120. Travel Product Review: Matador Refillable Toothpaste Tubes

This all started when we went on Spring Break, earlier this year. I decided to pop into my favorite Container Store location, while we were in Alpharetta, GA, and caught of a glimpse of a set of toothpaste tubes - one black and one white. I purchased them and decided to wait until I got home to fill them - for the NEXT trip. This lead me down an interesting path - one that I wanted to share with all of you. And, now that my new "Clean Travels" blog and podcast is preparing to launch, I thought this review would make a great crossover episode. Please let me know what you think! Either leave a comment under the YouTube version of this episode, or email me at labeledorganizing@gmail.com.

Transcript

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Hey everyone, happy Sunday. It's the day after 4th of July. Hopefully, everyone had a really good holiday. It's still part of the weekend, so some of you may be traveling, some of you may be listening to this on your way back into town from the lake, the beach, from wherever you tend to escape during your holiday. Um, I did post an episode first thing this morning. It is the introduction to the organizing for single moms. If you have not had a chance to listen to that yet, I highly recommend it. Even if you are a mom who is not single, but you feel like one. And that doesn't necessarily have to be bad. I think a lot of people look at that as okay, you know, the husband isn't helping. That's not what I'm saying. I just know that parenting is a very big job. That's why they say it takes a village. And when you are a single parent and you're carrying everything, whether it's financial, schedule, medical decisions, um, it's a lot for one person to handle. There are a lot of families where one parent is away all the time and it's not always the dad. Um, there are females that go into the military, there are traveling professions. It's just a lot. So I've noticed that there have been some men who have been interested in an episode like this because maybe they're a single father, maybe it's a grandparent taking care of their grandchild because of, you know, something that's happened with with the parent. So um, if you haven't had a chance to go listen to that, I do highly recommend it. The other thing that I want to mention today is that I am getting ready to start a travel blog slash podcast, and it's gonna launch really soon. I thought it was gonna launch by July, but here we are, July 5th. And I did put some feelers out. There were some places that I reached out to um as part of the hotel brand that I tend to book with the most, and I did not hear back from them. That is totally fine. Sometimes it takes a while to get those things approved. So I'm gonna reach back out to them. But I have traveled a couple times this year, and I do have some things that I want to go ahead and put on the blog. It is called Clean Travels, and so it's actually gonna be clean travels.blog, I believe is the website. Um, I am a very anxious traveler. Um, how do I put this? My standards of cleanliness are very, very high. And I know that many of you are not surprised based on some of the episodes that I've done in the past talking about standards of organizing. I used to have a cleaning podcast that may come back. Um, in fact, I found some of the files when I was cleaning out some of my files in my computer after my interview with Sean Lemon the other day. I'm doing a file cleanup. And so my cleaning podcast that I had before labeled organizing kind of stopped just because I ended up having a co-host and I moved, and we tried to do um, you know, an online podcast, like a Zoom podcast, and we had some technical issues. And so we are gonna revisit that. But I really wanted to put together a website and a podcast for people who want to travel, who like to travel, but they feel like even if they look at reviews for a hotel or for a restaurant or an activity, and everyone's like, this is great, you've got to do it. Maybe they get there and things are really dirty. Um, maybe things are highly unorganized, maybe they stay at a hotel and it's not what they thought it was gonna be. Um, and a lot of times people will end up staying at a more expensive hotel thinking that they're gonna get that cleanliness. And then they are just doubly disappointed because they've spent more than what they planned to thinking that they were gonna get more and get better. And a lot of times they were just paying for the name. Um, obviously, we know that there's a lot of businesses that carry a certain weight with their name. People pay more for their products, people stay in their hotels, they dine in their restaurants because of status. And that may have even been true up to a certain point. I think that COVID changed a lot of this for people. I think there are certain restaurants that did really well. And then after COVID, maybe they didn't have the same people come back to work for them. Maybe they lowered their standards just to save money. Um, I think that with hotels, obviously, they got into the habit of not doing a turn down every afternoon. If someone wanted fresh towels, people would, you know, come in and they would spruce up the room and change out washcloths and change the trash. And so it it felt like, okay, I'm actually getting what I'm paying for because if I were at home, I could do that myself and I'd be happy to do that by myself. But I'm on vacation and I am paying a lot to stay in a hotel. And so every little service, every little amenity means something. And I've run into this before where, you know, I'm gonna go stay in an area. I don't know the area very well. I'm looking at pictures, I'm looking at reviews, and you have a lot of people who will say, I stay here every time I pass through town. It's very convenient, it's very clean, I've never had any trouble. And then you go to stay there. And yes, it may be convenient, it may be right off the interstate, it may be a really good location, you may have lots of restaurants around you, but when you go to sleep at night, you're nervous because the sheets look like maybe they weren't changed out. And when you go to step in the shower, maybe, you know, there is evidence that, you know, certain things weren't cleaned before you checked in. I know that sometimes housekeepers get busy. I actually was a housekeeper for Holiday In right out of college because I was in between that summer. I was doing a lot of freelance writing, I was a correspondent for a couple of newspapers, and I would get paid per article. I would get paid per, you