Current Trends in Home & Gift with Angela Schmook, Road Runners LLC

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One of the things that I am so excited about happening in our industry right now is the major crossover between apparel boutiques and home and gift stores. Now, if you've been in business for a while, I'll say back in the day, there used to be a lot more separation between these two segments in our industry. And you'll note that when you go to a home and gift market versus an apparel market. But since COVID specifically, we've been on a fast track in our industry to see a lot more crossover and both store types recognizing the opportunity to learn from one another. And that's why today's episode. Episode is so good. And I'm so excited to have this conversation because we have been really having these deep conversations here at the Boutique Hub with so many of our friends in the home and gift industry about how can the Boutique Hub do more to support home and gift retailers? What do apparel boutiques need to know about home and gift? And what do home and gift boutiques need to know about apparel or selling online or just the different business practices that we both carry? So today on the show, this is going to be so awesome, you guys. My friend Angela Schmuck, who is the VP of operation, operations, and marketing at Roadrunners. I'm sure you've gotten the Roadrunners catalog or you've been to one of their showrooms in Vegas or Dallas or Atlanta. They're massive, and they support so many really great wholesale brands. So today, Angela and I are going to deep dive into maybe some common misconceptions between home and gift and apparel. What we all need to know about maximizing the incredible turn and profit margin and the consumability of many home and gifts brands. And also, what are some of the trends that Angela is seeing in our industry? Not only trends in business, but actual trends in product as we look at summer and fall and holiday. And where does Angela think our industry is headed? This is a really good question. So I am pumped for you to not only meet Angela today, but I also want to drop this quick reminder. It's a big week here at the Hub and also on hubventtory.com, our own wholesale marketplace, because it is home and gift week, so. So we are specializing and featuring many home and gift brands on the platform this week, doing some live sales with some amazing gift brands. And we're talking more about how you can grow your home and gift business. So I would love for you to check out Roadrunners, get to meet Angela, but also pay attention to home and Gift week happening this week on Hubventory. All right, let's meet Angela, and let's talk about the future of home and gift and apparel as these two industries definitely cross paths more often. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works, from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts, and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat. Hey, guys. Welcome back to the podcast. This week, it's a special week at the Hub and Hubventory. It's home and gift week on Hubventory. So there's no better time, Angela, than now to have you on the podcast and talk about all the things happening at Roadrunners, but also just to, I would say, dispel some misunderstanding or information across apparel and home and gift and talk about how the two of us can work even closely, even more closely in the future. So help me with this as we get started, Angela, talk to me about what is a definition of a rep and what's the definition of a rep? Agency for those who are not familiar.

Sure. So in the case of Roadrunners, all of our sales reps are independent contractors. They are independent sales reps, and what that means is that they travel through a territory and they help retailers find product for their stores. So our reps don't work for a single company. They're working for lots of brands. Some are a little bit larger. Some are really teeny tiny. And so our role is to help retailers find products and at the same time, help those brands place their products throughout a geographical area. In some cases, it's a whole state, a piece of a state, multi states. Each territory is a little bit different. But we work through relationships. We meet retailers, we find out about their stores, and they're all unique and different. So we actually, we really call our channel specialty retail, which really means any anywhere that has retail, we will. Will sell as a sales agency. The way that that works is we hire these independent contractors to work with us, and we sort of curate and select suppliers that sort of meet a certain criteria. They actually have product. They can ship products. So we kind of do some of that dirty work in advance for you. So curating that collection of brands, we are burning the candles and testing, you know, the. The products in advance so that we can kind of feel it out and help retailers really select good, solid brands for their stores.

Over the years, as I've gotten to know many reps, I kind of feel like before boutique coaching really became a thing, I feel like reps were kind of the first group of boutique mentors. Because when you think about your business model, your job is really to be a partner and a mentor in some aspects to the retailer. Because you're kind of seeing the forest through the trees for them and then bringing that information back to them. Right. Tell me about some of like the most successful relationships you have when you look at them like a true partnership with your retailer.

