Episode 112: The Rowboat Creative Experience

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In true Lucas fashion, he shows up with a full job that's due that night. We've never even— we've never even had one successful t-shirt, and he shows up.

Go big or go home.

Multiple sales guy.

Oh yeah, yeah, exactly. We got to figure this out.

He shows up with the crowd of people too. It's just to watch us like totally fail right in front of them. I was like, oh, this is ideal, right? But set the bar very high. Fast forward, like, until 2 in the morning, we had a run of shirts.

Let me guess, the orders are still happening that way.

Pretty, pretty much still happening that way.

Yeah.

After spending 10 years as touring musicians, Lucas Garriglia and Joe Zangrilli started Rowboat Creative in a basement in Chicago. That basement would eventually grow to over 60,000 square feet of some incredibly creative and progressive work. In addition to being one of the most respected merch agencies for their ingenuity, they are also one of the fastest growing, and they're young, smart, and passionate about this intersection they work at between art and science. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at Common Skew. Mark Graham and I were in Chicago and dropped by to see Joe and Lucas. Housed inside an old industrial building, the old Hammond Organ Company building founded in 1935, We meandered our way through the spacious former factory that now had this gritty street art feel, a hive of creative energy. In one area, they were doing concert set design for a famous rapper. In one hallway, an art exhibit was on display. In one corner, a team was looking at flowcharts on the wall, which we later learned was a value stream mapping meeting. And in the middle, the bulk of their space, a meticulously ordered screen printing, embroidery, and fulfillment area. A very large and intense operation for a couple of guys who just started selling t-shirts to the bands they knew. We sat with Joe and Lucas in their showroom and talked about those early days, how their DIY beginnings still fuel their hands-on experimentation, and how their music experience gave them a relentless passion for the fan's experience, the end user's experience, which led to all types of experiential marketing. Join us as we chat with the guys at Rowboat about how the two of them started a journey full of new discoveries and continue a never-ending beta test through creative merchandise while navigating a fast-growing enterprise. This episode is brought to you by CommsCube. The platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. Begin your free trial now at commonscue.com. And now here's our conversation with Joe and Lucas of Rowboat Creative. So you and Joe started Rowboat Creative in 2006 in a basement. You were full-time touring musicians for almost 10 years and you swerved into the swag business. How did you end up here?

Kind of by accident.

We have two different ways. Oh, let's hear them both merged in together, which is gonna sound like we just made this up. But how did you decide to grab that first kit? Because my story is different, but we— our stories both happened in the same day, which is like totally insane.

The dreamy speedballs Beginning screen printing kit story that hopefully we could get sponsored by Speedball.

You were friends. You were friends.

Yeah, we were friends. I knew Joe when I was— so the band that I was in touring that kind of led us together, I met Joe when I was 15 years old. And my mom was driving me to his after-show parties. It was awesome.

I was like, that's the coolest mom I've ever seen in my life.

So yeah, we met through music that way. Honestly, I think I picked up the screen printing kit just because I was getting annoyed with the fact that I had already had art degrees, or I was not even graduated at that point, but was going to school for different art degrees and came from a very artistic family and have always been kind of the, all right, I can figure this out myself, I can control it all. So I got it for Christmas and then I literally, called Joe and was like, I just got this. I mean, he's always been kind of the tech guy. And we were the leaders in the music projects that we were in. And so it was kind of just like, hey, I need someone else that can go hard at this with me. I think we can figure it out. And lo and behold.

Yeah, he calls me. And I have a completely different story that leads up right to this point. This is like a Tarantino story we're laying out for you. So that's what led him to buy the kit. But mine— My story is I was doing web design for a friend of ours' boyfriend who had this record label. And I'm doing the website for him. And he's like, oh, I got to go. I got shirts drying in the kitchen. And I was like, shirts drying in the kitchen?

That's still how we do it here.

I was like, what do you mean? He's like, oh dude, you just go to eBay and you buy this little press. And I did that. And it's super easy. You do it in your kitchen. I was like, wait a minute, no way. So I went and bought a Speedball screen printing kit, which of course is, we don't use that anymore, but I got the kit and no joke, Lucas calls me and he's like, I got this kit. And I was like, I'm sitting with the same kit in my hands. So we have two different stories that led up to the same thing. I was like, well, let's figure it out. And first thing we figured out was here goes our Speedball. Sponsorship that it was not, it was not a professional grade.

Right. Okay.

It came with a popsicle stick.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It, it, it did come with a popsicle stick. Nice. We now have a pneumatic automated popsicle stick.

A large popsicle stick. Right.

But I mean, from there we, we were like, well, why don't we like this? Well, the press, it, there is no press. It was just like a screen and you had to like lay the screen on a piece of paper or whatever you're gonna do. And we totally tanked on the first tries of that. So we're like, why don't we just go to eBay like the guy I talked to said? And we purchased like a one-color garbage press that was garbage. And then we purchased a multicolor one. And I mean, like, know that we're still like not even like $300 into the game yet. Right.

