Episode 184: A New Renaissance

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.

270,000 pets were adopted from rescue groups in 2020, 36,000 more pets than in 2019. Now, why am I starting with that stat? Hang on for just a second. Divorce rates declined by 22% during the pandemic. Sales of yeast for baking doubled in 2020. Home sales soared to levels not seen since 2007. 2006, we drove 430 billion fewer miles. And if you were in the leisurewear business in 2020, as well as many other types of businesses, it was a good year. When you look at the massive changes that have occurred in our society and in our industry over the past 12 to 15 months, you can look at it through two lenses: the net negative impact or the net positive. Without question, it was a harrowing and difficult time for everyone. In fact, a recent study by Pew Research respondents claimed it was net negative which is no surprise given the calamity and heartbreak the pandemic caused. But there were positive changes. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at Commonsku. And today, Mark Graham, Commonsku's Chief Branding Officer and President, and I explore what's changed in how we work, live, and sell. And more importantly, we chat about how we need to be cognizant of taking the positive gains and purposefully using them in our business moving forward. Finally, we talk about the possibility of us Helding in a new renaissance. Before we get to that chat, 3 events I want to share with you. On June 25th at 2 PM ET, we're hosting a webinar on Mastering the Art of Creative Kitting featuring our friend Stephen Baer with S&S, Lee Fine with Juice Marketing, Yvonne Lingezeman with Monarch. On May 26th, join us for our monthly community meetup where we'll take a live interview, mash that together with a working lab with your peers. This time we're joined by Lou and Seth with CoolPerks. And some really big news we announced this week. SKUCon 2022 is back live and in person. Mark your calendars for January 9th. More details to come. You can find all of our events at commonsku.com/events. This episode is brought to you by Commonsku, the work from anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more or to begin your free trial now, visit commonsku.com. Now here's my chat with Mark.

I'm curious what's changed with you past 12 months when you look at what's happened.

I can answer that question through a number of different lenses, but I think I'd start off with the personal, maybe my— yeah, the way that I show up as a as a husband, as a parent, as a member of my community, as a colleague, I suppose, at work. I think that this last 12 months have made me more patient and have given me maybe more perspective on things that I might have, where I would have lacked the perspective from before. And here's kind of what I mean by that. If you think about pre-pandemic, we lived in a go, go, go, everything's an opportunity. There's not enough hours in a day. We're growing this company, which, you know, pre-pandemic, the world was our oyster, right? In terms of the way that the ways that we were going to market the things that we were developing, the customers that we were bringing on board, there was not a moment to waste. And when you're entrepreneurial, you think about my job description for the last 20-plus years as an entrepreneur, it has always been a race against some kind of clock, something that I'm racing against. And I feel like that's always created an environment where it's been, where sometimes I'll lose perspective or that I can be impatient with certain kinds of people or certain kinds of outcomes. And for the most part, I would say that both of those things have been generally pretty good for me because they've acted as an internal compass, so to speak. But I think about the last 12 months and it really has been the year anniversary of when we closed the office or when we temporarily closed the office and sent everyone home. That there's been a lot more time where I've just sat and just reflected on what's been going on. At home with the crazy situation with our kids and them basically having to learn from, from home outside of school for the better part of the year, right, to us having to work from home. I just, I think it's, it's a lot. It's forced me to think about what, what we have and how the advantages that we have. And, and I think that that has made me a more calm more patient person with more perspective. And I'm really excited about this new power that I've, I wouldn't say mastered by any stretch, but maybe, maybe worked on, maybe developed it in little micro moments. Think about that power as we start to return to normalcy. And I think about how that new perspective will, will help me. So I'm actually quite grateful. And certainly it's been against a backdrop of a lot of of misery and bad things, but I'm more prone to look on the bright side. How about you, Bobby? How would you look at it?

