Shelley E. Kohan (00:31)
Hi everybody and thanks for joining our weekly podcast. I’m Shelley Kohan and I’m very excited to welcome Alex Schinasi, co-founder of Hulken, that amazing rolling bag that you’re seeing all over the place. Welcome. It’s so exciting to have you here. I have to start, I have to tell you my little quick story about the Hulken bag and my experience with it. So a couple of years ago I attended this event in New York City.

Alex (00:44)
Thank you. Great to be here, Shelley

Ooh, that’s my favorite part.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:00)
by a large beauty retailer and they gave us a gift bag full of all kinds of fun stuff and Hulken was the bag they put everything in. And so I’m, I know, isn’t that great? So I saw, it’s, I saw this beautifully stunning designed bag, but to be honest with you, at first I was skeptical wondering if this beautifully designed bag could actually make it through the streets of New York City. Cause you know, it’s very, the city’s tough.

Alex (01:09)
Ooh, I love that. So great.

We do hear that a

lot. You never know, right? Those wheels are small, but they’re strong.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:33)
That’s right.

so, but I have to tell you, I was so impressed with the durability and the ease to which I literally walked 20 blocks in New York City without a ounce of energy expended from me. It was amazing. So, ⁓

Alex (01:45)
I love that.

that’s so wonderful to hear. Thank you for sharing. That’s, I think, my favorite part. Doing these types of podcasts is hearing these stories and the many different ways people use the Hulken and it’s just always so refreshing and different.

Shelley E. Kohan (02:00)
Yeah, I just love it. It’s very easy. And by the way, a half a million people agree with me, just so you know.

Alex (02:06)
That’s right, yeah. And one more by the minute.

Shelley E. Kohan (02:11)
Yeah, you’re growing and I’m very happy to see that. But what’s more amazing to me is you have a great story to tell about the brand. And so I’d really want to start there. I find it super, super interesting because you and your husband, both co-founders, ⁓ you guys weren’t retailers. You didn’t work in wholesale or work for brands.

Alex (02:31)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (02:31)
⁓ I have

literally spent my whole life in retail like since I was 18 and I could not have come up with such a great unique product so but What’s amazing about your story is that it really came out as many products do out of a solution? To a customer problem, so tell us the backstory

Alex (02:37)
amazing.

thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

of course. So my father initially came up with the design. He was shopping the streets of Paris during the holidays and finding himself having to schlep all these bags back to his hotel. And he was thinking, my gosh, I need a smarter solution to schlep my stuff.

and ⁓ got back to his hotel, literally took a notepad and started drafting, sketching what his ideal schlep solution would be, which was this tote on wheels, which had never existed before. And he has always been in manufacturing, so he had easy access to that part of the process and sent it to his factory, created a prototype, which was not what it is today, obviously, you know, it very early days, but it’s a version that

that we all started using around the house, like me, my husband, my brothers, my mom. And it was such a fun favorite internally. And my husband, who was a professional musician for 25 plus years, was using it daily for his cymbals and his guitar amp and all the different equipment he needed to schlep through Brooklyn. And…

COVID happened and he found himself without any stages to play on and really anything to do and a lot of time on his hand he thought you know let’s take this ⁓ product that we all adore so much and put it up on a website without having so many expectations of growth or even thinking you know where this would take us I at the time was still working at my first startup that I had sold and ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (04:06)
⁓ right.

Alex (04:26)
was in the process of launching a new software startup. So it wasn’t top of mind for us. It was very much a side gig for a little bit.

But immediately, almost instantly, in March 2020, we got our first review on the Strategist, which came from a passionate user, a buyer that had used the Hulken and just loved it so much. Because like you said, you look at it and you’re not sure, there’s some skepticism, but then you use it. And that’s when you get the magic. And you see how the wheels roll like butter and how it swivels like a fairy. just, the usability is really what makes it different. And… ⁓

That very first strategist article was key to our growth because it was validation that we were onto something interesting, that it wasn’t just a family product, that it was something that so many people would benefit from.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:17)
I love that. So the product model was designed in Switzerland, right? And you’re using industrial grade material, which is really interesting because like these are materials Nestle and L’Oreal uses. They’re strong, lightweight. And what I find amazing is that you have this really cool, as you call, savvy design. So savvy and industrial just don’t marry up in my mind.

Alex (05:22)
That’s right.

Mm-hmm.