Well, you really hit the nail on the head because the beauty what a rep has the advantage of, that a retailer doesn't is all day long, that is what we do. We go from store to store to store to store. We're in big towns, we're in small towns. We have this network of other reps that we talk with. Our southeast group does a weekly call. So we get together and we talk about what we're seeing, what the struggles are, what the trends are, problems that retailers are having. So we really sort of have this great high level visual of what's going on within the industry. We talk about when things are on the increase and when things are on the decline. So we can kind of help retailers go, maybe you shouldn't order 50 gnomes this time. Maybe you should do the smallest minimum order if they're still selling for you, or on the flip to say, hey, no, you should order 50. I don't recommend 50 gnomes right now, but we do, we have have the advantage of seeing what's going on throughout the industry.

Can you tell me more about that? I'm just curious, like based on some of your calls, even recently, what you guys are seeing, you know, across different territories and what are some of the pieces of advice you're giving to retailers right now?

So we're in a very interesting moment, right, right this very moment. We had such a good year last year and a lot of retailers were really stocking up, stocking up, stocking up. And where we are right is we're sort of hitting. We are back to the normal, not the new normal, but we are back to, I think the regular normal buying pattern. And retailers right now are being somewhat cautious. I also think that they are waiting in anticipation of what they're going to find at market, that we are going to see sort of a surge of new. We sort of plateaued for a little while. On new product because suppliers were being cautious and the cost to land goods were so high that they didn't have the product development dollars available. They were having to shift a lot of things around. And so I think that we're sort of in this moment of caution and I think it's going to be really short lived because I think there's going to be a lot of excitement back at market. So it's a softer time right now on our side. The beauty of that is this is the perfect time to reach out to a sales rep and just some of those conversations of what are you seeing? What do you think is going to be hot? You know, what did I miss out on that I should have stocked up on? Because right now reps have a little more time on their hands as we lead into market season.

I love that. I wanted to ask you, really what you just brought up in addition was what are you seeing in terms of trends? Let's talk about trends that you see across home and gift, both for summer and immediates, but also what's happening now for fall and holiday? What do you see on the horizon?

Sure, sure. One thing that comes to the very top of mind for me is travel. We've been getting back to travel as Americans, but we're beginning to see more products related to travel. So whether it's something that solves a problem or something even as simple as luggage tags and in personal care, seeing brands that haven't travel size products are now launching travel size products. So travel is just, is definitely something that is bubbling to the top. We're also seeing color and I think that that transcends right even into fall and holiday where holiday colors have been very traditional. Red, green, jewel tones, metallics. We're seeing a lot of color transitioning all the way into fall and holiday. Like lots of pinks and more vibrant greens, blues, lots of color. And that, that goes all the, all the way across. We're also seeing. And I, I was putting some thought into this because I thought you might ask me about trends. One that, that is very interesting to me is sort of this western rodeo motif. And I live in Florida, I live in the south where everything is, is light and bright and we do have a showroom in Dallas. But I'm seeing this western thing everywhere and I know you're seeing that in, in apparel as well. Those are sort of the main, main things I'm seeing today at this moment. Just from the sneak peeks that we're seeing from our, our vendors there certainly are going to be some things that are gonna gonna bu couple of months, but those are the primary ones.

