Episode 273: Embracing An Abundance Mindset With Slowtide’s Kyle Spencer

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.

There was a crazy, like, storm and it was raining in Southern California, which is extremely rare. It doesn't rain in Southern California, but it was this week and we were painting the walls, but yet it was still rainy. We had to bring everything into the garage, but it was— nothing was drying because of the air being so humid. So we went to Home Depot that night. This is like before they close at like 11 p.m. and we bought all these fans to blow air. And this is like, this is in the middle of the night. We're doing this. The trade show is like the next day. We had to be there like 7 a.m. to set up and we're like, hopefully our paint dries.

3 friends are laid off from their work around the same time, and one thing they have in common is a love for all things outdoors, including surfing. So they decide to start a beach towel company. After a scrappy and humble start investing their last dollars in the business, fast forward a few years and the company born as Slowtide is now partnering with famous bands like the Wu-Tang Clan and famous brands like fashion icon Kith. Eventually, the founders at Slowtide, Kyle Spencer, Dario Phillips, and Wiley Von Timsky, discovered the branded merch industry through our friends at Gemline, where their now famous towel line is available. Today, Kyle Spencer joins us to talk about their journey from those early startup days to their support of many great ocean-friendly nonprofits. And we also get around to the topic of what surfing and business have in common. And Kyle says it's all about having an abundance mindset. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Chief Content Officer at Common Skew. Hey, before our chat with Kyle, I want to share one quick note. One of the most frustrating aspects of running a fast response merch agency is being bogged down by product search. You're trying to reply to a client's request. You've got a million tabs open on supplier websites, or you're lost endlessly sifting through 100 items in ESP. Well, you can stop all that because we made it so simple and beautifully creative. We have a feature called Collections. It allows suppliers to feature context-ready ideas for real-time responses for distributors. Here's what I mean. Last month, we hosted Product Summit Sustainability, where suppliers shared their most creative sustainable merch ideas. Now, usually you leave an experience like that with a ton of ideas and you trust your memory, which eventually fails you because, you know, there are over a million products in the industry to choose from. But suppliers like our friends at Gemline and others create merch collections featuring the items they talked about so that these products are available at your fingertips when you need them. You don't have to leave the app. You don't have to have a million tabs open. Suzanne Simpson created a beautiful collection of Gemline products that were featured at Product Summit., which include, among other items, towels from our friends at Slowtide. It's just one feature among the many that we at CommonsQ make simple and elegant through our award-winning order management system. We love putting the fun and creativity back in the merch business. Today's episode is brought to you courtesy of CommonsQ. You can learn more at commonsq.com. Now on to our chat with Kyle Spencer about his entrepreneurial lessons learned, including what surfing can teach us about business.

So glad to have you here today, man.

Yeah, likewise. Thanks for having me.

You bet. And where are you? So that everyone will know where you're at, where are you sitting right now? Tell us where you're located.

Yeah, I'm in Waialua, Hawaii, which is on the North Shore of Oahu. Yeah, beautiful location. Born and raised over here, my wife as well. And yeah, we've been living here for the last 10 years after some other jobs and relocations in the past.

So many of us that are listening know about you through Slowtide. And let's just start with that name. Why the name Slowtide?

Yeah, so I mean, we're— myself and my two partners, our two of us grew up here in Hawaii. One of us grew up in Canada, but right there on the beach by Vancouver and surfing. So surfing was a huge part of our lifestyle. And when we were coming up with the whole brand and the idea, it was based around originally beach towels. And so as a surfer, you're always checking the tides and looking at tides, low tide, high tide. And commonly for most surf breaks, low tide is a better tide to go surf than high tide. So you're checking for that low tide. So that's just part of our vocabulary. And then we were kind of talking about when people are using our products, we want people to like enjoy life and take life a little slower and have an item that kind of accompanies them with their activities. And so having this kind of slow-paced life was a part of that. And so we took those words and it sounded cool together. And we, we like, that sounds cool. That was our first name we came up with. And we were like, that's cool, but let's make sure we don't go with the first thing. And we came up with hundreds of other names and we gave ourselves a deadline. And then the deadline, we were like, yeah, I think the first one was actually the best one. Let's go with Slowtide.

That's great. You have a rare business partnership. You mentioned your partners. The kind they say that doesn't last, but you've made it work. You have 3 partners in your business, 3 owners of the business. Can you talk about your business partners? Who are they and how do you, how did you know each other?

