Would You Risk It All for a Shot at Building a Billion-Dollar Brand With Gordon Ramsay?

Do you ever stare at a beautiful product and wonder what stories are hidden behind its journey?

The culinary poetry of the HexClad brand products begins with a hypnotizing hexagonal pattern with an intricate layer that looks like a futuristic industrial honeycomb. The brand’s hallmark design isn’t just for style points but is the result of countless refinements, merging non-stick convenience with the resilience of stainless steel.

The cool, polished handle reassures with its promise of quality craftsmanship. Lifting the pan, the perfectly balanced weight is designed for capable culinary precision from the likes of anyone with a basic desire to cook, all the way up to chefs with Michelin stars.

Daniel Winer designed the pan to cook the perfect steak, pasta or whatever dish today, tomorrow, and decades from now- and he stands by it with a lifetime guarantee. 

After our conversation, I no longer see just a beautiful pan- I see a textured history of a founder putting it all on the line, facing more rejection than a Brazilian steakhouse menu at a table of vegetarians, and keeping his eye on the prize of building what looks like a billion dollar brand. 

In less than ten years since its launch, HexClad has turned into a global brand synonymous with quality and elegance on track to do $600 million this year, in no small part due to a partnership with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. 

Daniel’s serendipitous entry into the cookware industry began in the mid-2000s when a friend invited him to help sell cookware at a trade show. Disillusioned by working in the entertainment industry with a producer at one of the major studios and immobilized by a serious car accident that left him in a back brace for over a year, Daniel saw the fast track to earning some extra cash- $500 for the weekend of sales. 

Daniel would join the company starting at the ground level as a sales associate selling high-end cookware at trade shows and home demonstrations-a far cry from the glitzy world of Hollywood. This new path sparked Daniel’s natural talent for sales, and he climbed the ranks to become a National Sales Manager.

He was particularly tuned into shifts in consumer preferences. In the early 2010s, long before these strategies became mainstream, he saw the potential of digital channels like Facebook (launched 2004) for building brand communities and engaging directly with consumers. 

Daniel proposed building a direct-to-consumer (DTC) model through these platforms, but his ideas were dismissed by a boss rooted in traditional business practices. 

“He looked at me and said, ‘Listen, kid, this Facebook thing, it’s never going to last. It’s a fad. I’ve already been through MySpace.'” recalls Daniel. 

Now, it’s worth putting a pin in where Daniel was in his life at this given moment. Now, the Vice President of Sales, he was living comfortably, enjoying the financial stability that came with his successful career. 

He had the freedom to travel, indulge in personal interests, and live a lifestyle that many would find enviable. Still, he felt a growing sense of dissatisfaction and purpose. 

A salary is a drug they give you to forget your dreams.

Daniel saw a disconnect between his innovative ideas and the company’s reluctance to embrace change highlighting a fundamental clash in their business philosophies. His conviction in social media and the potential to sell direct to customers online grew daily, as did his growingly diminished sense of agency at his company. 

“That meeting was the first punch to the gut, where I realized, ‘Okay, this is not going to last. I’ve got to embrace plan B.’ It’s like evolve or die, right?”

By 2012, Daniel decided to start a new venture to carve his own entrepreneurial path and capitalize on the evolving market landscape. Some time later, Daniel and his co-founder Cole Mecray began bootstrapping the development of a high-quality low-effort juicer- Juicepresso. 

The company and product launched in the second half of 2014, leveraging novel DTC sales strategies. 

Despite achieving moderate success, healthy revenue, and the envy of his nine-to-five friends, Daniel’s first entrance onto the entrepreneurial stage was short lived. 

Juicepresso’s growth was paradoxically stifled by a growing juicing movement that led customers to simply just buy juice at brick-and-mortar places like Whole Foods. 

“Everybody loves juice; what they don’t love is extra work,” says Daniel. “It seemed like a no-brainer- why would you pay Kreation (an LA-based juice store chain) $10 for something you can make for $1.50 at home? Our value prop was one of time savings and convenience.”

Daniel would see the vision of his product’s value prop decimated in line at a Beverly Hills Juice Club.

“I see a girl buy a $7 juice and she had to split the payment on two cards.  It was like I got hit in the back of the head with a sledgehammer. She doesn’t have enough money to put it all on one card, but she won’t make juice at home. And then you start opening your eyes- Whole Foods is building a juice bar inside, Erewhon is making juice, and Kreation is growing in popularity. It was a huge cold-press movement.” 

Despite moderately good sales, the writing was on the wall for Juicepresso. 