I know it’s

interesting, right? And we’re kind of merging both worlds because my family’s background has always been in this industrial manufacturing of packaging. And we’re bringing a very smart kind of fashion forward solution to a problem that nobody wants to deal with. Nobody wants to schlep. Nobody wants to break their shoulders and their back. And if anything, we made schleping fun. We created a solution that is has the quality and the durability of an industrial grade product, but has the look and feel and design

of a very fashion forward product. So kind of merging both worlds is really what sets us apart.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:19)
That’s great. And I think another one of the big consumer trends right now that I’m sure has got to be feeding into this is this whole idea of wellness. So taking care of your body, making sure you have balance and all that. And I know for myself, I never put a backpack on my back ever. I can’t, my shoulders can’t handle it.

Alex (06:36)
I know.

You know, it’s funny because

we launched a backpack at Hulken, which is doing really well. But I was traveling with my backpack last week. I was going through the US and I found myself putting it in my Hulken. So I do have my Hulken carry-on because that’s our latest innovation and travel. So we now have a carry-on size, which we’re really excited about. But then I found myself putting the backpack in there. not to say you don’t need backpacks because our backpack is great, but it’s true. The wellness trend is important. It’s a big part of it. ⁓

to make sure you save your back. Everyone has shoulder issues. Everyone’s sitting at a computer all day. You don’t want to add any sort of stress that’s unnecessary. And the sustainability trend is another one, Gone are the days of using single-use ⁓ plastic bags, and instead use something that’s more durable and sustainable that you can use over and over for years to come.

Shelley E. Kohan (07:34)
I love that. So ⁓ I want to talk about the values. So reliability, empowerment, savvy design, we kind of touched on a little bit, and joy, which I love that. So how did you all come up with these values? And do you think this kind of plays into why you have such a strong following?

Alex (07:44)
Thanks.

I think so because we somehow managed to make something that’s inherently not fun into something that’s truly fun and enjoyable even. Who wants to be carrying 10 grocery bags from the car to the house? Who wants to be schlepping a ton of equipment to the sports field? Nobody. So we created a solution that allows you to bring lightness, fun and joy into the experience and the act of schlepping and schlepping made it easy.

our slogan has become something that people are proud of and they’re proud to schlep and they’re proud to be smarts about the way they schlep and they’re proud to do it in a fashionable way. bringing joy is really integral to everything we do. In fact, our social team, we always tell them everything we do is with a wink because we don’t take ourselves that seriously. It’s a funky product. ⁓ It’s one that solves very clear problems. But it’s one that, you know,

We understand that we’re different and that we’re shiny and we’re big and we’re rolling and that’s part of our personality for sure.

Shelley E. Kohan (08:59)
go back to something you said about your social team because I know on social media like it’s blowing up everywhere so tell me a little bit about the social media and how this has really helped with awareness what is this done for the brand

Alex (09:03)
Mm-hmm.

It’s been huge for us. like I said, in the early days, it was very much a side project. We weren’t sure where it was going to go. But then we started trenching ourselves in different professional niches on Instagram. So we saw that thrifters were passionate about the bag and they started spreading the word in the thrifting community. Then we saw that makeup artists were huge fans of the bag. And you know, they have to schlep all their makeup and even their set chairs and mirrors and whatnot. And how else can they possibly do that?

Shelley E. Kohan (09:38)
Yes.

Alex (09:44)
they had the Hulken So makeup artists set stylists to the extent that there was a Netflix show last year, Survival of the Thickest, in which a stylist in New York ⁓ had to have the Hulken to look realistic. That’s how entrenched it is in these communities. And so becoming the default bag for all these types of professionals early on…

really created a flywheel of virality on social that was integral to our growth because as much as we can spend on meta and allocate ad dollars to our digital marketing, if it’s not being supercharged by the organic power that we have around the brand, it’s not as meaningful. So we love that it’s a product that…

Shelley E. Kohan (10:20)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (10:31)
looks great on camera. It’s a product that people love to film. It’s a product that’s different from anything out there and therefore we very early on saw this viral flywheel that was critical to growth.

Shelley E. Kohan (10:46)
Yeah, I love that. you mentioned earlier that you have, ⁓ was it one or two companies that are technically software companies that you developed prior to this, right?

Alex (10:57)
That’s right.

So I’m a software gal, so I’ve always built software and I’ve sold both companies to other software companies. So it’s very much my bread and butter, but I understand digital marketing. And I think that was definitely my strength coming into this. And, you know, we have some manufacturing background in my family, which was critical as well. And the combination of the two allowed us to, again, find solutions and creative ways to take a product that didn’t exist before. created a category.

that was nowhere to be found into something valuable and exciting that can scale.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:35)
I love that. And so now, because you come from technology, are you helping with agentic commerce? Are you like training all of the agentic AIs? When I put in, you know, Claude or ChatGPT, what’s the best bag? Does Hulken come up?

