From Garage to Global: Building a 100-Year Toy Company | David Socha | EP15

A thousand days—that's enough time to transform a company, but not enough time to waste. Welcome to the One Thousand Day CEO, the podcast about decisive leadership, sustainable growth, and building a business that thrives beyond any one leader. Your host is Bill Kennedy. Let's make every day count.

Good afternoon, everyone. Today, my guest is David Soha. Founder and CEO of Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Company. David started the business in his garage more than 30 years ago and built it into a global plush toy company whose products are sold in more than 90 countries. That's right, 90 countries. Everybody loves those teddy bears. So along the way, he's navigated licensing and retail consolidation, overseas manufacturing, changing consumer trends, and an 80% revenue decline during COVID His story is about much more than teddy bears though. It's about focus, integrity, resilience, family, and building a company designed to outlive its founder. So welcome, David. It's great to have you on the show today.

Thanks so much, Bill. Great to be here.

Well, fantastic. So look, I thought I'd jump right in and, you know, you were exposed to the toy business at 9 years old, but hockey was really your original dream. When did you realize toys could become your life work?

You know what? I've always loved toys. I've always, I was a toy kid when I was little. If I, if it was out there and my family could afford it, I wanted it. So whether it was GI Joe or King Kong or any fun toy guns, I love toy guns. I love the Star Trek little disc throwers. So, but I really thought I had a shot to make a, to be, to be a professional hockey player.

Mm-hmm.

And so in college, my college roommate and I, uh, Who was an unbelievable hockey player. When we both kept moving on, we had our few tryouts, some free agent camps. Those didn't quite go the best they could have with the Boston Bruins. We, we started a company and about the same time this new pro roller hockey league started. So long story short, him and I were kind of double dutying, starting a company, but playing some professional roller hockey. So at some point though, you have to focus. And in that journey, literally in, in one of our practices, a guy's name whose nickname was Killer. I had my head down, I had my head down and he came across the middle and he killed me. So his name lived up to everything he said it was. And it wasn't meant to be for me to play hockey anymore.

Well, that's, hey, look, that's how you get those lovely teeth is you get new ones after Killer has his way with you. So.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was a new shoulder actually.

Uh, Well, look, take us back to the garage. When, what did the business look like before anyone believed it could actually succeed?

So take it way back before the internet, before, before texting, right at the start of cell phones, right? We, my roommate and I said, look, let's just, let's really dig in and start a mail order company. So we bought teddy bears from different makers around the US. And our shtick was we were going to advertise on the radio and send one that looks like Bill. So your wife could call and send a bear at that time. Maybe you were dressed in a blue suit. It'd be a bear in a blue suit. If your wife was a nurse, we'd do a nurse bear and they were average of $100 each. You'd listen to, you'd be listening to sports radio or talk radio. You'd call in, you'd order, we'd send it. It'd be there in 2 or 3 days. You were a hero, especially at Valentine's Day, because it was just different. So we'd send a teddy bear with a little bit of chocolate, maybe a little, uh, fake flower in there with it, with a beautiful card. And, uh, don't ask when we messed up the cards, cuz that would get a little tricky. But that's, that's another story. You know, a lot of apologies, to be honest. You know, they say don't ever apologize. Say, you know, let's make— but we try to make lemonade out of it. But there was a guy who, professional athlete, had a few different girls he was sending bears to, and a couple of 'em got crossed in the mail.

Gross.

And somebody got the wrong one and they knew about the other one and they called and it was A mess, but no, truly, when you say everything was manual, I remember handwriting all the UPS tags so we could have hundreds of shipments going out during Valentine's Day or 1,000. Those were all handwritten. And the boxes, we were, we were a very organic type company. So every box had an air hole that we put in individually with a little, a little pen that we would poke it and then stamp it air hole. So So your bear would be alive. So when they got there, it was fun, right? It was just a fun thing. They knew there was a stuffed animal in there and they knew that it's alive, which ironically, a lot of people, a lot of kids, they will throw out a lot of toys, but stuffed animals don't really ever get thrown out. They either get donated unless they get moldy, but which is very rare. They'll either get donated or passed on because it's a living creature.

