Episode 224: The Meteoric Rise of Merchology (with CMO and Co-Founder Ally Ward Delgado)

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. They're on track to do $80 million in revenue in only a short 8 years. Merchology is headquartered in Minneapolis and was founded by a family: Dick Ward, Andrew Ward, and Ali Ward Delgado. Merchology has provided merch for over 60,000 companies worldwide, including 86% of the Fortune 500. Merchology is also a disability-owned business. They were recognized by the Star Tribune as one of the top workplaces in 2021. Since 2017, Merchology has donated 1% of all sustainable brand revenue to environmental causes through their membership in the 1% for the Planet program. And they also started a sustainable lifestyle brand, Zuzaa, that's Z-U-S-A.com. Our guest today is Allie Ward Delgado. Allie is the Chief Marketing Officer and co-founder of Merchology. She oversees marketing, merchandising strategy, brand relationships, and product development for Zuzaa. Prior to co-founding Merchology with her father and brother, Ali worked in brand management at General Mills with innovation and P&L responsibility for the Nature Valley, Fiber One, and Helper brands. She started her career as a strategy consultant for Deloitte, serving Fortune 500 retail and consumer packaged goods clients. Ali received her BSB from the University of Minnesota and her MBA from Harvard Business School. Today we talk about their meteoric rise in sales growth. And their evolution from a purely online player to a full consultative and service-driven company, plus their expansion into more sustainable practices with their brand Zuzaa. But before my chat with Ali, next week we will be hosting a new product summit called Product Summit Creativity. If you haven't attended one of our product summits before, here's what it's about. It's a concentrated 2.5 hours of inspirational education as well as breakouts led by some of the most innovative suppliers showcasing trends and merch. Product Summit Creativity is all about ingenuity, turning ordinary products into extraordinary experience for your clients. It will be held on May 19th from 2 to 5:30 PM ET. We have an amazing lineup including Shelley Williams, the VP of Marketing at SanMar, Jeff Anderton, Director of Content with Snugs USA, Rinya Nelson, Founder at Brand Aid, and we have an amazing panel on the topic Secrets Behind Ingenious Merch from Ordinary to Extraordinary featuring Lindsay Reid, owner at Emblem, and Heather McLeod, Vice President of Sales at Elite Promotional Marketing. And of course, all of this will be followed by these amazing breakout sessions led by suppliers. And I always say it, but it's such a powerful experience because it's a concentrated amount of time and the ROI on just a couple of hours with all of these amazing people, thinkers, and products and ideas. It's a great use of your team's time. So invite your team to join us at Product Summit Creativity on May 19th from 2 to 5:30 PM ET. You can register at commonscue.com/productsummit. Today's episode is brought to you by Commonskey, the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more, visit commonscue.com.

Now here's my chat with Ali. Allie, give us a glimpse of the size of Merchology today from when it first started.

Sure. So we launched Merchology's website in March of 2014, and at the time we had 3 full-time people working on the business. And fast forward 8 years to 2022, we are tracking to do $80 million in sales this calendar year, and we will end the year with close to 300 employees. So it's kind of crazy, the journey we've been on. We have always been headquartered in Minneapolis, so we are still there, but we also have two other facilities close to the coast. So we have one in Reno, Nevada, and then last year we opened a second one in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, so we can service customers on the coast. So three locations. And, um, with all of that growth, this will be our fifth year on the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies list.

Wow. 8 years, nearly 300 employees. I have to ask the question everyone wants to know right away. How did that happen so fast?

Yeah, it kind of blows our minds when we think about it. I think a lot of it was right time, right place. And of course, we hope that we made some smart decisions along the way. There were probably 3 things that were very distinct about our business model that have helped us grow. The first is e-commerce. Of course, we were kind of early to the e-commerce game for this industry. That was really the vision for the company. We wanted to be no salespeople, no catalogs, and just acquire customers through digital marketing and cast a wide net on the internet. So that was really how we went to market. The second thing is our brands. So we've always been known for offering consumer brands, retail brands that people know and love. Our tagline is your logo plus brand you love. So very literal, but people understand it. So my father is my business partner and our CEO, Dick Ward, and he's an industry veteran and he's always been known for bringing retail brands to this industry. He started doing that actually back in the '90s, and we really carried that legacy with us to Merchology. Back in the '90s, he brought Bill Blass, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, Columbia, a bunch of brands to this industry and has always been known for protecting those brands. So when we started the business, we leveraged some of those relationships and focused on telling our brand stories and co-branding with the right partners. And then the last thing I think that has differentiated us, especially in recent years, has been We have our operations in-house for our value-add of logo decoration. So this has really been a critical driver of our growth in the recent years because early on we discovered that a lot of our subcontract decoration partners were not wanting to grow at the same pace that we were. So it was really difficult to get things delivered on time and sometimes at the quality level that we expected. So in 2016, we acquired our largest embroidery partner and made that a core competency in-house. So now we're able to expand our capacity to meet our growth goals and control lead times and decoration quality in a way that we weren't early on. So I think that's been a big driver recently.

