The One With PopSmith: Building a Premium Consumer Brand Without Sacrificing Profitability

Hey everyone, welcome back to Supply Chain Moves. Today's guest is someone I've been wanting to get this in the show for a while. David Stickland has spent over 20 years in the trenches of operations, retail, e-commerce, supply chain logistics, and merchandising. Not the theory side, but the actual make sure the product is on the shelf and the numbers work side. He's a retail expert by trade, but what I love about Dave is that what he calls himself by choice, a taste maker for the everyday person. His whole mission is helping CPG entrepreneurs and organizations get more efficient and more successful in how they actually run their operations. And he's built his career around working with companies and suppliers who have real stories to tell. So if you're a founder who's ever wondered what retail buyers and operators are actually thinking when they look at your brand, this conversation will help you. So Dave, welcome to the show.

Before—

Thank you so much for having me. Very, very, um, it's, it's morning in your place, nighttime in the Philippines. Before we get into any, um, stories and supply chain questions or pain, I have to start with the obvious question. You've already done popcorn with Franklin's. You knew this category. Why build a whole machine and why put it on Kickstarter instead of just quietly putting up for sale?

Yeah, you know, when we started Popsmith, we started with a lot of knowledge about the space. You know, my co-founder and partner, Tal, had been slinging popcorn since he— and popcorn products since he was like 20 years old. So when we started working together, There was just this deep love of the space. We had a product that we had been white labeling and we knew it could be a lot better. We knew there was a lot of space, especially upmarket. And both of us had a love for like the upmarket Williams-Sonoma, Crate Barrel, Staub pots, La Crusée, the nice things to have in your kitchen. That's the things my parents had, my grandparents had, the things that felt really good. And we knew there was a real space for a product like that in this market. And popcorn itself was such a dusty category. If you looked at like popped popcorn or bagged chips, everyone was fighting in CPG to be in that space and make products. And we saw a real opportunity to say no one is really innovating on the actual popping popcorn at home side, which is around the time we launched after COVID, everyone had gotten really used to being back at home, making popcorn at home again. And we saw— or being in the kitchen again, making food, making bread. It was like, this is a real opportunity to make quality product at home and deliver a story. No one had talked about popcorn since Orville Redenbacher, since I was a kid. There used to be an old man in a bow tie would be on these commercials talking about how his popcorn was different. And this is our chance to talk about how our popcorn is different. The best way to do that is to come out with an innovative way to make the popcorn. And that's why we started with the Popper and not just the popcorn. And we decided to Kickstart the Popper because Kickstarting it allowed people to get behind the story. We got to tell that story. We got to show off the product. We got to kind of, give people an exciting visual of what this could be like. We got to compare it to the other products in the space, and once people saw that, it got them excited. They wanted one, and that really allowed us to have the cash to finish building the product. Making Popsmith was not cheap and took a long time, much longer than we ever thought. So between the Kickstarter and a little friends and family money that we raised in the very beginning, You know, we needed all of that cash up front before we could even get to the first 500 units.

Mm-hmm. Okay, so that challenge that you've shared, Dave, is it a part of designing and hiring, you know, industrial designer for the new look of the product?

Yeah, we had never hired an industrial designer before. We'd never even done that, worked with an industrial designer before. And what an experience to take a product that existed and say, we want to make something like this, but we're not sure what this should look like. So they came up with several designs, and the real key to working with, uh, any, a industrial designer or any creative that we found through the whole experience was make 2 designs you think I want, and then on that 3rd design, make a design that is crazy and kind of out there that you love that you don't know if I'll like. And every single time we chose that third design, that when you gave the designer the space to be creative and the space to really think, they surprised us and created something that was unique and special. So the first two designs they designed were the same kind of hand crank as the Whirly Pop. And then the design for our product was the third one, which is What if we spun it on the inside so you'd see it this other way? And it was this novel way of doing it. And it was like, oh my gosh, this is something we can generate IP around. This is something that is easy to clean. And it unlocked all of these value adds simply by giving them the design freedom to break free of what they thought you might want based on what you said in the brief, right, or in the first initial meeting. And it was that way all the way down the line on every level of creative. Once you get done with industrial design, then you have to have engineers figure out how to make the design come to life. And that was the next challenge, which was going back and forth between the designer and the engineers who fabricate the design, saying, actually, this design you created looks nice, but doesn't actually work. And I need you to change the design to fit what you're actually trying to do, which is pop popcorn. So, you know, adjusting things, you know, even the spinner on the inside, adjusting the spinner degrees to make sure that it picked up every single kernel and didn't smash kernels down when they, when they popped. And like the amount of metal to so that it heated a certain amount of different ways. It was so many engineering questions that I would have never expected. All of that stuff was an absolute learning process for us. We're better for it. And what a journey.