My kids who are in their late 20s now, Both still have stuffed animals, bears, things like that from their childhood. And so they don't, they don't, they don't, they get kind of loved away, right? They get, they, you know, the eye starts missing and the part, but each one of them, in fact, my daughter, there's my grandson. He now sleeps with the bear she slept with when she was— and you, what else, what else do you keep? A blanket maybe? I don't know. Stuffed animals.

Yeah, you're right.

You're right. That's kind of, that's, I never thought about it that way. That's kind of, yeah, kind of cool. Yeah. We had, we had talked earlier about, you know, becoming sole owner, uh, after all the financial setbacks and all that. What did that period teach you about partnerships and control and things like that?

Yeah. In the very beginning, I had a partner who was my best friend. Mm-hmm. And business was not good. It was awful. And we put our last bit of money in and it, it just wasn't working and, and he wanted out. So I gave him his little bit of investment out and I was going in extreme debt. And just to touch on that though. So, so he left. We're still friends today.

I was going to ask you that. Does he, does he regret it that he didn't stick or?

I don't think so. I mean, it was different. I mean, there's been, this business is very interesting. We're not one of the big boys, like Hasbro or Mattel. So it's very challenging to get products on the shelf. We're competing with billion, multi-billion dollar companies for a limited amount of shelf space. So I mean, I don't know if he regrets it. I mean, I'm just glad that we're, we're still friends, to be honest. But so I'll just go into a short story, Bill, because I think it'd be great. I think it's important because I learned so much from this guy. I don't even know where he is now, but he was He was an executive at one of the media outlets that we used, one of the largest in the United States. And I worked with one of his reps and we had, I had taken all my money and hired the celebrity from that show and said, I want your celebrity to read it. I gave the celebrity the money personally. I put the rest of my money down and I said, okay, I'm putting all my money here. Everything's on, on black. We're going all in and every penny. So celebrities sell product. So the day before it's going to start, my rep, who was a sweet gal, calls up and she says, Dave, I have some bad news. I said, what, what, what's up? What's going on? She goes, you have a competitor that came in and just gave that celebrity newscaster 10 times more than you did. And I said, well, would it matter? I've already shaken his hand. We had a deal. She's like, my boss wants to meet with you. So I'm like, so I am fuming. I'm a hockey player. I am still, I'm very young. I'm on fire. So I'm like, Megan, well, I can be there in 30 minutes. So she said, okay, come in. So we met with general manager and for some reason I let him go first. I didn't yell. I didn't scream. I just said, okay, what, what do you want to tell me? And he said, David, you're going to learn a very valuable lesson. He asked me how old I was. I was 23. And it, and he said, you're going to learn a very valuable lesson today. He goes, you're going to find out that you cannot control other people's ethics, but you can control your own. So I said, okay, good lesson, sir. What does that mean for me? And he said, you're going to go home. You're going to go back to your office and you're going to tell me how many orders you would have gotten with my celebrity endorser. And I'm going to commit to you right now that I'm going to run advertising until you get that number of orders. If it takes me a month, If it takes me a year, if it takes me 2, I don't care. So long story short, my rep recorded the commercial for this radio station and that advertisement ran for almost 2 years. So for a $15,000 investment, we got over $1.5 million worth of airtime and he made good. Like he truly cared that his guy was very dishonest and, you know, just very unethical. And I don't say his name 'cause he's still on the air right now and I don't wanna, I don't wanna, but, but he learned, I, I learned a lot that truly you can turn lemons into lemonade if you're open to it and willing to listen. 'Cause I was gonna go in there guns a-blazing and I'd said 5 words the whole time. So I learned a very important lesson. And to be honest, if that didn't happen, I probably wouldn't be in business today. 'Cause I don't know if he would've fulfilled all, if he would've got all the orders and it would've been a 2-week run. Instead, I had people asking me, they go, aren't you Beverly Hills Teddy Bear? They're like, why do I hear you on the radio every single day? They go, is your company that big? I said, no. And so truly, you know, God works in mysterious ways, whatever your beliefs are. But I think that was the, probably the biggest blessing in the early stages of the company. So, so we'd get orders.