“From May 2016 to September 2016, sales dropped about 65 percent. It tanked. And this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do because the cookware wasn’t ready to go yet. On a Tuesday in September, I was in the juicer business. At 9am on Wednesday morning, I was not in the juicer business anymore. And for all the friends who were like, ‘He took a chance that I’m not willing to take. Good for him, he’s his own boss.’ Now I’m a failure. And that failure is one of the greatest things that’s ever happened to me.”

Daniel and Cole’s saving grace was that they were actively looking for new products the entire time, still feeling an attachment to the cookware space.

Daniel frequently attended major industry events, such as the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, China, a biannual renowned trade show that is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. 

During a Spring 2015 trip to the Canton Fair, Daniel stumbled upon a tucked-away table featuring the product, a unique Korean barbecue plate, that would lead to the creation of HexClad.

It was unlike anything he had seen before; better yet, its creator had all the patents related to the product. 

“At first, I was worried it might be another knockoff, but then the guy grabbed a book and he’s got patent after patent after patent- I’m like, did I find the Holy Grail here? Actually somebody who owns their patent isn’t a thief? I sit down with these guys and they talk about this laser etching capability. They showed me their first couple tries at a frying pan, which I knew was too thin and shallow to sell in a Western market. We just connected, I’m like, ‘Guys, I don’t have any money but I’m going to help you make this product better.” 

Daniel would spend the next year and a half redesigning the cookware with them, experimenting with different thicknesses, layers, and etching styles. 

Finally, the idea for the final product was forged; a luxurious pan covered in slightly raised hexagons. The combination of stainless steel with non-stick properties was a gamechanger for even cooking and even cleaning. 

In December 2016, Daniel and Cole launched HexClad, almost immediately into an environment of financial strain and uncertainty. 

Reeling from the monetary and morale losses from shuttering Juicepresso, Daniel and Cole found themselves with limited financial reserves with their backs against the wall, but determined. 

Undeterred, they put almost everything they had into the new company. Daniel cashed out 90 percent of his savings and retirement accounts to fund the new venture, they maxed out credit cards, and took out small-business loans. 

In the first year alone, they invested over $500,000 of their own money. 

Raising capital was also extremely difficult as many investors were skeptical, believing that the product wouldn’t stand out in the crowded cookware market. 

“I got laughed out of rooms,” says Daniel. “They weren’t respectful of how technologically impressive HexClad was. When Cole and I said we’re going to be the first DTC cookware brand, they didn’t get that. They said, ‘People don’t buy cookware that way.’ And I thought, ‘Yes, they don’t… yet.'” 

This conversation must have happened a hundred more times.

“Do you know how competitive cookware is?” a VC would jab. 

“I do,” responds Daniel. “As a matter of fact, I really do. But we finally have an innovation.”

“How are you going to get shelf space? There are five cookwares in Bed Bath & Beyond. How are you going to get them to kick one of them out to put you there?”

“I don’t want shelf space because we’re going to be the first DTC cookware brand.”

“Thank you for coming by.”

Like HexClad’s prototypes being forged through the fire and flames, Daniel’s experience raising capital further tempered his resolve. 

“Most people listening to this will fail, at least once.” says Daniel. “We hope that they do, because there’s learning to be had there. Very few of us step up for our first at-bat and hit a home run. It occasionally happens, and God bless them, good for you. But you probably will be a less effective leader and CEO because you haven’t had to lick your wounds and question your values, your common sense, your work ethic, which we all do.”

Founders are always looking for an excuse, Daniel reasons.

“People look everywhere around the room for an excuse but in the mirror, which is where the solutions are. “I am the problem’ and that’s okay- own it, identify it, and fix it like any other problem.”

If you’re going to go through hell, at least come out of it with the trophy, which is, learn empathy- the feeling that someone else has gone through what you might be feeling right now.

Learning from failure leads to durability- a lifetime guarantee of your product’s quality, which is your own ability to try. 

“Failure is giving up and not trying again. You get knocked off the horse, you don’t get back on. It doesn’t mean you have to ride the same horse. You can ride a different horse, or get in a car or an airplane, but just don’t quit. Keep going and do something else.”​

Daniel would reason that all he had to do was be confident in his product’s superiority, find an opportunity, and tell his story, and people will buy. 

“We’re Americans and we believe in the American dream. But I’ll tell you what’s interesting- how do you get there? How do you overcome the obstacles and the challenges? What do you do when nobody believes in you? How do you motivate yourself? Like how do you handle when you’re waking up at 4 A.M, thinking you’re having a heart attack and you’re like, ‘well, I better get to work’ because that’s what I did frequently?” 

He and Cole not only identified a gap in the market for high-quality, durable cookware that was easy to clean, they also spotted a trend in customer purchasing behavior- the combination of both of these factors, paired with a relentless resolve, was the magic mix that got HexClad its start. 

