Name: Why looks matter (for your product, at least)
Uploaded: 2015-07-24
Duration: 3 min 22 s
Description: Walker & Co. CEO Tristan Walker explains why design and packaging plays a major roles in sales.

[ MUSIC ] Let's talk about your company, Walker and Co. Last we checked in with you, your subscriptions were growing 50 %, month over month. Has that growth continued? Yeah, so we're still growing. We're growing about 30 % a month, and we're really, really excited about that. More importantly, we're excited about the customer satisfaction. Roughly 95 % of all our customers come back month in, month out just to continue to buy the product. We're incredibly excited about that. We're solving very important problems that exist in a community. And we hope to continue that over the coming years. And you're here to talk specifically about the role design has played in your company. I know it's played a huge role. But tell us a little bit about why and how. Walker and Company we're all about making health and beauty simple for people of color. I always talk about my experience of me going to the CVS, having to go to some ethnic aisle. There's nobody there to tell me which products to use, when to use them, how to use them, why to use them. And Walker & Co. is all about really inspiring that change in the health and beauty industry in the aggregate and doing it with really beautiful simplistic and practical design. And bevel is really the first manifestation of that vision and I think we're hitting a nail right on the head there. Talk about what you call second class marketing to people of color and walking down the isle like that and You saw, and these are your words, you used to see a 65 year old black guy drinking a screwdriver. In a towel. In a towel. [ LAUGH ] Yeah. Right. And so those are the kinds of images you're really trying to change. Yeah. It's unfortunate considering a couple of things. Number one, how much money folks of color spend on health and beauty products. We over index in every category. How culturally influential a demographic group we are. And looping in Latino and Asian folks and counting Black folks, we're the majority of the country in 20, 30 years, let alone the majority of the world right now. It has to change. Yeah. It's inevitable and Walker and Company is really trying to be at the forefront of that change. You also mentioned something that you heard from Johnny Ive Yeah. Which is that. Consumers can tell just as much about carelessness in product design as they can tell care, I mean everybody can tell when a product looks like it was designed beautiful. But the consumer also really can notice when there is a lack of attention. Ya that's a really important point. And it really affected me in measurable ways. Even when you think about our boxing experience, it takes two and a half seconds to lift up Kind of the top from the base like that's practical design, anticipatory design. You know we write a note, a handwritten note from me to every single customer. We care about that intent customer experience and it shines through in the testimonials that we get from customers as well and we are gonna be unwavering in that committment to practical design. Before I let you go, you are a member of our 40 under 40 list congratulations. Thank you, thank you very much. I wanna ask you a couple quick questions related to your career. What was your lowest moment along the way coming to where you are now? So, when I went out to raise money for this company, it was the first time that I heard no as often as I did. Mm- hm. You know, I've. I've been blessed and been fortunate to have a ton of at least success. I got to go to Stanford, prep school among other things. And I've had a lot of folks really believe and support me along the way. But it wasn't until I came up with the Walker & Company and had to go pitch it down [ UNKNOWN ] That folks would tell me, no, that's not the right thing to do. You should consider these other things. And that was the kind of fire that I needed to know that I actually had a good idea. Ben Horowitz would always tell me usually what looks like good ideas or bad ideas, it would look Looks like bad ideas and good ideas. And this is the first idea I had that looked like a bad idea to everyone else and I knew I had to do it, and thank goodness that I did.

Why looks matter (for your product, at least)

Walker & Co. CEO Tristan Walker explains why design and packaging plays a major roles in sales.