Episode 133: The House That Numo Built

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. SkewCast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

Our responsibility is, is to create relationships with our product. It is not to create relationships with people. That is, people buy our product. They don't buy the relationship that they have with someone. And that bubbles underneath the surface of everything that we do.

The celebrated designer Milton Glaser once said that the purpose of art was to inform and delight, to combine together both pleasure and applicability to life. If you didn't make it to the PPAI Expo this year, you might not know that the Numo booth was the buzz of the show. Thousands of people converged on their booth, and unlike many come-and-go experiences at trade shows, their guests stayed and stayed and stayed. Why? NUMO built a 2-story house in the middle of the Expo trade show floor. Not tables with product, not a booth with Velcro or slat wall and hangered items, but they built a home with a bedroom, a pool, refrigerator, a balcony, couch, bed, washer, dryer. It was an immersive and breathtaking experience. They took beautiful product and placed it in context of where it lives, respecting both function and form. Here's what you don't know: NUMO had a completely different concept in mind and spent an inordinate amount of time working on it, but 3 months before Expo, they got a better idea and scrapped months of planning. This is the story of the house that NUMO built. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at Common Skew. Today I'm joined by Jim Martin and Melissa McCauley as we chat about many things starting with the house and veering into subtopics such as their collaborative creative process, the sustainability conversation we're not having, the homogenization of the business, and so much more. If you've talked with Jim and Melissa together, you know it will be a rambling conversation, but so rich with insightful detours. 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 learn more or to start your free trial now, visit commenscue.com. Now, here's my conversation with Jim and Mel. God, guys, I'm so glad to have you on this. This is not speakerly me speaking. This is like just thrilled to have you guys.

Authentic, passionate disruptor, humble you speaking.

So since you already went that direction, Mel, let's talk about those words we're not going to use today. We're not going to use passionate. We're not going to use disruptor. We're not going to use humble. We're not going to use authentic and per Jim's instructions, we're not going to use ROI.

Or the industry. Or the industry.

Or the industry. Okay.

What we will say when we use the industry is just that we want everyone to know we are putting our air quotes up when we say the industry. We don't say the industry without air quotes.

How about I just get started? I'm going to go start with my first question and we're going to probably go off the rails pretty quick and I'm here for this ride.

Yeah, we can definitely disclaim our squirrelism if we need to.

Yeah, we will for sure.

Jim likes to— what do you say, Jim, at 3 in the morning in the booth when you're like, this is the face of mental illness? Well, yeah, I'll do the best I can not to poke fun at anyone that's mentally ill.

I'll do the best I can to keep you guys focused.

Okay, sure feels good to have you help us with that as someone who's completely focused at all times.

Yeah, right. Somebody asked, right when we fired up the mics, we talked a little about, about how you guys work together, which sounds like not even controlled chaos, it's just chaos. Is that how you would describe your working relationship?

Yep. Um, you know, you got some beautiful mind things at work going on there.

And yeah, look, I think that, I think that Mel and I have the—

it's important that the audience know right now that we are not in the same room and we can't, and we're We're actually looking at each other right now going, I think that we fundamentally believe in what is possible with our business.

And, right, and, uh, I, I don't, I don't know.

I think that our motivations aren't always the same, and sometimes they are, right? And at the end of the day, somehow we come together to create something. And as we're—

yeah, well, we, we talked, we were talking before we hit record about how messy the creative process is, and that's a part of it. It's a lot more stressful, messy chaotic, neurotic, especially neurotic, than people want to believe.

Absolutely. I like to say it's not linear, it's a heat map. And at the same time, as Jim pointed out to me the other day, it's like completely linear. Like, I'm asking how we did this but not this, or why this happened without this happening. He's like, you realize you're asking people why they aren't being more linear, and then you're telling them it's a heat map, but it's like a totally a heat map.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you just have to be linear in between the jumping points.

That's a great point. Not only that, we're asking folks to be creative, but we're asking them to somehow fit some kind of a paradigm for that, as if some— or control, control that to some degree when it's quite messy. Let me, let me get into this booth. So walking in the front door, I'm going to tell you guys, and now you're both going to roll your eyes, just be patient with me. I was one of many that walked into your booth and, and said some kind of superlative, some gasping moment came from them. I walked in and I'm going to tell you why I thought it, but the first word that came to my mind— don't roll your eyes— is breathtaking. But here's why. Breathtaking because I felt like this is what it should be like. This is what the experience should be like. Not because you guys had set up some kind of iconoclastic thing, which you would hate that word. That's got to be on the list. Iconoclastic.

You know, I don't know.

Oh, you like that one? Okay, good. Well, I want to pause on that.

Well, and I don't want to argue with breathtaking either. I think that at the end of the day, if we sat around and said, what would you like to accomplish with this booth? It would be, I want to take people's breath away. And that's certainly more tactful than everybody walked in and screamed, how much did this cost?

Because we got a lot of that. I would say iconoclastic would be the exact word that we would be looking for. Perfect.

All right, great. I'm glad I did. I'm glad I used the right word because that's truly what happened. You guys had a series of statements, and the reason why it was so breathtaking to me is because I read the signs before I walked in. I didn't just walk in the booth, so I understood the philosophy. I think I intuited it anyways before I read the material. Walking the front door of your home slash booth, you had a series— I'm going to call it an experience, unless that's a word we want to outlaw. That you had a series of statements that I think the first part of the statement is the most sublime definition of sustainability that anyone has ever come up with for our industry. The statement was framed on the entryway to your booth and it said this: We believe in making things that are useful, not merely for the sake of manufacturing, but for the purpose of the items we create being used, being passed on, bringing value to the people who own them. Our industry doesn't have to be trash. Data shows that 69% of consumers would pick up a promotional product if they deemed it useful. Why not make only useful things? You won't find any fidget spinners here, friends. When products last longer than a single use or a day, they move into the home and become a part of the fabric of our lives. The really good ones earn a place not only in our homes but in our hearts. Driven by the idea— everyone be patient with me, we're almost done— driven by the idea that promotional products can tell the story and create more than a single-use experience, we are here to push the industry forward out of the habit of quick, often sloppy goods into the era of suppliers coming to market with actual goods that fulfill the need for both function and form. Some say it's irrational. That's my favorite part of the line, by the way. Um, Melissa, I love how you created context for all of your products. So you trained the industry not to just think about stylistic design, but purpose and function. And it's subtle, but what you did with your design reminded us that these products when viewed in a beautiful context of how and where they're used, can bring meaning to the user. And I especially loved how— by the way, I'm going to pause and give you a chance to reflect on this. Where did this philosophy come from?