A fortune at the time.

In true Lucas fashion, He shows up with a full job that's due that night. We've never even had one successful t-shirt. And he shows up with—

Go big or go home, Miller sales guy. Oh yeah, yeah, exactly. We gotta figure this out.

He shows up with the crowd of people too, just to watch us like totally fail right in front of them. I was like, oh, this is ideal.

Right, set the bar very high.

Fast forward, like until 2 in the morning, we had a run of shirts.

Guess the orders are still happening that way.

Pretty much.

Yeah.

So if you back up a half a step, was there— I'm curious about the problem that you guys were trying to solve back in those days. Like, Lucas, had you ordered t-shirts for your band as a 15-year-old from a screen printer and endured like great hardship in getting that order? And did you look at yourself and say, I could do this better myself?

Yeah, that was definitely— I mean, Joe was the one who actually He had merch before any of us did. You know, we were starting to do some really larger scale tour stuff. And so it was time for us to get in the merch game. And I asked him, who are you using for merch? Ironically, it was a guy who his shop was about 2 blocks away from here. He sold us our first auto that we ever had. And it was just, it was always the same thing. We would go there, I would, you know, you would order 50 red hoodies and you would get some that were Fruit of Loom, you'd get some that were an offshoot brand and they were all mixed shades. And then, you know, if it was like, all right, the logo was supposed to be black and white, it would come, you know, like an inverse of that. And there was just never, you know, we didn't know enough and I wasn't hard-nosed enough at the time to even like complain about it. It was just kind of like, okay, I guess that's what it is. Right. So then, yeah, it was just kind of like, look, we can do this. And it was always, okay, quantity minimums, you gotta hit this. And you know, it's gonna take me 2 weeks to do this. Down payment for this. And the idea was just, how can we do this on demand for us? I knew that we could potentially sell out a lot. That what the show he's talking about was my music project at the time. We had a sold-out show at Metro for a record release, and we had no merch. And so it was time to basically— I bought a bunch of blanks from Target, showed up with them and a bunch of people, and basically were like, we got to do this. And that was kind of the magic of coming back from the show. We sold out of all the merch. We did the split with the venue. We got everything back. And then kind of came back and was like, OK, well, here's the money for the band. And then here's a chunk of money for us. And it was kind of like, all right, well—

It was amazing.

Yeah, what do we— OK, let's buy more gear. There's something here. And we already had so many contacts in music that it was just like, hey, who's your merch guy? Who's your merch guy?

I was like, oh, it's us. That's awesome.

You're looking at it. But then, I mean, machines are expensive. I mean, 'cause if you're gonna be making shirts, you need to be making screens. So we had to figure out how to make screens without buying the $4,000 exposure unit. So I just looked at the machine. I was like, this is basically like a giant camera. It's a light and some sort of a shutter to cover the light. So we just built a giant box and I found, I did some research Actually, this was— was Google even a thing?

This was like 10 years ago, right? I think so.

We're not that old.

Yeah.

But I'm trying to remember.

Was the internet around? It wasn't like— I mean, we had to learn from a book.

No, no, no.

There was a book we had to buy and flip the pages and highlighters and stuff.

I mean, we were still in the message board days.

Yes.

That's for sure. I mean, every single thing that we were trying to figure out was cruising message boards and t-shirt forums or like that. I remember we talk about it now because I'm sure we'll maybe get into it, but fast forward to now and fast forward to what those early days and the magic that was then and just kind of the unexpectedness and figuring it out. I remember I thought that we were the first people to figure out what discharge ink was because I had been exploring years ago just using little stencils and bleach and trying to figure it out and Affliction coming along and figuring out, okay, well, they're doing something similar. What is this? And, you know, we stumbled upon on a message board that you could get this discharge agent that still had formaldehyde in it, and it was just horrible, especially when we're in a basement. And, wow, yeah. But, you know, every— I remember just leaving so many times and just being so excited and so exhausted from being there for, you know, hours and hours on end, but being like, hey, we figured it out, we got this, we got that, and we figured out how to do the next step of what we're looking to do. And it was just like we were the Goonies.

Yeah, we were scientists. Yeah, I mean, we were figuring out what the light units are, and buying them in pieces, and hand wiring them, and having to figure out electricity, and figuring out how to make vacuum hold downs, and all sorts. And then— Modifying the printer?

Yes. With a Sawzall?

With a Sawzall. I mean, we went hard on trying to figure out how to do all this on a shoestring. String budget and make it consistent.

Yeah.

And I mean, it was testing, testing, testing.

And so this DIY part of your DNA is kind of still apparent as we look around, and you're like, I don't know, we'll figure it out. Oh yeah, it seems that we just walked into part of your production facility where you're doing on-set production for music artists and other folks, and that has to be, uh, we're going to figure this out kind of thing. Yeah. Let's help the podcast audience understand a little bit of quite a leap that we have made since 10 years ago, because we're sitting in this stunning old factory you've converted into this beautiful facility. We just walked through one of your meetings that you were having, where you were having this very intense procedural process meeting, and these beautiful screen printers and embroiderers, and all this beautiful space that's been mapped out perfectly. There's fulfillment, there's warehousing, there's, there's, it's a huge building. You tell us, give us an idea where we're at.