Yeah. So there's myself, Wiley Bontempski, and Dario Phillips. The 3 of us had been friends years long before we started the business together. And there's that age-old saying of don't go into business with friends or family. That's a tough one. I totally understand the meaning of that or the root of it, the why, but For me and for us, I go, I spend more time with these two people than with anybody else in my life. So why would I want to spend that with people who aren't my friends? That sounds miserable. And if they weren't friends before, if I'm doing business, they probably should become my friends because if not, it just doesn't sound that fun. And yeah, Wylie and I grew up together on Maui. I've known him since high school. We were roommates in later parts of life. And then I met Dario. He was, he got transferred down from a company in Canada. We worked for the same company. Company. He got transferred down to Orange County where I was living, and we just became roommates. We had a mutual friend, and so I literally met him, I think, the day he moved into our house. This is back in our single days. And so we, we naturally became friends. We were working together, and so it kind of formed from that. And it's been over 8 years now, and we've been really fortunate to still have a great business partnership and also a great friend partnership. Like, if it wasn't for us being in business, we'd still be hanging out together and be friends.

How do you split the roles in your business now?

Yeah, so I oversee sales and operations. Dario oversees marketing, and then Wiley is over creative. And that's— we have other roles in our company that are overseeing other stuff like finances and everything else, but the three of us, that's really what our backgrounds came from. And as we've been able to build the team, really leaning into the things that we do the best.

You have a fascinating Origin story. Can you tell a little bit about how you started the company? Basically, the three of you decided you're going to start a towel company, but that sort of came out of all three of you were laid off at the same time.

Is that right? Yes, definitely serendipitous. I think there's a lot of things you look back on, or how we got pretty lucky on certain timings of everything. And we had wanted to start this company even a few years before we actually launched it. And kind of back then, it was just Wiley and I. We had it met Dario at that point, and this was probably 2011, I would say. And we had this concept of doing this brand around beach towels. We kicked the can around for a little bit, didn't go anywhere. We had full-time jobs at the time, so we just had too much going on. And we met Dario and we told him the idea and he's like, that's so cool. And we kept talking about it and talking about it. Just life was busy and we all had full-time jobs. And so at this time, I think I was the first one to get laid off. We— I was working for a company called Quicksilver where Dario and I both were working at, and surf company based in Huntington Beach, California. And they were relocating offices to France. So my department was going to move it over there. I had just gotten married, so my wife wasn't really super down to move to a new country. And so I got laid off. And at the same time, Dario's whole marketing department was going through the same transition. He got laid off while he was working at Nike at the time, but they had a satellite office down in Orange County. And they wanted him and that small team to move up to Oregon at their headquarters. He didn't want to do that. So it was within months of each other, we all got laid off and we were picking up some freelance work consulting, but we were like, this seems like a good time to start that company we've been talking about the last few years. So yeah, it was very serendipitous. We had a lot more time on our hands and yeah, we started it kind of back then. That was 2015.

What did you see missing in the market where you said, towels, that's it? What was missing?

Everything we've done has really come from like an authentic place. It's come from things that we wanted to use, a brand we wanted to be a part of. And it really came from a day we were down at the beach with, with myself, Wiley, my wife, and some other friends. And Wiley had these amazing vintage beach towels that he picked up at a garage sale, and they were just beautiful with cool colors and cool patterns. And my wife, we should go find some of these or buy some. And so I think we went to Nordstrom or somewhere. They were all pretty lame. We looked online, we looked at some surf shops and we couldn't find any. It was kind of that, that common tale. There's not anybody doing this. And we just saw that opportunity to create this really cool— we were kind of all this creative bone in our body and love art and design and wanted to blend that with sustainability, with the kind of community and a brand. And so it just came from us being at the beach going, wow, like there's really no one doing this. And we looked around at all of our friends and a lot of them were artists, designers, marketers, and they had their towels, they were buying them from like Kmart or Walmart or Costco or somewhere. And, um, really spawned from just wanting cooler, better quality beach towels.

You didn't raise VC money. How did you scrap together the funds to just to start the business?

Uh, at first we used— my wife and I used what was going to be our down payment for a house to help fund our first production run of 1,000 towels. Wow. This is the true honest answer. Wow. And for Wiley and Dart, it was the same thing. We pretty much used our savings, um, to come up with the first couple production runs and took a little bit of a couple steps backwards in terms of what we were progressing in kind of our personal lives and kind of building something. And yeah, so that was kind of the first year. And then since then, we've been fortunate to meet a few kind of angel investors. We haven't gone the VC route, but kind of through— also, it's not been VC, it's not been family and friends, it's been just angel investors that came through mutual friends that were other founders, other CEOs, business owners that have been really more than just financial help, but really advisory help as well. Um, and so there's been a few key people that came on at an early stage and helped us out. And yeah.