Do you think that the experience with brands early on in the industry— I mean, very early on in the industry experience with brands and then jumping right into e-commerce was part of that explosive growth?

It definitely was. And it's really actually how Merchology was founded. So as I mentioned, my dad, Dick Ward, he used to be a supplier to the industry for a long time. So he first was a partner at LA Loving and then more recently at River's End Trading. So he had a lot of familiarity with what it meant to bring brands into this channel and how to help them design their products for co-branding, and how to really protect the brand to only partner with companies and logos that they were comfortable with. So when Dick was at River's End, he had a brand called Page and Tuttle. And he—

I remember that.

Yeah, it's, it's an old name, but he sold it a lot to the Golf Channel. But when he was at River's End, he wanted to set up a B2C website to see if he could sell it to consumers. He didn't know if there'd be any interest there. So he experimented with one of his employees, Nolan Goodman, who ended up being a co-founder of Merchology as well, by setting up a simple website and a few AdWords campaigns on the brand Page and Tuttle. And they ended up getting orders, but it wasn't from consumers. It was actually business traffic, which wasn't what he was trying to do. But it was a moment of kind of an epiphany for him where he realized, okay, there is B2B traffic in this space and no one is really able to fulfill those needs. So he realized it was just going to be too difficult to pivot River's End into that model. So he decided to sell his shares in that company. And then we put $75,000 into starting Merchology and It was basically my brother Andrew, Nolan from River's End, Dick and myself that started the business.

You know what's really ironic is that for years the industry has feared suppliers going direct. But in this case, what Dick did is kind of interesting because he didn't like go direct in the sense that everyone's worried about. He was like, nope, I'm gonna sell my shares in River's End and then I'm gonna go create a distributorship in a sense, right?

Yep, that's exactly what he did. I mean, there's a few cases where we do still partner directly with brands. Yeah, that maybe otherwise wouldn't be in the channel. They're not ready for that step of working with a major supplier, so they want to try it on a smaller scale, scale with Merchology. So we're happy to be a partner in those cases. So we do have many direct brand relationships, but obviously we are a distributor. We work with suppliers and it's been kind of a cool combination model without Dick having to make that decision of competing with his own customers.

Was there a transition when you started out as a pure-play e-commerce provider and then you ended up, like maybe a lot of folks do, pivoting, if you will, to a more consultative approach? Like, was there this transition with your business?

Yeah, things changed pretty quickly. Early on, we said we would never have a sales force. And we would never meet with customers and it would all be on the website. And now we have a sales team of over 40 people. So a lot has changed. And yeah, I think early on we didn't really have the capacity or the people to handle going out and drumming out, drumming up a bunch of interest. So we just use digital marketing and and handled the inbound interest that way. But now we really look at it as integrative. We think we're high-tech and high-touch. So what we found is if people are spending over a certain dollar amount, they want to talk to somebody and they want ideas. So we're a lot more than just a website to people now. We have pretty deep relationships and we give recommendations for products and merch boxes and logos and all kinds of things. So that's been a lot of fun and making that transition. We actually have a few people on our board that grew up at a company called Proto Labs, which is a business-to-business e-commerce company, publicly traded in Minnesota. So they sell injection molded parts for engineers. So kind of a different business, but they made a very similar journey. They started out saying only e-commerce and then they realized, you know, we're not going to lose the e-commerce piece, but we are going to do more relationship building and do consultative selling. So having them on our board to make that transition was critical.

Does the larger percentage of your new business then come from your previous work in organic and paid search, or does it come from this new sales team? Where are you seeing the biggest growth happen?

Yeah, the biggest growth is definitely from our sales team. It's pretty split. We still obviously acquire customers through digital marketing, but to continue to scale at the size we are now, we are really relying on repeat business and referrals with our existing customers. So that's been a big growth engine for us.

Okay. And the majority in the business— of your business is in the US?