We're really good at backing up our lies. So when a customer is like, do you do this? We're like, oh, we totally do that. And then they walk away. I'm like, oh no, how do we figure this out?

We're based on lies. This isn't even our building.

We're like, luckily, yeah, luckily we're a couple MacGyvers over here and we, yeah, somehow it just always works. But I mean, like, if you want to like jump from department to department. I mean, we started with screen printing and then it was only screen printing garments. And then, you know, my wife kicked us out of the house because we were locking down the block and paying off semis to come down a residential street to unload pallets in front of our house. And we had boxes to the ceiling. And one day Lucas was looking for a new, band space, which happened to be a couple blocks that way. So at lunch break, we walked over and checked it out. And it was literally, what, like 20 rooms or something? And they had the whole rest of the warehouse open. We said to the guy giving us the tour, you ever think of having a screen printing shop in here? And he was like, no way, dude. I own clothing stores. I would love to have a screen printing—

Serendipitous.

Yeah, screen printers in here. So I mean, everything just like organically happened. It's not like, I think if we mapped this out, I think it would've, there's no way that we could've like gone straight to where we are now. It just like happened, happened, happened. And once we were in there, you know, we were still only doing screen printing on garments. And one day someone knocks on the door and is like, do you guys make signs? And we were like, ah, yeah. "Make signs." Then the guy leaves and we're like, "Oh, I wonder what kind of signs he means." Turns out to be the contract for the city street signs, like the pay-at-box before there was the app to pay. And it was literally all of them, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, maybe even thousands. They had to be in the thousands. And they just showed up with these, the metal signs, and we had to figure out, What ink goes onto that sign? What ink withstands the sun?

Again, the Goonies. The weather.

Yeah, yes. And I mean, we just reached out to ink people that we knew. They suggested a couple ways. Fast forward to the Chicago city sign, like the old school city sign makers. One of 'em called us one day and he's like, I got one of these street signs you made here. How did you do that?

Yeah, and we thought they were just kind of full of shit. And they were just like, you guys have the best signs we've ever seen.

Yeah, and we just—

What do you mean, the best signs? I mean, it stemmed from they didn't really have any idea what they were doing, and they didn't really care because a lot of them were just from actual cut vinyl. Some of them were— I mean, when we dove into it, we had no details. They were just like, here's the art. Here's what they need to look like. And so what we were doing, we were trying— printing liquid vinyl, we were printing solvent inks, we were printing— it was— there were so many days when we were in there for 4 or 5 hours and then our head in the clouds, and I didn't even know where I was anymore because the fumes were so terrible. And so then, you know, we're, we're just going back and forth. But I think to go back to your point of it being DIY, I mean, it's just— I think that's just really what makes us us. And I think that— I think the— I think the culture of what we are, I think the culture of the industry is, is really kind of there too. And we all start on these shoestrings budgets and trying to really stay conscious. But we've always just maintained that that's how we want to be. And we were talking previously and saying that I love the fact that people are always a little bit confused by who we are as a company and what Robo Creative actually does, because we kind of are chameleons and we're able to do that. And I think that we're always walking that line of, if you pick your lane and you just say all we do is screen print, that's fine. You're there, but there's a definite ceiling for that. And so we're always just trying trying to figure out not to go with what's going on in the times and the waves, but just be able to do those things, because that's what keeps it challenging for us and interesting, so that it's not just the monotony of, cool, left chest, one color print, left chest, one color print.

How do you guys balance that desire for experimentation with keeping a focused business? Because you guys, I mean, we've been here for, what, 30 minutes, and it feels like you've created a very very streamlined, efficient, awesome place. But yet at the same time, Joe, you said, "Hey, we'd never made signs before, but I'll make signs." And if that was the only thing that I had heard from you, I might have thought that you were a bit of a flake in terms of like, "Okay, this guy doesn't know how to run a business. He's totally like, 'Hey, I can do anything for you.'" And the reality is that people who are successful in this business have that focus, because if you're spread too thin, right? You're the master of nothing. So how do you, how do you balance that? Because I feel like there's tension there.

Well, what I feel like what we do is we just completely spread ourselves so thin until there's all 24 hours in a day maxed out, and be like, well, how do we make what we're doing already more streamlined to make more time? And as you try to streamline and you wind up, you know, like, oh my gosh, you could— what we did, I mean, I remember times when we were at the shop, you know, across the street where it would be like, I think we did this week what we did in the last 2 months, you know, like a couple months ago. And then just kept thinking that over and over and over. And, you know, production got better and faster and more accurate. And as you do it, your customers are growing with you. So their orders start getting crazier and crazier and you have to keep upgrading your process. And then as your customers get bigger, they also have more needs, and it becomes the, please don't leave me. You have to be Home Depot almost and offer everything, because say you don't offer embroidery, they'll find an embroiderer who, guess what, does screen printing. Screen printing, right? So now we gotta get a 6-head, and okay, how does this work, right? And figure that out. Then, yeah, yeah. Oh, now we kept our bigger customers happy with our embroidery. Now they told their friends about us, and, oh, okay, now we need an embroidery team. And I mean, it just scaled organically. I don't think we really planned any of it. Like, I feel like we went into digital realm, you know, as people were asking for more and more ultra crazy designs, but they don't want to order 144 of them. They don't want to pay setup fees. So it's just sort of is like, I just get a DTG machine and kick those jobs over there. Okay, now we got a digital section.

