Episode 128: Scaling a Culture That Cares with Goldstar Pens

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

We talk a lot about scaling with intimacy, but what does that look like in practice? How do you build a culture that cares as you grow? Gold Star Pens has done the unthinkable. They made a big worldwide company with a big name in a seemingly unexciting and commoditized category fun and intimate. But not just that, they made it their mission to make Gold Star the easiest supplier to work with. So how did they do it? They created a mandate company-wide and dubbed it the Launch of Simplicity. Today, I chat with Howard Cubberley, Gold Star's Global General Manager, and RJ Hagel, Global Marketing Manager, and we unpack this idea of how to scale with intimacy. It's obviously working as they've not only endeared themselves to customers, but they're achieving record sales growth. Gold Star, the pen company, became Gold Star, the quirky personality you love. And here's the story of how they did it. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at Commenscue. This episode is brought to you by Commenscue, the platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To begin your free trial now, visit commenscue.com. Now on to my conversation with Howard and RJ.

You recently announced news of a global integration across brands, so I'm really curious what market forces are at play here, what led to this. What did lead to this? What was the decision about going global?

You know, as a supplier, we're always looking what's next. How do we scale? How do we be more important to our customers? You know, what can we do better, right? So we're fortunate to have resources. We're fortunate to have plants around the globe that are duplicating things unnecessarily. So first of all, you know, from an operations standpoint, it makes a lot of sense to develop product together, to bring the brand together, but also watching some of our bigger distributors especially, but really I think it's going to affect all distributors is the demand for international distribution.

So this was kind of about consolidating operations, but also the demand from larger distributors working with brands that are across the globe led to both of those. Those were the two big things at play.

Yeah, I would say so. And, you know, we do get requests all the time. Hey, I have— we have one right now for a large, you know, pen and pencil gift set. They want to produce it and ship part of it to London and part of it to Chicago. Now what? Do I ship it from San Diego? Where do I ship it from?

Right.

And what do you do?

Are you manufacturing this in the US and then still shipping across seas? Are you trying to determine that per project you manufacture in Europe?

Yeah, it's a good question. So what we're trying to do is come up with a subset of products that is an offering that is, is produced and decorated and distributed in both locations, both in the US and out of our Ireland facility to service Europe. And that way, you know, we can work with our distributors, large and small, to include it in their company stores and their sell-through opportunities that need that.

Yeah, this is such a big demand now. And I don't know how many folks realize this. Obviously, most folks will realize it if they're working with brands of any global size. But we saw this increase rapidly with company stores, where more and more were coming in with a qualification of, can you ship to Europe? Or can you ship to Brazil? Can you ship to these various places? So I do firmly believe you guys are heading in the right direction and that market forces forces are driving us all to consider the flat world that we're in. RJ, what's been the biggest challenge with this in terms of marketing and unifying this brand and then getting the message across and helping folks understand why it's important?

Yeah, so marketing and product were the two areas that we decided to focus on first. One, from the standpoint that we have similar brands, there are some differences between the two markets, but there was a lot of things already in play that kind of brought us together because marketing is very much operationally driven, uh, and creative driven. Yeah. Uh, there were two opportunities to bring people together quickly, whereas with sales you have different markets and processes and client needs. That's— it's a lot bigger of a, of a project to be able to, to create structure around. So for me, you know, I'm right in the middle of this. This has been going on now for about 4 months or so. So, you know, I'm still feeling my way through it where with With some of our growth, we're also expanding in each offices organically. So we have new people coming aboard to support each market as well as trying to bring the two groups together. You know, I think for challenges, I think most of the challenges are the same things that anybody would probably guess. You have different personalities and different roles, and sometimes roles conflict with each other. There's opportunities with understanding people's skill sets, but I actually see this as a great opportunity for us to be able to, to combine the strengths for the two different organizations and have been very happy with people's receptiveness to, to change and to be able to work with people who are, you know, 6,000 miles away from each other. But, you know, I think the, the biggest challenges for me day to day have more to do with time. Ireland is 8 hours ahead, so, you know, they're finishing the day when I'm starting, and then I still have my team here in the US. So it's been exciting. We're all in it as a team together, so the challenges feel a lot softer, let's put it that way, because of willingness to work together. Yeah.