Yes. So we're about 95% based in the US. But what we've found is that a lot of our clients now are multinational corporations. We've worked with 86% of the Fortune 500, and most of them have offices and employees outside of the US. So sometimes when we're able to fulfill that international order, that can be kind of the difference maker of keeping that account. So it's something that we're excited about that we can do international fulfillment, but very much US-based overall.

I'm really curious about this. Merchology is a disability-owned business. So help us understand really what does that mean? How does that allow you to create social impact? I was really fascinated by that when I read it.

Yeah, so this is kind of new for us. We're still learning what it means, but we're very excited about it. So Dick and I both have severe hearing impairments of over 50%, And mine was diagnosed as a kid, so I've worn hearing aids since I was 6 years old. And my dad wasn't diagnosed until about 10 years ago. I've been helping him kind of on his journey, and we actually first found out that we shared a gene for our hearing impairment through 23andMe. We never really knew where it came from, and that was pretty cool. So I should do some kind of testing for them. Yeah, but I think most of my life I have tried to kind of hide the fact that I have a hearing impairment because I don't want to be different or be viewed as not as smart. But I really love lately how people are embracing their differences and learning how to tell their own stories and be relatable in that way. So Dick and I thought, you know, this could be a really great way to meet other businesses that are led by people with disabilities of all kinds. And lean into that a little bit more. So that's what we're hoping to do to connect with those other business owners.

I love that you shared that. I was just at a conference Monday and Tuesday with BrandChain, and they had a sign language interpreter at their conference, and I thought that was really fantastic. I love how we're embracing and making sure, right, that we are being open to make sure everyone can hear the message, see the message, and be a part of the experience.

That's great. Yeah, you definitely don't see that very often. So I hope that becomes more common.

I do too. Yeah, I do too. Let's talk a little bit about sort of your mission. You come from the branding world. So tell us a little bit more about your background and where do you think you grew the most as a marketing professional? Because you were already working for big brands and then you, do you go to jump into this? Tell us about that transition.

Yeah. So I've always loved marketing. I studied it in undergrad and at my MBA, but truthfully, I feel like professionally my background is more in general management. Management. So I cut my teeth professionally right out of college at Deloitte Consulting, and I worked in retail and consumer products, flew all over the country and met a lot of different companies and brands. So that was really cool. And then I went back to get my MBA at Harvard because I wanted a very specific job, and that was to be a brand manager at General Mills. And I got that job. So, um, that was the pinnacle, I think, for me of like, okay, now I'm going to become this brand marketer and this is going to be the rest of my career. And I did some pretty fun things there. I was a P&L owner, but I got to think about very different brands during my short time there. So my first assignment was working on the Hamburger Helper brand, which is an iconic brand with a lot of brand equity, but more of a turnaround situation of how do we keep that brand relevant in today's world? From there, I went on to do long-term innovation and really looking at deep consumer research and trend research to figure out where the world was headed and what that meant for innovation pipeline in like 5 years. So very different experiences that kind of represent all that marketing can be. And I really love that experience, learned a lot and took that with me. Yeah, I came to Merchology.

Yeah, that's cool. How does that— how did that experience now inform what you're doing? Do you see impact of that experience coming to bear fruit with Merchology?

Right. I think the biggest thing is probably the deep dive of consumers and understanding both what they're saying and what they're not saying.

Yeah.

Kind of uncovering those unmet needs and finding a way to meet those needs. You know, as a company, Merchology has never been overly focused on our competitors. We really try to focus on What does our customer need and how can we serve them in a way that maybe no one else is? Yeah. So I think that comes from my time at General Mills.

At what point did you see what was happening with your dad's business and say, I think I want to be a part of that?

We realized pretty early on that we were on to something. We turned on our website, which was CorporateDirectApparel.com in its infancy. In March of 2014, and we kind of held our breath. We really didn't know if we were going to get an order in a day or a month. And in those initial days, we got a couple of small orders. And then on the fourth day, we got an order of over $8,000 for some OGO duffels from a gym in California. And we were ecstatic. Like, you would have thought we won the lottery. We just couldn't believe that strangers on the internet were willing to give us their money. So that was very reassuring that we were on to something. And I wanted to join sooner full-time, but I still had my MBA debt that I was paying off and I was enjoying my time at General Mills. But the breaking point for me specifically was I actually got pregnant with our daughter, our oldest, and I had kind of been working nights and weekends on the business and that was fine before we had kids, but I was really tired and sick from the pregnancy and realized I couldn't do both and I had to make a choice. So for most people, pregnancy is not the ideal time to jump into being an entrepreneur. But for me, that made a lot of sense and I haven't looked back since.