Has the customer evolved? It sounds like you started in the music business, but almost you also now are dealing with— I think I saw Red Bull and Wrangler. And so you've got the city you talked about.

I think it's evolved. It, it was really interesting when we first— like the basement days, it was very rooted only in music because that's where we're coming from. And then all of a sudden everything started to kind of snowball and we knew, okay, here's bars and restaurants. And so we started tapping those markets and then it was just really organic and kind of word of mouth. And so we started reaching out to, you know, anybody that is in that realm that was just like, hey, if we can help you, fine. But what has been really interesting is that we really don't, up until like the last like handful of years, have we really even started to, either approach or try to focus in more on actual sales. Everything has just been kind of either it just comes in the door because it's just been organic. And that's been great, but then when we sit back and look at them, like, OK, we've had all these great successes and all these celebrations. And what would happen if we actually put our head down even more and went after this? And I know that a lot of what has become just organically of adding these elements, adding different processes and stuff like that. I think part of it is just because, yes, we're knowledgeable in the business and we know that certain things people, DTG is coming on the market, so people are gonna be interested in this. But I think it's more so, it's the creatives in us and I think just like in our mantra of, if we could have every cool thing that was on the market, because I guarantee we can crush it with something and we can think about it differently and we can come at it from a different angle. We can combine, laser etching with DTG and embroidery and just doing something different than the norm of just, here's kind of just the stagnant stuff that we do. Yeah, yeah.

This flows nicely into something I wanted to ask you about. You both come at the business from a very creative angle, musicians, photography, media art and design. You say you're business-minded art kids. How does this alliance, obviously I can see it, we can feel it and we can tell, but I'm curious to hear you speak about this more, how this alliance of, art and commerce impact your success? And I want to be real clear for folks that can't quite catch it from our conversation. We just left a very hyper-intense procedure and process meeting where your whole team was sitting around going through value stream mapping. Value stream mapping.

There we go.

VSMing, as we say in the biz.

All right. No big deal.

Amazingly interesting for everybody not listening.

But very impressive. I mean, And here you have, that's the scientific, mathematic part of it. And yet here's these two artists, we're sitting at the table. So I'll let you answer the question.

I sort of like to think of it as those late night infomercials where you see someone do something totally ridiculous and they look at the camera and go, "There's got to be a better way." We literally don't know that we need value stream mapping until it's this failure, that failure, this fail. And when I say failure, I mean, it's not like, crash and burn, but something could be a lot better. And we, you know, when you start— I mean, we started with art stuff. Then, you know, numbers start coming into the game. You have to be able to, you know, get the garments. You have to be able to afford the inks and all that stuff. And as an artist, I was horrible at math in school, but When I start playing with our own money, I get to be a genius real quick.

I figure it out.

Now, this is what they're talking about in math class. But like you're saying, how do we make that transition? The two different jobs, I believe, that we hold, Lucas has always been more on the business side and I was always more on the production side. And the way he thinks, like, we've actually had this conversation the other day. He thinks future. I think, how do I get to tomorrow? And it's the two of us together. Like, what he says, and I'm like, we don't need that. It's so far into the future. And then he says, oh, you're thinking of right now. We now get it that we need both at the same time. But it was— You know, we're young, we're butting heads in my basement, but we kept going and the dynamic worked. And as he started, like, delving more into the business world and figuring out numbers and proving me wrong on a lot of stuff, we don't need that, we don't need that. Oh, hey, man, that's so much better than the first time we did it. And it's because we did this.

So that tension is so important.

Definitely.

We talk to so many successful, business partnerships, and that tension that's palpable, that's difficult sometimes, is actually critical for that creative output.

100%.