Yeah. From last year that I first saw your product, I've been researching about it. And one thing that stuck in me is the boxing, the packaging experience. How connected is it with the designing of the product? And why that packaging or unboxing experience?

The same people who designed our popper designed the box that the popper goes in. Our design was meant to sit on a shelf in Williams-Sonoma or Crate and Barrel and stop someone who was, you know, maybe not even looking for a popcorn popper. The design was supposed to sit on a shelf and wow you when you walked by and kind of reconnect you to maybe not a specific time in your life, but like connect you to a time when you had a really good time eating popcorn at home, right? Like, oh, that looks fun, was what we designed it to do. We wanted it to look really beautiful and also look kind of fun and playful. And so of course, you want that same experience when a DTC person orders your product. You want that same experience when it shows up at their doorstep. So when they open the door, they pick up the box and they bring it in the house. That moment is just as exciting as using the product. And in an age of social media, it's just as Instagrammable, right? Like, I wanted someone to be able to take a picture and Instagram it and be excited that they would capture it with their phone, that they would share this moment of opening that box, seeing everything beautifully laid out, and say, this is going to be fun. Every part of that makes them want to get out and make popcorn as soon as possible, right? Like, there's an intentionality to all of that.

And did you have a connected challenge in terms of cost for making sure that design and packaging really look good as what you've planned it to be?

Absolutely. And I think that's where we are now, right? So when we launched the brand, I think after many, many years in DTC, both of us were so excited to not compromise on quality and not compromise on making the best thing that we achieved the best thing. And after a few years on the market, we recognized that the best thing does not always translate into margins on the P&L. And so in order to go find more profit, it became a conversation of where can we make, uh, changes and adjust off of what is very best to become very good. And a good example is that box. So if we shave an inch and a half off that box, if we take a little bit of materiality out of that box, we can save the business $5, $6 per unit, which is significant when you think about the margin at the end of the day on COGS. Every little bit I can cut out of that box means more on a pallet. Yeah. Means more pallets in a container. It means less space to rent at my 3PL. It means less cost in the shipping when it gets to the customer. I save money at every single one of those steps. So we start with great, and then we get to the best for what we are trying to do. And, uh, and that's where we are now. So I think that, like, I wish I knew what I knew now. And what I would tell people, what I've learned in this, is think about the unit economics of the end of the P&L as early as possible and make, and make practicality battle with the dream a little earlier in the process. And I think, uh, I think we, we built something on a dream, and now it is— we are, we are building something a little more practical.

Yeah.

Um, around the product. The, the wonderful thing is, is without building that dream, we don't get into retail as quickly as we did, right? Like, the dream is what sells into retail, that wows the buyer and all of that. So Don't give up on the dream. Don't be too practical, but you gotta have, but you gotta save every dime you can on COGS.

I think that's a very good way of thinking it because if you have analysis paralysis in everything from the beginning, then you can't launch fast enough. And in e-commerce, in retail, you know, speed is the name of the game as well. So, um, launch it now and continuously build the savings later on. You've mentioned so many projects. That's something that e-commerce is not yet really diving deeper at this point. You know, I'm glad that you're doing it, but just the packaging, you know, a simple negotiation with, um, with your vendors, um, and, you know, a simple $1 savings for every piece is gonna be a lot if it's like selling like 10,000 pieces. So never underestimate the power of small savings because when they're added together, it's a huge help in the COGS. And then—

Yes, and I agree with you, but if that small savings is stopping you from going to market, get the small savings later.