know, greeting card or short story. And so I'm like, I need something consistent and I need something fast. And this was before door dashing, it was before Instacart, uh, a lot of these delivery things that are a lot more convenient to do now if you need some extra money. But I saw behind the curtain and the curtain is not clean. And that's just the truth. The truth is a lot of these housekeeping staff, um, they have to meet a quota and they have to do it quickly. And if the hotel's really busy, the last thing they need is for there to be seven or eight rooms that still need to be turned. And you've got people waiting down in the lobby at 3:15 p.m. Because maybe it's a larger resort, maybe the check-in time is really strict. And so a lot of people know that, you know, we can't show up before three because our room isn't going to be ready. But if we do come at three, we want to make sure we can get in right away. We want to make sure that we can go to the beach, go see whatever we want to see. So, anyway, with all that said, I have incredible anxiety when I travel, especially if I'm going somewhere new and on a new route, like if I'm driving, because along the way, I'm trying to figure out okay, what kind of hotel is this? I mean, yes, I'm not gonna stay at the most expensive, and I'm not gonna stay at the cheapest. I usually stay somewhere in the middle. But in knowing that, there's a variety of places you can stay at. There's different hotel chains. Not all of them look the same. Some of them may be renovated. So one thing that I want to accomplish with the new podcast and the new website is when you are going to travel, this is a website that you can pull up. You can see if either I have been there or I have done enough research where I can determine what kind of hotel reputation it has. And so I just think it's gonna be very beneficial. The podcast that goes along with it is going to be very helpful if you're traveling on the road and you're like, hey, we want to stay in Florida. So we're driving to Florida, we're gonna turn on the Clean Travels podcast. We are gonna find some episodes that talk about Florida and the route down there and different places that were recommended based on cleanliness. And I'll explain it more once I actually air the first episode of the new podcast. But the rating system is gonna be completely different than anything you've ever seen. A lot of people rate based on how expensive a place is, how convenient it is. The cleanliness score for a lot of these places is gonna be 50 to 60%. I'm not gonna lie. I don't care if it's a popular hotel chain. I don't care if it's a cheap motel, if it's somewhere that I think will work with my budget and it's either renovated or it's brand new, or a lot of people rave about it. If I go there and I see that it is either very, very clean or very, very dirty, then I'm gonna be very, very honest about it. So I hope you will all stay tuned for that. I will let you know when the first episode posts and I will probably feature the first episode here at labeled organizing so that you can kind of get a feel for it. And then if you enjoy that first episode, then certainly you can go follow the podcast itself. The reason I wanted to bring it up today is because I do have my first travel item review. This will also be part of the Clean Travels podcast. This is kind of where things are gonna start overlapping because I want to recommend products that will keep you and your space clean when you travel. I want you to feel like it's something that really helps your life, enhances your travel experience. I want it to be a good value, I want it to be something that is good quality, that actually makes sense. Sometimes you'll get a good product and you're like, yeah, it's a really good product. I love it, but it cost me $40 when I could have bought something similar for $15. And so these are the types of things that I really want to focus on as we do some of these crossover episodes because this definitely today's episode definitely falls into the organizing category. And we've also done travel organizing before. So we've done a lot of episodes talking about this stuff, but I specifically want to talk about this product. And I just want to say today's episode is gonna make it look like I don't like the container store anymore. That is not the case. I like the container store just fine. I'm using this as an example of a frustrating situation that I had this year when I was traveling and I got home and I just couldn't stop thinking about it. It wasn't a lot of money lost. It wasn't a lot of time lost. It was just something that I thought would be a really, really good example for a podcast episode because it just shows you the difference of what a good quality travel product can do for you and what a bad product that should really make your life easier, what a bad product can do for your travel experience. So without further ado, let's talk about this product. So, what I'm gonna show you is the Matador Refillable Toothpaste Tube. And it comes in a package of two. Okay, so as you can see here, we've got a larger black one and we've got a smaller white one. Now, when I first saw these in the store packaged together, first of all, I thought this is a really great idea. They're only $10.99 for the pair. I thought, okay, they look cool. You know, they've got this really cool matte finish. They're black and white, which I everything that I have is black, white, and gray. Sorry. I'm just not big on having a lot of color items. Like I like this, you know, monochromatic scheme here. And when I first saw the package, I thought, you know, it's not like you're gonna be putting your toothpaste into something that's not similar to the packaging of what you would normally have. Now, let me also say what I like about these is that yes, there are a lot of products where you can get a travel size in that product. There are a lot of new products out there in general that people are trying that don't have a travel size for them. Okay. People are running into this a lot more with toothpaste because it used to just be okay, you know, you use crest. Crest has a travel size. You use toms, they're harder to find, but you can get a travel size. Now there are more toothpaste out there geared towards certain things, their specialty toothpaste. And so if you get one and you like it, but you don't want to lug it on vacation, it only makes sense that there are, you know, travel shampoo bottles that you can get and you can put your shampoo in them. You can get travel spray bottles and you can put your detangler in them. So it just makes sense