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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_01: It's Calgary's Podcast on the Canada's Podcast Network.
[00:08] SPEAKER_00: Hello, this is Mario Tartaguzzi coming to you today with Calgary's Podcast, a member
[00:13] SPEAKER_00: of Canada's Podcast Network, where we talk to the entrepreneurs who are making it happen
[00:19] SPEAKER_00: in Calgary, Alberta, so you can listen, discover and engage.
[00:24] SPEAKER_00: Today's guest is Mike Gettis, co-founder and CEO of ND. Thanks for joining us today, Mike.
[00:31] SPEAKER_00: Thanks a lot, thanks for having me.
[00:33] SPEAKER_00: Okay, super, Mike. So tell me just a little bit first of all about ND and the concept and where the concept came from.
[00:43] SPEAKER_01: Sure. I worked a little bit over in Europe for a while and they were a bit ahead of the game in terms of adding
[00:49] SPEAKER_01: the temper to North America with regards to memory foam and foam based beds.
[00:55] SPEAKER_01: So definitely, I mean, we've also been a temporary pediatric commercial for, since we were younger and in the 90s.
[01:00] SPEAKER_01: And I think where I saw this great opportunity to work on a mattress market at the market as a whole, I worked my co-founder and partner,
[01:10] SPEAKER_01: Rajan Ruhrqal, who's also from Calgary.
[01:13] SPEAKER_01: He had the experience working at Groupon and had some e-commerce experience and we came together to sell mattresses on the Internet.
[01:22] SPEAKER_01: And we saw, one of the things that we saw was a really good trend that we had around when we started ND was this trend towards director consumer retail.
[01:31] SPEAKER_01: And we saw this was a really great opportunity because we had, sort of a bit of a hurricane of forces as the fact that beds people were moving more towards
[01:40] SPEAKER_01: foam based mattresses, the ability to compress and roll them.
[01:43] SPEAKER_01: More and more manufacturers had the technology to compress and roll.
[01:49] SPEAKER_01: Plus, we had due to see as an opportunity that people were actually starting to say, hey, I'm going to buy a brand online that was purely created for my retail,
[01:59] SPEAKER_01: which even if you go back to 2010, it was not, it was kind of unheard of. I mean, there was really proper down in the US with maybe one of the only few,
[02:06] SPEAKER_01: but there were very many brands that were doing this. So I used that scale.
[02:11] SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, the whole thing was this was to try to kind of combine resources together.
[02:16] SPEAKER_01: And then also the other piece was to do this in Canada and that in the US, a lot of times the company is a target corporate,
[02:24] SPEAKER_01: a really good example. They come to Canada, the product's fashion is really good, or the places are too high.
[02:28] SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't end up working to the same degree the Canadians get a lesser experience than what the US counterpart gets.
[02:36] SPEAKER_00: So when did you start Andy?
[02:40] SPEAKER_01: Andy started in 2015, we launched the public March, March 2015.
[02:45] SPEAKER_00: Okay, super. Can you explain a little bit? I give me a sense of how the business has has grown since its inception.
[02:52] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the launch really quickly this year was a lot of experimentation trying to get the model sort of.
[02:58] SPEAKER_01: They've had to get ads and how to talk to our customers and what the sort of customer journey was.
[03:04] SPEAKER_01: And then as we started to scale up, we saw that more and more people really loved the fact that it was made in Canada.
[03:10] SPEAKER_01: So it was made in Canada.
[03:12] SPEAKER_01: And the fact that we were focused on a Canadian centric view, Canadian customers, and we saw it scale up pretty quickly.
[03:21] SPEAKER_01: When we kind of got to that side, 10 million mark, we were really excited and then we got to the 29 mark and then it went to the 50 million mark.
[03:29] SPEAKER_01: So we just got growing and it grew to watch that snowball continue to gain momentum as times got on.
[03:36] SPEAKER_00: What do you think this concept has resonated with consumers?
[03:40] SPEAKER_01: This is titled out in the consumer. The fact that we're now in the past with the whole fair retail model, which we have with other styles that the whole fair retail model, the issues is you've got a whole fair and retail and each one person is margin.
[03:56] SPEAKER_01: Also in terms of what products were available, like traditionally in mattress retail stores, different products were in different stores.
[04:02] SPEAKER_01: So there was difficult to price match. I mean, we'd have the triple S sort of series and ends and each of them had sort of different models and each share.
[04:11] SPEAKER_01: They kind of looked at it from the perspective, they were custom curating mattresses that benefit them.
[04:16] SPEAKER_01: Like what type of spring is that spring, what type of moments of that phone? A lot of that was obscure.
[04:21] SPEAKER_01: And so for us, we said, you know, let's just take the best materials we have and marketed at a point that served consumers.
[04:27] SPEAKER_01: So yes, it worked quite well and it resonated with people. It also like with us having one mattress model, we still only have one mattress model.
