November 12, 2025 • 31 mins
Paul Corvino sits down with the CMO of Yeti, Bill Neff. YETI is an American outdoor products company that designs and sells premium coolers, drinkware, bags, and other related accessories
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Paul Corbino, division president of iHeartMedia in Austin, Texas,
with another episode of CEOs you should know. Today, I'm
here with Bill Neff, the CMO of Yeti, the drink
wear and cooler company that I'm sure you're all very
familiar with. Welcome Bill, Yeah, thank you for having me, Paul.
Eventually you wind up in this great position to a
(00:20):
CMO of Yetti, and YETI is one of those great
brands that were built you know. I know you also
have the cooler company. So you've got wide range, which
would be more people hunting, camping, and then you've got
I know where I live. I see every woman coming
out of their pilates class holding their Yetti in their hand.
So you've got a very wide group, and you've built
(00:41):
this tremendous brand. And very few have built a brand
where something is synonymous with a product that's not even
your products. I can think of Xerox, I think of Kleenex,
any companies like that, and you've gotten to that point,
which is tremendous accomplishment. I want to learn about that,
sure a little bit, but I also want to learn
(01:03):
about you. Yeah, So where'd you grow.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Up So I was born in Chicago, but I grew
up in Saint Louis, Missouri.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Saint Louis, Missouri, yep. And to get into a position
where you're working for a company that has these types
of products, Were you a hunter? Were you someone that
used these products?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
No, it was so I guess as a kid growing
up in Saint Louis just a pretty traditional played sports,
played baseball, played football and high school played lacrosse in
high school also, But it was really more in more
in the sports space than anything else. My dad wasn't
really a hunter, not really a fisherman either, and so
(01:42):
for me it was just I just like to be
active and be outside. But the path to Yetti really
came through my time at Under Armour. So I was
at Under Armour from two thousand and three to two
thousand and nine, so.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
In sports related field.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, and you a was very it was. It was
small when I got there, and it was kind of
on a ramp up at that time, and that that experience,
because I was in the sports marketing department there really
is what eventually brought me to Yet Anyway, he.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Is another good example of a brand that changed and
it became Originally I remembered as just sporting equipment. Sure
it was, and then he eventually became more of a
lifestyle company.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, it was just tight T shirt.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
How did you get the job there? Where'd you go
to school?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So? I went to a small liberal arts school in
northern Missouri called Truman State University. Really, when you're in
Saint Louis, you're looking at missoo you're looking at and
some of my crew would go to Dayton or Boston
College or some of those. Some of those schools kind
of farther east a little bit, but really it's you know,
(02:50):
you got your directional schools in Missouri. And I picked
not really knowing what I wanted to do or really
having much of a plan. I just knew I wanted
to go to college. Truman State had a good reputation,
it was a small college, so I chose it. I
look back on it, and I really I love college
football now. So I lost out on some of that
experience of being a part of a big football uh
(03:12):
fan base. But met my wife, met some of my
best friends and saw all that. So I went to
Truman State not and I graduated in ninety seven and
didn't really still didn't know what I wanted to do.
I probably majored in social life more than I majored
in in marketing, which was my was was my major.
But and got a job as an assistant buyer for
(03:35):
blouses and two piece at what is now Macy's. It
was the May Company back in the day. Yeah, and uh,
and I was doing that. So I was crunching numbers,
and I thought a buying position would be kind of
fashion and fun. I was in Saint Louis, so it
was a it was a division of May Company called
(03:56):
Famous Bar. It was just a department store. And and
at that point we did that for about a year
and you know, I guess a year and a half
or so. And then my next job was how I
was where I started my network started to grow. So
I got a job at this place called Boathouse Sports,
which if you're in rowing or you're an East Coast person,
(04:18):
this Boathouse Sports selles custom track suits and gor Tex
jackets to high schools and colleges all over the country.
And I had a little territory in Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska,
and Kansas. And my mentor there was like the number
thirtieth employee to under Armour. So I got to know
this guy, you know, Shannifer Brosh was my mentor. He
(04:40):
was the one that eventually left Boathouse and went to
under Armour.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
And then mentor. That's an important thing to talk about.
So many of people that I've interviewed, they've talked about
the importance of having a mentor. Describe what what do
you mean by mentor?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, So mentor it can be a couple different things.
For me. One is someone I could really lean on
for like problem solving or but also I look at
my mentors, it's just people who were like, let's go,
like you're come with me, and yeah, and and and
I had a few of them in my early days
that just started to pave pass for me. One that
(05:16):
trust was there for for me to work hard for them.
But also they trusted you know, and I trusted them
that they would they would do the things. And I
think that that trust between mentor and mentee is so important.
And that's what that's what I had at under Armour.
And so as I.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Got you and at the other company, how did you
get to under Armour?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah, so I was at boat House. I ended up
leaving boat house. After it was a sales job, calling
on all sports stuff, which was great. But I ended
up my dad, you know, was in the kind of
the video production, documentary style production, and he was he
had his he has his own company, and he was like, hey,
I was in Kansas City at the time. He's like,
(05:54):
you want to come back to Saint Louis and kind
of take over the company at some point. And so
I went back to Saint Louis, now engaged to my
now wife, and I thought maybe that was my path,
but I was still kind of guessing, you know, this
is early on in my career. But I was like,
I didn't. I didn't. I hadn't even started, like any
(06:15):
retire It wasn't there was no path. I was just
sort of walking through the.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Motion, going there was an opportunity. Yeah, and yeah, young,
I mean, how old are you at this time? Yeah,
twenty six or something, twenty six years old. Yeah, And
so I went back and started to working with my dad.
I knew immediately, but stayed there for three years. Probably
what My dad's a writer.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
He was an anchorman back in the day, broadcaster and
and started this company. And I just that isn't me
and it is you.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
But at the same time, though, there's a creative element
involved in writing and promotion that is going to help
you later as you move into the marketing side.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
No doubt I was on the sales side for him,
so it wasn't regardless, it was probably wasn't for me.
But what happened was moment tour Shannon had gone out
to under Armour and he was just like keeping me
close and he's like and he's like, hey, we got
an opportunity to come beyond this team sales group. You
want to move to Baltimore and newly married, and my
(07:15):
wife and I were actually because I was questioning whether
or not I should just stop work from my dad
and go figure it out. We were going to go
move to Denver and just kind of figure life out.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
And at this time Under Armor had not crushed over
to the degree that it has.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
No all my friends thought I was going to work
for Armor all and they didn't know what it was.
