster than I should?

Okay, so Alex, when you're trying to figure out where you want to sit in this spectrum of profitability versus growth, where are you at right now?

So we ended 2025 at 10% EBITDA and we're aiming towards 20%.

That's amazing.

Again, what comes with growth is a lot of capital demand that we need to be able to fulfill, and so we need to be in a better EBITDA position to be able to sustain the growth without outside funding.

I feel like we've learned the same thing. When you get too close to 10, it's too tight, and then when, if you get much above 20, you're probably leaving stuff on the table.

I think the question also is, when is the right time to optimize for EBITDA versus growth. And I think that's what I—

Well, how are you thinking about that then?

Well, that's what I struggle with. I think, I still think we're in high growth, right? Because we're not able to meet demand. And that for me is a signal that we could push harder, right? There's more growth to be tapped into. And so I think until I feel like we're comfortably able to meet demand at a pace that makes sense, I think that's the time for us that we wanna optimize on EBITDA. But it's a dance because we are also facing this drastic growth, which means I do need a stronger safety net on the EBITDA front to be able to fund that growth.

Why aren't you able to meet demand? Like what's the biggest constraint in the business?

Honestly, just fast growth, like just demand from the market that we weren't expecting. Um, right.

So it's just like a forecasting thing.

It is a forecasting thing. It is honestly inventory planning a lot of times. Like we're just not able to produce fast enough and every year we think we do and then another opportunity is getting thrown our way.

That's a good problem to have.

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Because by the time we meet the D2C business demand, then there's another, yeah.

There's always that something else.

Then there's a Target that comes our way.

Yeah. Oh, interesting. Okay, go back to the Target thing then. How did you convince Target to bring you in, number one, then bring you in so quickly?

Yeah.

Because we both reacted, we're like, how the hell? That's so fast for Target. Usually they're like 18 months out.

It has to be out of aisle to happen that quickly.

Yeah. So, how did that conversation start? How did it happen?

Just walk us through. Yeah. So, we work with a brokering agency that put us in touch. Our CRO, Lee, flew and met with them and pitched without any expectation thinking, like you said, 12 to 18 months. And I think it was also a transition year because of the tariffs. A lot of, you know, brands couldn't fulfill their POs for end of year. And I think that was an open door for us to enter and be on shelf by November, which was a crazy fast turnaround, especially for a brand that had never done like nationwide distribution at this And you launched

nationwide.

We launched nationwide within 5 months of pitching, which is insane. And think of us, we're a team of 5. It's me, my husband, an ops manager, brand and growth, and that's it. Like we don't have an in-house product designer, we don't have an in-house ops, head of ops. And so we had to figure it out, but I think that's like our nature as entrepreneurs. Like we just love to figure things out on the go. And that's just like our sweet spot. And, you know, we had to figure out retail packaging. That was the biggest expensive headache, by the way, because of course in 5 months you have to cut corners. You can't optimize on every single aspect of that order, whether it's fulfillment, packaging. I mean, we had to make immense sacrifices on that front. But for us, it was a foot in the door. And you know what? It wasn't the most optimized from a margin standpoint, but it opened the door for a back-to-back, yeah, back-to-back end cap that we have currently, back to school followed by holiday. all the way through March and Target exclusives. So I think sometimes just getting a foot in the door is worth it, even if it's not the most optimized on the finance front.

How did you pick a broker?

We interviewed many different agencies. A lot of them reached out to us. Yep. We get those all the time. And then, you know, a lot of it was just getting along with them and feeling like they understood the product. We have a very specific product. Either you fall in love with it or you don't get it.

Yeah.

At all. And they fell in love with it and they got it. And we needed that level of commitment to the product for them to feel confident that they would present it, you know, to retailers in a way that made sense.

Which one are you using, if you don't mind me asking?

They're called Bluebirds.

Oh, we're all Bluebird fans.

Are you all Bluebird fans?

Yeah, we work with Bluebirds. We've worked with them since the beginning.

Do you work with Ben?

Yeah. We love Ben. I don't work with Ben, but have gotten to know their team. And Katie. Really? I think so. So we have several friends that work with Bluebird.

Yeah, oh, Bluebird fam.

Yeah.

We love them and they came highly recommended by other founders too. So, it was a mix of them understanding the product, coming recommended.