[04:35] SPEAKER_01: We know which one to buy. It doesn't recreate a lot of confusion in terms of which one to get.
[04:39] SPEAKER_01: So that I think was a big thing that resonated and then the Canadian brand was another big thing.
[04:44] SPEAKER_00: Okay, what are your plans for the company going forward?
[04:48] SPEAKER_01: The recentest in country in 2018. And so from that point, there's a joint mission with essence of country.
[04:55] SPEAKER_01: I was to continue to expand from a whole if there'd been the number one in terms of mattress retail, specialty retail on all fronts. So retail and and on the e-commerce side.
[05:08] SPEAKER_01: The end of the brand itself, I still focus on keeping up the position as the as the number one online retailer.
[05:17] SPEAKER_01: And we continue to see growth there. People is resonating and more people are coming online and want to be one of the interesting trends is in way more business, and so by getting on and buying online over the last three months and using everything, which was quite interesting.
[05:35] SPEAKER_01: Those are kind of the low users we found more often than that, but of course there's always people in that segment that are super e-commerce oriented.
[05:44] SPEAKER_01: But we found, you know, if you've got an extra store that the five minute drive away and you know, the interest or online, we were seeing a lot of urban cities, well originally because of just the factor of actually getting to a store and delivery and an apartment building was all difficult.
[05:58] SPEAKER_01: So, let's assume the first spectrum of customer.
[06:02] SPEAKER_00: Do you think the the the the COVID crisis, right? You know, it obviously gave a lot of consumers the avenue of the e-commerce and online thing more and more people are.
[06:15] SPEAKER_00: So, this has become a habit for them to to shop online is that's going to help you do you think having more people and more different demographics now shopping online.
[06:27] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely. It appears towards our model. Even as we got a partnership like urban barn, we've had mattresses and no stores and we have it because there's still people who sometimes just want to try and do it and make that decision.
[06:44] SPEAKER_01: So, we've done that only some of the compliments nicely that people are literally going into the remembrance and they're buying online and there's a problem with it. It works quite well.
[06:53] SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I'm going to ask you a few questions about being an entrepreneur. What do you like about being an entrepreneur? What's what's some of the best things about it?
[07:03] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I think that there's a lot of times with the entrepreneurship people think that there's something with specific skills that needed for it and in some ways it's one of the few professions where those notes go really required.
[07:16] SPEAKER_01: Other than the sort of a bit, it's a personality trait really. I've been curious and driving forward and looking to change and do new things and pushing forward.
[07:28] SPEAKER_01: So, a lot of it you're doing based on an industry that's got in the box. There's no market report to say this is how that gets to consume online retail in Canada. It works. There's no manual for it.
[07:41] SPEAKER_01: So, we sort of grew with true off-city and excitement and moved forward that way. And another thing that the entrepreneurship to me is that it's an action word as well.
[07:52] SPEAKER_01: Personally, I'm also an action word and that people who say, you know, I'm entrepreneur and I run out. The best ones are the ones that are really moving forward and growing a business because I do is a great that I think the actual action and execution is what makes it move forward.
[08:15] SPEAKER_00: What do you think in terms of your personality traits are good for being an entrepreneur?
[08:22] SPEAKER_01: Well, if you have to be comfortable with uncertainty, I think you have to be comfortable with.
[08:29] SPEAKER_01: You have to be able to grow the punches a bit. You have to let the venture to some degree and be excited by the unknown.
[08:36] SPEAKER_01: I think if you're someone who really wants to be extremely organized and have everything go through and write like intersectionism is a really important trait for entrepreneurs that want to scale quickly, I think it's just going to go perfectly how you want them to.
[08:50] SPEAKER_01: And your consumer is not going to react. Your customer is not going to come and buy what you're selling. If you're trying to say, oh, I want you to buy this particular model, we have to be flexible enough to say what is the consumer actually want to buy and have that perspective, especially on and get a really strong feel for what they need.
[09:11] SPEAKER_01: So having some flexibility in terms of your thinking is important. Being willing to put it like a lot of successful businesses.
[09:19] SPEAKER_01: You've got, you know, Airbnb started selling cereal and things, you know, all those industries that you hear are everywhere, just some rules and you have to be able to have that mindset to get an other stage start up off the ground for sure.
[09:32] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure. What has been your biggest challenge of being an entrepreneur?
[09:38] SPEAKER_01: I would say challenges, like especially those are really enjoy, I would say long term, it's kind of become staying busy, right?
[09:50] SPEAKER_01: Like I said business, I was going home, we have a staff of just the IP things that really moving and we have a lot of process returning to a company.
[09:58] SPEAKER_01: So I mean, what to do, but I think from an entrepreneur perspective, being being active and so continually finding projects to drive growth and things like that.