It was very East Coast driven, very much in the
lacrosse and football space, but it wasn't. It hadn't. You're right,
it hadn't really done anything. So I walked in my
apartment with my wife and I was like, Hey, instead
of moving west, do you want to move east? And
(07:53):
she was like, yeah, let's do it. So we got
the job, move out to Baltimore, Maryland, and started the path.
And that was really when my career started for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
And what was the path? So you went out there
in sales. Did you have the territory that you were selling?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
No? So I had. So we were on the team
sales group, which was really it evolved into the sports
marketing group, but it called on only Division one football school.
So this is when I started learning about how much
relevance is important to brands. We had a whole team
that was just dedicated to making sure there was tight
T shirts on football players at the Division one level
(08:31):
if you went to Trima State, if you went to Temple,
or and not Temple anymore, if you went to Loyola.
So we didn't call on you. We called on Division
one A football programs, and that's why I did. So.
I had about forty colleges that I just toured around
and sold under armour to in We had about ten
(08:52):
skews at the time, and it was.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Had Did you move into the marketing department from there? No?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
So it was funny.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
So for by the way, what role did your mentor
have at this point?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
He was our he was the I don't even know
if it was a director low he was director of
team sales or something like that.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
He was heavy a sales organization. You're strictly on the
sales side at this time.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
On the team sale side. So we had a whole
other sales side, right that was that was zooming of
Dicks and all those other kind of places. So when
when I got there, we were a sales group. When
we started to really get traction in about two thousand
and four and five, you know, we could go to
any campus and get on there and get and get
(09:35):
shirts on these athletes. Nike and Adidas and some of
the people who really owned those properties. They were the
outfitter for the uniform. And the teams started to not
allow us on campuses, and so because they were seeing
our brand kind of blow up, they're like, we make
those shirts like you gotta wear Nike, you know, Nike
(09:57):
compression shirts and Audi's the same way. So at that
time we went from a sales group and we turned
into a sports marketing group kind of overnight, and where
we went from being a supplier to an outfitter and
then we started doing contractual deals with these schools and
we went out and started signing programs, and so my path,
(10:18):
I was on the sales path. It really just the
group stayed exactly the same. We just became sports marketing
and I became a marketer at that point.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
So, yeah, what was your role at that point?
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah, so I was a manager of sports marketing and
then I when I moved, so we opened an office
in Denver, which was ironic that my wife and I
wanted to move to Denver anyway, ended up opening office there.
About twenty of us went out there to kind of
focus on the schools out west. There was some salespeople,
but like in our group, there was three of us
(10:53):
that went out there, and I became a director of
sports marketing for the West. And that was the time
could do individual team deals. You go go do Pepperdine
baseball or something like that, and or even Baylor softball.
Now that they kind of stopped that too, they started
doing all school deals and so you couldn't you couldn't
(11:14):
make your way through those campuses as well. But at
my time, we had a whole we had a couple
of big properties where we had a whole bunch of
little properties that kept us on campus, kept us relevant,
help to the relationships there, and that's what we did,
and it was for me. Kevin Plank, who's the founder
and under Armor, always would talk about locker room talk, right,
And when he talked about locker room talk, all he
(11:36):
wanted to do was create energy within a single locker room.
And he didn't care about these He didn't really worry
about broad audiences. He believed you could win the locker room.
You could like it will spill over for the people
within those in those areas and the people that that
is attached to. And so the intimacy of that approach
is what really I still really love today is like
(11:58):
how can you become how can you be intimate with
your audiences without just painting a big peanut butter brush
brush and being like, these are people like to go
to the beach and then you try and market to them,
It's like, no, what do you like to do at
the beach? And like, how can we be intimate with
these people? And so that time at under Armour really
taught me about locker room talk and how do you
(12:21):
how do you be relevant to a small game locker room?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Yeah, excuse me in a different way, Yeah, totally. It
was just someone says locker room talk.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
He believed that if you can get a shirt on
one guy, this guy's like, hey, you got to try
the shirt out, and you got to try and this
word of mouth, it just starts to spin. And if
you can do that in enough places, then your brand
really starts to lift. And so we started seeing that
in two thousand and five and six and seven at
at under Armour. It was like just a tidal wave
of that growth. But it was just because of the
(12:50):
word of mouth that was happening. We did a couple
marketing campaigns, but really it was just this massive energy
of of athletes talking about the product.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
And what was your next role then at under Armour
or did you move?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So I left under Armour as a director of director
of sports Marketing. I left to go try and be rich,
get rich with a tequila company. So buddy of mine
started a tequila company with high school buddy of mine
started tequila company with Justin Timberlake. So I left under
Armour to go win the dream of the celebrity.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Spirit everyone was getting a tequila company.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
That's crazy, And so we went and tried to start
nine O one Tequila and that was a I was
ran marketing for them at first. I was back in
sales in Denver, and then we moved everybody back to
Saint Louis actually for a short time, and I ran
marketing for nine O one tequila. And the thing about
it was, you know, that was the counterbalance to what
(13:55):
I was experiencing an under armour, which was super relevant,
super organic. Nine to one was a much different experience
and one that I stayed super loyal to it because
of my friend. And I said, yes, I would do
how long you could stay there, I'd stay there for
five years?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Five years? Yeah, and from there, how did you wind up.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
At yep So? At five so five years, about year
four and a half, Jim Beam kind of came in
and rescued us. And so when they rescued us, we
ended up. I was a gym Beam contractor essentially, and
we went around and helped service Justin's tour at the time,
and I knew I needed to get out, but I
(14:35):
was honestly, Paul. I was interviewing for ups jobs and
I was doing. I was thirty eight and I had
four kids, and I was like, I don't know what
I'm gonna do because Beam's gonna fire me, and I
don't know. I've lost my under Armour. I really was.
It was a really low point. But I just through
my networks. There was a friend of mine at under
(14:57):
Armour that was working for the old Goren Associates, which
is the gore Tex company, and they were they have
a they had a small hunting brand out in Bozeman,
Montana called Boze of Montana called Sick of Gear. And
I saw this white tail category marketer job post up
and he was the one that posted it on LinkedIn,
(15:18):
and I sent Tim Dennis a note and said, Hey,
is this a real job. He's like yeah, we can't
get anybody to move to Bozeman though, and I was like.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Where's Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
I was like, that's like a top three place on
my list of places I want to live, Like Bozeman,
Montana was like a. I was like, okay, well, how
He's like you should apply? So I applied and got.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Your ability to move and go where it was needed
is really important. I see that for a lot of people.