So you and your brother are involved in the business now.

Where—

what's your respective roles?

Yeah. So we've really kind of been involved from the beginning with writing the business plan. Dick's like, I don't know how to market to millennials and I'm not an e-commerce guy. So Andrew and I jumped right in with helping him write the plan and making that decision for our whole family, I guess. So our roles have really evolved over time. We kind of wear whatever hat is needed at the moment. Right now, Andrew is the Chief Revenue Officer and he oversees customer service and sales. And my current role is Chief Marketing Officer. So I oversee marketing, technology, merchandising, and product development. So we both kind of had our careers before we started Merchology. Andrew did commercial real estate for 10 years, and then I just shared my background. So I think we never thought ever in a million years we would work with our dad or with each other. And I don't think we ever would have joined one of Dick's companies. But since we all kind of did this together, it felt really natural and it was a pretty exciting experience and a chance to spend a lot of time together.

Yeah, that's cool. Let's talk a little bit about Zuzaa. Am I pronouncing that right?

You are.

Zusa. Yeah, you're very passionate about this. How'd that get started? Give us a glimpse of what, what that success today and what, what that's about.

Yeah. So we started developing Zusa back in 2018 and we did it, I guess, for two reasons. The first was we got a lot of feedback from our customers that they were looking for sustainable options that they could co-brand with, and there just wasn't a lot. In the market at the time. There was a lot of organic t-shirts and that was kind of the extent of it, as well as Patagonia, which is the second thing that got us started. We are very close partners with Patagonia and we learned a lot from them about all the damage that apparel and manufacturing is doing around the world and that, you know, there's better ways to do things. There's ways that we can make a positive impact. They were actually super encouraging about the idea of us starting our own brand. So That was how we got started. And our goal really was to develop high-performance gear that was as high quality as the brands we were selling to create a real brand. This wasn't meant to be a private label. It was really meant to be a real brand. So we launched with about 18 styles in late 2019. So it was everything from t-shirts to polos to bags and outerwear and fleece. Since then, we've expanded the line a lot. So it has grown kind of beyond our wildest imagination. We— it's now Merchology's number 3 brand, and we'll probably do about $8 million in the ZUSA brand in its second year.

So, wow, that's fantastic.

But I think the best thing about the brand is that we actually feel like we're really making an impact. So to date, it will be, I think, about 3 million water bottles that we will have repurposed in the making of the line and That's really what this is all about.

So you're repurposing water bottles to make this product? That's amazing.

Is recycled polyester. So we repurpose bottles, melt them down, turn it into yarn, and then make the garments from there.

What a great story.

Yeah, it's exciting. And we've actually expanded into other categories now, so it's more of a lifestyle brand. So we have headwear, we have drinkware, we even have blankets. Due to the blanket mania of COVID All right. We would do that as well. So it's been fun to expand the line.

Help me understand the Patagonia partnership. Now, I, I thought I understood that they wouldn't sell branded merch in the industry. Are they— you're saying they serve as more of a consultative partner or are they actually a supplier, like, or a brand?

Yeah, great question. They are a supplier. So Patagonia is still co-branding in this industry, but they just have very specific rules about how they want to do that. Their goal has really been to keep garments in action and play on people's backs as long as possible. So they feel like adding a logo can sometimes shorten the lifespan of that item. If it's a certain industry, if it's education or healthcare where it's actually necessary to have your name on the garment, they're okay with the co-branding, but we try to do off the chest and tonal embroidery whenever we can. But they're, very much still supplying the industry.

I see.

Okay.

But back to Zuzaa, I mean, that's an amazing brand. The fact that you're building this out of— you're upcycling basically water bottles to turn them into apparel. What a beautiful story.

Thank you.

In regards to Zuzaa, you saw growth in what, a couple of years? $8 million in a couple of years? Yeah. That brand has so much potential. What's your roadmap look like for that over the next 2 to 5 years?

Yeah, we've actually just spun out the brand into its own company. We weren't planning on doing that, but there's just been a lot of interest in retail and in other channels. And we've even done a little bit of wholesaling of the brand too within our industry because our goal is to get the word out about these changes that we all need to make. And we think that there's a lot of education to be done on the fact that garments made out of recycled materials can be just as high quality, if not higher quality than other garments, but you don't know it until you see it and wear it. So we really want to continue to grow and to expand our distribution of the brand. So we're excited to see what else we can come up with for products in the next few years.