I was already working from home before this. I was already used to that cycle. What happened though was that we were all suddenly grounded. So my world did change. Some might say it didn't change as much as others, and it didn't, but it did change. I think what probably changed the most was something very similar to what you're saying. It's in my head. I didn't let things rest. I didn't do what you're talking about. And so when you, when you look at some writers like Wendell Berry or other writers who talk about the land and tilling the soil, that you can actually destroy the land if you just, if you just cultivate, cultivate, cultivate, cultivate without resting. And so the whole idea of a Sabbath rest for a Sunday or a Sabbath rest, there's this idea in land management that every I forget what the years are, but every 7 years or something like that, you must let the soil rest. And so what's interesting is we didn't rest, we kept working. But what happened, I think, because you didn't have all this other extracurricular activity going on, you didn't have the distractions of travel, you didn't have the distractions of having to be somewhere all the time, you were forced, whether you liked it or not, into your own Sabbath rest in your head. And so I think the distinction for me was Do you take advantage of that time and be okay with it? Or do you make it, you know, in some ways you could say that the quietude, the solitude, and the lack of connecting with others trots out all our neurosis out in the middle so that everybody can see it or so that you have to deal with it. And so in many ways, I was forced to calm that turbulent center in my head. I think a lot of people think that I'm a calm person. I'm not inside. And it forced me to sort of, you know, it it forced me to really do that on a regular basis. And you could almost say that for the first time over the past 12 months, I think I achieved more of a peacefulness due to the lack of the extraneous activity and the noise. I think creativity opened up more because I wasn't providing some artificial salve on areas of my head and mind that I normally would before. Does that make any sense?

It does. And it sounds to me like something that I think we've all heard in the past is how constraints are often the best gift to a creative, right? And say like any or most things in the world, whether it's an artistic pursuit or something in the world of business or science or whatever the case may be, most oftentimes the greatest amounts of innovation and creativity are born from constraint, right? And yeah, we would often talk about this, and Catherine and I would talk about this, and as though we were running the business to some extent with our hands tied behind our back because we couldn't hop on a plane, we couldn't have an in-person event, we couldn't go and meet a customer in person, all the things that we were accustomed to. We couldn't meet with our team in person, things that we were accustomed to if we needed to motivate people or make sure that people were culturally aligned or whatever the case was. And we were walking around literally with two hands tied behind her back. And over time, you start to think about things in a different way when your hands are tied behind your back. And the thing was interesting is that, and I don't think this has ever happened in our lifetime, everyone else's hands were tied behind their back as well. So, right. So, so the entire playing field was now equal, but the game had entirely changed. And so now everyone was dealing with these same set of constraints. And some people, and we've seen this not only in the software space in the promotional products industry, but you see it in the distributor space in the promotional products industry. You and I spoke about this on a podcast about the restaurant industry months and months ago about how some restaurants are thriving and others weren't. And I just think for me, as much as I want this to end quickly for the benefit of the world and society, and I never want to see it happen again. I do look at this very unique time with our hands tied behind our back, a little, you know, figuratively, as being one of the greatest gifts to our business that we've ever had in our 10-year history. Yeah, it's a funny, funny way of putting it, but I, but I really sincerely mean it.

I agree with you 100%. There's about that point, creativity, you know, fuels constraints. It's this compression around around these constraints that force this creative. And you and I learn from a lot of other disciplines. So we learn from artists, we learn from directors. And I was watching a film, very controversial film series on Netflix, what happened during season 2, and the name is escaping me, but the director had to stop filming in the middle of COVID And what happened was he decided they would do a backstory on 2 of the characters so that they would not put their entire film crew at risk. And I happened to catch this episode and it was just 2 characters in a cafe, and they must have filmed it with like 6 people or 8 people. And it was one of the most beautiful episodes I had ever seen. And I was really moved by it. Then I went and saw the normal series and I wasn't taken by it at all. And here, yeah. And it was really cool. The other thing is there's another film, same director, but there's an actress who talked about this. They, it was the film Malcolm and Marie, and they shot it in 14 days with a 22-person crew. And again, they would not have done that if there had not been this compression around the constraints around what's happened. So it's kind of an interesting lens to look through what your year in the past 12 months, what constraints did this create for you personally? And how did that, how did that make you better?

