Episode 267: Projects in Europe? The UK? Steven Ward's Your Guy

Stephen Warden, good to see you, my friend.

And you too, Bobby. Good to see you again.

What folks that are meeting you for the first time through the podcast might not know is that you were one of the most encouraging people I have ever met. You show up at our events all the way from England to join us and you have just become such an integral and an important part of the community and just thanks for just being a great example of what an entrepreneur looks like today.

That's very kind of you to say. I'm a big believer in if you're going to do something, then go all in on it and sort of give what you can. Yeah. Reap what. What comes back to you. It's. Yeah. Just making those connections and friendships has been, you know, for somebody that was on my own in the business for so long, it's. This community has been amazing for me to discover. Yeah.

Tell us a little bit about your market and, and what part of the UK you're in. You're a distributor and you are in.

We're nearest major town to us is Manchester, so it's northwest of England, so pretty much in the middle of the uk. Right. But we work, you know, with clients all over the UK and EU and we have some global clients. But yeah, it's slap bang in the middle of the uk really.

Yeah. What, what's the main difference between the European UK markets and the US markets in terms of like consumer preferences and how. How's the competitive landscape? Would just give us a glimpse of

what all that looks like. I think biggest thing I've noticed is we're a little bit behind the US and when it comes to sort of current trends, biggest thing I noticed when I first joined Common SKU was collaborations with known brands and some of the big brands. Yeah. It just wasn't a thing. You couldn't even get the brands they wouldn't sell to the trade over here. That's changing now. I was at the PSI show in Europe in January and there are suppliers now who are concentrating on getting those bigger brands together. So we're playing catch up a little bit and I think even the whole kitting, I think we were slow on the uptake with PARP compared to the us. But in terms of the market, it's changed a lot over here because of Brexit. I mean sending items over to Europe was just like sending it anywhere in the uk. That's been a big hurdle for us to get around. European and UK and markets are similar but it's now changed a lot with Brexit.

And yet in the UK you've been far ahead of the curve, far ahead of the US in sustainability efforts though. Is that what I hear?

I think so. There's. Yeah, for years there has been an eco friendly sustainable option for items but the take up on them wasn't great so the prices were really high. So prices. Planes wouldn't go for that but we work with some UK manufacturers and doing like the recycled plastic or even using pre consumer recycled plastic. So it's a fully recycled and recyclable product and they're now starting to really take off and everybody's going on about. And it's. There's a much bigger push on the eco side now.

Right, just talk about your business for a minute. How did you get started? What type of clients do you serve?

I got started 25 years ago this year. My background is from advertising agencies and I'd worked in about four or five agencies and I'm not on the production side run the production departments. So I did tv, advertising, radio and it's all about getting the content out to the stations or out to the press or in the case of signage and merchandise into the hands of the end users. And with my last agency I just got to a point where I wasn't particularly enjoying it and I thought I'm just going to go and do something on my own. I just want, as long as I've got enough money to be happy and support the family. That was the life I wanted to offer. Went. Didn't start out with merchandise. I had a vinyl cutter and a computer and I was going to go and do signs for the local community and it was great for a while it just ticked along and then people said, can you give me some pens? Can you get me mugs? Can you get me key rings? Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, do all that. And then before you know it, that snowballs and. But doing a signage job for a garage, which is car dealership, it's only around the corner from us, many years ago, introduced us to a big media company in Manchester that had a local newspaper and TV station, that was it sort of the merchandise side just took off massively after that. And most of our work comes by referrals. We do very little. Well, we don't do any advertising at all. Paid for advertising. We're in a few networking groups and it's just the referral side and that's grown and along the lines we got introduced to some companies in London that had global offices and all of a sudden we're we're creating products and sending products all over the world isn't its problems as you know.

But yeah, yeah now you started working with all types of clients but you've evolved your clientele and you're working for some more high end verticals. What types of industries are you working with now?