That's great. I was just talking with the CEO of a very large apparel company in the industry, and he made the comment to me that lines have blurred. And you look at, look at your experience with Merchology and you have your, your dad that was with River's End and the other brands who becomes a distributor and then creates this sustainable line within that umbrella, but then decides possibly we're going to sell this both wholesale to the industry as well as direct. I mean, it's fascinating to me that when we do keep our minds open to opportunities, what can happen, and that we don't just stay in these particular lanes. The lines really have blurred, but in such a positive way for Merchology.

Yeah, they have. And that was, again, never our intent, but, um, pandemic, we had quite a bit of inventory and it kind of happened naturally. And I think there is a shared goal of a lot of players in this industry to get the word out about sustainability. It's been a trend for a couple of years, but I think the pandemic has really accelerated that trend. So the more that we can raise awareness about that message and get people comfortable with buying it, the better. So that's really our, our focus right now.

What percentage of your sales would you guess is still driven through the e-commerce part versus your sales rep part?

Yeah, so actually all of our sales still run through our website, and we just kind of use the consultative selling up front to advise what they should buy before they check out. But after that conversation is had, we'll send over a cart, and that's how our customers check out. So everything is still done through the website. And I think that's an expectation. Just for transparency, our customers want to see exactly what they're buying, what the price is. And it's easy to do that in a line item way if they can see it through a cart and a checkout page. And they also want to track their orders so that, that they can do through our website too.

So technology is such an investment for you. Technology is such a big priority. I'm sure you mentioned to me there were things that you were investing in, like group purchasing tools, stuff like that. What's on the horizon for your technology?

Yes, so 2021 was a big investment year for us with technology. We still have merchology.com for bulk orders, so if you're shipping a large box to a trade show and everyone's going to be there, um, that's kind of where we process those normal orders. That is the legacy business. And then we launched a whole new platform in 2021, which we call Merch Solutions. So that is, like you mentioned, Bobby, the group order tool. So if people want to select a gift and say where they want it shipped, they can do that on their own. We also kind of reimagined and relaunched our company store platform through Merch Store. And then we've also launched a Buy Now, Ship Later program where people can buy their merch and we'll store it and drop ship it as requested. So that was a big focus of last year. And this year, honestly, we're just refining those tools, making them better, It's fun to get them out in the market and in front of customers, but technology is a hungry beast. You know, it requires a lot of attention and money, and we just want to make it the best it can be. So this year we're really focused on just making those tools better. We also in the last year have invested a lot, if not more than technology, in operations. So I think that's something that's a little bit different about our model, but we have more than doubled our embroidery capacity in the last year. And our goal there is to always be ahead of our sales with our capacity so that we can say yes to customers and meet their short lead times as well. So just as much of the technology investment as the ops investment that we're focused on.

You've got so many irons in the fire when it comes to different things that you're doing and the branding person in you, how do you prioritize with so many different types of almost business units, but I can see where, like in the case of Sousa, you're launching it as his own company, but how do you prioritizing these things as a marketing professional?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is we have a pretty established leadership team now that's been with us for many years and anything that is working, you know, they're running it and they're really handling the day-to-day and so Our priorities are more about long-term planning and figuring out what does Merchology look like next year and the year after, because we really feel like we're just getting started. So a couple of things that I'm super focused on right now, obviously has been real estate. So we just bought a new headquarters building in Plymouth, Minnesota. So it's about a 90,000 square foot building and that will be our office headquarters, but also we'll have warehouse and embroidery and screen print. So we are really focused on that move, which is happening in about a month, which is great.

Oh yeah.

And then we also just signed a new lease out in Reno, so we're doubling our space out there as well. So two moves in the next month. So trying to minimize our business disruption during those moves has been a big focus. And then another thing that I've been really prioritizing this year is people. So we just hired a new VP of People, Lisa Larson, and she is helping us kind of redefine what is a great employee experience for Merchology at the size we are now. It's very different running a business with 3 locations and 300 people than it was, you know, a 10-person operation in one location. So we just really want to understand from our employees, you know, what does it mean to make this a great place to work? What do you love about it? What should we be evolving? As we've talked about, the pandemic has just changed a lot. So we want to make sure that we're keeping up with those changes and understanding how to keep our awesome talent.

Something you mentioned to me is that you are transitioning or have been transitioning from a product-driven company to an experience-driven company or a service-driven company. What did you mean by that?

