Happy Thursday!

Danny Winer couldn’t get funding for HexClad. Investors told him cookware was too competitive and DTC wasn’t how people bought kitchen products. He launched anyway. One 10-inch pan sold in November 2016.

Today HexClad is the fastest-growing cookware brand in the world, Gordon Ramsay is a partner, and their LTV is nearly double their AOV. Danny joined us for a live talk on brand building, the Gordon story, Q4 strategy, and the long game that makes all of it work.

His sharpest line: the customer can smell it on you when you’re just here for today’s money.

I pulled 5 of the biggest takeaways.

Danny’s brand thesis came from one internal phrase: badass cookware. That doesn’t mean Harley Davidson customers. Grandma feeding the whole family is a badass. The 10-year-old making their first grilled cheese is a badass. The single mom is a badass. That positioning gave them room to expand from pans to knives to pepper mills without feeling like a stretch.

The Gordon Ramsay partnership started when HexClad’s Instagram manager noticed Gordon was following them. A DM. A response. Less than a week later, Danny was on a call with Gordon’s business manager in the UK. The deal almost didn’t happen on price, but Gordon sent over a self-made video before contracts were signed, showing people what he used at home. They didn’t pay him to do it. That’s the partnership in a sentence.

On product strategy: every new product either reinvents the wheel or it looks so good it doesn’t need to. The pepper mill reinvents the wheel. The knives are just beautiful. If a product doesn’t fit one of those two criteria, it stays in the drawing room. No planned obsolescence, lifetime guarantees on everything, and the goal is that customers buy knives and boards and mills, not a second set of pans.

On Q4: HexClad does a significant portion of revenue in November and December, but Danny frames Q4 as a 12-month season. The work done in January through March doesn’t show up until Q4. Most brands get impatient with that timeline and burn brand equity chasing short-term revenue. HexClad doesn’t discount. They promote. The framing matters: a compelling offer that pulls someone into the brand, not a markdown that signals desperation.

Listen here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

• Brand comes before product at a certain scale: HexClad didn’t set out to be a cookware company. They set out to be a cooking company, then a lifestyle brand, then a content company. Each level required a different strategy and different partnerships. The question Danny asks isn’t what products to sell, but what people who cook actually care about. The products follow from there.
• Celebrity partnerships work when the celebrity actually uses the product: Gordon made a video for HexClad before the deal was signed. Hailey Bieber used the product for two years before they partnered with her. The rest of the celebrities using HexClad on social, Danny says they don’t pay them. Authentic use is the only celebrity partnership worth pursuing. Paid posts that look like paid posts don’t move product.
• Q4 starts in January: If 40-60% of your revenue happens in Q4, the work that drives it starts in Q1. Brand awareness compounds slowly. The customer who sees HexClad in March and buys in November is still a Q4 conversion. Brands that try to compress that timeline by going hard on acquisition in October are competing against everyone else at peak CPMs with no brand equity to help them win.
• Promotions and discounts are different things: Danny hates the word discount. It sounds like bruised fruit. What HexClad does is a compelling promotion: a specific, curated offering built months in advance, designed to bring a new customer into the brand at a moment of high intent. The goal isn’t to move excess inventory. It’s to get someone into the ecosystem so they come back for the knives, the boards, and the mills.
• Three levers for revenue growth, and most brands only use one: Danny frames growth as: new customers via a hero product, existing customers via new categories, and new geographies. HexClad is running all three simultaneously. Launching in Japan, preparing for the Middle East and India, while also cross-selling within the existing customer base. The LTV nearly doubling the AOV is the proof that the second lever is working.

Danny’s point about Q4 starting in January is one of those things that’s obvious once you hear it and then impossible to unsee.

It’s Thursday, and it’s all downhill from here. Have a great weekend, stay hydrated, and I’ll see you Sunday.

Nik

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