Episode 301: Factory Tour With the Logomark Team!

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.

Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Chief Content Officer at Common Skew. And if you're listening to this episode as it's published, let me be the first to welcome you to the new year. We have a very special episode for you today with a supplier many of you know and love, Logomark. Our story is split into two parts. Part one is our brief conversation with Clive Goldberg, president of Logomark. Clive came from the just-in-time automotive parts industry, a very fast-paced, multifaceted business with demanding clients and impossible deadlines. And if that sounds familiar to you, then yes, very much like the promo industry. Mark Graham and I traveled to Los Angeles and we sat with Clive and his leadership team. Then toured their factory floor where we met our second guest, Errol Boucher, who worked his way up at Logomark to become the Senior Vice President of Operations and Production. Here's Errol.

Yeah, so 18 years ago, Trevor approached me. I ended up selling my business, coming over, started out here as the production director and kind of moved my way up. One of the things I'm proud of that we've done over the 18 years is that we've promoted from within.

Yeah.

So our floor manager, Jesse, who started with us 15 years ago from the temp agency, is now the floor manager. So he runs the whole floor. Our employee number 1, Marcella, she's been with us for 30 years, 29 years. She's still with us. To me, that's, that says something about the company. Employee number 7, Sandra, 25 years, still with us. Production director Tony, who's kind of my right hand, He's been with us for 25 years, started out as an artist. So to me, that's important that other people can see the growth, see they have the opportunity to grow. And just because you're sitting on a machine doesn't mean you're going to be sitting on a machine the rest of your life. You have the ability to, to do more.

Logomarkz's story is one of innovation, not just in product, but in production. Masters at obsessing over speed, accuracy. We begin our chat with Clive by talking about his entry into the industry, what the pandemic taught him and the team, and how it impacts their work today. Then we take you with us on a tour of the factory floor where Errol walks us through the daily grind of making magic happen, from how a product is staged to time signatures on orders and why they matter, and walking through the toughest part, turning all of this chaos into a streamlined efficient production process. The reason this episode is so important for us is that many of us, or many on your team, might not be able to make a factory tour. So we want to bring a factory tour to you. It's crucial as we head into 2024 to note how significantly technology is shaping the way we work as both distributors and suppliers, and to also note that equally as important are the hands that still touch our orders from the unboxing to the printing to to the reboxing and everything in between. Share this episode with your team to help them learn more about the people that make miracle orders happen on a daily basis. Today's episode is brought to you by CommonsQ, the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more, visit commonsq.com. Now here's our chat. Split in two parts. First, with Logomarx President Clive Goldberg, followed by our factory tour with Senior Vice President of Ops and Production Errol Boucher. Enjoy. Thanks, Clive. Thank you for being here.

My pleasure entirely.

You came into this industry through a just-in-time business. The automotive parts industry. And I love how you equate that to our particular industry because it was sort of a crazy fast-paced business. Can you explain a little bit of that and how it equates to our business?

Absolutely. So I came to the United States in 1990, and I joined a business that provided just-in-time inventory management to the people who did the repair work on vehicles. The industry in the automotive aftermarket was changing at that time. You hear, especially in California, with the proliferation of vehicles, the installer no longer wanted to keep inventory and tie up his money in inventory. And in addition, wasn't certain what vehicles would show up at his facility on any given day needing repair. You know, the days of somebody calling up their dealer and making an appointment and, you know, next Thursday I'll bring my vehicle in and there's a noise coming from the engine. Those days were gone. You basically got in your car in the morning, you noticed that your brake lights were on. You thought, boy, I can't really drive with that. So you showed up at Joe's Automotive Repair and Joe said, let's get your vehicle up on the, on the lift and see what the issue is. And he would look at it and he would say, hey, I can see you need front pads and front rotors. But Joe never had those in stock. And that's where he would call us., and we would deliver the parts to him for that job in 30 to 45 minute delivery time. So we, we owned, the, the facilities. We, we didn't own the buildings, but we had the inventory, we had the staff, we ran at, at the top end. I think we had about 300 drivers that would operate within a defined territory. We had many locations because you can only operate within a certain defined geographical territory. And basically we used the phone back in those days. The internet wasn't what it is today, and the way that business was conducted wasn't the way that we had people manning the phones. We would write the order right there for the clients, and then we would deliver the parts to him that he needed for that repair in about 30 minutes. And so you learn very quickly about delivery service. Communication. And this was happening all day, every day. We were, we were doing this. So we had to replenish our inventory. We had to deliver the parts. We had to make sure we had it. We didn't have the part, we lost the order. You don't want to be doing that. So, you know, so that was the business that I came from where we, you know, we managed warehouses, inventory, importing, and then servicing the heck out of customers. Right. So that was, that was the model that I came from.

