Seth Casden 13:59
Absolutely, I mean, when you put it in that context, like you look at the Winter Olympics, there are people that miss the podium by 1000 a second. Yeah. You know, the more elite you are, the bigger the significance of the game, right?
John Corcoran 14:15
Right. Now, the funny thing about this is, when you first came into this company, the idea was that you were going to be a passive investor, but you also ultimately, over the last 22 years, have served as CEO during different stints in its history. So what first led you to have to step in and serve in more of an operational role?
Seth Casden 14:39
Yeah, I appreciate that question, because you’re right again, you know, going back to my 20s, I was like, Oh, this is amazing. This is going to be fantastic. You know, when can I start counting my money? And then, behold, like, it’s not that simple. And, yeah, just because something that’s a great idea doesn’t mean they know how to run a company. And, you know, there’s a lot more to it. So in 2005 was my first opportunity to kind of step in and take the reins. And did that for a few years, and then thought I found somebody better and turned it over. And then after a few more years, you know, it’s been a long haul, and some people don’t have the patience or the dedication to kind of see it through.
And they’re looking, you know, for a return on a shorter timeframe than you know, doing something like this requires. And so ultimately, I kind of gave myself an education in terms of operations, and, you know, the irony is that, you know, to be excellent, you have to learn from experience. And experience comes from failures. You know, quote, unquote, what people might call failure. So, you know, made, made a lot of mistakes along the way. And fortunately, it wasn’t, you know, outcome determinant, and was able to, you know, take those experiences and just continue to push us forward in a constructive and positive way. And, you know, the last, yeah, go ahead.
John Corcoran 16:05
And I’m curious, because you had come from the world of private equity, which typically has like, I think it’s like a five to seven year time frame where they want to turn around and resell the company in what ways did you have you operated Hologenix CELLIANT differently because of your experience having worked in PE previously.
Seth Casden 16:32
I love that question. You know, John, thank you. And that’s exactly right. And that’s you know, that can be the downfall if you take private equity money, and you’re not able to deliver on that time frame, you’ll lose your company. You know, working in private equity, you realize, you know, seven or eight, nine out of 10 companies don’t succeed. So that teaches you a certain, first of all, reality, like, you know, it’s not, you know, just because you have a great idea and a great product doesn’t mean it’s going to work, but it also, I think, humbles you in the sense that like, it gives you the freedom to just give your best like, if it works, amazing if it doesn’t, it wasn’t supposed to in the first place, and so you kind of, like, lose that sensitivity to the outside noise, and you could just focus on what you believe and what your calling is. And so for me, it was really clear, like I believed in this, I was passionate, and I saw the value.
And there’s going to be bumps along the way, but I’m just going to, you know, stick with it, and you know, to the point you’re making. We’ve been able to do the opposite. We’ve been able to invest in a study that might take two years, and you’re not going to see a quarterly return. And that’s something you often hear about public companies, they always have to play to the next quarter. You know, for us, having been, you know, friends and family funded, we were able to say, Okay, we’re gonna invest in a performance study, and it’s gonna take nine months to do and another six months to get published, and then after that, hopefully a brand will be interested, and it might take another year for that brand to be on board. So our runway and our timeframe of measuring success is much longer than what you might see with a typical private equity investment or public company.
John Corcoran 18:27
Yeah, yeah. So it allows you to kind of have that longer view. But I, you know, I skipped over a part of your story that was a little perplexing to me. So you go to, first of all, you went to high school to the next high school over for me. I went to high school in Calabasas. You went to the viewpoint. Viewpoint is a very prestigious private school in Los Angeles. You went to Pepperdine. From there, another prestigious private university. And then you’re managing a reggae rock band. Before you go into private equity.
Seth Casden 19:04
So how does that play into the story? Yeah, so after I graduated Pepperdine and actually went to work private equity, and a couple of years of doing that, I realized this is not, you know what I wanted to do as a career, and so I moved to Argentina, and I lived in Argentina for a couple of years, and I learned Spanish, and I made a black and white movie. And through my journey of moving to Argentina in Miami, I met a very charismatic singer, and he convinced me that he had the next BC boy slash Bob Marley, you know, hit.
And so I ended up managing his band. It’s called cripple fish, and had a great run, booking them up and down some such strip at the whiskey, go, go and all the you know. PM, den, all the, you know, bars that were popular in the late 90s there and just really loved it. You know, it felt like whether or not they were recognized. I was following my passion and I loved what they were doing. But then that just self-destructed, and there was no way for women.
John Corcoran 20:21
Got stolen at some point after 911 Okay, 911 happens, and.
Seth Casden 20:28
We had a recording studio that we built for these guys, you know, floated on sand to minimize vibrations, and, you know, all the bells and whistles, yeah, and we booked them three day gig up in Mammoth and the band was going to the Guitar Center to pick up picks and strings and and the lead singer, at that point, those guys had their own internal fighting, and they saw him there at the Guitar Center and said, Okay, he’s doing the same thing. And they drove up the drummer and the bassist and the guitarist drove up to Mammoth and unbeknownst to them, you know, the lead singer never showed up. He was at the Guitar Center selling all the equipment from the studio, and got in the company car and called me from Texas saying, Hey, I hope you don’t mind. You know, I tweaked out and I couldn’t handle the pressure.
