FROSTBUDDY: Home of The Original Universal Can Cooler
- KLS
- Jun 3
- 9 min read
For the 188th feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with FROSTBUDDY and Director of Sales, Chas Shride. The world's first universal cooler, size doesn't matter.
"Together Talks" feature # 188: FROSTBUDDY presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
Story of how it was created?
Brock and Mitch started this in 2020, they are brothers. Brock was attending Indiana University and came home at Christmas break. He realized he wanted to start something in the e-com space. At the time there was one other brand on the market. No one had really launched a slim can cooler yet, Yeti hadn't launched theirs. The brothers decided to launch a slim can cooler. This is when seltzers were blowing up, and all the beer brands were launching their seltzers. They launched a slim can cooler, which sold out pretty quickly, but they realized Yeti then had launched their slim can cooler a couple months after.
They had to figure out how they can make this different? That's where the universal idea came about. They worked with our manufacturers overseas and they developed the universal can cooler. It fits your slim cans, your regular 12 ounce cans, 12 ounce glass bottles, and then also 16 ounce cans as well. It fits in a cup holder, keeps it cold or keeps it hot. That was the first product that put FROSTBUDDY on the map. And it's still our best-selling product to this day.
What separates you from your competition?
The uniqueness of our products. Almost all of them have at least two different features to it that makes it different. Our tumbler has the chapstick holder built into the handle. There's a place you can clip on your keys at the bottom of that handle. Our to-go buddy comes with that silicone lid, so you can drop your iced coffee in there, small, medium, or large. Or you could just use it as a regular tumbler. We are making products that can be used for multiple different things. Also we want to make the category much more fun. I would say drinkware is kind of a boring category. But at FROSTBUDDY, our goal is to make products that work well, but also are fun products as well.
What have been the biggest challenges?
I can talk more in the retail space because that's primarily what I do. I would say our biggest challenge is getting the customers in stores to understand what the product does in a few seconds. That's normally all the time you have. If you don't catch the customers' attention, instantly we could lose out on a sale. Most customers don't pick up every item they see in a store and read the label and how it works. That's our biggest challenge is getting the customers in a store to understand what the product does.
What were your concerns to transition to joining the company?
I had a mutual connection to someone who was already working at FROSTBUDDY. This was at the point where they were trying to grow the wholesale. It really had just been like mom and pop shops until then. Mitch was handling, but he also was doing operations stuff. They were looking for someone to kind of take it over.
Before that, I was doing healthcare recruiting. I did not enjoy that. I only was there for four months. And prior to that, I was in school. It was pretty new. It was 100% commission, this role. I heard about the opportunity and thought this sounds cool. I liked Brock and Mitch. I never met them in person, just FaceTimed a few times. I just took the leap of faith and it has turned out well.
Since I started, we've grown. When I started, we had around 10 to 12 full time W2 employees. Today we are over 65. It's been cool to see the growth and be a part of it. We continue to get better every day and I'm grateful for the opportunity.
What have you learned since joining the company?
The main thing from being in sales and then in this space is just literally being a human being. I post about this a lot, but with AI and everything and the cold outreach I get from people, you can tell immediately who is just copying and pasting messages and just blasting them out. As compared to who takes a couple minutes to look at your company and then send a thoughtful message.
When I first started, I was the former, seeing how many emails I can send every day, in that copy and paste approach. But people like to work with people and people buy from people they like. I had to make that pivot to my approach. That's the biggest thing I always tell people who are getting into sales or basically in any role ever. Just be a human being, be yourself. Normally it works out pretty well.
Take us through the creative process for creating your social content?
We have almost ten people now who make videos for us. Some of those people are in college. They're creating content every day. Brock is the one who has most of the ideas for this. I'm not coming up with a lot of video ideas. He has that process in his head. But we post a lot on Instagram. I think we've been posting like three to six times a day now with still photos, reels, TikTok. We post multiple times adding the TikTok shop, that was a pretty big revenue driver for us in the last year. TikTok shop has been great.
You get all the affiliates to also create content, and then we give them a percentage of whatever they sell. I don't know how many affiliates we're at now, but a few months ago, I think, in the 5,000 7,000 affiliates range. We have about 1,000 videos that are made from people who aren't affiliated, that are workers for our company.