Yeah, it is, because I mean, it's just, it's the reality of it's different perspectives, and it's just different. It's just different. And so, I mean, I have, yes, that conversation that Joe's talking about, I mean, we literally had, because I was saying that, you know, it's part of my blessing and my curse. Like, I have so many sleepless nights because I'm I'm so focused 5 months ahead, 5 years ahead. And, you know, talk to my pops, and when I was 16 years old going into the touring world, I was nervous about, am I going to be able to do this to be able to sustain a family? And he's like, you're 16 years old. Like, you want the things that I had when I was 42 and 45. And so, you know, I— those character flaws and character blessings that I'm always working with, period. But I think that from The art part of it, I had a very, very, like in my graduate class, or my graduate portfolio class or whatever it was in art school, we had furniture maker come in and he basically, he broke it down so drastically and so aggressively within the first 10 minutes. He was like, take a look around. There's, you know, whatever, 75 people around here. There's going to be, 74 of you next year who will be doing art. There will be 60 of you in that next 6 months after that. Fast forward 5 years from here, there probably will be maybe 2 of you who are doing art and sustaining a living. And then beyond that, I don't know if any of you will be. It was very eye-opening because for me, I always kind of thought that way and thinking like, look, this is, I mean, being coming as a musician, we all knew the reality. I knew that being on tour, doing these big tours, we're not going to be Metallica. We're not going to sell— no one's selling records to that level anymore at this point. So it was like, okay, well, that's realistically why I started to put a lot of focus on the merch side, because we were, we were making more money selling merch show to show than we were making for the actual show. So we were sustaining ourselves selling t-shirts, which was already crazy to me. And it was like, okay, well, we could probably do this a little bit more efficiently and more aggressively. But I always kind of took a step back from that and thinking, okay, well, you could have all of this on this side that is, you know, I'm the undiscovered and I'm the maniac artist that is here, but you just have to always be thinking about the reality. And as much as people might say, I hate business, I hate this, and you know, kind of what we were talking about, like corporate structure and all of those things, It's a really interesting juggling act, I think, for where we've become at this point because people understand that corporate structure exists because structure needs to exist. And corporate structure in an industry like us exists, whereas we're also teeter-tottering on that cool art collective, you know, that vibe. And so, you know, that is a very, very big struggle and juggling act that we do. Have always dealt with because when we started with one employee, it's cool. These are the cool art guys. We can do whatever we want to do. And then it becomes more serious. And where are you not stepping over that line where it seems like these guys sold out, they're not cool anymore, they're just in corporate America?

And it's hard. I mean, because A, we never wanted to become managers managing people. We wanted to have some sort of art team. Something, and all of a sudden, "Hey man, I can't make it into work," all of a sudden doesn't work anymore.

That was David Grisman?

Or— Hey man, Tommy Chong worked for us for a little while. But I mean, once the orders start coming in and there's, you know, it's job, job, job, job, job, you have to be ready. Or we're spending our time apologizing to people all day.

I'll ask this question of the two of you, and maybe Lucas, you can start off first. Are there parts of the job that you guys used to do that you no longer do now that you really miss?

I miss being in the basement because the IRS didn't know about us. And I miss being in the basement because we could take 3-hour lunches at Whole Foods.

I was just thinking about the lunches, actually.

I mean, I think that there's definitely elements of all of it, and I mean, I think that there's days when I wanna throw up my arms and not have to deal with anything and just say, I just wanna go print t-shirts. And then there's days that I remember back when we were in the fledgling stages of it and thinking as I was operating a press that, you know, not that I'm better than this, but knowing that I'm not the best printer and I'm not going to become the best printer. I know where I'm strong and I know where I can help kind of guide the ship and push it there. So, you know, it was stepping back from that, but we weren't at the point to have employees. And so I kind of pulled back and then Joe was still manning the presses and there was even a lot of conversations between us that was like, look man, between like what we're doing as a business, you are the most highly paid press operator in the world. So I like, and I, And I knew what our strong suits were, and it was like, I need someone with me on the front lines that can be doing this. And, you know, we're still— I mean, we're here every day. We're still in the fire. And I think that that's part of maintaining what that vibe is, because people don't— people see it, and they see us in it. And part of that is a double-edged sword, because we're still maybe a little bit too accessible, because, you know, I always joke, and if I'm out of office or if I'm somewhere traveling for something else, I can get 5 times the amount of work done because it's not someone asking a question every single 10 minutes. And it's not that they're stupid questions, it's just questions that need to be answered. And we just, we've never wanted to run it as a dictatorship, and I've never been the person that is like, don't talk to me, I don't have time for you. So we try to still maintain that vibe too, and it, it's tiresome. I mean, we get out of here whenever we get out of here, and then I get home and I'm still working. So then it's like, how does business life then start to impact your personal life and trying to, you know, mental capacity for chaos and everything else that's going on? So yeah, I mean, I don't know. I would love to go back to the basement days because I think that there's like the simplicity, but I think it's also just the magic. I mean, I don't feel like the magic is gone, but I feel like we're jaded. Like we've been through it, and so we know the ups and downs, and then it was just, A glare in our eyes. It was just like, "Sure, I don't know. Let's do it all, man." Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think of what I miss. I do miss the lunches. I still feel like I— in my day-to-day, I still am doing my MacGyver stuff in some form because we have so— we have quite a few departments and there's— There's always some sort of— we're working in custom art, you know what I mean? It's not we sell one bolt and that is what it is. It's sometimes you're, you know, you're reinventing the wheel on every single order because some of these orders, as the customers got bigger and bigger, these customers keep seeing all this ultra complex stuff online and they just have to have it too. And then now we have to figure out how to do that and how to replicate it So it's identical every single time. So there is no variation.

