The Best One Yet - 📉 “Worst Drop Since ‘22” — The crazy recession theory. Skype’s audio logo. Touchland’s viral hand sanitizer.

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Stocks had their worst day since 2022 because of T.R.I.C… “Trump’s Recession Idea Concept”Touchland is the 1st hand sanitizer to go viral… Because it turned Purell into a fashion accesory.Skype is shutting down in May… but we think it’s the most innovative tech biz ever #RIPPlus, how Costco’s Kirkland brand disrupted the entire private label industry.$MSFT $TSLA $HOODWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… Costco’s Kirkland 🌭— Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet to listen: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks “The Best Idea Yet”: The untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with — From the McDonald’s Happy Meal to Birkenstock’s sandal to Nintendo’s Susper Mario Brothers to Sriracha. New 45-minute episodes drop weekly.—-----------------------------------------------------Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. It's Tuesday, Tea Boy, Tuesday, March 11th. And today's pod is the best one yet. This is a T-boy. The top three stories at the intersection of business and pop culture. How's your portfolio looking over there, Greg? Not well, Nick.

I just checked and I think one of my stocks is down a million percent. But we still whipped up the best one yet. Jack, three stories for today's show. What have we got on the pod, man? For our first story. The stock market fell by the most on Monday since 2022. True. The NASDAQ fell four percent.

as recession fears are high. So Jack and I think it's time to share the crazy recession theory. For our second story, you won't believe what the must-have product is of 12-year-old girls right now. Hand sanitizer. Hand-sanny. Yeti's Touchland has transformed a health tool into a fashion accessory. And our third and final story, dearly beloved, we are gathered here to remember Skype. Skype. The inventor of video calls is being put to rest by its owner Microsoft. I can't do it, Jack. You handle the rest. But Skype is survived by the greatest tech growth hacks that we still see today. Pass the tissues, and we'll tell you the wild story.

But yet is, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. What a fantastic mix of stories. Love the mix, Jack. Odds are, statistically speaking, you will touch something today with the word Kirkland. Kirkland, you might be wearing something Kirkland right now as we pod. Kirkland, the private label of Costco, has the most 90s logo font of all time. And it's also the latest episode of our weekly deep dive show, The Best Idea Yet.

Because honestly, of all the products we've ever covered, Nia Jack, Costco has the most rabid fans. Absolutely. If Costco's a cult, then Kirkland brand is their Messiah. Because get this, one out of every four things sold at Costco, is Kirkland branded. Get this. If Kirkland were its own company, it would be bigger than all of Coca-Cola in sales.

But the story of Kirkland, which we're going to tell on this episode, starts with the story of Costco. The first store to let you get in on wholesale prices. By joining a club. And Costco's retail revolution began with a man so brilliant that Walmart copied him. In fact, you're not going to believe it. Everything Walmart did at the beginning, as told us today, is a copy of Costco's business.

Oh, it's a stage five zuckin. So yeties, to hear more, check out the best idea yet. The untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with. The episode is wild. We even tell you how Kirkland wouldn't have happened. without a wild airplane flight struck by lightning. New episodes of the best idea yet drop weekly every Tuesday. And you can tap the link in this episode description

because Costco's Kirkland is simply the best idea yet. And if you don't DM us on how well we represented your favorite brand, I'm talking to you, cult of Costco. We're going to be disappointed. The phone lines are open. But Jack, in the meantime, we've got three fantastic stories for today's T-Boy. Should we hit the pod, man? Mm-hmm.

15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea that caused a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is a norm. That's it. I don't even think they need to practice. 50% that's a fat tip. Tea Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, because we're ready to go.

We can't wait no more. So just start the show. Start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor. For our first story. Stocks fell on Monday for their worst day in three years as it smells like recession in the air. We'll share the conventional Econ 101 reason

that stocks tanked again and we'll also share the crazy recession theory. But Yeties, last week, we told you the whole world was confused by Trump's flip-flop and tariff announcement shack. What do we call it exactly? Wall Street Whiplash. Yeah, Wall Street Whiplash.