Yep, absolutely. I know you probably would not have seen it or probably let alone even heard of the Michael Jordan documentary that came out, you know, a few months ago. But apparently the last 2 or 3 episodes was recorded during COVID So they had to edit it and splice all the copy and everything. And it was amazing how those episodes came together. And some people will say that those are actually the best episodes. I know they're the final episodes, but it was a really interesting story as to how they had to cobble the whole thing together.

You know, when, when midstream they were cut off with COVID Yeah, well, look at, look at what happened with doctor's office suddenly couldn't see patients. And guess what? We're doing video calls now. I don't— there's no reason for me to ever have to go to my doctor unless I have something physical he has to check out, right? Some of these calls that took us both, that took him, you know, 30, 45 minutes is taking 10 minutes. And I don't have to drive 30 minutes across town to see the doctor that I, you know, want to go to. Groceries. I, you know, I— why do I ever need to step inside a grocery store again? I will. And I do. But there's another— there's so much of those constraints that kind of happened around this. On documentaries, Mark, and I'll let it go at this, but this weekend I was watching Coda with Sakamoto, the musician, and it's a beautiful documentary. And he talked about when they were filming The Last Emperor, the director called him up and said, we need music, we need it in a week. And he produced 45 orchestral arrangements for The Last Emperor soundtrack in a week's time. He said he couldn't do it again, probably. But I mean, there again, this compression around creativity and the constraints that it creates. But we saw this all around us happen with restaurants when they introduced delivery services. There's the, the nice, elegant restaurant that you guys order from the service and what they did around that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's amazing. It is amazing for sure. And I think if you're looking at the world with a glass half full, you'll see all of these incredible innovations that were born out of constraints, uh, let's be honest, out of desperation, I think in a lot of cases, right? Whether you were in the promo business or you were in other business, it's either you're going to survive or you're not going to survive. And I was, I was reflecting on this with Catherine the other day that we were having, we, we have these date nights every 2 weeks or so where we'll go and we'll get dressed up, we'll go into our dining room and we'll order a nice meal, pickup meal. That never existed before. Because before, if you wanted to go to a nice meal, you had to go out to the restaurant, which is great, but then you have to get a babysitter and you have to worry about, you know, getting a taxi and blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. And let alone, it's also quite expensive. And we were thinking that now the restaurants have introduced this new category that, in my view, will probably stay because it opens up this whole other market for them, right? Like, yes, people are going to want to go back and eat, and enjoy that experience. And I think it'll be actually really hard to get a restaurant reservation for at least the next 6 to 12 months.

Yeah.

But if now restaurants can, can activate this, this new kind of customer through a takeout and delivery experience that's not necessarily cheap, mind you, and deliver this at-home experience, and that can unlock all sorts of additional revenue, I think that that's a great thing. I think that's a great thing.

And I hope, and I hope that they stick with it. Yeah. You know, this word has been thrown around a lot. And Jamie used it recently with me. I used it recently in an article. Zeitgeist, what's happening in the culture at a time. So when you look at what's happening to us in particular, and then you pan back and look at what's happened in our culture, it's astounding what's happened. You, you use the word Renaissance, and I think that's exactly right because after the plague, you know, we're talking about millions of people and pain and misery. And through that, not because of it, I have to, you know, you have to handle this delicately, but out of that came some innovations that had to do with dealing with the plague. So you had labor changes, you had medicine, and the way they approached medicine changed. And some, some argued that you would not have had, or at least you had the Italian Renaissance wouldn't have happened without it. Or a better, lighter way to say that is probably there were aftershocks from the plague that created this Renaissance and heralded in this new era. And in many ways A lot of us had to do simple things like I mentioned about the doctors and the grocery. A lot of us learned how to cook. A lot of us learned how to do different skills. A lot of us took up new creative pursuits. We took up language learning, all types of things. And you mentioned the word Renaissance to me, and I thought, you know, that's right. We could be— it's— you never know when you're in the middle of it. You can only know when you pan back and look back at the outside. But we could very well be in the middle of one of those.