You know, this international expansion seems to be the new footrace. You see distributors who are expanding overseas, and then of course having supplier partners expand and connect those what were before disparate and disconnected pieces is a huge part. Do you think we're anticipating the growth? You think we're in the middle of it right now? Do you think we're ahead of it? Or do you think you guys are seeing enough demand now that it's obviously making sense?

Yeah, I think I think the European market for promotional products is maturing. So I think the infrastructure is kind of all already built out, but how do we leverage our learnings and our capabilities to really add value in both markets? And that's the race, I think. Anybody can open up shop in London and be a distributor, but it's not that easy, right? What's your value?

Right. Let me ask this to you, Howard, first, and then to RJ. What do we need to do practically with our customers to take advantage of this opportunity?

Opportunity?

Is this a matter of us going through our own client list and looking for those global opportunities? I mean, this seems to present a new sales channel for many of us when you have very strong strategic partners who have these capabilities.

You know, I think one of the biggest opportunities from a distributor standpoint is opening the door to thinking a little bit different about who you're targeting, especially with the growth of technology-based businesses or other types of businesses that aren't selling physical product. Like say a software as a service company, and maybe you're in the Chicago area and there's a company that you've been calling on for some time and they do business internationally and they basically said, hey, you know, we're looking for a large company to be able to support our needs globally and not having an answer prior to be able to support them, your client, with suppliers in the European markets, in the North American markets, but now have the ability to tackle some of these challenges even for small businesses. So this isn't just a, a demand for someone at a more corporate Fortune 500 level where you're selling to these big organizations like Coca-Cola and Microsoft. But I think there's small companies out there that could use a global footprint as well. And so I don't think any distributor should rule out the ability to grow internationally. You know, just through my experiences, the markets aren't that different. It shouldn't be as scary to think about doing business overseas as maybe some people might, might feel, especially in the European markets.

That's a very encouraging comment. I agree. I mean, we, the leads we were having coming in for global demand weren't necessarily those huge companies. It was just simple companies that had that kind of footprint. All right, cool. Let's go to growth because you guys have achieved some amazing growth, really astounding growth when you consider the category that you're in. And of course, we love growth stories. You've also differentiated Gold Star in a market that's overwhelmed by so many players. Can you share a little bit, Howard, of the growth that you guys have experienced in recent years, and, and then maybe some insight into your strategy? Give us an idea where you've been and where you're at now.

Oh my gosh, there's a lot. So, you know, I've been in the industry for, for a long time. I mean, coming up on, on 30 years, and specifically with Penn experience. So I came over just after RJ joined Gold Star as a marketing manager. I came over as general manager. You know, we know we're in a crowded space and, you know, we just said, what do we do to differentiate? Why Gold Star? What is that message? And, you know, you know, with the experience that we both had, we felt like we had some of the answers. But really what we did was ask our customers. We went out with surveys, we called our distributor friends and said, you know, what do you want in a supplier company, especially that that has a core of writing instruments? There's so many of us. And really at the time, it's a couple of things is that they wanted an ease of doing business, right? They felt like they were oftentimes surprised by extra charges and run charges and setup charges and hidden fees and marked-up freight and all of these different things that were impacting their bottom line. And writing instruments as a category is commoditized a bit, and they just wanted it to be easy. They wanted it to be the, do you want fries with that add-on order oftentimes. So we took that to heart. And the other thing that they said is that, you know, everybody's telling us to add value and become more of an agency, but we need help from our supplier companies. So we need selling tools, we need case histories. So we went back to the drawing board and said, all right, what are our core strengths that we can feed into that? And so that's where our simplicity value proposition was born. Not as a special, but really as a culture that we want to eliminate all of those extra friction points for our distributor partners and then provide them with the right tools to make them appear more of an agency company to bring those to market and, you know, really become their go-to supplier.