Yeah, it's a, yeah, the third-party agency is very much a founder-recommended thing.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, 100%. Can I ask the, to me, the people in our audience are gonna wanna know why a premium brand like Hulken would choose to go into a Target, into a Costco. Like, was there ever a conversation that this is good or bad for the brand?

When you look at the retailer landscape, first of all, there's very few of them where the volume—

This is true.

Actually makes sense at our scale, right? That is worth it. it. There's very few of them. Let's say there's 5 of them. So it left a handful of them like Target and Costco and Target we knew had, again, a dupe that was much more affordable, but we felt like they're going upmarket and they're actually now tailoring and trying to attract more premium brands to join in. And so for us it was actually not dilutive in any way.

Yep.

I think it's a little outdated to think, you know, this exposure when you get this massive reach all of a sudden, like it dilutes your premium brand essence. I actually think it did the opposite for us. It's a signal that we're here and we're here to stay and giving us a much more, uh, much more access to an enormous scale than we never had before.

Yeah, I would agree. I think that Target, Costco, they have a certain amount of trust that you get to transfer over to you as a brand. Okay. So then how, uh, with Costco, Costco typically is like known for off price. So like they always want to give that because their thing is like member value. We've experienced has to be like 20% off member value and whatever it is.

And then you can only mark it by 14%. There's a whole math behind that. So

how did you navigate the math of Costco?

Yeah, I mean, we knew from day one we had to develop a dedicated SKU for Costco. First of all, we didn't wanna cannibalize the target audience and that relationship, 'cause that was one that we wanted to make sure we kept, but we had to do a dedicated SKU that wasn't cannibalizing any other channel of ours. And so we launched an extra large Hulken, which is the perfect fit for a Costco audience with an insulated insert. And actually the math, you know, made sense for us from a margin standpoint. It's a really good position to be in and the volume is just so enormous that it was a no-brainer. But I think it had to be with a dedicated SKU that wasn't affecting any other channel.

Can I ask you how you think about TAM for your product?

Yeah, it's a good question. For me, like I said, every household needs a Hulkand. They need multiple Hulkand. That's why, you know, we have multiple sizes. We tailor to different needs that a household may have, but the TAM is endless and, you know, we do really well in Asia. So, that's one of our market expansion that we went after. Like large cities?

Yeah.

Yeah. We just launched in Japan in January and that's going really well and growing already into, you know, mid-7 figures within a few months. So we're very excited about Asia and, uh, obviously the US, I feel like it's still very much scratching the surface.

How are you dealing with Asia with a small team that—

So we have a local distributor. Okay. That's basically doing all the work. They do it.

Yeah.

We have the dream distributor that will buy everything upfront, pay upfront.

Oh yeah. That's the best part.

And sell.

Yeah.

Easy. Honestly, it doesn't require work.

That is so good. Uh, where do you spend your time now? Like, where are you? Like,

where am I?

Yes. Like what, what gobbles up most of your time in a day, in a week? Yeah.

Is

there a part of the business, like a certain thing that you—

A lot of it is product strategy because we onboarded this new product designer earlier this year and she came from Louis Vuitton and has, you know, a lot of knowledge around luggage and bags. And so she brings expertise that we never had before, but this is my opportunity for the next stage of growth of Halken, thinking, okay, how can we bring the practicality and the beauty of what we have with the current rolling tote bag, which is the hero product and what we're known for, and apply that across different products to our existing audience?

Is there a product category that you're launching soon that you're particularly excited about that you can share, or is all that still under wraps?

It's still under wraps. We have a couple things coming up, especially next year, but we're excited. Yeah, it's I think it's a great way to, again, we're always thinking of ways how do we either add new customers or tap into our existing one.

As you've grown, has there been a part of the business that you used to spend a lot of time on that you've had to let go?

Yeah, retailer relationships. So I used to own that, you know, we were early on QVC, was one of our first buyers. We're still on QVC and very successful there, but I just, you know, again, I don't have time for this at this point and a lot of it is increasing the Hulken brand and dedicated time to product and just overall expansion, whether it's geo or market or retail.

How do you, I mean, I'm very curious to hear your thoughts and philosophies on like this whole, you know, products, markets, and channels. Like there's really only the 3 things that we in consumer have to play with. How do you prioritize which one is sort of first, second, third?