John Corcoran 21:22
And, you know, that sounds like it. And that was it. End of the band, okay? And that. And then how does that play into the hologenic story?
Seth Casden 21:31
So at that point, I’m, you know, and four days later, it was 911 and sitting on the side of the road, I guess it was no overnight parking, a police officer pulled up and tapped on the window, you know, sir, you can’t park here. And I told him the story I just told you, and, you know, he’s like, Okay, well, you can have another, you know, hour here, and just trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And, and then I, you know, my dad introduced me to David Hornick, and I just was like, wow, this is it is this is what I want to do.
John Corcoran 22:01
And so it’s kind of a low point for you, like you were 911 all that stuff. It was just like, Okay, I need to change my life. It sounds like, yes, yeah, yeah. Tell me a little bit about you know, there were a couple big inflection points over the last 22 years of running the company there. So there’s a 2008-2009 timeframe. How did that period affect your business?
Seth Casden 22:30
Well, obviously there’s a global sort of financial meltdown. At that point, it was a lot harder to get brands to engage. They’re more in a you know, protecting their business or not looking to expand or to add new technologies. One of the things that we went through our product originally was called holo fiber, as in a holistic fiber. But depending on your diction and where you were raised in the US, you would say hollow fiber, and then they would think it was like, actually a hollow channel fiber, which exists for other applications.
And so we realized that we needed to do a rebrand. So we actually launched CELLIANT in 2008 right in the middle of this. And CELLIANT is solid and reliant, because you’re relying on your cells to power it. So, that was a big undertaking. And we were able to sign some great brands at the time and kind of launch under the CELLIANT umbrella, but, but that was sort of, you know, one of the times of like, are we going to make it or not, you know? And it was a big, big bet to say, All right, let’s relaunch, this rebrand and, you know, put a Yeah, and usually.
John Corcoran 23:43
Those things take a couple of years. So it’s not like you can just turn on a dime if there’s suddenly a big economic crisis. But, you know, in retrospect, a lot of people say that these big companies started during downturns, you know, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, stuff like that started during downturns. Looking back on it now, you know, obviously you made it through those downturns, but it was, was it really difficult for you doing a rebrand in the midst of this major economic downturn?
Seth Casden 24:12
Absolutely, it was, you know, in five or 10 years, or maybe now, it looks obvious to people, and they say, Oh, great job. But you know, we had a lot of people telling us to shut down, to close shop, to just walk away and start something else. You know, there’s not a lot of market awareness around infrared, so we had that added challenge of educating the consumer so that they start looking for infrared in our clothing. So yeah, that was a real, a real sort of leap of faith.
John Corcoran 24:45
Yeah, and then I mean, under armor as a brand, I don’t know when your partnership started with them, but you know, it’s a company that, over the last 20 years, has gained a lot of awareness, especially among professional athletes. So talk a little bit. About the importance of those types of relationships with a large company like under armor, and I understand there’s others as well.
Seth Casden 25:08
Yeah, absolutely. We originally met with them, I think in 2010 or 2011 and they launched in 2018 I want to say. And so there’s this whole period of validating the technology and really substantiating our claims. And what I think helps them stand out among their peers is that they’re really committed to innovation. And it’s not like a gimmick or coming up with a name. They really have a science behind what they’re doing. And so having a brand like that really helps us get other brands like a KT tape, where they see the legitimacy in what we’re doing and the value.
And you want to leverage all of those sort of rising tide lifts all boats to bring these diverse products to the consumer. So whether it’s a shirt or, you know, tape or a brace, Curad, does a, you know, a knee brace, you’ve got to defend that? Do you sleep? Sleepwear, bare mattress, does, you know, bedding, pure care does sheets. Sleepletics does sheets. So we have a really wide brand footprint, or product footprint through all those brand relationships.
And then when you go beyond the US, you know about half of our business is international. Decathlon in Europe, they’re the largest sports retailer at neon, and Asia is the largest retailer in Asia. So we’ve really been fortunate to get relationships with the leaders in their respective categories.
John Corcoran 26:51
I’m i’m really curious about this because as a company that was founded on innovation and developing a new technology in areas that have existed for a long time. You know, shirts, clothing, sheets. How much of your energy and effort do you put into research and development of new products, new technologies, which, of course, is hard while you’re also trying to build and scale up a company? How much so, how much of your time and energy and effort and budget do you put into that kind of R and D?
Seth Casden 27:25
You know, that’s a really good question, and I think it’s evolving for us. I mean, first you’re trying to show that your product works and does what it says, and then you’re trying to make it easier to work with. You’re trying to get the particles smaller. You’re trying to get them to disperse better. You want to have different applications. So now we have cellulose. We have a natural fiber that’s recyclable. We now recycle polyester, through our relationship with UniFi. And then looking forward, you know, what is the next material? Is it an impact material? Is it a cooling material? Is it a heating material?