that you would have some kind of toothpaste travel item that you could squeeze your toothpaste into. So I got these at the container store. I got them when we went on spring break. We went into Atlanta, down to the aquarium, and then we we actually stayed in Alpharetta. We stayed across the street from the container store. And yes, that was done on purpose. Um, it wasn't necessarily done on purpose to go to the container store, but that area um is a good area to stay in. It has a nice hotel. That's probably one of the first hotels that I'm gonna put on the Clean Travels website and talk about is that one right there at Avalon. Um, it is the I think it's the Holiday and Express at Avalon. So that may be my first one. We'll we'll talk about that later. Um, but we went to Atlanta. We were staying in Alpharetta, and I thought, well, while I'm here, I'm going to go into the Alphoretta container store because it's probably my favorite one. And again, it's easy to get in and out of, it's easy to park. Um, the staff has always been quite friendly compared to some of the other locations. So we were already on vacation. I went in for a couple of other small things. Like I have slim hangers from there that are wood that I can't find anywhere else. Um, I wanted to get some hangers. And then there was one other thing, I don't think it was travel related, but I walked through the travel section because they have these stainless steel spray bottles that are travel spray bottles that work really well for my cleaning supplies. And sometimes they have them and sometimes the national store doesn't. And so I thought, okay, we'll we'll just stop in and see what they have today. So I see these. And like I said, they came in a package of two, $10.99. I thought, you know, that's great because there's two. I think it'd be different. I mean, even if there was just one, I think with the actual packaging, how well it's made in general, I would I would have paid. I probably would have paid $10.99 for just this bigger one. This big one, it says it's a two-week capacity. It's 35 milliliter max and it's TSA approved. This one right here is bigger than what like a crest travel size would be. And that's why I'm holding up this little white one because this size is the one-week capacity 22 milliliter max. Okay, so if you get a little tube of crest travel size, this is probably a comparable size. Okay. So, like I said, they come as a two-pack. I probably would have paid $10.99 just for this because it's a two-week supply. And I feel like that does give you a lot more than just your standard travel size. Now, why does this matter? A lot of places that you vacation, you probably can get a travel size of something. Okay. A lot of us have the type of toothpaste that we really like. We may have to use a specialty toothpaste, especially for kids, if they use a special toothpaste, and then you can put it into a travel size bottle in a pinch. If you're at the airport, if you're in, you know, a city that has a gas station or, you know, a Walmart. I mean, obviously you can get travel-sized toothpaste a lot of places. But what if you're camping? What if you are going out to a cabin? What if you're going out to move nowhere and staying in an RV? You know, I like to be as prepared as possible before I go on vacation instead of thinking, oh, if I run out of toothpaste, I'll just pick another one up. You know, maybe you drive all day and you get to a city and you're just so ready to get upstairs and check into your hotel. And you're like, well, crap, I think I only have enough toothpaste for tonight, but I don't have any for tomorrow. And like with us, we wanted to get up and go straight to the aquarium and spend the day there. And so I say that sure, there's a lot of places you can go and you can just pick up another travel toothpaste. But who wants to add more to their to-do list when they're already traveling? And if you're only gone for a week and you have a two-week tube, then that just makes sense. The other reason I liked the fact it was going to be two is because I was thinking, okay, I purchased a new toothpaste online that's a large size. That one can stay at home. This one can go in my travel bag for vacation. This one can go in like my daily bag that I take everywhere that's kind of like to freshen up. So I have like a travel hairbrush, a toothbrush, and a toothpaste. Okay. So this doesn't have to be a I don't know which one to choose. I don't know how long I'm gonna be gone. This can always be in your travel case. And then this can be kind of like in your car or somewhere where you're like, you know, throughout the day and I'm gone, I want to be able to brush my teeth. This is a good option. Now. This would have been awesome. Okay. If you notice, I don't know if you can hear that. There's beads inside. Okay. They're not filled with beads. It's it has a little silica package. You're probably thinking to yourself, well, why do you still have a silica package in there when you've put toothpaste in there? Well, I didn't. I didn't. I haven't used these yet. Here's the honest part of the review. Okay. I give these a two out of five because I can't use them. I can't open them. And I'm not being dramatic. They do not open. Okay. How frustrating because what a good idea these are. So I've already listed all the reasons why this would be a really, really good buy. But if you can't use something, then it's worthless. Okay. And the only reason I'm giving it two stars is because of its potential. Okay. I would give it a one star if there was something less than one star because I do, I do like these. I wouldn't have bought them otherwise, but I can't get them open. I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you what I'm talking about. And then I'm going to read off some reviews of other people who had the same problem. Okay. So again, when you were thinking about buying something, you're thinking about staying somewhere. It's really, really good to go off reviews. Sometimes the reviews do paint the whole picture. Sometimes you go to buy something and you see it in the store. And so you don't see the reviews first. You're only seeing the reviews after you have an issue and you're trying to figure out how to solve it. And you're like, oh, a lot of people have had this issue. So we're all kind of out of luck. Right? So I'm just going to show you really quick. Now I knew there was a silica package in here because when I couldn't get it open from this end, I opened this cap thinking maybe I'm missing something. And when you open this cap, you can't see it in the black one. You can definitely see