iRobot CEO Gary Cohen on Turnarounds, Feature Wars, and the Future of Roomba

Transcript

[00:00:00] Gary Cohen: We think there is a really strong relationship that the brand has with consumers. I mean, people name their Roombas, they have parties with their Roombas. We get pictures all the time of kids and pets playing with Roombas. It is synonymous with the category. When we do well, the category does well. When we drive the category, when we come up with new products, we advertise. The entire category grows when we just compete against our competition with feature wars. Again, we're just going after a very small segment of the marketplace that's only gonna maybe trade up a little bit, but we're not bringing new consumers in.

[00:00:38] Brian Heater: Hello and welcome to another episode of Automated. My name is Brian Heater. I am the managing editor at the Association for Advancing Automation. We have a very special episode for you today. If you've been following the show, you know that we have interviewed all three co-founders of iRobot, Helen Greiner, Colin Angle, Rodney Brooks. We also recently spoke with Mehul Nariyawala from Matic and previously featured Roomba designer Joe Jones in the Automated newsletter. iRobot is a cornerstone of the American robotics community, both in terms of cracking the consumer market and employing some of the industry's top names. If you have followed the news lately, you know that the company has been struggling quite a bit. This week we are speaking with CEO Gary Cohen about shepherding iRobot through the Chapter 11 process and its recent acquisition. It's a great conversation. You'll learn a lot. I learned a lot. Everybody learns a lot. If you're enjoying the show, please like and subscribe and don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter over at Automated.fm and with that please enjoy this interview with Gary Cohen. We talk a lot about what's coming up next in automation on the show, but if you really wanna see the future in motion, you've got to be there in person. Automate 2026 is where the world's leading innovators, builders, and dreamers come together to show what's possible. Robots, AI, machine vision, motion control, you name it, all automation under one roof. Register for free at automateshow.com

[00:02:20] Gary Cohen: To join us in Chicago June 22nd through the 25th. We'll see you there.

[00:02:26] Brian Heater: So I understand that you're like me, a bit of a music guy, a bit of a music person. I have a music podcast. I interview a lot of musicians. And obviously there's this thing when you're a pop musician about having your big hit early on in your career, right? And it kind of, it can doom you. I'm wondering if early on when you had sort of started off in this business world, whether you were worried that the Mach3 razor would be that for you, whether it was all gonna be downhill after the Gillette Mach3.

[00:03:00] Gary Cohen: Not at all. I had ambitions of grandeur, well, even before Mach3. No. I just love the game. I love growing brands. I love being part of businesses and when I was at Gillette at the time, we were on a roll, but we already knew what our next generation product was gonna be. So I had a little insight into the future and our goal was always, there's a better way to shave and we'll find it. I have to say Mach3 was awesome in terms of everything we did. It all came together and it was such a gratifying experience to be part of. But as soon as we finished, we went on to the next thing to start to develop how we could be bigger and better. And that eventually led to Fusion, which was still out in the marketplace. So I'm very proud of what we did. But it was, for me, it was always just part of the journey.

[00:03:48] Brian Heater: Was there a Mach4? There was a Mach4, right?

[00:03:50] Gary Cohen: Not by us. Somebody tried to beat us. It was the razor wars. Everybody was trying to, yeah. If you remember from Saturday Night Live, I think there was a 10 blade razor that they were showcasing. But no, we went from three to five.

[00:04:05] Brian Heater: I remember that very distinctly. And I feel like maybe there's a lesson to be learned specifically in the razor wars that, you know, maybe when it comes to innovating a product, you can't just keep adding more and more razors.

[00:04:18] Gary Cohen: Yeah. I mean, there's a careful balance between end benefits and features. I'm dealing with that now. We call them the robot wars. Our competitors just want to keep adding features and features, and we have this iconic global brand and we know the way to win is gonna be able to make sure that we have the best feature set that we can offer, but also differentiate the brand and lean into the affinity that consumers have with the brand and provide benefits that consumers are looking for. So when I came here, there was a fundamental change that needed to take place in my mind, which was make us a much more consumer-facing company. And that's a cultural change and that has to impact every function within the company. And now I'm communicating that to our new owners and our new R&D and manufacturing teams. So it is just something that has been part of my DNA.

[00:05:13] Brian Heater: That's interesting. I mean, in what sense? Obviously, in a very broad sense, Roomba and robot vacuums generally are the most consumer robot that has existed. But in what way was iRobot not a consumer company before you joined?

