How I Built This with Guy Raz - Stasher and Modern Twist: Kat Nouri

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

As a mother of three, Kat Nouri was dismayed at the amount of single-use plastic she was using to pack her kids' school lunches. She had already launched a successful brand called Modern Twist, which sold placemats and baby bibs made of silicone. So Kat wondered: why not use silicone to make durable food storage bags, which—instead of being used once, could be used thousands of times? In 2016 she launched Stasher, and was soon persuading retailers that an $11 reusable bag was better for the planet—and ultimately, more cost-effective for the big-box shopper. Kat successfully sold the brand to S.C. Johnson just a few years after launch, but her short tenure at Stasher's helm was marked by growing pains and gnawing moments of anxiety, including an unexpected scuffle with the sharks on Shark Tank. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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like which other NPR podcast we start offering a sponsor-free edition of, or what are the benefits we start providing, and whatever else you want to tell us about what you like and what we could do better. To fill out the short survey, go to npr.org slash subscriber survey. Again, that's npr.org slash subscriber survey. And thanks. I had vertigo twice in my whole career.

Yeah. One time was when I was on Shark Tank. Some of the judges are not that. Nice. No. And if you don't know your business inside out, they're going to eat you alive. But what you got out of that was huge visibility. Did you see an immediate impact on sales?

No. No. From NPR, it's 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 Kat Noorie built a better baggie out of silicon. and started Stasher, a storage brand that wants to get single-use plastics out of the kitchen. My wallet is a Ziploc bag.

I keep some cash, a few essential credit cards, and my driver's license tucked in a Ziploc sandwich bag. Every few weeks, the bag gets tattered, and I switch to a new Ziploc. I started using the Ziploc wallet last summer when I spent a few days at the beach. It seemed like the most efficient way to keep my cash and car. dry in my swimsuit. And guess what? It worked. Sure, everyone laughs when they see it. Just the other day, when I pulled it out to pay my barber, he sarcastically asked me if my Ziploc wallet was made by Prada. Now, imagine a world before Zi-Z, we'll call it BZ, 1968. That was the year Dow Chemical introduced the product to grocery stores. All of a sudden, sandwiches and carrot

sticks and apple slices could be kept separate inside lunchboxes. The problem is that we started to use a lot of them. We still do. And ultimately, that's not a good thing, because plastic is a huge environmental problem. There's too much of it, and it's finding its way into our oceans and into our bodies. A 2019 scientific study found that the average human will ingest as much as 40 pounds of plastic in their lifetime. Microplastic that floats in the ocean, in seafood, in the air, in sand, it's all around us.

Only a tiny sliver of the plastic we use gets recycled, less than 10% according to the EPA. That little recycling symbol on your single-use water bottle, it's basically nonsense. So over the past two decades, more and more social entrepreneurs have been trying to figure out how to reduce plastic. One potential solution is in a polymer called silicone. It has properties that act like plastic, but is more sustainable and lasts much, much longer. And Kat Nouri, a parent of three, who packed a lot of lunches, realized that, like many of us, she was using a lot of disposable baggies. Kat had a small business that made home goods out of silicon, things like place mats and coasters,

so she had some experience with the product. But could she figure out how to turn that silicone into a Ziploc like baggy? Well, if you've heard of her brand Stasher, you know the answer is yes. She did figure it up, but it would take a lot of work to convince people to buy the bags. Stasher bags are expensive. One sandwich-sized bag might last several years, but for the price of one, you can buy 120 ziplocks, which is an important part of the story, because in 2020, Kat actually sold Stasher to SC Johnson, the company that happens to make Ziplocs.

It's a sign perhaps that over time, S.C. Johnson sees a future without single-use plastic. But how that acquisition happened? Well, if you listen to this show, you know there is a story behind it and it starts with Kat. She was actually born in Tehran, in Iran in the mid-1960s, before the Islamic Revolution. In the mid-70s, her dad decided to move the family to California to search for new opportunities. He had heard that California's like heaven. He said, you know, California is so green, and there's so much opportunity for us to have our own business and to start a new life together as a family, and you guys can get educated.

Like, you can all have the best education and not, like, wonder what you're going to do after school if there's work opportunity for you. And that was just something that was really important to him because he was three years old when he lost his mother and he was brought up by his brother. In fact, when my dad lost his father and his brother, my dad just couldn't stand living there anymore and being associated to his business

where he sort of saw the shadow of his brother every day but his brother wasn't there anymore. And that was such a blow to my dad that he pretty much picked us up and said, We're packing up our bags and we're going to California. And he moves you guys to the Bay Area to Walnut Creek, California. First of all, why did he choose to go there? Did you have relatives in that area?

So we had an English teacher in Iran whose brother lived in Walnut Creek. And I remember to this day when he picked us up from the airport and driving over the Bay Bridge. And we were two kids, my brother and I, my mom and dad. And I remember distinctly that the guy kept turning around and looking at us. And I kept asking my parents, why is he like looking at us? Of course, you know, when I was 16 and I learned how to drive. We learned that that's what you do when you're changing lanes. So those were kinds of the, you know, and then other things that I remember is that I remember

right when we got here, we just didn't want to be apart from each other. And we went to Montgomery Awards and we bought blankets and pillows. And even though we had three rooms in the apartment, we all huddled up around the TV with the blankets and the pillows in one room together, the four of us. And none of us wanted to use the other rooms. We just wanted to be together because it already felt like we had left our home. And now we were like going to be in separate rooms. So it was just, it was very lonely. when we first got here.