That was one of the great things about when Howard came aboard was that we, we both were excited about changing the future of our business. And I spent almost 6 years as a distributor prior to coming here. So in the vendor relations space, so I was dealing with dozens and dozens and dozens of suppliers, and I knew the challenges that a lot of people are going through right now with how do we consolidate vendors? Who do we choose? You know, who do we want to be doing business with? And so the answer had always been about how do we make it easier? Because even before the distributorship, I had worked in the, in the engraving world at a company that we charged per letter. So if you came in with a plaque that you needed created and you had 400 characters and it was 7 cents per letter, you had to do the math. And a lot of times it ended up being some ridiculous price that we couldn't pass along. So it made everybody's lives more complicated. And so how do we make it easier for everybody so we can coexist in a world that's becoming more automated, quicker, faster? The demands from an end user are continuing to increase. And so how do we How do we cut out that noise in the middle? So yeah, it worked out really well. I mean, just, just, uh, we're kind of continuing that phase today. How do we continue to make it better? And technology is, uh, one of those things that I think the industry is adopting quicker, and we're kind of looking at some options.

You know, it's funny, I suppose a lot of suppliers would say, um, sales tools and things like that, and you guys are doing it, so I'm not doubting that. But what's interesting about your brand is that you guys seem to have You're a very large company. You have this very grassroots plus hyper-social approach to the business, but it's just a refreshing grassroots approach that's obviously been on purpose. Can you reflect a little bit on what this journey has been like taking this very large organization and in a way making it small and applicable to the grassroots, Howard?

Sure. Boy, there's a lot in that question.

Yeah, I know it was.

I'm sorry.

I'm really bad about asking it that way.

No, it's all good. To start with the grassroots approach, once we established the value proposition of kind of why Gold Star or who we wanted to be that leveraged our strengths, we go, well, all right, now how do we tell people about it? And I think that we had, we were fortunate that we had some really good sales leadership out of the field with our VP of sales, Kenny Vett, who really was very visible, kind of lives, eats, and breathes the brand. And we were selling through multi-lines and we made an executive decision to move away from that model to the factory rep model. And brought in some key industry players with experience on both the supplier side and the distributor side. So that's been an interesting, a little bit of an experiment, but Charles Dugan running our key accounts, and then we filled in the territories in the country, at least to start, with people that are like-minded. And so that's where you're seeing the social stuff, because it's, it's a work hard, play hard. I mean, it's purposefully done, is that we sell pens and we get creative with logos. Let's have some fun doing it. Go back to the kind of glory days of the, of the writing instrument business.

Well, actually, I want to, I want to comment on that. The, the, you know, in a sense you've created this for such a large brand, you've created this intimacy. I mean, every— everybody knows Kenny and Charles, everybody knows you guys. Um, that has been very strategic on your part to recognize that as you get bigger, you can absolutely lose those personal connections that are so vitally important. So it sounds like on one hand you've got the reliable manufacturing and making sure that obviously that's number one. And then number two, that you are remembering that everyone, you know, makes buying decisions emotionally and making that connection there. You know, you guys remind me a lot, speaking of, we're heading to social here, of Southwest Airlines, because, you know, they're known for getting more people to their destination on time than any other airline, and yet they're actually more known for their quirkiness. So the minute you said Kenny and Charles, I thought of that. Sometimes I think it's a shame that, that, that Southwest and folks like you are more known for that, but the two things seem to work hand in hand emotionally. That has been very strategic on your part.

Yeah.

To Howard's point about, um, hiring good people and trying to, to capitalize on what they bring to the table as well. One of the things that people lose is that the business to business space doesn't have to be treated like business to business. As you mentioned, Bobby, we're, we're all people and we make emotional decisions.. And it really doesn't matter if it's for our businesses or for our families. We may treat the emotions differently, but there's still emotions that are tied to that. And one of the things that I saw is from a supplier standpoint was that most supplier brands in this industry are just that, they're product brands. They are, here's a catalog with product, please buy my pen. And so we wanted to bring something more, a personal touch. A fun atmosphere. We wanted people to want to do business with us because they seemed like they were part of our, our tribe. And so, you know, we, we have great relationships with our customers and we try to create an atmosphere that people enjoy coming to, to do business with us. And at the outset of that is they get great products as well.

It's funny, you seem to have created a personality for the brand, and that's what your distinction, I think, has been as opposed to an entity., with a catalog and a huge volume of products, you've actually built purposefully a personality.