I think for us, given that we live in Europe, the geographical expansion was a natural first step, even though it's not intuitive to a lot of American-based founders, right? But we had access to this Asian market fairly early on, and that was an amazing move for us. I think where we struggle honestly is the product expansion because we're known for this one rolling tote bag. I think that will be the next and probably last way to grow. but we prioritized market because we're comfortable with that and we had access to great distributors, followed by channels, retailers, and lastly product.

That's it. It's so, so interesting. Most DTC brands would do like product first.

Yeah.

Then they would probably do channels. Yeah. And then they would do markets.

Which I think ties in something that has come up in many of our interviews, which is you have to use the advantages that you have as a founder.

Exactly.

You've already mentioned your family's background and how that gave you a unique view on the world, and then being international makes expanding internationally much less daunting for you than it would be for most founders.

Yeah, no, I agree. I think it depends on the makeup of your team. We're a team that's small, but that wears many hats. I think that's also why we're able to stay small. So everyone on the team is not scared to, you know, get outta their way and do something that they're not supposed to do. And I think that must happen is when you operate small.

What do you think your superpower

I think moving fast and learning on the go, that's my favorite thing. That's what I love to do and I'm not scared of it. And if there's something we don't know, like launching at Target in 5 months, we'll just find a way to do it. And I think probably a lot of founders would be overthinking that.

Yeah. Do you find that the business gets easier as it gets bigger to run or is it harder?

No, it's definitely not easier. This year, probably the hardest year. You know, we just couldn't manage the inventory thing. It was just like such a slap in the face to wake up one day realizing like no container is coming to our warehouse for the next 3 months. Yeah,

and DTC is such a momentum machine.

It's such a momentum, and don't even get me started. Have anxiety just thinking about it, but definitely gets harder, but it gets more fun. So, you know, like complexity doesn't scare me. I think that's what makes us, excited to be founders because we're ready for it.

Why did you start a podcast?

Yeah.

I'm very curious, like your thoughts on personal brand and media and

how

does that fit into this picture of like building Hulken? And

I hope that I'm remembered for empowering people. Actually, my first 2 software companies were empowering interior designers, empowering teachers to do their work better. And in a way, Hulken is doing the same, but in the physical world. And I love to build. I love to build in public. I love to empower others to build. And I hope that with the podcast, I inspire more people to go after that.

What's it like working with your husband? I started my first company with my wife.

Yeah.

We worked together for 6, 7 years.

How did that go? Tell me everything.

Great. We're still married. There's still— yeah, like 22 years in now.

Oh my God.

But we had to retire her because she's like, I don't like how big this is getting, so I'm going home now.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, uh, just give us a sense of like working dynamic.

Like what are you guys great at? I never thought in a million years I'd be working with my husband. Mm-hmm. Like I was always in tech, I was doing the whole startup thing. He was a drummer, musician, touring the world, doing his thing, and that's what I love about him, but he's still very much a drummer. That's why he's not here, right? He's always in the background doing his thing. But I think the fact that one, we respect each other immensely, we also don't really cross over. You know, I handle growth, marketing, sales, whereas he is heavily focused on production and ops. And so sometimes we sit next to each other, you know, all day, and we don't even like really talk. Yeah. Because we're so deep in our lanes. I will say we did, if we didn't love what we do so much, it would probably be harder. But the fact that we have so much fun, we just fucking love doing what we do. And so even if work comes in, you know, the household on dates, Yeah. We don't care cuz it's like, it's something that we love doing. And so of course, like we talk work, we go, you know, whatever we do, it's obviously a part of our everyday life, but for us it's, uh, it doesn't matter.

It works. Is there like any dynamic in the team, in the company then, like with both of you in the business? Like, who do I go to? Like, I'm just, I'm always curious because that was a problem for us.

No, I think we just kind of laugh that he's the boss and, you know, I, and we don't really have a hierarchy on the team. Again, we're 9 people, you know, they're all pretty senior. It's people that I've worked with before and we're all just relying on each other. And, uh, but yeah, he's the boss even though we don't see much of him, but He's, he's the one.

I love it. It's, uh, these are like popular topics in our audience. It's like, yeah, because there's a lot of people that work with their spouse.