[00:05:30] Gary Cohen: They had a great relationship with consumers because they were first in the business. But you see it often with technology companies that they want to develop technology, sometimes for technology's sake, or in electronics product lines, people come up with different features and then figure out a way to market them. Consumer-led companies tend to look at what are the consumer needs, what are the consumer pain points, and then develop products to deliver that. Gillette was a very technology-driven company, and when you merge them both, that's when you can get great ideas. The concept of three blades existed well before we launched Mach3, but we did a lot of insight work on what a consumer's looking for, and it wasn't until the magic came through of, well, what is the benefit of three blades and what can that deliver? And interestingly, three blades was actually a better shave and less irritating. So when we developed that concept of three blades, better shaving, less irritation, that unlocked the consumer aha moment. That's what I would give as a good example of consumer-led innovation, where you're taking sometimes technology and what the consumer pain points are and merging them together. And that's what my goal will be with iRobot, is to take what the best of the technology can deliver and in many cases bring some of those consumer benefit needs and the pain points to develop a great product.

[00:06:54] Brian Heater: I don't know how much you know about my background as a journalist, but prior to covering robotics as much as I am now, I was really covering consumer tech, so I was doing phones and gadgets and things like that. And those tend to exist, especially phones, on that year refresh cycle. So we're all used to every year the big keynote happening, there being one or two new features coming out, them trying to sell this new device. Obviously different than industrial robots. But do you feel that that was something that maybe iRobot was attempting to, or starting to get caught up into, of just adding a new feature every year in order to get people to refresh?

[00:07:41] Gary Cohen: I think that, and maybe a combination of not really addressing the competition or what the consumer needs were in the best way possible. We had some great technology. We had a great vision. The former CEO was a visionary. He was great. As we started to get competition, however, they started to look at some of the consumer pain points a little differently. So as an example, outside of the US, mopping was a very big segment of the marketplace, and we developed the best mop we could deliver to the marketplace. The problem is consumers didn't want two vacuums or two robots in their house. It's difficult enough for some consumers to have one of these devices in their house. So two was just one too many. Our competition figured out a way to put both of them together, and initially consumers were willing to make some of the trade-offs of not having the best mop or the best vacuum, but at least it was one single device and we were very late to the party because we missed that consumer insight that many consumers didn't want two devices. And this was a time when the category was growing. So to attract new consumers, sometimes you have to make it easy for them to get into the category. We had the best technology in terms of navigation, but it required a lot of software engineers to develop the product and the vision was to be a connected home and to use camera-based navigation systems. But camera-based navigation was expensive and it had some challenges to it, like you can't run your robot at night. So a simple task that consumers would want, the products couldn't deliver. So our competition started to use LiDAR-based navigation, which was simpler and mapped your home much faster. And we were very late to the party. So there were several technology areas that we did not get into for strategic reasons. And when you compound them all, we had a deficit in terms of product offerings versus our competition. So that was the situation that I faced when I joined, and we've dramatically made changes to address that.

[00:10:05] Brian Heater: Addressing the competition. I mean, to a certain extent it sounds like that means seeing some of these feature sets that are coming out that are being popular. Obviously you don't wanna be chasing, you wanna avoid that where possible. Market fit is a big one too. I mean, when we take the hundred-foot view and we look at what happened, the market is just a lot more saturated than it was before. You know, Roombas just start occupying the top half of the market. So I assume that trying to bring the price point down significantly and trying to compete down there was an issue as well. But was it possible for iRobot and Roomba to compete with the low end of the market?