Yeah, absolutely. At the outset, that was really what we had to do to grow. Being a, a little bit smaller supplier at the time when we got started, and we have some fairly large competitors with, with deep pockets. And, you know, like most industries, the advertising model is pay for play. If you have the, the dollars and the resources to put behind it, you can show up more often than others. You know, we, we didn't necessarily have that at the beginning, um, nor do we focus on that today, but it's more about how do we reach people in a more meaningful way instead of just dropping advertising in front of them or putting product right in front of them where that's their only outlet to view us. And so we want to create some curiosity and some, some excitement about our products and have people come to us. Instead of us having to push things in front of them. It's worked well because it creates, to me, it creates more of a human interaction at that point.

Yeah. You've created this quirky personality with the brand that is a lot of fun. And Howard, you mentioned, you know, a funny anecdote to me about some of the stunts that your team wanted to try. And you and I are, maybe we've been around a bit and you were pleasantly surprised at some of the responses. Can you share some of those, that journey, what that was like, where it seems like you, you yourself also moved from this entity to embracing this personality that you were going to own in the marketplace?

Yeah, sure. I would say that it's an extension of what RJ was saying, right? So we felt like we came in, we put a plan forth, and we had, you know, people, processes, products, and we had a plan. And the rest of everything that RJ was talking about is as purposeful as it is, it's organic. It's true. Meaning you can't fake fun. You can't just say, hey, we're the fun guys. You know, you just gotta have it kind of happen. And it's funny, we're in the middle of planning right now our January trade shows, and I was looking back at some of the original photos of the booth, that kind of where we came from. And there's a picture of Kenny and RJ and I standing in our little 20-foot booth. And, you know, I came in and just said, hey, we're making white Oxfords with the Gold Star, new Gold Star logo on them. And you see in the pictures that Kenny's wearing bright blue pants pants because I was like stifling his creativity. He wanted to really dress up. And so that really was the thing. I mean, it's one thing to build all of this, but if nobody comes over to our booth, nobody finds out about Gold Star, it really doesn't matter. And so the decision to kind of let that unfold on its own and let him have fun with it was probably harder for me than anybody else because that's not the vision I had in my head. You know, I think I was talking to you about just an interview I'd seen with Jon Stewart, the old guy from Comedy Central, when he was asked about what the hardest thing for him was in building his career, and he said that making the decision to fully commit to political satire, right? And that was going to be his career, what he would be known for, and when really he had a lot of other facets to his comedy act and his abilities. And so just kind of saying, okay, wow, there's something there with Kenny because people are responding to him. And then We started to attract other employees that had like mindset, that wanted to just come have fun with their job and then build a career and grow and be part of something special. And then it just took a life of its own. I mean, you'll, you'll come to the shows, you'll see them dressed up, you'll go to a sales meeting, and if it has a theme, boy, they're all in on it, you know? Yeah.

What I love about this, if you're, you know, we're all about trying to just educate folks, whether supplier, distributor showing up, and I know some of this sounds so basic, but I love how powerful it is. So I'm going to bore you with alliteration, but so far we've talked about getting getting the right people in place, getting your structure right. The processes obviously are vitally important for you to deliver for distributors time and time again. Same for distributor to their customers. So we got people, processes, product is obvious, purpose we all kind of know, right? So all of those so far are to use our another P as our pedantic. We kind of all get those. But this last one about personality is huge. I mean, that Southwest Airlines— I took a flight one time and Gary Kelly, the CEO, not a lot of folks recognize him. And I sat by him on an airline. We talked about that, you know, how hand in hand these things go together because we at time. I was with Robin, we were shipping packages all over the world, and I was curious what I could learn from someone who is, you know, getting people to their destinations on time. And he really emphasized that how important this last part of it was about the personality. So kudos to you guys for— kudos to you, Howard, for taking that leap and then, you know, letting that take its own life. Let's talk about growth for a minute because you guys have achieved some phenomenal growth. If— correct me if I'm wrong on the numbers, but I think I'd read you had a 34% growth.