Alex (11:50)
Yeah, of course. So it’s interesting how that has shifted and it’s on the top of everybody’s tongue because it is so critical to any kind of marketing strategy right now to think of these LLMs and how do we optimize it in our favor. So it’s no longer just the typical Google SEO strategy, but very much expands to every single LLM platform to make sure that we appear in the searches and that we’re number one when it comes to these types of solutions. So the ranking is

It’s much more complex nowadays than it was. At same time, it’s a much bigger reach, so it’s exciting.

Shelley E. Kohan (12:28)
Yeah,

that’s great. Okay, so let’s flip to physical retail, which is brick and mortar. ⁓ so you’re this small mom and pop kind of business for a few years, and then you decide, okay, let’s do physical retail. And you pick one of the largest retailers in America, which is Target. So tell me how that came about.

Alex (12:44)
Yeah.

Yeah, so we, again, we were 95 % direct to consumer up until to this day, right? I think the balance is shifting now. It will certainly shift even more in 2026. But of course, as a startup girl, I’m always thinking what’s next for us. And, you know, we got Hulken into where it is today and we got it to a very healthy minute eight figure business without outside funding and almost entirely direct to consumer.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:03)
Of course.

Alex (13:17)
really familiarizing myself with the space because I was surrounded by software people, right? I’ve come for the VC startup world and I’m realizing that…

The only path forward is to go omnichannel and therefore to start evaluating who are the retailers we want to partner with. And pretty early on in our journey, our first retail partnership was actually with QVC, which is still one of our main retailers that we adore. I was just at QVC last week. did a today’s special value, which is a 24 hour hit where you’re live for 24 hours. ⁓

which is always super fun and the purchasing power on QVC is truly incredible. ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (13:53)
my gosh.

Alex (13:59)
So we were on QVC, we’re at the Container Store, who we also love. We had a huge display on 6th Ave for the last few months. ⁓ Such a fit. And I used to walk by the Container Store every day, dropping my kids to school around the corner from the 6th Ave location, thinking, this is the place for Hulken. It’s so obvious. It fits so well. And so the next natural step was to go to a more nationwide player like Target. And when

pitch to Target back in June, it was almost like an instant understanding that this needed to happen. ⁓ Target is the perfect fit for us. It’s great for the brand. It has amazing distribution. ⁓ We feel like it takes us one step closer to making sure every household in America.

has a Hulken because that’s the aspiration. This is where we’re headed. And there’s no reason why not because there’s so many use cases. Everyone needs a Hulken for something. And Target is helping us get there.

Shelley E. Kohan (15:04)
I love that. So my background is I spent most of my entire retail life in department store land, so Macy’s, Bloomingdale, Saks Fifth Avenue, all the big name brands. And I know for D2C it was always in the past very difficult for a small brand to kind of play in these major retailers. ⁓ There’s a lot of requirements of vendors. There’s all these fixed standards that go out there.

Alex (15:24)
Right.

Absolutely, yeah. Packing requirements,

yes.

Shelley E. Kohan (15:36)
So how’d you do it? I mean, my god.

Alex (15:40)
Yes, so it was a big learning curve for sure. I’m not going to lie, but I think the fact that we were already in QVC and the container store kind of gave us a smooth introduction into the world of retail. ⁓

We found partners that help us navigate this, so I think I couldn’t recommend that enough. If you are looking to enter these types of retailers, definitely find yourself an agency or partners that can either help you navigate the situation, they understand the ops, they understand the relationship, they understand how to make your product shine. So we work with agencies that really help us take it to the next level. I’ll always remember our first hit on QVC, we did all on our own.

Did we age probably a hundred years dealing with that? And it wasn’t, it was sizable order at the time. But when I look at what we fulfilled for Target in the span of five months, it’s unbelievable. So we came in with the right partners that helped us navigate. We used an agency called Bluebird. They’re amazing. Hit me up if you want an introduction, but they’ve been instrumental in making sure that we hit that deadline. It’s very unusual for a brand to pitch in

June and be on shelves by November. And now it’s, I know, and part of it is, know, we own our manufacturing, we have full control on that piece of the business, which means we can very quickly pivot, produce more if needed, produce less if needed. ⁓ But there were some learning curves, some hard ones, you know, we had to figure out retail packaging, which we had never done. How is that going to stand on a shelf? How are we going to design that end cap? ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (16:55)
I’m shocked. I’m shocked.