I am so glad that you're here that not only are you listening to the podcast, but you know why you're different because you actually implement what you learn and that sets you apart from everyone else in this industry every single day of the week. So thank you for that. And because I know you love to take action, I want to make sure if you're not already a part of our community at the Boutique Hub that you have an opportunity to join us. You see, the membership at the Boutique Hub is the core of everything we do. And it has been for almost, almost 10 years, which is crazy. We gather together from all 50 states in the United States and seven countries, boutique owners, wholesale brands and our trusted and vetted industry partners on a daily basis to talk about what's really happening, to answer your ongoing questions, to share stories, to learn and grow from and with one another inside of the membership at the Boutique Hub, not only do you have access to our daily community, but also our ongoing education. You see, we have live experts, coaching and speaking every single week, two days a week, both retail and in our private wholesale groups. We also have monthly training bundles and content calendars that go out to our members on a regular basis on all kinds of topics, plus our vetted training library. Our training library is full of tools and templates and videos and how to's checklists, everything from non disclosure agreements that you can learn from, model agreements, content calendars and engagement libraries, videos on how to run Google Ads and Facebook ads, to optimizing your inventory you're buying and how to pay yourself more with profit first. Besides learning, I want to make sure that you also have an opportunity to buy and stock your store accordingly. So members of the Boutique Hub also have access to so many discounts from vetted and trusted wholesale partners, almost a thousand of them now inside of the Hub and also on our platform, hubventory.com the new wholesale marketplace built by the industry, for the industry. And finally you guys, your membership, I can tell you how to get it for free. And many members do. And here's why. Membership at the Boutique Hub comes with all kinds of exclusive perks and discounts only open to you, a Boutique Hub member. And when you use those perks and discounts, it saves you often three to four times the amount your membership actually costs, which starts at just $24 a month. So access those perks and those discounts, those wholesale savings, and also make sure you're growing your business to build more revenue with all the trainings happening at the Boutique Hub. You know what, one last thing. I know you like listening to podcasts, but you know what's even better? Meeting in person. And that's one thing I am so thankful for at the Hub. Because at every market in Dallas or Atlanta or Las Vegas or even at our conference for boutique owners, the Boutique Summit members have an opportunity to meet up, learn and grow together in person. So I want to invite you to join us@the boutiquehub.com backslash join to become a member of our community today. I love that the rodeo thing just makes me laugh because I like, I'm a rodeo person, right? Like we have horses, we do the whole thing. So to see that be such a mainstream trend, I'm. It's like you're trying to like, live into the trend, but like be authentic to yourself. It's like a battle I'm having interpersonally with this whole trend happening. But you bring up a really good point. When I think about, like these trends that are coming, and maybe this is a question a lot of people have about ordering in home and gift versus apparel is talk to me about the timelines. When you're ordering home and gift, do you have a lot of opportunity to order immediates or is it more advantageous to order ahead of time and get in on, you know, these early product releases?

So that's an excellent question and I'm going to give you lots of different answers to that, to that question. Because we represent such a diverse range of products, I'm going to give you like a couple of different examples of how you can buy in gift and home. So we are already selling fall and holiday. So we'll talk about early buy. I think you guys in apparel call them like pre book. And so early buy is a little bit different. It is typically offered by your larger, larger brands. It's, it's typically not a smaller brand. So larger brands offer it so that they can sort of get a pulse on what's going to be hot so that they can go ahead and pre book larger numbers. They might think the pink is going to sell best, but lo and behold, it's the blue. So early buy and gift in home really is advantageous to take to, to do in advance as a retailer. And I think that's a piece that's different. Typically you're offered all kinds of perks for helping the supplier out by placing that order early. So typically the way it works, the larger your order, the larger the perks and they offer everything from freight caps to free freight to discounts off of the goods to dating to free product. The perks really, really vary. And early buys sometimes can start as early February to buy for holiday for the following year. Which is great because it's fresh in your mind of what sold, what didn't sell, what you still have on hand that you want to re up or add in addition to. So there's early buy. Then there are also monthly specials. So that's something that working with your sales rep that is like this big giant perk that you don't get when you're ordering directly from a brand. So every month we have what we call road specials. And these are things that your sales reps have that working with your rep, they'll say hey, if you order $25 more, I could save you $100 on your freight. So there are those monthly specials and then just your regular everyday. Let's place an order that varies fairly widely. So we have some brands that are larger brands that will have a larger opening order, it could be 250, $300. And then we have brands that literally have no opening order. You can start with a brand by just ordering one case pack, which might be three salt and pepper shakers. So it varies greatly. And that's one of the reasons that you want to work with a sales rep too. If you have ex open to buy, maybe you're a really small store, you're an online store and you've got $1,000, maybe even have only $500 to invest in gift and home. If you work with your sales rep, they can help you really get a wide variety of products with a low buy in and a low number of items that you have to bring in so that you can experiment with some products.

