Episode 204: Marketing is the New Sales (skucamp Panel)

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.

In September, we hosted our annual boot camp experience for entrepreneurs called Skew Camp, where many of the industry's market leaders, challenger brands, and entrepreneurs gathered together for a few magical and inspiring days at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs. Now, at that event, we hosted keynotes and panels and breakout discussions on some of the most challenging issues and unique opportunities facing our industry. One of those discussions was the session Marketing is the New Sales, and it was an interview hosted by Mark Graham, Commsky's president and chief brand officer, who chatted with 4 leaders of some of the smartest marketing minds in the business. During the past year, there's been a huge shift in the sales world with marketing playing a key role. Marketers are now the new salesmakers. For a long time, the marketing profession was like the stepchild in the sales household in our industry, but now Marketing is the compass, how customers find you. Marketing is the fuel for sales growth with existing clients, and marketing is how you differentiate and distinguish yourself from the herd. Today, you'll hear this panel of fresh makers who are redefining how marketing makes sales happen. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Commonsku's Chief Content Officer. The day before PPAI Expo on January 9th, we are hosting SKUCon, the conference for innovators, explorers, and dreamers in the promotional products industry. Now the in-person event is sold out, but SCUCon is being broadcast virtually. So if you didn't get a ticket, we encourage you to join us from the comfort of your home, your office, your hotel room, wherever you are to be inspired by folks like Davis Smith, the founder of Cotopaxi, design legend Aaron Draplin, and many more. Virtual attendees will also get exclusive interviews that the live attendees won't experience and even one-to-one networking. Plus, if you register for the virtual experience, you'll receive the official SCUCon 2022 t-shirt, a shirt designed in collaboration with Aaron Draplin that you just have to see. Hop on over to SkuCon.com to register you and your entire team today. This episode is brought to you by CommerceHQ, 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 CommerceHQ.com. Now here's Mark Graham with Sarah Whitaker, Sean Mooney, Alex Weir and John Vo. One technical note, there's a little bit of feedback in this recording, but we thought the conversation was so important, we still wanted to share. Here's the session, Marketing is the New Sales, recorded live at SKU Camp.

So I want to just set this up, uh, and then we're going to introduce the speakers. One of the things that has been a real source of interest to us at CommonSKU is seeing how the industry has evolved over the last 5, 10 years. As it relates to the power and significance of marketing as a driver of sales. And the reason I say that, and I can speak from personal experience, is that, you know, say 5, 10 years ago, the salesperson was supreme. And it's not to say they're any less important now, but it was a sales-dominated industry with classic sales-oriented tactics, whereas marketing was always relegated off to the side. You had marketing, it was often seen as an expense, might be a junior hire, and and not as important as sales. And I think that what we've seen over, particularly over the last couple of years, and I would say even during the pandemic, is that marketing has taken this very interesting seat at the table. So we're gonna talk about that. So without further ado, I'm gonna try to stop talking here and get these experts speaking. But we've got Alex Weir, who is one of the founders—

Weir.

Weir?

What? It's gonna be Weir today.

No one can say it. No one can say it.

No one can spell it.

It's totally fine. Don't worry about it. Yeah, you spelled it right on this. That was huge.

So Alex, this is gonna be tough for you, but I want each of you for like 30 seconds to give a 30,000-foot view as to who you are. Introduce yourself.

Uh, I'm from Augusta, Georgia. I was an English major, self-taught designer. So I started an advertising agency about 15 years ago, I think, after multiple firings and many other positions. I figured, uh, I could tolerate myself. Um, so I started one because I could write and design. That's kind of the two sides of things. And, uh, since then we've grown it to about 25 people, and then we spun off our sister company Show Pony with, uh, with, with my friend Sean Mooney here. So how's that for a transition? Sean?

Yeah, so I'm Sean, uh, Sean Mooney, uh, and I am a partner in Show Pony, which is in Augusta, Georgia. My background, uh, designer I was in product development for a while at a small golf tournament in Augusta and decided to leave because I was tired of working with just one logo over and over and over again. And so honed up—

and that was the Augusta Rotary Club.

Exactly.