So, Bobby, I always love having these conversations with you. They're quite wide-ranging. But I know you're a big book guy, and it's hard to impress you, but I just finished I just finished this book here written by the historian Margaret McMillan. It's called War: How Conflict Shaped Us. It's a very interesting read. She's a fantastic author. And one of the points of the book, because she takes a very sort of a bit of a divided view on the impact and legacy of war. Obviously, lots of it is really terrible, but she also makes the observation that in a lot of wars, whether it was the First World War or Second World War, the Civil War, whatever the case may be, that a tremendous amount of innovation came out of the war. You think about women's suffrage rights. You think about a lot of technology advances. You think about evolution in government and yes, in science and technology. So it's a rather unusual route to innovation. And as I say, I don't know that anyone's necessarily advocating to go through that door. But you mentioned the plague. I then likened it to this book that I just finished. You think about what we've been through. We've honestly been through a war, a version of that, for the last 12 months. And you think about what's come out of this. That to me is exciting. Maybe that's the silver lining out of all of this.

Well, and so on that point, when you think of war and what's happened in terms of the changes in technology and medicine and all the advances that happen because of that, Look at what's happened with businesses that were suddenly forced to go home. It's not a comparison to war. What it is is more, look at what happened to businesses in general. Before 2020, 3% of the US labor force worked remotely. Now it's 42%, and that change is here to stay. And many are predicting that by 2025, after COVID, after the pandemic, and after vaccination has penetrated the society and people are back, all back safely to work, that we'll still have 80% of B2B working from home. And we've seen this with tech companies for sure. I was reading an article where the Quora, the online question and answer, I don't know what you call their site, but they're an interesting company. They're about 20 to 30 million. They've got 200 to 300 employees. And he had this really great letter about what's changed in business culture in general, and they are going to be a remote-first culture. We saw Shopify bring this up, um, Shopify CEO bring this up as well early on in the pandemic where he talked about Shopify will basically be working remote for the most part. But you're seeing this shift now to not just a part-time work remote culture but a remote-first swing happening with businesses. And the implications around that— and the Quora CEO talked about this— look at what can happen in culture and business. So for example, a lot of us take jobs and we all move to— the best jobs are supposedly in LA or New York or in Toronto. That's where all the great tech jobs are, right? Silicon Valley. Well, if geography no longer matters, then what's going to happen to these city-states, these cities and these organizations that that's why you move there? First off, you come, you go there second for culture. Very well could be that cities now put culture and the well-being of living well first, as opposed to attracting companies into their place. Because it was at the Quora CEO said, basically, our headquarters is now in the cloud. And I thought that was a great statement. Yeah. And what that can do to the future of work, to the future of where we choose to work. In a small example, I was talking to my daughter who's always wanted to move to Florida, who is going to school. For design. And she mentioned, I want to work for a company that I'll be able to transfer. And I said, you realize that's, that's not even a thing anymore, that you can actually go move to Florida and work for many, many companies that you're choosing.

Yep.

Because of this new opportunity, the opportunities that are being created because of this are astounding.

Yep. No, I absolutely. And I think that that's, that's an amazing opportunity for us as employers in the promotional industry where we can hire top talent that is not necessarily limited to a specific geography.

Right.

And then I also think that you think about our ability as an industry to sell to clients who are outside of your local geography. Yeah, exactly. Is that much greater now to be clear. And I'm going to give the promotional products industry a ton of credit that well before COVID we were a fantastic, very ahead of our time industry when it came to distributed workforces. The ability to have people working across the country or even the world, and also the ability to sell to customers outside your local area. Like I remember back in my distributor days at Right Sleeve, even though we had a lot of customers in Toronto, we had a sizable customer base that was in the US as well as across Canada. And we weren't a quote unquote national distributor. Like a Staples or one of the larger distributors that might have said, hey, I do business in all sorts of different places because we've got offices across the country. And I always felt that it was relatively easy for us to go and build a relationship with someone in another market and sell to them. But I think now it's that, that phenomenon has been further accelerated. And I think that this is a gift. It's a gift for our industry.

