Episode 279: Mastering the Distributor Production Role with Mike Vandervoet, Paperclip Promotions

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.

There are a few roles we've noticed growing with distributors. One is a dedicated marketing person, whether you call that role client engagement, brand strategy, or marketing director. It's a crucial role for any distributor, particularly because we are in the marketing business.

The other role is that of a supply chain manager or production manager.

Now, through the pandemic, we experienced a painful supply chain crisis, and suddenly monitoring and troubleshooting projects in production became a vital part of a distributor's workflow. But the role didn't arise as a short-term fix. In fact, post-pandemic, many suppliers changed their buying and inventory strategies, for example, offering fewer products and implementing shorter inventory cycles.

Thus, one of the reasons for the need for a heavier ops focus on production.

Because this role has become more important, I wanted to talk with an insider, someone doing the work, and explore their best practices and advice. But this just isn't any insider. Our guest actually has a military logistics background, which I learned over dinner when we rolled through Austin, Texas last year during our CommsCue Texas tour. Mike Vandervoort has been a production manager for over 4 years with Paperclip Promotions. He brought 7 years of Air Force logistics experience along with decades of customer-facing involvement to his first job in the industry with Paperclip.

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Growing up in Southern California, Mike's first job was at In-N-Out Burger. It was an experience where he learned the value of treating everyone with equal kindness. Mike then joined the Air Force, where he was assigned as an inventory management specialist. It was a successful match for Mike, as he was named one of the 12 outstanding airmen during his 7 years serving. Upon leaving the Air Force, Mike completed his bachelor's degree in communication studies at California State University, Sacramento, and moved to Austin, Texas, where he's lived since 2000. Mike is moving out of his role as production manager and into a new role as program and fulfillment manager for Paperclips. So during our chat, I wanted to know not only what his experience was like in the production role, but how he's training his replacement, plus advice on how to do this production job well and what it involves. Even if you don't have any plans to hire a production manager, Mike's advice on how to masterfully handle production working with salespeople, strengthening your supplier relationships is so important. I really love this conversation with Mike. Hi, friends. I'm Bobby LeHew, Chief Content Officer at Commonsku. Since we're talking today about production, I want to mention that in 2019, not that long ago, there were no suppliers on Commonsku with EPOs, electronic purchase orders, turned on and only a percentage with connected inventory and order steps. What's an EPO? It's basically a touchless purchase order. Once you submit it, it requires little or no hands-on maintenance by you or the supplier. Today, 7 major suppliers have connected EPOs through CommsCue or are in the final stages of connecting product data and purchase orders, and more than 40 are connected through inventory and order status. That's thousands of products and millions of data points harnessed through the power of a connected workflow. Basically, between 2019 and now, plus a pandemic and near-catastrophic supply chain issues, you have an incredible net gain of the brightest and best suppliers making strides toward one goal: simplicity for all. Our vision at CommonSkew is to eliminate the hassles of order management, the sometimes 30 or 40 steps involved in just getting an order across the finish line. And thanks to Promo Standards and our connected workflow, we're doing it. You didn't get into the branded merch business to become a professional order handler. You got into this business to create cool projects for clients. Order management? That's our expertise. Let us do the heavy lifting. Do what over 700 other distributors have already done. Check out our touchless and seamless system at commonscue.com/demo. Now, here's my chat with our friend Mike Vandervoort at Paperclip Promotions.

Thanks for joining us today.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Bobby.

You bet. And it's so rare to get someone with your experience in a particular discipline in our industry that has become one of the most important roles in our industry. So you had 7 years of inventory management in the Air Force. And as I mentioned in our introduction, you are with the wonderful company that we love, Paperclip, Ruth and the team. But you— but prior to that, you had 7 years of inventory management in the Air Force. And when I sat down with you at dinner, when Mark and I, we did our little Texas tour and we had dinner with you in Austin, I sat down and realized, wow, this is like a professional supply chain management person. You know what I know? And maybe you think or do not think yourself that way, but that's fantastic because that role is really growing in the industry. So, but 7 years of military experience, did that help you prepare for that, for this role? In the industry?