So partnered up with Alex, and we have another partner as well, Daniel, who is the steward in Wear Steward. And we started off this little kind of quality control thing and built it into its own little business. So Yeah, we're just fun-loving people. Oh, real quick though, I'm supposed to know all 105 of y'all's name. Can y'all just all say it at once so I know everybody's name? I'm kidding.

Jon Vo.

My name is Jon Vo. Back in a previous life, I used to develop computer networks, travel the country for a while, and then my project ended. I was burnt out, so I stayed home and smoked weed and played video games for 6 months. And it would have been a year, but my sister came over and said, you loser, come help me with my company. And she was doing hats and t-shirts at the time, just embroidery and screen printing. And I was like, this is a business. But just by sheer luck, I picked up EarthLink as a first client and they gave me a nice hat order and they kept ordering and just kind of sucked me in. And I just love it. I love swag. I love it.

Self-care is so important.

I'm Sarah Whitaker with Williams Advertising. We're based in Kentucky. And Williams Advertising— Williams is my grandfather. So it was a family business I came into about— it's almost 7 years years ago now, and with the intent of starting a marketing agency, and then just by accident got into promo because that's what he was, he was into with it. So it's just been a lot of fun ever since.

Awesome. Sarah, I'm going to start with you. And your story is interesting because you came in with into this older generation business, and you had a grandfather that was selling maybe more transactionally oriented, selling traditional products. And you came in with this almost next generation perspective. How did you blow up the business in terms of how it is that you came to market?

So when I came in, we were doing everything. He was handwriting POs and faxing them in and all the things. So now to be on Commenscure, you know, it's very, very different, but I kind of am approaching things from a value-add standpoint. So if we're looking at the whole marketing mix, where does branded merchandise fit into that mix and how can we better support, you know, have a greater ROI on things really just as you would approach it with if you're doing a spend on digital or anything else. Else, you know.

Walk me through that transition, because if the business before was selling coffee cups with a one-color logo to the local insurance agency in town— just making that up— right, to you now taking a more design-oriented strategic approach, presumably that must have been a challenging transition. Like, did clients go, what are you talking about? I just want to have my coffee cups.

Sometimes, and sometimes that's, you know, that's still the conversation. But I think sometimes when somebody says, oh, let's just put this on it, when it's an item that I can suggest and say, oh, but we we could have so much more fun with this. It could be so much more impactful, or, you know, let's think about the story behind the product, all those things. I mean, it's an educational piece of it for sure, but it's just, it's just that conversation with the customer.

Well, we're going to be getting back to you. So let's put a pin in that. Jon Vo, you, you have created your business with so many unique angles, but one of the things that you're really well known for is your approach to self-promo. Talk to me about how you've invested in self-promo as a marketing channel channel and why has it been successful for you?

I think to start off, I have to let you all know that everything I do is to avoid cold calling. It's soul-sucking, it makes me sad, I just can't do it, I don't want to think about it. So that drives everything that I do business-wise. But we used to do all those self-promos, you know, because we're in the promotional products industry, so you have to practice what you preach. So you send out your self-promos to your clients. We used to do it monthly, quarterly, we used to do all the supplier specials. All Leads has these great self-promos, it's a great price, to do that. Was it successful? Did it help us? I don't know. But attending the first Skew Camp here in 2017, and they put out this Skew Camp collection, I was like, what is this? This is like a whole cohesive story going on. They got this down. I kind of adopted that, and so our self-promos over the years have evolved into sending less out and concentrating more on the quality and the emotional feeling that our clients would get from it. Would you buy it? Would you pay money for it? Because if you're not paying money for it, they're not going to pay money for it. So that's what we really try to focus on.

John, one of the things that we were talking about a little while ago was this— I think it was a term you and I made up on the spot, sounds fancier than it really is— but this concept of self-promo 1.0 and self-promo 2.0. And 1.0 is this concept of, say, getting 250 whatever the product is, a pen or a coffee cup or whatever, with your logo on it and then sending them out. Versus what you're doing where you're taking this almost ad agency approach and you're putting together this whole cohesive collection that's taking you a crapload of extra time. Talk to me about why you've chosen to invest in Self-Promo 2.0 versus the, hey, that supplier rep that's coming to you giving you a good deal on 250 pens, which is a hundredth of the effort.