Yeah. And speaking of our industry, those changes have been— you've got major areas where we've seen change. You've seen change obviously on the trade show front. We've seen change in the way that we're handling, like you said, colleagues and employees and workers. And then we've also seen change on the education front, which is kind of what jump-started this whole conversation. Because when you talk about the Renaissance and what happened in the Renaissance and Gutenberg's press and how that disseminated throughout the, the world that changed the game. That's what I mean by we could be in the incremental phases of Renaissance right now. We just don't realize it. They certainly wouldn't have said back then that we're in the middle of a Renaissance, although I'm sure the energy around it was the, was that case. But to our industry's point, we talk about education, Mark. You and I both have attended world-class event educational events online. And you could, for example, one example is You didn't have to go to Sundance to see the Sundance Film Festival this year. You can see the world's best filmmakers right at the comfort of your own, your own desk for free.

Yep. Yeah, it's amazing.

And what that does to a generation of filmmakers moving forward who get to see that and expand on that and learn from that is astounding. And so we've seen this happen with our industry, just with things like SKUCon and, and what happened with virtual events. In that case?

I think it's such a fascinating thing because on one hand, there's so many benefits and yet it also sucks on the other end. And what I'm hopeful for, and I made this comment back in the restaurant thing, what I'm hopeful in the world of education and conferences and get-togethers is that we get the best of both worlds going forward. So you think, so right now Sundance is a great example. They could not host this in person because of COVID and they pivoted and they offered this virtual experience. I'm sure there were probably lots of people that were like, I miss being at Sundance, I miss the parties, I miss being able to hang out and see the filmmaker in person. That's an incredible experience. But the reality is that that's actually a, it's a somewhat exclusionary slash elitist experience because they only have a finite number of tickets. The, the finite number of tickets are very expensive. Then you have travel, then you have the time out of the office. Yeah. And even if you could afford all that, there's probably some people who would feel intimidated to go because they're like, oh, well, I hang out with such and such people. I love film, but I'd feel intimidated to hang out with the people in that industry. Yeah. I'd love to, you know, attend on my couch. And so I feel like if we can emerge from this and, and Sundance can go back to doing its in-person thing and offering that elevated experience for a finite group of people, but at the same time democratize that experience and bring it out to the regular people like you and me that can go and hang out. I saw a Coltrane documentary. It was 25 minutes. I didn't have time to see anything else, but I was really excited to see that. And I was like, man, I would have never come across that. And I spent 25 minutes. It cost me nothing. And it it impacted my day in such a way that was so positive. And I think, I hope that I can have that experience again. And that applies to tech conferences. It certainly applies to SKUCON and all the things that we were able to do in the world of virtual events where we were able to offer, I think, pretty good quality education for a fraction of the cost for way more people, democratize the whole experience. And I look at that and say, when we go back to normal, why would you ever want to get rid of that? Why would you ever want to get rid of those great economics, the great democratization, the ability to impact way more people? And that's not saying that you ever want to turn your back on in-person, but how can we create this hybrid model? I know that I've talked about it till I was blue in the face before, but what an extraordinary opportunity.

Yeah, and I love the word democratization because it's absolutely true. When you go to these shows, you have to make a financial decision on who gets to go, who doesn't get to go. Often you make the decision as a distributor of customer-facing people who are working in that, that area, but you've got potential people that have a lot of potential. You can't afford to send everybody, but suddenly everybody could afford to go to these events, to these shows, because they were virtual. And so I'm actually one of those that's not missing I know that many think I'm a misanthrope and a hermit, but— and I am not a misanthrope, but I am a hermit. But I am not one of those that misses that.