Is that year over year? Yeah, don't believe everything you read, but certainly really since the launch of Simplicity, we've never had a period or a year that we haven't had significant double-digit growth. And we're well on a pace to 3, 4 times the business over a short period of time. So very, very exciting period here at Gold Star without getting, you know, kind of too specific, you know, in our path.

Howard, what else can we learn from over the past 5 years, you know, biggest mistakes that you've learned from and what lessons did you, did you take from it?

Oh, wow. There's been so many, right? So, you know, to sit here and say that we, we, we had a plan, we executed the plan, it all worked. I mean, that's just not how it goes.

It's a little revisionist history, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Not intentional, but we all sort of tell ourselves narratives, but go ahead.

Yeah, we just keep trying things and we, and, and keep asking questions. What if, what if we try that? What if we try this? And, and we ask our customers, continually, right? How do we be better? How do we work together? What do you guys need? What are you seeing? What's the feedback? But the biggest mistakes, sometimes, you know, we get a little ambitious, maybe launch too many products at the same time, or we've had some cases where, you know, RJ and I will argue over, you know, a style of a riding shirt we want to bring forth. And then we kind of have a little side bet on who wins, if it's successful or not. But then there's some cases where we both agree that this thing is It's going to be a winner. We get all behind it and excited, and then we bring in tons of inventory and boy, we're both wrong, right? So we've had some of those things there. And also, I mean, you alluded to it, there's some growing noise in the industry about order management and some of the challenges that customers, distributors are having with suppliers. It was a topic at some of the industry events recently. So it's a very real thing, planning and staffing and training, creating process. I mean, these are, easy to underestimate as you try to scale a business. And we're chasing that one constantly. And so I might have done some different things there too, but—

To add to what Howard was saying about anticipation is also, it's really understanding where you are in your business and how do you react to the opportunities and the needs of the business today while not losing focus on the future, especially when we're talking about technology and that technology you know, has to do with order management and it has to do with a customer-facing information, something like promo standards or websites that, that can show real-time order status, inventory, previous orders, having a portal for our distributors to be able to access the information they need. And then there's, then there's technology in the operations. How do we make our equipment faster and more effective, right? Being able to lower turnaround times typically doesn't have to do with buying more machines. It has to do with How do we create more efficiencies in our operations to make things flow faster? And sometimes the answer is people, sometimes the answer is equipment, sometimes it's software. There's a lot of things changing. And traditionally as an industry, we haven't had to adapt to technology the same way the consumer market has. And I think finally catching up to us, and this is where, you know, I think a lot of people's pain points are regardless of where you are in the industry today is is the technology infrastructure and how do we agree where we move forward. I applaud, you know, the Promo Standards Group. I know that this is something that's been tried in the past. I feel very strongly that this group has it, has what's needed to help move forward. And we're a participating member and we're excited to be a part of it because we know in the long run this is all gonna help us.

Yeah, and you know, on this topic, I'm glad you brought it up, RJ. You know, I'd written about this recently, and Howard, you might recall, and RJ, you too might recall the days— what I wrote was it feels like with promo standards right now, in particular EPOs, we're at a place in time in the business where it felt like it did back in the days where everybody was moving from 2- to 4-week productions to 2- to 3-, 5-day production. It was a race back then for suppliers to align their resources to ready themselves for that new big transition. It took some time, but it feels like we're in that kind of a race again with promo standards. Now the momentum is intense. Am I wrong about that observation?

I don't think so. I do think that it is a race and it's being driven by a handful of the big guys, but I think the industry will be better for it in the long run. And I like, like some of the things that Common Skewer is doing to kind of bring it out to more of the masses. I think that's an exciting direction. But this, the whole thing will unfold and it won't end where it is today. So I think it's just going to be a continual commitment from all of us.

Yeah, I'm real curious. You guys have taken a lot of risks. You've taken calculated risks. You've taken maybe some gambles. What was your biggest payoff over the past year or two that seemed like a gamble at the time, or at least a high-cost calculated risk?