Like I mentioned earlier, I wasn't sure if the way we were doing self-promos before was really working for us. There was no way for me to quantify it. Yes, our business grew year after year, but Was it because of self-promos? Looking back now, I don't think it was. Our business has grown quite a bit in the last few years, but more importantly, the quality of the projects that we're getting are a lot more aligned with what we want to do, a lot more creative. People are spending more money and doing less volume, right? So instead of 2,000, we'll do 500, but we'll make it a lot better. And that's what we do with our kits too. We spend a lot of time, a lot of money on it because we decide we're not going to send out 4 or 5 mailings a year. We're going to do just one really good one that's going to be memorable for the entire year. And I think it's working for us because we've gotten some really cool projects that we weren't seeing coming across our table 4 years ago.

And we're going to spend a little bit of time— I'm going to come back to you and get into some of the details. All right, Mr. Pony.

I don't know, but I think just having the time of our lives.

Yeah, it It's funny, I was speaking with Sean and Alex last night and they said, we really want to be memorable with this crowd. And I think you're nailing it so far. So I don't know.

I think it's about a B+ right now.

We'll get there.

You're getting there.

So I want to start off with you, Alex, and then get to you, Sean, in a sec. So Alex, you're the co-founder of the SADD Agency. Probably didn't know promotional products existed a few years ago.

You go through—

I knew they existed. I just thought that most of them were terrible.

Okay. So it was basically invisible off your radar.

Right.

So you're an ad agency. You're really focused on design. Talk to me why there was an opportunity to create a promotional products division at your fancy ad agency.

Yeah, it's very fancy. Well, I think most like if you just look around here and look at where like how people are just taking their brand in general these days, you know, you're coming from a spot where when I started, which is about 15 years ago, it was like Steve's Promotional Products and Steve didn't care what his own business looked like and he was just going to do the one-color coffee cup thing with the cheapest coffee cups. Now that's kind of been marginalized by, you know, cheap, like, online printers and things like that. But we would create a brand for somebody that they spent a lot of money on, and we gave a lot of time and thought to. And then when we saw that it come out of the other side, when someone had created something with the brand on it, a lot of that stuff looked like shit. And because we wanted to control the expression of the brand, we wanted to— and fortunately, we had Lauren who came. She was— we're very design heavy. So Sean's a designer, Lindsay's a designer, I'm a designer. But she came out of a print house and she knew how to do the promotional product ordering stuff. So we started doing it in-house just as a way to control quality. And then we just noticed that competitively, two things. One, it doesn't work inside the kind of the processes of the ad agency. And when we're trying to be a regional, national, high-end, fancy ad agency, there's not really a place on our site to be, oh, and get your koozies from us too., right? So that kind of didn't make sense for a messaging thing. And then we could thought, we thought we could have a lot of fun with it and we could have a unique positioning within our market with the Show Pony brand, which is kind of this cheeky, smart-ass-y, high-end looking, but still Sean's making horse noises and we got a crest on that says, hey. So anyway, that we basically came into that as sort of, we are going to curate, I think like a lot of people have done here, curate higher-end stuff. And really let clients know the difference between, you know, a shirt that no one's ever going to wear and a shirt that someone will wear until it falls apart is like a dollar. So you can either set those $6 on fire or you can pay $7 for something that's going to kind of live forever. And that's sort of been, I think, where the clients have been evolving towards is understanding the value of like not only getting a promotional product, but having one that, you know, people are actually going to like. And a lot of that is design and a lot of it is choice.

Right. So Sean, you're boots on the ground in the promotional products industry where Alex is running, is maybe got more of a macro view of branding. Very macro. With all of the different channels that you support your clients with digital, so on and so forth. Sean, you're specifically focused in promo. Tell me how it is that you're approaching promotional products through the lens of design as opposed to product first.

Yeah, well, I think it's really important to understand how our business is in terms of actual structure. So we have two separate buildings that are kind of adjoined with little cut-throughs. And we always tell people who come through when we showcase, we always showcase Weir Stewart, Weir Stewart always showcases Show Pony. And we always say, this side is all digital, this side is all tangible. And so selfishly, I just tell them, hey, we're the fun side, right? Because you finally get to touch your brand when you have it. To answer your question specifically, focusing on design versus just product, we like to tell a story with the product that we're trying to do. So when a client comes in, we sit them down, we talk to them about it. And I think I was talking to Jamie earlier about this, but we have certain things we tell them, right? When we talk about hats, it's not just we could do this nice hat. It's, hey, we like to do hats where your icon's on the front and your word marks across the back.