And you were lucky to have support and a wife
and children that were ready to go also.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
So I say it all the time. And my oldest daughter,
who's now a junior at Texas M Texas A and
M studying aerospace engineering, she I'm at I had her
in five different grade schools before where she was I
think in fifth grade. So it was like she and
I look back on those times and I'm like, man,
the sacrifice she made in moving so much was like,
(16:10):
it means a lot to me. My wife, Yeah, she
was Melissa. She's a she's a warrior, but she's also
an adventurer, like she's like up for it and she
likes new situations. But you're right, it was the fact
that we could be mobile and go and say yes
to these opportunity.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Was so Now you are in what's the name of
the town.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Bozeman, Montana, yep, and in the middle of God's Country
working for Sick of Gear. And I'm fortunate enough to
work again with a really great founder in Jonathan Hart
who founded that company and Sick of Gear. If anybody
hunts out there, it's it's one of the biggest, you know,
hunting apparel companies now. But back in the day when
(16:50):
I got there, it was still it was still getting moving,
and so I was able to see some of that.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Really grow as your position there.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
So I was a category marketer for whitetail and then
in about four months into the job, that gave me
the waterfowl hunting category two and so I so I
was and this was really the first time I learned
sort of full funnel market like full you know, marketing
tactics and strategy because and it was great because it
(17:18):
was a smaller brand of the Brant. Yeah, it really was.
And so you had the backing of Gore. So Gore's
a three billion dollar company back in Delaware that doesn't
was just like yeah, you know, they kind of found it.
They just gave us the support and we were able
to go do what we want, we needed to do
and what we thought was right. But it was yeah,
the how long are you there? So I was there
(17:39):
for about two years, but I would have been there forever.
Part of what was happening with those hunting and fishing
companies back in the day was they none of them
were very rich, and so we all sort of partnered
together and so we would do at sick of Gear
we do a film, and we'd ask Yetti for some
for some money, and we'd ask Matthew's archery for some money,
(18:01):
and we go and we do these kind of films together,
and marketing and things, we show upt events together, just
kind of pooling each other's resources. And YETI I got
to know the vice president of YETI, Corey Maynard, through
that type of thing, and they were looking though. And
so I was watching YETI.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
And what year was this.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
This was twenty fourteen, and I was watching yet You
could tell YETI was separating.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
And YETI at this point was primarily the cooler company.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Cooler and we just launched drinkwear, so we had drink war.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
So just launched drinkware. Yeah, I mean Drinkwaar has become
such a juggernaut.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
For at that time, it was just the YETI coolers.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Yeah, pretty much. But I was seeing what was what
they were doing, and I could see similarities in my
time at under Armour.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Right, and I could tell them that the very similar stories.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah. And in the hunt Fish space, like all of
us brands, they were just starting to separate, and you
could tell them the way they were spending money and
marketing and so they wanted to create a sports marketing department.
We call community marketing, but they wanted to create a
sports marketing department that's similar to Nikes and Audi's and
under armors of the world. So anyway, Corey knew I
was the director of sports marketing for for under Armour,
(19:10):
and he was like, hey, you know he called me.
I remember the call. He was driving to Arkansas on
the way back from a from a like a trade
show down there, and he was like, hey, do you
know anybody that was in like sports marketing for under
arm or Nike or ADDI, like, anybody that that might
be interested in this? And I knew why he was asking,
(19:31):
and and so that was I was like, okay, yeah,
I have friends that you know that were that we're
in it, so let me get And then the next week,
his like brand director was in town up in Bozeman
doing a shoot and was like, hey, we want to
hire you.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
What about the products that they had enticed you?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
I mean, I loved my Yetti cooler and I loved
the drink where I was using at a time. It
was the energy that enticed me. It was like the
you could feel it. It was palpable and I'm as
sick of gear and you have I.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Say back to locker room.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah it really is. And it was like and I'm
at this place that has amazing gortex jackets and all
these amazing things and and it was cool. But the
energy coming from Yetti and what they were doing was like.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
That's what I want to went back to your locker
room mentality. Get people talking. So we do in radio,
we get people talking about things and we we we
start a conversation.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
That's right, that's right. So he was like, you want
to come down and be the director of community marketing
and for YETI and and so again we picked up
and we moved to Austin, Texas and that was We've
been here.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Became a Longhorn fan.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I got, I got a big Longhorn story. The people,
the Texas Longhorns are great. But but yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
So now you see, now you're down here and you've
got this community marketing position.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
So yeah, so I get director of community marketing and
it's great, and we're going for revolving from a hunt
Fish brand and and in in sports marketing, community marketing,
you're just trying to drive relevance for your product and places.
So whether you're on field and Nike making sure shoes
are on field at the right time, you know, we're
making sure coolers are at the right places. But we're
growing and so now it's the climbing communities and the
(21:11):
barbecue communities and you know, more broader ski and outdoor.
So we're like looking at partners, looking at places where
we can drive trust through trusted sources. And that's the
biggest thing we try and do is like, how do
you find trusted sources, get with them to drive trust
to their consumer base through them where And that's what
(21:34):
we do.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
You sound like us, Yeah, I'm sitting here thinking. What
we do every day is we tell people how you know,
being on air with us radio is the most trusted
especially now with social media the most trustedable media. And
we're telling people that you're on air with your trusted
friend that you drive to work with every day. Yeah,
similar story.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
You're right, it's exactly right. So and so that's what
we did. And so for the first year and a
half it was that in it was great, and we
blew up our outdoor division and went from forty ambassadors
to you know, one hundred and fifty ambassadors, and it
was like.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
This was still growing the coolers or growing the this.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Is growing coolers and drink where of course. And then
we just had launched a bag product in a in
a a in a submersibul duffel bag and backpack. So
we were now getting into a backpack category. And so
that's what that's what we did.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Now had a drinkwear takeoff the way it did, I
mean and especially for YETI, I mean drink where in
general became I think it started with I remember back
in the seventies when people were buying bottle of water
and people saying, why is any why buying bottle of water?
You got it at home? And then you had models
and actresses and actors walking around with a bottle of
(22:47):
water and it became fashion. Is that sort of the
same approach? Did it become fashion? Is that part of
it to walking around with the YETI?