[00:10:48] Gary Cohen: You know, at the time we weren't competing at the mid or the high price. I don't think that was really the issue. That said, the market really isn't saturated. It's just we're talking to the same people that keep buying the same products. The household penetration has somewhat plateaued in a market like the US. It's less than 20% household penetration. So I've worked in low penetration categories before. Razors being one of them. At the time when we started Mach3, the penetration of systems razors, which are the more expensive premium razors, was still relatively low, and we were converting people from disposable razors. You need good technology and messaging and we went after a target audience that was fairly young with sampling and messaging, and even then we grew household penetration by single digits every year. That took many years to manifest itself into bigger household penetration. I had the same thing with Oral-B power toothbrushes. It was still a relatively niche product with household penetration, but it took sampling, dental recommendations, new products, advertising to eventually get household penetration to increase. Robots are in the same situation, and so by just continuing to put features at the higher end of the price point you're only gonna either trade people up or bring in a relatively few number of folks. I won't give you product ideas, but we do grow household penetration if we're really gonna transform the category. And that comes from taking a consumer mindset, not a technology mindset. We can argue whether Apple is the best technology, but I can tell you it's a very easy product to open. It's a very easy product to start up. We need to take the robotic category and make it as easy as starting up an iPhone to really grow penetration. So separate from the arms races of features, if we can have the box opening experience, the setup, the challenges of getting your product to wifi connection, if we can minimize those pain points, those are examples of how we'll grow the category significantly, and we've just started that journey. So that's what I mean about being consumer-led. It's not always about features and trying to win the arms race. Yeah, you have to be competitive. But at the same time, we have an opportunity given our brand to really identify ways to unleash category growth, and that's another major focus of ours.

[00:13:37] Brian Heater: It seems that's something you were also getting at too, is that you're only going to convert a very small portion of the market if a large percent or most of your devices are over a certain price point. You are going to have to address that lower part of the market. I mean, that is what really, to a certain extent, is why Roomba succeeded in the first place, right? They were the $200 robot to the thousand, $2,000 Electrolux robot.

[00:14:05] Gary Cohen: Even then, the penetration was so low, I don't think people made that comparative set. It was really like, this is a great new technology. We never really were going after the low end of the market with the technology. The market has segmented pretty significantly where even two to $400 robots are pretty good quality. I would say it's the under a hundred dollars that a lot of it is just cheap product that you probably wouldn't wanna buy or doesn't work that well. But I think within a good, better, best framework, even the entry level of what I would call good products delivers against some of the needs that consumers have. So as you get into the more premium sets of products that do everything from mopping and heat drying and air purification and really cleaning the product well and making autonomous cleaning an opportunity for a lot of consumers, that's when people are willing to pay premium price points. But as I said, my vision is to both grow the category with attractive products at affordable prices, but at the same time come up with premium products that deliver on benefit needs that certain segments have, versus just loading products with features and trying to win a feature war.

[00:15:31] Brian Heater: So what did you maintain? What's still there at iRobot? What is iRobot bringing to the table that is the key differentiator that will continue to be the differentiator going forward?

[00:15:45] Gary Cohen: We have a tremendous commercial platform globally, and we've got a great brand and people that manage relationships with our major customers. So what we have is a footprint that is in just about every major retail outlet in the globe. We then also have our own DTC platform, plus we have really strong relationships with e-commerce. Most of our competitors started out in the e-commerce platform and that's where a major part of their volume came from, and now they're expanding into retail. But we've got a footprint that is unlike any other, and our retailers are very supportive of us and have saved a lot of shelf space waiting for us to address our turnaround situation. So that coupled with the brand and really good marketing savvy will enable us to set ourselves apart and maintain what we think is a really strong relationship that the brand has with consumers. I mean, people name their Roombas, they have parties with their Roombas. We get pictures all the time of kids and pets playing with Roombas. It is synonymous with the category. Despite some of the challenges we've had in the last couple of years, when we have major promotions in the US, like at Prime Day, we have four of the five top SKUs in the marketplace. So that brand affinity is something that we don't take for granted, but it's something that we need to leverage and make sure that we can build upon it. In the world of organic social media and influencers and TikTok, we are there and those are areas that we're spending even more and more time on. So just like we have to be good at technology, we have to be good at marketing. We've got the teams, we've got the infrastructure, and now we just have to make sure we put the investment in the right places to continue to grow the business.

[00:17:37] Brian Heater: That's really interesting because I don't know that I've heard that before, specifically not just about iRobot, but just generally this idea of holding onto the shelf space at retailers. That is a thing that happens, that some of these big box retailers have faith in a company and you've had these conversations that we're gonna turn around, we've given you this timeline, and then we're gonna start seeding our products to your shelves at a certain point in the next like two years.