Yeah, I would say so. My 7 years I spent performing inventory management, that was actually the highlight of my career, I would say. So not only that I learned so much in terms of what it takes to move things, and particularly at the time, aircraft parts all over the world, but I also got to see and experience, you know, seeing the world. So it was an experience that helped me, prepare me, and shaped me both professionally and personally.

Yeah, I, I've read that, and you and I talked about this a little bit at that dinner. I've read that wars are won or lost at logistics. Would you agree? And, and, and like, do you have an example? And I'm bringing this up not because neither of us are, are warmongers. I'm bringing this up because of the importance of the role in a successful distributorship, a role that has grown so much. Um, but logistics are won or lost in those cases.

Yeah, I would agree. So while I don't have a wartime example for you, I felt the pressure working as the face of logistics for a squadron. So when just one of our aircraft that you're in charge of ordering parts for is sitting on a tarmac waiting for a part, that's a universal not good sign to the entire base that the supply team isn't, you know, has some work to do basically. So, right. I think we can all relate in some way, right? So when Amazon is delayed delivering that gift that you expected to give your kid for their birthday and it's delayed, I mean, you feel it. And in terms of distributorship specifically, even though a delivery problem is due to the shipper, bad weather, etc., that's not an excuse any reputable distributor wants to use. So, yeah, working with the suppliers that you can trust to do their job is an important element. As well as an order management platform such as CommonsCube.

Yeah. In your career, you obviously had critical supplies to manage. I mean, you, like you said, you have a multi-million-dollar plane sitting on the tarmac.

Yeah.

How do you see supply chain different than we do, or do you see similar similarities?

Sure. So I would say that there's more differences similarities when it comes to specifically being efficient. So for example, in the Air Force, if a part is on backorder and impairing the mission, then it's elevated to people that take care of that pretty efficiently. So for a recent supplier example, we had a few gift boxes that were damaged during delivery. And so unfortunately, it took weeks and speaking with numerous people just to get those boxes replaced. So Situations like that should only take 1 or 2 touches before it's remedied and taken care of the next day, the following day. But unfortunately, it took like multiple weeks and persons and things like that. So when it comes to efficiency, I can be impatient because I strive for and am used to a smooth process.

Yeah, yeah. I don't want to stereotype all suppliers because we know how vital our supplier partners are, but in some cases there's a missing role there, right, where you can elevate something to a critical mission status or something that's gone wrong. There are some suppliers that don't have that layer built in.

Exactly. Yeah. And I didn't— I wasn't trying to pick on any particular supplier. I've just, you know, as an example that we had, I've heard that before.

That's why, that's why I bring it up. But isn't it crazy how this universe works? I mean, who knew that you would someday stumble into this business, which has a very own very complex supply chain. How did you come up on this industry and Paperclip?

My journey to Paperclip was by happenstance, actually. So I was searching for an opportunity to work with an employer providing upgrade to my benefits that I truly had. And I had interviewed with the two Paperclip founders, Beth Walker and Ruth Ferber. And I guess you could say the rest was herstory, right? So they were, They were kind enough to take a chance at hiring me. And so being new to the promotional product industry. So looking back, what stands out for me that I used to start my day at paperclip, going to the office at 8:00 AM to an office full of people. And then, you know, within a year I was walking to an empty office during the pandemic where on many days I'd be lucky to see maybe 3 people, you know, the UPS dude, the FedEx dude, and maybe the USPS person. So, Definitely a lot has happened. And so I just also need to recognize that Ruth and Beth's decision to keep Paperclip going during the unknown when many businesses were just shutting down and saying, hey, we'll give you a call if we need you when we're back up. Like they decided to keep it going, you know, and I'm happy to say that we've moved on from face mask orders to bigger and better things today.

So you came on board right before the pandemic, right?

Right before, yes.

Yes, and now you're moving on to a different role. Tell us about the role you're moving into now.

So I'm moving into the role of a product and fulfillment manager. So I haven't said it enough, sorry. So, I'll talk to you more.