Yeah, well, there were a couple of things here as I went going back to the beginning of the origin of simplicity. The value proposition seems logical, right? Remove all the friction. Well, some things are process related and other things have real costs associated to them. If you look at the P&L and said, all right, we have X amount of freight income and we want as part of simplicity just to have the cost of the pen delivered and include freight and setups and all of these things. They had real revenue attached to them. Even if it wasn't at huge margins, it was real recouped revenue. And it was pretty much pushed all of our chips to the center on simplicity and said, you know, if this doesn't work, I mean, that's it, you know? And so that was probably the largest gamble to do it, but it worked and we just never turned back. And it's not a special, it's become the culture still in a sea of, EQP specials in the industry. We get asked, you know, when does that free freight end? And it doesn't. I mean, that's kind of who we are on writing instruments, right? And then the second one I would say is the move from, from multi-line reps for us at our evolution and our size to factory reps was really at the right time. We couldn't have got to where we were without the multi-lines because it's a way that we can all work together and afford representation in the field. But to get to the level we're at now, we couldn't have done it without moving to the factory factory reps and hiring great people.

So not to oversimplify, but it sounds like bundling those price— those fees into one price was a big gamble, risky gamble, and that paid off. And then of course consolidating, or if you will, in a sense— I don't want to say downsizing, but really making a more intimate approach to factory reps— were the two— were the two biggest gambles that paid off?

Yeah, whenever you change your model, your— the way you bring products to market, it's, uh, it comes with risks. You know, you need to try to find the right people and get them trained and bring the excitement. So I mean, we're fortunate that those moves really, you know, fed the growth.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think the other, other big play for us was product. So when I started with the company, I want to say we had about 120 SKUs and that would be 120 individual products, not counting all the SKUs that build the different color variations and ink options, but about 120 products and maybe 50 that were were strong sellers for us. Today we have about 440 SKUs. Out— stepping outside of just writing instruments, we've also included drinkware, and last year launching full-color drinkware. We have bags and soon to have full-color bags available in 2020. There's this expansion of SKUs and decoration methods, you know, the commitment to having one of the largest or the largest selection of of decoration options in the writing instrument space as far as silkscreen, laser, different size laser engraving options from, you know, small kind of economy-based to something where you can actually wrap it all the way around the pen. We have multiple color options. So we have a lot of value and there's a lot of commitment from our point to be able to scale our product selection and have it have meaning. You know, just because you put product out there doesn't mean people are going to come and buy it. But if you're not strategic about it and selecting products that people are demanding, uh, you have an uphill battle in front of you to convince people to buy things that maybe we like, but maybe that's not being demanded. So it's finding that balance about being unique and finding where the demand already is and coming to a point where we can provide that value from a product selection standpoint.

I'm going to ask an ignorant question because that's my job to be the dumbest one in the room, which is kind of hard. You guys have expanded categories. Have you seen this tipping point past, well, Gold Star is just the pen guys? Have you already experienced that? I mean, catch me up to where you're at in that journey.

No, I wouldn't say that. I think first and foremost, we have to be great at writing instruments, but we've invested a lot in infrastructure and in decoration and equipment and in capital investments. Everywhere, why not leverage it into some of the other top categories that our core distributor partners certainly would prefer to sell Gold Star because they're fans and they're already selling our line. But first and foremost, I think it would be a mistake to lose our footing as a writing instrument expert.

You know, obviously you're banking on that reliability. And I love the phrase you keep going back to, and this has been very strategic, is the launch of simplicity. That must be a refrain that you repeat often in your organization, the simplicity.

Yeah, I think in all of our training and all of our communications with everybody, there's two things that we bring forth over and over again. Does it meet our standard of simplicity? Are we making it easier for the customer? And I hate to say we don't always, but we always strive to. By structure, we do, but by communication, we're always trying to improve. So I think that's part of it. And the other thing is we flipped our culture here to be customer-focused. It's cliché, I understand. But one thing, if you're, if you're working closely with the customer care team or the inside sales group or anybody dealing with the, with our distributor partners, there's a lot of urgency around turnaround times. There's a lot of urgency about proof approvals and the whole process. And is it going to meet the enhanced date and why? What this went wrong and what are we going to do about it? And all kind of very heightened experience sometimes. And so if you're in, if you're processing orders, you have to create a culture that, that explains that. Otherwise, it's just Groundhog Day. And when we grow, all they have to do is process more orders, right? There's no benefit for them. And so we created a compensation plan that helps them hit monthly goals. But more importantly, we created a purpose that says, that our distributor customers are entrepreneurs that typically work on 100% commission most of the time. And so, yeah, they're going to be passionate about their order and their delivery and their getting paid. And they've already calculated the commission as it relates to their monthly bills a lot of times. So we have to match that passion with an interest to helping them grow their business and being successful. And once we gave that purpose to the service team, we've seen great improvement. And just their understanding of what they're trying to do. They're not trying to just process orders. They're trying to help an entrepreneur grow a business. And it doesn't resonate everywhere, I have to be honest. But for the ones that have really grasped onto that, it's been exciting to see.