So, oh man, I could do a podcast on this topic alone just based on the fact that when I was a distributor, Jim's favorite words. He's rolling his eyes right now. Um, I had a hard time. I know what my struggles were, uh, besides the fact that my purchase orders didn't have commas in them. My— I seem to believe that that was maybe someone else's fault. Um, and not to place blame, but I felt like there wasn't a whole lot I could sell. This purple thing didn't match this purple thing, that even within the same suppliers, the the purple things they were buying didn't match each other. And I'm just like, well, and, and maybe customers would have bought that and I needed to overlook some of that anyways. Long story short, on the whole, when I came to work at Numo, I, I told Jim this was one of maybe 3 suppliers I would actually ever even consider working at because I didn't feel like it was trash. And at that time, sure, there might have been a little, we need to clean some things up. But I see what this looks like in what I mean, I've been here now 6 years, I, I see what this looks like in 5, 6 years. And I mean, everybody already loves Numo, they just don't even know it yet. And that was a quote from my interview, literally, that I find myself at the juxtaposition now of like, what's pretty and what makes sense. And kind of given in the years past, we've always agreed that our product, like we internally, that our products are useful and that yes, you can take and use this and it's highly customizable. So even the, the person creating this product to give to an end user, it's more valuable to them because it's a little more custom than what somebody can pull off of a shelf. And while I think over the last couple of years we've been able to show the prettiness of it, while some see the function in some things, there was this time that I just wanted to spell it out for everyone, knowing that they wouldn't read— that a lot of people wouldn't read this stuff. And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, words, words, words, right? What's— and so, so I just wanted to be able to at least stake claim on the fact that If you do this right, all of that value will be there. And the industry, air quotes, taunts this whole, you know, be it ASI or PPAI, love you both, but they want to tell everybody what this ROI is on promotional products and how it's so much more effective than radio and billboard and blah blah blah, right? And, and that it's got a larger cost per, or smaller cost, whatever, cost per impression value, um And while I believe that all of those things are true, if someone's actually wearing a t-shirt that promotes something walking around, we always say that what is the ROI of something that's in the trash? It's negative dollars. I mean, I think we put zero on the actual thing, but it's negative money. It's somebody spent money on someone throwing that in the trash. And I think a lot of us that are in this industry that don't love promotional products necessarily, like we don't walk around trade shows collecting things because we either A, don't need it, it's not useful it's not. I am someone who has been at a function for Dribbble and another, like, agency in town that I grabbed a black matte finish pencil with a pink eraser that I have on my desk to this day. And I'm like, I love this item, right? It might have been the inspiration behind some hell-bent thing I went on about us getting pencils and it being the best damn pencil and not having a Ferrell and how are we going to do a pencil differently. And, and I have a yo-yo from the same event, and I'm just like The yo-yo is like the original fidget spinner, right? Except that— did it— I don't know. I think that if you make things that bring value to some people, be it art, be it function, um, and in the real, really powerful instance of it being both, then yes, you do create something that people will keep in their desk or in their kitchen or whatever statistic tells us to put it where.

I love how the products you sold in the booth featuring in the before indistinguishable from household furnishings and decor. In fact, they were part of the decor. So you exemplify Dieter Rams' 10 Principles of Good Design. Some call it 10 Commandments of Good Design. One in particular, good design is unobtrusive. So what I loved how you did was we often don't think beyond the product. We don't think where the product's going to live. We don't think someone— that someone will find joy in this product. We're just thinking in terms of advertising effect only, right?

So I actually had never heard of, um, this Ten Commandments of Good Design, and I looked it up and thought it was pretty cool. Um, and that I think I'm going to use that now as a checklist for everything that we create. Um, and part of the, you know, planning out this house was thinking about things in a way of if someone was given this, it's very— trying to explain it now by way of like, It's kind of like, Jim, duh. Um, if your kid has been given this bag for his soccer team or whatever, isn't it likely that his or her soccer slides would be in that little, uh, piggyback tote and hanging right in the entryway so that you can grab them next time you're running out the door or whatever? It's all so real, um, in how promotional products could be used. And I think one of the biggest mistakes that we make as an industry, um, is fit to max imprint area. Um, and just because you can doesn't mean you should. You know, it's, it's one of those things where, will a person use this item if you make them a moving billboard for something? And these are all things just to consider. Hey, if it's a a team sport that you— I get it, not everybody wants to have so-and-so's car wash on their, um, right backpack or their whatever. It just kind of— it— different strokes for different folks. But I think at the, the bare minimum, we as suppliers, or Numo as a supplier— I'm going to speak for everyone else— but we should at least create something that looks, um, attractive to people.

Yeah, yeah, beautiful and useful. Absolutely. Jim, what are your thoughts on, on the philosophy that you guys had all over the— did people comment on the, the things you had framed all over the, the house?

Yes. You know, I, I think, I, I think everything Mel said, and I think what the, the— what was framed and what you read sums up our concept far better than I could, right? With the exception of the industry bit. I, you know, I don't think— we're not beholden to the industry. This is what, what we believe. And you commented about what— while Mel and I disagree about many, many things, at our core is exactly what we did in that trade show booth.

Yeah.

And, and Mel says, duh, right? And, and that's kind of where I am on it all. I, I, I have such a hard time with people wanting to understand the why behind behind it. It, you know, and I, I've said it before, right? It's make cool shit. That's, that's the only thing that we as a business are, are required to do is to make compelling products that make good sense, that, that from a competitive standpoint, we're not there trying to have a better salesperson, have a better relationship, be a scratch golfer, be able to win some trip, be able to compete to win a trip to Costa Rica, right? At its core, we're just trying to solve a problem for an end user.

Yeah.

And we need to solve that problem better than everyone else. And I think we do. And anyway, I don't know. Sorry.

Yeah, I know.