And how did you all adjust to life in America? Like, for example, what did your parents do for a living? My parents did from the get-go. They started investing in property. And that was probably one of the best things they ever did. They started buying some real estate. My dad was really both of them. They were such a good team when it came to managing their money

and working together to, start a business and just thinking of how they would support us. We never felt like we lacked anything as kids. Even if they felt it, we never felt it. All right. So you're a 10-year-old kid in the U.S., new country. How was your English at the time? Did you have, I mean, you had gone to a Catholic school in Tehran,

so did you already speak English? You know, it's really, that's a great question because, when I got here, I actually felt like I didn't speak English at all, barely. And I remember that I used to mix up the word want and have. And it was so difficult for me. When I got here, I was in fourth grade. And my parents put me into school. And I remember that I pretty much didn't understand anything that the teacher said.

And I had really poor eyesight, and my parents didn't know that. because on top of not speaking the language, I didn't want to be called four eyes. So I didn't want to tell them that I couldn't see. So it was a pretty miserable move for me. I felt really out of place, and the kids laughed at me all the time. I felt very different.

And so I was kind of looking for an identity. And if anything, I always say I turned into Ali Sheedy when I was in high school from Breakfast Club. Okay. That LHUK. Uh-huh. Wasn't she called the basket case in that movie? Yeah, I was pretty much that.

And I was like the goth kid. More like in her looks where, in her appearance where she was a got girl that didn't fit in and didn't care to fit in and really didn't care if you weren't her friend because only the people that got her were allowed to be her friends. Right. I'm trying to, because her character was, she was, she was, she was a misfit, right? She didn't fit in to what, and certainly, this is the 80s when you're going to high school. I mean, they was probably, I'm assuming, did you go to a big public high school initially? Yeah, I went to Northgate in Wallet Creek. And I was really different than everyone around me, and they treated me that way. So, you know how they say what happens in high school, stays with you in high school or something like that? Yeah. Well, it definitely stayed with me. It's carded me for a long time. And I refused to go to school because of it. And I was basically forging my mom's name and signing absence slips with my best friend and hiding in the closet every day.

I used to hear my parents in the house while they were there assuming that I was at school. They found out that I wasn't going to school. And my mom intervened. And she said, what's going on with you? And I said, I don't fit in and I don't want to be here. I don't want to live this way. And so she said, she talked to her sister, and she came to me and she said, I think I found a solution for you where you can see that the world is a much bigger place than this little corner that you think is everything that the world has to offer to you. And I guess her sister, your aunt, she lived in Sydney in Australia and your mom sent you to live with her.

to go to school there to finish out high school there, which must have been pretty transformational because you came back to California and eventually you applied to Berkeley and you got in. Yeah. And I got in. I got in. Wow. Yeah, I wanted to be a lawyer. And so that was like one of the biggest winning points in my life where I thought that my efforts could really change my direction. Right.

And so your idea was I'll graduate and I'll go to law school. Yeah. But actually after you graduated, this is in the late 80s, you ended up getting a job, a sales job, for, I guess, a subsidiary of IBM or a company that worked for IBM. Yeah. And you were selling mainly to businesses, presumably, right? Yes. I was selling software and hardware, actually, at that point, to other businesses. I mean, the training that I got in marketing and sales was.

amazing. I remember walking into one company into SAS San Francisco with my sales manager, and she said, Kat, you've got to walk into this account with me. And we walked in, she says, watch, they kick me out every time. And we walk in, they say, hello, Mrs. Johnson. And she'd say, hello. And she'd say, as you know, I'm Gail Johnson from IBM. And they'd say, yes, we know. And you know where the door is. And she would walk me in. She'd say, I just want you to know, You should never be afraid of that happening to you.

So you would walk in and say, introduce yourself and basically try to explain that this, you know, this hardware would be, would make their business more efficient and you would hopefully get, you know, have a chat with somebody initially. Yeah. Yeah, completely. You know, I was sort of like the entrepreneur in my background as an immigrant was coming out because my parents had had every business under the sun. So I started interviewing the people that own the businesses. Like, why did you start this business? Because I was dealing with distributors and folks that had their own businesses of all sizes. And I remember I met this one guy, he was a Persian guy.

His name was Farzad Naimi. And he was working for this Japanese company. And I was there to try to sell him his system. And I got to know him. and he really liked my energy. And he said to me one day, he said, Kat, did you ever know that you're actually an entrepreneur and you're working for a corporation?

And it's funny how in your life, most of the things that happened to you and that you might take a chance on are always right under your nose, but you just don't sort of see them until somebody kind of like in a very simple way tells you that. Had you had you, I mean, you were still pretty young. You probably are your early 20s at that point.

25. You know, 25. So presumably you hadn't thought of yourself that way quite yet. At all. I was lucky to have a job is what I thought. So the light bulb went on for me that, wow, I was an entrepreneur. And I guess, I mean, you were sort of inspired by that conversation. Eventually, you decided to leave IBM.

And I guess it was right around the same period. this is like the mid-90s, when you also got married, right? Yeah. Actually, when I left IBM, I did get married right around that time, I would say, where I was sort of exploring different avenues. What's your husband's name, by the way? Afshin. Afshin.

So when you and your husband, Afshin, got married, you kind of, from what I gather, had this sort of period of time where you wanted to start your own thing, but you weren't quite sure. and you experimented in a bunch of different businesses. First, I guess you learned floral design. Did you get into the floral business at all? I did for a quick minute, and I discovered that my inventory dies. What did you do?

Did you have a shop? I had a corner spot in front of the orbit room cafe where there's a Whole Foods now in Upper Market, because we lived in San Francisco at that point. And I had a flower stand, and we did weddings and canes. and catering and all that, you know. So it was a nice little business, but your inventory dyeing and then also your cash would disappear

because you'd have people that were working the shifts, various people, and it had a big turnover of employees. So your cash would somehow, like, not be what you thought at the end of the day. So it was a tough thing, and I moved on pretty quickly to other venues. Right. The inventory dying just killed it for me. Yeah. It's a flower. It's going to die.