Investors were more than confused. Yeah, they were. They threw the worst stock market tantrum we've seen in a few years. Jack and I showed up in the pod studio yesterday, and stocks just kept getting redder. The S&P 500 fell by 3% yesterday. NASDAQ fell 4%. And we're way below Election Day stock levels. And it's all because of President Trump's implication that his tariffs could actually cause a recession.

That's from an interview he did on Sunday. But we also have a real-time indicator from the Fed that suggests that the economy has already switched from growth to shrinking in Trump's first quarter as a president. Now, interestingly, in response to these recession concerns, President Trump described this as a transition period for the economy. And transition period could be interpreted in two totally different ways, which is what we're about to do. First, on Twitter, a lot of people think that a recession could be a genius

short-term cure to long-term inflation. Here's the crazy recession theory. People are speculating that Trump wants a recession to happen early in his term because it will fix the economy quickly. You can pause the pot for a second. We'll explain why breaking the economy could actually fix the economy. Here's our best shot at an explanation of this conspiracy theory. For nearly four years now, we've had a big inflation problem that came with high interest rates too. Basically, you're paying more for your egg omelets and more for your mortgage. But if we had a quick recession, as the theory goes, people would stop buying things and inflation would finally go away. And with that economic shrinkage, the Fed would then cut interest rates,

which would make it easier to borrow money, which would help restart economic growth again. Boom. A short-term economic painful recession could kill inflation and end high interest rates. It's almost like you flick one switch that tanks the economy and then you flick another switch that brings it around back. And since it would happen so early in Trump's term, he would enjoy three plus years of us buying homes at lower mortgage rates, the housing market getting rekindled, consumer confidence going up, and inflation being a thing of the past. Now, Jack, I got to ask, won't some people lose their jobs if we have even a mini recession? Yeah, Nick, a recession would lose some jobs, but we just learned the last few years that inflation is the

greater evil when it comes to economics. Oh, we hate inflation. So that's the crazy recession theory. Or another way to think of the crazy recession theory, Jack, is Trump's radical recession idea concept, the acronym of which is trick. I'm going to stick with crazy recession theory. Trump is breaking the economy in order to quickly fix it. And the reason we use the word crazy is because it sounds like a huge risk to just play economic god and again, turn off the switches of the economy. Easy as that. Every president in the history of the country has tried to avoid a recession. Now he's trying to do one on purpose. So that's the crazy theory. But the other theory for all this Wall Street, a whiplash,

is actually our takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies who are watching stocks drop? Make America self-sufficient again. Yeties, a lot of Americans complain that we just don't build stuff anymore. What used to be built with metal is now built with plastic.

What used to be made in Toledo is now made in Taiwan. Well, the economic interpretation of Trump's make America great again thesis is to go back to the old days when we had less trade. When we built more stuff in the USA. And we can tell that's what Trump wants, based on a quote from his Treasury Secretary,

Scott Besson last week, who said, access to cheap goods is not the American dream. He seemed to imply that building goods here in America is the American dream. Now, producing toys in Toledo instead of Taiwan, that's going to make things more expensive. But Trump seems to think that higher-paying American jobs are worth that trade-off. Profits would fall, prices would rise, but there would be more factory jobs in Ohio. Although this would take decades to play out and dramatically reshape the whole world economy. He'd have to rewind 30 or 40 years of economic globalization.

Still, those are the two theories for Trump's economic whiplash right now. The first is CRT, the crazy recession theory. He wants a quick recession to kill inflation and lower interest rates. The other, Trump's tariffs are to rewind the clock to when America traded less but made more. For our second story, the newest teen. status symbol is actually Touchland, a $16 hand sanitizer. Designer hand sanitizer. Yetis, we're going to spell out exactly how this hand sanitizer turns the product from a tool to a fashion accessory. But first, check your calendars, yetties. Five years ago today, Tom Hanks got COVID. March 11th, 2020,

the day the World Health Organization declared COVID a global pandemic. The NBA shut down the season, and we all went to Airbnb to see if we could find a place in the woods to camp out. Well, five years later, one company is still shockingly surging. A hand sanitizer startup, self-described as skincare forward. It's called Touchland, and Gen Alpha is obsessed with this stuff. Here's the product, a hand sanitizer that comes in a colorful rectangular package the size of a deck of cards.