So we want to be sure that we’re investing in our science and how to apply it going forward, while we’re building out the applications for the core product. And, you know, we’ve looked at things like agriculture, the effect of infrared and selling it on how plants grow is incredible. So we now have an agricultural arm that we’re developing, but it’s important to continually try and build upon what you’ve done to get to a point where people are, you know, expecting infrared and everything that they wear or sleep on. So, you know, that’s something that you can, you know, really never do enough of we’re constantly trying to reinvent ourselves, if you will.
John Corcoran 28:45
And how does the product work in agriculture?
Seth Casden 28:49
So in agriculture, if you think about indoor growing, and now they do a lot of hydroponics, without soil, they have these vertical farms where they’re using LED lights. When you add infrared into that system, you see an increase in plant yield. You see a decrease in the amount of water needed. You can look at all kinds of different markers for how to measure a benefit, but at the end of the day, plants really respond to the stimulus from infrared, and that creates a very visual response and reaction. And you know, you can measure the yield of tomatoes from a crop and see an increase. You know, we’re seeing anywhere from a 10 to 30% increase in the amount of tomatoes, as an example, when you add CELLIANT media to the growth system.
John Corcoran 29:40
So is it? Is it? I’m just having trouble understanding. Is it like a cloth or a fabric that goes into the growing plant?
Seth Casden 29:49
Yeah, if you’ve heard of rockwool, if you think of hydroponics, they will plant the seed in a synthetic. It looks like a foam, like a fibro foam, yeah? Yeah. So if you wrap that home or make that foam by selling it, then the plant will increase its growth rate and its yield.
John Corcoran 30:08
That’s so cool. So as you look towards the future, and I’m mindful of the clock, I think we’re nearing the end here. What other applications or areas are you looking at, or do you see potential for your technology for CELLIANT?
Seth Casden 30:27
Well, you know, the applications are almost limitless. You know, if you look at people as a population, and you say, if I increase circulation, does your health improve? It’s almost unequivocally yes. What we’re really focused on is awareness, because right now, there’s not that many people that understand this out there. They can use it and that will help them. So our mandate is to bring awareness of infrared, the benefits of infrared, and obviously, specifically selling it, and what it can do for the, you know, for the average person listening.
Just me, you know this. Traditionally, we’re told if you want to get healthier, you have to eat better, exercise more or sleep longer, right, right, take a pill. And what we’re offering is the solution that is passive. All you have to do is sleep badly the way you normally would get dressed the way you normally would, and you’re going to have a benefit just by being able to harness your body’s energy and direct infrared back into the body.
John Corcoran 31:29
It is funny, because here we are walking around in clothing, most of the time, probably made from cotton, which is the way it’s been made for hundreds of years, and we haven’t in every other area of our life, from, you know, being online at all moments of the day, having a supercomputer in our pocket, you know, all these different access to information, satellites in the sky. We’ve got all these different areas that we’ve innovated, and yet, the clothing on our body, so many of us don’t think about how that affects us. And as you said, it affects our circulation. It affects everything in the body.
Seth Casden 32:06
And that’s what we’re trying to change. You know, typically you think of your clothing as a fashion piece to make you more comfortable, breathability, waterproof, you know, Gore Tex, moisture management. And we want people to start thinking about, what can it do for their health and their wellness, and how can we improve your health and wellness through the products that you wear and use? And there hasn’t been innovation in textiles, really, in a long time.
John Corcoran 32:33
Yeah, interesting. Seth, this has been such an interesting conversation. I want to wrap up with the question I always ask, which is my gratitude question. I’m a big fan of expressing gratitude to those who helped you along the way, especially peers or contemporaries. However you want to define that, who would you want to thank?
Seth Casden 32:52
Well, you know, thank you for that question. You know, it’s sort of the Academy Awards. You have this long list of everyone you want to thank. You. Now, for me, I’ve had so many influential people that have just encouraged me to follow my path. And you know, I had an amazing teacher in high school, Dr Levy, that you know would quote Robert Frost. And you know, I chose the path less, you know, less traveled, and that’s made all the difference. And you know, for me, I don’t have to look any further than my father. He’s always supported me.
He’s been my biggest fan, been at all my games, always cheering me on, you know, always evaluating me on my best day and not my worst day, which I think a lot of us get caught on, you know, get stuck on, on the negative. And it’s so important to look at what we can do when we’re at our best. And my dad has always supported me and encouraged me and introduced me, you know, to this company and created this opportunity for me. So he’s the one that I hold up and admire to be.
John Corcoran 34:03
Seth, thanks so much for your time. Where can people go to learn more about you? And CELLIANT.
Seth Casden 34:10
so celliant.com is our website, and I love people to come out or reach out on LinkedIn. Seth, Casden, and you’ll get a response from me. And thank you for your listeners and for having me on your show.
John Corcoran 34:22
Seth, thanks so much.
Outro 34:26
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.