it in the white one. But when I went to squeeze it, I felt the package in there. And when I opened the white one, I could actually see it in there. This matters because when you have a product like this, you need to make it very, very clear that there's something inside of it that has to be removed. Now I threw away my original packaging when I got home. I decided not to use it on the trip. The only reason was because I already had my travel toothpaste. And I thought I'm gonna wait till I get home and then use it like I intended to use it, which is take my full-size toothpaste and fill both of these. So on vacation, this did not throw me off. Okay. I was excited to find it. I just happened to find it on vacation. I brought it back home, took them out of their package, threw them in with my other travel bottles. I do have a little bit of inventory for travel bottles. And I went on my way. I thought, okay, the next time I go to travel, I'm gonna fill these. The other thing, too, is that my son needed a travel size of the one that he's using. So then I got to thinking, well, I will wait because maybe I'll use this one and he'll use this one. And then in a couple months from now, we'll just go grab another package because I mean 1099 is not that bad for something that should really help your life. So let me just tell you this. This little piece on the end is what you're supposed to open. And if you can see it right here, see where there's a little spot right there. It's almost like a little clip. So this clip's on, and then you've got a little rod. And then that's what actually slides into place. So if you look at the other end, it's closed. So this is the end you've got to slide it off of. Okay. What you should be able to do is you should be able to either pop this off and slide it, or you should just be able to hold it like this and slide it with this hand. See how, see how forceful I'm being. Right. And I mean, I'm being and when I say I have already tried this multiple times. This is not my first rodeo. Okay. I have tried to open this the last couple of months. When I first took them out of the package and I figured out that you fill them from here, I was like, oh, okay, cool. I wanted to open it from this side and and look in. And I couldn't. So I'm like, well, maybe they're just stuck. So I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna spend some time and try to get that open. And I could never get it. Yay! Oh my gosh, do you see what just happened? Oh my gosh. Yay, it opened. I finally, finally opened it. Oh my gosh, this is so exciting, you guys. Oh, this has been so frustrating. Okay, and I knew that this would probably happen. I loosened it. The last couple of times I tried this, I for sure loosened it. But do you see how hard I had to pull to get this open? So now you can actually see inside of it. See right there. And then what should pop out? Come on, I hear you, is the little silica packet. Okay. So I will consider that a win because now I can use it. I knew that if this happened during this episode, it would actually be, it would actually be really exciting because now I can rate it a three. Okay, we'll just do that. We'll update its rating to a three. So see how you've got the little, see how you've got the little lines right there and it says fold line and fill line. Okay, so obviously you're gonna fill it here. Now that has actually come off, then this little piece right here can slide back on. And I'm gonna do it right now to see how easy this is. Because now that we have it off, the trick is once you actually get toothpaste back in here, you've got to make sure it slides over. Okay, so here's the other problem. See how you can't pry this open? This isn't flexible, okay? But you have to get this slid back over that little rod in order for it to keep it shut. So okay, there we go. So you have to slide it in from the end and then push it. There we go, all the way in. Okay. Let me go a little bit more. Okay. So I had to be very, very forceful with that. Okay. So we actually we actually did it. All right. So this is a win. Now let's try the little white one. Because now I'm curious. Okay, so this is what I was doing with the other one. See the force I have to use. So I've got to pull the tube this way. And again, I okay, so here's what would help. If this were more flexible, and I understand it has to be tight enough to keep it here, but it really needs something to where you can kind of get your fingernail under there and then you're able to slide it out. Let me try again. I don't know. I don't know you guys. I now I at least have some hope that I got the other one. Let me try taking off the cap because that's what happened last time. I don't know if you can see. See with the white one, you can actually see the silica packet in there. Okay. I'm gonna put this back on. Maybe that released a little bit of air. Then I've got to make sure that that's the opening. Okay, that one's not. See, this was luck. Here's the problem, okay? At the end of the day, we had a we had a victory with this one. This one right now is still a loss. Let me tell you that this is not a win for anyone. If you are on vacation or you're getting ready to go on vacation, this is the type of thing that can add way too much stress for what it's worth. This is a fabulous idea. I love the packaging. I love that they have like a matte finish. I I mean, this to me could be just the best product for traveling, but let me just share with you some of these reviews because it's not just me. And again, it's not like I should be able to figure out everything on the first try. Okay. Just because I'm an organizer, just because I've worked with a lot of products and a lot of products at the container store does not mean that I'm gonna pick up a new product and just automatically know how it works, how it's designed, the flaws of it. Okay. So that's where, you know, like this guy right here. I don't even know why they have this in there. Obviously, the silica packets keep things dry so that they don't have moisture. I'm assuming that they're trying to keep it as dry as possible so that it doesn't mold before you get your hands on it. But at the same time, it's so tight. This cap is so tight. I don't know. I just think that you at least have to make it to where you know that this is inside. And I'm getting ready to get into the reason why right now. Okay, so I'm gonna put these up. I'm tired of holding them. We'll just put them to the side right now. Okay. So Matador refillable toothpaste tube package of two. They're $10.99. I've already talked about that. Their overall star rating