Products that's really helpful to know because I think there, there is this big misconception that it's expensive. I have to order way more product. But the way you put it, I feel like a lot is changing and what's unique about that is I love that you guys have access to like specials and discounts and perks and all this apparel I don't feel like really has a lot of that. And maybe it's because it's so fast, you know, like trend in apparel and production apparel especially fast fashion is just like a different time span. But, but I love that. And it's a good reason I think especially for an apparel store to test out home and gift and to make sure a home and gift store is really working with their reps to be advantageous on those savings. So very good points. Angela, you and I had a chance to meet several months ago at the DHTA conference. And I don't know if I was maybe like an outsider. Cause I feel like I kind of came in with an apparel tone to your group. But I'm curious when we had our first interaction and I talked about, you know, when. What, what is the perspective of apparel stores, of gift and home, and how can we work together? Because we're having this moment today where apparel is going into home and gift and home and gift is going into apparel and kind of knocking down these silos across the industry. But I'm kind of curious your first impressions of maybe some of the things I spoke about. What did you noodle on after that conversation? And where do you see more opportunity for the two sides to continue to work with one another?

I am so glad you asked me that question. So I'm going to go just a tiny bit backwards. Even from that event when you held, I believe it was the Boutique Hub Summit in Dallas the first time. Our director of sales for the west coast came to me and said, you know, I bought you the content program. And she handed me these two binders and I looked at it. I'm like, this is apparel. Like, this doesn't apply to us. I'm not understanding. And then I sort of dove into it and I went, oh, this stuff is powerful. And then she, she attended and met you and then you spoke at ghta. I was mind blown. Mind blown at that event. There were so many points that you brought up that suddenly I saw this synergy between the two and we were already experiencing it a little bit. But. But I think that as an industry, we were resisting it a little bit. And one, one example of that is gifted Home has. Was very much entrenched in brick and mortar. We had not really knocked down the walls of selling to online retailers. And I think that between the pandemic and our GHTA conference and you speaking about this whole SOR model that really is specialty retail, we as an industry had really not allowed for those walls to be knocked down. And then as we began to realize we are all specialty retail, we are all doing the same thing, the barriers sort of just went away. And we are the same. We're doing the same exact type of type of thing. Something that happened for me recently at the apparel show that we attended. I sat down at dinner with another retailer. It was sitting across from me. And I promised, I was Going to be quiet. I wasn't going to say anything. And I just needed to do some. Do some work. And we started talking, and she was a definite apparel boutique. And so I started asking her, you know, well, do you carry any candles? Carry any cards? And she's like, no, I don't. I don't do any gift. I don't do any gift. And then when I started asking her about the brands, she did. She carried candles and she had cards, and she. She buys gift. She had never been into any of the gift showrooms. So there's this whole new world of opportunity that was right there in. In front of her. So we're a lot. We're a lot more alike. Going back to Ghta for a second, the one item that really, really, really resonated with me that you mentioned was that apparel buyers are scared to walk into the gift and home showrooms. And that blew my mind. We're wide open. Come in. We want you in our showroom. Walk in, come up to our customer service desks, and just say, hey, I have a store in such and such, and I'd love to meet my rep. And even if your rep is not available, we bring in temporary sales associates that are trained on all the brands. They typically live within the geographical area. All you have to do is share a little bit about your store, and we want to help you. We'll walk you through the whole showroom. We will take care of you. You just have to. Have to say, hey, I need a little help.

I love that. I. I've got to go back because you. We're talking about how this has changed so much. I think there's stores that in the past had, like, a Pretty Woman experience where someone came in and they were like, oh, we don't have your rep or your territory or whatever. And in, I'm gonna say, untrained showrooms. Right? And now I think that's so different. I love this opportunity. We've started in a couple of markets in Dallas and Atlanta, leading buyers tours, taking apparel buyers and taking them into home and gift showrooms and saying, hey, look. And we came into Roadrunners. Hey, look. Look at these brands. Here's how you order and just breaking down those barriers. And those stores were so excited because it is a whole new world and there is so much opportunity. There are so many great, like, if you followed you guys that are listening, if you followed any of our assortment planning, training, and we talk about, just like, you walk the grocery store and. And there's your charcuterie board section. Right. Great for entertaining. And then your bread and butter, you need to bring home the meat, bring home the bacon to feed your family. There's your coupons and then your add ons and upsells at checkout that your toddlers like begrudgingly take home every single time. And we all need that in our stores, whether you're online, whether you're brick and mortar. And I feel like there's such a synergy with home and gift and apparel to really nail all four of those assortments. So I would agree. Is there anything, any other advice you would give to stores that are listening, who want to know more about just shopping in showrooms, working with reps, or still feel a little bit intimidated to walk in? Any other tips or advice you would.

