Latest / Best of Business / Simon Huesser: Huski Co-Founder on the company's success

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Simon Huesser: Huski Co-Founder on the company's success · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from news Talk zed B.
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  Speaker 2: Success story out of Taranaki startup Husky has hit multimillion
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  Speaker 2: dollar profits with their world first wine cooler tech. So
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  Speaker 2: it's a nice free coller keeps the champagne cold for
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  Speaker 2: up to six hours. They've just secured their largest commercial
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  Speaker 2: export order to the UK for seventy six thousand units. Now.
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  Speaker 2: Simon Hess is the co founder of Husky, and he's
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  Speaker 2: well the Simon, very.
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  Speaker 3: Good morning to you, Good morning, thanks Mite.
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  Speaker 2: Well done blah. But I've had a look this morning.
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  Speaker 2: It's a good looking thing. What I like most of
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  Speaker 2: all no condensation, because you think the moment you get
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  Speaker 2: cold and condensation all over the table, there's not Is
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  Speaker 2: it magic or what is it?
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  Speaker 3: The technology had actually been around over one hundred years.
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  Speaker 3: It works in the same way that like a Thermos
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  Speaker 3: Strenk bottle works, but nobody has just turned it around
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  Speaker 3: and kind of used it for wine. With the right
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  Speaker 3: kind of design, you can put it on and because
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  Speaker 3: it keeps the keeps all the cold insight of the
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  Speaker 3: great job of into landing, you don't get it cold.
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  Speaker 3: The outside, so you don't get it.
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  Speaker 2: So the bottle's got to start cold, so the thermicidea
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  Speaker 2: the bottle must start cold and it will hold its coldness.
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  Speaker 2: Is that right, it's it.
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  Speaker 3: So you pull the cold bottle from We wanted it
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  Speaker 3: to be super simple. So you pull the cold bottle
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  Speaker 3: from the fridge. You grab the husky off the shelf,
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  Speaker 3: which is root temperature. You put the bottle in the husky.
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  Speaker 3: You screw on the lid. And it doesn't matter what
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  Speaker 3: size bottle it is, if it's an Olfats or a
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  Speaker 3: Burgundy or a Bordeaux style bottle, you screw on the
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  Speaker 3: lid and that's all you have to do. Then you
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  Speaker 3: pop it on the table. You pull your glass of
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  Speaker 3: wine with your friends. You notice that their glasses of
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  Speaker 3: wine are you know, half full or empty, and you
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  Speaker 3: unscrew the lid and you top it up. You don't
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  Speaker 3: have to kind of go back and forward to the fridge,
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  Speaker 3: or we don't have to deal with a nice bucket
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  Speaker 3: and condensation.
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  Speaker 2: So you don't have to cool it in the first place.
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  Speaker 2: Are there lots of patents around this or no, not.
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  Speaker 3: Really, because the base technology has been around for so long.
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  Speaker 3: All of those ones have run out, and then our
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  Speaker 3: using it for wine was relatively new, so there wasn't
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  Speaker 3: anything that kind of existed in that space, and then
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  Speaker 3: we revolved the product. The Wine Caller was the first one,
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  Speaker 3: and then the Champaign Caller, which won the Red Dot
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  Speaker 3: Design Award, has the integrated bottle stop in the bottom
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  Speaker 3: because you've got bubbles with sparkling wine as another innovation
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  Speaker 3: on it, which so we were able to want to
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  Speaker 3: do a pattern on that.
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  Speaker 2: Because they are quite style of shann't they. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: that's that's as important as anything I think, isn't it.
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  Speaker 3: I think it's critical. Like when we were designing it,
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  Speaker 3: especially for wine, it's there's rituals and romance and everything
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  Speaker 3: around that, and we were conscious that we're going to
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  Speaker 3: build a product or create a product for this. It's
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  Speaker 3: going to sit on somebody's table. It has to look
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  Speaker 3: really good, it has to perform really well. So yeah,
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  Speaker 3: that was that was super important for us. It had
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  Speaker 3: to match the kind of environment.
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  Speaker 2: Seventy six thousand units, so you've got that many units.
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  Speaker 2: There's a lot of units.
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  Speaker 3: It was more than we'd produced in the entire year proceeding,
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  Speaker 3: so it was it was a big one for us,
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  Speaker 3: but yeah, we were confident we could make it happen.
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  Speaker 3: We've got really good production partners and with the landing
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  Speaker 3: on the shores in the UK at the moment, and
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  Speaker 3: I can't say it are for because they'll be under
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  Speaker 3: Christmas trees, I think somewhere worth.
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  Speaker 2: Good, well, well done. I love a good success story
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  Speaker 2: and well done. Congratulations on that salmon. Whose husky is
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  Speaker 2: the name of the company, and he seems to it's
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  Speaker 2: so just to explain, just so you're not it's not
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  Speaker 2: in the fridge. It's yes, Husky's Wine Call has been
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  Speaker 2: around for years. But you've got to cool them down
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  Speaker 2: first so they stay cool to keep the wine call.
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  Speaker 2: This isn't cool, I know because I've got a thermisize
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  Speaker 2: bought a thermis when my hot water tap, and this's
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  Speaker 2: my thermist will keep the bottle cool as well, except
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  Speaker 2: because it's got a little hole that won't keep put
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  Speaker 2: a bottle in, so it just keeps liquid. And so
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  Speaker 2: that's just.
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  Speaker 3: A give me having to pour your wine in there
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  Speaker 3: with a funnel, haven't.
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  Speaker 2: You precisely No one's caught me yet, Glynn. Everyone thinks
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  Speaker 2: it's water.
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