Yes, I think we've always been so focused on the product early on. We are the brand people and we really marketed our products. And that piece is still very important to our business. That's unchanged. But what we found is that people are just as concerned about how they receive a product as what they are receiving. So we've seen that, you know, people have very different expectations recently about, you know, how, what kind of box does something show up in? Is it being sent to someone's house or is it being sent to an office? So we're just really paying attention to How do we develop these tools to service people and help them keep the swag ordering process really easy? So that's very much services. We think when we think of technology, we think of services. And then also just the consultative selling that we mentioned, that's very much about services. You know, if they just went on our website, it could be overwhelming to decide what they want to buy. But if they talk to a trusted sales rep, then, you know, that's consultative selling and that's a service too.

Let's talk about Allie a little bit. What brands or business leaders do you admire and follow?

Yeah, so many. So a couple that are coming to mind. The first is Brené Brown. I absolutely love her. She's actually— I would say she's an accidental entrepreneur herself, coming from a social work background and having a PhD and being so research-focused. But I think what she's doing with educating all of America, but specifically corporate America, on what it means to be an empathetic leader. I think that's a message we all need to hear. For a long time it's been about IQ with leadership, and she really emphasizes how important it is to have high EQ. So I love all of her messages about being real and vulnerable. I also really enjoy any work from Ben Horowitz. So he's now a venture capitalist, but He is an entrepreneur who's been in the trenches, been there, done that. He wrote a book called The Hard Thing About Hard Things, and I read it a while ago and liked it. It's about building a business and all the challenges that you'll encounter. And during the pandemic, it was literally on my bedside table and something I referenced often just because I felt like we were in such uncharted territory.

One thing you had just done, you'd rebranded Merchology. I don't remember how long ago it was, but you'd rebranded Merchology. And a lot of folks are actually going through this right now. They emerged out of the pandemic a different kind of company because they switched to different, different types of services for their customers and they realize, oh, we're not the same company we were going into it. What was your branding experience like and how would you, as both a branding expert because of your background and what you've done through Merchology, how would you encourage them now?

Yeah, so in 8 years, I'm just thinking through this, we've gone through a rebrand in 2015. So we were Corporate Direct Apparel and then we became Merchology. We did new brand development with Zuzaa. So that was from scratch. You know, what do we want to call this thing? Yeah, we just did a brand refresh of the overall Merchology brand in 2022. So a lot going on there. I think my advice would just be to carry over something old into your something new when you're doing a refresh. I think a lot of marketers and my team included, we talked about this. We tire of our marketing and our branding a lot sooner than our customers do, just because we're exposed to it and we're working in it every single day. And there's a lot of things that are probably still working about your former brand and your messaging and your voice. So I think it's just really important to test different variations and get feedback from your customers before you make a drastic change, because it can be really expensive and time-consuming to go through that brand refresh, and you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Yeah, that's good advice. Last question for you. Speak to a younger Allie Delgado. I mean, you've been through so much, you've created so many different experiences by now. You've been a part of a very fast-growing business. What would you encourage her to do more of? What would you encourage her to take more risks with? Would you tell her to slow down in this area or what not to do? And I ask this because there's so many younger, young-at-heart entrepreneurs who are in the process of running their own businesses. Curious what you would have to say to them by speaking to a younger Allie Delgado.

Yeah, I don't think I have any specific regrets. I think the message I would probably say to myself is just to slow down and enjoy the moment and the phase and stage that I'm in. I am probably an exception in that I became a parent at the same time as becoming an entrepreneur, and there's a lot of parallels between those two things. I had 2 babies that did not sleep and my husband and I were always kind of saying to each other like, oh, we just need to get to that next phase and, you know, they'll sleep through the night and we'll get our lives back together. It obviously is great when they become toddlers because there's a lot of fun things about that and it's fun to see them grow just like it's fun to see our business grow. But you realize that there's new challenges with this new stage that you didn't necessarily anticipate. Anticipate. So yeah, I wish I would have maybe enjoyed each stage a little bit more. And it's a good thing to think about now because I feel like we have a long way ahead of us of the big aspirations we have. So reminding myself just to soak up the moment and not wish for the next milestone or, you know, the next year is a good reflection point.

That's such a great point to end on because the velocity of business is faster, I think, than it's ever been emerging out of this pandemic. And a lot of folks are in a fast growth mode right now. So Ali, thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed getting to know you and Merchology and, and your team. What an amazing story.

Thank you so much for the time, Bobby, and I really respect everything you're doing with Common Skew and love all the great content you're putting out.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of Skewcast.

SkewCast.

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