Give them, you know, share with us? That's something that I feel like sometimes people hold, hold back because they don't want to show all their cards or they don't, you know, they're, they're intimidated to say I've never shopped in here before or I don't, I don't know anything about candles. Help me. Like that's the role of a sales rep. We are, we are here to help you, the retailer. Yes, we have a job to place products throughout our territory, but we want it to be in the right place. It does mean no good to sell you $250 worth of something that is not right for your store. Because the way that I make a living as a sales rep is I sell you that 250 and I can come back with the next, next brand that's the right fit and sell you that one and maybe get a reorder because the first brand was such a success. I want you to be a success. So that's, that's where. And I want you to not only be a success for a year, I want you to be a success for 25 years. Because I'm not going anywhere. And I want to help my, my retailers and continue to help you grow your business. So your best interest is my best interest. The other, the other. There was another point that just made a moment ago. Something else that's unique about home and gift is we offer a lot of private label opportunities. If you want something that is really unique for your store, gift and home offers a ton of that. A ton of that. We can make special jewelry just for your store. We can help you make a candle scent just for your store. We can do hats just with your town on it. I mean, we offer a lot of Private labels, label opportunity. And that's something that I feel like a lot of stores are looking for.

That is a huge advantage. A huge advantage. Can you take me one step further and talk to me about finances, profit margin and turn in home and gift versus apparel? So, and I think this is an important conversation right now, especially because in apparel, consumers in this economy are buying more based on need than want, want. And a lot of times apparel falls into the want category. But there's things that in home and gift, like candles specifically, that are, you know, replenishable goods. They're, they're consumables. So talk to me about maybe the difference in turn rates or how you see the profit margin different in home and gift and what the benefits would be.

Well, home has a much longer shelf life, I feel like than fashion. Pillow is a pillow is a pillow pillow. There's no shelf life on a pillow. Yes, styles change, but certainly not as fast as fashion does. A lot of home and gift is also color generated. So if you buy a pillow, let's say you gamble on something, you don't know if that is right for your customer base, you can take that blue pillow and you can remix that with some, some hot pink and set up a new visual display and it may fly like that. So you've got a much longer shelf life on home goods. Even when you look at personal care candles, I mean those certainly they don't go out of style. So that's something that is really great about going into those types of categories.

Are you carrying home and gift products in your store? Add ons and upsells and decor and all the things to round out your retail experience? Well, if so, I want to invite you to save the date for our Hubventory feature week featuring all home and gift on June 19th through the 23rd. During this week, you're going to shop exclusives by a number of brands on Hubventory. You're going to be able to plan collections by using our pinnable board words to help you shop smarter on Hubventory. Plus, if you're a hub member, don't forget about those hub member discounts. Hundreds of brands have discounts built into their products just for you on hubventory.com so save the date for our home and gift feature week June 19th through the 23rd on hubventory.com when when we talk about pillows versus candles, help me understand kind of the, the edges of home and gift a little bit. If someone was going to start in home and gift gift, I would mainly Start in, in what main categories like candles, like some little like fun keychains and giftables and cards. But I'm not going to go all the way into like tabletop and maybe some holiday decor. Like tell me the kind of the boundaries and edges of all the different categories available.

Sure, sure. Here's where I would actually start. If I were an apparel retailer and I've decided I'm going to bring in some peripheral product from, from these categories I would start. Customers. Hey, this is what I'm thinking. What are some, some gifts you've reached, recently purchased or what do you wish that I would would carry that I don't have? And so I think that would be be a strong starting point. Then I would look at what is a natural progression because you have a captive audience that's already buying apparel from you. What would be the next natural progression? Like what do, what does my customer as a consumer buy? And if I were to gamble on a category, I would gamble in what I would call consumables. And the reason I suggest that is because once they consume it and love it, they will buy it again either for themselves or they will buy it as a gift. So I would look then at personal care. And personal care can be as simple as lip gloss, lip balm, small travel hand creams, things that don't take a ton of dollars. But you can begin to dabble in their impulse. You can put them by the register. Same thing with candles. Candles are consumable. Almost everybody burns candles. It can be a great gift and it can be a great purchase for yourself. So I feel like those two categories are not a gamble, they're a given. Another fun category that people sort of forget about, but it's a great little add on are sticking so that that's you can make them unique to your store, to your customer base, to your town. Those are three categories that I feel like are a home run.