Did you start selling to retail, trying to sell wholesale at first, or were you trying to tell retail, direct-to-customer? What was the model at first?

Yeah. So I like to say we were omnichannel before that was like a cool buzzword to have, which is also why, I mean, we, we did talk to, we got introduced to a few VC groups early on. And we had a website we were selling, we were doing wholesale, and usually the fact that we were selling to wholesale partners was a clear no for any of these VC groups back— this is back in 2016, '17. Fast forward now, and all these DTC brands are trying to open up wholesale. That was just what we knew. We worked for companies like Nike, Quicksilver. Wiley was at Billabong, I was at Hurley. And so that was our world, was online and wholesale. And I think also we didn't go out there and raise a bunch of money, which we used wholesale to help finance the growth of the company and help market the company. We didn't spend a ton of money on marketing the brand. So for us to partner with best-in-class retail stores, whether it be like influential surf shops like Jack's in Huntington Beach or Town and Country here in Hawaii, and later on Nordstrom and Urban Outfitters, that also helped to grow the brand awareness And so yeah, to go back to your question, we were doing it all at the very beginning.

Yeah. To show how scrappy you were, tell me that trade store trade show story from 2016.

Yeah, that's a good one. So we launched the brand in October of 2015. We got a phone call the day we launched from Aaron Levant, who was the founder of the Agenda trade show. And this is back then, that was, it was huge. They had trade shows in New York, in Miami, in Las Vegas, in Long Beach, California., and we just get a random phone call out of the blue and he's like, I saw what you guys are doing. I want to have you guys here at Agenda. And we're like, okay. And that was the place to be. We got a small little 10 by 10 booth and, and we were like, all right, we got to figure out what that's going to look like. And again, back in these days, these brands were building out beautiful big booths, spending tons of money. And so we felt like we were going to be alongside these big brands. We had to look a certain way and build a booth. And in Wiley's backyard, we were constructing walls because you get these booths and they're just pipe and drape. So, you have to build walls and frame in this full-on little house. And so, we were building walls, we were painting the walls, we were decking it all out and trying to learn how to do all this stuff on the fly. This was in January of 2016. There was a crazy storm and it was raining in Southern California, which is extremely rare. It doesn't rain in Southern California, but it was this week. And, we were painting the walls, but yet it was still rainy. We had to bring everything into the garage, but nothing was drying because of the air being so humid. So, we went to Home Depot that night. This is before they close at 11:00 PM and we bought all these fans to blow air. And, this is in the middle of the night we're doing this. The trade show is the next day. We had to be there at 7:00 AM to set up. And, we're like, "Hopefully, our paint dries." And so, it was definitely a bit of stress. But that was— it was also fun. It was also like we were, we were enjoying the days literally in the garage, and we pulled it off. The paint dried miraculously. We slept for probably 2 or 3 hours, and we went and set up and had a great trade show. That's cool.

How many employees do you have now?

So now we have 14 that are full-time in-house for Slowtide, and we have about 20 sales reps throughout the country.

Okay. You leaped from— there seems to be this leap, and we know it was more iterative than that— for your retail line and D2C. How did you suddenly land into these collaborations where you're doing things like the Wu-Tang Clan collection? And you did that— you like that project you did in collaboration with the band's 30th anniversary of their debut album?

How did you make that leap? Yeah, that took some time to get from kind of launch to like having big partnerships like that. But from our very first collection, we had 8 beach towels. They're all the same size, all the same shape. It was very simple with different patterns on it though. 7 of the 8 were ones that we designed, mostly, mostly Wiley designed. And then one of them was a collaboration with a local artist in LA that we had become friends with and we loved his artwork and we wanted to use our product as a canvas for his design and artwork. And so he was our first collaboration. And from there, we really knew that like partnering with artists and other brands was a key part of our DNA. We built this brand and this— we were calling it a canvas. For art, this beach towel. And so being able to see other art and expression on our product was really exciting for us. And that just grew from our friends that were artists to our friends that had brands to some bigger ones and bigger ones. And kind of all the way through into this last year, being able to partner with the Wu-Tang Clan and celebrate 36 Chambers album, it was really cool. That was definitely like a really fun moment for us to be able to to have a big partnership like that from a group that we've listened to since I was in high school.