[10:08] SPEAKER_01: So one of the things that started doing is looking at some angel investing and that sort of thing and looking at startups and helping to mentor.
[10:16] SPEAKER_01: And I think that has been a great way to kind of get that entrepreneurial fit inside a, as my own company has gotten bigger.
[10:22] SPEAKER_01: I think that I would say a challenge really is just maintaining that and continuing to remain busy and moving forward on that sort of entrepreneurial venture.
[10:33] SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes it's easy to say, we've made it. Now it's a back, that's the next big sort of place depression, the next thing to disrupt and continue forward on that, I think is an important piece.
[10:44] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, when you look over the years of being an entrepreneur and being in business, do you recall any specific piece of advice, the best piece of advice that you receive from someone on being an entrepreneur?
[10:59] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is related to the action world piece. I studied a business school I went to year for year, probably just because I wanted to go to year for year.
[11:10] SPEAKER_01: I had a dodging guy who came to Finland and was talking about entrepreneurship and I said, you know, I've got some advice about starting a company.
[11:17] SPEAKER_01: I think he had a removable power company and he had some grants from the adoption government.
[11:23] SPEAKER_01: And I said to himself, what's your advice to get a business going? And he said, you know, I don't think I need to give you any advice.
[11:28] SPEAKER_01: I said, well, what do you mean? You know, people in especially in your country, a little bit more direct as well, sort of like that.
[11:34] SPEAKER_01: I don't think I need to give you any advice. And I said, well, what do you mean?
[11:37] SPEAKER_01: So, when you move advice on how to be an entrepreneur, then that doesn't come across as someone who's entrepreneurial to me.
[11:43] SPEAKER_01: And I said, well, how do you mean that? You kind of said, well, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you're just going to go and start selling something and you're going to start building something and you're not going to be asking for advice.
[11:50] SPEAKER_01: And I said, well, actually, it's a good course. And so I took that one to heartless and I like, you know, the interaction word and something that, you know, you move forward and, and, you know, surprisingly, it's not the person who's the smartest.
[12:04] SPEAKER_01: A lot of times with the person with the most perseverance and also having some flexibility within their time to say, we're willing to adjust and continue for it.
[12:14] SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of times you're going to hit their qualms, especially if you haven't started a business before you're actually thinking, you can remember $1,000,000, so I consider my mattress company people are like, oh, I don't know.
[12:24] SPEAKER_01: And if you're done with this or no, you've got to, you've got to be able to put your view to do some stuff through and be able to get that money raised.
[12:30] SPEAKER_01: And if you do have a small amount of capital, there's that pressure, grants are being lean and nimble.
[12:35] SPEAKER_00: So in the hindsight, if you weren't doing what you're doing now, what do you think you would have chosen as a professional career?
[12:44] SPEAKER_01: So I tried to do the professional thing. I did, and I like I reached in Calgary, so I went around and I'm on gas.
[12:51] SPEAKER_01: I think part of it was pushing in a passion. I think the entrepreneurial grads for me is sort of, I think I would have ended up there pretty much for that.
[12:59] SPEAKER_01: I actually, many other groups, even me and Dan, knew if I would have gotten lucky and maybe I'd started with a company that was very entrepreneurial and gave a lot of flexibility, and made them that possibility.
[13:11] SPEAKER_01: Like I said, I was early, really engaged in like a shop at the time or something, I could have seen myself working in.
[13:16] SPEAKER_01: And so I think it would have been human shit, but what I found was, is after trying a number of different jobs, I'm not quite getting what I wanted.
[13:25] SPEAKER_01: That sort of my own shop was the way to go because I could kind of do it within the image I wanted to.
[13:30] SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm a big fan of collaboration and I'm a big fan of things that were cross-functionary and the big fan of people that, I believe they're you guys at the door and work together.
[13:41] SPEAKER_01: And so being able to do that environment with Andy has been great for me.
[13:44] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, obviously you mentioned about how busy you are in the business, etc. Especially now, what is it that you do to strike that work life balance?
[13:58] SPEAKER_00: What interest do you have outside of work?
[14:02] SPEAKER_01: I do the big skin trip this year, definitely into that. So I'd like to come back and do that.
[14:09] SPEAKER_01: Who knows what it would be like this next winter, but hopefully get another trip in summer.
[14:15] SPEAKER_01: Well, definitely enjoy sort of heading up the interior.
[14:19] SPEAKER_01: They have the the scope of origin and they have the cottage area, lots of lakes and canoes and all that kind of stuff.
[14:26] SPEAKER_01: So, definitely enjoy that. Everyone's doors is a big thing.
[14:30] SPEAKER_01: And I should have been the main thing. That's a reading, a reading for sure.
[14:36] SPEAKER_00: What kind of stuff?
[14:38] SPEAKER_01: These things are going to be really interested in economy just because we're, you know, what's going on at first.