I think there was such—

so much missing in that world that we had in terms of potential. And I think we— I think because we were forced, 100% of us were forced to suddenly think of new and innovative ways to educate, learn, inspire our colleagues. And inspire our employees. I think because of that, we've come through that a lot better. And I'm one that is not really wringing my hand over the fact that we're not wasting a lot of time, hours, and money on a single moment when we can actually have the opportunity to create many moments throughout the year. So I think it's just that, like you said, that matter of perspective and that shift in your, the lens. You know, it depends on the lens you're looking through. Absolutely. Mark, I also, I'm curious about this too. I have found that what most of us, and I just did it too, most of us see the past 12 months through our own bias. So if we were more energized and fueled by being around people, it could have been a very debilitating 12 months. If you weren't, then you have your own bias, like I just said, where you didn't really miss out on a lot. In fact, things got a lot better. And frankly, for an introvert, The world actually got noisier and more crowded for those of us introverts because we had the world all to ourselves on our quiet little lonesome while people went out. And suddenly now everybody's Zoom calling and wanting to be in touch. So it's such an interesting world that we've had over the past 12 months. But in business in general, I think what we are seeing, particularly with the tech companies, you saw the recent report from— is it Bessemer? Am I pronouncing that wrong? What's the cloud report?

Yeah, yeah. The venture capital company Bessemer.

Yeah. Yeah, and you look at their state of cloud computing and what's happened. And one of the other studies that we saw early on was that within 3 months of the pandemic, we saw e-commerce rise a 10-year jump in e-commerce in 3 months' time. And then what's happening beneath the surface? I love what Shopify CEO said about where we're at right now. He said something like the tools that we have right now for remote work are the best we got. And he said, here's the interesting thing. This is, this is baseline for us moving moving forward. And you think about the tools that we have with Zoom and the fact that you and I can connect and our whole team connect, and we've got Zoom and Slack and all these tools that actually help us stay connected. If this is just the baseline and everything's getting better from here, that's another signal that we're probably heading into a Renaissance.

Yeah, absolutely. And we'll look back in 5 years and we're gonna— we'll laugh that these are the tools. Right, right. We'll look at this and say, oh my goodness, This is what an unbelievable situation. You know what I think is also interesting, Bobby, and I know we're gonna talk about this in another podcast, is this interesting disconnect that you see in e-commerce between what you're seeing in the Shopify end of the spectrum, the Shopify, the Amazon end of the spectrum, largely B2C, right? Where the CEOs of those respective companies would say things like the pandemic has advanced e-commerce by 10 years. In, in one year, it's been advanced in 10 years in terms of the adoption, in terms of the volume, in terms of the expectation, all that kind of stuff, right? And as a result, that's been a very exciting space. And you've seen in the public markets, those e-commerce companies, their stock valuations have gone up exponentially. You don't see that mapping to the promotional products industry in the same way. And what I mean by that is I'm citing Promo Marketing, I believe just came out with an article about 4imprint. 4imprint, of course, is the kind of bellwether for e-commerce sales in the promotional products industry. And since they're a publicly traded company, their financials are available for everyone to see. And their sales were off considerably. And I think that their profit was down by 96%. And I'm not overly surprised with those, with those numbers because I can understand how the buyer might be looking to purchase promotional products online, but it feels absolutely in stark contrast to what you're seeing at the Shopify and Amazon level. Why the disconnect?

Yeah, I don't know. That's a really good question. We've talked about this before in our model. The complexity around what we do, the customization around what we do, not just custom products, but the custom consulting that we do is a big part of what we saw the industry, I think, over the 12 months, past 12 months have gotten better at consultative selling. We've thrown that word around for decades. And I think what happened because of the constraints of creativity and compression, a lot of folks, a lot of us got better at consulting with our customers. We talk about the elevation of swag that's happened, not just over the 12 months, we've seen this rise, but we've also seen I think the reputation, Swag, and what it can do, because suddenly we're shipping these things into homes and we're making an impact on people and where they live. We're creating connection in our disconnected world between employers and their employees. And then you look at what's happened for Imprint. I think the disconnect might be that you have over here the model that's highly consultative, that's highly boutique, that's highly customized, that might have created an entirely different experience. An entirely different type of engagement with that kind of customer when they needed it the most. That's my best guess at what's happened there. But we've talked about this transactional selling disappearing for quite a while, and I think it's probably what they felt was a large percentage, not just the economy. Of course, the economy factors into that major in a big way, but I also think transactional selling in general took a hit. So in one way you could look at it is that 4imprints numbers show the hit that every distributor took to some degree for transactional sales. But those sales where you suddenly dug in with a client and you actually got into purpose-driven selling expanded and those opportunities actually got larger.