[00:18:03] Gary Cohen: Well, people don't give you that much time, but they'll give you a little bit of time and they've been tremendous and have worked with us, but it's an annual, what have you done for me lately. So the products have to deliver. We know that our retailers, whether it's in the US or Japan or in Europe, they want us to win. They want to have a brand that when consumers come in looking for a Roomba, that we're there. When we're not there, the category doesn't do as well. So when we do well, the category does well. When we're in Japan and we've got in many cases 50 or 60% share of retail space, when we drive the category, when we come up with new products, we advertise. The entire category grows. When we just compete against our competition with feature wars, we're just going after a very small segment of the marketplace that's only gonna maybe trade up a little bit, but we're not bringing new consumers in. In many cases, as the original product in the category and the leader in many markets with retail space, we have an obligation to bring to our retail partners category growth stories. And that comes with good new products and it comes with investment and in some cases, products that are gonna help us grow the category. Right now in Japan, we're gonna launch a product in about a month that we think is gonna be a game changer in terms of helping grow the category. And we've developed a product that's unique to Japanese consumers' needs. And we also know that that product has legs globally, but we're gonna start in Japan first.

[00:19:44] Brian Heater: Has iRobot done that before? Has iRobot specifically launched in Japan prior to the States?

[00:19:50] Gary Cohen: Not that I know of. I mean, there have been times where maybe a product might be available in Japan first, but I don't think we've had a Japan-first launch that I know of, and you know, the company's been around 30 years. There may be something in the archives, but not that I know of.

[00:20:05] Brian Heater: Historically, Japan has been, I would say, quicker, at least more interested in embracing robotics and technology, and a lot of this is a big part of, we talk about the aging population there, right? They've been more bullish about this idea of care robots. Robots in the home. Is that ultimately where you see a product like Roomba fitting in?

[00:20:31] Gary Cohen: Well, if you just think about how Japanese consumers live and their environment, it's a combination of physical space and then also demographics as well. And those are examples of consumer pain points and consumer-led innovation that will allow us to develop products. And then being vertically integrated lets us address those needs even faster versus our former model where if you have to partner with somebody, it takes a little bit longer to develop those products and develop those features. So we shifted to our new model about a year or two ago to be faster, to get products delivered to the market faster, and also to get a better cost base so we could reinvest in the brand. And now that we're vertically integrated, we've got that plus speed plus better quality that we can deliver faster. There are many consumer needs that consumers in the US have that are parallel to the Japanese consumer, but many that are even different. Homes are bigger. We need to make sure that the products perform better in an environment that has a larger home size that is maybe even different than Europe. And at some point you wanna have a product that meets the needs of everybody because it's efficient. But there are other times when it may be more practical to have a product for a specific market that takes advantage of the needs that those consumers have. So I've got many ideas. There's no end of ideas that we had. If you talk about our history of innovation and the founding team that started iRobot, the ideas were endless. In some cases, they weren't practical to commercialize, or in many cases we had commercialization challenges ourselves because of the way we organized or some of the challenges that we were facing, either pre-Amazon or during the Amazon pendency period, when we stopped innovating and stopped commercializing ideas. And so now I'm getting us back to being both consumer-led, being fast to market, but also commercializing ideas quickly. And Japan is an example of that.

[00:23:25] Brian Heater: iRobot ran into the issue that it seems like every single company that's attempted to break into home robotics has ultimately run into, which is how much are we a research company and how much are we a commercial company? As you said, you've got three brilliant people coming over from MIT. You go to their Bedford offices, you've got that museum up front, you've got the baby doll, you've got the Mars Rover, the teleoperation robot. It is an incredibly difficult thing to both try to be a research lab, an innovator, and then continue to scale and then be a large mainstream commercial entity at the same time.

[00:24:21] Gary Cohen: That was and is a challenge. And at the same time you had competition that was coming in that almost had an advantage of having the entire Chinese market to play in and to get better and to refine the product line. And that was an entire market that was closed to us, which made even innovating and commercializing more difficult. So we didn't always have an ability to test out some of these ideas that we had. I've got a whole back room of lawnmowers that haven't seen the light of day. I've got many adjacent categories that we have worked on that haven't seen the light of day or that never really got commercialized. And when you think of the brand that we have and the partners that we have globally to help us commercialize these products, there's no reason why we can't get some of these ideas to market faster. And now that we're vertically integrated, we'll get the cost curve down. We've got the ability to get into China now that we may not have had before. So there's a lot of benefits about our new partnership and new organization that will enable us to both compete but also bring new ideas to market faster.