And they're like, why?

We say, well, because people go, what? What's that icon on your hat? And suddenly these people have invited them into a conversation about that business. You don't have to tell them what the business is. So a lot of times it's not just the design of how it's done, but the story behind why the design is what it is. And we've seen a lot of success with that, kind of helping people along. It's also why we're very particular about our work. So I think a lot of people tend to understand that better when you give a story and you give an explanation. I think it's more a partnership than it ever was before with your clients and bringing them along the journey, if you will, about why you do the things you do. It's kind of giving away a little of the secrets, but you also build that trust and they come back to you and they see you as an expert and they'll come back to you over and over.

Right.

At the end of the day, it's a form of advertising. You know, it's what it is.

Yeah. Love those answers. Okay. I'm going to get back to you. I've got a ton of questions, but I want, I want to hop back to Sarah. So, Sarah, you, you're a pro at So many different things, uh, like everyone else up here, but, uh, content and social specifically are two areas that you've really differentiated the business with. Talk to me about why that has been a successful strategy in the context of marketing.

So I think for us, we're a small team. And so I think for us, anything has to be dual purpose. And so we're trying to build out that expertise and we tell our story through that. Through the content. And then it, it's something that lives on our website. It's something that we can use in social media. We repurpose that in email marketing, you know, all of the things. Now, very much so with video on social and different things. So it works for us in a lot of different ways. It allows customers to get to know us when we focus on that content. So when you hit our blog, you're going to find out about techniques, or we're going to talk about things that are value-add to them on our social. You really get to know us as a goofy team that we can be. You know, so it just, it's so multi-purpose for us and, and all the while it's building rank for us, you know, organically. So it just, it's just where we focused a lot of our time.

Right. Are you able to get into maybe one or two specific examples of where content has driven value for Williams and, and ultimately your clients?

Yes. So I would say that, so at the beginning of the year, we kind of took a shift. So we, I was focusing heavily in Facebook and the return returns on that as far as social media were not there for the type of client that, that we were hoping to get. And so I've shifted at the beginning of year— of the year to being really intentional about LinkedIn content and making sure that we're there, making sure that we're consistent. And that has paid off so well. I have had people reach out directly to me based on things, or, you know, we have that back and forth, that interaction. When I see people in person now, you know, they're talking about, oh, I saw that cool thing that you did, you know. So that's been really great. Just the intentionality behind it, making sure that we're planning things and not just doing it on the fly all the time so that we hit the things that are important to us, but more importantly, that people want to consume. The other side of content that we have found really valuable has been as simple as case studies. So whether we are showcasing something on our blog, whether we are showcasing something in a formalized, you know, we've boxed up a PDF, you know, and we can send that out. When I am doing a cold call or a cold email or things like that, you know, I really— I know, I know. You know, I would rather approach it from a, this is how someone else has done it that's worked really well, and I think this can work well for you. Here's how we helped do that versus a, hey, I'm so great, look at what, you know, look at what we can do. So trying to be value-add in that case has been really nice.

Right.

Would you say, I mean, this might be therapy for John, but no, but I mean, I love that at the end of the day, what you're doing, I mean, I think the kind of cold calling that is traumatic for people is when you're cold calling or cold emailing or whatever the case may be without a unique story or a unique angle. Because at that point, you're just a salesperson with a catalog, either analog or digital, that is in the promotional products business. And then, it's get in line. It's literally get in line. Whereas in your case, when you're able to tell that story through content, that now all of a sudden the competitive set is dramatically reduced. It's that you're not selling that coffee cup. You're now selling something that has delivered this value for client XYZ. Is that right?

Yep. Yep. That's, that's really, it's been good. And it's also, it kind of goes back to your original point about the one color imprint or the thing. If I can showcase, you know, here's how we designed this great box and we focused on the customer or the recipient, you know, here's what we did with this otherwise ordinary item, and here's how it turned out for the client. I think that's just so powerful.