at the container store was a 3.1. There were 12 reviews. Okay. There were four five-star reviews, four three-star reviews, one two-star review, and three one-star reviews. I'm assuming the four people that gave it three stars probably had the same experience that I did. Where it's like, this looks great. This seems like a wonderful idea. I can't get it open. And then at some point, you won't stop. You're determined. So I'm assuming that the three-star reviews, probably the people that did, in fact, get it open and were able to use them. Because otherwise, I feel like they would have stayed at either a two-star review or a one-star review. Okay. 60% of the people who reviewed said that they would recommend this to a friend. Not recommend, recommend. So if it has a 3.1 rating, mostly three, two, and one-star reviews, and 60% say they would recommend it. I'm assuming that again, they're looking at its potential. They're like, we really want this to work. Like, help us. Help us help you make these things better. Okay. I'm going to start with the most recent reviews. Now, this person left a review, and I'm going to put them up here. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm doing the pointing. This is all going to be right here. Okay. Three months ago is when this review was submitted, which is around the time that I bought them. Now, this isn't my review, but the point that I want to make is if everybody is having trouble around the same time and the product isn't pulled or improved, then how does that help anyone for the product to be on the shelf and people have the same problem over and over and over again? Okay. So again, I'm not trying to come down on the container store. At some point, I'm just curious, when are you going to hire an accountability coordinator? That's the only job I can think of that would solve this problem. Is if people keep leaving bad reviews about something and you're like, yeah, we're going to share your experience with the vendor or you know, the manufacturer or whoever you're sharing the feedback with, then at what point do you not what at what point do you pull the product and you say, okay, this just isn't working? And so this review was submitted three months ago. It was one of the two-star reviews. It says, love the concept, but the caps are crap. This person says, I really want to love these refillable tubes. I can never find travel-sized versions of my favorite toothpaste. These tubes were exactly what I needed, and they did the job perfectly until the caps split on both tubes. So that's the actual cap, I'm assuming, is this right here. I don't even know how that would split because that's pretty tough. That's like a regular toothpaste cap. This isn't, this isn't poorly made, by the way. This is actually, this feels like a good solid quality product as far as the materials. Okay. Then they said, so disappointing. The manufacturer should either include extra caps, offer a way to receive replacements, or, or here's the kicker, redesign the lids to be more durable. Okay. Now, again, these to me feel pretty durable, but again, if somebody had both caps split, then that's a problem. Okay, here's the merchant response. Thank you for sharing your experience. We strive to provide products that will last a lifetime. And this feedback will help us do that. Okay, so that was from the container store. That was the response. Um, then you've got the little thumbs up people. It says, was this review helpful to you? Seven people said yes. Okay. So that helps seven people decide, am I gonna buy this? Am I not gonna buy this? Okay. So the reason I'm saying that is because it's not just one person's review. They're missing out on possibly seven people that said, I clicked on this, I was interested in buying this, and now I may not. Okay, the next review was submitted one year ago. Now I printed these off two days ago. Okay, so around this time last year, there was a three-star review that said, this appears as if it will work for alleviating the need to buy travel toothpaste. However, there are two important things to be aware of if you buy it. The first is that the clip on the bottom to open where you fill the toothpaste is extremely difficult to slide open. The second is to make sure that you look inside before you fill it. I did not, and at only, sorry, I did not, and only after filling it and nothing squeezing out, did I realize that there was a little silica pack inside that needs to be removed. I had to empty them again and refill them because I did not look inside first. Now, why would you look inside first, to be honest? Mary, Mary made a good point. Why would you have to look inside a travel bottle? Again, I know that toothpaste is going in there, and that's probably a compliance thing for anything that you are storing that's going to go in your mouth. But there's also other food storage things that we buy all the time that don't have silica packets. So I get why they did it, but I would think here's what I would do, Matador. I would sell these open. Okay. Not that you can't put the silica packet in there, but I would sell these so that this clip is not on them. You could have a clip on one of them, okay, in the packaging itself. You keep the clip on one to show how it's supposed to work. Okay. The second one you keep open with the silica packet inside. That way, when someone goes to this one first, they're gonna see that there's a silica, a silica packet inside. And then they will know, okay, when I get this one open, there's gonna be something similar. Okay, that's that's what I'm recommending, Matador. Um, 22 people found that review helpful. Thank you, Mary. And then I didn't print off the container store's response. That's okay. I don't I'm not sure if there was a response because normally that would come before the little thumbs up. Okay. Another review one year ago. So summer 2025. The title is Wanna Know Why the Toothpaste Doesn't Come Out. I'm gonna put it right there, above my head, beside my head, above my finger. Nancy says, I filled the large tube and found it difficult to dispense. After using it the whole time away, struggling and fighting with this tube. I got home and caught. Let's see, what does this say? I got home. I'm just gonna, I'm assuming she means I got the other end opened and pulled out a pack of those beads. C photo. So of course, Mary, I'm sorry, Nancy had a photo. The merchant response, thank you for bringing this to our attention. We do apologize for the difficulty you experienced while using the tube. It's certainly frustrating to struggle with a product while away, only to later discover