That's really impressive.

Every day because of his faithfulness to his integrity because he did, he, it was, he ran it. He was the big boss and he said, I'm going to make good no matter what. So learned a lot that day, learned a lot about reputation. And yeah, he, he's impacted my business more than he could probably ever know.

That's an amazing story. I thank you for sharing that with us. You know, one of the, I don't know if this was during the same time or not, but Babe the movie was a big, big deal for you. Right. And it was the, the, the merchandise became an early breakthrough on that. Was that brilliant strategy? Good luck, timing, a little bit of all of it. Like, like, tell us how that came about.

I, one of my favorite books I ever read was Life Is a Contact Sport. And I think it's an older book, but it talks about the story of Lionel Richie. Mm-hmm. And how his, his manager created his legacy. And he had some other celebrities too, but it truly is making the relationship. So my, a company that I worked for, I did an internship with the, the VP there. Said, hey David, this Babe the Pig came out. The company we were at doesn't wanna do it and none of the majors wanna do it. Do you want a shot at it? He knew I was dabbling in, in this business. And I said, yeah, of course I do. And I had no idea what I was doing about manufacturing. I knew all the other aspects cuz I worked in the, uh, I worked in sales, I worked, but I didn't know anything about manufacturing. But I had a friend who ironically, he was a hockey buddy and he, I called him. I said, hey, what, can we deliver this in 90 days? He called his factory. Flew to Asia, had multiple factories making it, and we went from selling a couple hundred pieces to a couple hundred thousand pieces over 30 or 40 countries in a very short amount of time. And this is just me in my apartment.

So, you know, the ability to ramp that thing up is amazing. That, I mean, I don't think people understand how challenging, and you doing it by yourself and you were what, 23, 24, 25 at this time?

Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Doing business globally, selling stuffed pigs for God's sakes. And, uh, and doing 200,000 units.

Yeah, it was.

What was the key?

You know what the key is really? Saying yes. Always say yes till the, till there's no way you can do it. And that's one of the, and I, I say this humbly because I get it from my dad. My dad went bankrupt when I was very young. He had to work over 100 hours a week just to support us because he still wanted us to play hockey and still want us to do things. And My dad never said no, and it can be a bad thing, but it, for me, it taught me just figure out a way, figure out a way to get it done when everyone else says no.

Mm-hmm.

Because, and especially when you're a smaller company and you're just starting, find a way. So, you know, in the beginning I'd go to Asia 8, 10 times a year. Sometimes, sometimes maybe only sleep one night in Asia and fly back the next day. Because running sales and, and back then, uh, Blockbuster Video, which maybe some of your listeners won't know who it is, but it was one of the biggest retailers in the world and they were a big partner and they always wanted the trend and always wanted the movie and you had to be fast. So I learned a lot through those experiences too. Well, they, they had a chance to buy Netflix, right? For some minuscule amount of money, right? Yeah.

You gotta keep up with the time. I, your story, It's really all about saying yes and keeping up with the times. At what moment did you know you had a real company, not merely just an entrepreneurial experiment anymore, some 23-year-old playing hockey and selling pigs? So when'd you know?

I think probably 3 years in, 4 years in, I thought, what's the worst at this point, right? I mean, because I was very in debt in the beginning and Had enough experience, had the makers, and we were really aggressive. I'd hire interns to just call basically phone books of customers and say, hey, do you need any plush stuffed animals made? And we found some enormous business in that, in those times. So now we get the AI, you know, bulk emails in our LinkedIn boxes or our email boxes. We did that via phone and we called hundreds of people a day. And if a guy got 1 or 2 leads a day, it was worth it. We have a, we had a college here and we would just hire these guys. I had a guy overseeing them. And so I think that's when we really knew that, you know, we had some orders in the pipeline. We had some steady business and that we kind of could figure it out. And, you know, look at, I'm not that smart. So I'm living proof that there's a creator that, hey, if you, if you work hard, I think there's, I think there's biblical principles too about You know, the Bible talks about being an ant, right? Ants work really hard. They prepare for winter. And my, it's funny because my grandfather always said, don't be a grasshopper because grasshoppers just hop around and they're just, oh, it's all great. It's summer, summer, winter, they're dead. And I never really understood it till I understood the biblical principles of what being an ant means and how hard they work.

