Newell Brands Innovation Pushes the Bakeware Technology Envelope Featuring Kris Malkoski,...

Hi there, how are you, friend?

Sure. So Newell is a $10 billion global company. We are found in over 80% of US households. The average person has 17 of our brands in their house. So let me tell you some of the names, and maybe you'll understand why they have 17. We have Dymo and Elmer's and Expo, Dry Erase, Crazy Glue, Paper Mate, Sharpie, Parker and Waterman fine writing pens. We have Ball and Kool-Aid? No, Ball and FoodSaver, Rubbermaid, Yankee Candle, Woodwick. We have our Rubbermaid Commercial, so if you see the big trash cans and the cleaning supplies that people have, that's our product. We have Graco and NUK pacifiers and Baby Jogger, Bubba, Arob, Bed, Contigo, Coleman, ExOfficio men's underwear, Marmot jackets. And then we have Crockpot, Mr. Coffee, Oster, and Sunbeam. So how many brands are in your house, friend?

Yes. So anyone who manufactures cookware or bakeware saw an incredible increase in usage when COVID hit because you weren't going out to restaurants, you were doing more cooking at home. And we were wondering where in-home cooking and baking is going as we go now into very strong inflationary headwinds and maybe going into recession. And we're comping last year, 2021, where the in-home cooking was at a height that hasn't been seen in over 50 years. And what was amazing is when we asked, and this question was asked on September 21st, so this is really recent data, people said versus a year ago, they are cooking meals at home 43% more than they did a year ago, and they are also baking 28% more than a year ago. So then we asked them, well, for the balance of the year and going into the future, are you going to keep up at this level? And they are: 28% say they're going to use their cookware more, and 25% say they're going to use their bakeware more. So really incredible learning in terms of the importance of the brands that the Cookware and Bakeware Alliance supports for their use in the home. The research also showed that 35% of people are going to eat out less than they did a year ago. And the restaurant business was constrained a year ago, so conserving our money, trying to eat healthy, trying to extend that food budget is really important and something that we need to be aware of and be supportive of with all of our cookware and bakeware manufacturers.

Yeah, it's interesting that there's both an increase in intention to both cook and bake more, because two of the products we're here to talk about today cover cookware and bakeware. And I would love to start with the bakeware product. It is one of the most innovative bakeware products I've ever seen personally. I've been in product 30 years. I would love for you to tell us more about DuraLight from Rubbermaid.

Yes. So it started probably about 15 years ago. I got into the housewares business, and one of the things that I saw was that people do love to bake. They really prefer the experience of cooking in glass bakeware or ceramic bakeware, but there are limitations to that. You can only put it in the oven to 450 degrees, depending on the brand. It can be really heavy, so if you're stacking several together, it's quite an impact to lift it. And not all of the glass bakeware or ceramic bakeware is elegant and beautiful, because the ceramic will chip, the glass you can see brown marks from the baking you've done. And the alternative, metal bakeware, which you can put up to broiling, is not something you feel proud to serve at the table. And like you and I were talking before we got on air, when you cut brownies in a metal pan, you leave behind scratch marks. So I really wanted to create a line of bakeware that was lightweight, that was elegant to serve at the table, and that you could broil with, it being glass in the oven. And we created a new technology called floral silicate glass. It has a proprietary way of being made, which is its secret sauce. And this product is oven and broiler safe up to 550 degrees Fahrenheit. It's very lightweight compared to ceramic. It doesn't break or chip. It's nestable, stackable. You can put it in the microwave, the dishwasher, the freezer. There's no BPA, and it comes with a lid. So if you want to transport a tray of brownies, which I know you do, friend, to your friend's houses, you can put the lid on it and it transports very effectively. And I'm so excited. It's called Rubbermaid DuraLight Bakeware, and it launched literally. It hit the shelves in Target last week. Television advertising started on the Food Network. It's going to be used in the Great Baking Cook-Off that happens on HGTV and the Food Network. I'm really excited to see what the potential of this product is. I'm going to give it one shout out: also the way the lids are designed, it makes it easy to stack and store. There are so many pieces that are kind of bulky. This is elegant. You want it out. You don't want it in the cupboard. You own it proud.

No, no, no, I won't. But we really wanted to make sure it was safe because ceramic and glass will break if it goes above about 425 to 450 degrees. We wanted to make sure it didn't warp. So we went through probably six months of extensive product testing, and the testing pushed the extremes. So we started out with food in the container, just as you would normally use it, but then we also put it without any food in the container, which means the heat transfers even more deeply into it. We did 500 cycles of dishwasher testing. It still looks like new after 500 cycles. We put it through salt baths to see if it would ever denigrate or break down the product or chip. There's impact chip testing you do on the rims, you do on the center of the vessel. You increase the intensity of the ball bearing that hits the container to make sure it doesn't have fracture potential or chip potential. So we really went through some rigorous testing, and it did not fail in one single test. 300 times under the broiler without food, no breakage. 300 times under the broiler with food, no breakage. So I really feel confident that this product is going to deliver for the end user.