Oh, that's huge. That's huge. That's everything for someone to understand that the person on the end of the call is not a pain in the ass. They're actually somebody who's trying to grow a business and that when they grow, you grow and you all work together. What's the one thing you wish your customers knew about being a supplier, and specifically Gold Star, what do you think we take for granted? I think what I know, but Howard?

Yeah, that we care. And so what I mean by that is that, you know, we build a process, but the process, it doesn't always match our interests of being everything to everybody. So, you know, there's, what, 25,000 distributor companies and 80,000 distributor salespeople all process their own things a little bit differently and expect things slightly different from a supplier. And we're trying to funnel that all through one system. And it's far from imperfect. I mean, it's far from perfect. It is imperfect. But we care and we try and we're in it all the way. And it sometimes gets lost in the kind of heat of battle.

Yeah. RJ, you were a distributor. What do you wish customers knew more about being a supplier and more specifically Gold Star?

What do we take for granted? There's two things that I'll talk about that relate more to our situation today as a global economy. One is on top of everybody's minds, which is importation, especially from China, and the things that have to be dealt with from safety and compliance for things like Prop 65 to the tariffs, to a rapidly growing economy in China where they're developing themselves. And so there's a lot of change happening that we don't control. So the products that we do import, we're at the mercy of the manufacturers as well. And so we, we try to mitigate as much as we can, um, obviously with things like tariffs, that's going back and renegotiating with suppliers to, to offset some of the increases that we're getting. And then domestically, it was something that was actually brought up recently, uh, with some other conversations that we had, is, is really is labor. From a distributor standpoint, a lot of the labor comes in with salespeople and service, but at a manufacturing level, you're bringing in a lot of people that aren't passionate about their careers. You know, it being in San Diego, we don't have a lot of the immigration that we used to in California where a lot of workers that would come in from Mexico are no longer coming in. They're staying in Mexico and finding good quality jobs there. So there is a shortage in finding people at the manufacturing level that are passionate enough and we can train because is a lot of the decoration is an art, you know, things like silkscreening is not something you can train somebody overnight. There's an absolute art to it. And the complications to the manufacturing process was something I didn't understand as a distributor. And I would highly encourage people to take factory tours whenever possible. I know I'm on the board for, for SAC here in California, and we do at least 2 to 3 factory tours a year, if not more.. And I find that when I've been to them, you can see people's eyes open and they start to really grasp on what this takes. The fact that every single order that goes through our factories are all custom, everything's slightly different. And I have the compassion on the other side that, hey, when a supplier screws up as a distributor, it's my relationship with the customer because of something that was out of their control. And so I think there's learnings from both sides to be able to really understand each other's businesses. And it gets back to what Howard was saying was from our standpoint is to be compassionate about the fact that somebody, their livelihood is based off of this customer's order. And if we don't do it properly for them, not only do we sacrifice the money they would make on that order, but potentially future orders because then they lose trust with their distributor. So it's absolutely a partnership here. And I think the commitment is really about working together as an industry so we can all thrive and stay relevant.

I was struck by this when we've talked before, but you guys really humanized this brand of Gold Star, right? It just seemed to be a name to me forever, and you really have done a brilliant job humanizing this company and just the words you're speaking today. So thank you guys for the work you're doing. Thanks for the consideration that you give toward your customers. I'm not just kissing ass here. I really think it's admirable. So kudos to you and wish you guys just more and more success.

Thanks for all you've done. Awesome, Bobby. Thanks for the opportunity.

Yes, thank you, Bobby.

It's great talking with you.

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