[00:25:28] Brian Heater: Now when you say you've got a whole room of lawnmowers, you're talking about the Terra lawnmower that was introduced, I think like maybe 2019, CES 2020, so obviously came out, showed what looked to be a pretty finished product. I met with Colin at CES that year. Global pandemic hits, that's a bit of a problem. Sourcing products, things get really expensive. The Amazon thing happens, obviously a lot of different dominoes have fallen and we haven't really, dates keep getting pushed back. We haven't heard much from it. When you say you've got them in the back room, what does that mean?

[00:25:59] Gary Cohen: Well, we've got a lot of products that had been invented and close to commercialization that are sitting around, that we still are testing, that we still have developed. But as I said, a lot of those products needed a better cost curve or now with technology that has lapped, some of those ideas will probably get some enhancements and modifications that take advantage of the latest navigation and the latest cost curve to be able to bring those to market. But we have good IP on a lot of those categories as well. I gotta give Colin and the team a lot of props for their inventiveness and their ability to come up with a number of ideas. And one of my goals will be, I'd be nothing prouder than to take some of these ideas and see them come to light and hit the marketplace.

[00:26:51] Brian Heater: This was a good line that Colin always had. Every time you'd interview him, he would say, I only had success as a roboticist when I became a vacuum salesman. You really do wanna start diversifying the portfolio as soon as is, I guess, plausible.

[00:27:05] Gary Cohen: Nothing really has changed from the turnaround plan that we put together last year. It may have just gotten pushed out a year due to some of the external challenges that we had, but it's really solidified the base. Start to grow into and expand into new markets within our core category, and then eventually get into adjacencies. So like a three-step process. And that third step has to come fairly quickly because the demand is there and we don't wanna miss the opportunity to take the brand and bring it into new segments. But we have to do it thoughtfully and with the right investment levels. You can't just put a product out in the marketplace. The brand still is gonna require investment. It's still gonna require promotion because just about every segment we would wanna go into, there is some competitor that may be there first. But we know that with our technology and the brand, we'll be able to make meaningful inroads. And we do have some IP that exists. And we also know that we can develop great IP with our new partner to be able to help differentiate us.

[00:28:10] Brian Heater: You alluded to the Amazon deal before, and I think the words that you used were something along the lines of having stopped innovating. A lot of that was, everything was invested in that deal going through, right? I spoke to Colin, we had him on the show not long ago, and I don't think he particularly liked my choice of words, but I said, were there essentially too many eggs in that basket, and if it didn't go through, what did that mean for the future of the company? Was iRobot's future ultimately dependent on having that deal go through to continue to exist?

[00:28:49] Gary Cohen: In hindsight, it's always easy to be a Monday morning quarterback. I think it was so certain that the deal was gonna go through, and then at the same time, there were so many requirements put on the deal from the partners in terms of what we could do and not do. I think, yeah, Colin may have felt a little bit compromised in terms of what he could actually do as a plan B, and the reality is plan B didn't really start to look like it was needed until pretty late into the process. As he would even tell you, there really wasn't a lot of sound logic behind the deal being not approved. If it was a 10% chance, why do a lot of alternative investment when that wasn't the case, especially when you have a partner that's willing to go with you pretty far into the process. History will kind of judge it. There were some strategic missteps along the way that were in place before the Amazon situation, and then when you stop innovating, you've got those issues plus the combination of not innovating for a couple years. So it was about a five-year period where competition was almost allowed to make inroads and take over certain market segments. That's unfortunate, but I don't think plan B would've materialized unless we just said we gotta stop this acquisition, we have to move on and do something else. And I don't think there was ever a time where either side felt that was the right thing to do. So all I can do is say I gotta pick up the pieces, move forward and pivot as fast as we could. And frankly, that's what I'm most proud of. I'm a consumer guy at heart, and we were able to quickly flip and clean up the post-Amazon issue, get the company set up for the future, change the whole model of the way we develop products, and develop a whole new product line in less than nine months and get it launched and win Prime Day 2025. We did that all in like less than a year. And so now to then say, okay, how do we set ourselves up for the next future, which was a partnership that has this vertically integrated model. That to me is both a save of the company, but also continuing on this path of the turnaround. You know, you talk about maybe a five-year period of issues that we've been able to dramatically turn around. And I think that's what I'm most proud of, both with the management team and the employees that we have, because that's our goal is to kind of make Colin proud of all the work that he built, that great foundation, and save this company, and grow this brand and take us onto a new path of growth.

