HexClad CEO Danny Winer on building a billion-dollar brand after 50

In this episode of The CEO Series, William Salvi sits down with Danny Winer, co-founder and CEO of HexClad. Danny traces his path from studying theater and film at NYU and moving to Los Angeles with $2,000 and three suitcases, to a car accident at 28 that broke his back, shattered his right leg, and left him six figures in debt with no ability to work. He rebuilt by selling cookware at trade shows, then lost his first company, Juicepresso, in September 2016 at age 50. What became HexClad started in the basement hallway of a trade show in Guangzhou, where Danny spotted hexagons lasered onto a Korean barbecue plate and found the rare thing nobody finds at those shows: the actual inventor, holding a book of 13 patents. They talk about the handshake deal that gave an unknown American company US exclusivity, why every investor turned him down for refusing to sell into retail, the emptied retirement accounts and rolling stack of credit cards, and the single Costco test store that saved the company when it was months from going out of business. They also get into celebrity partnerships. Gordon Ramsay found HexClad by following them on Instagram, and Danny explains what his business manager meant by "you're going to get more than you bargained for," why Gordon is on weekly calls looking at numbers rather than just filming ads, and what happens when he does not like a product. Plus becoming the official cookware of the New York Yankees, the F1 work, and how a conversation with Jimmy Iovine turned a martini shaker into a collaboration with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.