If you enjoy good American business success stories (no, we’re not going to brag — this time — about Tucker Paving Inc.), we have one for you.
It’s about YETI Coolers. That’s the company that makes the insulated bottle we’re going to give away — and soon, we hope — following our Tucker Paving “Road to 1,500 Likes” event on Facebook. (For event details, click over to www.facebook.com/tuckerpaving. Look for a post with a gold background and a picture of the bottle.)
The need to accurately name and describe the beverage bottle — it’s a 36-ounce Rambler model — had us going to the YETI website (yeticoolers.com) for details. We got stuck there for a few minutes, reading the YETI story. Here are some highlights:
• “YETI was born out of frustration,” by fishermen brothers Roy Seiders and Ryan Seiders, “and molded by experience.” The brothers typically use ice chests as casting platforms during their fishing trips.
• “… (T)he coolers that were out there just weren’t up to our outdoor adventures — the handles would break, the latches would snap off and the lids would cave-in,” the brothers write on the YETI website. “Not only was it a hassle to replace our coolers after each season, but these cheaply built, ordinary ice chests were limiting our good times. And that frustration led us to a solution.”
• “In 2006 we founded YETI Coolers with a simple mission: build the cooler we’d use every day if it existed. … One that simply wouldn’t break.”
• The company later ventured beyond just hardy ice chests and now also manufactures vacuum-insulated stainless-steel drinkware (like the Rambler bottle we’re giving away), soft coolers, and other outdoor gear and accessories.
Built on sturdiness and quality, the YETI coolers were launched at a price point much higher than regular ice chests, but that didn’t keep the new brand from taking off in the marketplace. A headline and subhead in Inc. magazine put it this way: “How Two Brothers Turned a $300 Cooler Into a $450 Million Cult Brand. When two frustrated fishermen set out to reinvent the cooler, they didn’t expect to upend an industry.” (www.inc.com)
The brothers sold their company to Cortec Group in 2012, but Roy Seiders still runs it today as CEO from headquarters in Austin, Texas.
How’s that for a success story? Two brothers wanting solid coolers to pull double duty as fishing perches decide to build their own and go from frustrated to flush with cash — proving once again that quality in product and business has its own reward.
Whoever he or she is, the Facebook-using winner of the YETI Rambler from Tucker Paving will get a quality product, and we can’t wait to give it away.