Thanks for joining us at Shop Talk TV. Up next, an interview with Mark Barrocas, CEO of Shark Ninja. Mark will be interviewed by Joe Lazlo, head of insights at Shop Talk. Mark, welcome to
Shop Talk TV. It's a delight to be sitting down with you. You were just on our new market stage a little while ago and we're following up with a few more questions for our not here in Vegas audience. So, thanks for being here.
Yeah. So, I guess my first question is probably the toughest one I'm going to pose to you, which is of all the products that Shark Ninja makes, what's your favorite?
I mean, that's like asking which is my favorite child. I have three children. You know, I will actually give you one Shark product and one Ninja product. That's absolutely there. There's a product called the Ninja Lux Cafe. It is an espresso coffee, cold brew, ice coffee machine that I use every day in my home. And so that's become kind of a go-to product for me. And then, interestingly, I'm a regular user of the Shark Cryoglow LED infrared cryo face mask. I could probably use that. I'm 53 years old and you know, anything that can kind of give me a little jolt.
Very fair answer. Thank you for that. So on stage when you were talking on the new market stage, the conversation drifted toward or was very focused on how you're just able to innovate, create new products so quickly, and we talked a bit on stage about the fact that you do that really well, but I want to explore a little bit the culture that enables that. You know, how do you describe Shark Ninja in terms of a culture of innovation?
It starts with this idea that we call outrageously extraordinary. And it's the desire to want to be the absolute best at what we do, no matter what it is, whether it's product development, finance, legal, or IT. In doing that, we found you have to eliminate the fear of failure. Failure is part of being extraordinary. If you can put that aside and focus on the outcome and be really clear on making something compelling and exciting for the consumer, the failure is just roadblocks along the way, speed bumps. So when you look at a Shark or Ninja product, we'll iterate on up to 20 prototypes before we put the product into tooling. From the time we put it into tooling, we might change the product a hundred times before it goes to market. It all comes down to putting the consumer at the center. The consumer tells us if we're doing a great job. We can have hypotheses, but we have to be willing, once we get feedback, to scrap it and move on. In business, when you get anchored to your idea, you lose your compass. For us, the compass is positively impacting people's lives every day in every home around the world. That's a mission statement I wrote back in 2009. If you stay anchored to that, you won't drift into areas counter to positively impacting the consumer.
Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about overcoming that fear of failure. Nobody wants to make something that doesn't go over and be a smash success with customers. I think maybe in the world of software development, it's much easier if you're a software engineer. You still want your product to succeed, but if it fails, it's not like you spent a bajillion dollars on a hundred physical prototypes to learn that. How do you convince your engineering team or marketing team that just because an idea didn't work, that doesn't mean they're going to lose their jobs?
So, you brought up the first thing. We have been able to take a very software approach to hardware. Iterative, iterative, iterative. I'll give you a great example. Back in 2010, we developed a product called the Shark Multivac. We were enamored by it. It had incredible suction power, cleaned floors and carpets. But the product was like an erector set. When the consumer got it home, it was difficult and complex to put together. They didn't understand it, and it was a disastrous failure. Most companies would put that away and say never talk to me about the Shark Multivac again. But what came out of it was a real nugget: portable power that the consumer could take around. In 2011, we launched the Shark Liftaway Vacuum. We saw a problem: most vacuum cleaners had a cord. You'd plug it in, take the hose out, go up the first four stairs, then unplug, carry it up, plug in again, and always miss the two stairs in the middle. What if you could lift the vacuum off and go around anywhere with the 30-foot cord? That became the number one selling vacuum cleaner in America by 2014. So from what I think was the worst failure we ever had, it became one of the biggest successes.
I love that story. That's great. Let's go back to outrageously extraordinary because I love that as a tagline, a mantra, a guiding force. But it's got to be a challenge to instill, especially as you guys are a really big multi-billion dollar company. I guess maybe there's a little bit of self-selection, right? You don't go to work for a company called Shark Ninja and expect to be mediocre. But are there processes in the course of training somebody in new hire orientation that really helps instill outrageously extraordinary?
So about five years ago, I would hear terms like 'Shark Ninja is very entrepreneurial,' 'Shark Ninja is really fast-paced,' 'Shark Ninja is crazy.' The fact is, if you don't define your culture, you let other people define it for you. So I started putting down on paper a document called the Success Drivers. What we looked at when we were truly at our best: communicating for impact, details make the difference, progress over perfection, winning is a team sport, rarely satisfied. Those five things embodied a Shark Ninja leader. We put it on our website, made sure anyone interviewing knew this is who we are. If these things don't speak to you, it's probably not a fit. We then transitioned to a document called the Leadership Principles: what it takes to be a leader at Shark Ninja, like owning others' success, helping others achieve more than they ever thought possible. Then we followed up with outrageously extraordinary. That came down to things like wanting people who are explorers, not tour guides. If you need the path, you go to a museum with a tour guide. In business, you have to be an explorer, willing to go out with a direction but keep course correcting and pivoting. I said on the main stage that the days of 60-page business plans are over. By January second, you're already pivoting and evolving. Outrageously extraordinary puts that front and center.
That's so interesting. I mean, again, thinking about you guys as a company that makes physical products that live in the real world, that's got to be a real challenge because the product development life cycle is inevitably going to take a long time, especially as you iterate and test and prototype as much as you do. So bravo for managing to find that equilibrium.
But even in that, we have 1,200 engineers around the world based in Boston, London, and China. We've created a 24/7 innovation cycle. When a product is being worked on in Boston, those engineers go home, the product is passed to China, they work on it, then passed to London, and that cycle continues. It allows us to bring products to market not just faster, but with a different lens. A Chinese engineer brings design for manufacturing and cost, closer to factories. A British engineer brings a European consumer bent. An American engineer brings an American view. It helps us make products for a global consumer.