I know, it's interesting, right? Like, I never thought—

Especially in consumer, it's weird. It's like we've encountered many.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It seems like we hear a lot of the divide and conquer approach where I, I can, I can see how that— oh yeah, more conflict. It's like, hey, we're both in charge of brand. It's like, okay, hello, man.

Yeah, no, my God, no.

Oh no, my wife was the designer, I was the software engineer. It was good. It was a good little pairing.

Yeah. You have to be.

I couldn't tell her what to do, not even close. Uh, and she couldn't tell me, and it was awesome. Um, can we talk about how you've capitalized the business? So like you've bootstrapped this company. Uh, why not raise some money? Why not like solve the problem with capital? Good question.

You know, I always wonder if and when we should raise money. First of all, the manufacturing is done by my father's company, so in terms fronting inventory costs, it's, you know, that's what allowed us to grow from the beginning. So, you know, it's not that we had no funding in a way, they were funding production costs and that was a huge advantage to getting started up until this day. Now, for the first time with Costco and other retailers, you know, we've had to think about, you know, working with banks for financing. So we're starting to do a little bit of that for some of these bigger POs.

Yep.

But, um, as far as, you know, proper fundraising, it's in the back of my head. We do get outreach a bunch.

Yeah.

And,

and you come from that world, so it would be familiar. I come from that world. Yeah.

I, which means I know the good and the bad, right?

You know the trade-offs.

There are trade-offs and I think—

Can you walk us through some of those? Like just what, what wouldn't you, what, what are you trying to avoid by not bringing in outside capital?

I don't wanna have the growth pressure that we had with VC funding, especially. I know in consumer there's more different ways of raising money, but in our case, yeah, so much pressure around growth and not just smart scaling.

Yeah.

And I think so much of our success was actually being creative with scale, being creative with marketing to stay profitable and self-sustain ourselves. And I love that. I love that we don't depend on outside funding, that this is not what dictates my growth strategy. However, investors can be amazing, right? They were great partners, they were friends, they're part of your board, they built this with you. And yeah, it's always in the back of my mind whether we should and when.

I have a question. You have children. So how has being an entrepreneur growing at this point 3 different businesses, how has that impacted the way that you approach being a parent?

Listen, I don't see my kids as much as I want them, I want to see them. How is that, did it affect me being a parent? I just think I cherish my time with them much more, right? Yeah. Like I spend a lot of time away, as you know, I, the team is in the US, I'm in Lisbon, I travel back and forth. And so when I'm with them, I make it a point to have quality time with them, which I think is important. And maybe if I wasn't traveling so much, I wouldn't. Right? So, I try to pick them up from school more and do things that I don't get to do all the time because I have this back and forth. So, I think, yeah, just being more present.

Have you ever done the math on like time with kids with, as an entrepreneur versus like if you had a normal job? I did this one year because I was like, am I worse off being a founder or should I just like, should I just have a job when it comes to being a better father? And like the math actually turned out that as a founder, you do have a lot more freedom of time, Right? So that when you, if you choose to, when you are with them, you can, you can just actually spend much more high-quality time with, with your spouse, with your kids in this life in a weird way, even though you work so much, it's like when you can go, you can just go very deep and high, high quality.

Yeah. I have, I have some strong opinions in this area because I've thought about it a lot. I mean, if you have a company that's successful, it's like, well, why don't you sell your company and spend all your time with your kids? Oh yeah.

No, I jump off a roof.

And I think that, yeah, exactly.

We're not built for this. This isn't the wrong audience. Well, exactly.

Exactly. Because it's like being a good parent isn't about just maximizing the number of hours you're around your kids.

No, it's quality.

It's about giving them vision for their life and helping equip them to become an adult.

And you being fulfilled in your life.

Exactly.

And showing, being the best version of yourself.

Giving them an avatar of like what that looks like. You know, I mentioned earlier taking my son to a factory visit and giving him vision. And so I just think it's complex. Like what is it to be a good parent is a multifaceted question and we always feel the hours that we wish we could spend with our kids. Totally. But some of the most powerful things we do are the things we do when we're not with our kids and the example that we set for them and the vision we cast for them of what their life can be. And so I think that's actually been a really helpful idea to me as somebody who, just like you, is always like, I wish I had, you know, now I'm in New York, my kids are not. Um, but I think I'm doing something meaningful when I'm away from them, just like I think I'm doing something meaningful when I'm with them.