Yeah.

So a lot of what we are doing now is a result of our success of selling. Sometimes you have to sell inefficiently to prove that you can sell, to stand out with your manufacturing partner, to make yourself a name to say, OK, now let's negotiate how we're going to do the box. Let's talk now about how we're going to do this. You have to get in the cycle of selling to be able to sometimes see where the savings are. You cannot predict every opportunity that's going to come later from the very beginning. So if there is a part that is stopping you from going to market, just go to market. Like, you know, you can cut different amounts of money somewhere else and then come back and get efficiency later.

I like how you've shared that, Dave, because usually the operations mind, they want to be efficient in the beginning. That's why, you know, marketing and new product development or ops are having friction whenever there's new product development meeting because, you know, sometimes the operations or the developer or the designer would want to perfect everything first before launching, but you have the operations mindset, but at the same time, you understood that it has to come out and we continuously improve later on. Is that, um, something that you've been doing for, for these kinds of products? And how did you learn that?

I think we learned that because we didn't raise a bunch of venture capital dollars. Uh, while we raised a small amount of money in a friends and family round and we kickstarted the product, we have never fully capitalized the business in a way that created the safety. Yeah. Uh, and so you need to start selling as soon as possible, and you cannot afford to sit around. So you need to get sales in the door. Uh, so the pressure to sell is always going to be the winner, uh, in those situations. Even when we launched the product, we launched with the designs for Popsmith 1.5, Popsmith 1.0, like 2.0. I know what I would change tomorrow if you gave me $200,000 and access to engineering again. I know exactly what what the product would look like, how it would be different, changes I would make to make it better. I— it is very hard to read customers call me out on the things I know were wrong about the popper, uh, but at the same time, there's a, you know, 100 other comments saying that it's a wonderful product that everyone loves to use on a Friday night and they love it. And you cannot let small problems with imperfection stop you from putting a product in the market that, you know, people are really going to enjoy. And, uh, and that has been part of the beauty of having a partner in working with this, you know, not being a solopreneur, is having a partner that there are things that I get stuck on that are very important to me, and I'm like, no, no, no, this must be fixed. Um, and then Tal is very No, we have to go to market. And there are things that he gets stuck on and says, no, no, this must be fixed. And I'm like, no, no, no, we have to go to market, you know. And, uh, and I think for both of us, we both end up compromising exactly what we'd like because— and, and then promising ourselves we'll come back and fix it later. But you have to prove that it's going to work first. Like, at the end of the day, that's a problem we'll fix when we get to $20 million. That's a problem we'll fix when we get to $30 million. But like, Let's go sell. Let's go sell. Yeah.

And then from that industrial design, packaging, how quick is it to manufacturing and actually delivering the product to the customers?

It's never quick enough. So I think what I wasn't expecting is you take the design, engineering has cleared it, industrial design has cleared it, and you go to the factory and now there's a whole nother level of Now that we're done tooling and we're making the product, now it has to go back to engineering a few times. So now the relationship between industrial design and engineering is a relationship, and then the relationship between the, the factory and engineering is a relationship because not every tool makes everything that engineering thought would be made. Sometimes there has to be custom tools made or custom pieces that a factory may not make that your engineer came up with as a solution. They're, you know, so your supply chain before it hits the factory gets more complicated. Maybe your factory doesn't make a piece and they have to, like for us, like there's a stainless steel piece on the inside of the product that's not fabricated at my factory. It's made by another factory and then brought to my factory. So, how much of that complication do you want? And that's a conversation that happens once you get to the factory. So, and then you get samples. And for us, I think one of the biggest things was learning how paint worked. You know, it wasn't a conversation in industrial design to engineering. You don't talk about color on the outside. You're talking about function. And it wasn't until you got to the factory that it was like, oh, well, now we have to paint this and we have to make it a color that's going to hold up to heat. On the stovetop and what is heat going to do. And then working with the factory, like, okay, what kind of paint is going to work for the outside of this? And then working with them on a painting process. And we were really lucky to work with a very seasoned NPI, which is a new product introductory group, who has relationships with all kinds of factories on the ground. So, when we were coming to them with our specs in hand and saying, this is what we want to make, finding the right factory partner that could look at that and say, I'm anticipating these problems. Through your MPI, we can work through that. So to have an intermediary who can anticipate those problems, help solve those problems, I don't think we would have lasted without that MPI in the middle. So I think if we had had a direct relationship with the factory in the beginning, it would have been an absolute disaster. So that's where having a good MPI shepherding it from engineering all the way to the end has been incredibly helpful to us.