I'll add on to that too that Jim is like, Jim, and this happens in terms, he is not a why person. And when I think about like as a child, I was such a why, why mama? Why? You know, here's a person, a homeless person, and whatever. And I'm like, why? Well, most of them don't have a job. Why? Well, this— why? You know, and so sometimes I feel the need to explain some of what we do, and I don't— we don't owe that to anyone. We don't have to tell the industry why we do what we do, or we don't. It's just that this time I knew it was going to be so over the top that when people came in and asked why or told us we were irrational or crazy, I just wanted to be able to point to the wall and be like, so we have an email address that we send our emails to. And the moment we decided to start sending email blasts again, um, which was probably some another irrational thought, but we were like, what? We say this is why a lot, you know, in regards to anything, in regard to anything. This is why, this is why. And So we made our email that we send email blasts from, thisiswhy@numofg.com. And I think it was supposed to be temporary and it got stuck or whatever, but we find ourselves saying that a lot. And I think one of the posters said that, this is why, you know, and we just, I guess, to explain ourselves, even though we don't have to explain ourselves. And Jim and I agree to disagree on some of that by way of, you know, I think if we can help people understand that it might be a little lost on them what we're doing. And they would like to understand it, then I would like to tell them why, if that makes sense.

So I think that what we do is the, the gap between what you would perceive as— I don't want to say— how do I say this the right way? The gap between 95% and where we are is far more vast than the gap between 95% and 90%. And I think our message is so much more nuanced and subtle. Yeah, that I think that's— so my issue that I have with writing it all down and spelling it all out is that, yeah, is that, you know, I— for, for what purpose, right? And, and I, you know, I don't want to get all crazy about all of this, but it's the this concept of, of, of, of I don't understand, I don't, I don't understand it, but I love it. And that, that is what, from my standpoint, you know, Mel and I, we do this, this having to explain everything and having to explain everything. And I think that difficulty we do with our employees all the time, right? Trying to get them aligned with where we're wanting to go. And you can, you can, you can write all of the verbiage that you want at a certain point in time. You have to feel it. Right.

Yeah.

And, and I think that, that, that explanation in my mind oftentimes discounts the power of what the message is. Right. A picture's worth a thousand words. So, so we don't need a thousand words.

You demonstrate it. It's almost as if you, by your booth, you demonstrated your philosophy in a word picture. And in a funny way, it's like it was like an education session on its own. That's what I mean. That is not even to demean it. I hope you don't mean that. I hope you don't take it that way. It was almost like an educational experience for everyone.

Is it not ironic that our trade organizations spend all this money lobbying and don't spend money explaining that concept?

The concept of utility, usefulness, and beautifulness, and the utility of beautiful things, right? And which, which creates a sustainable product, which creates a sustainable industry, which creates a sustainable lifestyle you want to live.

Yeah. It's far more nuanced. It's far more nuanced and far more difficult.

Right.

But I just—

it's far more different. Yeah. Anyway, let me ask this. You know, you guys are— you're preaching to the choir here when you— you— this next thing you had pinned up on the wall. I've often said the laziest question in our business is what's new? And the only correct one is what works. And on the entry to the house, you publish this as well. The setup is meant for you to explore, think, challenge yourself, and to not ask What's new? That's got to be the worst thing you can hear when you're constantly cranking out items all the time, especially the way you're doing it.

I'm totally— and I get it. I'm so hypocritical on that one. I think that I would walk into someone's booth tomorrow and ask what's new. I would get nervous, not know what to say, not remember the person's name who I'm supposed to know the name of or something, not even remember which booth I'm standing in and go, what's new? You know what I mean? Uh, so I get it. And at the same time, you know, people's time is finite, right? Yeah, you get about 20— we used to say you get about 20 seconds in the booth. Well, now we've learned from our little thing you get about 6 or 7 minutes. Um, but there— some people are just looking to— yeah, I know everything about— I think the problem with, yeah, people in NuMo is that you have people who knew— who knows everything about us and all our capabilities and how many thread colors we have and what you can and can't change. And then you have people who go, are y'all new? Who, who is this? Well, I thought Numo made can holders, you know. And we're finally starting to get past that a little bit. And, you know, I saw the other day someone said in the, like, terrible place that I shouldn't hang out on that Facebook group, get in trouble there. But, um, I saw someone say I'd never heard of NuMo until this post, and I was just like, I, I'm glad that she learned of NuMo. And at the same time, I have to ask myself, if you're in this industry right now and you don't know who NuMo is, I think that's a problem. Um, and maybe they only sell apparel, or maybe whatever. Um, but this whole, like, I, I think we have to challenge ourselves in not just finding out what's new that people do, but what's old as hell that people do that you never knew because you weren't paying attention when they weren't as pretty as they were now, or when it wasn't as self-explanatory. Because while we may be pretty and we may have this house going on, you can walk in there and see what's there and remember it all because of how beautiful the house was, but you ain't gonna remember what wasn't there that was in the last booth or whatever. Um, And another thing, like going back to some of the posters that were on the wall, when, when we were kind of shooting back and forth what some of these posters might would say that would hang in the house, how this kind of poster concept, once we framed it into a more— we often start with like meaner, uglier things to say, and then we figure out how to make it presentable, um, honestly, because we're real. And Some of the things, since this is, you know, off the record stuff we're talking about, you know, distributors come to us sometimes and say that they lost this order because of this or that. And there are these moments of me wanting to say like, well, I know it's probably our fault that you didn't know we had this item, but, um, but sometimes you lose customers because maybe you weren't doing the best job or you didn't look better than this other distributor who takes pride in their self-promos, or who does this or this or that. And I think what we were calling for in this booth, outside of like, then to make people realize the function of products in homes if they actually go to live there, was to just ask for better. Yeah, from everyone. Like, it's not my job to change the industry, but I do believe that I want to work in a place that I don't feel is trash. NuMo is not trash. The industry, you know, I don't want to be the person who says I'm a little— let's hear your elevator speech, Bobby. Are you a podcast technology person, or do you work in the promotional products industry? And the, the only way it's going to get any better is to be a part of changing it. And, and whether I change the industry or not, I'm going to make the place that I work at beautiful and something I'm proud of and something I'm proud to be a part of, whether the industry sucks or not.

This goes back to both of you. You have this inherent philosophy in both of you that you're building products and things you want to be proud of yourself personally. And by doing so, that does elevate the industry. But your purpose is not to elevate the industry. Your purpose is actually to build things that you're proud of, to do creative work that you're proud of. And that's so evident in the work that you do. Second thing I want to mention, which, Mel, you do this, Jim, you do this, but every product is a canvas for an opportunity. So there's one artist that says, make subject matter the first thing you see, then stop seeing it, because there's so many possibilities with that particular product. That's why the what's new, what's new question is such a— we get it. It's an easy question to ask. It's a fast question, like you said, because they're out of time. It's an easy language handle for us to grasp because we can't think what to say.

Right.