Speaker 2 (22:55):
I think in the last couple of years, like the
drink where category has become broader sort of fashion.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
My wife does not leave the house without that yetti.
It's almost like a security blanket. I love.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
That's amazing. I think so I think the way it
started back in the day was that we were building
a brand that entry into the brand was four hundred
dollars cooler, and so you had to decide if you
needed a cooler that cost you four hundred dollars, if
(23:28):
that was something you were going to bring into the brand.
But what's happening was I had friends at the time,
and I wasn't working at Yetti that were naming their
dogs YETI and like there was like this like want
to be a part of this thing. And one of
the things that Roy and Ryan did, it's it. So
one of the things Roy and Ryan did was if
you bought a cooler, there was a Yetti hat in it.
(23:51):
And the only way you could get a Yetti hat
was if you bought a cooler. And so what was
happening is when.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
People were in airports the cooler to get the hat. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Well, and then so you had this hat and you
saw someone that had the hat, you knew you were
kind of in the club like you were. You weren't
just someone that was just pretending. You either hunted hard,
you fished hard, or you did some really stuff. You
did things that were hard, and so that started to
create this aura. And then I do think when we
launched drinkwear, we really thought it was We didn't have
(24:21):
a lot of expectations for it, but it was one
of those stories where I think people could get into
the brand for forty bucks instead of four hundred. Yes,
And it became specifically in Texas and in Florida because
those were our two big states back in the day.
It was just a flood.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
I see it in Beverly Hills every year.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Now. Yeah, well that was a twenty seventeen thing when
we noticed that eighty percent of our sales were coming
from you know, Texas, Florida and most of the southeast.
And we were like, people in California didn't know who
we were. People in New York didn't know who we were.
So that was part of our.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
And you become not just a brand, did you become
part of a lexicon?
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I like that you say that, but it makes me.
It also makes me nervous.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Is make me nervous.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
I just think, like, you know, we our brand is
like you know, to carry yetti. We want it to
be a yetti. We want it to be that's what
That's what it is, you know. And so the likes
of Kleenex and all those things are great stories, but
it's also you want to make sure that, hey, this
is a special piece of product that we make and
(25:31):
we and we do a lot of things through our
I see that.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
It's it's interesting that you feel the quality in it
when my wife hands hands it to me. You feel
the weight of it, you feel something solid about it,
you feel this is this is something special.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Well, we definitely have. We and we put a lot
of that's because the people that work on our product
put that into it and it takes We are hard
on ourselves when it comes to when something comes into
the world that's a we. We we have it has
gone through its paces.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
How big is the drinkware business compared to your cooler
business now?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
So I don't know, Joanna, what what did we report
last time on earnings? Yeah, I think it's right around
a billion dollars and so we're about one point what
are we right now? One point eight?
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Actually the drinkware business.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Now that's the toll ye drink ware. I think we
reported to be somewhere right in the in the billion
dollar range.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
So the drink wear is your big business now?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, Yeah, it's the we classified in drinkware and then
coolers and equipment, so everything else, bags, coolers and the
drink where Yeah, it's it is our it is it
is a it's a powerhouse.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
So the company has grown tremendously since since you were there,
And when did you take over marketing?
Speaker 2 (26:48):
So I took over. So it was funny, I've had
two little stints. So I went from the director of
community marketing and then we lost our VP of marketing
that hired us in twenty seventeen, and so our CEO,
Matt Ryanchess, was like, hey, will you just keep the
team together for a little bit, We're going to go
hire a CMO or whatever. And so it's like, yeah, sure,
(27:12):
I'll do that. And so I did that, and what
I thought would be a three or four month sort
of thing lasted about two years. And so I was
the interim head of marketing through seventeen and eighteen, and
that was when we kind of went public and then
we had.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
You were there during the tremendous growth. Oh yeah, you
were the interim head of marketing. But that's when the
business took off. It was yeah, and that's when the
brand became the brand.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Well, we definitely did some really good things in those
years and really started to accelerate the growth of the brand.
And then in nineteen we hired a CMO and that
was that was great and she was great, and we
didn't She only stayed for about nine months though, and
at the time we hired a creative director as well,
(27:59):
and so him and I sort of two headed monsters,
so I wasn't running the full department there. I did
that for about a year, a two headed monster thing,
and then they asked me to move into a product role.
So matt Our CEO, I think, wanted me to get
a little bit more broader experience, so I moved into
product for a year and a half. I took over
(28:20):
marketing for Europe for about nine months, and then I
went into a commercial role and then I came back.
It's been about a year and a half of running
marketing for for YETI, But that little four year stint
outside of market gave me incredible perspective what we do
on the commercial side, what we do on the on
(28:40):
the products.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
So what's next for JeI. You're at this point now
where you're I mean, you're you're in probably every country
in the world. You built a tremendous brand. What's what's next?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah, I think for us it's a I think international
growth is super important to us. So you know, we
opened up in Europe and two th nineteen focus mostly
on the UK. We're really starting to see some really
positive momentum over in specifically the UK, but broader Europe.
We just opened Japan the last year ish, so we're
(29:14):
fully functioning within this year, so I want to say,
don't say last year. It was within this year we
opened up capabilities in Japan to start going. So our
international expansion is super important to us, and I think
you're going to continue to see US innovate on product.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
You say you want to continue on product, What would
you say is the differentiator? What is the value proposition
that YETI has that sets you apart from your competition.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
I think the amount of testing we do that when
our product gets on a shelf somewhere, you can rest
assured that it is going to be as durable as
anything that you're going to buy, and so by it
once have a forever kind of kind of mentality. So
I believe our value prop is our performance are designed
to the product and then ultimately our durability that's really great.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
One more question for you, what advice would you give
your twenty one year old self who just graduated Liberal
Arts College and wasn't sure what he wanted to do
when he grows up.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
My advice was, there are going to be peaks and
they're going to be valleys. Just keep walking and don't
forget to say yes to those opportunities because I see
so many people that won't move or they don't want
to just take the risk to go do something. So
I say say yes to everything you can say yes
to and just keep moving in the journey. But it's
(30:34):
not all smiles and rainbows like there are deep valleys
in there, but there are really amazing peaks. You just
got to keep moving through it.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Thank you so much. Once again, we're here with Bill Neff,
the CMO of Yetti, the drink wear and a great
cooler company.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Bags to Paul Bags too. Oh that's a big one
for us. Right now we're doing some fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Thanks so much for spending some time with us today.
And once again, this is Paul Corvino, division president of
iHeartMedia saying thank you for listening to another episode of CEOs.