Right. Okay. I'm going to get back to you in a sec. More questions here, but we want to get to John's therapy here. So, John, I want you to share maybe one or two specific examples of self-promos that you've done because we were talking about this session and the caliber of people in this room, they don't need us to tell them about the value of self-promo. Everyone here is a rock star, has done this kind of work, but what you're doing has really stood out. And I know you've sent them to me, and I'm super picky about this stuff. It's always caught my attention. So I want you to take people through what it is that you've done and how it is that you specifically design these products and source them, and then we can get into the ROI.

Well, I, I like what Sean said about the product telling the story. And I would go as far as to say, yeah, the product tells a story and design tells the emotion that you want to show, right? So when we go through a kit, it's driven by a couple of things. One, it could be we see something that's really cool. It's like, hey, you know what? I really like this item. I think it'll resonate with people. Let's build something around this. Or two, it's some kind of theme or meme or something we found that was memorable available to us. Then we'll curate product around that. And the product is always— everything has to make sense, has to tie in, has to tell a story, has to be interactive in some way so they're not just looking at it but actually doing something with it. Lately we've been getting into focusing more on design and making it all cohesive and really help drive the story because the product sometimes is not enough. They don't know how to connect to each other, but with design you can connect those dots there. So that was one part of the question that you asked.

Yes. Now, I want— so you're going to be, you're going to be showing— it is a good answer. I want to dive into the specifics of two campaigns that you've done, the Sunshine Kit and the other kit, Germ Blaster. Yes.

I want you to—

because we've got some nerds in the audience here, tell us about each of those campaigns and get into the, the, uh, the gory details as to what it is and why you did them.

So the Germ Blasters we did during the pandemic when everything was shut down. I decided, everybody's doing PPE, I'm not going to sell PPE. If you can't put your logo or design somehow, I'm not going to sell it. That's not the business I'm in. But we can still do the products for them, so let's send out something that will show them how it should be done. And for some reason, Space Invaders came into my mind because I played it when I was a kid. Like, oh, let's blast those things. Holy shit, germ blasters! That's a brilliant idea. We're going to run with it. So we curated a kit, we did a custom bag, we themed all the Space Invaders, we call it Germ Blasters. So each item, the mints, was like breath blasters, because you've all had mask breath, I know, it's terrible.

Especially after a panel.

Germ Blasters, right? The bag was designed like the video game graphics, and on the one side it had the spot for you to write your name on it, but instead of saying your name here, we put high score. Yeah, you know, so people can kind of tie in. So that was one of the things we did. And you want numbers, right, Mark? I have numbers here.

Well, that's the sixth part of the question.

Okay, so I should answer it later then? Yeah, you should answer it later. I'll answer later.

Okay, we got to get people excited. You got to sell them on the concept and then drive it home with the numbers.

Yeah, okay. So that's what we did. We had a lot of good results from it. We had a lot of direct orders of the products that we put in the kits, and we never do our kits to try to sell the product in there. I don't really care if we sell anything in there. It's nice if you do, but for this one, we had a very, very high return, which we'll answer later. Huh? It's high. I'm going to need someone with a calculator. I hear Carrie Cowden and Mandy Rudd had calculators on hand all the time, so you guys have to work the numbers for me later. The second one we did that Mark won't talk about is the Sunshine Kit, and we did that recently because we wanted to focus more on sustainability and social good. We had talked to a company named Riviera Towel, and we really liked what they said. You know, they have authentic Turkish towels made by little ladies in Turkey tying the fringes, hand-tying. That's what they told me. I believe them. I do. Talk to the guy, he's real cool. And so we said, hey, this is really good for the summer, let's do this and let's build it all on going outside because things were just starting to open up so you can go outside, go to the beaches. We found heart-shaped sunglasses which I really loved. We found a partner to make them in recycled plastic for us. So that was with messaging there. We did mineral reef-safe sunblock and lip balm from an industry supplier. And then we did neoprene koozies and a mason jar, and we included drink mixes and umbrellas and straws and all that. Everything you need to have a little outside backdoor pity party by yourself. And yes, and then we designed it with all just a lot of colorful graphics, which I hope resonated, and got a lot of good response from it. It's still a little early. It's only been 2 months out, but we sent it to a potential client. And they loved it. And the first order with them was almost 6 figures, and we're not even done with the first order. We have 3 other ones going on right now too. So, but we'll get into numbers later because Mark doesn't want numbers, but you know.