But it really is about seeing a product that we sell as content, as an opportunity for art. And you guys have built this beautiful experience at the cross-section of art and commerce. Let me ask you, before we go on to any other questions, Jim, was there anything else you wanted to comment on from what we've said before I move on to my next question? I just want to make sure I give us all space to say something.

You know, so I think it's interesting. I was at, I was at the museum with my daughter and, uh, I forget the name, you know, I'm not—

yeah, it was the Dallas one.

It was a Dallas, and I don't, you know, I'm sure you know the artist. I don't. She knows. I mean, she's into all that crap, right? And I am too, whatever. But, but we're sitting there and the security guard, and we're looking at this, this modern— I don't even know what what the type of— anyway, and it's gorgeous. It's this huge large format painting and it's very, very simple and I'm just stricken by it, right? And we're looking there and the security guard starts talking to my daughter and he's like, you could do that. And she could, right? And so we went to the next thing and we're just looking at it and I'm the ugly, coarse, whatever, right? I don't get anything. And he Tells my daughter again, you could do that. And she's like, and she looks at him finally and she says, yeah, but you just have to think of it. And, and I think, and she's, she was like, yeah, and I think that in, in all of this, when I'm saying duh, it's, and I think even down to our products and, and what we do, it is, it is, we want to have the most, the simplest, most easy to understand stuff that just fits, right? You just have to. And anyway, that's, that's my whole, from, from the whole thing. And I think as Mel and I struggle with how we describe what it is that we did and this and that, it's like, yeah, you just have to think of it, right?

And well, and I'll comment on this on Jim's part too, like not Well, it— when I say that some of our motivations are different, there is no doubt that at the end of the day, everybody here that works on my team especially, and Jim, like, yeah, we do want to make good things we are proud of. But at the end of the day, this is a business and we— it's not lost on us that we would also like to make revenue.

Hell yeah. Yeah.

And so, right. And so like, as we sit here and go like, oh yeah, we just make it all pretty and it it— I like doing both of those things. Yeah. Um, and just so everybody knows too, I feel it's an important time to announce that my background is in accounting. And so anyone who out there might be thinking that I've gone to some creative arts school— it was right.

I went to school for accounting. That just blew my mind.

Um, yeah. And so sometimes I think people think like, oh, she's just this naturally talented person. Gosh, I'm that person in high school where if I wasn't studying all night, I was going to fail the test, but somehow still got good grades. The same applies now. Yeah, I am up all night figuring this stuff out. Okay. It is not—

on this point, this is your— Mel, you're getting to something really good that I want you to— I want you to keep talking about this, but I have a question for you that's related to what you just said. So we, so far, we've been talking about creativity and the creative process and how ambiguous some of this is, how it's really hard to define, but you feel it in your gut. It's intuitive. One of the challenges we have when we see an experience like what you built is we think creativity is spontaneous. So we, but But you guys are going to bear with me, but one writer wrote it this way, that spontaneity is this impression, like Jim at the art museum seeing that piece of art. Spontaneity is this impression which the work conveys, but that doesn't mean you can achieve the result by spontaneity. In most cases, it's only a lot of hard fucking work and perspiration and sweat that allows you to arrive at the most satisfying, apparently spontaneous solution. We got to walk into the booth and have this spontaneous experience. —where you thought, my God, look at this piece of art. And whereas you, which is what you're about to get into, Mel, and I have a question about this. Last year in November, I don't know if you remember this, I stayed at your Airbnb in the Bishop Arts area of Dallas. You showed me the plans you were working on for last year's booth. You gave me a sneak peek and it was fascinating. I saw this multi-page spreadsheet. It was some kind of software program. I was blown away by how much work had gone into it. It was very intense. When did you start working on this project for 2020 and what was that process like going from concept to completion?

Um, so did we cover yet that Jim and I are enablers of each other?

And go ahead.

Sometimes we like to see how far we can take a joke, uh, like lobbying back and forth until it kind of becomes a reality. And that didn't come by way of— I remember, I remember my first booth at NUMO, and you know Again, when I came to work at Numo, it was, oh yeah, I can totally sell this stuff. As I was hired as a salesperson, I can totally sell this stuff, I just need to fix some of it first. And Lord knows what that turned out to look like. But like, um, some of, some of these first ones, it was like, oh, we were, we were using what we had already and we were just kind of making it look better. It wasn't coming at any extra, um, expense, or we're not going to talk about money. But, um, I think some of the proof in the pudding was originally showing Jim, oh my gosh, look how much better this can look with using the resources we already have. This isn't— this is, you know, booth number 1, 2, and 3 that we started working on to where I think one of the things Jim said too in my interview or Shortly after I come to work here was that, oh, I don't think we'll ever have— we'll never not do our own booths, which is funny because we do still do our own booths, but by way of needing help with things like labor and this and that, what's become like, um, and, and it took— once we started executing a better plan and what this could look like, it just started compounding on top of each other. And it's, we could do this and we could do this and All of a sudden it grew into this thing of like, yeah, every year it's a contest with ourselves.

Yeah.

Um, and when we start to get back to the original question, um, Jim, feel free to interrupt me if I'm, um, saying bad things. But, um, when we started this year's booth, um, we were gonna just kind of go with a similar format, um, of what we did last year, which what we did last year, you know, the big draw was, dare I say it, but the notebook bar was kind of— and the notebook bar portion of that came at the last minute, um, and we had to figure out how to throw it in there. I mean, yes, we overnighted to the show floor the paper that it took to do that, which any suppliers on this understand what that means and how much paper weighs, and there were 200,000 sheets So anyway, the concept of last year's booth was to have all these individual brands kind of like from our lookbook, these fake brands that were like, here's how our product looks in an ice cream shop, here's how our product looks for a skateboarding brand or whatever, because that had come from being so tight. It's funny, my first booth here, you know, nothing matched and it was kind of just like, here's an example of everything we could do, which kind of make it an eyesore to look at. But then following that, I was like, let's show everything matchy-matchy and in these pretty colors that'll grab people's attention. So great, everybody loves our pretty colors. Now they want to step in the booth and say, that's great, my clients are corporate, right? Okay, good, it comes in red. We grabbed your attention with this pink color or something that people are attracted to, but now they can't figure out how to sell it because they don't realize it comes in 54 colors, or that if it was all gray and black like it was the year before, we'd be boring, right? So it's constantly this juxtaposition of what— so So last year's booth was, we're going to make these individual brands and kind of corner everything off where it's, here's your PR agency, here's your bank, here's your this, here's your that, here, look at how this works in the real world. And which was very successful. People love that. It was fun to watch different Instagrams pop up of, you know, you could tell whose niche, niche, niche, however you say it, markets for what, you know, you've got the, the San Diego people posting all this beer brewery stuff, and then you've got— anyway, so I feel like last year's booth told a really good story for, for what it was.

