00:00From your vantage, how's the consumer doing? What capacity, what patience do they have to endure the level of uncertainty
00:04and difficulty that we're seeing right now?
00:08Look, David, thanks for having me. I mean, the consumer right now is clearly under pressure.
00:12I mean, as you talked about, I mean, gas prices are up and it's a challenging time for everyone.
00:17But I think the growth that we're seeing is testament to our innovation, our performance, our quality, our value, you
00:25know, that is really exciting consumers.
00:27I mean, our products are a lot of, you know, very basic household products.
00:31I mean, consumers still have to vacuum and they still have to cook for their families and they still want
00:36to look beautiful and they still want to get excited about them.
00:39And so for us, we really look at it as the consumer has a certain amount of discretionary spend.
00:44You know, how do we do everything we possibly can to give them the best value for investing it with
00:49Shark Ninja?
00:50So to get to the important stuff, you've collaborated with Tom Brady and David Beckham now as well.
00:57Who's going to be next and how do you make these collaborations pay off for you guys?
01:03Well, Vani, I guess let's start with, I mean, the first quarter, you know, we delivered our 12th consecutive quarter
01:09of double digit growth as a U.S. public company.
01:12Our business grew nearly 16 percent on the top line, nearly 18 percent on the EBITDA line.
01:18And so, you know, there's strong demand for Shark and Ninja products.
01:21It's driven by our disruptive product innovation.
01:24We're in 39 different product categories.
01:27We're selling in 30 different countries around the market, around the world.
01:32And for us, Vani, to the point that you're bringing up, I mean, we create demand through what we call
01:37a demand pyramid.
01:38I mean, we kind of look at celebrity partners that we work with.
01:41We look at macro influencers.
01:42We look at micro influencers.
01:44But we also drive the organic flywheel.
01:47I mean, what's so exciting is you take a product like our Shark chill pill that just launched.
01:52It's already gone into the cultural zeitgeist.
01:55I mean, consumers are producing their own social media content and explaining how this product is so exciting and so
02:02amazing for them.
02:04I wanted to ask you, you mentioned 30 countries, how you're considering the global marketplace at this moment in time,
02:09when you weigh going into a new market, what you're considering, and if there are any kind of macro difficulties
02:14that are coloring those decisions here at this moment in time.
02:19So, David, what's interesting is, you know, the products that we make appeal to a global consumer.
02:24I mean, an American consumer loves our products, a Brazilian consumer, a consumer in Italy.
02:29And so it starts with, like, is it the right product for the consumer?
02:33And we think we are delivering that.
02:34The second is the demand model.
02:37As we run social media in the U.S. or the U.K., that content travels.
02:43As we run it in Latin America, it travels to Spain.
02:47You know, the world is not, you know, this is not like we're running a commercial on NBC at 9
02:52o'clock, you know, five years ago.
02:54You know, this content is traveling throughout the world.
02:57And we've got this great omni-channel strategy.
03:00I mean, we sell to every major brick-and-mortar retailer.
03:04We've got a robust direct-to-consumer business.
03:06And we're driving a lot more business now on TikTok shop, you know, as we expand that into six countries
03:12that we're in.
03:13You talk about the international expansion.
03:15It's obviously very important to you guys.
03:18Where are you concentrating now, particularly given that the international picture has changed since the war?
03:23So our business grew 32% internationally in the quarter.
03:29You know, the growth was really broad-based.
03:31I mean, the U.K. is our largest market outside the U.S.
03:34I mean, that grew over 18%.
03:36Continental Europe is growing really nicely for us.
03:39I mean, in particular, Germany and France.
03:41Our Latin America business, I mean, we bought back our distributor rights in Latin America, and we saw very strong
03:49demand in Latin America.
03:51We've developed a great partnership with MercadoLibre in Latin America.
03:55You know, as we're developing demand, we have to figure out how to get the product to the consumer.
04:00And they've been a great platform for us to expand and get to those consumers in those markets.
04:06So it's broad-based.
04:07I mean, it's Europe.
04:08It's Latin America.
04:10You know, we've seen, obviously, a little bit of fall off in the Middle East over the course of the
04:14last couple of months.
04:15But, you know, we think over time that will rebound.
04:18Mark, will you indulge me with a question about AI?
04:21I'm curious how you're using it, maybe for product development, but just more broadly in the business and how bullish
04:27you are on its prospects for changing the way that your companies operate.
04:31David, this is the most exciting time in the 18 years that I've been running and leading Shark Ninja.
04:38I mean, the innovation that is happening, in fact, I would invite you to go to our website and to
04:44my LinkedIn page.
04:45We ran an AI hack week.
04:47We shut our entire company down last week.
04:51And 4,200 people hacked for the entire week around AI solutions and how we bring them to the business.
04:59We don't want to outsource AI.
05:00We want to make our business AI native.
05:02We want to train everyone in AI.
05:04It's helping us drive faster consumer insights.
05:07It's changing the whole way we're developing products.
05:10We're developing products faster and better.
05:13It's helping us on the operations side.
05:1525% of our calls today are being taken by AI agents that go into our call center.
05:21The shopping experience and the partnership that we have with Salesforce is going to be enhanced through AI.
05:27So, again, we call it jailbreak Shark Ninja.
05:31You know, we have decided that we're awarding nearly a million dollars to employees in the company for great AI
05:38ideas.
05:39I'd encourage you to kind of look at it and see what we're doing.
05:42I think it's really exciting, really innovative.
05:44It was an incredible week last week that we had.
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