YETI: Roy and Ryan Seiders. How Two Brothers Turned a $400 Cooler Into a $2 Billion Brand

**Guy Raz** (0:00)
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**Roy Seiders** (3:31)
I think we come up with about 10 solid names and YETI got mixed reviews.
And I was way more confused than I went into it. So I just like, gosh, I don't know if I'm making the right decision here. But I went back to the same group of 20 people like two weeks later. I said, hey, out of my list of 10 names, which ones can you remember? And all 20 people, the one constant they all could remember was YETI. So that was all the validation I needed. Whether they liked it or not, it struck a chord and that's Marketing 101

**Guy Raz** (4:23)
Welcome to 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 the ambition to build a tougher and colder cooler led to YETI, a high-end brand that does over $2 billion in sales.
It's easy to assume that founders who come up with an idea for a niche market secretly have bigger ambitions. Maybe they're making a product for elite runners or mountain climbers, or surfers or snowboarders. But the dream, at least we assume, is to eventually sell it to everybody. The thing is, a lot of the entrepreneurs I've had on this show don't really seem to think that way. When he started Patagonia, Yvonne Chouinard wasn't trying to turn it into a global lifestyle brand. He was a mountain climber who wanted to make better gear for climbers. The founders of Hoco weren't trying to make shoes that you'd see people wearing at the airport. They wanted to make a better shoe for serious runners. And that's basically the story of YETI. When two brothers, Roy and Ryan Seiders, started the company, they weren't thinking about tailgate parties or backyard barbecues or beachgoers. They were thinking about hunters and fishermen. Roy and Ryan were serious outdoorsmen, and they were constantly frustrated by their coolers. Most of what was available were the familiar plastic coolers made by companies like Igloo and Coleman, and they were okay for keeping things cold. But the brothers wanted something even tougher, something that could take a beating, and importantly, something you could sit or even stand on. So Roy and Ryan decided to make a better one. It was thick, incredibly durable, nearly indestructible, and it cost around $400.