One area that we got introduced to a client in the financial technology area and just we worked with them for a good number of years, still do on a couple of projects. But as people come and go from that and moved into other companies we seem to have now worked or be working with four or five companies that are in that industry and again all via referral. It's, it's not an industry. We thought I know we can do that, we know exactly what we're doing for that market. But as it happens we're now able to suggest items that people go oh yeah, that'd be really good and that would go down great with our clients. We, we only have a few larger clients. A lot of our business in the uk. Another difference to the US is order quantities are much smaller. Right. Because a lot of companies that we work with are just UK based so they've got, you know, a maximum target that they're going to aim at. But in terms of who we work with, the financial technology is probably sort of the one area where were focused on in terms of we got introduced and then it was like okay, so yeah, do something with that. Other programs we, we work with all industries, we work with local authorities, we work with the NHS media companies and it's just a case of adjusting the products to fit the problems that they have. It's, I've always aimed to offer solutions to problems rather than sell products.

So now you're developing expertise with fintech and, and that's exactly what happens right when you start becoming, developing your businesses you lean into a vertical and you keep gaining an expertise in how these clients work, what they need, where they're headed and it just, it's easier to expand that way.

Yeah, it's. The expansion came, I mean just going back to how I started. I was working from home, the business grew, I got an office, we had some part time staff and then we had the recession in 2008 and had to close the office, make staff redundant and it was, that was an awful thing for me and I never wanted to do that again so I sort of hunkered down and we just started slowly again and say just again buy a referral. We get introduced to things and to a point where we couldn't, I couldn't just do it on my own anymore.

You've also done something that, that we haven't really seen done before to this degree. It's ingenious. You've partnered with us based distributors to help them with European clients, is that correct?

Yeah, that all started thanks to Mark Graham. He had an email from Adam at Commotion over in Santa Barbara and he introduced us and see if we could help with a challenge he had and we did. And we've worked with him on a couple of occasions now and we even actually got to meet up and go have dinner with him. After we did Skew Camp last year, we had a vacation on the west coast and that was just great. Sort of just drive down, have an amazing holiday. But to be sat with people in Santa Barbara that you've worked with and you do zoom calls with and actually help them out and it's just that connection you get with distributors over there. So we've now worked with probably about half a dozen distributors everywhere from Ohio, California, Florida, Texas. And it's great. And it's, I just approach it again from, you know, well, how can I help? What can I do?

Yeah, and how do you, how do you help them? I think that's what folks would be asking Stephen. How do you help them?

The biggest challenge is, I mean, we've had it shipping out to the US identical products. One occasion we shipped some stuff to a board meeting in Austin and it was delivered within 24 hours and the client was amazed and we needed the same products going into New York and they got stuck in Customs and UPS for 10 weeks and it's like, well, how does that work? You know, so it's just, well, we're not doing that again. And it's the same speaking to US distributors, they've had the same trying to get products into Europe or into the uk. So for me now, if somebody's got a problem like that, we tend to help them split the job. We run the equivalent product or the same product on some instances where we can. And we do the European and the UK arm for them and we've got, we, as a result of Brexit, we can't just ship into Europe from the uk. So, so we actually went through a fairly painful process of getting set up with a European VAT and the ARI number. So we have fiscal representation in the eu. So I can buy as an EU company as well as a UK company. So we end up, you know, T shirts are a good example of work that we've done. So we'll print T shirts in the UK and in the euro, keeping close control on them, making sure it's the same garments, the same inks and things. So we've got the similar looking products for the client. We'll just take that side on for a US distributor and it takes the headache away from them. We're trying to ship from the US over to the UK and it being held up or in some instances sent back so they still get charged Customs and then it gets sent back and then the clients still got the product.

So if I have a client and let's say it's a T shirt's a great example. We had an insurance client one time that hit the Fortune 100. Best companies to work for. Everybody in the company got a T shirt and. And that means in the US I could do that and then through you I could deliver that to European employees as well. So everybody has the same experience. Is that a good example of what you're.

Yeah, it's perfect example. And we'll. We even split it down where we're drop shipping to individual addresses, we're delivering in bulk to offices or even into warehouses for logistics. So whatever the occasion or the need that the client's got, then we can help out with that.