Right, no, this is brand new. So you are now, as you mentioned, Paperclip keeping the business open was huge for you. You've now actually moved on to a different role, but you have been doing the supply chain role for a while, and I keep repeating myself, but in the intro I talked about how there are a couple of roles that are really growing in the industry. One is a supply chain manager, one is marketing, but you're now training someone else for this role. And as you thought about the most important aspects of this role, since you're handing it off, and we're, we're probably the folks that are tuning in today are probably really curious about this role. Either they're distributors who don't have that role yet and they want to craft it in their business, they want to define it in their business, or there are folks who are doing this role, or maybe they're brand new. What were two or the three essential traits that you were looking for in this person since you did the role, you're hiring for that role, and now you're training for that role. What were you looking for?

So I think first and foremost is someone who is detail-oriented. So we know too well in the industry that just one number, one letter can make all the difference in the world, you know, if your client is going to have their order delivered on time. So having someone who is detail-oriented and enjoys making sure that the details are correct is paramount. So I tell everybody that I'd rather work on making sure all the addresses on a spreadsheet are uniform and correct instead of coming up with a design idea. So I don't mind being the left-brained guy in a world of right-brained people. So, and then secondly, you want someone that you can trust that'll work well under pressure. So When you do experience a problem, the quicker you can formulate solutions for a client, the better chance we have of making it right.

In some ways, not to, you know, blow this out of proportion, but it's a little true that an air traffic controller has some resonance with this role in supply chain manager because you're moving a lot of pieces at one time. So it can be very high stress.

Yeah, it definitely can, especially when you have these tight in-hands data. And yeah, there's a lot of moving parts literally in the supply chain. And so you rely on a lot of good people and good relationships.

Yeah. So detail-oriented, you want someone who's going to obsess about those kind of details. You mentioned that being a left-brained person in a right-brained world is actually very critical for an operation. You need a balance of those kinds of folks. What were some of the key ingredients you wanted to convey to this new person that you brought on? That would help them in the role now that you've done it?

So yeah, there's a few things that come to mind. At first, of course, back to the detail. So make sure you've done your part in the name of efficiency with the details that you do, that you provide when placing an order. And I think one of the things that we, well, maybe we don't overlook, but one of the most important things is nurturing your industry relationships, right? So the way a production manager, the way I've done it, so in a world of constant emails, if someone just says, you know, something like, oh, they hope you're having a good day, so I'll actually acknowledge and reply to that sentiment. A lot of people will just kind of go on to the business and all that, but sure, it may seem like robotic on their part to ask, but you'll never know until you genuinely reply. And so, and I'd rather be that guy that stands out because I've answered about my day than to be that lumped person into the group of routine and unmemorable replies. So I think the industry relationships play a big part. I think you need to expect to make mistakes, but learn from them. So it's inevitable that we're going to make mistakes, but learning from them is the difference between performing below standards and meeting the standards. Yeah. And then I say, finally, I would say that your teammates are essential to the company's success, and sometimes you'll need them to do homework. For example, as a production manager, it's important to stay in your lane before you find yourself doing a sales manager's job as well. So for example, when it comes to a rushed order, the sales manager needs to, the homework that they need to give is give us the details about the job to make this a successful order. So you need to make sure you check stock, the proof time, the production time, then we can figure out what that firm enhanced ship date is. And only until then is we can have a successful order.

That's a great point because if someone hands you in half complete order, That doesn't help. I mean, it actually hurts the process. And so it's screwed up right from the beginning. No matter how good your supply chain person is, if it's— if they're handed an order with 15% of it incorrect, then it's going to be screwed up from the get-go. And we all know that orders are turned in at the last minute for everything.

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, we, we try to do our best here to, to be efficient and just make sure everything's done at the get-go so we don't waste time and money with, you know, touches of getting back with people and this back and forth that's unnecessary.

The other thing I really love about what you said, this is a very people-oriented business. It's a very— people call it a relationship business.

It is.

And I, I love your advice that you started out with about be human and be real and be memorable because you did this with me, by the way. It's, it's probably just something you do with, without even being really conscious of it. And it opened up a conversation about running, right? I started running again. Here you've done marathons and we wouldn't have got into that conversation. And yes, completely memorable from that, from our dinner anyways. But I mean, I thought it was fantastic. And to encourage folks, the reason why I'm bringing this up, there are thousands of distributors. So if there are thousands of distributors, there are thousands, tens of thousands of orders floating through the industry on any given day at any time. And you can easily become just another number to someone who in their role has more autonomy than we probably realize at a supplier. So for example, or at your embroiderer or screen printer or wherever it might be. So I think those are two really great points.