It's going to die. It's going to die. Quickly, yeah. But my next thing was something that took some money out of our pocket, which was the next thing. The next thing was. I decided that I wanted to do an antique business because we met a couple in Mexico who had an antique business. And they lived in Ohio or something. And they promised that they would send me this beautiful truckload of goods.

And I could sell them and start my own store. So the first step was that they, they, sent you a truckload of antiques that you paid for or that you got on consignment? No, I paid for it. Lesson to self. Never pay for something that you don't know what you're going to receive at the end of the day. And so they said, just give us $10,000 or $20,000 or whatever, maybe more. And we'll send you a bunch of antiques and you can sell them, start a business.

Yeah, I think maybe it was $5,000 to $10,000. And I ended up getting stuck with it. and they wouldn't take it back. And did you try to sell any of it? Did you pursue this in any way? What did you do? I was stuck. I was stuck with the inventory.

Nobody wanted that. It was just garbage. So did you at that point abandon that idea of antique business? I did. Yeah. And also, I think during this time, you had kids, a pretty quick succession, right? Yeah. And I had three.

kids, all of them, so they're now 24, 22, and 19. So they're, what, two to three years apart from one another. Yeah. So you've got kids at home and I guess at a certain point, your husband, he decides to leave his job, he was an engineer, to start his own business. Yeah. So he started his own manufacturing company in San Leandro. And by the way, what was his company? What was his company? What were they doing? So they manufactured. test interface products for the semiconductor industry. And I don't know how to say that in an easier way, but it's the test and burn in industry,

making receptacles and icy sockets. Which I don't know what that is. Yeah, see, exactly. And I sold it. So he must have been crazy busy. So we were all crazy busy because I was in there with him. Right. I would literally bring my two boys.

I'd drop one off and bring one to the back office and breastfeed them and have them go to sleep and then go do the accounting and then do my sales calls and then go change diapers and then go back and pick up the other one and then come home and make dinner. I mean, it was just crazy. I actually felt like if I left his company that it would fall apart because I had such a big part in helping. But I guess things got so. stressful that you did leave. You decided like, I'm going to take a year and be at home with the kids because it was too much for both of you to kind of try to get this business off the ground and make it work with little kids, I guess. Well, surprisingly enough, I let go and they did just fine and I stayed home with the kids and I kid you not out of all the things that I had done,

staying home with the three kids was probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Yeah. While you were, from what I read, while you were, you know, during this time, this year that you took off, you would at nighttime when everybody was asleep, it was quiet, you would just scour the internet for ideas. Like something that needed to, some industry, something that needed to be disrupted, you clearly were looking. for the next thing. Is that, do you remember doing that? Yeah. So at this time, I was like hanging out with a bunch of other moms that were really creative and they were taking their ideas to the market and figuring out ways to manufacture them. And I found it really interesting that I knew

manufacturing and I knew sales and I love beautiful products and I definitely had a sense for an eye for design. And I just kind of connected the dots. Like how can I, possibly come up with something that can go to market that I can manufacture and sell to the public. And you were just looking around, just like doing Google searches. I was looking around and I was tagging along with my friends that were doing shows at the San Francisco gift show and that were manufacturing products and had agents and so forth. So I was learning from them. And I was looking at different things to do.

And my husband came home one day with this little box that was a, it looked like a little Japanese and a mini box where it had a hidden compartment. And one of his Japanese customers had given it to him as a gift. And I remember when I would take a nap with my daughter that she would go and she would take the pajamas after I folded them, put it under her pillow, and she'd throw it on the floor after I just folded it. So I thought, well, what if I came up with something to have? a hidden compartment that we could hide her pajamas in.

And we would call it like a PJ pocket. And it would look like a Japanese in a mini box that was hidden. And then you flip it up and you put the pajamas in it. And that's how I actually came up with the name Modern Twist, which was the company that I came up with. So around this time, I think it's about 2005, tell me about how you came up with this idea. What's the, yeah, what's the,

origin story of that company. So as I mentioned to you, I created this little PJ Pocket Hidden product, but I wanted to come up with, I had a feeling that people could knock me off pretty easily with a sewn product. So I started searching the internet and, you know, I was starting to think about from my days when I was at my husband's company where there was so much plastic waste. Like they would make parts and the part would only be like a tenth of, you know, a tenth of, you know, the piece and the rest of it would go on the ground and it would be wasted and then it would be thrown in the garbage. And that really sat with me and I kept thinking, how can, and it had a translucency to it too and I had a design sense to me. And I thought there are all these plastic

things out in the world. How can I come up with something that is more design driven that performs better than plastic. Hmm. I want to take an existing material and rejuvenate it. When we come back in just a moment, how Cat grows modern twist into a company she's proud of until a trusted advisor threatens to walk away and how that threat leads to her next company, Stasher. Stay with us.

I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2005, and Kat Norie has been looking to start her own business for a while. So after doing a bit of research, she decides to launch Modern Twist, a brand that sells tableware products made of silicone. So I wanted to produce placemats and table runners and coasters that were for the table for entertaining, that were made out of hand silk screen silicone, that were beautiful to the touch,

that were super elegant, and you could throw them in the dishwasher, and they would last you forever. The same for baby bibs. You know, I wanted your baby bib to last you through four kids. I remember having a silicone baby bib, maybe one of yours, one of my kids were little. What was it about silicone? Because it is, I mean, there's controversy about silicone. Some people say it's not plastic. I've read tons of articles in researching this episode. there are lots of environmental organizations to say it is a plastic. The plastics industry calls it a plastic, but there are different views on it. Some people say it's not as bad for the environment because it doesn't create microplastics.

Some people say it. Anyway, first of all, from your point of view, why was silicone better, a better product than plastic? It was because it was durable and it would last. And I think that's half the issue about anything that we produce is that it ends up deteriorating and going into our landfills and into our oceans. How much money did it take for you to get modern twist off the ground? I mean, because there's lots of moving parts. You had to design a product. Then you had to manufacture the products and then you had to do the marketing and distribution, etc.