That's very good to hear because, you know, some brands think that working directly with the manufacturer is the answer to everything, and it doesn't. You know, sometimes if the product is simple enough that you are like just changing something from the existing, then probably that's a good solution. But a complicated industrial design like yours, you know, leave it to the experts is what I feel when you made sure that the NPI and the manufacturer are really working together. So also, so you and Tal can focus on what's really needed from you in the business.

We needed someone who could advocate for what PopSmith was supposed to be on the ground with our manufacturer. So, when you think about what, uh, like, QA looks like on the ground with a factory, if a factory has never made a specific kind of product, maybe they've made cookware before, but they've never made a stovetop popcorn machine that, you know, functions the way yours functions. Having an MPI who understands your product, has used it before, like it has used other popcorn machines, understands how this is supposed to work on the ground, you know, going through figuring out what QA needs to look like for your product, coming up with that, negotiating that with the factory, and developing a process for your product. Because it's never existed before, so helpful, right? Like, if I think if I had been ordering something the factory had been making for a long time and I had made some small changes to, or I had maybe come up with a specific design or a specific housing that they could easily get, all of those things are very easy to negotiate with the factory. But when we are doing something that stretches the bounds of what the factory has done before, where it's a new process for all of that, having someone else on the ground when Tal and I do not have the time to spend on the ground with our factory, and certainly don't have the resources or knowledge to do that, is incredibly helpful. So having an intermediary was really key to that success. And when you look at our defect rate or the problem rate with our products going forward, I— credit so much of that to the hard work of our MPI.

Nice. And is that part of their service that they provide, not only with the sampling but also the first production, at least the quality checking?

Yeah, so, you know, sampling, they have their own engineers on staff. So, you know, like when there was a problem with how things were fabricating, that we're handling some things internally. It was a nice off-ramp from the dream to the reality and then making sure what was delivered to us was the quality that we expected and taking responsibility to getting that to us. So just really bringing the entire experience to the end user.

But in terms of negotiating minimum order quantity, scheduling, lead time, pricing, is that you who was, uh, directly communicating with the vendor?

Yeah, so, you know, the, the secret for us when we're in hyper growth mode when it comes to reordering, for the first year we definitely, uh, ordered too much. I, you know, like when you are dealing with, uh, relatively high MOQs on a product that's, custom to you, you have to take on a lot of inventory in the beginning, which is a real reason the Kickstarter was so important, is you have to pay for that inventory up front. So, you know, so having probably— it took us probably 6 to 9 months of data to really start to get an idea of what a 90 or 120-day cycle looked like. Especially when you start thinking about how long product-market fit takes on the marketing side. The sputtering start of a brand means that you are holding product for a lot longer than feels comfortable. Uh, we were paying rent on way too much product for way too long. And then by year 2, when we were lucky enough to become one of Oprah's favorite things, and our, uh, cost to acquire a customer went from like over $100 to like $10 because everyone wanted to buy this thing because Oprah said this is the greatest popcorn machine that ever existed. I suddenly sold out of everything, and I had no way of figuring out a model based on Oprah. Like, Oprah sold out— sold me out of everything. And then, well, now that's— there's no model now. So what does that mean going forward? And we had to, you know, it took us another 6 months to rebuild the model. I would say we're almost through our third year. We are doing an excellent job of staying somewhere between 60 and 90 days worth of inventory. And we're doing that by trying to control our MOQs and stay in a continuous loop of having product on its way to us and then doing everything we can to keep selling what we have. So speed of selling plus speed of just a constant churn of things coming in the door is how we are trying to attack our scaling right now. And right now we're scaling, we're 150% up year over year. We're seeing our best year ever. I don't know where the ceiling of this is. My supply chain manager just, you know, has to hold on for dear life every single day and hope, you know, and I make her life as hard as possible. And so far we're doing an excellent job, but even today it's just, you know, best guess, 60 to 90, let's keep trying to go. And we've been pretty successful at it.