I love that. I love that. One thing I noticed when we were touring in Dallas in a few different showrooms is this new category of like drink mixes and cocktails. Like that's a whole exploding category on its own. Is it?

Is it is. And that is also a awesome new category. Food and gourmet food is an emerging category for us. We represent a brand called Noble Mix and they have those exact packages that you're talking about. And what's awesome about them is it can either be a standalone sale or an add on sale. And what I mean by that is you can go in and pick up up Three, six little drink mixes to give as a gift and give it with a set of wine glasses or a shaker or pop them in a card. I actually recently received one as a gift. It was just a little note inside of a greeting card and they had mailed it to me. So they're great little impulse purchases as well as can be tied into something as a greeting gift. And they're also great pickup items. I love to take them on the boat with me. They're great for beach day. They're great to just have in your, in your purse and you really just add them to water, add a little bit of your favorite alcohol, and. And off you go. So that was one of our best sellers actually at the last apparel market was the Noble Mix drink mixes. So I'm glad you brought that up.

Yeah, I just think it's so clever and there's no reason for me why an E commerce store that we work with, whether they're gift or home or appare apparel or whatever, there's no reason why they can't market those things and, and do great with those, especially people who are doing live sales. I mean, that's a huge opportunity in that category. I just think there's so much synergy and opportunity that's being left on the table right now. So I'm just really excited we're having this conversation. I'm excited for stores to, to see this come through. When you think about stores that you work with across home and gift, what do you feel like your most successful stores have in common? Common?

That's an awesome question. Willing to take a risk. That's what the most successful stores have in common. And it doesn't even have to be a risky risk. They listen to their reps. When their reps come in and say, all my stores are buying this, I think you should try it. I think you should bring in two displays. The stores that are willing to listen and are willing to try something that they've not tried before. Because let's face it, the end consumer wants the latest, hottest, greatest. They want the tried and true, the things that they, they've experimented with and tried and know that they love. But they always want to see something, something new. And I think that's something that social media is driving us to. So the ones that are listening and are willing to take that risk and try something new, that's what they have in common.

I love that. That's really good advice. Well, Angela, take me back for a second. How did you get started? How did you get into this industry. I know you've been with a few different companies, but take me for a minute on your journey to where you are now with Roadrunners.

Oh, that's sort of a funny story. So I graduated from college and I. I went to work for this really large management company that was super structured. Everything was. Had a, you know, 10 steps on how to. How to do things. I learned a lot about foundation and rules and structure. Meanwhile, my husband was in sales, and he was having so much fun every day. And I was going to my job that had lots of foundation and structure. So I thought, I'm going to start looking into some sales jobs. And I literally answered an ad in the paper for gift sales. And I met with Louise Appleman of ApplemanShauben. And I went in and I asked for everything my husband told me I should. I asked for a big salary, a company car in an expense account so I could take all my clients out. And she knew right then and there that I had no idea what I was doing, that I didn't know anything about this industry. I knew nothing about this, about any of it. But I wanted that job. And so Louise and I continued for a couple of months to talk back and forth, and she tried to talk me out of it. But I was determined that I wanted to, Wanted. I wanted this job. The more I knew, learned about the industry and what it was, it was something that I wanted to be part of. I guess I was the only applicant because eventually she hired me. And we. We laugh and joke about it to this day. She called me the. Her. Her diamond in the rough. And I still don't know why she gambled on me, but she did. It was just. It was a wonderful time because Louise was expanding her business. She was opening her first showroom in Atlanta. And I spent 10amazing years there. And I learned so much in that. That time. But as my. My kids got a little bit older, they were in middle school, one was heading into high school, and I was on the road every single day, traveling all over southwest Florida. And so I knew I wanted to be a little bit closer to home. It was the time I. I really needed to keep my eyeballs on them a little bit more. And I had a friend that I had had worked with as a rep that had gone to work for this small sales agency, Roadrunners, that had just opened their first showroom in Atlanta. And it was literally two rep principals and a handful of sales reps. And so I met with them and I just. I really like liked where that company was going and I just saw a huge opportunity and so I took my second leap of faith and took the role there as their sales manager. And boy, oh boy, have we grown a lot in the last 10 years. So I'm the VP of Operations and Marketing now. I work with two amazing Director of sales for our east coast and West coast. We have over 45 sales reps now. We have three showrooms. So I'm really thankful now that I've got that background in the organization and structure and the experience, I get to take my last 20 years of work experience and put them together and absolutely love being here at Roadrunners.

