Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge

Hey, I got this new product and you know this awesome sponge and I showed it to him and he said, Yeah, you know, I I it's not gonna sell. And I said, Oh no, you're wrong. It's a it's a bright yellow, smiley face in this neon box, like there's no way it's not gonna sell. And he said, Alright, so he went to the shelf and he just moved some sponges over and put it on the shelf and said Yeah, we'll see.

You know how many people bought it? Hum I Nobody. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. They built.

I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how an inventor who made products to clean cars wound up making a sponge to clean dishes. grew it into a massive brand. Scrub Daddy. Some of the best known products in the world didn't start out as great ideas. They were actually meant to do something different. Take bubble wrap, for example. It was supposed to be wallpaper. Yes, textured wallpaper. Post-it notes were the result of a failed attempt to create a super strong glue. The adhesive was actually too weak.

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