I’ve been in Fort Worth, Texas nearly my whole life and come from a family of entrepreneurs—everyone from my father to my grandparents, aunts, and uncles. I've always had that bug. I spent nine years in corporate America, and after my first kid was born, I had this idea that we needed a side hustle to supplement our family’s income. So I came up with the idea of starting a cooler company and talked my father out of retirement to join me.
We explored importing coolers, but determined that using a U.S. manufacturer to build our original mold delivered better quality. Since 2012, we've taken a lot of pride in being an American-made business. It's easier, more affordable, and contributes to our economy.
Early on, I recognized the potential of the market and the opportunity to differentiate ourselves. Initially, we envisioned our coolers primarily serving hunters and anglers, but that was just scratching the surface. Now you’ll find our coolers everywhere from kids sporting events and backyard barbecues to job sites and customized corporate swag. Here in Texas, it’s not uncommon to have 40 to 50 days that are over 100 degrees, so coolers are an integral part of people’s lives. They’re great in an emergency, and I think they enhance our quality of life. We've had customers tell us they’ve had their coolers in the back of their truck for 12 years.
That said, the past 18 months have been the toughest for sales growth, with inflation taking its toll. We’ve really doubled down on using Gemini across sales, marketing, and day-to-day operations. It’s been invaluable for processing sales orders; I’ll prompt Gemini in Google Sheets to modify files and help me solve complex formulas I use too infrequently to recall. We also use Gemini in Google Docs to help with crafting marketing emails, press releases, product descriptions, and social media posts. It gets us 80% there, and then we add our unique cultural spin on it that resonates with our customers. And recently, we’ve started using Gemini in Google Meet to capture meeting notes.