Yeah, those that are listening are running agencies and distributors, and their whole world is collaborations. Like, they're trying to match good brands with good product, and there's a lot of collaboration energy around what they do every day in, day out. What have you learned about all these collaborations? Because you've done some fascinating collaborations with some pretty big names featured in Rolling Stone. What have you learned about all this that you didn't know prior to doing them?

Yeah, I think it's, I think for us it's all about authenticity. So from the very beginning of why the brand in the first place was because we wanted a better beach towel. We've done a new product since then that we wanted to use, and all the collaborations stem from brands, bands, artists, creatives that we enjoy and that we are excited to partner with. And whether that be me or Wiley or Dario, or as our team has grown, really diversifying our interests, but just comes from things that we're into. So nothing's been— we haven't chased something just to make a quick buck, whether it's Grateful Dead or Wu-Tang or the Beatles, or if it's artists like Takashi Murakami or Keith Haring. These are bands and people that we have loved for a lot of years. And so it's very— comes from our own personal interest. And I think that is shown through the brand and how we build our community. And again, not just chasing something because it's hot right now.

Yeah, that's a really great point. You, and you do the same thing with products. Like you, you said that you and Dario and Wiley have this, that this passion for certain experiences and that's how your new products come around. Do you have an example of a new product you've released lately?

So some, some good ones might be, I mean, our yoga towels and our active line that stemmed from the 3 of us at the similar times, like getting really into yoga and exercise years back. And we were going, we were going to these yoga classes and going to people are using these other ones that like don't look that cool. They're not really made from sustainable materials. And we're a towel brand. We should probably maybe think about this. Yeah. And so that stemmed from that. And we launched a home collection a few years ago and bath towels and robes and hand towels and kitchen towels. And again, we're here striving to be the leader in textiles and towels and blankets. And we look around our house going, these are products we're using every day. We love building a great home and bringing our art into the home. And those products were very influential for us. Another one we have coming out in a couple seasons here, I'll give you a little sneak peek, is baby, like baby towels. My Dario has a couple kids. I just had our first kid a few months ago. And so it's like, all right, maybe it's time to like, thank you. Maybe it's time to make products. And again, I was, we were getting products, gifts from friends and baby towels and they weren't Slowtied. And I'm going, this isn't right. This isn't right. You know? So yeah, all these things really just come from things that like we wanna use ourselves.

Yeah. You're, speaking of sustainability, you're a very conscientious brand. You support a bunch of organizations including Surfrider, Good 362, Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii. Can you tell us about one of these for those non-surfers like myself? Can you tell us about one of these organizations and how you support their work?

Yeah. Yeah. That was a lot. We've really made it a point to be able to, like our brand is really diversifying beyond just the beach with our home collection and active collections, we want to make sure that what we do to support really cool organizations isn't just limited to one thing too. Whether it be things like ocean conservation with Surfrider or disaster relief with Good360 or surf therapy and really kind of bringing the joys of the ocean and surfing to inner city communities like Good Juju and a company called, or a group called Un Mar de Colores. It's really important to kind of diversify our give back. Contributions to, but I guess the one that I maybe I'll mention is like Surfrider Foundation. They're a local organization based in Southern California. We were friends with some of the people that worked there even prior to starting Slowtide, just loved what they did. And through Slowtide now, we've been able to partner with them on a few different aspects. So we've been able to collaborate with them and make custom products that all the sales go back to the organization. We do events that, you know, make limited products and events that sort support their organization as well. We've done some beach cleanups, we partnered with them and we help promote that and host that. And Surfrider is a, is like an ocean conservation group. And yeah, whether I feel like whether people surf or not, it's, they're bigger than that. It's the environment and it's the ocean, which is whatever the number is, how much percent of the world is, is the ocean. I think we have a respect for all bodies of water, and whether that be the ocean, lakes, rivers. Yeah, they're a great organization and we're super excited to be able to like support what they're doing.

So you bootstrap this business with towels, you end up selling both direct-to-consumer as well as wholesale, you grow this business and suddenly you discover promo. So you discover the promotional products market through our good friends at Gemline. How did that come about? How did you discover this industry?

It's pretty serendipitous. That's going to be like the theme is I didn't really know much about this whole industry prior to working with Gemline. We're good friends with some of the guys at Mirror and Tim White, who heads up their sales, just randomly mentioned, hey, have you thought about this industry? And I said, no, I haven't. He, they said they work with Gemline and they're really great at working with brands. So I got introduced to Gemline and it grew from there. But yeah, I really was naive to it. It wasn't something that we intentionally started out to build when we started the company.