We do. So everyone knows the Calphalon brand, and Calphalon is an incredibly beloved brand by people who have had the experience of using it or maybe being a child watching their parent use it in the kitchen. Actually, the background of Calphalon was that it was founded in 1963 as a brand sold exclusively to chefs and restaurants for extreme exposure to lots of cooking. Later in the 1970s, we began selling into homes, and it's always been seen as a high-end, in the sense of quality and performance, line of cookware. In the category, we thought, as we were thinking about Calphalon and thinking about how we have so many more foodies in the kitchen because people learned how to experiment and how to expand their cooking capabilities, that we should come out with some superior technology to really talk to our users. So for the extreme foodies who are doing a lot of cooking in their pots and pans, we created Mineral Feld non-stick technology. So it's made of some of Earth's hardest minerals and ends up being five times more durable than any Calphalon we've ever produced, and it has superior non-stick properties compared to the leading competition in the market that we tested against. And we tested against about 25 brands. And then for somebody who's maybe starting out and can't afford a set that might cost $149 to $99 for 10 to 12 pieces, we created the AquaShield non-stick technology, which is made with a water-based nonstick that keeps pans performing like new 40% longer than any Calphalon that we have ever made before. And that's really important because us consumers are lazy and we stick everything in the dishwasher. So if you can keep a pan performing like new 40% longer, that's really important because the number one degrader of the non-stick technology on cookware is washing it in a dishwasher. And dishwashers seem to be getting more aggressive. I'm not sure why. I'm not sure what they're trying to clean off our products.

Yeah, and you know, a lot of restaurants use flame for heat, which gets more intense than an electrical burner. So the hard anodized outer shell was actually created to perform at a better performance level in the restaurant setting on top of flame. So that's kind of cool. But one of my favorite things about Calphalon is when it gets to the point where you want new Calphalon, it's not going to show up in the landfill because we joined TerraCycle. So with TerraCycle, we ship the pots and pans, or the consumers can ship the pots and pans to a TerraCycle recycling center, and with that, they make park benches and playground equipment. So if your child or your grandchildren are playing on playground equipment, there's a good chance that if that equipment was installed in the last five years, that it's recycled Calphalon.

Yeah, you know, especially in the US. I was just on a call with people from other countries. We're a little behind on getting stuff out of the landfill.

Yes, we do a lot for the community. Community is really important to Newell as a pan-organization, not just Calphalon and Rubbermaid, but all of our brands. We do a couple of different things. Probably the three big buckets are: one, we give local grants into the communities where our people work and live. So we have offices in Chicago, Deerfield, Massachusetts, Huntersville, North Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia. And we let the employees vote on which local charities they would like to support. They nominate first, so it's only employee-based nominations, and then we vote, and we give sizable cash grants to really help make a difference in the communities. And it goes down to even where we have manufacturing facilities like Mogadore, Ohio. So it's a very pervasive grant program that we're quite proud of. We do support three national organizations like Save the Children and The Nature Conservancy. And we do an annual campaign, and all the money that the employees donate is matched by the corporation so that it's double the gift that's given to these three global charities. And then the last thing we do, this is really important to us because we have such a diverse range of products. We have car seats for infants and high chairs, and we have kitchen supplies whether it's food storage or cookware. When there is a natural disaster in a community, we give them supplies so they can continue to transport their children, they can continue to feed their children safely from a high chair or push them around in a stroller so they can get from point A to point B. They can continue to cook and store food and utilize their kitchen or the temporary housing that they're in. And this is really important because when people are faced with natural disasters, it's great to give them the short-term stuff like they need the quick food, they need the quick water. But to give them something that they don't have to spend their money on as they're trying to rebuild their lives and their homes, and something that will last for several years, we think is really important.

How far back do you want me to go?

So it was interesting. I grew up on a farm in the middle of Nebraska, and we had a little bit of everything: 50 head of dairy cattle, we grew corn, soybeans, had an apple orchard, had large gardens. One of my brands, Ball, is one of my earliest memories of a brand that I used because I was helping my mom can when I was about five years old. But it was an incredible way to grow up because you learned great work ethic. I was fortunate enough after graduating from college to start my career at Procter & Gamble and rose to be the fourth woman ever to become a VPGM because P&G is a promote-from-within culture. And prior to seven years before my arrival, they only hired males for the management roles, so that was exciting. And I was able to participate in some incredible launches like Aleve pain reliever was one of my babies, and ThermaCare heat wraps was another one of my babies. I then went on to start my own contract product management company, which I sold to P&G. I've worked in private equity and the snackware industry and the housewares industry at a company that had incredible brands like Pyrex, Correlle, CorningWare. Also worked on the Craftsman brand when Sears carved out the brands, and I was able to grow it outside of Sears with Ace Hardware, ultimately selling the brand to Stanley Black & Decker, which is a great home for another incredible brand. So it continues on as Sears continues to have tough times. And then most recently, I was CEO Americas for ARC International. Not a name that you know, but ARC makes some of the highest-end brands for the food service industry, like champagne glasses and wine glasses that are crystalline, as well as they do a lot of the private label glassware for retailers. So if you buy Target brand of glass food storage, it's probably an ARC product. And what's really cool for me is we do a lot of B2B. We did, when I was at ARC, including all the vases for Yankee Candle. So I turn around and the next company I go to sells Yankee Candle, and I can remember visiting them as a vendor, and now I visit them as a coworker. So that's been a great career. I have no regrets. Every single job and every single adventure sure taught me more. And hopefully now at the age I'm at, of course 39 forever, but at the age I'm at, I feel like I've had some great experiences.

Now people tease me all the time because if you grow up on a dairy farm, the whole house wakes up well before 6:00 a.m., and I can't get that out of my system. Without an alarm, I'll wake up by 5:00 every morning. And so I come into work, and I try to leave work at a decent hour, like 5:30 or so, and people are always giving me grief about being the first car in the first spot in the parking lot. And I'm like, I can't help it. I grew up that way.

Well, thank you. I enjoyed talking with you.