Yeah. Speed. You can tell speed was so important to you then.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, the logistics, the logistics of a route, if you, if you break down a simple route because you, you're operating in a, like a 10-mile radius and customers, you sort of broke the territory up into quadrants and customers would order from anywhere. But in order for us to be able to deliver the parts, you basically set a route. Where you delivered hopefully more than one order on a given, you know, if I'm sending a driver out, I wanted to make that driver as efficient as possible. So, and this was, this was, um, you know, life was, business was much simpler then. We didn't have all the technology that we have today. So you learn at the, you don't rely on the computer. You basically have to have the skills to develop those, those methodologies. Yeah. But it was, it was, it was fun. You know, it was, it was a good learning experience and I was in that industry for north of 25 years as we, as we built those models, we franchised, we had company stores, we had stores out of state. Right.

Yeah. High stress, fast paced. What did you, what did you see as similarities and what were differences as you came into this business?

I joined this industry and everybody would look, you said to me, you know, so what do you think of this crazy industry? You know, and, and I'm thinking to myself, well, obviously you haven't been in the automotive industry, you know, and I'm sure that that theming is common across many many industries is all industries have their uniqueness in terms of the specific industry, but at their core, business fundamentals don't change, right? You, you honor your commitment, you deliver on your commitment to the customer, you add value, and you deliver on your promises to the customer. It's a, it's a, that's what business is, and that's the business I came from, and frankly, that's the business that that I find I'm in right now here in the promotional industry. Those fundamentals don't change.

Yeah.

How are the customers different in this business than the customers you had before?

Both customers are rather demanding, right? But I'll tell you what's interesting. I learned very quickly in joining Logomarkt and joining the promotional industry that What is it that, that we are doing as suppliers? Yes, fundamentally we're providing product, we're decorating the product, but really our job is to maintain that relationship between the distributor and their clients. We are the ones that deliver on that relationship, right? That distributor has a relationship and a connection to their clients. As a supplier, our job is to fulfill that relationship. That commitment is to make that distributor look good in the eyes of their clients. And that's— you have to understand, or I did, I had to understand that it's not about the product, it's not about the decoration. That's the, that's the end result. It's about delivering on that relationship and enhancing that relationship between the distributor and the client.

I love how you see that through line to that relationship. Now, as we toured your facility, I was struck by how everything was timed in your business. Like each order was— there was a timestamp on each order. It showed how long the order should take from the time it hits the production floor to the time it leaves the doors. There's so much complexity in that to control. Speed and accuracy are such crucial parts of your DNA. How do they factor into everything you do at Logomark?