But let's just talk about the different stages that you had to go through. Yeah. First of all, money. How much money did you need to get it off the ground? So I was kind of crazy with that. I would say that I started borrowing money against our credit cards. And I started borrowing money against our home. And I probably went into debt for, gosh, I would say I probably took out a good $100,000.

And with that, money, what were the first products you were going to get manufactured? So I first produced the placemats, the table runners, and the coasters, and the wine tags. Wine tags, I remember that was my first one. And how did you get the, because, you know, knowing what I know about, you know, certainly from interviewing people on the show, with products like these, you usually start with samples. Yes. How did you find somebody to make you samples? So I would stay up all night and I'd look for manufacturers that could produce what I needed.

And I found a factory in China that was really good at working with me to experiment to get it right. And I applied to the first, like the biggest show for gift for the gift industry that sort of like catered to the independent special. see mom and pop retailers. This is the New York gift show, which is called Now New York Now. And it was at the Javitt Center? At the Javis Center. All right. So I'm at the trade show and I'm a buyer for, I don't know, bed bath and beyond or something.

I don't know. I'm just making it up. And I see you. And I say, oh, what do you have here? Give me your pitch. Tell me why should I buy your product? What was your pitch? I would basically say this is one of the most innovative products in the marketplace.

and it's a hand silk screen product that's been made with love. We hand silk screen it. We present the work of independent artists on the surface. And it's durable. It's heat resistance. And there's nothing else in the market like it. And they would touch it. And it was really the touch that sold the product.

I mean, it just feels like there's nothing else like it in the marketplace. Super soft and silky. All right. So I'm at your booth. I'm like, wow, this is cool. I haven't seen this before. And what, what, what, what, what, tell me what are you selling these table mats or these place mats for? And they were really expensive. And that was a problem. How much? Yeah. I'm still, you're making the pitch to me. I'm the sales guy. For the buyer for a container. I don't know. What, how much? I think at that point when we entered the market, maybe they were, I want to say, 1499. nine each. For a place map. Wow.

Yeah. And then I would say, why are they so expensive? I mean, I'm at Bed Bath and Beyond. We're all in the country. Like, I don't know. Can you help me understand why they're so expensive? What would you say? Then I take some water and pour it on the mat, and I take an iron, and I'd put it on the mat,

and I'd take some crumbs, and I put it on the mat. And I'd say, nothing goes through it. It can withstand heat. You can throw it in the dishwasher and it'll last you forever. And they would buy it. Not in high quantities. It was always like really cool high-end stores. Right.

Like the Momas, SF Momas of the world. The Museum of Modern Art? Yeah, of course. These museums obviously have gift shops, very influential gift shops. They had a buyer there who bought some of these. Kit Dombrovsky was my first buyer, and she said, you know, I like you and I like your product. And they remained as some of my best friends to this day. Huh. And so you walk out of there, did you walk out of that trade show with a lot of, I mean, a lot is a relative term because you're a small business. But do you remember, like, how much money and orders you got from that trade show?

Probably, I would say, somewhere between 20 and 50,000 on my first show. And I remember calling my husband right when Kit walked away. And she, She came in. She walked into the show at the last 10 minutes of the show. And I said, honey, I think I have something. The SF MoMA. Yep. And do you remember if I'm focusing on SFMOMA because I don't think you sold a big companies at that point. It was like small boutiques, right?

Exactly. And probably the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts gift shop was the most influential story you sold to. Very much so. There's visibility and it's a trendsetter. And in those first five, six years, were you even able to get a foot in the door at some of the bigger retailers? Like, would they even answer your emails or calls, like the bedbaths and beyond? I don't know, T.J., whoever was. Was that even something you were trying to do?

Yeah, it was more like the Bloomingdale's and the surlottes of the world. Could you get into those places? No, it was very difficult to get in. Did you try? Yeah. And I got in. And when I did get in, it was so minimal. And the effort was so much.

And the process for shipping to them took like an employee of its own. Right. And I didn't have the manpower at that point. And honestly, the independent designers or the independent retailers did so much more for us because they could explain the product in person. And so their sales volume was so good. I didn't really need to be in those stores. Right. Right. This is really pre-Ecommerce.

E-commerce is around, but it wasn't quite what it is today. So you still really depended on those stores. And just to put this into context, I'm imagining by like 2010, this is five years in, when you say you were doing really well, that was probably a few million dollars in sales a year, right? Correct. It wasn't like $20 million in sales. Like doing really, because this is a probably the margins were low. And it's not like, I don't know, Bitcoin, right? It's like it's where it's exactly.

It's silicone products that there's a limited number of people are going to buy it. And then it lasts forever. They're not replacing it. Exactly. That was one thing. One of the buyers turned around and said to me, you know what the problem with your product is? I said what? He says, they last forever.

So you buy it once. Because you buy it once. And, you know, we were, I was doing really well. And when I say that I was doing really well is that I didn't have to worry about having a few employees and paying myself anymore and affording a space. And by this time, I had brought in a CFO and he was working with me once a week and we would stay up from Thursday. He was like a part-time CFO. Yeah, he would stay up with me from Thursday evening. Everybody knew I had Thursday evenings for like 10, 15 years straight.

where Mike would come to the house. This is Mike fake, right? This is Mike fake. And he would come to my house and come upstairs. I'd have dinner for him, and he would just start digging in. And he was like my everything. Kat, what are you doing with this retailer? Why are you just, you know, focusing on this one retailer that you're selling this skew to?