[14:42] SPEAKER_01: They've been reading a lot. One guy who liked Red his principles, Red Aryan.
[14:48] SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've heard of that, but it's a cool and especially.
[14:52] SPEAKER_01: You can see a lot of different things in a lot of different pieces that made his head from successor, but it really actually applies the well towards startups as well.
[15:02] SPEAKER_01: Especially where you need to take a lot of data like with that.
[15:04] SPEAKER_01: If you come to some of stadium, you have clicks and you've got conversions and you've got streams coming from different websites and all of the rest of it.
[15:12] SPEAKER_01: And how do you turn that into a cohesive story? How do you build a culture around being objective as opposed to principles over personalities?
[15:20] SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a big thing to drive towards success.
[15:23] SPEAKER_01: Like your culture, ironically, becomes one of your most important assets in a company.
[15:27] SPEAKER_01: And so, so Red Aryan speaks to a lot of those elements that he built into a hedge fund that made it successful.
[15:33] SPEAKER_01: So I enjoy listening to those sort of analogies of looking at different different industries and different things because we do get a lot of startup type stuff to like that.
[15:42] SPEAKER_01: You know, the room startup and there's a lot of those types of books that are really specifically around getting a startup plan.
[15:47] SPEAKER_01: But I do like to hear from other sectors.
[15:51] SPEAKER_00: Okay, super. I'm going to present a little bit of a scenario to you and I'll just get your response to it.
[15:57] SPEAKER_00: Okay.
[15:58] SPEAKER_00: We're going to take you and drop you off at a small tropical island, beautiful place in the middle of the ocean, right?
[16:06] SPEAKER_00: That has nothing on it.
[16:09] SPEAKER_00: No technology, no internet.
[16:12] SPEAKER_00: Nothing of that kind, except they'll have one phone booth there.
[16:15] SPEAKER_00: You can pick up the phone and call us at any time to come and get you and bring you back home.
[16:22] SPEAKER_00: So a couple of questions. How long do you think you would take you to make that phone call?
[16:28] SPEAKER_00: And what do you think you'd be doing while you were there?
[16:31] SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, I guess when I was in high school, I did a lot of sort of outdoor pursuit.
[16:38] SPEAKER_01: There's harder to do in Ontario, like the mountaineering stuff, right?
[16:41] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[16:43] SPEAKER_01: I really like the idea of like the building building a hot of sorts, like definitely would be chopping.
[16:51] SPEAKER_01: If I had no experience of looking for sort of dead roots off of palm trees, and we'll be looking for some wood, some solid wood, and we're trying to build a shelter, something down by the beach, probably.
[17:03] SPEAKER_01: And then probably next we'll be looking at food, how can I do some kind of a trap.
[17:09] SPEAKER_01: Probably fishing would be the easiest I assume if you were on a desert.
[17:14] SPEAKER_01: I don't think I'm pretty, I'm not very good at small game hunting or anything like that.
[17:19] SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I could build a rabbit trap, but I probably could build a good spear and try to try to fish.
[17:26] SPEAKER_01: I would do my, my thought.
[17:27] SPEAKER_01: And then fire should try to find a way to get a fire built.
[17:31] SPEAKER_01: It would be hard without a lighter, but maybe look for some flint rock or something.
[17:36] SPEAKER_01: Maybe near river in land or something and then try to try to build a fire.
[17:40] SPEAKER_01: If I could get that going, I'd be pretty happy.
[17:42] SPEAKER_01: And I think if I still have a bit of that, I would be calling to get picked up.
[17:51] SPEAKER_00: Alrighty. So Mike, before leaving us today, is there anything you'd like to add?
[17:57] SPEAKER_01: We're just to mention as we've been, we're working on with hospitals right now in terms of donating because the frontline workers that have to deal with COVID.
[18:08] SPEAKER_01: I think that's, it's great that we are with the people that were by staying at home.
[18:11] SPEAKER_01: I think it's different people with reps and downs.
[18:14] SPEAKER_01: I think the healthcare workers are putting their lives on the line to help us out on and deal with this.
[18:19] SPEAKER_01: So there's just sort of a shout out there and sort of we've been doing what we can to donate mattresses.
[18:25] SPEAKER_00: Okay, super. Thanks for joining us today, Mike, on Calgary's podcast.
[18:30] SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
[18:31] SPEAKER_00: Thanks for taking the time today to listen to Calgary's podcast on Canada's podcast network.
[18:38] SPEAKER_00: We hope you enjoyed the show today.
[18:41] SPEAKER_00: Make sure you sign up for our newsletters and write a review for us on iTunes and then connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn at Canada's podcast.
[18:52] SPEAKER_00: You can also check out what other entrepreneurs are doing across the country.
[18:57] SPEAKER_00: See you next time.