Yeah, I agree. I'm really comfortable with, with that. I think earlier on in my life I wasn't, you know, I raised my first million dollars, I was pregnant with my first kid and I was hiding the pregnancy. It was not something I was comfortable with. Sure. Because there's this assumption in startup land that you never stop working. Oh, I was gonna say that's very much a tech thing. Yeah. And you could, like, we can't talk about maternity leave and especially, you know, 11 years ago, or at least that's how I perceived it. But now I have the confidence and the wisdom with age and experience that it really doesn't matter. And You know, I feel like I do spend a lot of time with my kids despite my travels. And actually when I'm there, we have a lot of quality time and I'm very fulfilled. I do what I love and I need to do this to be a better parent for them.

How— can we switch over to the— I wanna talk AI, is that cool? 'Cause your background is tech. How are you thinking about AI, Hulken, AI consumer, all of it? I actually was curious, like, do you have philosophies on this? How are you using it?

Yeah, it's interesting. It's an ongoing debate, to be honest. So, the first step for us with AI was to have an AI infrastructure in the office. Again, lean team, trying to be more efficient, facing tremendous scale. So, we hired a company to create this infrastructure, create a company brain to touch every aspect of the business from supply chain to fulfillment to marketing, et cetera. And so now every team member has their own chief of staff that pulls information from the brain. Our chief of staffs are, you know, talk to each other and it's not replacing humans per se, but it's just making everyone more efficient and able to work better. So that was the first place. Now there's the whole creative side of AI, which we debate on all the time. And, you know—

Oh yeah, I'm so curious. What is this debate? Give us, give us like—

Listen, the Hulk is not a product that AI has successfully been able to reproduce yet because it's not a known product, right?

We're not done. It's not in the training data.

Yeah. It's not in the training data. So, we've tried and honestly, it's just not good enough yet. Yeah. So, there's some aspects of creative AI that we can tap into, but for the most part, we still rely on photo shoots and things like that, which I honestly am proud of. Like, we were in LA last week, we had a pretty big production with a celebrity for a collection that we're launching, and I'm happy that we're able to contribute to that creative industry. And, you know, we're profitable, we have cash in the bank, like, I wanna be able support that. So, there's some lines we won't cross. We won't use AI models. Yeah. But I think it's an enhancer more so than it's replacing actual humans as far as we're concerned. But we use AI, you know, tools like Pinpoint for social media. We use a lot of AI in our customer success, obviously on the website, a lot of A/B testing. So, we love it and we definitely tap into it, but not to an extent that it's replacing people.

There's like a, a, yeah, there seems to be this like people-human boundary that we're all figuring out in every business.

Like, where is it? Yeah.

Uh, the design and creative thing was like, is definitely a hot topic. It was for us.

I mean, I know brands that use AI models and their entire funnels, like from ads all the way to website. Oh yeah. It's becoming a thing. There's AI influencers. It's a little scary.

Oh, they're, and they're, they're like, there's big AI influencers.

Huge AI influencers. It's like, yeah, it's mind-boggling.

Yeah. It's, um, Um, the training data thing, I get trolled a lot because people are like, how come you guys don't just use AI to do all your photo shoots? Like at Pela, because we have like 17,000 SKUs when you look at like style variation. And we do, that's the funny thing, we do. But when a new phone model comes out, so like Apple launched a new phone this past week, that's not in the training data. So like, I cannot generate that phone.

No.

You know, I ask ChatGPT, it's like, make me a picture of the iPhone 18. And I'd be like, that's the Seventeen

guy.

It just doesn't work. So there is limitations too. And I think calling that out is important for people. Like, if you want to be, and I find, I don't know what your take is on this, but like, I feel like when somebody comes to your site, the product needs to be as like, that has to be the product image.

It

has to be perfect. It can't be a representation of the product because somebody is making a buying decision at that point.

Yeah.

So like AI needs to, it can exist like further away from the brand, I guess, But as you get closer—

Yeah, we will use it for PDP imagery if we have existing product shots, actually physical product shots that we have, and then use Claude to optimize and make them into PDP-friendly imagery. So again, it's an enhancer. I don't think it's replacing our creative strategy yet.