Let's get rid of that skew. And at this point, something else happened after I met Mike. First of all, Mike cleaned up my books, helped me get an SBA loan, helped get our financial straightened out, got inventory under control. And I don't even know how I would have done it without him, honestly, all the way through. He was absolutely my pillar of strength. He was sort of a consultant, right? I mean, he was a part-time CFO to help you kind of map out things that you were not able to. to see or figure out on, I mean, he basically had a perspective that you didn't have.

Yeah, and he believed in me. I mean, he had all the tools that I didn't have. He always joked that I paid him in Persian food. And he was my, he knew I was that crazy entrepreneur that sort of like flew by the seat of my pants. And he was that very calm, cool cucumber. He never got excited about anything and he never got overwhelmed by anything. And I really needed that. Right. Your company, Modern Twist, would not become profitable for, I think, around seven years, if I'm right, which is, I don't, I'm not dismissing that. I think that's amazing.

But it took a while before it actually became profitable. 100%. But even over that period of time, you know, up until it became profitable, it doesn't sound like you were nervous that it wasn't going to work out. Or were you? Was there ever a point where you thought, we got to get a. make it this profitable. I've been in this for seven, eight years. And my God, I'm not making any money from this yet. No, I didn't get antsy at all. I was making money at that point. And everybody was making money. We were doing fine. But what happened at this point is that I met a friend of my mom's at a natural product show named Ahmed Rahim. We know him. He's been on our show. Founder of Nunei T. Yep.

Exactly. So I met Ahmed and Riem at a natural product show at a natural product show named. natural product show through my mom. And my mom was the nutritionist and she's super holistic and my passion was always so connected to food. And here I was producing a product that had to do with things that were at the table, but they didn't have to do with all this good nutrition that I loved and I was raised with. And I started hanging out with Ahmed and the organizations he was involved with, B corporations. You know, at this point, you know, my mom's whole, you know, holistic, you know, Buddhist side kicked in of, are you just going to take care of yourself and your family?

I mean, this guy, Ahmed, is all about community and he's hanging out with all these organizations that are going to change the world. Why can't you sort of like look into producing something that could have real impact? And at one point, Amma turned around and said to me, I'm just not going to support you anymore, be your advisor if you don't think of some other way to produce something that actually has the ability to have change. So clearly you wanted to, you started to think about ways you could innovate or grow, and you had experience in silicone plastics, in silicone products. And it sounds like in your mind you started to think what else could I do with silicones, with silicone products?

Yeah. So my aha moment was definitely, as I was trying to make a bag with my silicone product and with some fabrics with some friends of mine at Graffin Lance, we were trying to... You were trying to make like a handbag? Yeah, we were trying to sew the silicone into a bag and then put a zipper on it. And they were beautiful. But then again, I was going back into the industry that wasn't exciting me anymore, which was the high-end design industry. And I love design and I love the function of things.

But I wanted something that actually could be consumed by the masses that could actually make a difference and sell in volume. So just to be clear, you started by thinking, I'll make a handbag for women or men, whoever wanted, but like a fashion handbag. Well, more like a makeup bag because it would be. be small and it would have a zipper. But when did you start to think, you know, this is actually like sandwich bags for lunch, for school lunches?

When my kids would come back with, you know, all these wrappers and... In their lunchboxes, yeah. Single use bags and I'm like, what are we doing? Like, why is this happening in our community? Like, where's all this going? Right. And you're thinking, yeah. And 45% of all landfill waste is from packaging.

And that's usually from single-use things. Right. So the thing about silicone is, from what I understand, I'm not an expert, I don't like you or a chemist, but it's basically it's made from natural materials of sand and rock. Exactly. And there's different types of silicone, right? Because there's some silicones that do have chemicals and other things in them to make them work, right? What's the difference between the kind of silicone that you were making and using and other silicone? Is there?

So you can put fillers and byproducts and chemicals and any kind of crappy wine to silicone and make it cheaper. And if you're using a platinum form of silicone and it's food grade, you're definitely paying a lot more for the material. What makes it different? What makes a food grade? It's free of latex and things. Thalates and plasticizers. So you're making something that was food grade. After three years of experimenting, you finally come up with the bag.

The bag that you can sell is like a lunch bag. And this is going to be a modern twist product. That was the idea. Exactly. And you called them stasher bags right away? I called them stash your bags. That's right. And how'd you come up with that name?

You don't want to know. No. Just stash stuff in your bag. Yeah, you know, I hang around with a lot of people from the natural products world. They stash a lot of things, you know. Yeah. And they had a lot of influence in, you know, when I was hanging out with them and they loved, we loved the idea of coming up with something whimsical with a very heavy topic of plastic waste. And that was stasher?

That was stasher. And if somebody came to you, you would say, hey, you use Ziplocs, this is going to totally eliminate the need for that. because you just buy this and you've got a lifetime zip-block bag here. Exactly. And I was on LinkedIn again. And I saw that people weren't getting that these, they're like, what's the difference between, like, at this point, the plastic free movement was nowhere yet. And people were asking, well, what's the difference between, like, if I use reusable, you know, a resealable bag than if I used your bag? So I had to really, like, get that across.

I'm like, okay, how do I get the function of this thing? Because here I was with a bag that was at that point when we were launching. It was $10.99. So $11.1 bag. $11 Ziploc. Exactly. It's a lot of Ziploc bags. I'm going to Costco and buy like a Ziplog palette.

No, not a palette, but yeah. So they didn't see the value of, you know, you have to give the consumer the value. And I'm like, well, you could use it thousands of times. You can cook in it. You can freeze in it. And you can use it. thousands of times instead of that. And at the end of the day, you would actually end up saving money. Wait, you could cook in it? You could actually, what do you mean? You could suvied in it.