According to the Wall Street Journal, middle and high school teens, they're collecting these hand sanitizers like Pokemon. and then they're trading them like baseball cards. It's the thing they want. It's the only hand sanitizer to ever make somebody's birthday wish list. That's a guarantee. We didn't even have to double check that. Basically, when it comes to the craziness of this,

this hand sanitizer is like the new Beanie Baby. Nick, forget the Stanley Tumblr. The Touchland hand sanitizer is a teen status symbol. And we got the numbers to back it up. Touchland did a collab hand sanitizer with the Hello Kitty brand. And Jack, how did that thing sell? 30,000 people joined the wait list, and it's sold out in the first day.

In fact, during the pandemic, Touchland was doing $16 million in hand sanitizer sales. The pandemic's over. And yet their sales have six-ext to $100 million a year. Jack, this is the first hand sanitizer that's gone viral. We are five years from the anniversary of the pandemic. And teachers are confiscating a hand sanitizer because it is too cool. I see the irony.

So we know what you're wondering. How did a hand sanitizer keep up? all this momentum from the pandemic when Purell, Chlorax, and all the others have slowed down. Here's how. Two fashion-inspired redesigns transformed it from a health tool to a fashion accessory. Okay, so here's the first thing they did. Touchland hired a perfume house called Juvidian to help give their hand sanitizers a scent. Peachy-lechy, mango mojo, blue sandalwood. Those are a few of the flavors you can buy that would make Cindy Crawford's beauty mark blush. turn the whole hand sanitizer lineup into a candy factory. It's like a nasal skittles.

It's kind of like a perfume. It's not just the smell, though. It's also the form. Because most hand sanitizer is a gel that you squirt on your hands and then rub in. This product is a mist. You're spraying this hand sanitizer like it's Chanel number five. Again, kind of like a perfume. Now, their insight here is that most hand sanitizer is a gel, which is actually a bag hazard. Like that stuff's going to fall, it's going to drip, is going to ruin that little econ textbook you got in your hand back. If you get an accidental pump, it could ruin your textbook. Hate the accidental pump.

But a mist is actually backpack safe because it's not going to spill all over that economic textbook. You're not going to get an accidental spooge. The result, Jack, what was it? The fact that it's mist and that it smells nice connected with teens. It feels more like a perfume with a pumpkin spice scent than a hand sanitizer. And that let them charge a premium price of $16 a buck a buck. bottle. There you go. Two fashion-inspired redesigns are why the dance floor at your next bar mitzvah is going

to be dangling with Touchland. It's going to be the cleanest bot mitzvah party ever. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Touchland? Come for the look, stay for the user experience. Now, yeties, there are many ways to build a product, to test a product, to find product market fit. A whole bunch of theories out there. A simple principle we found always works is come for the look, stay for the experience. Oh, or to put that in business terms, Come for the brand. Stay for the user experience. First, customers come for the look. The fashionable color and the smells like a dessert.

And then they stayed for the experience. The mist felt premium and it didn't ruin your backpack. That's how Touchland disrupted Puroreel and is now the rage with tweens. The Tally turned a hand sanitizer into a $100 million a year fashion accessory. Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third and final story. Microsoft is shutting down Skype this May. So Jack and I wrote an obituary to Skype

because we think it's the greatest, most innovative company in history. But Yetis, let's bring it back to the year 2003, an age before the iPhone, when Skype let everybody FaceTime worldwide. Using the internet, Skype basically killed long distance. That was their first destruction. They destroyed the long distance phone call and basically invented video calls.