So a lot of truth into that. Your grandfather was a wise man across so many proprietary brands. You've cut a lot of deals with, with major labels. Custom products, licensing, real retail, e-commerce. Which part of your business creates the disproportionate value? Where are you really winning at?

So the fortunate part is that we've, we've kind of have 3 or 4 divisions that we split it up in. And we hope that one of them is doing exceptionally well. You know, and they kind of rotate through the years, but retail is really where we're probably, it's the disproportionate part of our business. We're, we're trying to grow the dot-com and the direct-to-consumer, which is growing. It's probably the Probably the fastest growing part of our company. Mm-hmm. But truly the retail partners we have around the world, some of the biggest, and just continuing those relationships to go deeper, to work with, you know, sometimes you work with a toy buyer, sometimes you work with a seasonal buyer building. I think, uh, I think one of the best sayings I've heard is it's 6 times harder to get a new customer than it is to keep an old.

Mm-hmm.

And I, I really like that. We really like to build our relationships deep. And we do it even with our makers. We have a, we have a lot of makers that we're 15 or 20 years plus. I know the owners, they've been at my wedding, whatever it might be, right? Where we just have those deep relationships. I have one of them I call uncle, right? I've known him for almost 30 years and he's truly helped me whether we're doing business or not.

So those relationships make the difference during, you know, stressful times, knowing the people, having a relationship. You don't get that overnight. You know, that's one of the challenges. People, I wanna come in, I wanna do it right away. If you're gonna build a great company, you can't do it in the last 90 days. It takes 10 years before that of setting it up, doing the right, right thing. Toy companies, especially along with many others, can accumulate thousands of SKUs. How do you distinguish between, you know, the productive variety, the ones you're gonna win with, from the ones that are quietly destroying your profits?

Yeah. Well, I love your number right behind you, right? Pareto's principle, 80/20, right? There you go. Yeah. It's for our business, it's probably closer to 90/10 on the retail aspect of it. So we really try and focus, but also there is in our business, there's an evergreen factor and a trend factor.

Mm-hmm.

So we have to have the right mix of SKUs that are evergreen that hopefully can sell now or in 50 years because everyone's gonna want a stuffed bunny. But then there's some trend items that Might only be around for 2 years. So there has to be a good mix. And yeah, SKUs, we're, we're product junkies here. So SKU count is difficult for us, difficult for any company within the consumer products business that has unlimited amount of things you can do, right? There's, Mm-hmm. There's unlimited amounts of stuffed animals you can do. You can make stuffed animal bears, cherries, monsters, you name it, you could do stuffed animals. So It definitely is. There is some self-control within it.

I believe that. Yeah. What's the process, you know, for actually killing the products that aren't working? How do you get out of it? How do you deal with that? You got everything from your working capital stuck in it. You got your inventory, everything. You're globally sourcing. That means there's going to be 16 weeks of stuff on the water coming at you. How do you kill them? What do you do when you get it wrong? What do you do when you get it right?

Yeah. I mean, we, well, let's go about, I always like to start with good first.

Yes.

When we get it right, we try to chase really hard, right? So we try to make sure we have product in the pipeline. We can fill the retailer demand. Marketing is a big part of our business now with the social channels. So when it's going right, we try to really, you know, I hate to say, you know, like a shark smells blood in the water. We just try to really blow it out. And when it's going bad, we just really just try to turn off the lights and We have some coming in. We work with a lot of ministries. So hopefully if it's 1 or 2 orders, we can just donate to them. If not, then we'll slowly liquidate. We don't, to be honest, it's, we haven't liquidated a lot of product lately, which a lot of consumer products do. We really try to work with our ministries when we have things left over. And a lot of times we still have, we have a, we have a line that I think died 5 years ago at retail, but it's still working online. So There are certain things that only work in certain places, which no one can explain, right? Because you would think retail or online would be the same. And actually online is harder to see a stuffed animal. But so, yeah, but we, we try to, we try to, we try to turn the lights off quickly, if that makes sense.