Do you feel the software background in you, do you feel drawn to go build an AI?

So we actually, we did launch an AI company called Northstone with Lee, so Lee and She and I founded our 2 software startups together, and now we have the podcast, and she's CRO at Hulken. And so when we created this infrastructure for Hulken through this incredible AI tech person, his name is Or, and he was just starting out on his own. And so we helped him build a company that essentially creates infrastructure for companies to be able to run better. So that's our way to tap into it as entrepreneurs. We think it's, every company's gonna wanna do it and we're already seeing huge demand on that front. So it's called Northstone, just came out and doing great.

How the hell are you guys balancing all of this? So you have Hulken, podcast, Northstone.

I mean, same as you, Daniel.

Oh, I have my answer.

I'm asking you. But I think it's, again, it's part of our DNA as founders. We just like never stop and always add more to our plate. I think for me, Northstone is empowering Hulken and vice versa. You know, the use cases are very compatible and so it's not a distraction. And same with the podcast. I think as long as it's all within the same ecosystem, it's just working together.

Huh. How do you do it? How do you, like, you run multiple companies. Like, I'd just love, give everybody listening a perspective.

I think the hardest thing is the context switching. And we're so high capacity, the people that we talk to on this pod, And that, um, even if we're not operating at our peak, we can feel like we are. And I think that's something I've had to be honest with myself about, is that if I'm doing a ton of multitasking and a ton of context switching in a day, I'm giving at best a B, you know, effort on those things. So I found it's helpful to kind of have blocks where I'm really focused on the thing. Yeah. And I can kind of get into context and get dialed in and really focused. Like right now, I can kind of block out all the noise. in my brain about Trevi or Simple Modern or all the other things I have going on and just be in the conversation with you because this is what we're doing. Um, so the ability to focus, I think, is, is what you have to do. You kind of said this with your kids. It's like, when I'm with my kids, I'm with my kids. And so there's a discipline, I think, of being in the moment. The technology makes it harder. And so turning off notifications and doing everything you can, you know, at this point, I don't even think, except for my wife, I don't even think I'll see a phone call that comes in. So if you call me, like, I'm not sending you to voicemail because I don't like you.

Yeah, same. No, no. I mean, who has notifications? It's a nightmare.

It's

funny. I also think different companies and initiatives that we have require different levels of involvement. So I know, you know, now at Hulken, we have such a solid team and obviously as much as I'm in the weeds on some aspects of it that we're still developing, some aspects of it I don't have to be in the weeds for. And I think that's the beauty of leadership and taking that to the next level. But for something like Northstone that we're just launching, you know, I'm a little bit more in the weeds and that's fine and it's temporary and it's what needs to happen now for the business.

That's probably 'cause it's also hitting like your zone of genius being a certain set of things.

Yeah.

As long as you're like staying in that zone from business to business or product to product. Exactly. It's probably leverage for you. Yeah. So it doesn't feel like you're actually probably not context switching that much.

It doesn't feel like it. Your brain is kind of like, I'm in this zone. It doesn't feel like it. And then I turn to social media or I turn to the podcast content and it's all one of the Yeah.

Yeah. I, that, that's how I look at it. I'm like, I'm just always marketing. That's basically what I do.

You mentioned it. I think leadership is the single highest leverage activity because it's like multiplication. And that when you are an operator who has built something from zero, it is very easy to forget that because you just think, hey, the most effective thing I can do is make decisions, be the, be the person that, that is making things happen. And it's really not. And I'm becoming, you know, I think as I get further into my career, I'm becoming more and more comfortable with not being being the point person on anything, but, but, you know, helping empower people and giving, and giving advice. And that's even easier. Like you said, it's, it's very easy to drop into a, a situation and say, hey, what's going on? What are you dealing with? How can I help? And, and not feel overwhelmed.

Yeah. And I think that's why you gotta trust your team. And it's such a skill to delegate. I don't think a lot of us know how to do it right off the bat. Like, I look at my husband, he's a first-time founder. Like, he's not delegating. Like, it's really hard for him, right? Whereas this is my third company, like I'm at a stage where I want to delegate and I'm ready for it. And again, because we're a small team, nothing is very far from me ever, right? So it's not like I'm turning a blind eye, it's more that I have worked hard enough to get to that point where I can be comfortable delegating.