We measure everything. You have to understand the metrics to be able to improve, and that's the world we live in. The world does not stand still. It's ever-evolving. Customers are ever-evolving, clients, products. So you have to stay relevant, right? I mean, that's the key component. And in order to do that, you have to understand your business exceptionally well, right? First, it starts inward before you can deliver outwardly. And we measure everything. And excuse the pun, but there's a lot of moving parts, right, to an order. And we need to know and understand We have so many products that we offer. If you go on our website, you'll see that we have a complete offering of products. We have multiple decoration methods. We have multiple decoration methods for specific products. We can decorate different products in different ways. And in order for this to, to be what we would like to be as the well-oiled machine, we have to know and understand the timing from the warehouse through production to delivery for every part that we, we deliver. And, and it's very important for us to do that, to be able to deploy the resources necessary for each job that we have. You know, each job— we don't look at the collective. Every job to us is the most critical job because that's delivering on that commitment to that distributor, right? We just happen to have an awful lot of those, but we need to have a system that allows us to be able to treat each job individually, to be able to deliver on that. And in order to do that, you need to have the resources. So we provide an in-hands date or a delivery date to our customers. That's the starting point. You work back from that. In order to be able to deliver on that, we need to know how long it takes to decorate the part, how long it will take to, you know, to pack it, to prep it on the front end. And so we are able to measure that and we provide that information to our production staff so that they can, they can know how long it should take them to, to do each, each job. And we can measure it internally from a management standpoint. We can see where every job is at any point in time in our system.

What's the hardest part about all of that complexity?

So the hardest part are the, the variables that don't always go according to plan, right? So in a perfect world, everything works like a well-oiled machine.. But in the world that we, we all live in, somebody calls out sick, a machine goes down, a client changes the art, something happens. And so you try and factor all of those into the, into the mix. You know, you allocate a certain amount of time, but you can't really factor all of those variables in. So to me, that's the difficult part is managing the exception. But you can manage exceptions if your core run very well, right? If everything under normal circumstances run well, so you adapt and adjust to those variables that, that come at you, those curveballs, right? To use the sports analogy.

Yeah. Yeah. When Mark and I were there at your headquarters, it was amazing tour. Thank you for your generosity, particularly in the middle of fourth quarter, which is crazy busy. In your main conference room, there's a massive picture of Nelson Mandela. Much of the leadership team is from South Africa. And how does How does his influence impact the way you do things and how you lead your team at Logomarkt?

Yeah. So, so there are a number of us who are former South Africans, but a lot of the management team are Americans. Frankly, I consider myself an American too. I've lived here longer than I ever lived in South Africa. I guess you just don't lose the accent, right? But, but what it does, I will say that being an immigrant brings with it a, a a drive, a dedication to succeed. You know, you've left, you've left a life behind, and there's no option but to make a success of the one that you've come to. And I will say this, that America afforded a wonderful opportunity. It was, you know, at the time I left South Africa, it was, it was very tense. It was a difficult time. This was before the elections. And, and I was fairly young, and you don't look back, you just look forward, you have to make it work. And so you have that drive and that determination.. And that's common with many immigrants, no matter where they come from, is that, that sort of drive and determination. And that's what you bring to the equation. Now, you know, we have that then develop into a culture at Logomot, right? A culture of succeeding, a culture of moving forward, of finding a way to solve a problem, understanding the problem. So I think that that's that immigrant mentality, if you will, is that, that drive. And then also South Africa provided many challenges, you know, with sanctions during the apartheid era. And we learned to adapt and overcome and, and find ways to succeed. And we brought that with us to, to our business here in America, where there's always a way, you just sometimes have to dig deep to find it. But there's always a way to overcome a problem, you just You know, you have to have the desire to do so. Yeah. And Nelson Mandela, and we lost him, you know, too early, but what a remarkable man. What a— how— I don't know that anybody else could have transitioned South Africa from apartheid to a free society and hold it all together with all of that pent-up anger and frustration and inequality in economics. It took a very special person to do that. That picture's a very special picture. Trevor found it from a very famous artist. And, you know, the qualities of Nelson Mandela sort of loom over you as you're sitting in that room. You know, you kind of have to be on your best because he's watching, right? Right. I love that. But anyway, that's kind of what that does is failure is not an option, Bobby.

That's our mentality. I love it. I just love the influence of his smiling face in that room. And yeah, yeah, Trevor, walkable man. Yeah, absolutely. Trevor is known by some listening. For those that are new, Trevor Nissen is the founder of Logomark, and he's somewhat of a legend in this business.