You created context with these items last year. Would that— that sounds like it was a precursor to this big experience this year, right?

And so as we— this year's booth was just going to be another version of last year's booth that might have been different colors had different types of cutouts and just kind of the same concept. That was the original plan because we had a lot going on. Um, and then we, um, we— I have a friend in the trade show industry that did a house concept, very different concept but similar premise, where, uh, we said Jim Goes let's build a house. And I was like, okay, of course, we'd love to do that, right? Like, and we just start going off on each other about like— and it's kind of like, yeah, and the playroom could have this and this and that, and the— we could have, oh, the bar cart that could have the— our glassware. And we just keep going back and forth.

You're being somewhat asinine about it at this point, right?

At this point, yeah, it's, it's like And then at the end of the conversation, it's like, no, but really, it's like, okay, let's start to wrap our heads around how— and, and so then what becomes let's build a house, as we've already— our booth used to be a 20 by 80, or it was originally a 20 by 50, then we went up to a 20 by 80. You know, we started having all these crafting experiences in the booth and, um, build your own soap and all of that. And so last year, the last two booths have been very hard to finish at any reasonable time. So we're like, you know what, let's go back to the 20 by 50 and really pack a punch in that amount of space and not have to— it'll still look good, it just won't be as much space and we won't be as spread thin over trying to get it put together. Um, so we did just that. We went back down to a 20 by 50 and that was going to be all fine and good until we decided we wanted to build a house on it, um, and started to go, well crap, we don't have enough room. Like, we don't have enough room to build a house that's 20 by 50. And then it's like, well yeah, we do, because we can just build a rooftop deck with a pool and a yoga studio. And at this point it's all still jokes, right? And then we start putting the pen to paper and amateur sketch, and I've got where the pool can go and how, you know, how we're gonna shelter ourselves, like build enough of a pergola, I guess you call it, or whatever, to shelter ourselves from the Kmart lighting that is the trade show lighting so that our twinkle lights can shine. And all of this crazy stuff becomes like— it's almost like you convince yourself of it and you do enough that you're like, well, we can't turn around now. And by the way, this was in October.

Oh my God, October. Yep. Wow.

So to answer the original question, did we start working on the booth long before October and have a plan in place and we're just ready to start executing some of the SketchUp drawings that we had already done? Yes, we absolutely were. We planned in advance, but then we got a better idea. And that is often how it happens. Why we find ourselves working at the last hour is because we got a better idea and we can't sleep at night over it.

Was there, between you two, was there disagreements where you ended up— or you started with joking with each other?

Um, well, yeah, I told Jim how bad that he's out of his mind.

I would say no, there was no disagreement at all once we we put our mind to something, we— it is. And, and again, I come back to, yeah, duh, why would you not do that? Yeah.

And I just knew Jim was going to push back on like the, okay, Mel, let's do the house, but do we really have to have a rooftop deck with a pool? And then I think it's, it's been over these last 5 years that every time we do something, it just gets better and better, that he doesn't— there used to be some things that Jim told me no on. He just doesn't tell me no anymore. And almost to the point where I'm like, Please tell me no, like for my own health. No, it's put the pool up there. Put it. Why would we not have it?

You know, I'm learning from you guys is that a lot of people ask why through the creative process, and you guys ask— always seem to always be asking the question, why not, right?

Why not?

Yes. So someone did ask Jim, like, why would you— another supplier, like, of course, right? You know, and I'm sure it's some of the same things you would like to address on, like, why would you do this? And Jim's answer was, why would we not?

Why would you have this idea and, and this concept of the most beautiful way to show your stuff and, and, and then choose to set up, to use Mark Graham's term, the science fair booth? I mean, I don't— that's it, duh. And, and to your earlier point about it being how how difficult it is. It, it, that comes back. It is incredibly difficult.

And yeah, it's difficult to do a shitty boot camp.

This is 5 years, 6 years of, of building trust and, and, and getting better. You don't, you don't wake up one day and decide you're going to do that, what we did. And then just go do it. It is building on top. And everything we do in our business is the same. If you look at the arc of our product development, it begins with something very crude. And then 3 years down the road, it's holy crap, look at what it is that it looks like now. Right.

And I think that is some of this. It's like you get one shot, you get one shot.

But to your great point that your ecosystem is like this, it's an iterative process altogether that sort of melds. Jim, to your point then on this subject, many folks are shuttering their exhibits. They're choosing to network, they're avoiding the shows, but you've doubled down, like more so, more so probably. This was a significant investment and a growing investment for Numo as each year you seem to raise the standard for yourselves first, um, and, and then everyone else exhibiting, not just in exhibit style but product development as well. So I'm, I'm not going to ask the, our ROI question that's burning atop of everyone's minds, because honestly, I feel like to do so is to demean the hard work that you've done over the past 5 years. It seems as though it's a natural evolution of your entire creative process. When people want to know the ROI question, I think they want it from two angles. Number one, it's a legitimate question about how much is the ROI for booths today, because people are asking that. I had the president of a very large distributor, one of the largest distributors, sit across from me at lunch and say, what are people getting out of these shows? I don't get it. Um, and then on the second hand, you have folks that want to ask the ROI question honestly because they want to dismiss it. They want to disprove or prove that you were wrong, that that vast experience that you built that kept people in the booth 10 times or 20 times longer than they could didn't work.

I think the big question is, is it worth it? Right?

Okay.

Right. Is it worth it? Okay.

So, so, um, the, the, the actual question that one of a supplier asked me, and it wasn't a, it is how can you afford to do this? And my response was, how can I afford not to? What do you mean? So if, so first of all, is it really your comment about networking and this and that? At my core, and I think Melissa agrees with this, our responsibility is to create relationships with our product. It is not to create relationships with people. And, and I— that is, people buy our product. They don't buy the relationship that they have with someone. And, and that bubbles underneath the surface of everything that we do.