Yeah. Well, again, going back to the comment about having your hands tied behind your back, you know, if you're a salesperson and you're an account person and sure, you may have some technology to streamline the experience with your end client, but at the end of the day, you're working with your brain and your creativity and your ability to reach out to that client. And in many ways, it was almost as though the creative salesperson's moment to shine, right? Because for so many years, there's been this discussion about how as consultative as you are, that doesn't matter in the face of the 4imprint juggernaut or the Discount Mugs juggernaut. And when I say that, I'm not referring to those companies in a negative light. That's just It was, it was so clearly a massive focus for our industry. Look how fast these companies were growing. Look how fast the transactional side of our industry was, was growing. The creative salesperson is no longer needed. And I kind of love that that model was proven wrong to some extent. Now, as we bounce back, I think as the economy bounces back, as the industry grows, I think that you'll see Certainly the transactional side will bounce back. These companies are not going anywhere, and I think they'll continue to thrive, but I think they'll continue to thrive as well as the creative consultative side will thrive. I don't think it's a binary thing where it's okay, for imprint is now going to gather some steam in 2021, 2022, and goodbye agency creative little guy distributor. I think you're going to see an elevation in both. Because the technology stack has always been there for the 4 Imprints of the world because they've spent aggressively on those infrastructures. But the technology ecosystem has become so much more elevated and democratized to some extent for everyone else. And yeah, and that to me spells opportunity.

Yeah. And on that note, Gartner produced a number of studies around the B2B buying experience. And what they found was suddenly 90% of the world through the B2B lens is working from home, working remote. Suddenly salespeople are selling through digital tools. What they discovered was that the businesses themselves that are selling said that their sales force was two-thirds— like two-thirds of the businesses that reported said they were more effective selling through the digital channels in a consultative way like this than they were face-to-face. And so the predictions now are that 80% 80% of B2B buying will have to have some kind of digital engagement component built in. 80%. That's— another way to look at that is that 80% of our buying is going to happen in a digital experience. That doesn't mean that salespeople aren't going to be needed. It's just a different part of the engagement process because you and I talk about— you sent me an article on experience commerce, which we think is a great way to shape the B2C conversation, but engagement commerce is a great way to to shape the B2B conversation because you have to have this robust— and we're technology people, so it's going to sound self-serving— but you do have to have this robust technology now behind all of this, as well as the consultative aspect. And what's interesting is that the numbers are proving out.

For sure. And so I'm going to cite one example that I've seen within the Commonsku ecosystem. So, and it has everything to do with supplier sales to distributors in terms of how suppliers get products to market. So, and you and I both know this from our past distributor backgrounds, that in the old days or pre-pandemic, while we were practicing our craft as distributors, the ways that the best way for a supplier to get their product to market, to Robin or to right sleeve, was for them to book an appointment and come in, press the flesh, bring their product, and do a— in some cases they would do just show up and throw up. And in other cases, to their credit, they would, they would do a very creative consultative conversation.

Right. Right.

But the common factor there is that they all came in, they met with us, they looked us in the eye and they showed us the product. We were able to touch and feel. Those were always the suppliers that got the lion's share of our sales. All the other small, smaller suppliers who didn't call on us in person, they'd get little bits, right? And not because we were trying to exclude them, it's just because we didn't have the relationships there. We didn't know their product line. We couldn't touch and feel them. Maybe there was a trust factor there. So in the last 12 months, and I think about just one data point with SKU Talks, the, the opportunity for suppliers to digitally connect live, and then there's also the recorded videos with all of the distributors on the Commsky platform. In many cases, this is the only opportunity that these distributors have had to learn about Gold Star or to learn about some new product that hit or Logo JoJo or Sandlot Goods or whatever the case may be. And the reality is that in 20 minutes, these suppliers have been able to educate, inspire, and connect with a large distributor audience. And the economics of that are just astounding for both sides. And I think that if that can be here to stay, I'm not giving up on the salesperson meeting face to face, but if that experience can stay, that's a great example of how to use technology to inspire your customers through product education. And it's an incredible model.