What have you learned from Trevor that still makes an impact on what you do today? Wow. So, so Trevor, Trevor's knowledge of this industry and his product knowledge and his ability to, to see trends sort of couple of miles down the road. You know, a few of many of us are sort of looking down 100 yards. You know, he's sort of 3 miles down the road and made a right turn already. So you can't but learn from that. You can't but sort of sit back and listen. The interesting part is delivering on that, is executing on that vision. That's the fun and challenging part is taking Trevor's vision or view, having a discussion to make sure you truly understand what he's looking for, but then delivering on it. And that, that develops a— and it might be a little bit of a cliché what I'm about to say, but it develops a culture of yes. You know, you, you, you, you believe that you can do— you may not know how you're going to do it on the front end,. But you know, it can be done. You just got to figure out how to do it. And that actually meshes the team together too. You know, you become problem solvers. That's what our job as leaders in a corporation are, are problem solvers. You know, you just, you have to have that mindset and that culture. And Trevor, Trevor doesn't stand still. He's running, he's sprinting, you know. So, so you have to develop that culture to be able to solve problems and, and move forward.

Yeah, you took over the company right before a pandemic. I like to say when you came to Logomarkt, you brought a pandemic with you. And what did, what did that teach you about pivotable leadership? Here we're talking about, you know, staying nimble and being, being responsive and what Nelson Mandela's legacy taught you. As you look back now, how did that time change you and Logomarkt for the better?

So that's a very interesting question, and, and there's no, there's no doubt that it did. And for many companies, I've spoken to, to many of my peers in different industries. And so I joined Logomarkt in April of 2019, you know, and as we discussed earlier, changed industries completely, had a lot to learn before I could, you know, feel like I was weighing in and bringing value, working with the team, trying to understand the complexities and how everything worked. And then we got hit with the pandemic. And, you know, you say to the leadership team, where's the manual on how to run a business through a pandemic? Right, right. And nobody had one. So we had to figure it out, us and sort of everybody else. And we did. And the team came together. It was remarkable. What they needed was the clarity that we will get through this, we will survive this, we will get through this. And not only will we survive it and get through it, the Initially, of course, you get knocked for it, you know, down a bit. But then you say, we're going to be better and stronger at the end of it. What is it we can do to deliver on this? We adapted very quickly. We modified the business and no one person can do it. Yeah, they just, they needed the, the culture and the environment to, to perform in that way. But then everybody stepped up and did what they had to. I mean, we changed the product mix, we changed the production flow. I had to split into two shifts because I didn't want so many people on the floor at any one time. You know, right. We're blessed with very short memories as humans. But if you remember that time, I mean, we're wearing masks, we're sanitizing, we're, you know, we— so much was happening. I couldn't afford to have my production go down. Yeah. And so I had to modify production. But I got no resistance from anybody because everybody's saying, As I said earlier, failure is not an option, right? We're going to do whatever it takes to succeed. And the team grew very, very close and very strong through that. And then I also leverage technology, which is— I'm very big on, you know, labor is a very, very key component, obviously, to business. But you have to— our goal is to make the people that we have as efficient as they can possibly be. And for that, you have to leverage technology, systems, procedures, processes. I think I drive everybody a bit crazy because my philosophy is there's always a better way. Yeah. So when you think you're there, you have to go a step further and see how can I do what I'm doing better? How can I streamline it? How can I improve it? And that's where we leverage technology. And so all of this came to bear during COVID What we learned was that you can you can effect change very, very quickly if you have to. It's funny, prior to COVID, it was, well, let's develop a plan for that. And let's see how that's going to go. During COVID there was no testing of anything. It was, man, we got it, we got it. And the team saw, I saw, and I saw in the team the ability to do that. Yeah. So we emerged, I would say, a stronger, better company. And I've spoken to many others, they feel the same way. Yeah. And I've tried to continue that sense of, yes, you know, we can, we can do it. We just got to figure out quickly how to do it.