It was that airtight? Yes. It's that heat resistant too. So basically, I reached out on LinkedIn and I wanted to see, I had a friend, her name was Laura Scher. And at that point, she was another, you know, social entrepreneur. And she said, Kat, there's this really cool concept. It's called suvied that's in the marketplace. Water cooking your food. Water cooking your food. Water cooking your food in a plastic in a container in a heated like you could put in a pot and then you put a suvide machine in a pot and then you put your plastic bag and your food inside of that bag and and the taste of the food is amazing in it because all the nutrients stays in the bag and the taste and the moisture stays in there so suvies been like something at the friendship been doing for a long time so i reached out i was looking

on lincoln trying to see who the biggest suvite player was. So all of a sudden, I see on my LinkedIn that Electrolux has bought Anova. And I'm like, Electrolux just bought Anova. So I reach out to Anova and I'm like, I've got your bag for you. Inova is a suede company. Yeah. And they were bought by Electrolux. So they were going to ramp up quickly and be the number one. Anova. A Nova, A Nova, A Nova, A Nova, A Nova. A NOVA, yeah. By the way, no one, except for people who are super food geeks are even going to know the company, right? You've got to be a a super food geek to have a suede stick. But anyway, keep going. Absolutely. So I reached out to them. And this was really important because they helped me produce my first set of molds.

I meet with them and we get our first biggest order from them. How did you have the capital to make the product? Because usually those places pay 60, sometimes 90 days later, you got to pay for the product. So there's a gap. How were you able to finance that? What happened is that ANOVA gave us a big order, and ANOVA was already in Target. And they needed a suvied bag, and I had a suede bag for them. So this was a way for me to get into Target, and I went to Target, and I already had an initial meeting with them, and they weren't into my idea at all. They weren't into it because your bags are too expensive, probably, right?

Honestly, I think the real thing was that they didn't think anybody saw the difference between a reusable plastic bag. You know, who's going to pay for your bag? So I didn't get an order from Target directly, but ANOVA gave me a great order. And I made a great deal with ANOVA where they had to pay for the molds for the productions because we didn't have them. Right. And the bag would be like part of a kit? They would put it right next to their suvite machine in Target. again. All right. So you, so you, so you, so basically this deal with ANOVA finances the first molds. And, but it's a tiny market. I mean, you got to hope that people, it's people who are going to buy a suavid. It's a tiny number of people. And then then you have to hope that they're going to buy the bag. So I can't imagine that it took off right away. I wasn't interested in that market necessarily. I was interested in the fact that people would get, I had to educate,

people where the value was for this $11 bag. And people weren't getting it from our messaging that was on the packaging. And I didn't know how to message the packaging. Which is why I decided to do Shark Tank. After the break, how Kat gets her first bout of vertigo while standing up to the sharks. And her second bout while sitting down with the buyers at Target. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz. and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2017 and Kat Nouri is just starting to get traction with her new company stasher. But she realizes that not enough people know about the advantages of using silicone bags over single-use plastic.

So to get the word out, she decides what else to apply to Shark Tank. When I sent things to Shark Tank, I didn't look like a small company. I looked like somebody who had some traction. And so when I did the submission, I was very colorful and I had the tools to show them that it was a company worth looking at. And when they contacted you and they said, okay, you're on. Presumably in 2017, you went on. Correct. Were you nervous?

I had vertigo twice. whole career. One time was when I was on Shark Tank. Next up is an eco-friendly alternative to plastic bags. It made me so nervous to be judged by the whole world, like to actually put yourself out there, especially as a woman. And here I was, I had to go stand on my own in front of the whole world pretty much to judge me. I don't understand the advantage of the product. And the product doesn't get me excited. I'm out. But here's the thing. You were going on with a mission. I mean, yes, you want to make money, but like you were going on and you were saying, look, plastic bags, the zip top bags are really bad.

People, you know, are throwing these away. I'm going to solve this problem. How could, how could you even have imagined anybody would be mean about that? I think you've watched Shark Tank. Some of the judges are not that. nice and they'll shred. And if you don't know your business inside out, they're going to eat you alive. Kat, why haven't you put more about the environment and the

plastic-free element? I agree. Maybe that's something that we should definitely put on the packaging. If you told me that and you are one of my buyers, I definitely put it up there. And this is good feedback on your side. This is your vision. You've got to be able to sell this away from you. Well, the one thing I knew was my business

and they weren't going to tell me how to do my business. And when it came to them questioning my business and telling me how to do it, I got a little offended and I got a little offensive and it brought my other side out. Can I ask you, you're a brand specialist. What would you do that would say that that is a better option and it's healthier? How would you do it differently? We can't do that here. We can't reinvent anything. Look, we're asking you questions and you're coming back asking us a question instead, right?

You're not saying, I get it or I made this choice because I do get it. I swear I do get it. But I'm just saying that I wanted to see what you're pointing. of you was. I'm not arguing with you at all. You did get an offer, or I guess two of the sharks were considering teaming up an offer, but you did get an offer for Mark Cuban. He made you an offer. Mark made me an offer. Absolutely. 20% for $400,000. And did you, in your mind, had you valued your company at that point?

I think it was something like I hadn't valued it myself, but I think they were valuing it, at 2.5 or something like that. But he made you an offer 20% for 400,000. You came back and said, I'll give you 15% for 400,000. And he accepted it. He was going to become an investor. Absolutely. Okay.

So the taping ends, this is the part that a lot of people don't know. It doesn't mean this is a done deal. You still have to negotiate off camera to get that money. And you guys actually never closed the deal. In the end, he did not invest. In the end, we spent like $20,000, $25,000 on the negotiations, and I really wanted to make it happen. But I wanted a deal that basically let me still run the company the way I wanted to, and I couldn't get that deal. And I had to walk away.

But what you got out of that was huge visibility. And that airs in January of 2018. And did you see an immediate impact on sales? No. No. Nothing. Nothing. We did, but I mean, it wasn't immediate. It kind of trickled through time. Basically, it gave us like a leverage. People would see it. One buyer would tell another, you would send it to a buyer. We started utilizing it as a marketing tool. And I had one friend whose brother had seen the show. And he said, I don't care what anybody says, you're a complete badass. I want you to run the company exactly the way you're running it. And here's a half a million dollars without any questions. So I took the money from my friend's brother. Yeah.