And I— or we're selling that. I mean, a lot of the times it's like we have to sometimes rein ourselves in because we can be, you know, in these conversations. And a lot of where a lot of the heavy hitters— and I think where we really started to kind of carve out that niche in the industry is people, they could come to us and they just want us for production. They just want us for capacity. They want us for volume and our quality. But then all of a sudden, very quickly, they start to realize what we're capable of in terms of ideation and where we can take things to the next level. And so we get so excited, and we have so many amazing people on all of our teams that we can be— I mean, we've literally had conversations at this table where the client is here, and all of a sudden we're pitching all of these things. And we all walk out of the meeting and we're like, how the hell are we going to do that? And it's just— and the crazy thing is then we figure it out.

Wow.

And we're not doing it— I mean, a lot of it is we're not the upsell guys. We probably actually lose money because we're putting in more time to get it to our standards. We're putting in all the other handholding just to make that idea come to life. And so—

Perhaps therein lies the spark that you still enjoy about the work. Exactly.

You're still those kids in the basements turning to each other going, how the fuck are we going to do this?

Right.

Yep.

Exactly. And we're trying to— And I think that's why a lot of, whether the small clients or whether the big people or the huge big box companies, I think that's what they smell and what they love. Because they come into it and they're like, yeah, these guys, they're passionate. And not only are we passionate about it, but we also deliver. And we're always willing to, I mean, there's been so many times when something goes wrong and we always kind of joke about it and it always, seems like, okay, well, that's not the end of the world. It sucks, you gotta eat it, cool. We always just talk about it internally of this is the difference of why we are different from every other facility that might be out there. Because a lot of times people might just be like, eh, not our problem, sorry, you get what you get. And we're no questions asked, that's fine, we'll replace it. Here's what, we'll get it to you when we need to do it, whatever we need to do. If we need to eat to get it to you overnight, if we need to personally drive it there, that's what we'll do. So anybody listening, don't return everything.

I was like, no, there's all sorts of complicated forms you have to fill out.

There's a lot of disclaimers.

I mean, and we actually had this conversation recently. It turned out not to be our fault. Someone just couldn't find a package that got delivered to them. But I went through so much trying to track this package down. And when they found the package, they were just like, thank you so much for all this time you put in. I'm so sorry. And I was like, I wish, you know, like now we know that that person's gonna come to us again because they know that we are, we back up our product. And I actually say, I was like, maybe we should screw up more because that lets me interact with them and how I handle it shows them exactly who we are as a business. So we need to work that into our value stream mapping. Step 3 is fail.

You can't steal, I mean, you know, we were kind of, before we even started, we were talking about, you know, the industry and people stealing clients and in general. And when we step back from it, the thing is that what we have here, we didn't create screen printing. We didn't create embroidery and sublimation and all of that. I could tell you every single piece of equipment that we have. I could tell you what meshes we use, what inks we use. It doesn't matter because you can't steal our customer service. You can't steal what we've created. You can't steal our vibe. And we have it all day long. I mean, it's a cutthroat industry and, you know, you have the next guy down the block who's gonna say, I'm gonna do it for 2 cents cheaper. And if those clients are gonna go over there for 2 cents cheaper, then we're kind of at the point where we're always just like, then go, that's fine.

This touches back on this topic of art and commerce, I think, because another interesting aspect, and it's just one tiny glimpse into the world that you both strive to create for yourselves, which is the challenge, is that you partnered with BELLA+CANVAS recently to do some experiential marketing at ISS as well as Havas Chicago.

Yes, yes.

Live branding activation through live handjet printing, if I got that right.

Yes.

Can you tell us more about that? What'd you guys learn from that? What, what the hell is it and what'd you learn from it?

So they, they're units that started originally as branding devices for shipping containers, pallets, boxes. You can use them to serialize. You can use them— They look like paint guns. Big, giant electronic paint gun. They can either be solvent inks, water-based inks. I mean, there's even some inks that they use to mark fruit. You can mark meat for, you know, I mean, there's literally kind of every other option. We've not got into live meat branding yet, but—

Not yet. Not yet.

No one's asked for it yet.

I just saw that. The light went on.

Hey! Exactly. Let's figure that out. Waiting for a barbecue company to come to us. Right, right. But yeah, I mean, we had been playing around with them for years just internally, and it became just another thing that we were pushing to the limit. And we were just looking for a different way to start to brand things, a different way to get exposure, and kind of come into that realm even more of, you know, we don't know what they do. Like, they're just always doing weird stuff, and they're doing out-of-the-box stuff. It kind of started to become like a cultural movement because Mike from Chinatown kind of coined it. You know, a lot of the Hypebeast kids really took it and ran with it. And, you know, to these days, even if when we posted like all the recaps and everything, we had a lot of people that were still, you know, big Chinatown fans who were like, oh, you took the Chinatown thing. Mike invented that. Mike invented that. And it's been around for years and years and years. Yeah. So we, we, partnered with Bella. We'd been talking with them for a really long time just about doing something kind of out of the box and figuring out how we could get some cross-content to promote them, promote us. And, you know, we're kind of in the same vein of really just always trying to push things forward. So partnered with them for ISS was a really successful activation. It's—

so if I was an attendee, to give everybody a clear picture of this, I would walk in the booth and get a custom shirt right there on the spot by— with this gun.