Okay, who wants to hear the numbers? We want to go to the numbers. Okay, all right, John, can you impress us with the numbers? So here's, here's the serious question. Yeah, we're a creative creative group here for the most part, but overwhelmingly so. And I think it's— I think what makes this group and people like this group in the industry is that they're able to connect creativity to great business results. So, it's not just creativity for the sake of creativity and then you're out of business next year because you weren't thinking about it. Talk to me about your investment in the ROI and why this was valuable.

So, Germ Blasters, we spent about $6,000. 7,000 including shipping, and directly because of that kit, we had $413,000 in orders. Damn! Wow.

And hang on, and what was that, 12 months?

Uh, that was— no, that was in the next 6 months. Wow.

Yeah, so it's, it's and counting, right?

Yeah, 6 months. Right. And so, uh, for all you nerds out there, that's 6,800%.

Katherine, is that a good ROI? Yeah, that's a high score.

And then for the Sunshine Kit, like I said, it was a little too early to quantify everything, but we spent about $6,000 on it, and just in that one new client, it was over $100,000, so that's 1,800% return. And that's just talking about numbers directly because of the kit. That's not even talking about the different quality projects that are coming across that clients are saying, can you be more creative? Can you help us do something that'll wow our clients? You know, and there's a lot of projects that have come across our table and I can't directly correlate to a specific campaign, but it's all in general, you know?

Yeah. And I'll just say in advertising, like attrition is tough, but you know, when you're doing stuff like that, when you're putting out the stuff, you're also just kind of positioning. You're just like, oh, this is the coolest shit guy that's thoughtful. You know, and who knows when that one's going to come back? Like, who's sitting on those two kits? It's finally going to get around to where they got, you know, $200 grand they need to drop on something, and you're going to be the first guy that they do.

So a lot—

half of it's like brand and positioning and awareness, and half is direct ROI noise.

I have a question. Alex and I are kind of thinking about this too, because we send out a client gift, but we always try and do something that's a little unique to us, right? Like, just different. And so for every year they do a Valentine's gift at Ware Stewart.

Yeah, because we, you know, everybody does the Christmas gift and we're like, you're our clients. And so it's kind of this love letter to your clients. So it's kind of the same thing. We do a big kit, but ours are kind of always irreverent, always very— and I think this is cool too that you did this stuff because there's always some level of risk involved. And like, we do some pretty— like, we made a bunch of pins and we, uh, what do you call it?

We took lapel pins and we put them on, uh, backer boards that look like condoms and we foil sealed them, so it was like a rack, like you drop them out, condoms, and it's all just clients because we sent them to like Catholic schools and churches. Yeah, got a lot of fun calls.

We did like a weird, like, that one custom candle that was—

had a bunch of innuendo on it that people were scared of looking behind the kimono.

Yeah.

Oh, we did a strip poker deck of cards, custom deck of cards, and we wanted everybody to hashtag deck pics. Yeah, and post it on Instagram.

But we—

for sure.

For sure, buddy. We're, we're right on Broad Street. It's like the main part of our town in Augusta, and it's where all the parades go by. And being an Irish man myself, we celebrate St. Patrick's Day. That's like our client giveback. They all come down. We, you know, let the kegs roll freely. It's just fun. And so we always send out like a St. Patrick's gift. And one year we did—

it was—

what was it? Not Natty Light.

Patty Light. St. Patty Light. And we just did some NuMo, but we did some really cool, like, koozies to make them look like St. Patty lights and we put it in a box and it looked like a pot of gold and it was just silly and stupid and we had a little limerick with it. But I love this concept that you're able to measure.

How stupid was the limerick? I can't remember.

There once was a man. No, I can't remember.

As long as it's not Nantucket, it's fine.

Yeah, it wasn't.

Carry on. I want you two jokers to talk about Give a Shirt and, uh, like what was behind that and why it was this great win-win campaign for not only your community but also a huge way to use marketing to drive new sales.