I was going to throw in, you know, we were, we were joking earlier about born from our incompetence of we learned a long time ago that salespeople and every state. Yeah, in our experience, again, born from our incompetence, we, you know, we're, we're smart, but we're real dumb. And so thinking about, okay, so we hire a salesperson, right? And they go in and we say, you know, what do you do? How do you, how do you go visit a customer? And so, because I know what a, I know what a sales call looks like if I make it, or Jim like makes it, and it's real, real and great, you know. And he, this person said, well, you know, first of all, I go in, ask him if there's any orders on their desk I could take off. I'm just like, no. Oh Oh no, no, no, that's— see, that's not us. And, and that, that people believe that their relationship with someone saying, can I see what POs are sitting on your desk to decide which ones of them that you can place through us, is not sustainable. It's not scalable. It's not— it, it is not what we want the connection with Numo to We want Numo products to be sold because, you know, sure, we've got some similar products to other people out there, but you, you might not always can get your thread color or your zipper color or whatever makes it different. We want the connection to be with the product. I don't— you know what I want? If somebody— I'm like cilantro, right? You either love me or hate me. There's no in between. Somebody in this industry that is a distributor that hates me has to come buy a product from Numo because their customer has asked for it by name and they have no other option. And that is the beauty of having a relationship with the product person. And, you know, employing a salesperson in every state would cost us far more than our booth, and we wouldn't be able to— when I say control that person, we wouldn't know.

I think that's the real point, right? Is that we spend a lot of money on a trade show booth. We used to attend every ASI trade show. We used to attend the SACS shows, we used to go to expos, we used to do all of these things. And what we have learned is that, is that us making an impact, um, outsize in January in Las Vegas generates the sort of interest in our products that make it very much worth it. And what's ironic about that from a competitive standpoint is that is that those that have the burden of a sales force— I'm not knocking a sales force, it doesn't line up well with what we do, that's not how we're set up— but those that have a sales force look at what we would do as an incremental increase to their budget, right? And we're looking at it from a, it is our budget.

And, and that is our budget, and it's a strength. It's something we're good at that we can capitalize on. We're good at building booths. We are not good at controlling people and understanding who they're taking to lunch or playing golf with that costs us money as well and has no return when that person leaves this place or whatever.

It's print, you know, it, it trade shows may be, may be dying, but somehow people still show up every year, right? And people want to see what it is. The sloppy question, what is new? They want to experience something. And when they show up and see the same exact booth that was set up for the same exact suppliers. It's, it's like, it is so— and it's incredibly difficult, don't get me wrong, but it is so easy to set oneself apart when, you know, it's the same every year.

Where you see money being spent that you can tell something is expensive just by— if you do trade shows, you know how much a hanging sign costs. So then you see a booth that's about out, I mean, a million square feet with a hanging sign for every 20 feet of their booth, and you're going, oh my gosh, they have invested as much in hanging signage as our entire plot on the floor. And so I would ask those people about ROI and like, how does your hanging sign—

I mean, are people finding— are they— are you generating revenue as a result of your hanging signs? All right.

Our question works both ways, right? Works both ways. You guys— Numo has developed the closest to a cult-like following that I have seen in this business that only a handful of people have really achieved. Like, you really are an anomaly. So you've, you've talked about this in this relationship-driven business. You don't have reps in the field, and yet people love Numo. It's as we've— seems like we've got it backwards. Developing on-trend or creating trends with stylistic product plus progressive design capabilities is superior to just cranking out product and hiring people to shill it. Is that— that basically is what you're saying? Yes.

And it's far more difficult to do it that way.

And I think that that is a result. That is the ROI. I mean, that is the— you want a dollar amount of ROI? Don't have it. You want to know what it's like to people to be loyal to you, buy your product, and have a cult-like following? And well, look, I don't know, can you put a value on that?

We've got a few, we've got a few people that sew for us, and our business is such that we actually make everything that we, we, we sell. Not everything, by and large the bulk of it. And, and when you're sitting at looking at what it is that how you want to go to market and how you're going to, uh, be accountable to your stakeholders, your, your vendors, your customers, your employees, right? And, and you sit and you figure what are you gonna go do, right? And, and we have to make things because we're very expensive, because we actually make stuff. We make stuff in North America. We don't— in— and you have to make The products you make have to be compelling enough for people to want them, and then you have to be able to, to communicate what is very different and complicated and difficult about your line. That, that, and so you have to be able to, to, to sell that to someone experientially, right? So that they're right. If, if you have a beautiful booth and you put crap-ass products in it it doesn't work, right? If you have these beautiful products and one of the things that Mel brings to the table that, that she understands so perfectly about our business is the potential of what it is that we make and how do you present that so that someone can see and understand it and believe in it. Right. And, and a salesperson does not get that right. They just don't.

It's as if you built this experience for the end user. What happens with distributors a lot of times is we go to market like a supplier. So a supplier will just vomit new items out in a catalog out to new people, and the distributor will turn around and they'll do the same thing to their market. And that's called spam. Because when a distributor— when a client comes to a distributor, there's a purpose. There's always a purpose for this product. And yet they don't do that translation work, which is what you did. You put the product in context. You showed that it was beautiful. You showed creative design, subtle design. So In many ways, it was like a show that easily could have been done demonstrating to distributors how a show could be done for even for end users to put products in context, to give it purpose, to give it meaning. What advice would you have for distributors working with their end users based on what you learned?

Based on what we've been told as suppliers is that the distributors add the value, right? So why do they need us to—

go ahead, keep going, I won't stop you.

No, it's just that, it's just that we actually understand that you can't do these things alone and that a distributor's mercy— I mean, a distributor is at the mercy of a supplier. So if we're talented in this arena, why shouldn't we? And understanding at the same time that the whole reason a distributor exists is because they're going to go do all that creative part. And so, you know what we say, if we we can just do the creative part too. It's just, that's fine.

It just will get us to the end that much faster. Yeah, it gets to itself faster, right? Right.

And we'll send, no matter where the end user decides if they want this product with this colored stitching or this color zipper, well, it sends them back to us unless they have 30 to 90 days to wait for it to come from China. Um, just because, yeah, we're also an anomaly in that we sew things and make things. And I think there's a lot of things that impact the whole cult-like following for one reason or another. And I think different people, um, would define that reason differently. But the whole— and we are more expensive, and we have to stand behind what makes these things more expensive. And just because Walmart is cheaper than Target does not mean I'm about to go there.