What would you advise? Kind of have two questions going back to Brexit a little bit. Is that a good example of how it made things more complicated? You now had to get this licensing and Europe as well as in the uk.

Yeah, it changed the industry overnight. I think throughout the whole referendum as to whether the UK should leave or remain. I don't think anybody ever said in very clear terms that this is what's going to happen if you leave. I think if somebody had really stood up and said that, a lot of companies wouldn't have voted to leave. But what it did is even though even with Ireland, Ireland and Northern Ireland, we can ship into Northern Ireland without too much of a problem, we can't ship into Southern Ireland because it's still very much part of the eu. So for a T shirt order, we're printing it over in Europe. It's then taking seven or eight days to clear to then get into Southern Ireland. But that's still quicker than us trying to do it and cheaper than us trying to do it from the uk. Yeah, sure. I was ferry ride away. Yeah. And it's just the whole like two sets of VAT and splitting all of that out. So it just put additional costs on and. Yeah, you know, I'm Sure. Somebody is winning from the whole process.

Right.

Well.

And I love that you outline this process because this is exactly the kind of thing as a US distributor would say. I don't. I just suddenly just get my. My eyes glaze over. I'm confused. I don't understand the system. You do and that's a big help. Is this what advice we give to distributors with clients? You know, often they'll just shut down a project with a client. I think it's changing, but it used to be, you know what, we don't do business in the UK now though, with a partner like you, they can say yes to these kinds of.

Yeah, very much so. And it's, you know, as I say, we've helped about six US distributors now with various projects. Some very straightforward, just needed a job drop and delivering in bulk. One address in the uk that was an easy win. Others are a lot more complicated if it's UK and EU and there's drop shipping as well as bulk shipping. But I've got it in reverse. We've got a project that we deliver that goes out to the US and I've now got. With all your different tax variations with the different states and everything that was causing us problems. But now jobs simplified a little. But I don't even try and do that. I've got a distributor helping me source all the warehousing and everything. So once it gets delivered, it's just looked after over there, I don't need to worry about it. And then when the client needs the next pallet of whatever it is, then out it goes. Yeah.

Do you split. Do you like charge of fee? Do you split just percentage of profits? How do you typically work? Or any of the. All the above.

The easiest way I've done it is just be completely transparent. I share my net costs and I just say, you know, I'm happy to help you out in any way. Let's just split the profit without exception. Everybody's just gone, great. That's the easiest way. Let's crack on.

Right. How would you respond to the phrase collaboration over competition?

That was a big eye opener for me, coming into Common SKU and seeing just initially just the community feed that's on the platform itself. And then whilst we were in Covid, seeing all the zoom calls and just speaking to other distributors and how you do help each other. For me it's. It's been the best thing I've ever done and I do like to help people anyway. Yeah. Nature and working with US distributors, they're not just Clients now they're friends in, in the uk we're much sort of denser population and in a smaller surface area because I've got my nearest sort of competitors are, you know, just over a mile away from me, within 10 miles radius. I've got many companies that do what I do and we're all pretty much fighting for the same piece of work. And there is no issue for us in the UK sort of shipping to anywhere within the uk, it's the same VAT code there aren't that. So it doesn't really matter where you are in the uk, you can just deal with another client in the UK and that's it. And there is a lot of competition for it, particularly since people have caught on to doing the kitting. There are many websites springing up like that and Brexit's have a knock on there because a lot of people lost the jobs so they've set up on their own. So you've got a lot more smaller distributorships and now there's even more people going after the same work.

Right.

Typically if you go to a networking meeting and you see somebody in the same industry, not just the promotional product industry, you'll see two financial advisors or two accountants and they don't really talk to each other. They'll sort of go separately. You can literally see them go heels and go separate. That's the competition and they're in this town and they're. So I, I've not really seen. There may be some collaboration with some of the bigger firms. I'm not sure. I, I haven't seen it myself.

Yeah.

But for me personally to collaborate with U.S. distributors, it, it's working well. It helps them, it helps me. I've got access into the US and it's, it's just fun to do. Yeah, the.