And I didn't have to take the Sharks money. Yeah. One of the things I think is really important is, and I hope people listening to this, especially PR people listening to this who pitch our show, we get pitched a lot of things like my client just raised $20 million. dollars. They founded their company last year. And they've just raised $25 million. Can they be on how I built this? And the problem with that pitch is that there's no story. If you start your business last year, but there's no story to tell. And raising $20 million is great. Congratulations. It doesn't mean you're successful. Yeah. It doesn't mean. Let me see what you do with that money, right? You didn't actually raise a whole lot of money. But there's a myth there, I think, in the, in the money. in the entrepreneurial world, that raising money is like a badge of success. Guy living in the Bay Area, there's this big perception that VCs and raising money is like

your route to success. And one of the biggest things that I have seen in my own friends and from what I had studied has always been that there's no such thing as free money. You can't run your company the way you want if you take someone else's money. And I wasn't about to let anybody ruin my vision because I didn't start this company for profit. I started this company so that it would support the change that I wanted to see in the world. And if I was going to do that, the VCs were probably going to tell me, that's a really great thing. But you can't donate.

You can't run it this way. You can't hire that person. You can't grow as slower as fast as you want. I didn't want to grow fast for someone else. I wanted to, the company went explosive because we were authentic and we were transparent. Not because, you know, we were trying to like, you know, sell something to someone because, you know, it was just some gadget that was going to scam someone. Right. Once you had visibility from Shark Tank, did that help you get into a.

bigger stores, like Target, for example? Is that how you got into Target? So we got into Target because what happened is that I, through LinkedIn, found the brokers that represented larger companies. And I found out who was reppping some of the brands that I really admired out there, companies like Swell that had done a really nice job of going to market. Yeah, been on the show. Yep, sure. And had eliminated plastic waste through their bottles. Yeah.

And when I went to Target the first round and I got a no, they didn't see the value in an $11.99 bag because they didn't see that, you know, they couldn't see through the marketing or through the marketplace, the reception and the perception of the value of the product. And it was a category maker. It wasn't a hard container. It wasn't a tossable single-use plastic bag. So where did it fit? Did it fit in the essentials or did it fit in housewares? And what did you say? Well, I found out through people that what you get in essentials is traffic.

and what you get in housewares is really you might get an in cap, but the actual volume in sales is less. It's lower. You say you realize you want to be in the other part of the store. I wanted to be where I could show the volume of sales to target so that I would have, you know, I would stay. But you say, yeah, but when you say you weren't prepared the first time, what did you do the second time to make the case and to convince them that they should carry this product?

So the second time, I took my head of product development and engineer, Paul, with me, to my target pitch for the second time. We get to Minneapolis, and I fly in with an end cap. My team worked on the end cap for three or four months. The end cap, I think, is a shell, like a promotional shelf, right? It's a promotional shelf that has information about your company and a beautiful. beautiful display. So you brought that with you? You brought it to the pitch? On the airplane. My team worked on it for like three or four months. And I ended up standing at my hotel with no in-cap that night. Oh, it didn't arrive. It didn't arrive. Okay. So I go to sleep and keep telling myself,

I got this. I got this. It'll be there by the morning. In the middle of the night, I wake up sideways and I can't even move. And the minute I come to stand up, I throw up. And I have major vertigo. There I was. And I had to not only look good. I had to go do a presentation in the account of my life. And I tilted my head sideways and I took a shower and I went downstairs and my brokers

and Paul were there and they all like wheeled me in pretty much. And they sat me in a chair before the buyer walked in. Yeah. And I had had a video that we had made. I went to L.A. and we made a video about what plastics are doing to our planet and how it's affecting human health because we're eating the fish that are eating the microbeats and that our bodies are being consumed with plastic. And by 2050, we would have no fish in our heads.

oceans. And this video was so powerful, we all had tears in our eyes. And the buyer said to me, I represent a category of essentials where there's a lot of this, where I feel like, you know, why isn't there a more innovative solution to what's going on on our planet with plastic waste? And here you are, and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you succeed. And I was completely stunned. And he said to be, I don't even know what you would be like if you felt good. I mean, the video that you presented, did you, I mean, that must have been expensive to produce. Very.

I think it was $30,000. And you had like a production team come up with a video that showed the impact of plastics. Yes. That was the pitch you made. And, okay, so you make the case to target. And they say, all right, you're in? We hit them on our mission. And so presumably you now had to ramp up production because you now are getting this order from Target.

By the way, at this point, were you patented? Did you have patents to protect the silicone bags? Oh, my gosh. We spent so much money on patents. And that was like well worth everything that we did. And anyone that copied us, we went after. Because there were knockoffs. There were tons of knockoffs.

I had a whole team on Redpoint every day that would go on – their job was to go on the Internet and see who's knocking us off and serve them. I don't know what Red Point is. I guess it's a data. Yeah, it's wonderful. You could see who's knocking you off like in three seconds and where it's coming from. But still, it's a pain because if you had people knocking you off, you have to file lawsuits. In the meantime, you're losing sales. Yeah, but you have to do it because if you don't keep some of the big.

one's back, you're going to get eaten up. But I do have to say on that note, I want to thank every single copier we've ever had out there because it made me run like the devil was chasing me. And you have to thank your competitors. You say it made you run because you got to establish your brand. Essentially, once you have a product that can be slightly modified and replicated, the advantage that you have to have is a better brand. It's brand awareness.

