 What's been the biggest lesson you've learned so far? Live comfortably in uncertainty because there is just so much uncertainty at every step of this journey. You just have to roll with it. Mike Mayer, co-founder of Widmill. Are you ready to answer some questions? I am ready. We've seen mattresses, razors, now window unit air conditioners. What made you want to reinvent something like that? I was moving my brother in the city a few summers ago. We have a mutual friend named Ryan who's in air conditioning. And we realized how absolutely horrible the industry is. And we said, Ryan, we got to do something about this. And we did. Widmill, the name is super like one-on-one millennial brand vibes. Who came up with it? My friend, Sam. The branding is great, but so is the product design. How do you find people that design on that sort of level? Three months of flying around the country. I see you graduated from Wharton, which seems to be the genesis of lots of successful DTC companies like Warby and Harry's. How much of their playbook have you used? Half. What half? Creating that consumer friendly consumer first brand. And how much of just like probably the agencies they used or the PR firms they've used, like have you replicated across the board? It changes so fast. So the agencies they use would be so out of practice, I think. No offense to them, but we found new people. When we spoke a few years ago, you were working on a few different ideas. Did you seek out the AC biz or did it find you? It found me. You've managed to make staying cool look cool. Why are other AC units so ugly? Decades and decades and decades of using the same supply chain without thinking about the customer first. All other DTC disruptors have increased convenience and decreased price. Where do you fall on that spectrum? Drastically increased convenience keep the price about the same. What's been harder than you anticipated? Almost everything. You give me DTC vibes, but then I see you have a partnership with PC Richard. Why'd you do that? DTC only takes you so far. Retail is where broad distribution is and we want it to be there. What other brands inspired you? Casper, Warby. A bougie window unit is almost an oxymoron and pretty ironic. Why'd you choose to focus on aesthetics? People buy with their eyes and this thing sits in a window in their home. It has to look nice. Forbes called you the iPhone of air conditioners. Was Apple an inspiration for the windmill brand? Absolutely. Soft edges, clean lines, beautiful clean look. What's the biggest difference between windmill and the AC units your co-founder Ryan's grandpa Tony used to make? There's a lot. First, it's easy to install. It comes pre-assembled so it's ready to go out of the box. We have double side insulation to keep drafts out. You can keep it in all year long. The LED display fades away after 60 seconds. It connects to an app. It's obviously hopefully you think beautiful looking. It's much, much different than what grandpa Tony was slinging around the city in the 60s. Usually when something like this happens there's a bunch of other people that come up with the same idea at the same time that are attacking the problem similarly. How many real competitors do you see amongst the new wave of air conditioners? Of course. I mean, we have competition. It's sort of validating that this is a market that's worthy of being in. I look at our competitors as the big grill is in the room like GE and LG and Frigidaire. Those are really the companies that we're going after. Okay. We are at our Flowcode flow card. So Flowcode is a sponsor of this season. Flowcode is a next generation QR technology that allows you to just by putting your camera up to it, get your own customized mobile experience that connects you directly to your customer. So the audience is going to see your own customized Flowcode that will design for you. So now that you know that people are watching and they're going to pull their phones out, what would you love for them to be connected to in this environment? First of all, that's very cool. Second of all, I definitely want to have a photo of the Windmill AC. I'd love for them to be able to see reviews, our Instagram page and our Facebook page, and maybe eventually go give us a follow and give us some love there. How do you make sure your brand resonates and doesn't just check boxes? I've bought a lot of these Windmill ACs in my day. So has my brother and Ryan. And so we really understand what the customer is going through and talking to them at each point in the journey is really how you connect with them. When you say talking to them, does that mean email and text and all that kind of stuff? Yeah, every touch point with the customer, even to what's on the packaging, what's in the manual. That's every time that we're communicating with the customer is what I mean by talking to. Besides sales, what metrics do you look at to determine your brand's health? We're talking a lot about the customer now. And that's something that's near and dear to my heart. So you think about an MPS score, what the satisfaction level is with our customer support team. What keeps you up at night and what time do you wake up in the morning? A lot keeps me up at night, especially in the early days of the business, but just making sure that customers are getting product that works and that keeps them cool is obviously top of mind. I try to wake up at around 7 a.m. to work out. It doesn't always happen. What's been the coolest pun intended moment so far? Getting into Home Depot and PC Richard & Son as a startup. What's been your best acquisition channel? We haven't launched our new website yet. So retail has driven the majority of our sales this year. You said this earlier, but a lot of DTC brands, it's not the business. It's how you launch and eventually Casper had stores and Warby had stores and Harry goes into retails. Did you go into retail sooner than you anticipated? We had always wanted to get into retail first and have a true omnichannel approach. I think DTC just means you sell on your website, which of course we're doing and we're going to continue to do, but really to get the reach that we want, especially in this product category, retail was always a priority. What do you worry about? Keeping customers happy. What's been your biggest investment to date? Buying all of the air conditioners to get them here for people. Work from home or office? Work from home. What's your kryptonite? A return. What's been the biggest lesson you've learned so far? Live comfortably in uncertainty because there is just so much uncertainty at every step of this journey, you just have to roll with it. What's the best part of the job? Knowing that we produce something from scratch that people love and they get a lot of use out of and seeing happy customers write in or post on Instagram or tweet about us is so rewarding. What's your brand expansion plan to be able to sell a windmill customer or something else besides an air conditioning unit? We're looking to reimagine air care products more broadly, so I'll let you all use your imagination there and there'll be some exciting things to share over the next year or so. Who's your target audience? So really we're for everyone, but our target demographic, the customers that we're marketing to are heavily in New York City. And tend to be young professionals living in walk-ups. I can imagine of an investment of this size being a new brand might hurt you in that people want to make sure it's reliable and what happens if it breaks, how do you address all that? Ryan, who I've mentioned, his family's been in air conditioning for 60 years and telling that story, they've been manufacturing with the factory that windmill is using for over 20 years now. And so we're not just some flimsy new startup to enter this space, we actually play on decades of experience doing this. What's been the best day in company history and what's been the worst? The best day in company history seeing a windmill in the wild. I was walking home and now I look up to look at air conditioners when I'm walking down the streets of New York City and I saw a windmill AC unit in a window and I actually got teary eyed. Worst day was thinking that we had a major manufacturing issue. We drove to our warehouse to investigate. Turns out it was not what we thought it was, but that one hour ride from the city to the warehouse was probably the most tense one hour that my co-founder and I have shared. Mike Mayer, co-founder of Windmill. Thank you so much for coming on and answering some questions. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. I'm Ian Wishingrad and I'll see you next time on I'm With the Brand.