In our, in our case, we have better stuff than other people. The value is there, right? It's, it's the same— it's age-old question: why would someone slap a logo on something cheap. I don't get it. It's your brand, and, and whoever's buying that stuff, it is, it is— why do you— it, it's— I don't know. I don't get it. And as it relates—

and I think when distributors, yes, they see us doing that, they place value on that, be it goodwill, respect, some intangible thing that you can't put a value on, is appreciating it, appreciating what we're doing for them, and And at the same time, it, it, it helps them, you know, we produce imagery and great things that they can reuse. And people— I am behooved by the fact that people are— end users are starting to ask for Numo products by name. And that is— it's like when I used to ask for an American Apparel shirt, right? We're ordering shirts for something. Can we please get American Apparel? And to think that someone is asking for that as an end user, oh, we want the NuMo pen, or we want this, or we want that, that is the goal.

You heard my response. I'm sure you heard all the superlatives, many of the same comments. We love your booth, beautiful, stunning. I told you my response was breathtaking. Again, not because I'm prone to hyperbole, I am, but because I read the philosophy before I walked in. So, it embodied your entire belief. What responses did you get from customers And what about responses from competitors or suppliers and any negative responses?

So I, I love this because it wouldn't be like me to not be somewhat cynical, at least a little bit, in this little chat we're having. And I think I've been pretty positive.

Surprisingly, shockingly positive. Go ahead, Mel.

Pat self on back now. Okay. Do you walk in someone's house and ask how much it costs? Do you walk in someone's house and take stuff out of the refrigerator? Good point. So let's, let's have a little manners conversation here. While many people walked in and breath were taken, taken away, there was a whole nother group of people that wanted to steal things.

Um, I did lounge. I did, I did lounge on your couch for an hour.

I mean, that's just because you're welcome to our home and chill.

Shout out to the girl who looked Jim in the eye and said, uh, it is noon, and opens the refrigerator and proceeds to drink the beer. Um, okay, so there, there is a little bit of a if you give a mouse a cookie concept, and we, we always want to do these great things, and then we're like, why do we do that again? Again, for anyone who knows about the notebooks, um, We have the letter we actually sent to everyone that was nice and tactful, and then we have the one that's hanging in our office in a large format print to remind us of why we will never do something like that again. And we probably will, let's be honest. Like, uh, but between the fistfights that almost happened and having to shut the pin bar down a couple of times to reorganize it— again, this is last year's, right? But So we've learned a little bit about if you give a mouse a cookie. If you offer someone to make a free notebook as a sample in the trinket industry, you better be prepared to get them their free notebook. Okay. And as we should, because we promised it to them. So I'm not, I'm not going to not defend what we should do there. But back to the topic of giving a mouse a cookie, I think the most overwhelming question that my team and myself can hear from someone upon creating something magical and beautiful is, what are you going to do next year? Um, I think it's extremely insensitive. You should be present, as all the Instagram things tell us, or yoga or something. Is that really— please take in the awe of what it is that's around you right now and, and understand and appreciate every single bit of it before you ask me. And by the way, hold my drink, right? Because Challenge accepted. There's nothing, there's nothing I want to do than outdo the booth that I will never outdo. But no, it's just kind of one of those things where I know people are, I just probably another one of those times where they can't think of what to say. But as we've proven every year that we will find something to do next year, and it might be a little different, it might be a little different spin on creativity. Um, but it's just an insensitive question. So to the 20 people listening, not because of your following, Bobby, but because of mine, don't ask me that question. Um, and yeah, be present. Enjoy what it is that was like no other experience around you. It's funny, people— I keep seeing these videos of— that were clearly taken from our rooftop, um, of, you know, saying, oh, we're at the PPAI show, look at it, there's tons of booths. And I'm, I'm thinking Oh my gosh, the worst thing about our booth is the view.

What was that? What was the, what was the positive response that surprised you? Did you have any?

Oh, you know, the ones that it's— and it's the same, it's the same people over and over again that thank us for what we do, that come into the booth. Year before last, um, uh, Danny Rosen from Brand Fuel walks in our booth with tears in his eyes and is like, thank you. And I think that's one of the— when we talk about what we have to do for the industry, right? I think, Jim, that I think about those moments of someone walking in and thanking us for the level that we demand from other people that are going to keep up with us, or whatever the case may be, is seeing that we affected someone personally in that way to, to maybe create loyalty or whatever it is. And having that, like, real true emotion show up of someone being grateful for us. And grateful— it's that moment when you realize, who cares about Christmas with your family or Thanksgiving or any of those things that I just spent bitching about for the last 6 weeks? Not necessarily even for me, but for my team members that miss those moments. And to have no one acknowledge that from the, from the outside, and then have someone walk in, know it took every ounce of our being, and to be grateful for it and to thank us. And there are a lot of those people that that are truly amazed, overwhelmed, grateful, thankful for every bit of it, and realize at what expense, not even dollar-wise, but to our, to our team. You know, we— it's, and it's not easy. And I think, I do think we make it look easy, and there isn't one square inch of that booth that I couldn't turn around in and tell you what the problem was with this and how that turned out to be, which You're like, oh my gosh, you wouldn't believe what this looked like 2 hours ago. And how we get through some of those challenges, and we lose a team member every single time we do it. And we go into it knowing that we're going to lose a team member every time.

Because it's so grueling and intense. And I know we need to be respectful of your time. So let me ask this final question here. What are you going to do next year?

I'm just kidding.

Final question. What advice do you have for all of us as we strive to tell less product-centric stories and more Purpose-driven stories with product. I mean, I love what you said about your relationship with product because those of us that experience the products that we love in our life right now, we have those relationships with product. But you put it in the context of a story and the whole house. I mean, what advice do you have for those of us who want to create these immersive experiences?

Jim, I know you have a disclaimer. Yeah, Jim has a—

I don't know, Mel, do you want to go first?

Well, no, because I think what I was going to say here, like, is kind of the correction. Okay. This is a product-driven story. It is.

That's it. That's the whole message here, right? You know, when you want to use the fidget spinner thing from the— everybody had a fidget spinner, right? I don't— this is like the most— it's the simplest thing in the world. You take a look at what it is that your strengths are as a business. And then you try to figure out how to leverage those and apply them in a way that sets you apart. And in our circumstance, we are a creatively led organization. And from when we are on the floor, our people are constantly trying to figure out how to bastardize a piece of equipment in order to make it work for what it is our purpose needs, right? And, and from those of us that are telling stories, whether it's a distributor or whether it is another supplier or whether it is my, my daughter who's having a lemonade stand, right? You have to look at what it is that you, you do halfway decent and figure out how to leverage that and, and make it apply in a way that people in a commercial environment want. Right? I mean, that's, it's, it's not, it's, and, and for some people that might mean that I've got a salesperson in every zip code in this country. That's a wonderful strength. They need to figure out how to get the fire hose out and shove more stuff through that channel. In our circumstance, it is we make our own crap. How do we figure out how to, from the very beginning, make that line up in a way that carries all the way through to a booth, right?