[00:31:34] Brian Heater: One thing that he and I one thousand percent agreed on is that you were not given an easy job. You stepped into something extremely difficult and I've had this conversation with a lot of folks, certainly in my job at TechCrunch, CEO coming on like Peloton for example. There are a lot of examples of people coming into companies that have been successful, that maybe have been struggling and trying to do this turnaround. And I always have to ask them, why? Like what was it about this challenge that made you wanna step in and have, I assume, like a couple of years worth of sleepless nights?

[00:32:13] Gary Cohen: Good question. I've done it before, and I do get a certain energy of being part of a team that can turn around a business and that I can apply, call it the Gillette playbook or some of the brand building that I've used in the past. It's not my first CEO role. I've been part of a turnaround before, and so there's a certain skill set and energy and mentality that you need to have. A couple of other things. I'm Boston born. I knew about iRobot, I would drive by the company headquarters all the time. And I even knew some people that used to work at the company and some folks on the board. So I had this emotional connection to the business, separate from just my turnaround experience and my interest in trying to jump into this. I love jumping into the fire and building and rallying teams towards a vision. And I felt, from day one, this great loyalty to the brand, but also to the people and to the team. They were so passionate about the mission that Colin had set up, that we're gonna change the world through robotics. It reminded me of my early days with Gillette, there's a better way to shave and we'll find it. It was that same mentality of we're gonna conquer the world. And people felt that they still wanted to be able to do that and they felt that we had the ability to do that. So even to this day, if people say, why did I join, it was because of the brand, our ability to innovate and the people, and I get this great energy from building teams and being part of teams that can turn things around. So call it crazy, but that's why I did it.

[00:33:51] Brian Heater: You're also coming in for a CEO who was also the founder of the company and who had been there the entire time. You are an outsider, and there's always a really difficult give and take here. I talk to a lot of CEOs, I talk to a lot of technical founders. They have to make that decision early on whether or not they stay on and become an executive. I guess you must have felt like a bit of an outsider. Maybe you were regarded as such. Was it difficult to sort of convince people that you knew the business or that you were going to learn the business?

[00:34:29] Gary Cohen: When you come into these situations, there's a certain level of humility that you need to be able to become a servant leader, which I think I am. The last thing you wanna do is come in and tell people we have all the answers. One of the probably benefits in my career, even when I was at either Gillette or Procter, I've worked in so many different categories that it's the business process and it's the ability to run a company that is paramount, not just being a razor guy. There aren't too many razor companies in the world, so I wasn't gonna go to another razor company. But my point is I've worked in capital-intensive businesses. I've worked in liquid-fill commodity businesses. I've worked in Asia-sourcing businesses with infant care. They all have different dynamics to them. And it's the ability to run a business and figure out a strategic plan and fix a company. That to me is paramount. So I mean, I worked in watches at Timex. Every company I've gone into, whether it's Oral-B or watches or even in the auto industry, I'm an outsider and people say, what do you know about cars? I don't know a lot, but maybe that's a good thing because you can look at the business from an outsider's perspective and say, why are you doing this? And if you do it in a polite way versus coming in with all the answers, people will embrace it. And so for me, it was setting the vision that we've got this great brand, we're gonna innovate, we're gonna turn this business around. I've done it before, and we're gonna do it again. And you then have to give people those checkpoints along the way, the measures that say, hey, see, it's being successful. We had to reduce the size of the company by 50%. We had to change the business model. We had to launch new products. We said that the only way we're gonna be able to invest in the brand was to improve gross margins. So by the end of last year, when we started to put points on the board of, hey, we are expanding the gross margins with this new product set, we are holding shelf space, we are growing, we did have a successful Prime Day, those are the proof points that then give people confidence in the vision, or at least confidence that I know what I'm doing. You have to win the hearts and minds of people. You can't just show up and say, this is how we're gonna run the railroad. That's what's been my success formula and I'll continue to operate that way.

[00:36:49] Brian Heater: Yeah, I mean, I've had to let people go in jobs and even at its small scale, easily one of the most difficult things that I've ever had to do in my life. And as far as like regaining confidence, especially at a large scale, how do you do that? How do you get people back on your side and how do you convince them that we're back on the right path?