Being first to market has the biggest advantage you could have with getting in front of the buyers, being in the market, getting first positioning. It has the biggest advantage of anything. But the other part of that is just keeping everybody away from you so that you can keep, like, doing things differently. And the way you keep everybody away from you is by zigzagging on the road. Right. And being a B corporation and being a one, 1% for the planet and being a woman-owned business, those things were not things people committed to when they were copying me.

Right. You know, I was putting my money where my mouth was. I wasn't a greenwashing company that was trying to make a dime. I existed to make a difference and my team existed to make a difference. How did you, I mean, given that there were an R products that are also silicone bags with the zip top, there's a company called zip top. Was it just at a certain point you can't sue them because they're also, I mean, they're changing it enough where they're not violating the patent?

Yeah, I mean, the thing is, you also don't want to, you know, I always told my team this, you know, and they know I didn't watch the copiers like they did because my job was to drive forward and to drive really fast. And their job was to look in the rearview mirror and to always make. sure we took care of our customers like nobody else and that we had a culture in our company that cultivated everything that we stood for. And people, like, you know, we had millennials in the office. They're no nonsense. If our office was all about what we wanted to see out in the world, and that just spread like fire. You can't copy that unless you're legit. So you, I mean,

2018 and then 2019 are, you know, huge growth years. I think by the end of 2019, you're, you know, maybe doing about $30 million that year in revenue. But that year, a little over three years or under three years after you really founded the company, an announcement went out. S.C. Johnson acquires stasher. Yes. which was amazing to be acquired after just three years. But tell me why. I mean, what was the, I mean, obviously you got to pay out, and there's money there.

Was that the reason why it made sense to you to sell to S.C. Johnson? And I can't confirm your numbers, by the way. I wanted Stasher to be in the hands of everyone if it was going to make real change. And, guy, it's all about distribution. Who has distribution? Yeah. S.E. Johnson's one of the biggest, right, like, companies, if it's a consumer package company, how do you describe it? Yeah, I mean, they're a multinational, and what do they manufacture?

Right. They soap and detergent and household cleaning products, all kind of things like that. And they manufacture Ziploc. And they have a whole arm of companies that are better for you companies like methods. and Mrs. Myers and Caldrea and Sunbaum. I mean, they have companies that are changing the footprint of the way multinationals do business and the way things are produced. And by the way, just for the record, I didn't get acquired. I brought the acquires to the table.

I saw anybody that would have an arm for massive distribution of stasher out, and I weeded them out. And did you specifically look for S.C. Johnson because there was a product that they had acquired that you thought aligned with yours. You mentioned method. Was there anything about that? Yeah. I mean, they have it on, it's accessible to everyone. That was important to me. You know, that stasha would be accessible, that it would be affordable, that it would be donated to schools or, you know, all kinds of things that it would be recycled through terra cycle. Those are programs. that they're putting in place that I could have never done. But then I have to tell you, I, COVID happened. And every single day, I thank my stars, that the acquisition happened because I had the responsibility of 40 to 50 families in my hands. And that could have been potentially a disaster because people weren't packing school lunches.

People weren't going to retail stores. People weren't shopping anymore. Everybody was saving their money. I'll tell you what, though. We were going on a hike. So I had a lot of dried cranberries in my stash of bag. And I did, and I did meet the guy that was going to be our CEO. Yeah.

Because you decided at that point, or you were not going to be the CEO after the acquisition. No, but I had to meet who was. I had to meet Kay Salma, who's from the Netherlands. And the guy was just the nicest guy. And, you know, his DNA is all about sustainability. Why didn't you want to stay on? Why didn't you insist on staying on as CEO? Because you are no longer really, you're not relatively part of the company anymore.

You're kind of a brand ambassador. But why didn't you insist on staying on? Did you just not want to do it? I'm not very good at following rules. You didn't think you were the right person to work in a big sort of corporate superstructure. Yeah, you know, and I have to tell you, Guy. I mean, my family has been on this right. I mean, my kids have been on most of my business trips.

They've been at all, like a lot of my trade shows. They've packed my goods with me. They deserve mommy at some point. And now that they're young adults, I really want to not just be here for my kids. I want to be here for other women and I want to do things that are, that will have a bigger footprint in the money that I was able to make with my passion for something that will change. hopefully the plastic footprint of our society. And I have the ability to do something else that's possibly maybe even bigger.

So that was it. 2020, the deal closes and then COVID hits. And wow, I mean, in some ways, the timing couldn't have been better. Yeah. But they're doing great. Yeah. And I love being in touch

and they'll always be my family. When you think about your journey and all that you've been through and the success you've had, how much do you think that has to do with how just your smarts and your work ethic and how much do you attribute to luck? I think as an immigrant and as my mother's daughter, work ethic is a given. And I do believe the harder you work, the luckier you get. But I also believe that the universe has a power and an energy of its own, some of it not in our control. And if we embrace those things, whether we call them luck or things that were unlucky,

I think that maybe we just like let go of the things we can't control and think of those things that come to us as luck or things that just happened because we took a chance. That's Kat Nouri, founder and CEO of Modern Twist, and founder of Stasher, where she still advises as a consultant. By the way, if Mark Cuban managed to make that $400,000 investment for 15% on Shark Tank in 2018, would he have done well? He would have been clicking his heels. Wow. Cuban, you would have been clicking your Ferragamo slippers. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. We would love it if you could give us a positive review on whatever podcast platform you use. And don't forget to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you want to write to us, our email address is hibt at npr.org. And if you want to follow the show's Twitter account, it's at How I Built This or mine at Guy Raz. Our show's Instagram account is at How I Built This, NPR, and mine is at guy.ros. This episode was produced by Carrie Thompson with music composed by Ramtin Arablewe. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Murashima. Our production staff includes Casey Herman, J.C. Howard, Julia Carney, Harrison, BJ Choi, Liz Metzker, Ferris Safari, and Elaine Coates. Our intern is Catherine Seifer.

And Jeff Rogers is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. This is NPR.