Makes sense. Now, you, you mentioned before, you, you got, you know, e-commerce and, and, and then, you know, kind of bricks and mortar stores. And, and you said that the bricks and mortars are driving more of your sales into e-commerce. Did I, did I hear that right? Correct. Correct. Now, why is that?

I think, you know, I was brought up in this business and stuffed animals to me, I've always been taught that it's been really an impulse buy. Like your daughter probably didn't go to the store, probably, and say, I want a blue teddy bear with a pink bow. And she was walking by and all of a sudden she saw a beautiful axolotl and she said, daddy, daddy, I want this. And it's more of that impulse. I'm just gonna buy it on the spot as opposed to an advertised Lego set that you're going in, you're going to get the next Star Wars release. So that's, that's, I think why brick and mortar do well, but I will say dot-com is growing and it's very important that you continue to grow those channels.

This is interesting. Yeah, I think, you know, stuffed animals and puppies, once the child gets their hands on 'em, they're not letting it go, you know?

No. I think one other important thing to touch on is being a small company, you have to find what is your niche? What is, what are you bringing That is the proposition to the customer, but also to your retail partners if you're trying to sell a retailer. And for us, it's always doing something a little better. Mm-hmm. So we have a brand called World's Softest, and the second moment of truth is when, after the customer reads the tag, picks up the animal, it better be the world's softest or they're gonna put it down. And it's the same on, if it's on Amazon or any other online channel, when they buy it, The review better be great or not a lot of people are going to buy it. So I think it's important for like anyone can go out and sell stuffed animals, cars, whatever it is, be different, you know, do be, be different in the business and, um, you only have one reputation. So that's very critical too, but sorry, go ahead, Bill.

No, I didn't say that. It was, uh, but you did make me think of a question. The, when you look, you know, with being different and you're nichey, do you find your main customers being Nichy stores or the big box retailers? Like where, where do you find you really win and, and have a competitive advantage?

We have a really wide range of partners. Mm-hmm. I'll call them from the biggest to one store chains. And if you work with them and get them product at a reasonable price, a great quality and product that sells, it works. So, you know, not everyone has to sell the Targets of the world. There are other smaller chains, 10, 20 stores, 50 stores that if you want to go deep with them, you can. And we have a handful of those that are some of the most fun because you can get creative. You can create merchandising displays. You can do things that really let your creativity out, which at the end of the day, that's my favorite part of the company is creating, is making great product and finding that next new thing.

Interesting. So you're really describing a broad base of customers rather than one giant Mount Fuji or a monument customer. I'm sure, like you say, you have both, but it's really around that. How do you balance that power diversification against the power of concentrating on, you know, your best customer? How do you deal with that? How do you make sure you're able to handle it?

I think scaling is really important. So we have a business and I'll pick on Carrie. She, she's been my, my director of custom plush for 15. She's been with me for 15 years and she runs that area. And we talk about it all the time because it, it's a well-oiled machine. She does hundreds of custom projects a year that she, that goes through her and her little team. And I would say her success rate is 99.5%. There's always some customer that's not going to be satisfied, right? It might even be higher than 99.5, because it's, if we have one bad order a year or one every 2 years, that's a lot for us. And I think it's the scaling though, and hiring the right people, which it took me a long time to learn, but there's a reason the Chicago Bulls were great in the day. There's a reason that Florida Panthers were great, whatever sports fan you, you bring in the right pieces of the puzzle and they have to be superstar. Not everyone could be Michael Jordan. If everyone was Michael Jordan, It, but you need the, you know, you need the, the balance of operations and sales.

That's right.

And you just need to have that everyone having the same mentality that we're going to figure it out, how to get it done and how not to leave someone out. Right. How to, how to make every partner feel like they're important, which they are. We're in a business that's hyper, we're in a world that's hypercompetitive. Anyone can search online. You know, and find 50 companies do what I do. But it's that, and you talked about it earlier, it's about building that reputation. I mean, our resume is amazing and I wish I could take the credit for it. I've had an amazing team, right? We have amazing designers or, or artists and sales and, but we all have the same goal is working together. So, yeah.