You should know.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Thanks Paul appreciate you man,
This is Paul Corbino, division president of iHeartMedia in Austin, Texas,
with another episode of CEOs you should know. Today, I'm
here with Bill Neff, the CMO of Yeti, the drink
wear and cooler company that I'm sure you're all very
familiar with. Welcome Bill, Yeah, thank you for having me, Paul.
Eventually you wind up in this great position to a
(00:20):
CMO of Yetti, and YETI is one of those great
brands that were built you know. I know you also
have the cooler company. So you've got wide range, which
would be more people hunting, camping, and then you've got
I know where I live. I see every woman coming
out of their pilates class holding their Yetti in their hand.
So you've got a very wide group, and you've built
(00:41):
this tremendous brand. And very few have built a brand
where something is synonymous with a product that's not even
your products. I can think of Xerox, I think of Kleenex,
any companies like that, and you've gotten to that point,
which is tremendous accomplishment. I want to learn about that,
sure a little bit, but I also want to learn
(01:03):
about you. Yeah, So where'd you grow.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Up So I was born in Chicago, but I grew
up in Saint Louis, Missouri.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Saint Louis, Missouri, yep. And to get into a position
where you're working for a company that has these types
of products, Were you a hunter? Were you someone that
used these products?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
No, it was so I guess as a kid growing
up in Saint Louis just a pretty traditional played sports,
played baseball, played football and high school played lacrosse in
high school also, But it was really more in more
in the sports space than anything else. My dad wasn't
really a hunter, not really a fisherman either, and so
(01:42):
for me it was just I just like to be
active and be outside. But the path to Yetti really
came through my time at Under Armour. So I was
at Under Armour from two thousand and three to two
thousand and nine, so.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
In sports related field.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, and you a was very it was. It was
small when I got there, and it was kind of
on a ramp up at that time, and that that experience,
because I was in the sports marketing department there really
is what eventually brought me to Yet Anyway, he.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Is another good example of a brand that changed and
it became Originally I remembered as just sporting equipment. Sure
it was, and then he eventually became more of a
lifestyle company.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, it was just tight T shirt.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
How did you get the job there? Where'd you go
to school?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So? I went to a small liberal arts school in
northern Missouri called Truman State University. Really, when you're in
Saint Louis, you're looking at missoo you're looking at and
some of my crew would go to Dayton or Boston
College or some of those. Some of those schools kind
of farther east a little bit, but really it's you know,
(02:50):
you got your directional schools in Missouri. And I picked
not really knowing what I wanted to do or really
having much of a plan. I just knew I wanted
to go to college. Truman State had a good reputation,
it was a small college, so I chose it. I
look back on it, and I really I love college
football now. So I lost out on some of that
experience of being a part of a big football uh
(03:12):
fan base. But met my wife, met some of my
best friends and saw all that. So I went to
Truman State not and I graduated in ninety seven and
didn't really still didn't know what I wanted to do.
I probably majored in social life more than I majored
in in marketing, which was my was was my major.
But and got a job as an assistant buyer for
(03:35):
blouses and two piece at what is now Macy's. It
was the May Company back in the day. Yeah, and uh,
and I was doing that. So I was crunching numbers,
and I thought a buying position would be kind of
fashion and fun. I was in Saint Louis, so it
was a it was a division of May Company called
(03:56):
Famous Bar. It was just a department store. And and
at that point we did that for about a year
and you know, I guess a year and a half
or so. And then my next job was how I
was where I started my network started to grow. So
I got a job at this place called Boathouse Sports,
which if you're in rowing or you're an East Coast person,
(04:18):
this Boathouse Sports selles custom track suits and gor Tex
jackets to high schools and colleges all over the country.
And I had a little territory in Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska,
and Kansas. And my mentor there was like the number
thirtieth employee to under Armour. So I got to know
this guy, you know, Shannifer Brosh was my mentor. He
(04:40):
was the one that eventually left Boathouse and went to
under Armour.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
And then mentor. That's an important thing to talk about.
So many of people that I've interviewed, they've talked about
the importance of having a mentor. Describe what what do
you mean by mentor?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, So mentor it can be a couple different things.
For me. One is someone I could really lean on
for like problem solving or but also I look at
my mentors, it's just people who were like, let's go,
like you're come with me, and yeah, and and and
I had a few of them in my early days
that just started to pave pass for me. One that
(05:16):
trust was there for for me to work hard for them.
But also they trusted you know, and I trusted them
that they would they would do the things. And I
think that that trust between mentor and mentee is so important.
And that's what that's what I had at under Armour.
And so as I.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Got you and at the other company, how did you
get to under Armour?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah, so I was at boat House. I ended up
leaving boat house. After it was a sales job, calling
on all sports stuff, which was great. But I ended
up my dad, you know, was in the kind of
the video production, documentary style production, and he was he
had his he has his own company, and he was like, hey,
I was in Kansas City at the time. He's like,
(05:54):
you want to come back to Saint Louis and kind
of take over the company at some point. And so
I went back to Saint Louis, now engaged to my
now wife, and I thought maybe that was my path,
but I was still kind of guessing, you know, this
is early on in my career. But I was like,
I didn't. I didn't. I hadn't even started, like any
(06:15):
retire It wasn't there was no path. I was just
sort of walking through the.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Motion, going there was an opportunity. Yeah, and yeah, young,
I mean, how old are you at this time? Yeah,
twenty six or something, twenty six years old. Yeah, And
so I went back and started to working with my dad.
I knew immediately, but stayed there for three years. Probably
what My dad's a writer.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
He was an anchorman back in the day, broadcaster and
and started this company. And I just that isn't me
and it is you.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
But at the same time, though, there's a creative element
involved in writing and promotion that is going to help
you later as you move into the marketing side.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
No doubt I was on the sales side for him,
so it wasn't regardless, it was probably wasn't for me.
But what happened was moment tour Shannon had gone out
to under Armour and he was just like keeping me
close and he's like and he's like, hey, we got
an opportunity to come beyond this team sales group. You
want to move to Baltimore and newly married, and my
(07:15):
wife and I were actually because I was questioning whether
or not I should just stop work from my dad
and go figure it out. We were going to go
move to Denver and just kind of figure life out.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
And at this time Under Armor had not crushed over
to the degree that it has.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
No all my friends thought I was going to work
for Armor all and they didn't know what it was.