Yeah. What was your impression of the branded merch industry before connecting with Gemline versus now?

Probably honest answer is not good. Sure. We come from a space of building best-in-class brands that are the Quicksilvers, the Nikes, the Billabongs, that, that's just never really the intention of the brand. And it's building these like high-class partnerships with New Balance or Wu-Tang Clan or Grateful Dead. And I think from where I always thought of this, it was like getting a polo shirt for a fundraiser golf tournament with a big giant screen print on it that I would never wear again after that. I would probably give it away, give it to Goodwill. Will. So that was my impression before.

It's changed.

How has it changed? And I think getting introduced, and again, when that introduction got made with Gemline, I was like, I'll at least chat. I'll have a conversation and I'll see where it goes. And it was really opened my eyes to what they do and how it's different than my perception in the past. And they work with really great brands that we are, we're fans of. We are very similar to what Slowtide is doing in just other product categories, things like MIR, Moleskine, Osprey, and New Balance. And I think Gemline is a unique one. They really know how to work with brands, and they're not just making a chotchy giveaway item that ends up in the trash can after the event. And that's really important to us. I think being a sustainable brand, one of the most sustainable things that we can do is make a product that lasts as long as possible so you're not throwing it away or going in the landfill after one season of use. And we really like that about Gemline. They knew how to work with the brand. They understood that, and that was, I think, what their partners came to them for was for brands, not cheap items.

What makes— I know this is going to sound like a very simple question, and but remember, we have a lot of folks here who are selling all kinds of product through for their clients. What makes a towel an ideal merchandise product, a branded merch product? I mean, I'm trying to get you to help us with our sales.

Yeah, I like it, I like it. Prompting. It's the same thing of why it's a great product for— and whether it's an e-com business or a wholesale business, I think it's the same answer. It's the actual product down to itself is it's one size fits all, and it's not age or gender specific. And we've been able to really broaden our consumer base because of that. And I think we have a great business in the spring summertime. And granted, we are more than just a beach towel brand. We have a home collection. We have blankets and ponchos and robes that are kind of multi-season, year-round business. But at the same time, in the holidays, we still do a lot of business around beach towels. People are traveling, people do live in warmer climates, they are going camping, they live in an apartment that has an indoor pool or a jacuzzi or a sauna, and it makes an amazing gift. And I think that's the reason why it makes a great gift. And if something makes a great gift, it kind of lends itself quite perfectly to the promotional products world.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. Let's talk a little bit about you and your journey. How have you grown as an entrepreneur? What would you tell younger Kyle today as he was starting out back then that you didn't know about like creating a business like what you've created?

Yeah, that's such a good question and a tough one. I think I've been asked that before and I'm always like scratching my head going, okay, what is that advice I'd give my younger self? And I think part of it is, I think there's a ignorance is bliss. And you've, I've heard a lot of other entrepreneurs say if they knew everything about the world they were going into, they probably wouldn't do it. And so I struggle with that question because I'm going, I think if I was to give my younger self advice, it would probably freak out my 18-year-old self of just how hard it is. It's really tough. It's fun, but a lot of times it's really difficult. And We didn't pay ourselves for years. We were living a very meager, just trying to scrape by, sacrifice a lot for a few years. And there's times that are not fun. You've had, you have to make tough decisions. You have to, not everybody loves you when you're running a business. And so I think, I think that, that answer is tough. I would just love that when everything we've done the way it was, it was a new challenge for us. We didn't know everything about it. So I guess my answer to that question is I probably would just say just keep that ignorance of a young child and just, I guess, follow your passion. That's like the kind of cheesy, I think even in those years we weren't paying ourselves, it was invigorating. It was exciting. We were learning, we were pushing ourselves, we were growing, we were like meeting new people, we were traveling, we were like, it was like, it was amazing. No. And so I think it was all about money. We'd be doing something, we'd be selling like pharmaceuticals or something, but we really love what we're doing. And some of the success or whatever, wherever we're at now, it has just come because I think we actually love what we're doing. We're passionate about it. Yeah. Because that's my answer.

Who are your business or personal mentors?