I think if there's a takeaway, Marc, for me personally, and maybe we can all apply this to our businesses and our lives, is as we step back into the world, you know, the We're starting to see more and more vaccinations. I'm really shocked at the number of people that are telling me they're getting vaccinated now. So that proliferation, I think Biden said by the end of May is when we'll have a large percentage of the US vaccinated. So you can see on the horizon now this shift happening. Probably a takeaway for me is not to let go of these lessons learned and think in my head that we're going to return back to normal. I actually have embraced, like many of us have, a lot of the changes that that happened because of the pandemic. And so I guess it's a note to self to be sure that I embrace the best changes of this and also accelerate those changes somehow. You know, we think about engagement commerce in our businesses. This would beg the question, if you and I were still distributors, then how is my team going to sell going forward? How are we going to interact going forward? Just like businesses right now are trying to decide whether to go back into the office or not. It's that binary thinking, I think, that should be a part of our past because now we have far more options than we used to have.

Think about pre-pandemic, how many distributors would have suggested a Zoom call with their client? Right, right, right. Maybe if it was a webinar, like, hey, Distributor X is going to be doing a trends webinar, maybe. But, but think of, hey Bobby, you're, you're my customer and we're both in the same city. Do you want to have a Zoom call or a video call to talk about your next latest and greatest? The answer would be no, I'll come down and see you. And yeah, no, you're weird. Maybe argue, hey, if I see you in person, I'll get the sale. But at the end of the day, that means I've got to drive down to your office, I got to pay for parking, I've got to go up, I've got to do the small talk with you because, you know, you feel that you have to give me an hour, not 20 minutes, because I drove all the way down here.

Yeah.

And And I think there'll be a lot more of, hey, happy to meet with you in person, or do you just want to set up a quick Zoom call right now where we can go through some of the products? Like, hey, here's my one product right here. This is great. And then you gauge the supply or their interest. And now maybe cut down the in-person to maybe once a quarter. So whereas before, a really good client, maybe you're seeing them every 2, 3 weeks in person. Now that's cut down to once a quarter where that's more of an experience, right? It's either like a great dinner, it's some entertainment, maybe it's some kind of value-added experience as opposed to like, hey, just wanted to drop by and show you the latest polo shirt, right? Like, yeah, that's not a good use of either person's time. So that, that's just another tool. I don't think you and I are really sharing anything that's rocket science per se, but this is, this is an absolute superpower for our industry, for those people that have hung on to be able to utilize some of these additional tools to be able to advance sales with now a customer base that is also so much— these technologies have been proven to the end client. Most of them probably love these technologies because of the way it saves time. And then of course, they're prepared to spend the in-person experience on those moments that really matter.

Yeah, I think what you're pointing out, we can, we can end on this, is that the sanctity of the in-person conversation has to be preserved moving forward. How can we make those in-person connections special? How do we not just go back to the way that we were doing things before? And then how do we remove more of that transactional stuff that could be happening quickly through these kinds of channels here? But that whole question of moving forward, how do we make this in-person make the experience incredibly special is, I think, a great question.

Yeah, absolutely. I think in closing, haven't we been talking as a society or maybe more focused as an industry, delegate the things that are low value added, right? This is not the first time anyone has talked about this. We've been talking about this right from the moment that I started in this industry as a salesperson. Delegate the things that are getting in your way that are low value tasks so you can focus on the higher value added activities. So whether that's you outsourcing to someone or you delegating to a colleague using technology. And now I think that we've seen this, it's just reached a whole new level. And it's exciting. We've got these new superpowers and I can't wait to see what the next 12 months have to do. I agree. The impact it'll have. So anyways, I'm glad that we've kind of made it through this. It's a weird one-year anniversary to not celebrate, but I think to maybe make note of and maybe to look back and Look, look at all the ways that it's been a gift, you know, for us and our families.

Right. So in 12 months, we'll record this again and we'll see what's transpired.

Thanks, man.

All right. Cheers. Thanks so much for tuning into 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 blog at community.commskew.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.