[00:37:13] Gary Cohen: Well, it's not just me. I set a vision. I communicated that vision. I met with people, but I also either brought in some folks or identified some crown jewels of talent that we had at iRobot that we promoted, that I brought onto my leadership team that went through this battle with me. And I couldn't be prouder of the leadership team as well as the employees that we have. So you can't do this alone. I've learned that many times in my career. You need a strong team, you need a good vision. I had a very supportive board that allowed me to pull the levers that I wanted to pull, and they knew the situation we were in. They knew the challenges, they knew the history, and so they were very supportive. To this day, going through battle with the team that I had is what actually made it manageable, because they always say it's lonely at the top as a CEO. But if you have a strong team around you, you can delegate, you can have them share the vision as well, and that's what's important.

[00:38:13] Brian Heater: I understand that you do have to navigate optics internally, but I'm actually curious, obviously there's optics for people like us and then there's the Wall Street optics. But at the end of the day, how much does an average consumer who's walking into Best Buy to shop for a robot vacuum care that that company has gone through the Chapter 11 process?

[00:38:34] Gary Cohen: Not everybody knows it. And in those cases, they just want to know that they've got a product that they can trust and that they can rely on. And for those that do know, we have to reassure them that we're still here, we're not going anywhere, and we're gonna be able to delight them and deliver products that they need, and that we're gonna be here to fix the product if they have issues, and that we're gonna be here to sell them accessories if they need it. So there's that message from PR communications, even sessions like this with you, that I use to reassure consumers that we're not going anywhere and we're gonna continue to develop great products for them. So we use that in our messaging and advertising and social media and public relations, all the different touchpoints that we can get our message out.

[00:39:19] Brian Heater: Yeah, and then the other thing that immediately raises concerns from people is any mention of China when it has to do with either manufacturing or privacy concerns. It sounds like when you did the Chapter 11 turnaround, you've been very proactive on the messaging around that.

[00:39:38] Gary Cohen: Without a doubt. And that was a true partnership with PCHI International. We wanted to make sure that we need to lean into privacy and we need to make sure that consumers are comfortable. So we've set up this governance board. In this process, we had very, very strong protocols for protecting data. Same with Europe. So all of our cloud servers are US-based. We use AWS for our cloud support. And all that data is housed there. We really don't have data on individuals that we look at. On an aggregate basis, we can find out how people are using products, how many are active, how many are not active, where the pain points are from missions, how many are not successful. So on an aggregate basis, we get a lot of that data that we use for R&D and development. But even then, we said that data has to stay in the United States. And they were very supportive and we set up a governance board just to ensure that.

[00:40:53] Brian Heater: So we're at about time right now, so we can close on this, but let's say it takes us another year to sync up our schedules, which sounds optimistic as far as how long it took to get this thing going. Or let's say it takes two or three years. We do this podcast again in two or three years. What does a successful iRobot look like two or three years from now?

[00:41:15] Gary Cohen: The KPIs are well established. We're gonna continue to grow market share in the markets where we have major presence like the US, Japan, Europe. We're gonna gain back market share in some of the markets that we lost share in many years ago, like Germany or Northern Europe. And we're gonna expand into new markets that we have been hesitant to go into, either because of investment during the Amazon period. And that means markets outside of Western Europe and also means going back into China with new products. It means having a good, better, best strategy. It means delighting some of our premium consumers at the high end with a really good couple of products that meet their end benefit needs that I'll be able to talk about in a year or two. And then by then it will probably be talking about a few adjacencies that we've entered, that we're very excited about, and some of the early performance that they've had.

[00:42:11] Brian Heater: Do you think I'm gonna be able to have an iRobot lawnmower before the next time we talk, a year from now, two years from now?

[00:42:17] Gary Cohen: I would hope so. If not, something you can try. That's commercializable.

[00:42:23] Brian Heater: Okay. Fair enough. Gary, thank you so much.

[00:42:25] Gary Cohen: Alright, take care Brian. Thanks.

[00:42:28] Brian Heater: Thank you so much to Gary and iRobot for that conversation. Thanks to you as always for tuning in. If you're enjoying the show, please like and subscribe. Don't forget to check out our newsletter over at Automated.fm. We feature exclusive interviews every Thursday morning. We have a lot of great interviews coming up on Automated with Serve Robotics, Boston Dynamics, Physical Intelligence, Keenon [verify spelling]. We've got the head of the Computer Science School over at Carnegie Mellon University. Lots of good stuff. As always, thanks for joining us and we will see you next week for another episode of Automated.