No, that makes sense. But, you know, being the founder of the business and, uh, you, you still create Such a unique value. You're able to put your finger on things, cut through it with it. Where, where have you learned that your involvement actually goes the opposite, becomes a bottleneck? Where, where, where do, where are you starting to hold people back now that you have such a strong team?

In the early on, and even I would say up to maybe 5, 7 years ago, I was in every intricate piece of the business and trying to help, help. them do their jobs when, when I hired them. They're, they're better at things than I am. They're smarter at things than I am. Why am I trying to muck things up? So I think really, I, it's now when I, when I bring a new team member on, which we've had people here over 20 years, we've had a, we've had really great loyalty. We're a different place to work too. We're very family oriented. I have 6 kids, so I'm very empathetic when there's a child issue. or a family issue. But, um, and our whole fam— our whole company's like that, but truly let it— I, I tell them, I say, if I'm not talking to you, it's probably pretty good. That means you're doing an amazing job.

Uh-huh.

And if you see me next to you all the time, there's probably, we probably got to work some things out, but it's true. I think, you know, let, let your superstars do what they do best and really create a, we create an atmosphere of It's kind of your own business. Sales guys run their teams. You run your, your, your partners and, um, really a lot of autonomy. And some people don't agree with that. I think it's great because, um, I know, and I, I, we have interns all, you know, on a pretty regular basis. And the one thing I tell them, I say, if you come here and you do well and you're here a year, I will guarantee you'll get a great job somewhere and it'll be super easy because, um, we're small and you have to learn so many aspects of the business. Mm-hmm. And you learn things Because I want, I want them teaching me, especially if I bring out, I just hired a marketing intern. I want him teaching me what's the best in practice, what's the best posts on social media, et cetera. So I'm pretty hands-off. I'm not an overbearing quote unquote boss.

That makes a lot of sense. You know, the culture you've created really speaks volumes just to longevity. You're reflecting back, you know, when revenue fell more than 80% during COVID what was the hardest decision That you had to deal, and yet you still were able to maintain this culture. You got, you mentioned people have been here over 20 years, right? So how, how'd you do it?

You know, it was really difficult. I, the worst part of being a boss is hurting families. I don't care what anyone says, like I can lose money, I can do, but when you have to hurt families, that is the worst. So originally we, everybody across the board, like I eliminated my salary, but everybody across the board and my president eliminated his salary. And We cut, we cut pay a certain percentage. And then we had some people, you know, it was like the right time for them to leave and just worked out. I mean, no one could have ever predicted COVID. And we were, before COVID we were flying high. I mean, we were on fire and COVID hit. We had, we never prepared for that rainy day. Uh, and more in our distribution side, one of my key distributors flipped and went and did PPE products. Unbeknownst to me. So I, so that business went to zero. International shutdown, which is a third of our business, went to zero because COVID hit, you know, and in America it was very patchy. You know, Florida didn't have COVID, California did. So how do you, how do you manage that? And retailers were just very careful. And there was a reason that Target had containers in their parking lot because they were so over-inventoried. Walmart, everyone was so over-inventoried. So I think your question was, how do you handle it? It very painfully, very painfully. But it, it, what was great is that the people who made it through and remember that, you kind of, it's kind of like a family going through an awful time together where we were all, I mean, the company was struggling, but the people who were loyal and stayed, I think it, It means something to me and to them that it is more than just a company and it is that family. And they know that, I hope they know that we care about their families. So, but how do we navigate it? Very carefully cut costs. We had to sell 2 buildings that we were in. We just really tightened the belt, kept our customers going that we were going with and held on for dear life, literally held on for dear life.

So you, you talk a lot about faith and integrity, uh, things. I know you're, you're, you, you, you, you are someone who, who believes deeply. How, how do you bring that into the company, uh, and make it better without, uh, you know, 'cause not everyone believes the same way. How do you handle that? How do you, how do you, how does that make you and your organization strong?