It was very East Coast driven, very much in the
lacrosse and football space, but it wasn't. It hadn't. You're right,
it hadn't really done anything. So I walked in my
apartment with my wife and I was like, Hey, instead
of moving west, do you want to move east? And
(07:53):
she was like, yeah, let's do it. So we got
the job, move out to Baltimore, Maryland, and started the path.
And that was really when my career started for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
And what was the path? So you went out there
in sales. Did you have the territory that you were selling?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
No? So I had. So we were on the team
sales group, which was really it evolved into the sports
marketing group, but it called on only Division one football school.
So this is when I started learning about how much
relevance is important to brands. We had a whole team
that was just dedicated to making sure there was tight
T shirts on football players at the Division one level
(08:31):
if you went to Trima State, if you went to Temple,
or and not Temple anymore, if you went to Loyola.
So we didn't call on you. We called on Division
one A football programs, and that's why I did. So.
I had about forty colleges that I just toured around
and sold under armour to in We had about ten
(08:52):
skews at the time, and it was.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Had Did you move into the marketing department from there? No?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
So it was funny.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
So for by the way, what role did your mentor
have at this point?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
He was our he was the I don't even know
if it was a director low he was director of
team sales or something like that.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
He was heavy a sales organization. You're strictly on the
sales side at this time.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
On the team sale side. So we had a whole
other sales side, right that was that was zooming of
Dicks and all those other kind of places. So when
when I got there, we were a sales group. When
we started to really get traction in about two thousand
and four and five, you know, we could go to
any campus and get on there and get and get
(09:35):
shirts on these athletes. Nike and Adidas and some of
the people who really owned those properties. They were the
outfitter for the uniform. And the teams started to not
allow us on campuses, and so because they were seeing
our brand kind of blow up, they're like, we make
those shirts like you gotta wear Nike, you know, Nike
(09:57):
compression shirts and Audi's the same way. So at that
time we went from a sales group and we turned
into a sports marketing group kind of overnight, and where
we went from being a supplier to an outfitter and
then we started doing contractual deals with these schools and
we went out and started signing programs, and so my path,
(10:18):
I was on the sales path. It really just the
group stayed exactly the same. We just became sports marketing
and I became a marketer at that point.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
So, yeah, what was your role at that point?
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah, so I was a manager of sports marketing and
then I when I moved, so we opened an office
in Denver, which was ironic that my wife and I
wanted to move to Denver anyway, ended up opening office there.
About twenty of us went out there to kind of
focus on the schools out west. There was some salespeople,
but like in our group, there was three of us
(10:53):
that went out there, and I became a director of
sports marketing for the West. And that was the time
could do individual team deals. You go go do Pepperdine
baseball or something like that, and or even Baylor softball.
Now that they kind of stopped that too, they started
doing all school deals and so you couldn't you couldn't
(11:14):
make your way through those campuses as well. But at
my time, we had a whole we had a couple
of big properties where we had a whole bunch of
little properties that kept us on campus, kept us relevant,
help to the relationships there, and that's what we did,
and it was for me. Kevin Plank, who's the founder
and under Armor, always would talk about locker room talk, right,
And when he talked about locker room talk, all he
(11:36):
wanted to do was create energy within a single locker room.
And he didn't care about these He didn't really worry
about broad audiences. He believed you could win the locker room.
You could like it will spill over for the people
within those in those areas and the people that that
is attached to. And so the intimacy of that approach
is what really I still really love today is like
(11:58):
how can you become how can you be intimate with
your audiences without just painting a big peanut butter brush
brush and being like, these are people like to go
to the beach and then you try and market to them,
It's like, no, what do you like to do at
the beach? And like, how can we be intimate with
these people? And so that time at under Armour really
taught me about locker room talk and how do you
(12:21):
how do you be relevant to a small game locker room?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Yeah, excuse me in a different way, Yeah, totally. It
was just someone says locker room talk.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
He believed that if you can get a shirt on
one guy, this guy's like, hey, you got to try
the shirt out, and you got to try and this
word of mouth, it just starts to spin. And if
you can do that in enough places, then your brand
really starts to lift. And so we started seeing that
in two thousand and five and six and seven at
at under Armour. It was like just a tidal wave
of that growth. But it was just because of the
(12:50):
word of mouth that was happening. We did a couple
marketing campaigns, but really it was just this massive energy
of of athletes talking about the product.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
And what was your next role then at under Armour
or did you move?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So I left under Armour as a director of director
of sports Marketing. I left to go try and be rich,
get rich with a tequila company. So buddy of mine
started a tequila company with high school buddy of mine
started tequila company with Justin Timberlake. So I left under
Armour to go win the dream of the celebrity.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Spirit everyone was getting a tequila company.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
That's crazy, And so we went and tried to start
nine O one Tequila and that was a I was
ran marketing for them at first. I was back in
sales in Denver, and then we moved everybody back to
Saint Louis actually for a short time, and I ran
marketing for nine O one tequila. And the thing about
it was, you know, that was the counterbalance to what
(13:55):
I was experiencing an under armour, which was super relevant,
super organic. Nine to one was a much different experience
and one that I stayed super loyal to it because
of my friend. And I said, yes, I would do
how long you could stay there, I'd stay there for
five years?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Five years? Yeah, and from there, how did you wind up.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
At yep So? At five so five years, about year
four and a half, Jim Beam kind of came in
and rescued us. And so when they rescued us, we
ended up. I was a gym Beam contractor essentially, and
we went around and helped service Justin's tour at the time,
and I knew I needed to get out, but I
(14:35):
was honestly, Paul. I was interviewing for ups jobs and
I was doing. I was thirty eight and I had
four kids, and I was like, I don't know what
I'm gonna do because Beam's gonna fire me, and I
don't know. I've lost my under Armour. I really was.
It was a really low point. But I just through
my networks. There was a friend of mine at under
(14:57):
Armour that was working for the old Goren Associates, which
is the gore Tex company, and they were they have
a they had a small hunting brand out in Bozeman,
Montana called Boze of Montana called Sick of Gear. And
I saw this white tail category marketer job post up
and he was the one that posted it on LinkedIn,
(15:18):
and I sent Tim Dennis a note and said, Hey,
is this a real job. He's like yeah, we can't
get anybody to move to Bozeman though, and I was like.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Where's Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
I was like, that's like a top three place on
my list of places I want to live, Like Bozeman,
Montana was like a. I was like, okay, well, how
He's like you should apply? So I applied and got.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Your ability to move and go where it was needed
is really important. I see that for a lot of people.