I noticed when we were at headquarters, we both have this, both Komensky and you have this shared passion around technology and efficiencies. And it was something that came up in your conversation often there. Final question here, Clive, we have just a few minutes left. As a leading supplier, you survey 2024. What are the biggest opportunities on the horizon? How do you feel about the business heading into 2024?

I feel confident about the business in 2024. I think that, first of all, it's a very large industry, right? And I believe that this method of marketing has incredible value. You know, the value of a product representing a brand handed to an individual is a very powerful marketing message. I think the return on investment and the dollars spent on that marketing are well spent. So, so that kind of themes the whole industry, right? And then the— I, I believe there's huge opportunities for us as a supplier to continue to deliver on that level of service and added value. Communication and service are key, and we will continue to do that. In terms of products, that we've got some wonderful products coming out that I think will be incredibly well received. But talking not only about me or Logomark, but about the bigger industry, it's a very large industry. And as I said, I think that the marketing departments at the clients realize the value of this style of marketing. And we are going to capitalize on that. We're going to deliver excellent products. But more important, we sell Logomark, right? I mean, that's what our main product is. It's represented by the brands and the products and the decoration methods. That, that adds value to what we do. But we want to build that rapport with those clients. We want to continue to validate that trust that our clients, our customers, have put in us as we deliver on that trust that they've built with their clients. And I don't see why 2024— listen, it's an election year, there's external variables, that's a lot, but that's not new. I mean, that happens every 4 years, right? Right. It's a good point. And so it has been, you know, post-COVID, 2022 was a very good year. '23 was a different kind of year. No doubt '24 will be a bit different too, but with the right culture, we are gonna deliver on it, right? With that, that culture of, of service and commitment to our customers, I see '24 being a, a good year.

It's a great way to end our conversation, Clive. Thank you. I really enjoyed it when we visited with you and there, and I enjoyed this conversation today. Thanks for for your time, and I love your perspective too. Thank you, my friend. Now here's part 2 from the factory floor with Senior Vice President of Operations and Production Errol Boucher.

But the, the, this warehouse, as Clive alluded to, is predominantly where it's the pick, pull, get ready for production warehouse. The other warehouse is just off-site. It's all the overflow and that kind of stuff. Production starts in this area, really in the warehouse. The order comes in, it gets entered, it gets clarified, goes into the art process, gets proofed, proof approval. While all that is happening, we actually created our own production workflow system. Our IT department did for us. That's part of it, but there's different screens, different processes for each person and each department. So the guys in the pack department, they don't need, or the manager of the pack department, he doesn't or she doesn't need to know what's happening in the warehouse. So she has her list of things that have to be done. These guys get the list every day. They walk in and they're pulling today irrespective of what the ship date is or anything. They get told pull the order today because it might be 5 days in production before we ship it. It might be 1 day in production before we ship it. So they get told based off the system, go and pull this product.

So this is your blank product, this is where it's going to be manufactured.

Yeah, so I'm kind of starting at the beginning.

We know at any point in time through this system, we know exactly where an order is in this building. So we can actually manage an order to the minute, literally.

Yeah, and to the operator, so we know exactly exactly who's running it, who picked it, how long they took to pick it, where they've put it. It's all barcoded and it gets scanned through.

And that's all digitally rendered. So in other words, if we need to research it, we have it in this self-developed system.

Through this area, we kind of laid it, lay it out. You can see the different departments have their staging area that the warehouse would put it into. Just, I'll just grab this one. So this is a part of the production workflow system. So this is warehouse, it tells them when they should pull it, how many pieces, what the SKU is, there's a photograph of what the product looks like. This is a hazmat item, so it already tells them up front these are the labels that are going to have to go on the box and it's going to be treated differently because it's hazmat. So everything is ready for them to pull and then when it goes into production, I'll show you a production sheet. But we have it down to like this this particular job should take 12.2 minutes. So we have it down now. Okay, this many pieces, 12.2 minutes, they should be done from pulling and getting it prepped for production. No, this, this is a production timeline. Oh, because I don't know. Yeah, so I don't care. And actual time is done afterwards. Okay, so at the end of the month, you hit that pretty, pretty often. Yeah. And then we'll see. It's not whether it's 12.5 or whether it's 13 or 11, we need to see trends. So if this product generally is in and around this time, we know we've allocated enough time on the front end, right? Because we pre-allocate. Yeah. So in order— coming in today, we are going to tell you that your order will be able to ship next week Wednesday based off of the availability of space, based off of this time. So if we see all of a sudden something is running at 30 minutes, either the operator there's a problem with the product or the problem with our timing. So we can then make the adjustment and go, you know what, it's on average, it's actually taking 8 minutes. We're giving too much time. Let's take away a little bit of time.