And Jack, you and I were both working international jobs. Like, you were calling Europe. I was calling Latin America. When I was study abroad in Berlin, I had many a late-night Skype. I mean a Skype. But Skype, few know, was actually invented in Estonia

by a few entrepreneurs with zero telecom experience. They're actually the same guys who founded Kazaa, which is the Napster knockoff Nick and I used to share music. I mean, we never used because we only bought Music League.

Now, these Estonian entrepreneurs actually sold Skype at first to eBay. That was right around the time that Skype became the first tech product to become a verb. True story. I'll Skype you. Sorry, AOL, that was the first one. But Skype isn't just vintage tech. It's arguably the most disruptive tech company pre-Uber. Case in point, when Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion, that was their biggest deal ever.

Recap. Skype was born on Kazaa technology in Estonia. It was acquired by eBay and then later acquired by Microsoft. And get this. Skype grew from 1 million users in 2004 to 50 million users in 2005. And they did it with so many growth hacks. You'd think Skype was on digital steroids. Sit down, stand up and Skype away again. Jack, first growth hack, what do we got?

Social proof. Yeah, social proof. Before Facebook was even invented, Skype got you to sign up for Skype because all your friends were on Skype. Yeah, Skype cleverly would show you who else was on Skype with a green dot. And so you were like, yeah, this must be legit if my buddy Timmy's on it, and that caused you to sign up.

The second growth hack that got them to 50X users in one year was the freemium model. Yeah, the freemian model. It was free to use Skype with any other Skype user, but they would charge you if you tried to Skype a phone number. Again, this is back when people would pay big money for a long-distance phone call to like a landlord. So the freemium model gave you an extra reason to sign up. Unlimited long distinct calls for free.

And the third growth hack that made Skype a thing was their audio jingle. Audio jingle, or as we call it, an audio logo, right, Jack? Because this was the whole brand. Here's the sound you would hear if somebody Skypes you. Incoming. Now, you know that jingle, that audio logo. But what you don't know is that it's highly strategic. Skype actually worked with a composer to invent that jingle. It sounds to me like a gigantic goldfish. Yes. But it's actually a mix of sounds that's supposed to sound like breathing, waterfalls, and voices.

Now, here was the strategy behind it. Skype wanted a sound that would get your attention but not annoy you. A sound that you could recognize as Skype, but would not stay stuck in your brain and never leave. It worked. Added it all up, and it led to Skype hitting 600 million users when they sold to Microsoft in 2011. Jack, could you sprinkle on some context to that number, please? Those 2011 user numbers are 10 times bigger than what Slack has today. Oh, and Slack's jingle? Kind of annoying.

Hate that jingle. Don't stop it. No more. No more. Sorry, Trey, cut it off. So Jack, can you Skype me the takeaway for our buddies who are everyone in tech? Skype is survived by its family of innovation hacks. Yeties, Skype users have fallen 95% from their high to just 40 million today.

is shutting down Skype in just two months. They're going to fold all of Skype's accounts and communication features into Microsoft teams. Now, in this eulogy of ours to Skype, we think there are a few reasons to make clear for its demise. First, they missed the jump to mobile. Skype was built for laptops,

not really for apps. And Skype got iPhoneed and Gmailed. FaceTime and Google Meet, they basically made Skype obsolete. And you can also tie Skype's fall specifically to the date when Microsoft acquired it. Because after that deal,

Skype just stopped innovated. And like we said before, two out of three acquisitions, they simply fail. But the real takeaway of this obituary isn't what we're losing in May. It's what we've gained for the last 22 years. So true, Jack. Because Skype is survived by its legacy. All those growth hacks we just mentioned that the entire tech industry still uses today. A moment of Skype.