And you were lucky to have support and a wife
and children that were ready to go also.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
So I say it all the time. And my oldest daughter,
who's now a junior at Texas M Texas A and
M studying aerospace engineering, she I'm at I had her
in five different grade schools before where she was I
think in fifth grade. So it was like she and
I look back on those times and I'm like, man,
the sacrifice she made in moving so much was like,
(16:10):
it means a lot to me. My wife, Yeah, she
was Melissa. She's a she's a warrior, but she's also
an adventurer, like she's like up for it and she
likes new situations. But you're right, it was the fact
that we could be mobile and go and say yes
to these opportunity.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Was so Now you are in what's the name of
the town.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Bozeman, Montana, yep, and in the middle of God's Country
working for Sick of Gear. And I'm fortunate enough to
work again with a really great founder in Jonathan Hart
who founded that company and Sick of Gear. If anybody
hunts out there, it's it's one of the biggest, you know,
hunting apparel companies now. But back in the day when
(16:50):
I got there, it was still it was still getting moving,
and so I was able to see some of that.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Really grow as your position there.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
So I was a category marketer for whitetail and then
in about four months into the job, that gave me
the waterfowl hunting category two and so I so I
was and this was really the first time I learned
sort of full funnel market like full you know, marketing
tactics and strategy because and it was great because it
(17:18):
was a smaller brand of the Brant. Yeah, it really was.
And so you had the backing of Gore. So Gore's
a three billion dollar company back in Delaware that doesn't
was just like yeah, you know, they kind of found it.
They just gave us the support and we were able
to go do what we want, we needed to do
and what we thought was right. But it was yeah,
the how long are you there? So I was there
(17:39):
for about two years, but I would have been there forever.
Part of what was happening with those hunting and fishing
companies back in the day was they none of them
were very rich, and so we all sort of partnered
together and so we would do at sick of Gear
we do a film, and we'd ask Yetti for some
for some money, and we'd ask Matthew's archery for some money,
(18:01):
and we go and we do these kind of films together,
and marketing and things, we show upt events together, just
kind of pooling each other's resources. And YETI I got
to know the vice president of YETI, Corey Maynard, through
that type of thing, and they were looking though. And
so I was watching YETI.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
And what year was this.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
This was twenty fourteen, and I was watching yet You
could tell YETI was separating.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
And YETI at this point was primarily the cooler company.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Cooler and we just launched drinkwear, so we had drink war.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
So just launched drinkware. Yeah, I mean Drinkwaar has become
such a juggernaut.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
For at that time, it was just the YETI coolers.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Yeah, pretty much. But I was seeing what was what
they were doing, and I could see similarities in my
time at under Armour.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Right, and I could tell them that the very similar stories.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah. And in the hunt Fish space, like all of
us brands, they were just starting to separate, and you
could tell them the way they were spending money and
marketing and so they wanted to create a sports marketing department.
We call community marketing, but they wanted to create a
sports marketing department that's similar to Nikes and Audi's and
under armors of the world. So anyway, Corey knew I
was the director of sports marketing for for under Armour,
(19:10):
and he was like, hey, you know he called me.
I remember the call. He was driving to Arkansas on
the way back from a from a like a trade
show down there, and he was like, hey, do you
know anybody that was in like sports marketing for under
arm or Nike or ADDI, like, anybody that that might
be interested in this? And I knew why he was asking,
(19:31):
and and so that was I was like, okay, yeah,
I have friends that you know that were that we're
in it, so let me get And then the next week,
his like brand director was in town up in Bozeman
doing a shoot and was like, hey, we want to
hire you.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
What about the products that they had enticed you?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
I mean, I loved my Yetti cooler and I loved
the drink where I was using at a time. It
was the energy that enticed me. It was like the
you could feel it. It was palpable and I'm as
sick of gear and you have I.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Say back to locker room.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah it really is. And it was like and I'm
at this place that has amazing gortex jackets and all
these amazing things and and it was cool. But the
energy coming from Yetti and what they were doing was like.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
That's what I want to went back to your locker
room mentality. Get people talking. So we do in radio,
we get people talking about things and we we we
start a conversation.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
That's right, that's right. So he was like, you want
to come down and be the director of community marketing
and for YETI and and so again we picked up
and we moved to Austin, Texas and that was We've
been here.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Became a Longhorn fan.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I got, I got a big Longhorn story. The people,
the Texas Longhorns are great. But but yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
So now you see, now you're down here and you've
got this community marketing position.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
So yeah, so I get director of community marketing and
it's great, and we're going for revolving from a hunt
Fish brand and and in in sports marketing, community marketing,
you're just trying to drive relevance for your product and places.
So whether you're on field and Nike making sure shoes
are on field at the right time, you know, we're
making sure coolers are at the right places. But we're
growing and so now it's the climbing communities and the
(21:11):
barbecue communities and you know, more broader ski and outdoor.
So we're like looking at partners, looking at places where
we can drive trust through trusted sources. And that's the
biggest thing we try and do is like, how do
you find trusted sources, get with them to drive trust
to their consumer base through them where And that's what
(21:34):
we do.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
You sound like us, Yeah, I'm sitting here thinking. What
we do every day is we tell people how you know,
being on air with us radio is the most trusted
especially now with social media the most trustedable media. And
we're telling people that you're on air with your trusted
friend that you drive to work with every day. Yeah,
similar story.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
You're right, it's exactly right. So and so that's what
we did. And so for the first year and a
half it was that in it was great, and we
blew up our outdoor division and went from forty ambassadors
to you know, one hundred and fifty ambassadors, and it
was like.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
This was still growing the coolers or growing the this.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Is growing coolers and drink where of course. And then
we just had launched a bag product in a in
a a in a submersibul duffel bag and backpack. So
we were now getting into a backpack category. And so
that's what that's what we did.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Now had a drinkwear takeoff the way it did, I
mean and especially for YETI, I mean drink where in
general became I think it started with I remember back
in the seventies when people were buying bottle of water
and people saying, why is any why buying bottle of water?
You got it at home? And then you had models
and actresses and actors walking around with a bottle of
(22:47):
water and it became fashion. Is that sort of the
same approach? Did it become fashion? Is that part of
it to walking around with the YETI?
Speaker 2 (22:55):
I think in the last couple of years, like the
drink where category has become broader sort of fashion.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
My wife does not leave the house without that yetti.
