Roger Dahle:
So, griddle cooking lends itself and the variety of food. I mean, when you think of a gas or charcoal grill, you think of steak chicken, hamburgers and
hotdogs, and you think Memorial Day to Labor Day, thats what that industry had been my industry now for many, many years, really kind of boring, no innovation, nothing cool, just the same old stuff. Yeah, its 4th of July, lets
barbecue. What should we cook? Well, lets cook chicken and then you burn the outside of it and the inside its not cooked properly. So, theyre harder to cook on, theyre not as fast, theyre not as fun, theyre smokey
and you got flames. So it scares a lot of people away from the experience.
Roger Dahle:
But with the griddle, anybody can cook on a griddle. We have kids, we have moms, we have dads, we have grandmas, grandpas, everybody can cook on a griddle. So
its fast, its fun, its easy. And again, I just keep repeating variety of food, but thats really the key.
Nick Clayton:
Totally. Well, I think TikTok is maybe what grabbed a lot of peoples attention your direction, looking through your materials, one of the most
interesting things I found about the deal is how youve managed to secure your manufacturing capacity in China through your partner, Cowell International. So how did that partnership initially come about? And can you talk about some of the
strategic benefits you see it bringing moving forward?
Roger Dahle:
Yeah, its a family business over there. Its a father and son, and theyre Taiwanese. And so, I first met them many years ago when I was
working for a large fitness manufacturing company, and they moved over to mainland China in the city called Xiamen, which is their ancestral home, and started opening up factories. In 2013, 2014, I was starting to have some traction with the
griddle, and I knew I needed a really good manufacturing partner.
Roger Dahle:
And so, I would go to all the big grill factories in China and none of them were interested. Number one, my volume was tiny at the time, and number two, they
didnt want to deal with the big heavy griddle plate. The thing weighs seven pounds and its harder to manufacture. Their tooling and their equipment, they were all set up to do traditional gas and charcoal grill. So they werent
interested.
Roger Dahle:
So, I contacted the Lee family
who I knew and went over and visited with them in 2014, and thats how this whole thing got started. So its folks that I knew had a lot of trust with had some past business experience with, and they had never built grills before at all.
So, it was brand new for them, but the timing was really good because they had just finished manufacturing a new facility and they didnt really know what they were going to build in it, and so our timing was good and thats how we got
started.
Nick Clayton:
And I think theres obviously
plenty of brands, plenty of products that are manufactured across the Pacific, but not all have necessarily that strong connection with their manufacturing partner. How do you think thats going to help you in the future as well?