Gosh, I think I have these really large ones. I think like probably the biggest one would be like a Phil Knight. Like I read Shoe Dog, I think in the first year that we were starting. Slow Tide, and that had a huge influence on just my mentality and probably why we didn't go out there and raise VC funds from day one. But it took Phil and Nike a long time to even build what it is today, and they didn't do it overnight. So I love that story. I love how many ups and downs he had and the challenges he had. And then I would say even just down to, there's some of our investors that are really inspiring people. Aaron Levant is our first ever investor. He started the Agenda trade show. He has a company called Network. Kellen Rowland runs like Pharrell Williams' company, Jupiter. Ethan Song is one of our investors who started a company called Frank and Oak. Yeah, we've been really fortunate to have these people and we have quarterly meetings with them and they've been able to be a great sounding board for us as we've shaped the business. And then my last answer that I can't leave out is my father and my father-in-law. My father has, he did development and construction his whole life, worked super hard. He instilled work ethic in me. Even when it's not fun, I'd be out on the job site when I was in summers after college doing some pretty difficult manual labor and really instilled the work ethic. And he built a business in the same— my father-in-law, he makes surfboard fins, right? Got like across the street pretty much at a factory here on the North Shore. And so just to see their work ethic is really inspiring and what they've built too. Yeah, can't leave them out.

What do you enjoy doing when you're not working?

And I'm assuming you surf. Yeah, my wife actually teases me because I have so many hobbies. Yeah, surfing is my first love. Born and raised here in Hawaii, grew up surfing. That's my first love.

But I, yeah, I know I grew up on a ranch. I've been nowhere near any kind of surfing whatsoever, but I read Barbarian Days by William Finnegan. It was absolutely amazing for someone who's like never been near or hardly ever been near water. That was an astounding book.

That's still on my list. I somehow— everybody that I know that doesn't surf has read it besides me. We're all living vicariously through your real life. I know. I feel guilty. I need to read that one.

It was mesmerizing though. It was mesmerizing because he really took you into the experience.

Yeah. It's weird to not talk about it and sound like a hippie. It's spiritual and it's like interacting with nature. But it truly is. It's unlike anything else. So my other hobbies, I like golfing. I love tennis. I've gotten into pickleball from tennis recently. I love running, exercise, working out, lifting weights. I have a daughter that I love hanging out with, my wife. But all those other kind of hobbies, it just isn't the same as surfing. It's just different. It doesn't give you that same feeling when you get done. And I think that there's so many life lessons in surfing. You learn how to have a respect for other people. You're in the lineup, you're sharing these waves. And you're out there for an hour and you want to catch all of them, but you have to respect other people. And so there's that. And just being in nature, it's moving, it's interacting. You're having to think split-second. The wave, you think it might not break, but it's going to break and you have to change and pivot. And with the business, it's you're constantly adapting and changing and it's moving. It's its own life force. So I think there's a lot of relative things. And the last thing that I think a lot about too is is like the abundance mindset. And when you surf, there's always more waves. You think you're only out there for an hour and you got to get all the waves, but there's always going to be more waves. There'll always be another swell. And so I think having that abundance mindset keeps me from wanting to catch all the waves when I'm out there in an hour, knowing that I'll come back tomorrow or the next day or the next day and there'll always be more waves. And I think, again, that's just my personal philosophy is having that abundance mindset, not the finite mindset. So again, it sounds super hippie and spiritual, but like it's, it really is.

Not at all. It prevents a fatalist attitude that says this is all there is. I better squander. I better get everything I can, which what a richer life to live with the abundance attitude. Our last question, what brands inspire you? Are there like upstart brands or brands that have been around for a while? I mean, you, you're very immersed in the brand world, particularly given your background.

Who inspires you these days? Yeah, there's a gosh, gosh, I don't know. Like, where do I even start? I could list a zillion, but I'll just go to one that is my favorite brand of all time. It's called Kith. Yeah. They're, they're based in New York.

They're kind of just in a store of theirs in Brooklyn.

Yeah. Yep. Yep. That store is unreal. I think it's one of their newest stores and it's just been a brand I've been a fan of forever. The way that they do things, that they, they really take pride in every little thing they do. And you've been in other stores, every little detail is thought through and it's just incredible. Their products. Just the storytelling, their partnerships, it's really aspirational. And we were really fortunate to be able to collaborate with them. We just launched our collaboration with them about 3 weeks ago for their summer collection.

Very cool.

Congratulations. Wow, man. So that was probably the biggest kind of holy smokes moment we've had in the business so far. And yeah, really cool. And that was kind of like one of the most like fun things we've been able to do kind of thus far in the business.

That's very cool. Congratulations to you and the team and your fellow founders. And thank you for spending your time with us. Today. I know Sadia and the folks at Gemline spoke so highly of you and the whole Slowtide group, so we're thrilled to have you.

Thanks, Bobby. Yeah, I really appreciate your time and having me on here.

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