So that's how you prep for volume and demand. Correct. Correct.

Going back to the timeline where we were talking about 12.2 minutes, where does the system break down?

Like what would cause that to be totally thrown off and become an hour for production? Depending on the process, yeah, if it's screen printing, perhaps the screen breaks, you know, we, a wrong color ink or something at mix where we're not getting it exactly the color that we like, because although we do a PMS color match, once you start putting that color onto a different substrate, the color might change, the translucent nature of the product is going to change what the ink looks like, so we'll make some adjustments, but their time only starts after that. But if a screen breaks during the process, perhaps it's one of— it's a newer product where you don't have enough data. So in the beginning, we're making an assumption that this product is similar to this product. What we're finding in laser engraving at the moment on our Laser Extreme which is laser engraving larger logos on drinkware. White drinkware is much slower than any other color drinkware. So you have the exact same product where one color is different, is slower than another color. So now we're breaking it down to that where we go, okay, we're allocating them more time when they're laser engraving on white than if they were laser engraving on black, which is the quickest. These machines in this area are for wooden products. They're different. Basically, the machines run off a different wavelength. And then we have a bunch of machines back there that do just regular laser engraving, pens, keychains. And then we also have a whole bunch now that we, we've actually bought. And this is a department that we've grown substantially in the last 2 years.

Since COVID Is that because you've increased the product line for that particular— is there a reason?

Is there a speed reason or is it product selection? Product selection. Yeah, the, the 40-ounce, the water mug, coffee mugs at the moment, that kind of product. It's completely changed the way we actually— the part— the way we're decorating products. Okay. So we— and we've jumped on it. You know, Clive was talking about being the size we are, being nimble. For me as the production guy, I can go to Clive and say, Clive, this is what I'm seeing, this is what the machine costs. ROI is a year, it's 6 months, it's 2 years. The decision can be made immediately and we can make that decision immediately. So, and then buy the machine, get it in, and we grow the department.

What can distributors be doing to work with you more efficiently as better partners?

From a production standpoint, yeah, obviously on the order entry side that I look at that as well, but from a production standpoint, have the correct item, have the correct colour, have your artwork ready to go, and it just speeds up the process. There's no lost information where we're having to go back, okay, are you sure you want this, you sure you want that, those types of things. Oftentimes the proof will be approved, the paper proof will be approved, which actually contradicts what the order says. So do you follow the art or do you follow the order? So now you stop, go back, hey, which way do you really want it? Do you want it as the art? Generally with sizing, because they, a lot of distributors will put, let's just say we say it's 4 by 2, the imprint area, so they'll put on the order 4 by 2, but when you keep it to scale, it might actually be 3.5 by 2, and you can't go 4 by 2 because you're distorting the art. So now you end up having those questions. Do you want to max out this way or this way? So those are the things like that would definitely help. So product all ready to go into production again, we're utilizing all the space we can at the moment.

And these bins that we're walking by that's holding product, that's blank product that you have to go get that.

Yeah. This is all pulled out of the boxes. You'll see little things when they're prepping it, they open the zipper, right? So when it gets onto the machine, the operator doesn't have to worry about opening the zipper. It just happens a whole lot quicker.

Do you have an average order size that you're always shooting for in terms of what you're producing?