a blockage, especially from something unexpected like a pack of beads inside. This is definitely not the experience we want for our customers. We've shared your feedback and photo with our quality team to help ensure this doesn't happen again. Then they go on to thanking them and apologizing again. And I didn't take a picture of the thumbs up because I only printed out this first page. But again, I'm gonna put up here in the corner the actual review so you can see it for yourself. Now, so that was a year ago. Here's another one submitted one year ago. Lid cracked after one use. These are okay. The larger one held up with toothpaste on a 10-day trip, no problem. I put lotion in the smaller white one, and the lid cracked in half after one use, making it useless and causing me to have to throw away the product. Easy to fill, but useless with no cap. Merchant response, and this was also a year ago. Thank you for sharing your experience. We strive to provide products that will last a lifetime. Oh my goodness. And this feedback will help us do that. This was a year ago. I purchased these three months ago, along with whoever the first reviewer was. Who was the first reviewer? M I-C-H-Z. Maybe that's Michelle. I purchased these three months ago. Okay. I am still having trouble. Today is the first day I was able to open this. Okay. I bought these in March. It's now July. I started trying a couple months ago to open these. I probably started in May. When I actually opened them out of their original packaging, is when I tried to open this. Okay. For them to say we strive to provide products that last a lifetime. Okay. I believe that container store. I really do. I know that this is always how you've run the company. You want to provide higher quality products that last a lifetime. We want that too. This just isn't it, Matador. Okay, this was submitted two years ago. So the reason this timeline is really important is because of this. This was submitted two years ago by Elle. So thank you, Elle, for leaving this record. You impossible to open one star. Not sure if my tubes melted or what, but it was impossible for me to get the slider off to open the tubes. Multiple people tried two years ago. Multiple people tried. And again, I'm gonna show you. I got this one open, so I can do it. I can do it. I'm trying again. I can't get this. I can't get this little one. I can't. I can't. Okay. Multiple people tried. We used pliers, knives, etc. They use tools. They use tools. Someone used tools. I even thought this morning I should just slather this thing with olive oil, but that's ridiculous. It's ridiculous if you have to go to your toolbox. You're not gonna have your toolbox on vacation. You're just not. You shouldn't have to have a tool to open up a plastic container. She said, or he said, L said nothing worked, went in the trash. Okay. Merchant response. Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. We will pass this along to our vendors and buying team. Six people said this review was helpful. This was two years ago. So my problem is that the first person who said I was not able to get the slider off of this tube was two years ago. And then three people a year ago left reviews saying that these caps cracked, the slider was hard to get off, and there was a silica packet inside. Somebody actually used their toothpaste while they're on vacation. It slid around. They literally had toothpaste in with this packet. So the actual packet itself and it looks like mine, mine looks okay. But when you think about it, if the silica packet gets wet, which obviously toothpaste can do that, then the silica itself can actually so you're putting a product that says do not eat into a travel tube where you're gonna put items that are gonna go in your mouth. So I'm just I'm saying. So two years ago, this is this is the thing with some of these companies. They have somebody who is on damage control responding to these reviews. And they're like, okay, thank you for taking the time. Thank you. Okay, great. Thanks. And I'm not trying to sound catty, but this is what it feels like. It feels like, yes, we're listening. Yeah, we got it. We got it when the first person said it two years ago. We got it when three or four people said it a year ago, someone else said it three months ago, yeah, we got it. Thanks. We'll pass this along to our vendors and buying team. I think it's time to pull the product. And I think it's time for Matador to say, you know what, we need to go back to the drawing board. And why is it Matador looking at these reviews? If I had a product that was in a store, especially a store like the container store, that's a very, very big brand, very big brand. And I had a product that was being carried in their store and it was getting one, two, and three-star reviews two years ago. I would have said, you know what? I'm gonna do you a favor, container store. I'm gonna pull my product because we believe in quality and we wanna improve our product. So we're gonna spend the next six months to a year improving this. And then we would love to get back into your store and we can give you a discount. Um we will make it to where we're gonna make this right. Anyone who left a bad review, let's do a marketing campaign where we say, okay, if you purchased our product a couple years ago and you hated it and you threw it away and you felt like you wasted 1099 plus tax, we are gonna send you our new and improved version of it. And then we want you to review the new one. That's what I would do. Matador. Okay. Sorry, I'm kind of tired. I was up until like 2 a.m. editing the um organizing for single moms episode. Um so anyway, okay. Before we wrap up today, one of the things that I wanted to do, I wanted to go click on the link to Matador. And I'm gonna put this up here. So whenever you're looking at a product at the container store, whoever the brand is is gonna have a little underline and you can click on that. I thought it would tell me more about the actual brand, but it sends you to other links, other products of theirs, which is fine. That's totally fine because that tells me a lot as well. So I wanted to kind of give them a break. I thought maybe this is just a flop product. Maybe this is a great brand and this just isn't their best. See, I'm sorry, I'm looking at the this is gonna bother me now. Now the white tube is all dirty because I've messed with it so much and it's all bent anyway. I don't know if that white one is gonna make it past today. I may just be done with it. Um, anyway, so 12 other products, actually, sorry, 12 total products popped up when I clicked on Matador. Okay. I'm