Ah, so good. So good. Where do you see the future of, of these two industries? Going home and gift and apparel together? What do you feel like is next? Because you've got to be planning what's coming for Roadrunners. Incredible growth.

I think we're just, we're going to continue to see more and more crossover. I don't think there is going to be this apparel channel and this gift and home channel. I think we are becoming more and more 1. Our gift stores are carrying more apparel, apparel is carrying more gift. And I think we're going to see more synergy and, and more unification across the two.

This is a big question, but I totally agree with that and I might raise a couple feathers asking this question. Do you think that's going to impact market dates and cause more overlap with apparel markets and home and gift markets so that stores who do want to do both have more opportunity to see it all in one trip?

That's an excellent question. And I've asked that before of the market centers and I think it's going to vary a little bit by the market center. One of sort of the behind the scenes things that I never quite realized is that a lot of those dates and times depend upon the cities themselves. So there's a bit of work because when we start to merge together these two powerhouse channels of business, there has to be enough hotels and transportation and, and all of that sort of behind the scenes stuff that we don't think about. So maybe what will will happen is just there's more opportunity to buy. I don't know that the dates themselves will, will change, especially in the larger cities like Atlanta. But what we are seeing in Dallas is the shows butting up against each other. So if you feel like you, you're truly an apparel buyer and that's your core and you're just beginning to experiment with gift in home, you can now come in a couple of days early and shop gift and home before you begin your apparel buy, because those dates are budding up to each other. When you look at it at Atlanta, the dates are still different, but your gift and home apparel, at least the larger showrooms, are open during your apparel market. So it's a great time to go in and shop those showrooms, too.

I agree. And the, the reason I ask that is I find the last couple of times in Dallas when it has butted up, it's so helpful for buyers to walk through and not see black showrooms, not see them dark. Like to see these showrooms open where before they felt like, oh, this isn't available to me. So I do think that's naturally going to peak a lot more curiosity than we've seen in the past. So very, very, very interesting. Well, Angela, thank you so much for your time today, for all your wisdom on this industry. And I'm just really excited about what the future holds and the opportunities for store owners of all types. I have one final question for you, and this is always the question at the end of the day. I know, and I know you agree that in this industry we're about far more than selling products to people. Right? This is a much bigger game that we're all playing and a much bigger purpose. And we're. Why I'm curious, when you get, like, past retirement and you're sitting on the front porch and you're talking to your friends and your family about the life that you lived and the journey that you've had and all these stories that you've had an opportunity to work with, what's the thing that you want your family and friends to remember the most about you and how you lived and how you took on this journey?

Being a helping hand through this, this whole entire process, it's. It has nothing to do with me.

Me.

It's not about me. I want to help other people be successful. And whether that is helping my retailers be successful, helping my reps be successful, help helping my brands grow, that's what I want to be remembered for, is being that, that helping hand. And even if it's not a product that I, I sell, helping connect a retailer with another, with another brand, the helping hand, that's. I, I don't have any other words for it than that. Just to, to be, to be a resource.

I love that. And the world needs a lot more of that. So thank you so much. And we'll link up for, for all of you who are interested, we will link up all of Roadrunner's information in the show notes so we can see a whole list of brands that are available and we'll find ways to get our stores in contact with you if they have any questions. Just about again, the crossover of this industry. But Angela, again, thanks so much for today and all of your wisdom.

Thanks for having me.

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