It's a very, very good challenge for your brand. And since we're talking about money and raising on Kickstarter, you know, what's the— if you can walk us through what was the bet, you know, what was the experience, the challenges, anything that you can share about Kickstarter.

Yeah, so for Kickstarter, Like I said, putting a tangible product up in a space that hadn't seen innovation in 30 or 40 years, really, was an easy sell to the Kickstarter audience and for the people who really loved popcorn, which really made us bullish, especially when we moved away from Kickstarter and we moved to crowdfunding in general. Like when we moved to our first raise in StartEngine and we said, now we're not just gonna sell you a product up front. We're actually going to allow you to invest in our brand. And we raised a significant amount of capital that first year. With, uh, that second year of when we raised a significant amount of capital, the second year of, uh, Postmates existence through StartEngine, it was because people could get behind the story, right? People want to invest in product and money that, you know, and, and a story. They want to invest in something that is exciting and intangible to them. Just like people like to invest in the stock market, people like to have something in their house that they say, I'm a part of this, like, this is something that I'm behind. It's conspicuous consumption, and the cost of entry, it's fairly low for the, for the normal average consumer. So you can buy a product for $200, or you can own a piece of the company for you know, as little as $350 and own a piece of where the brand is going. Get a letter from, uh, from the owner, from both owners. You can, you can be part of the journey. You have the ability to, you know, share your ideas and, uh, and, you know, shape the future of the brand. And I think people love supporting small nascent brands, especially after so many years of big companies kind of dominating in the space. I also think on the CPG side, as we see CPG have success in places like Target, Walmart, other places, I mean, I was just in the grocery store 2 days ago and a woman had a cart full of Poppi and Olipop, and I had to stop and I had to take a picture of it because I was like, there was a time I remember where everyone said no one is going to buy soda over the internet. And here you are buying a cart full of what I remember being a CPG product on the internet. And I'm so proud of being in this space and saying that, like, people have the ability to bring product from the internet into their daily lives and be a part of that journey. And I see, I see people being part of that now, and they're excited about it. And to give, to give a regular person who sees one of our ads on Facebook or give someone the opportunity to be on the Popsmith journey with us is, it's huge for us. And then someday when we've grown Popsmith to where we want it to be, I really look forward to having them all have that success with us. So that's why we do it, right? The best part of doing Kickstarter was being able to get the email after they got the product and they're like, oh my God, you nailed it. Yeah, right. I didn't think you would nail it. The thing about Kickstarter is maybe, you know, 6 out of 10 times you get what you thought you paid for. And I wanted to be the one out of those 6 that was more than you thought you paid for and was above and beyond what you thought you were going to get. It was going to be the quality product you got. And that made all the difference to us, and that made us so bullish about the future of the brand. And at every stage, we've tried to overdeliver on every opportunity we've gotten. And I think that's what's made us successful.

That delivering the promise is the, I think, the gold, you know, part of success. And what, like, Dave, if you have challenges facing that will, you know, jeopardize the quality and, you know, the promise that is set, What is your usual attack on that situation? You know, supply chain has a lot of issues recently, and for sure, it is like making, it's pushing you a little bit more in that side of difficulty, especially the comms part. How do you handle that?