It's almost like a security blanket. I love.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
That's amazing. I think so I think the way it
started back in the day was that we were building
a brand that entry into the brand was four hundred
dollars cooler, and so you had to decide if you
needed a cooler that cost you four hundred dollars, if
(23:28):
that was something you were going to bring into the brand.
But what's happening was I had friends at the time,
and I wasn't working at Yetti that were naming their
dogs YETI and like there was like this like want
to be a part of this thing. And one of
the things that Roy and Ryan did, it's it. So
one of the things Roy and Ryan did was if
you bought a cooler, there was a Yetti hat in it.
(23:51):
And the only way you could get a Yetti hat
was if you bought a cooler. And so what was
happening is when.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
People were in airports the cooler to get the hat. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Well, and then so you had this hat and you
saw someone that had the hat, you knew you were
kind of in the club like you were. You weren't
just someone that was just pretending. You either hunted hard,
you fished hard, or you did some really stuff. You
did things that were hard, and so that started to
create this aura. And then I do think when we
launched drinkwear, we really thought it was We didn't have
(24:21):
a lot of expectations for it, but it was one
of those stories where I think people could get into
the brand for forty bucks instead of four hundred. Yes,
And it became specifically in Texas and in Florida because
those were our two big states back in the day.
It was just a flood.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
I see it in Beverly Hills every year.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Now. Yeah, well that was a twenty seventeen thing when
we noticed that eighty percent of our sales were coming
from you know, Texas, Florida and most of the southeast.
And we were like, people in California didn't know who
we were. People in New York didn't know who we were.
So that was part of our.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
And you become not just a brand, did you become
part of a lexicon?
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I like that you say that, but it makes me.
It also makes me nervous.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Is make me nervous.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
I just think, like, you know, we our brand is
like you know, to carry yetti. We want it to
be a yetti. We want it to be that's what
That's what it is, you know. And so the likes
of Kleenex and all those things are great stories, but
it's also you want to make sure that, hey, this
is a special piece of product that we make and
(25:31):
we and we do a lot of things through our
I see that.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
It's it's interesting that you feel the quality in it
when my wife hands hands it to me. You feel
the weight of it, you feel something solid about it,
you feel this is this is something special.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Well, we definitely have. We and we put a lot
of that's because the people that work on our product
put that into it and it takes We are hard
on ourselves when it comes to when something comes into
the world that's a we. We we have it has
gone through its paces.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
How big is the drinkware business compared to your cooler
business now?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
So I don't know, Joanna, what what did we report
last time on earnings? Yeah, I think it's right around
a billion dollars and so we're about one point what
are we right now? One point eight?
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Actually the drinkware business.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Now that's the toll ye drink ware. I think we
reported to be somewhere right in the in the billion
dollar range.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
So the drink wear is your big business now?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, Yeah, it's the we classified in drinkware and then
coolers and equipment, so everything else, bags, coolers and the
drink where Yeah, it's it is our it is it
is a it's a powerhouse.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
So the company has grown tremendously since since you were there,
And when did you take over marketing?
Speaker 2 (26:48):
So I took over. So it was funny, I've had
two little stints. So I went from the director of
community marketing and then we lost our VP of marketing
that hired us in twenty seventeen, and so our CEO,
Matt Ryanchess, was like, hey, will you just keep the
team together for a little bit, We're going to go
hire a CMO or whatever. And so it's like, yeah, sure,
(27:12):
I'll do that. And so I did that, and what
I thought would be a three or four month sort
of thing lasted about two years. And so I was
the interim head of marketing through seventeen and eighteen, and
that was when we kind of went public and then
we had.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
You were there during the tremendous growth. Oh yeah, you
were the interim head of marketing. But that's when the
business took off. It was yeah, and that's when the
brand became the brand.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Well, we definitely did some really good things in those
years and really started to accelerate the growth of the brand.
And then in nineteen we hired a CMO and that
was that was great and she was great, and we
didn't She only stayed for about nine months though, and
at the time we hired a creative director as well,
(27:59):
and so him and I sort of two headed monsters,
so I wasn't running the full department there. I did
that for about a year, a two headed monster thing,
and then they asked me to move into a product role.
So matt Our CEO, I think, wanted me to get
a little bit more broader experience, so I moved into
product for a year and a half. I took over
(28:20):
marketing for Europe for about nine months, and then I
went into a commercial role and then I came back.
It's been about a year and a half of running
marketing for for YETI, But that little four year stint
outside of market gave me incredible perspective what we do
on the commercial side, what we do on the on
(28:40):
the products.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
So what's next for JeI. You're at this point now
where you're I mean, you're you're in probably every country
in the world. You built a tremendous brand. What's what's next?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah, I think for us it's a I think international
growth is super important to us. So you know, we
opened up in Europe and two th nineteen focus mostly
on the UK. We're really starting to see some really
positive momentum over in specifically the UK, but broader Europe.
We just opened Japan the last year ish, so we're
(29:14):
fully functioning within this year, so I want to say,
don't say last year. It was within this year we
opened up capabilities in Japan to start going. So our
international expansion is super important to us, and I think
you're going to continue to see US innovate on product.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
You say you want to continue on product, What would
you say is the differentiator? What is the value proposition
that YETI has that sets you apart from your competition.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
I think the amount of testing we do that when
our product gets on a shelf somewhere, you can rest
assured that it is going to be as durable as
anything that you're going to buy, and so by it
once have a forever kind of kind of mentality. So
I believe our value prop is our performance are designed
to the product and then ultimately our durability that's really great.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
One more question for you, what advice would you give
your twenty one year old self who just graduated Liberal
Arts College and wasn't sure what he wanted to do
when he grows up.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
My advice was, there are going to be peaks and
they're going to be valleys. Just keep walking and don't
forget to say yes to those opportunities because I see
so many people that won't move or they don't want
to just take the risk to go do something. So
I say say yes to everything you can say yes
to and just keep moving in the journey. But it's
(30:34):
not all smiles and rainbows like there are deep valleys
in there, but there are really amazing peaks. You just
got to keep moving through it.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Thank you so much. Once again, we're here with Bill Neff,
the CMO of Yetti, the drink wear and a great
cooler company.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Bags to Paul Bags too. Oh that's a big one
for us. Right now we're doing some fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Thanks so much for spending some time with us today.
And once again, this is Paul Corvino, division president of
iHeartMedia saying thank you for listening to another episode of CEOs.
You should know.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Thanks Paul appreciate you man,
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