Yeah, so again, agency promo. We share a lot of clients, and a lot of our clients when the pandemic hit were searching for ways to stay afloat. A lot of restaurants early coming to us, "Hey, what can we do?" So we kind of racked our brains and we came up with the concept of selling t-shirts. We were going to do a full e-commerce site. We're going to handle all distribution. And we're going to launch 10 shirts on a Monday and then 10 shirts on a Friday. And they're only going to sell for 7 days. And boy, did we have a dream because it just really took off and we had no idea that we needed to scale up so quickly. We started with 8 shirts and 8 different businesses.

And you can buy them. And yeah, when we went to them too, it was like the first one is this pool hall that was just our favorite pool hall in town. And it's like the best burger in Augusta, cash only, very analog, lo-fi place. But this is at the time, like restaurants, bars, they're all just getting slaughtered. And you know, and there were several funds like Giving Kitchen and stuff, but it was like, how does the money get there? How does it get distributed? How the hell with these people that we know ever get it. And so we came up with this concept, and it was basically we design shirts for specific business, we give them all of the profit associated with the shirt, and we rounded it up. It's like, sell shirt for $20, they get $10, we distribute it. So the first one—

the mess-up was all the profit.

Yes, it was.

It was altruism. Tell you, the ROI— altruism is never a mistake. Keeping the karma tight is never bad.

We were just hopeful they would get to 48 shirts, right?

So that first one, because she has no presence anywhere. We were like, they've just got to sell 48 or we're gonna have to like eat more, then we're actually losing money. And she sold 404—

444, yeah.

So 444. So we leave— we designed the shirts on Tuesdays and Fridays, we leave them up for a week, everyone could order whatever they wanted, we fulfilled all the orders, and then we like in a week we cut them a check for $4,440 like that. And then you've got 444 people that have a badass shirt. I designed that one. I thought it was good.

It was really—

it was the first one. Thank you. Because they have no brand. They have like— a lot of people have no brand. They have no logo. They don't have no anything. And so at a time when we got a bunch of designers that, you know, want something to do, it was great to rally the troops around having this, you know, mission of helping everybody out. But we ended up doing it. So we had on the site like, do you want a shirt? We want to help you out. And we got like 300 and something immediately.

Yeah, well, we ended the list. So a couple of numbers. We ended up selling like half a million dollars in t-shirts over the course of like 4 or 5 months, right?

So we gave $250,000 away. Yeah, basically only in our market. Yeah. And yeah, during the pandemic, but it was, you know, we found a way to let, you know, can anybody really take a ton of time? Can anybody really— who's got a lot of money right now? But there were people that were like, I got $20. For the sports center. Yeah, I got $20 for this bar that I love. And that was kind of how you just sort of activated the community around the idea of helping people out.

Well, and then of course, so altruism, that's kind of our guiding light between the two businesses, is we always try to take the, you know, rising tide lifts all ships concept. Yeah. And so we really thought, you know, we're just going to do a couple weeks of this and blah blah blah. We ended up having to get a bunch of interns, and they were really helpful. And I mean, it went on for a long time. The governor came and saw it.

Yeah, I remember when we hit $10,000. And everybody got on a Zoom, and because we had a ticker on the site that shows you where you are, which I think was a good way to kind of try to help drive sales. And we got to $10,000, everybody was like, holy fuck, man. And then, and then it ended up being $150,000, and we were like, oh my God.

Yeah, it was really cool. But for businesses, for y'all to understand, so one of the ways that we've capitalized on it, and one of the ways that it's been beneficial for our business, um, is that at Show Pony, we white label everything as much as possible. So every single one of those 25,000 shirts that went out had Show Pony in the back, in the neck. And so when we travel—

bags were branded and said like Altruism in a squishy bag and had some funny shit about Show Pony on it or something.

Yeah, and after you packed, I don't know, like 500 of those in a day, you're like, I fucking hate this bag. It's not that funny after that. It's not that great. But what's really cool is now, so a lot of those businesses that were actually able— so Sandy at Sports Center, you know, she was able to keep on a couple of her employees that she wasn't gonna be able to do. And so those people have come back to us, they they've ordered from us now. And so many of the businesses may have made $1,000 selling 100 shirts, but they've come back and got like $3,000 worth of merch from us or something like that. So there is a constant kind of flow back, which is really cool. And then it just raised— talking about raising rank, I mean, it raised our profile tremendously because all over the region, I mean, we were shipping— I was shipping shirts to Alaska. I mean, like, I'm like, how do you even know?