Yeah, so I asked, I got asked by a friend of mine 2 days ago, What is keeping me up at night? Like, what scares me about the growth of Pop Smith?

Mm-hmm.

And my answer was, I have seen a lot of brands get a lot of attention and get a lot of growth and spin out of control and fall apart.

Mm-hmm.

And a lot of that can happen on the supply chain. And, uh, and within the relationship with the factory and the product. And so to us, it has always been, how do we continue to maintain quality? If we have to give up massive growth to deliver excellent product, that's an easy choice for us. We will choose the product and the customer and the experience over a retail channel that, you know, is willing to bring us in that's gonna put us in over our skis. Like, the answer is we can either deliver great or we cannot deliver great. And if we cannot deliver great, we can't do it. So, that is always going to be, Can I have a transparent enough relationship with every part of my supply chain to where the minute we're overtaxing things and we're cutting corners, paint's getting sloppy, the inside of the products are not being— the box isn't great anymore, and we start cutting closer and closer to the bone to feed speed or growth. To me, that will be a point where the wheels are starting to come off, and that would be a point that would start to scare me. And, uh, and that usually it costs way more money than it's worth, right? Like, it speeding up to, to, uh, to feed growth usually is an expensive proposition, and it's much, it's much better for the company to slow down and, and focus on profitability and focus on delivering quality. Which is where, which is where the future is anyway. The idea of these fast-growing hockey stick brands from 5 or 6 years ago, those days are over. What people want now are longevity brands that are profitable. We're going to be profitable within 3 years of our brand's existence, which is kind of unheard of. We're going to be profitable by next year. And part of the reason for that is we have been focused on 2 things, profitability and quality, uh, over growth. And I think, and growth is just happening in spite of that because we're delivering on the other two things.

Yes, I think that's the result of doing the two things. And as we are, we have founders listening right now and some might be looking at crowdfunding or planning a pre-order launch. What should they be planning for that nobody warns them about? The thing you wish someone has said to you before.

Yeah, if you're planning a pre-order launch, what no one warns you about is the amount of marketing that you're going to have to do to get people to sign up. So, you know, Kickstarter, um, is, or, you know, Indiegogo or whatever you decide to use is, is noisy. You need to go find your market and you need to develop a relationship with that market as early as possible. So if you are not already posting content to Instagram or TikTok and you are not establishing yourself as a category expert in what you are going to launch, then you're already behind. So I would encourage anyone who's getting thinking about doing crowdfunding to go out and use the tools you have right now to develop trust with your, your audience. And then after you've started getting an organic content, uh, cadence down and you're out there every day talking about the product, put some money behind that content and push it out as advertising to drive people back to your pages to sign up for information from you, to follow you on social. And that way, when you launch your pre-order opportunity, you already have an audience. Building an audience after you've launched is incredibly expensive. Mm-hmm. Building an audience before you have the launch, just when you are talking about the space you're in, the category you're in, the problem you're trying to solve, is incredibly cheap. Do that work first and then go solve the problem. And the 100 true fans or the 1,000 true fans or the 10,000 true fans you need to launch will be there when you need them. And the amount of stress in your pre-launch will be significantly less.

Thank you for that. And one last question, a little bit, you know, personal. The Popsmith decision you're proudest of, you know, as co-founder, and one thing that you'd do all over again.

I think the thing I'm most proud of is the relationship that I have with my partner. You know, Tal is the longest marriage I've ever had in my life. And what you see in Popsmith is the relationship between two people who really have alignment on wanting to deliver a product to the market that they both believe in, that they both can stand behind, that are willing to put their ego aside and share in what that product ends up looking like. Just like for every brand is the child of the founder, this is our child together. And it culminates both of us so well. I'm really proud that the brand reflects a— just a sense of playfulness and whimsy, but also beauty and aesthetic, clean— cleanliness and high-end. It just— encapsulates both of us and the personalities of the two of us so well. And in every part of the brand is unique and different. We didn't follow a trend. I'm just really happy that we marched to the beat of our own drummer and followed both our hearts to develop something that represented us because it's so much easier to work on something that you personally believe in than it is to just work on something you think customers want.