Actually, a moment of. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us? for T-Boy Tuesday. Stocks had their worst day in years, as Trump's moves could trigger a recession. Econ 101 says this is bad, and then there's the crazy recession theory. For our second story,

Touchland is the accessory that every middle and high school girl has in her backpack right now. It's the hand sannie that's gone viral. You come for the look, but you stay for the user experience. And our third and final story is Skype. It's being shut down by Microsoft in May.

It was the first tech product to be a verb. Skype, wonderful Skype, is survived by its family of innovation acts. But Yeties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, a few more details on that stock market route. We got some numbers. Tesla had its worst day on the market in five years.

And the magnificent seven, they're down 20% from their peak in December. Also, besties, there's actually a new term you're going to be hearing a lot this week, and that term is stagflation. It's what happens if Trump's plans go wrong. Stagflation is when we get high unemployment and high inflation.

Not a good combo. Hit us up if you think we should do a story on it because Jack and I have been studying it for a while. Second, Canada has a new prime minister and he was elected specifically to fight in the trade war. This guy is a total finance guy, by the way. Harvard educated, worked at Goldman, bled the Bank of England.

His name is Mark Carney, and he says that Canada will never be part of the USA ever. He also said that he'll fight a trade war until the USA shows them some respect. Finally, just south of the border, Buffalo Bills have signed Josh Allen to the biggest deal in NFL history. Okay, we're talking about a human being

who got $250 million in guaranteed money. But honestly, every year we get a new biggest deal. Yeah, yeah, the National Inflation League. That's what it is. Exactly. It's like inflation. Every year, somebody breaks the record for biggest deal in NFL history.

Yeah, we'll put that in the CPI. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Savannah Westwood from lovely Orlando, Florida. Yesterday, we talked about the woolly mouse, which is a mouse that had woolly mammoth DNA somehow mixed in there. Jack, you said that so casually like, yeah, a woolly mouse. Of course the woolly mouse. Well, did you know the earliest known hybrid animal is actually the mule?

Ah, the mule, which is a male donkey with a female horse mixed together. They've actually been bred as a hybrid since the ancient Middle East. And Colby College is the fighting mules. It's a tough animal. And it's a tough defense Colby has. But Yetis, did you know that the mule is not a mule if it's a female donkey and a male horse? That animal is called a hinnie. Same species involved, but different genders involved. Female donkey, male horse is a hanny. And you got to say it.

Like, Jack just said. Yeties, you look fantastic today. And for everyone in the cult of Costco, we know exactly where you got to go right now. Click the link in the episode description to learn all. about the Kirkland brand. The best idea yet. In the meantime, Jack and I will just play a little bit of elevator music while you head over there. Yeah.

Yeah. Here we go. A happy birthday to Yeti Shandra and Gavin Griffin down in Orlando, a couple who shares the same birthday. 25 years they've been together, by the way. Happy birthday to Amber Adams, in Magnolia, Texas, the mother to three beautiful poodles. And Solana Larson's turning five years old down in Safford, Arizona, celebrating with gymnastics and pandas, doesn't get any better than that. Nobody, somersaults like Solana Somersault. And congratulations and good luck to the Ford of Women in Business over at the 26th annual conference in New York City.

These Rams mean business. And happy meat anniversary to Denise and Cesar in Pacifica, California. They're now married. They met at work exactly 10 years ago. And a shout out to Jeremy Fernandez down in San Francisco. Domingo who noticed that on Friday's pod. We said Domino's just launched stuffed crust, but actually he's been enjoying stuffed crust at Domino's

in the Dominican Republic for years. Dominican stuffed crust. And finally, what is good luck to our buddy, Nick Marino, who's down in Los Angeles at Sony Studios filming Jeopardy. Nick, I'm going to be playing Jeopardy while I watched the TV, and I'm going to be keeping score for myself. Nick, you got this.

You're going to beat me. But if you need to phone a friend, call Jack. If it's about the Kirkland brand, I'll know the answer. This is Jack. Nick and I both own stock in Robin Hood and ETFs in the S&P 500. And I have about four gigantic Kirkland-branded peanut butters in my pantry right now.