gonna put my search results up here so that you can see a clean copy, but I'm looking at the printout. So I apologize if I'm I get a little bit confused here. I'm trying to keep these products together. So there's 12 products. I noticed right away that Matador makes a pocket blanket that's marked down to $13.99 from $34.99. That's not just a July 4th sale, okay? A July 4th sale would be it's normally $34.99 and now it's $29.99. This pocket blanket is not doing well. I don't think it has reviews. I think this was one of the products that didn't have any reviews. So it's one thing if it doesn't have any reviews, but it's full price. It could just be new. It could be newly stocked. But this tells me that the product has been around for a long time. It's probably too expensive for what it is, and they're trying to get rid of it. So the product information, I'm just going to read you the first paragraph. Prepare for fun with a picnic blanket that's waterproof, weighted, and made for easy storage. The pocket blanket literally fits into the palm of your hand. Unfold it, and you'll have dry, comfortable seating for up to four adults. Weighted corners with built-in stakes. Keep the pocket blanket in place even when the wind kicks up. Okay. Yeah, so it has a carrying pouch. I mean, we've seen a lot of these on Amazon. And I feel like you can get one of these. Now, again, quality is important. Maybe it really is made of good quality. But I feel like this $13.99 price is probably more accurate based off of comparables on Amazon, is my prediction. Okay. Without doing any comparison on Amazon, that is my prediction. Okay. Other products that they have. They have a beta lock for $34.99. I don't know how much those are at other places. There is a nano dry packable shower towel for $38.99. Now I've done the packable towels. I actually did that on my cleaning podcast. I actually got a packable towel, and there is no way I paid $39. I think I found one on Amazon for nine or $10. And again, I do like their packaging. They have very clean packaging, lots of black and white and stainless steel, which that appearance alone just screams quality. It really does. It just has that very, very sleek, clean look. I'm rooting for you, Matador. I gotta say, I'm I'm not trying to come down on Matador and I'm not trying to come down on the container store. I just feel like there should be someone who works for the container store or now Bed Bath and Beyond. Bed Bath and Beyond annoying that someone hasn't dealt with this. Who is gonna deal with this? I guess it's gonna be me. They just better pay me for it. Okay. Let's give Matador a little bit of a win. Okay, they have a flat pack soap bar case. I'm gonna put it right there. Sorry. I'm pointing up here. It's not gonna be up on the ceiling, it's gonna be right there. Um, $13.99. Four stars. It has four, it's not four stars. I'm sorry, four reviews that are five star. People love this thing. It's the Matador flat pack soap bar case. Now, with bar soap, sometimes we get those plastic containers and they've got holes in them to help them air out. But again, it's a clunky case. People love this thing. Somebody said, I have purchased two and would buy again. They say it's a game changer for traveling with bar soap. I travel almost weekly and have been able to put bars of soap that are very wet into this bag and they dry up and do not leach through the bag. This is by far the best product for traveling with bar soap. Okay, so now we just need to make this product the best one for traveling with toothpaste. Okay. Okay. Done. Done. I hope so. Matador, call me. Um, somebody else said great for travel. I have owned one of these for four or five years. They are great for traveling. They don't leak, blah, blah, blah. So that's the bar soap thing. That was a total win. Now, they had a total of 12 products. I'm not going to talk about all of them. You can actually find them on the container store. There is another product that is a flat pack toilet tree case. So it's similar, but it's for all of your toilet trees. It was $32.99. Now it's $13.19. So for those of us who worked in retail, whenever the sale price ends in a weird number like that, like 19 or 29 or 49, depending on the store. And I've never worked for the container store. Um, but when I used to work at Pier One, I've worked at Pottery Barn Kids. Um, I worked for Target for a while on the Planogram team. So we're gonna talk about Target in the next episode. I thought this was gonna be a quick episode, you guys. I really did. I didn't realize how much I would care about Matador at this point. I think getting this one open today is what saved them. This was gonna be like slam dunk. This sucks. It should, it should have been great. Um, but now I'm invested. Now I'm invested in them. Um, so they have other products. It's not like they are, you know, failures. They've got other products. They've got two or three of them that are just dramatically reduced. The next one that's gonna get marked down, I'm calling it right now, is this flat pack toilet tree bottle set of three. See how there's one review and it's two stars. $39.99. $39.99 for a set of three flat pack toiletry bottle. So when you think about it, this is probably shampoo, conditioner, body wash for almost $40. And it has one two-star review. So I keep messing up. It's one review, two stars. Okay. But I do feel like that's gonna be the next thing that gets marked down. They have travel earplugs, one review, five stars. Okay. Somebody, oh, the so the the bottle set of three that I just talked about, that's $39.99. The review, yeah. Here's the one review from MPLS Janet. They leak. Do not buy. I purchased for an international trip because they fit a lot of product for a longer trip, but they easily pop open and leak all over. One split at the seams after just two trips, not worth the money. This was a year ago. Guess what container store said? We appreciate your feedback and we'll pass it along to our product buyers as we aim to meet the needs of every customer. Was this review helpful to you? 19 people said yes. 19 people. You've lost 19 people based on one review. Okay, I've seen enough. I've seen enough, I've heard enough. Let me just tell you, okay. I'm no retail genius. But again, if you guys have not listened to what the container store did wrong, I'm gonna post it right here. What the container store did wrong, this is part of it, you guys. Think about all these reviews I just read. The person who kept saying, thank you for your feedback, we will pass this along, is probably the same person in every single review response. Now, since