And Dave, I wanted to say this before we close, and this is the angle of a team member or a supply chain expert. From what I heard from you, I think the best key takeaway is that if I am your supply chain manager, I will not have a hard time following the mission of the company. You know, it is very clear what's important. You know, in supply chain, price and quality is always at the end. So you have to— what is the priority and what can support it? So if quality is number one, how else can we lower down cost because we're not sacrificing in quality? And as a supply chain expert, I feel like if I am working with you, that is going to be clear. And, you know, when things are clear, members or talents are going to have a better result. And, you know, before I started this interview, I came into this conversation expecting an operations guy, 20 years of ops, COO roles, and the whole, you know, experience. And what I got was one of the most entrepreneurial decision-makers I've had on this show. So because, you know, here's what I kept noticing. Every time there was a fork in the road, the safe operational answer and the bold one, you pick the bold one or what's really important with the brand. And building premium hardware instead of, you know, less quality, betting real cash on tooling before Unit 1 existed and holding a quality standard that made your, you know, your, the new product development process harder. But, you know, you didn't mind that. And that's not usual ops playbook. You know, that's a founder conviction executed with an operations discipline. And honestly, that combination is rare. I've interviewed so much, and most founders have the vision and no system. Most operators have the system and won't take the swing. So I think you've got both, and I think that's the real reason Popsmith made it from funded to delivered and why so many, and why its campaigns are very successful.

Well, thank you. I think my time in ops and having been a, chief operating officer and worked on other people's businesses so long, I think it gives me a confidence in systems and processes that allows me in me in situations when we are making decisions about vision to not be afraid of making hard decisions, right? Like, so to do the hard thing requires excellent systems and excellent operations and excellent people and execution. And if you are not confident in, you know, what that process is like or what that pain feels like, if you have not felt that pain before or taken it on, you're going to avoid it. You don't want to do the hard thing. You want to do the easy thing. The easy thing, the fastest thing that's going to get you to market, the choice that the least amount of problems is going to come out of. But if you've been solving problems for 20 years, problems don't scare you anymore.

Yeah.

And you want to do the thing that's going to provide the most amount of value to the brand. So the value is in the hard stuff. So make the hard choices. And, uh, I'm a big believer in always choose the hard path if it's going to lead to a deeper opportunity down the road.

Yeah. And long term. Um, what's the latest with Popsmith and how can the listeners support you or other people can support you?

Well, thank you. Uh, we just launched, uh, our new crowdfunding campaign. Um, we are riding high. So we, we launched a bunch of new consumable products. We have all kinds of new flavors and different kinds of popcorn for you to try on the website. And those have been, uh, adopted so fast. The repeat purchase rate on our consumables is, uh, is astounding. It's beyond what we expected when we launched them, uh, at the beginning of the summer. And that's made us really bullish about the future because we think that we can develop a high repeat purchase rate CPG company on top of our kitchen appliance company and really see excellent growth into 2027, which means we need to do some hiring and we need to do some R&D on some new exciting consumables to go along with this. So we're raising a little capital now. I'm excited to do that. We're doing that through StartEngine, and it is a crowdfunding campaign. So anybody who wants to get involved can, and we would love to have everybody on board. But we're looking forward to the best year of PofMith that we've ever had. We're looking at a record year for us, and we expect Q4 to be the hot, must-have, under-the-tree product for highly giftable gift that everyone's going to want this year. That's what we think PopMyth is going to be.

Definitely. Thank you so much, Dave, and that's it for this episode of Supply Chain Moves. If you know a founder who thinks operations is the boring part of the business, send them this link, not for me, but for them. And I will be sharing with you, sharing with them also the link, Dave. I will share it in the show notes. Thank you. Thank you so much.