My trick is I'm just lazy, so I don't wanna do anything.

That works too.

Yeah, and that's it. It's like I just, I'm trying to do the least amount possible on a given day, so it's like you have to— I got it. I have to work through—

Someone else has to do it.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Can I ask you about moat and how you think about it between the various businesses you've built and coming from software, which has an own set of beliefs around moat, and now you're in consumer?

Like, well, it's funny because you said software doesn't care about brand, but actually—

No, they do. Yeah, for sure they do.

We always cared about brand because that's actually what set, set us apart in a lot of ways. Because again, the typical, you know, workflow software where again, didn't care about marketing so much, as much as it cared about retention and revenue. And for us, we always put community at the center of every software and every company that we've built.

Very cool.

So even with Ivy, we launched a software tool for home remodeling professionals. We were at every event in the industry. We showed up at every magazine launch, every podcast. We just became a part of that industry intrinsically. And same with early education. And now again, the same with Halkin. So I think people will come for the problem solving, but they will stay for the community and the brand that you've built. Yeah. And we've seen that repeatedly throughout.

You have not talked about yet, and I, I think it's the right time to talk about, you're dealing with lots of dupes, probably counterfeiting. Yeah. In, in pretty extreme ways. Talk us through your experience in that area and the things that you have done to A, not lose your mind, and B, to combat that.

Yeah, that's a great question that we're still trying to figure out, to be honest. When the first dupe came to market, we were enraged. We couldn't believe it. Like, how dare they? It's so clear that, you know, we came up with this, we invented this. We do have some design patents. Of course, they find ways to go around them.

Oh yeah, it's so easy.

We had one lawsuit that ended in our favor, but we've had to take drastic measures. First of all, like all the trademarking in China is really important at the customs. items on all these different websites that one used our imagery, used our name, used our patents, used our trademark. I mean, it just feels like an endless hole at this point. And so honestly, it's flattering at the end of the day. It shows that we're hitting a nerve.

Sure.

You know, when Target and Costco launched their own dupes, that was not the most comfortable thing ever. But you know what? We're now launching at both Target and Costco. So I think it shows again the dupes will come. It means you're hitting on something interesting. And that's why in terms of moat, we put brand as a premium and we're the one, you know, Supreme is not gonna partner with the dupes. New York City Ballet is not gonna partner with the dupes. They wanna partner with us.

Yeah.

And that's why we work so hard and invest so much in brand.

You know, you mentioned Target and Costco. We didn't bring this up during the conversation, but when you're approached by, say, a Target and they're like, we really wanna have you in store, Or if you say no, you should just be aware.

Yeah, they're totally—

they're going to do it.

They're absolutely gonna get in on it.

Exactly. So it's like they're showing we are going to get into this category.

Oh yeah. That's a signal they're coming.

Yeah. So sometimes 100%, even the market makes the decision for you.

The Container Store has been a great, uh, buyer of ours for a few years now. Uh, they just got bankrupt, got bought by Bed Bath. It's a whole thing. Anyways, the, the pool gets smaller and smaller. But they even told us, you know, we were developing it in-house and then they killed it because they saw, again, the brand value that we bring and that working with us works. I think there's exactly, if you're not in there, someone else will. And like, you know, we're fully ready that Walmart will have the dupe. We're fully ready that all the players that we're not in will have a dupe, probably a lower cost alternative to what we have. Just a part of

Yeah. Is there something you'd change with how you've built Hulken? Like, looking back at the journey so far?

I mean, definitely the whole inventory planning thing. We're still figuring that out. I mean, I need to learn from you guys. Like, how can we make this better in 2027?

Oh, no, I lost a factory because I didn't want to figure it out.

Oh, God.

Here's the truth.

It's like, you're always wrong.

You're always wrong in inventory. It's just a question of which type of pain you're dealing with. Like, why did we buy so much, or why did we not buy more? And

we can't be in the, why do we buy so much bucket? No. Because then it's a huge liability.

You've chosen the right side of that to be wrong on.

Exactly. Right. So we, we'd rather be short. It means like slower growth. Yes. Than be on the other side of it and then be liable.

Yeah. I've, I've been on the other side once.

Yeah.

And it's awful and it almost sunk us.