Yeah, that was crazy. And then like, we were featured in like a UGA alumni magazine and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, it was pretty cool.

But the altruism, I think that's one of the things is we have, we tend to have a lot more faith rather than figures guiding us, is that we just have to believe that what we do is, if we're doing it for the right reasons, we'll see the right return on the other end.

Right. And it was my understanding there would be no math, right? That's why I do what I do.

Mathless. Well, we have our resident math mathematician, John Vo, here. So there we go. So in the last couple of minutes, Sarah, I— you made a great point, which I really believe in, when we spoke a little while ago about how it is that you can involve suppliers into this discussion. We have several extremely senior— not in age, but senior in position— suppliers that are in the room here.

What's good to say?

Yeah, I know, it's good. What is the message on behalf of distributors in terms of how it is you've worked effectively with suppliers to create these creative outcomes as opposed to the 250 widgets with your logo on it, right? Supplier 2 or self-promo, uh, 2.0, uh, uh, product 2.0 as opposed to this, the lame basic stuff that we've seen in the past.

Yes.

How can suppliers help?

For sure. Okay. So we have a list going, um, amongst our team of all the suppliers that have a great lifestyle imagery bucket, you know, that we can go and access easily. I'm not talking about having to go and screenshot images out of a catalog, you know, not random necessarily designs, just something that really looks great already. Because if you look at our social media, we want people to see product, how they would use it in their life if we expect them to use it in their life. So we like to reflect that there are no white backgrounds, you know, kind of mockup kind of things on our social because I don't think that's what resonates with people. So when a supplier does that, you'll see that you see consistently same suppliers on our social because they provide that for us and it makes our life really easy. So we don't always have time to, you know, we used to do— if you look back at our social, we used to do a t-shirt flat laid on the floor and that was that. Well, I mean, it's fine. I mean, that's cool, right? Hey, it's okay. No, but we, you know, even the simple move to, we bought a mannequin and now there's some shape to that, you know, or even better, one of our team members will show that. And then even better than that, we'll do a video. But when the supplier provides that for the thing that we don't yet have or the project that we haven't done, because for us that's aspirational maybe, or it's something that we would like to introduce, it helps us so much and it's so helpful.

I've got a numbers question for you. How many, just off the top of your head, How many of your suppliers produce those high-quality images for you?

The list is short. I don't know that— I don't know. We have categories. So we have who does lifestyle imagery, who has great videos that don't have the supplier's brand all over them, who has the case studies that we could refer to. And it's a short list, especially when you go across all the things that we could use. It's a little shorter than I would like.

So— and where can we find that list?

Please share.

And listen, the reason I ask that question is not to suggest that a supplier that is doing more basic product photography should be shamed. I think that what's interesting about this in particular, as we head into breakouts, is to also understand the supplier's perspective as to why it is that they're investing in that kind of photography. And I know there are some suppliers here that are on your list, and in the breakout groups they may be able to justify the extra cost. Yeah, right. Lifestyle images cost more money for suppliers.

Oh, absolutely.

And that— it's interesting as we start to think about marketing from the supplier perspective, where does that pay off? And it's interesting to hear your story that those, those suppliers that are spending the extra money for those lifestyle images are ending up in your shops or ending up in your digital presentations and inspiring the end client that is then leading to orders.

Yeah, I think we have to look to retail and what is the user used to in a personal sense from retail websites and, and different things, and how are they seeing things, and then convert that to that B2B.

Yeah.

Is there an ROI that you can share on those lifestyle images?

I'm just kidding.

Will, I could share on those lifestyle images for anyone who would like to sign up for them. Yeah. Supplier side, slide in my DMs.

Yeah.

Thank you to each of you for being such irreverent jokers up here. But I think in all sincerity, You delivered what we were aiming to do here, which was to start the conversation, definitely not end this conversation. But a round of applause for everyone on stage here.

Thank you. Happy to continue to embarrass ourselves throughout the course of the panel.

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