And yeah, you literally— so We figured out, we've done a handful of them now, we created a proprietary platform that allows us to basically customize. If you were to come up and say, hey, I want XYZ on this, I want my wife's name, I want this, I want my run number, whatever it is. So we have a platform that will allow us to do that, and then by Bluetooth basically send it to any one of our handjet units, and so those can be within seconds, and the ink is immediately dry. So people can walk in, they could say, I want it there, here's what I want it, and I want it running down the back, and then we do it, and then they're on their way.

And because it's a handheld gun, it can— you can do anywhere, anything, anywhere.

And just— I mean, we did the Bella Canvas one, and that, that was awesome. But we also, we did one for Biofreeze for the Chicago Marathon, and at that point we had done a couple you know, Nike activations with the gun and stuff. And we're like, how do we put this into dead serious production? And we got an ask to do live branding with the hand jets at the Chicago Marathon where they picked the shirts up and the people would just come. I mean, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people. And we just, we had a table smaller than this 2 platens to put the shirts on and 2 laptops and a couple guns. And we were doing almost 2 a minute.

Let me preface it by saying that they also only thought that we were going to go through like 300 a day. Oh yeah, 250 to 300.

Yeah.

And it literally, like, I was on site to be helping shoot content and just kind of make sure everything was cool. Within the first 5 minutes, I literally put down my camera and was just like, OK, we're in it.

Help.

Lucas, help.

And we went through— there was probably 2,000 a day, maybe, from 7:00 in the morning. I mean, no joke. All joking aside, there was— all of our team would literally run from the activation to the bathroom and run from the bathroom back. Because that's just how quick it was. And so we could have stomped our feet and said, okay, well, yeah, I did the contract and we only said, or you only said that this was gonna be $250,000, $300,000 a day. This is $2,000, we're not doing this. And we don't have the people, but we kind of just take it as, cool, time to go. We just roll with it.

Yeah, I mean, that one was wild. I mean, at one point we got finished and then someone was like, man, I can't believe we were on the news. I was like, what are you talking about?

Yeah.

Like the camera crew was in front of you for 40 minutes.

Yeah.

And I was like, I never even saw them. They're like 5 feet away directly in front of you. I couldn't even look up. So I mean, we had brand ambassadors with cards saying, you know, how many characters was it? Like 15? Like, what 15 characters do you want? And as the person stepped up, you laid the shirt down, boom, next. Laid the shirt down, boom, next. And it was pretty wild. And I mean, Everyone— it looks like you have a magic wand and you're pointing it at the shirt and the letters just jump onto there. And like everyone's minds are blown and it becomes a full spectacle.

And I mean, the reactions are the best. Oh yeah, because you literally like— for something that we've seen so many times, and that's what I was originally there for, to be capturing, is just watching everybody's faces and they're confused and they're amazed at the same time, and then you're giving them a piece of customized art and that they had really involvement in making. And that's, yeah, I mean, that's like every time I have the conversation with any of these companies that are like, OK, well, we could do that. What's so cool about the live customization? And it really is about, you can go to a million things and someone could give you a tote bag, someone could give you a t-shirt. There's nothing personal about it. Yeah, you got something free to take away. People love free stuff. But as soon as now you're engaged with deciding that I want to put a red star in the lower left-hand corner, everybody else has been doing it in the right-hand corner. Now all of a sudden they're like, this is really cool, whatever company this is, Nike or Reebok, and like, hey, Reebok really is involved with the people. And so there's really this exchange between watching the consumers and what's kind of happening, especially for me. On the outside to see what our job is and what we're supposed to be doing and what we've been hired to do, but then also from the consumer standpoint of like, these people are into it and there's something kind of special happening.

And I just think that us as artists, we wind up turning everything into a performance somehow.

Yeah.

That's huge. Yeah.

I mean, we talk so much about this emotional connection and that the magic of this business is when you have that emotional connection between the product and the person who's receiving it. It, and it's clear that you guys are doing a great job with that. Yeah, so we talked a little about—

you, you had this music background, so no doubt you evolved from working with strictly with musicians, other bands, 10 years ago in the basement hanging out with other band rats. And the business has obviously evolved where you're doing this very sophisticated printing. Who knows how much in capital you've got invested out there on the floor? It's a tremendous amount. Who is the market now that you have evolved to serve?

I think that the biggest— the market that we are either attacking or always just kind of welcoming are the clients that want to take it to the next level. I know that's kind of ambiguous and salesy sounding, but—

On the creative side?