“From a ballsy perspective, I was looking at Casper. They gave me hope. They were ahead of us, and my initial reaction was, ‘Nobody’s gonna buy a mattress that way.’ Then I went, ‘Hmm, maybe they would.’ And then I bought one, and the experience was great. And that gave me the thought, ‘I can do this. It’s bigger than a box of pans.”

However, Daniel and Cole didn’t let their in-person sales experience gather too much dust. In November 2017, they landed an in-store demonstration at Costco and sold $5,000 worth of pans that day, a crucial moment of validation for the product. 

The next year, HexClad was a profitable business, buoyed by Costco sales. By 2022, HexClad was doing about $170 million in revenue, doubling into 2023, and is on track to achieve $600 million this year. 

Nobody had done what HexClad did in the cookware space before, and Daniel looks back at taking cookware DTC with pride.

“We were the first ones to say, ‘Hey, we can do it this way.’ And then, a year later, you see these DTC cookware brands popping up, backed by some VC that laughed us out of the room in 2016 that would go on to back some inferior product later on.”

Ultimately, Daniel wants to build a legacy brand built on Lifetime Value (LTV, for our acronym enjoyers), which is starkly different to the timelines of most venture capitalists. 

“We always wanted to be a legacy brand. VC guys probably didn’t want to hear that. They want, ‘How do we accelerate growth and how the hell do we get out? How do we get to a hundred million?’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, no. You don’t get it- yes, I want to get to a hundred million, but what I want to do is build a brand that people trust. I want to be around for 50 years, 80 years, because that’s just who I am. So I’m not going to bring crap to the market.”

HexClad offers a lifetime guarantee on its products, whereas most products with warranties offer one-year warranties. 

“If they don’t work in 25 years, we’re going to give you a new one. And you know how we know it? We test them like crazy. Is it profitable to do it this way? People would say that’s crazy.”

According to Daniel, the Average Order Value is about $400, giving HexClad a large profit margin after customer acquisition costs. The team guesstimates (a few sales channels like Costco don’t provide them data) LTV at about $800. 

“People are trusting us and coming back, and that’s the way I feel like I’m going to build the business. If I make a good 10-inch pan, you’ll buy my 12-inch, and you might buy my pepper mill, and you might buy my Damascus steel knives. Someone said, ‘You want to be the Apple of cookware.’ I’m like, actually, no, because I love their cult status, but I don’t want to make something that has planned obsolescence.”

One of the most pivotal moments in HexClad’s journey was the partnership with chef Gordon Ramsay. Known for his exacting standards and no-nonsense approach to cooking, Ramsay’s endorsement is like having Michael Jordan’s endorsement for a sports brand. 

In a move worthy of the social media manager Hall of Fame, the collaboration kicked off when HexClad’s Instagram account manager noticed Gordon Ramsay was following HexClad in the summer of 2020. He reached out and chatted up Gordon Ramsay’s social media account, leading to the HexClad team sending Ramsay some pans. 

Soon enough, Daniel found himself on a call with Ramsay’s business manager. 

“He says, ‘Gordon likes the product. I think he’d be interested in doing something more robust.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, robust. What does that look like?’ And he says, ‘When Gordon Ramsay gets involved, you get more than you bargained for.’ I asked, ‘Is that a promise or a threat?’ He said, ‘Yeah, both.'”

A few calls and a Zoom meeting in October 2020 later, Gordon became one of the most involved celebrity business partners a founder could ask for. 

“It’s attractive to work with a celebrity,” says Daniel, “but I think there needs to be a really synergistic relationship. I’ve seen partnerships that don’t make sense, where it feels like the celebrity was just hired for a commercial. With Gordon, it’s different. He’s deeply involved, which is why the partnership works.”

While it’s tempting to bring a well-known name into a company, in many cases, celebrity partnerships can come across as disingenuous, especially if the celebrity is only involved in name and not in practice. 

Chef Ramsay’s relationship with HexClad showcases how the goal should be a long-term relationship that enhances the brand, rather than a short-term boost in visibility. 

HexClad’s collaboration with Ramsay was not just about leveraging his name; it was about aligning with a partner who embodies the same commitment to quality and innovation. 

Ramsay, an equity owner in the business rather than just an influencer on payroll, has elevated HexClad on the global stage through his numerous television shows, media appearances, and using HexClad cookware in his Michelin Star restaurants and personal life. 

His involvement goes beyond mere promotion; he’s contributed to the refinement and development of HexClad products based on his experience as a world-class chef and owner of one of the most respected brands in the restaurant industry.  Today, HexClad feels like both a timeless brand and a startup at the beginning of its journey.  For more in-depth business lessons about how to build your brand, listen to our full-length audio podcast here.