Speaking of, by the way, do you have an extra 10 minutes, Stephen? Okay, great. Speaking of common sku, you've been such a great supporter of Commons. Q. I mean you were a supporter before realizing this was going to have an ROI for you.

Right.

You were attending events, encouraging others. How has Commons you made an impact on business? We know from the side of this, from what you're doing with these partnerships, but how about in your operation?

For my operation side, I had to find a new software. The, the software I was using just stopped overnight for reasons that, you know, unfortunately somebody passed away and they were the brains and had all the information. So I was put in a situation where literally all our whole order processing system just route to a halt. Overnight. So very quickly looked around, came across this common SKU and it's like what is it? And had made a few inquiries about it, long story short, decided yes, this was for me without fully realizing the benefits of the system. And even though in the UK we have no products to put on that we can just tap into, we have to put everything on manually. It was such a good system. The clients commented on how they like the presentations, how they appear to them. Shops are just starting to come on board a little bit for me now. We're hoping to get one off the ground very soon, which we've used pop up shops but I've not been able to get a company to do a company store yet. But in the four years that I've had common sku I double more than double my turnover and double the staff. And in fact the latest staff member started last week and that was through delegate CX who I only found out about at SKU camp last year. And what is this DCX that people are talking about? Had a chat with Rory there just before Christmas and his team have just been amazing. Yeah, we had a new starter last week and it's couldn't be going better. That's great.

How about your personal growth? How's it sort of changed you as a leader and just, you know, working, being able to work on your business, in your business. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but how's it really impacted you personally?

For me personally it's, I've got no formal business training whatsoever. I was just, I was fed up in the office one day, right, I'm going to go and do my own thing and sort of it was going fine and then things start growing and then you don't know about all the other issues that you get with growing a business and trying to do everything from the sales, the production, the installations, then the invoicing and then running all the accounts and you just, you miss so much, you don't grow the business, it sort of gets tied down. I think the mistake I made earlier on was not getting that good team. Even when I did have an office that had part time staff, they weren't the right stuff, I don't think at the time. So for me, certainly in the last four years I've listened to lots of Skew Casts and other podcasts. I've read Seth Godin's book Purple. I've listened to his podcast, it's opened my eyes to lots of different areas and as the business has grown I have now Got the right people in place and it's. It's now making me feel like a more rounded person and I can. I think I can see issues before they become a problem now or it's given me the confidence to go and tackle something that I might not have done previously.

Yeah, I was going to ask you that. It sounds like it. Because it gives you sort of more confidence and energy to scale your workforce as you're already doing.

Yeah, it's just I need to be able to work on the business because I can see that's what's making the business grow. Yeah. I've sort of all but removed myself from the day to day or the processing now. I'm still involved in all the projects but once everybody knows what needs to happen, I just sort of maintain a watch over that to make sure that it does happen. Obviously, being such a small business, holiday cover and things like that, I'm there and sleeves rolled up and in the thick of it again. Yeah.

On this topic then, how would you encourage another entrepreneur trying to do it all and grow like you? And what would you tell Stephen Ward who just who started in the business? What would you tell him now that you know what you know?

I think it would be try and get a good team together as soon as you can, or that. That's the hard part is knowing what is a good team. I suppose with experience, I've worked out what that is for me now, you know. But if you can do that right from the off, that enables you to, like we've said, work on the business, not in it. Because I spent too many years just in it, which was great, I enjoyed them. But to for compared to the last four years, it's like chalk and cheese. It was just. I was a different person. I was just head down, not too much stress, just. Yeah, you want one of those or that sign doing or that merchandise, fine, not a problem. And just. Yeah, I've got enough money to pay the mortgage, take the family on holiday, do what I want to do and I was happy. It's getting those introductions into the larger companies and then looking at their issues and sort of trying to figure out a way to do that. I've really enjoyed that and I like figuring out problems. It's working out how best we're going to get around the situation and there's a lot of people that just don't export into Europe now because. Or deal with Europe because it was just such a hard thing to get into and get sorted out and expensive. I think now I've just got the confidence to go, well, I can do that. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. For many months it was just. No. Okay. Can't get that way. Right. Find another way around. And you know, eventually you get there and you make it happen. I think there's a lot of making your own look. Yeah.