And you know what's harder than making a beautiful booth is taking custom things and making them start to finish with, you know, most suppliers just have to pull it off the wall and print it. Want to talk about, oh, we cut it wrong. Oh, we did— like, before we can even get it on the press, it's, oh, we pulled the wrong color, but then we got the right color, and then we cut it wrong. These are things that people don't even know that are happening over here. That is just— we have that many more obstacles in our way by way of what— but you you would never even know it. Oh, and I thought— we have a hard time convincing people we make things. They think we pull this stuff.

And from a brand— and from a branding standpoint, Common Skew, like SkewCon and Skew Camp, the, the swag bags from there, I mean, everyone loves everything in there, right? And, and, and Mark and the— and the— and the— your team at Common Skew, you curate that knowing that you have to create something that people will look forward to, love, revere, will use, right? And now, is that a product-driven story or is that a purpose-driven story? You know what I mean? The purpose of what you're doing, you're creating a community, but that product has to line up with what your community is, right? You're not creating— you didn't decide to have a swag bag and born of that swag bag is common skew.

Well, what you did with, what, what you did with product is you also put it in context. So in both those cases, you built beautiful products. Like you said, you have a relationship with product, but then you put it in context that we would understand. And there's the part of the story, in the sense that you, you embraced it better. You understand its context, you understand how you received it, you understand where it lives in its relation to you. That was one of the beautiful subtle things I saw in the house.

So the other day I Googled the definition of design, and I can't remember why I was doing it. It wasn't for this, it was for something else. And I screenshot— another thing popped up, which was the question, what is the purpose of design? And I screenshot it because the answer, it reads, design is the process of intentionally creating something simultaneously considering its objective slash purpose, comma function, economics, socio-cultural factors, and aesthetics. Yeah, when I think about what we designed, it encompasses every angle of that, whether you're looking at the product, the structure, the story, the— it just embodies every bit of, you know, we have in this industry, we have graphic designers which I like to call graphic artists, right? Uh, they can be a graphic designer if they can curate their own, um, if they don't, if they don't need a non-designer to help them fix it. And so you have these, you have designers, right? And you have people that can look at visionaries and look at the big picture and figure out how that is all going to work together and make sense with your, what you're trying to do, and make sense dollar-wise, right? Like, okay, Okay, how, how long did it take us to make that email blast? And is that— do we generate the kind of response that is worth making the email blast that pretty? And by the way, if we can't make it pretty in a reasonable amount of time, then we're not sending it. Yeah. Um, so you, you get stuck in these— people are paying for these booths anyway. I could— to even ship your booth to a show, it's outrageous. To buy the square footage on the floor, it's outrageous. You're already spending the money. Yeah. And sometimes you might not— I don't know, you're already spending the money. Yeah. You can half-ass it or you can whole-ass it, right? We decided to whole-ass it. And we— right, you know, is it worth it?

I don't know.

It's incredibly difficult. And, and the— have you ever seen Moneyball or read Moneyball? There's a scene, there's a scene in it where they're trying to talk to the guy that they want to convert to a first— from a DH to a first baseman or something. And, and, and the character that plays Ron Washington used to be the manager of the Rangers, sitting in in this guy's house and they're like, "Hey, we want to turn you into a first baseman." And he's like, "I've never played that position before." And Billy Bean, who's Brad Pitt, sits there and he says, "Oh, yeah. Ron will teach you. It's a piece of cake." And he looks at Ron Washington, who's like a renowned infield coach, and says, "Is it really easy?" And he looks at him and he says, "It's incredibly difficult." And so, that is what But what— in looking at all of that, and, and I guess from a purpose-driven standpoint, if you're not trying to do those things that line up well, that, that are incredibly difficult, someone else is going to do that. This is— I mean, I love to tell— I tell my grandma, and I tell— I'm a communist, I'm a communist, I'm a socialist, right? And, and the, the, the reality is I'm a capitalist pig, and, and so is Mel, and we are trying to figure out how to to eke out and scratch out every possible advantage that we can. And if we're not doing that in this world of consolidation where everybody's buying everybody and the coolest independent suppliers are being bought up, and the same can be said for independent distributors, and it's just turning into this homogenized thing, we have to scratch and pull and do everything far more— the absolute difficult in order to sustain ourselves. And I would say that, that purpose. If, if as a distributor you're not doing the same thing— when I think of distributors that I admire, I look at what it is that they're doing, and it looks incredibly easy, and it is incredibly difficult.

And if we're going to go down like Blockbuster, it's going to be— or we're not going to have a Blockbuster story, it's going to be the Titanic, and we're going to play all the way down, and, and we're going to look good doing it, and we're not even going to like like, yeah, just, we're gonna accept it and know that we literally died trying. And one thing I want to close with too is this whole, as consumers, when you buy things, you know, I don't want to say Tide or, you know, very kind of how you choose your laundry detergent, that's pretty basic, but I don't know, let's say you're on the wine aisle, and you're gonna— wine's not a good example either because I don't want people to judge me for picking wine off the labels. But makeup, makeup is a great one. Neither of you are going to be able to relate to this, but when you're at Ulta or Sephora or wherever and you're really just— you want to try a new face wash, or you want to try— you, you narrow it down to about 4 that you like what they say they're gonna do or whatever, and then those of us that place value on pretty things, which should— A, should be everybody in this industry. Absolutely. You're gonna narrow it down to packaging or what's pretty or what looks the best. Sometimes it's the only sole way you can make a decision, and I know that's how I make my decisions sometimes. Yeah. Which, it's like, some— when it's not money-based or it's not that, you know, all these face washes cost the same, or who cares, I'll pay $5 more for the prettier one, or whatever the case may be. If we aren't viewing things like that in an industry that is marketing and design driven, you're doing it wrong. Yeah, you are doing it wrong.

Great point, great point. Amen, guys.

That's a great way to end. Thank you for your time. I know you're trying to ship another booth today. You've got so much going on. You squeeze this in. Uh, thank you guys so much. You already know this, we respect the hell out of you. We loved visiting the factory, um, and it's just Nothing but respect for you guys. Thanks, Bobby. 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.comonsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.

Mm-hmm.