It is better to be a little bit, uh, hungry than a little bit too full.

Exactly.

That's a good rule for life.

It's just generally kind of across, I would say across consumer, across life.

Yeah.

Leaving a little bit of meat on the bone is way better than, yeah, being a little bit too full.

Yeah, I do this with my daughter. I'm like, we call it rules for life. That's definitely on the list. The first one I started this with, I don't know why I'm sharing this. One day we were talking about something. I'm like, listen, Olive, good rule for life is always leave the house with pants on. Okay? I'm like, there's just— I use it. I'm like, I'm like, this is an example of like, there's just things that you should know. Right? And this was one of them. I was talking about like delayed gratification and she was like, oh, I I get it. This is what you mean. I'm like, it started with the most extreme thing. Again, marketer. I'm like, I gotta, I gotta peg this to something.

What age were you when you figured out this rule for life?

I don't know.

That's what we need to know. That's how you know when you're a marketer.

When did I figure it out? Yeah. It's like, I went to work 3 years ago and I just didn't have pants on.

We've all had that dream, but it's like, do you actually live it?

What my first lawsuit, Mike, was. Yeah. Okay. Uh, yeah, let's finish it on pants. So, um, we like to finish these things with what's called the Titan 10.

Yep.

Uh, just rapid-fire questions. Very curious to hear how— I'm always curious to see how founders think about this stuff. So I'm just gonna hit you with questions and then we can chat.

Cool.

Uh, so you get to a desert island. I give you a piece of paper, 3 numbers on the piece of paper that tell you how Hulken is doing. You get nothing else. What are the 3 numbers?

Um, wow. Revenue, cash, contribution margin.

Love it. Uh, you also get to bring a book or a resource, but it can't be about business.

Well, all I read are historic fiction, especially if they're very sad and set in World War II.

Oh, why though?

So this is my, I don't know, you know, like if I can, if I can cry reading a Holocaust book, like you got me. So I don't know, that's in my genes. I can't help it.

Okay. Uh, what's something that you believe to be true about business that a lot of founders would disagree with you on?

on? Uh, yeah, great question. I, problem solving doesn't default to headcount, meaning—

Oh, I like that.

Yeah. I don't think we are very reluctant to solve problems with hiring, as you know.

Yeah.

I think before we go that route, we always think, can tech solve it? Can a process solve it? Can an outsourced agency solve it that has better expertise than us? Yeah. And if it doesn't, and we think we need that role as a forever capacity, then we will hire in-house.

I actually, I like that because that's almost in conflict with your comments on leadership.

Mm-hmm.

Right? Like, to, it's like people who are great leaders tend to default to, uh, people.

Right.

As such.

Actually, no, I actually disagree.

Ah.

Because people who do not want to add more people—

Mm-hmm.

Empower the people that they have with more. It's actually when you're bad at leadership that you overhire.

Oh, that's a great comment.

Because it's an inefficient organization where people aren't really empowered.

I like that.

Again, it goes back to us not wanting to own every capabilities in-house. Yeah. I'm more interested in owning best access to the best capability. And if that means outhouse, so be it.

Love it. Okay, so then what is the single most important word in leadership to you?

Uh, leadership, trust.

Uh, single most important word in business? Focus. Favorite meal of the day and why?

Dinner. Only meal as a family.

Yeah, me too.

You know, the 5 of us.

Yep. Uh, right now, what do you think the most overrated growth tactic is in consumer?

Copying other brands. I hear that a lot.

Yes.

I think it's true in some cases, but I think we've talked about that today. Every brand is different and I think there's some overlap, but not always.

Yeah, that's rampant in ad creative right now. Like there's software companies basically launching to say, here's how we're gonna help you copy other brands' ads. And I'm like, wow, you are all gonna suck real fast.

Yeah, exactly.

Try having an original idea, people. Okay, so then what's the most underrated tactic?

Having a product that people love to talk about.

Banger.

Think of Hawken, visible on the streets. Think of Polaroids, you know, that movement that everyone knows, like waiting for it to be ready.

Oh yeah, so true.

That's,

that's great. Yeah, they made a freaking— there's a line in a song on that one.

Yeah,

that is so good. Alex, this has been, uh, this has been awesome. You crushed it.

Thank you for having me.

That is the pod.

This was so much fun.

Yeah.