Did you use the phrase here's my Americanism that I didn't catch it. Did you use the phrase chunking cheese?

No, no. Chalk and cheese.

Chalk and cheese. What does that mean?

Well, chalk and cheese are so different.

Oh, chalk and cheese. Okay, I got it.

I love it.

All right, great. I was like. I thought this was like some cool throwback fridge century or something. I was.

Yeah. Out of it. I don't know what the American would be, but two things that are so. Yeah, I love it.

Yeah, it's still cool. I love it. Better than apples and oranges. So what do you steam? What do you do when you're not working? What do you enjoy?

Well, I don't think I'm ever not working fully, but I. I'm in a golf business network, which I've always played golf. Not particularly well, but I play it. That's. It's been really good for my business, but I enjoy golf socially anyway. But the actual golf group we're in, they've now expanded into Europe and into the US they're in Colorado, Arizona and Florida now. Does it? That's been good on the personal and business level.

Yeah.

The other passion I have is photography. I like just going out with my camera and just being. I didn't know that.

Yeah. What do you shoot with?

Well, I've just upgraded. Two years ago I went to a new Canon mirrorless system. Nice. Now in a position where I can treat myself to the pro lenses, so I buy the best glass and I've got nice filter systems. So. Right. I can begin sat there. Whether it's doing some astro photography or astro landscapes or we had a nice trip up to Norway in January and managed to see the northern lights. So that was really good. And that's amazing shots of that. But yeah, I quite happy sat in a field or somewhere just with my camera and just let the. The time go by.

I love knowing that about you, but we can share some tips and. And things. What's a recent book, podcast or a movie that's really had a big impact on you?

I think I mentioned it before. The Purple Cow by Seth Godin. In terms of book and podcast that found that really helpful read a couple of times. The. I'VE mentioned to you before, but the Skew gas, that's just. I always listen to those now. It's like something's got to happen each week. It's the skewcast because I've picked up so many tips from the many great guests that you've had on there. And now it's not just that they guess. It's like, I know that person. I met them and oh, that's a good friend. And coming back to when we went to SKU camp and met such great people. Yeah. And I met John Bo will again on the road trip. You know, me driving down and just dropping for drinks with John on the way down and it's. Right. Just a crazy thing that I never envisaged would happen. But yeah, in other podcasts that I listened to like Promo Kitchen and Promo Corner that only came heard about again through Buy Common Skew. So very cool. So much to thank you for.

Well, we are continuing the great tradition of having awesome Skewcast guests because, Stephen, you have been so generous with your time and your energy and your knowledge and helping make the connections for Commons Q distributors. And I just want, I want to say thank you for being you. The team loves you. Thanks for being so generous with your time and intelligence. And how would you encourage others to be less competitive and more collaborative in the business?

That's a really difficult question.

Just be Steven Ward, maybe.

Is that what I don't try. That's the thing for me. I'm not trying to be something I'm not. It's like I've always been somebody that will try and help somebody. Yeah. And yes, in business you have to be ruthless sometimes and sort of defend your corner. But it's. I've not lost clients to other distributors because it's about building that relationship. So, yeah, if two distributors working together can go and get a bigger client and work together on it and share, then I would recommend it. And obviously for me, my focus with using Common Skew and meeting so many great people is very clearly if I can help somebody in the US that needs to help a job get cleared in UK or Europe, then I will do it. And I'm in a fortunate position that there aren't many others over here in my position with the connections that I've now got through this community that they're doing it. So I'm an easy win for them because we've already done it, we've got a proven track record. And yeah, it's, it's good for me. If there was somebody in my position, that was uncommon. Skew. I'd say, yeah, go do it. There's a lot of great companies out there that need help.

But, yeah, we, I would, I would add, we haven't done any name dropping here, but you are doing it for some of the best brands in the US and so my hat's off to you, my friend. And thanks for joining us on Skewcast,

and I look forward to seeing you in September.

Absolutely.