Yeah, definitely. And then sometimes, for example, a little personal touch I'll sometimes have is if I'm out for a day or two and I'm in email contact with whether it's a client or one of the suppliers and stuff like that, I'll just say like, oh yeah, hey, I was out, you know, watching Hamilton last night and I'll just send them a a little picture of me there. And that kind of like humanizes it and may lead to other conversations of, you know, oh, great. I love Hamilton or I hate musicals or whatever. Right? But whatever the thing is, you have more of a personal relationship with that person now that you've shared something about yourself.

Yeah. And I'm sorry to bounce around. I'm going back and forth to a couple things because you said so many key things there too. But the idea, and I guarantee you some production managers are gonna be listening to this episode and they're gonna be forwarding this to everyone on their sales team because they all deal with this problem of folks turning in orders that are half done, 10% complete, missing that one thing, and they just expect for it to go smoothly. And suppliers deal with that frustration all the time. But that is probably one of the most stressful parts of a distributorship business in your interworkings with each other. Are those— is that incomplete information?

Yeah, definitely. And, and again, excuse me, um, you know, the relationship you have with your sales manager is like integral because, right, you know, you really are a team. And so I get this a lot, you know, when I send out the shipping information, I copy our sales manager and a lot of times our clients, they see us as one of the same. They don't see me as, oh, he just does shipping and production or whatever. They'll, they'll reply to me and say, hey, can you reorder this? And And really, it's not technically in my lane, but I'm happy to do whatever I can. Right. And work together with our sales team. So yeah, we really are like just a big team. And at PO, it's not just the production manager, it's the production manager, the salesperson, maybe our sales support. Like everybody's hand is in there. Yeah.

Going back to your daily routine, I'm asking this question kind of for owners who are considering this role or other supply chain managers. Who have this role and they want to know how you do it differently, or salespeople who need to know better what your role consists of. What was your daily routine like as a supply chain manager? You would come in first thing in the morning, you'd open up CommonSKU, and you would look at what?

Yeah, so I have what I call like the big 4 columns. So, okay, first and foremost is going to be the status column. So I really have an issue that was in the problem category, but if I did, I just want to see what do I need to do to take this out of the problem status. So do I need to follow up with the client, the supplier, or what have you. So, and the problem could be anything.

It could be that the PO wasn't confirmed or something.

Exactly. It was a question on, you know, the quantity. Is this actually one or two color? Like it could be a variety of things.

I see.

And so, yeah, we want to move that out of the problem stage into the confirmed stage, the status. So, and then the second is the stage column. So, Have I heard back from all the suppliers on the PO I've sent? So especially with new suppliers, you don't know what their, their MO is. So, you know, do they— a lot of suppliers are going to have the automated reply, hey, I've received your email, we'll get back to you, and all that. But a lot of them, you don't hear anything, especially the new ones. So you need to make sure that you've sent, that they've received it, you send it to the right email, and so forth. And then the third is the proof column. Are there any proofs I need to follow up with the client to make sure they received my email? A lot of times it gets into their company junk or spam folders because I have that proof link or a PDF attached and so forth. So I'll have to follow up with the client sometimes to make sure they actually have seen my proof email that I've sent them. And then also see if I overlooked an approval, if there's a status that the client actually approved. And I maybe overlooked the email that I should have gotten to contact the supplier that, hey, it's been approved and ready to go. So that's another nice double check right there. And the last thing I do is look at the project ship date. So I need to make sure that any firm in-hand dates, that orders that we have been taken care of, and look into tracking information for the other orders that have shipped.

I, um, a lot of folks that turn to CommonsQueue turn to it for the simplicity of the order management side, but where I think the platform excels the most with a growing distributor is in handling the complexity of so many orders at the same time with an entire team. So that transparency— but look, I'm speaking ahead, but how does CommonsQueue help you stay on top of those projects in play as it's going?

