HydraPak - The Courage to Be Innovative
The Story of a Brand
Ramon Vela
5 • 145 Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2022
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode is brought to you by Sendlane and Mercury.
HydraPak is a performance hydration brand focused on hikers, bikers, and cyclists says president and CEO Matt Lyon. The company, which has three brands, has been around for 20 years.
"I don't know if we would have made it if we were a VC model because the first five years were pretty rough," Matt says. "But what that really taught us was figuring out what we did uniquely and where we brought value to the table. And I always say figure out what people desire, and you have to get in between, what they desire and what the solution is."
HydraPak has three brands: hydration reservoirs, bicycle bottles, and effervescent cleaning tablets (for cleaning steel bottles).
Much of HydraPak's success is due to the long-term relationships with suppliers, employees, and customers. That goes for the competition too.
"The people I was competing with on day one are still the companies I'm competing with today," Matt says. "So as much as we innovate and do new things, it's been a very consistent marketplace. We've just been fortunate to grow from being a start-up to being one of the significant players in this space."
An early challenge that faced HydraPak was the pressure to produce products similar to market leaders. Matt says it was his instinct toward differentiation that allowed HydraPak to survive ultimately.
In Part 1, Matt talks about:
* Gratitude toward his father for inspiring the idea to start a company and continued support.
* Why the brand wasn't a good fit with the venture capital business model.
* The focus of the company's three brands.
* The consistency of the marketplace.
* How the company's launch came right after the Sept. 11 tragedies and how it became a good time for him to start a business.
* How he temporarily turned his back on his instinct to focus on differentiation in the beginning days of the company.
* How his involvement in the company helped through his involvement as a runner and cyclist.
* The effect of the COVID pandemic on HydraPak.
Join Ramon Vela and Matt Lyon as they break down the inside story on The Story of a Brand.
For more on HydraPak, visit: https://hydrapak.com/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So Hydropack, we're all about performance hydration for athletes. |
| 0:05.3 | And so we're in the outdoor recreation space. |
| 0:09.3 | Think bikers, hikers, cyclists. |
| 0:12.9 | And then we're quite specific and that we focus on the hydration needs for those athletes. |
| 0:18.6 | We've been around for 20 years. |
| 0:23.8 | And we operate under three brand names right now. So hydropack, which does all sorts of flexible hydration products. Think backpack |
| 0:30.1 | reservoirs or soft flask for running vests or just flexible bottles for your jacket if you're skiing |
| 0:36.6 | or whatnot. |
| 0:42.2 | We also have a brand called Polar Bottle that does bicycle bottles specifically and manufactured in the U.S. and sold primary in the U.S. |
| 0:46.5 | And a brand called Bottlebrite, which is an all-natural effervescent cleaning tablet, |
| 0:52.7 | very big for cleaning our products, but also lots of stainless |
| 0:56.6 | steel bottles and other products out in the market where they kind of brought this whole idea |
| 1:00.7 | of container cleaning to the marketplace. |
| 1:09.2 | Recorded at Send Lane Studios. |
| 1:11.9 | This is not your average entrepreneur or e-commerce podcast. |
| 1:16.1 | And he's not your average host. |
| 1:18.6 | This is the story of a brand with your host, Ramon Vela. |
| 1:25.7 | If all DTC companies were forced to turn off their Facebook ads, they'd be dead on arrival. |
| 1:31.7 | Why is that? |
| 1:32.7 | Well, they overinvest in paid acquisition and underinvest and retention. |
| 1:38.0 | Luckily, SEND Lane makes it easy to solve this problem. |
| 1:41.6 | Sendlane is an e-commerce customer experience platform helping hundreds of D-to-C brands to tighten |
... |
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