Alex (17:21)
But again, we were equipped with partners that were able to help us navigate this. And on the supply side and the margin side, we were super lucky that we had a business model.

that allowed us to go both retail and DTC in a way that’s profitable. And I think that’s the struggle that a lot of DTC brands have to deal with. Once they start going retail, it’s okay, this is a different kind of reality. And I can’t stress this enough. I’m talking to a lot of early DTC founders. Build a business that when the time comes, you have to be able to cut these margins to be able to go retail. The volumes are interesting, ⁓ but you have to have those margins to protect you.

in order to have this omni-channel approach. ⁓

Shelley E. Kohan (18:10)
I love that. So when you talk about Omni Channel, Omni Channel can mean different things to different brands. Tell me what does it mean for your brand when you talk about Omni Channel and how are you going to move that to the future? Because Omni Channel keeps changing and more, you know, we have Agenta Commerce now, Mcom, Scom, like tell me what does it mean to you?

Alex (18:29)
That’s right. To

us, think the switch to the evolution to a more retail focused business is a big step. And so that’s what I see as the biggest shift for 2026. So far, we were 95 % direct to consumer split between Amazon and our Shopify, so our own website.

Our own website still retains 80 % of sales and we want to keep it that way. But for us, Omnichannel really means the retail expansion. And obviously we’re keeping LLM in mind.

kind of in the back of our minds, but we don’t, for now, the retail expansion is one that is so big and can actually move the needle significantly from a revenue standpoint, that this will be the focus moving forward. I think once you reach the 50 mil type range in revenue, there’s only so many channels that are interesting and you kind of have to focus on those that are significant enough to justify the growth. ⁓

So for us, it needs to be big enough that it moves the needle for us to invest in it. And that’s why I think there’s very few channels that actually provide that. And some of those that we’ve identified as being successful are those big retailers.

Shelley E. Kohan (19:50)
I love how you’re focused on measured growth. That is like so smart, Alex. I just love that.

Alex (19:57)
Yeah, I think it’s important.

think that’s, again, the startup background, right? We’re very data oriented. We want to make sure that every decision is backed with actual data. We’re a very small team. We’re basically a team of six full-time employees. a lot of freelancers, don’t get me wrong, we have a lot of freelance teams, but this lean and mean approach.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:01)
Yeah.

Alex (20:18)
makes us more creative. It makes us be smarter about things. We don’t have an immense amount of cash coming in where we can just be lavish and spend it on different things. I’m the one that’s dressing up as a turkey for Thanksgiving, going to Whole Foods and handing out Hulkens We don’t have interns to do these things. We’re getting our hands dirty. We’re doing the work. And I just love it. That’s just the type of entrepreneur that I am. But I also think…

It makes you smarter about your business and you have to build a business where your margins are first, profitability more than ever is critical to growth ⁓ and to even if you’re raising money, that’s the first thing people are going to ask you. How are your unit economics? How are your margins? Do you have a path to profitability? ⁓ So yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:07)
a great mindset. I love that. Can you share any future product developments or things that you’re working on with our listeners?

Alex (21:17)
We have a lot that we’re working on. ⁓ We have a lot of exciting celebrity partnerships coming up later this year. That’ll be fun. ⁓ We also have new iterations of the Rolling Totes, new fabrics. I know we hear a lot that the shiny fabric is wonderful, but we also hear feedback that maybe a more sober matte fabric would be exciting to some customers. So we actually have that launched in January. And we want to own the space. We’re the first.

here to we’re here to roll until the end and keep on expanding in that category and that’s what we want to be known for.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:55)
that’s great. All right, one last question I want to ask you. And what are you most proud of in this great story of Hulken?

Alex (22:02)
Wow, most proud of. ⁓ There’s so much to be proud of, but I’m just really proud of the product, you know, I’m proud of…

how my dad created this out of nowhere. And it really comes down to the product and people adore it so much. That’s what brings me joy every day is getting into a conversation like I did with you and hearing about stories of how it’s being used. Then we hear anything from grocery shopping to the professional mermaid community. There is a professional mermaid community out there that is using it for wigs and tails and whatnot. And every day it’s a different use case. We heard it during COVID to bring vaccine supplies to different

Shelley E. Kohan (22:25)
⁓

Alex (22:43)
I mean, it’s so rewarding and it really comes down to that product that we invested so much in. The first two years of Hulken was just us making the product better and better and better. Not spending on marketing is making sure that we’re the leaders in this category that we have created and make a product that is so delightful that makes people just want to talk about it.

Shelley E. Kohan (23:07)
I love it. And I’m sure you’re going to be doing a lot for Black Friday. ⁓ so you Yes, and you have your big target launch. So I wish you the best of success. What a great story.

Alex (23:12)
We’re in the midst of it. It’s happening. Yeah.

Thank you, Shelley You were so excited. It’s a new world for me, but every step of the way I’m just having so much fun. So, I appreciate you having us.

Shelley E. Kohan (23:27)
That’s great.

no, thank you for being here. I’m sure our listeners learned a lot and thank you for all your tips for the D2C startups.

Alex (23:35)
Yeah, of course, anytime.