Sure, and it's funny you say that because I tell everyone that my success as a production manager is in big part to the use of CommonSkew. So often the tasks that we perform, you rely on a series of looking into emails, logging onto a website or two, and maybe looking over notes somewhere. But with CommonSkew, I can answer every question about an order because of how robust the platform is. And so, and as a production manager, your teammates won't even have to ask you questions about the status if you utilize the platform up to the potential. So I guess everything I do is right there, so they don't have to email me, Slack me, and say, hey Mike, what's the status of this? You just open up the project and you're going to see my notes that I put on there and you can answer your own question. I could, I could be out running and you can figure out what the status is and what's going on.

That is such a huge thing. And I don't mean to camp out on just CommsCue for a minute, but it's such a huge thing because how many emails we trade back and forth on, can you give me a status of?

Yes. Yeah. And that's part of this whole efficiency thing. You know, I just, it's a big focus. And again, without CommsCue, we wouldn't be as efficient as we are.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm new to this industry and I told Ruth, you know, about, you know, once you check up on how I'm doing and you know how my workload is, you know, they follow up and I say, I'm great. I have a common SKU. And as long as I have my stuff together on common SKU, then I'm good. I'm golden.

That's fantastic. I love it because it's really one of the hardest roles in the business if it's not done with that kind of symmetry and simplicity. That we have.

Yeah, you have to be consistent. You have to utilize all the tools that are there for you that are available. And once you embrace that, once you do that, your job as a production manager should be as seamless as possible.

When you walk in in the morning and you open up that production dashboard, and what's a red flag? What gets your attention right away? Like, what are one or two red flags and you go, uh-oh?

So I've been fortunate enough that not to have so many red flags with the team that I have. So my experience has been that the majority of the red flags can be prevented when you do have the teammates doing their homework, create the sales order and all that stuff. But with that said, a red flag for me is when the tracking information hasn't been given to me in the time that the supplier said for an order with the firm in as a like, When I see that I didn't get that, because a lot of the shipping information will come overnight, and I don't see that tracking email, I get on the phone right away like, hey, is, is this done? Like, yeah, is it?

That's huge, right?

Ground? Is it 2-day like we talked about? And so that's huge.

Yeah, that's huge. It's everything, right? You lose a, lose a $100,000 client over $2,000 order that way.

Exactly.

Yeah. Um, you seem to have developed, uh, an intuitive sense, likely based on experience, of when you need more oversight over a particular supplier. Can you speak to that a little more? And we're not going to throw anyone under the bus, we're just kind of more— I'm sort of trying to get more an idea of the MO of a person in your role. You tend to know that there are certain suppliers that you're like, you know what, I don't have to worry about the supplier because they have their things dialed in. And to be fair to suppliers, maybe they're brand new to the industry and they're still trying to work out some kinks and figure some things out. Or maybe it's a supplier that you've chosen that's not even in our traditional industry, therefore they don't really comply with the kinds of guidelines and rules that we use. But you— that's an important part of this role, right, is for you to understand the supplier network.

Yeah, and that's something that I had to learn, uh, being new to the promotional product industry. So, uh, but I think it goes back to nurturing your industry relationship. So yeah, often that relationship can be the difference between needing to give more, uh, oversight to supplier, like, uh, for example I like to let the suppliers do their job after giving them all the information they need from us. And so granted, every supplier has their MO when it comes to confirming an order, receiving proof, etc. So when those first steps are falling outside the usual range that you're used to of these suppliers, then it's time to follow up. You know, if I, if I'm used to getting that email, you know, that next day and I haven't got it, I'm going to get on the phone with the inside salesperson and say, hey, I didn't see anything. Did you guys get this yet. And so, so then I just follow up with a phone call if I haven't heard back. And from there I'll ask for clear time expectations for like proofs, revisions, production time. And I think these things are very beneficial to nipping things in the bud. Yeah.

Regarding EPO integration, when done well, it really can impact supply chain. How do you feel about EPO integration from what you've tested so far?

So I haven't had that much EPO order experiences, but the experiences that I've had with Cuddler and Bug and Bullet and Starline, it's been very efficient. And it's, to me, yeah, I think it's a game changer because that live inventory, that stock, like, you know, right away that order is going to be processed. You know, there's other— the only alternative is maybe hearing back a day or so later and then saying, hey, we're out of stock. What about these things? So ETOs are— I'm a big proponent of them.