I think both. I mean, on the creative side, I mean, because we're willing to have those conversations and take it to that next level and say, look, you may have some of the best, you know, whoever, ASI suppliers that are out there that can give you the best pricing, but are they understanding thoroughly who's your demographic? Who are you going after? You know, when we have some of these artists that come in and how can we fully immerse ourselves in who they're going after? So like part of that is, you know, fashion trend, you know, what is forecasting and whatever else is there. But I think because we understand that realm and we have so many great people on our team, that we can really get down in it and say, look, your demographic is this. We're not gonna be selling corporate polos to somebody that is headfirst into down-and-dirty streetwear. So I think that we're always looking for the people looking to really raise the bar. I think we're looking— we're not this elitist facility, but I think at a certain point, we're trying to align more specifically with the people that that we know are going to be a good fit to us and that we can be there so that it is this, hey, we worked with Robo. We had a great experience with this. They really— it's not just about giving them a cool t-shirt. It's about coming back to it and saying, hey, in 3 months, look at what happened to your sales. We're involved in that process from literally the ground up.

When you talk about something like that, do you want to say working with us and not working with us? There has been several festivals that we've done that we've done all the merch, and each, each merch drop for each festival just does amazing. And then someone new comes in and they try to— I got these other guys that'll do it. Guess who comes back the year after? And they're like, whoa, what happened there? The sales dropped insanely.

They just do it cheap. Yeah. And they, they realize why, why that is all of a sudden.

And you're obsessed with the end recipient's experience. That goes from this experiential marketing that you did, it goes from the art that you see all around the building. You're just obsessed with that end experience, as opposed to maybe many in the promotional business who are obsessed with the buyer's response to what it is they're selling. You're really intent about the audience response. Probably goes back to your performance.

Yes.

It's 100%. I mean, I think that there's even more— there's more people who are more focused just on, great, we made $5 million last year. And yeah, we can be focused on numbers, but I think, yes, it goes back to our performance. We'd rather the client, the customer, or partner come back and be like, what you guys did was amazing. Because you're not stealing that from us no matter what. And I think that's just like us looking for praise enough of saying, you guys did a great job.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes we wind up just being like part of the team. By accident. So I mean, us being the "we never say no" guys, we wind up getting ourselves into all sorts of people just handing off all the work to us because they've put together full ideas. And then we say, well, why don't we try this? And then they throw their ideas out the window. So all of a sudden, they just stop showing up with ideas and start sending mood boards. And it becomes teamwork.

I think what's so clear to me in terms of why you guys have been successful, I think there's two things that jump out at me is number one, you've attracted this tribe that you take such great care of and where there's a great values alignment. So that's one thing that really pops out. And the other thing is this empathy that you guys have for the customer base. You are the customer, right? You are the guys that have attended those festivals. You are the guys who played at those festivals. And so as a result, you know what it's like to have a shitty t-shirt experience. You know what it's like to have a shitty merch experience. And you got into this business because you understood that buyer's need so well, and you addressed that. So I mean, that's my perspective as someone who's coming in and just chatting with you guys. It's so, so clear as to what makes you different than that other screen printer who's like, hey, I can get you a cheap price. It's not really the business you guys in.

No.

Good on you for that.

And a lot of times when the people come pick the stuff up and you're face to face and something's wrong, I can't in good conscience be like, OK, bye. We have to try to figure this out because, A, if I make you go broke over some nonsense, you're not coming back. We want to grow as a business the same way we want our customers to grow.— it becomes— I mean, a lot of our customers that we've had, that we have, we've had for over 10 years. So some of the people are like, you know, they're massive people now. And people are like, how did you get that person? They came in when, you know, when they were just starting. And, you know, they only needed 10, and everyone told them they need 36. And I thought the design was cool, and we sat down and knocked it out. And now, hey, now they're our buddies.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Do they need 3,600 or 36,000?

You never know who's the next Nike. And we still treat it that way today.

It's still— it's just taking it, I think, to the personal level. And that's what we try to literally rein in on from every single person that's on the team on the production floor of knowing that— imagine that. Imagine you're printing this for your mother or for anybody else, and you know that it's screwed up. And you have to hand this over to them that just either saved up money or maybe don't have— or borrowed money for. It's just that actual compassion. And I see both sides. I get the facilities that are just throw and go because they're just banging them out. They're just worried about numbers and they don't care. There's no owning up to that. They're not even focused on losing that client because they're just focused on the next one that's in the door, next one in the door. And that's just never, that's never been where we are. And it just never will be where we are because I would rather close doors than not have that accountability to everybody else that is out there. Saying, you can— there's, there's enough shitty companies in the world that I don't want to be contributing as another one of them.

And people come to us all the time and they're like, we used to use so-and-so. And guess what? We hear that over and over and over. We don't want to be so-and-so. That's right, right. Because if you're blazing through people and just upsetting them all, there's a line of people who hate you and are walking around and letting everyone know, don't go to these people. This has been awesome, guys.

Yeah, thank you for welcoming us. This is home. It's, it's been a great experience. For sure.

Yeah. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SKU Cast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SKU Cast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.