That is our strategy to post consistently, post all the time. Because the algorithm is so weird, you don't know what will take off. I posted about how I took Brock's video, I sped it up 1.5, so TikTok didn't read that it was the same video, and mine is at 7 million views now. The one that they posted on FROSTBUDDY's page, I think, is at 12 million. We took the same video, and we're close to a combined 20 million views, which is kind of crazy. What is more interesting is that video actually didn't convert super well either, which is odd. Because I've posted videos before where it took me a minute to make the video, and it converted super well. And then this one, he went through the whole demonstration of how the product works, and everything, got a bunch of views, engagement, and didn't convert as well as we thought it would based off 20 million views. It's a weird, weird algorithm. You never know what's going to stick, so we are willing to try it all.
Share a decision that you made that was detrimental?
I think a big thing was inventory when they first started. We had a design called Hibiscus. It was a flower design. At the time, it was a top seller. I think they ordered around 30,000-45,000 units of it. This was back in 2022, and then we were kind of just stuck with this color, because nobody was buying it. It stopped being a top seller, so we actually sent a lot of it back about a year ago overseas, and they scrapped the design, made it stainless, and then reprinted. We lost money on that, so that's been a learning curve because inventory is super hard, but they have another brother, Scott, who joined about four months before I did.
There's three brothers who work in the company, and him and Brock have done a good job of dialing in the inventory now, and they have a pretty good process to it. But that is a tough piece to get, especially when you have Amazon. TikTok shop, our online, and then wholesale. There's a bunch of different channels and we could get a corporate order for 10,000 units. While that is great, sometimes we can't get this color in for another 70 days. It's not the easiest thing to predict. I think that's probably been the biggest learning curve.
Do you recall the first moment you saw real traction with the brand?
Yep. Actually, the first three weeks I started, I was at three different trade shows. I started in Dallas for one week, then we went to Atlanta. In Atlanta, we were at a permanent showroom, where the Atlanta Gift Mart is held. We were working with a rep sales company. They bring their customers in and they purchase and they get a commission, basically.
We did some crazy numbers. We had just launched a new display. Everyone wanted the display in their store. Those numbers kind of just blew me away because we're just selling cups. And I wasn't used to that level of interest. That was kind of when I was started to realize wow, there's a lot of money in this. People talk about it, but when you don't see it happen, it doesn't really click. That was kind of the first instance where my understanding grew to our potential.
Then when we launched into Dick's Sporting Goods about four months after that. That was a cool launch to see happen in a big store. It was actually me and my fiancé were like the models, I guess, on the display for it. That was pretty cool to see our faces in stores. That was kind of the moment where I realized this is kind of great.
What is your why?
For me it is the white belt mentality. There's always something to improve on. You'll never be a true master of anything. That idea that of knowing you can keep getting better every day. It may be kind of cheesy thing to say, but that's how I like to look at it. With how we are growing, it is something pretty cool to be a part of. That is not really my why, but more the reason for the tenacity in my work ethic. In our company, since we're not a giant corporation, my opinion has value. I can offer suggestions and they are given an opportunity to be evaluated. Whether they choose it or not is exciting because I understand that my opinion has value and is respected. Other corporate jobs, that is a rarity.
Is there a favorite collaboration you have done?
The first one that we've done with the actual university where we did NIL, and they're selling our product at the stadium, is the University of North Carolina. It was so cool to see it happen. There's another big one that we're working on, I'm not going to say who it is, we're close to finalizing. It would be for this fall, but that's pretty exciting to see happen. I think the universities are cool to work with. I actually kind of took on the licensing for about four months and dove straight into it, meeting with licensing directors. Now we have a few people on our team whose sole focus is licensing.
The MLB reached out to us, which was incredible. When I got that email, it was like whoa, the MLB, they want us to get the license. That was pretty incredible to witness. Then we're still always working towards getting the NFL. That's the next one, which is incredibly hard to get.
Piece of Advice
I'm only 24 years old, so I guess this is more of a piece of advice for people who are just starting off in their careers, but don't always take the safe route. When people take some sort of risk it does scare them, but it also normally excites them. They feel something more than the people who take kind of the comfortable route out of college.
Then also, I'd add to ask for help. I think that's a big thing people don't do. Often they are scared that someone won't even respond, but I think you'd be surprised on asking people for help who have been in your position for a long time or whatever it might be. Ask them for advice and you'd be surprised on who's there to give the advice or help you out.
Community Callout
In Closing
KLS wants to thank FROSTBUDDY and Director of sales, Chas Shride, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!
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