I think, I think there's a lot of benefits for even people who don't have faith to work at a faith company because we have We answer to a higher power, right? And I think most people respect it. We're open with it. We hand out an ethics dictionary before we hire anyone. And we're very clear. The principles are all biblical, but it's, we never, we never force anyone to come to faith where, you know, we've prayed almost every week as a company for 25 years, but some people in the company might not even know that. Because they've never asked. They've never, and it's fine. It, to me, it's totally fine. I have great friends of all religions or no religion, and we're, we're all made in God's image and that's how we should be treating each other. And, but, but I do think, I think whether you're of faith or not, I think it is, it's, it's the principles that everyone wants to live by. Everyone wants to treat their family great. Everyone wants to have the freedom if, if their kid is sick, Or if this, and we're, we're pretty flexible. And on the flip side, we're also very intense. There's times where I had a gal, she has a newborn baby. She worked till midnight the other night. And I'm so grateful for that because her nanny was sick. And so she had the baby all day and then had to work till midnight to get ready for a show. But I think that kind of mutual partnership with your team members, I think is really important. And I had— The company I worked for when I was very young, I talk about, I had mentors, but I had anti-mentors. There were guys and gals I did not want to be like ever. There's companies I go in. I remember going into Asia and there was a crazy, many crazy factory owners and they would just treat their people so bad. And I just said, that is, I never want to be like that. Right. And it's, I, hopefully it's permeated the whole company culture. And we all treat each other with respect. Not that it doesn't get intense sometimes. Not that we don't go direct, all like right to the point, maybe not in the best of voice, but there's always a mutual respect with everyone.

So, yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah. You've talked before about wanting to build a 100-year company. What has to become true for Beverly Hills Teddy Bear to be able to prosper without David Soha? What, what, what, what, what must happen for that to happen?

Well, definitely have to have a great team and a great succession plan. But honestly, all those lead into, you have to have legacy products. I met a lady from South Africa and I was on a call with her and she just struck me because we were working on a deal for us to make some toys for her organization, which was very large. And she said, I just don't want landfill. I want toys that can be handed down from generation to generation when the name sticks. And wow, they see Beverly Hills Teddy Bear, they're like, I know that's good. I know that's what we're all aspiring to be, right? Because there's plenty of companies, you know, and we tell our partners, if you want the cheapest, you should probably go somewhere else. If you want quality and things that are gonna last and you come to us and we're not perfect, we make mistakes. There's, everybody makes mistakes, but we try to do our best and try to make the best product we can. At all times. So, you know, that's really profound.

So if someone buys one of your toys 50 years from now, what do you hope remains unchanged?

I hope they just see something different and that it's still a family company that, you know, we're, we're in a business of big corporations and big companies and a lot of conglomerates. I hope, I hope, I think, I hope we're not. I hope we are just a family business that in 50 years we'd be 80-some years old, which would be great. I hope. And if we can make it to 100, even better. But I think kids are always going to want to play, are always going to want to have some nurturing, especially the more digital we get. I think there'll be the great divide. I think kids are going to go very techie or very simple. And we cover the very simple nurturing, loving aspect for the most part. And We just hopefully do it better. And I shouldn't say better. There's a lot of great companies in my, in our business. There's a lot of bad companies that just put out junk, but there are some great companies and hopefully we can find our place next to them with them. And we're all, I mean, most of them, we're, we're pretty friendly competitors to most. We're friends with a lot of them.

This has been an outstanding conversation. I've learned so much. Is there anything you'd like to tell us you got coming up that you'd like everyone to know about? I'd love to Love to maybe finish on that if we could.

Yeah, no, we're, uh, we moved into our new showroom in Los Angeles and, uh, the toy business has kind of centered in Los Angeles, which has been a blessing for our family. So, and yeah, we're, we're really looking forward to a lot of the new things and I'm just really grateful for my family and for my team because they are like family. And yeah, if I were looking forward to anything, just growing together with them and my family is is amazing. So thank you. Thanks, Bill.

What a great way to finish. David, thank you so much for your time today. This has been wonderful. We look forward to having you back on the show soon.

Sounds good. You've been listening to The 1,000 Day CEO with Bill Canady. Follow the show for more decisive leadership, sustainable growth, and strategies that build enduring businesses. Until next time, make every day count.