Last few questions for you, Mike. What's on your desk today? I always like asking folks this question, like, what's on your desk today? Because we can get an idea of what your job is like. What's the next fire?

Sure. So on my desk is placing order for the programs that we have in place and how we can better serve our clients with the use or expansion of a company store. So as in many industry, timing is everything.. And I want to do everything I can to get ahead with having the right products ready at the right time. So I try to prevent these fires with doing all I can to be efficient. So I need to do my own version of controlled burning, if you will, for these fires. So, and that's communicating with our sales manager who talks to our clients that don't have a promo store with us just yet. And then communicating with our current promo store clients to make sure that we're meeting their expectations. Implementations. And if I do that, hopefully I can put on my Smokey the Bear hat and prevent these fires.

Wait, do you have like 2 more minutes, Mike?

Yeah, I want to keep you.

Okay, that's great.

Okay.

So what do you enjoy doing when you're not working?

So lately I've been starting to pack for a move that I'm going to be making.

That's right, you're going to Europe.

Where was it you were going? What's that? I'm sorry.

Where were you going? You were going to Europe.

I know that. Oh, yes. So the the, my next move for me is to the Netherlands. And so I've been fortunate to be eligible for dual citizenship and decided the next chapter of my life will be to permanently move to the Netherlands. So it's actually sort of a circle because I was actually stationed at the US Air Base when I was in the Air Force in the Netherlands before I helped close that down.

So you were obviously staying with Paperclip while you're doing this and Yes.

That's fantastic. Yeah, I can't tell you how much the support of Ruth and Beth mean to me. So I expected to leave Paperclip when I moved, you know, when I was going to do the move, but they're so gracious in wanting me to stick around. So I couldn't ask for a better situation. I'm very grateful and fortunate to have them.

And this is the kind of thing that just warms our hearts at CommonsQ because being able to create a platform that allows people to work from anywhere, this is one of those kinds of stories that we just absolutely love. You know, the fact that we can create this kind of energy and enthusiasm around it. What do you enjoy doing when you're not working? I know you're a runner.

So yeah, when it's not sweltering heat, as we're both experiencing, I've been known to get some miles in, and just like you. And I've been fortunate to complete over a dozen or so full marathons. But back in April, I was able to complete a bucket list marathon at Big Sur. So I'll probably give it a little rest considering all this heat before I get some serious run miles in. But I'll be looking into running Paris and London and Berlin.

So that's awesome. No, not just like me, Mike. I can't hold a candle to what you're doing. Tell us lastly here, where do you go for inspiration and any brands you follow?

Sure. So I'm inspired by those who overcome great obstacles through no fault of their own. And so one of the bigger examples Recently are going to be the Ukrainian people, you know, the many men and women who have to start over with literally their clothes on their back and maybe a suitcase. So it gives me a constant reminder that figuring out how low I want to keep my thermostat during a heat wave is clearly a first world problem for me. And so what inspires me? So as a vegan, I'm inspired by brands that offer vegan leather. So I love what Nuvo offers. So I also love that the Tenshi line of sustainable clothing is out there. So I think there was a time when the word sustainable wasn't prevalent in the industry, right? So my hope is that many suppliers follow Nuvo, and any time that we can get our world— I'm sorry— to becoming more cruelty-free gives me inspiration.

That's great, Mike. I have one last, last question. I promise this is it. Oh, no, no. What's your latest book, podcast, article, or movie or show that's really inspired you?

That's a great question. I have to admit I haven't really subscribed to any of the streaming services long-term, so I'm not part of that common, uh, uh, have you watched or have you heard, uh, conversation. So, but I do plan on watching Ted Lasso once I've moved. Um, and, uh, it may not be in the inspirational category, but maybe in a more, uh, positive category, I would say just the TV show Modern Family. That does it to me, just see how people can relate to work out their differences and still love each other and with a positive message. So that's always good.

I love the characters in that show. They're fantastic. Mike, thank you so much. This has been so informative and you have no idea how helpful this is going to be for folks that are doing this role. And thanks for sharing your wisdom and insight with us.

It's been a pleasure and it's always great speaking with you, Bobby. Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks, my friend.

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