one review was two years ago and a lot were one year ago, obviously that person may not be there anymore. Maybe somebody else is like, thank you for your feedback. You know, people give AI a hard time, they give that whole, you know, robotic script customer service thing. Like people hate when they spend money on something and they try, they try to get the company to do something about it. And if you notice, not one of the reviews said, I want my money back, or I'm not shopping with you again. Every single review, and I'm really proud of these people, okay? Every single person who left a review, they didn't just put a star on it and walk away. They actually said, I bought this for an international trip. That's the other thing too. Remember when I said, okay, sometimes you go on vacation and you can just grab a little thing of toothpaste. You did have one or two people say, I use a toothpaste that doesn't come in a travel size. That's why people buy these. Okay. People buy travel size empty tubes so they can fill them with products that don't have a travel size version. And so that's what these people did. And they all said, This product, if I got it to work at all, broke on me while I was traveling overseas. So I'm not saying that you can't buy toothpaste overseas, but as you're going along and you're traveling, the last thing you want to try to do, especially if you're trying to like make your flight a connection, if you're trying to get an Uber, you don't want to be like, hey, Uber, can you stop at the drugstore so I can get a tube of toothpaste? You want to leave for a trip knowing that you're prepared. These people were prepared. They bought the items before the trip. I bought mine on the trip, but I didn't need it right then. I was actually prepared for the next trip. And so I'm just saying this the product itself needs to be revamped for sure. Matador, you need to pay attention. This is teacher Sarah coming out. Matador, pay attention to what people are saying about your product. Okay. It can be improved. You've got a good thing here. You just have to improve it. Or at least, like I said, keep one of the bottles open and package it differently so that people are aware that, okay, we've got one where the clip is off. That's where you fill it. But inside, you're going to actually see that there is a silica packet, which is important. Okay. So you want your product to work for everyone. You want to be, you want it to be so super easy that a child can use it. Okay. Now, some of these, as far as like filling them and stuff, yeah, a child's going to mess up this. They're going to mess this up because you got to hold it with one hand, you know, and fill it with the other. But if you have a product that you want the whole family to use, you've got to make sure that the parents can open it. Okay. That the parents can open it and not use pliers and not have to get baby oil. You know, it's it's ridiculous. You want to have a product that someone can buy, even if they're on vacation, like I did. I didn't have to buy this on vacation. I'm like, hey, I'm on vacation. I'm gonna buy this. This is a great idea. And so then, as the store that carries the brand, the container store, bed bath and beyond, whatever, you guys have to pay attention. Pay attention to what people are saying about a product that you carry in your store. This went through a lot of people. Okay. And I'm sure that at some point, even a store employee probably said, Yeah, we've looked, you know, people that actually went and tried to return these, I'm sure that there were people that didn't leave a review that actually bought them and said, I'm gonna try to go return this. And I'm sure that at some point there was a store employee that was like, Yeah, these get returned a lot because no one can open them or they break. So between the store employees, between the corporate people that are responding to the reviews themselves, and then for Matador to not be like, like, if I had a product that was just not well received, I would be like, oh my God, we are so sorry. We are so sorry. We are going to go fix this. Um, because $10.99 is not a lot of money, but it's a lot of frustration to deal with something like this. And if you have other products that were originally priced at $32.99, $34.99, and they're being marked down to Amazon prices, that's what's happening. People are finding comparables on Amazon, or they're saying, listen, we want to make this work, but we saw the reviews for your other products and we're just not sure about you. So that's a problem for the brand itself. And so again, I have no problem with the container store, other than where they're located. They need to be located in Franklin, Tennessee, and not Nashville, Green Hills. I'm gonna say it again since we're talking about it again. If we have a container store in Franklin, which makes total sense, there are so many people in Franklin who are container store people. I've had so many clients in Franklin who are container store people. At least open a second location down here because no one wants to drive into Nashville to buy these. Oh my gosh. Could you imagine if I had driven there just to buy these for a trip and I got all the way back home after fighting Green Hills traffic? Oh, I would have been so upset. I would have been really upset. So it's that kind of stuff that you guys need to work on. So anyway, I hope this episode was helpful. Please make sure to find us on YouTube if you haven't already found us and watched this episode. I love pointing, by the way. This is fun. I'm gonna do this a lot. Please make sure to subscribe on YouTube. I did pull back the labeled organizing Instagram page. Because now that I've interviewed Sean, I was like, I've gotta get that page going again. I deactivated it for a while just to make my life easier, but now I'm like, okay, we gotta get back to Instagram. So go find us on Instagram at labeled organizing. Please consider subscribing to the bonus content. The minimum contribution is only $3 a month. You will have access to all of the bonus content that I have done over the last two plus years. We are on episode, I believe this one is gonna be 120. A lot of the older episodes, a lot of the earlier episodes are now in the bonus content. So as episodes age out of the regular pod, they're gonna go there, and you can go back and listen as much as you want. You're gonna have access to that complete library of useful information, including the container store episode. Go listen to that if you haven't listened to it yet. So thank you all for listening, and I will see you in the next episode.