So I wouldn't say we have one that we're shooting for, but we absolutely use it as a measure and to see how those morph and adapt and change depending on the season and depending on the product mix. Yeah, obviously, like anybody, we want the highest order value, you know, we can get. But we're realistic. We sell so many different types of products and we have so many decoration methods that we use it as a gauge for us to be able to breed our efficiencies internally based on the order size.

Yeah, and depending on the product type, it varies substantially. I mean, you might get something where it's, yeah, because of the dollar value and that, the number of units going through is a whole lot less than a commodity pen or commodity keychain or something. That makes sense, right. As we come through this area now, these are all orders that we're walking past now waiting to go into the pack department. So they've all been decorated. All finished orders. So just to quickly show you a pack. So we have an order, you can see the production date was that date. Yes. The prep date was that date. The warehouse date would have been the day before that. Right. That's the item number in color. It shows them what they're supposed to be doing. Again, there's one setup. If it was two-sided, if it was two-color, that would change that particular number. Out. How many pieces, how many the job minutes for this particular piece. So it's 64 pieces and it took 46 minutes. It should have taken them 46 minutes. Got it, right, approximately. On this particular piece, and that includes their setup time. Right, okay. When it's shipping, it's going to be shipping ground on this day. We tell them what box it's going to go into. So on the front end, if a distributor needs to know, okay, how many boxes is it going to be, we We have that on the front end, but now we need to make sure that we actually get that right. So this is going to be 4 cartons with 16 pieces in each carton. So if they're doing a freight quote or anything like that, especially on larger shipments, how many boxes are going to be on the pallet, that information is all there. Every job is signed off by a manager or a lead depending on the dollar value. Who what, checks the accuracy? Checks the accuracy of the order at the beginning. The beginning of the order, and you'll see the signature, who the manager was, has to actually physically sign off the job. That's the warehouse sheet I showed you in the warehouse.

So—

I'm sorry, imprint area. Imprint area proof is on the actual piece as well. The approved proof, if there's approved proof, the artwork. In this particular case, that's the artwork that they require. And everything's put together. And it's all visual because English is not everybody's first language. Right. Now, so, and not everybody reads and writes at the same level. Yeah. So this way, by having it visual, they have a picture of the mug, they have a picture of the artwork, they have a picture of the color of the artwork, and that way we can make sure that we're giving them the tools they need.

Yeah.

This area, they're going to do a look through the order. Does it need a packing list? Does it need labels? Does it need decals, stickers? Anything that would need to get put together would get put together in this particular area. They then also at this point, because they know it's now going to move through into pack, we have two ladies. Their only job is to go and, as we said in the beginning, we try and reuse as much as as possible. So the empty boxes that pertain to this particular piece are in a particular area over in that where we started. They will now go back and get the boxes for this particular— for this job. So everything ties back together again.

Really?

They'll literally walk across the factory floor and go get the original box?

There's two people that that's what they do.

Wow. What do you think is— we as distributors take for granted, and walking through and seeing myriad of processes in production and what it takes to process, and it's astounding.

Correct.

Yeah. Variables.

So I do a lot of tours for distributors, and I encourage them to come through because my feeling is the more the distributors know, the— first of all, the easier it becomes for us as suppliers, and they also get a better understanding of what actually happens to their 49-cent pen, their dollar pen, whatever it might be, how many people actually touch it. And that's one of the big things that the takeaway from everything. I didn't realize it was still so labor-intensive. If you start at the beginning and by the time it actually gets loaded on the truck, you asked me over there, you know, what's one of the things the distributors should learn to get that one pen out out, 12 different people touched it in production. Never mind your artist, your order entry person, the QC, customer service, accounting and invoicing, whoever it might be. But just, you have 12 people in production, physical touches for that product before it actually gets on the truck.

Yeah.

How late do you run production? So currently we're running from 6 to 6, and then we've just about 6 weeks ago. We've started a second shift now. So that's one of the areas that we are going to put an emphasis on in the new year is growing that second shift.

Obviously, we'll have a direct impact on sales capacity.

But you want to do it right.

Yeah.

That's what I was saying to the question that Mark asked earlier. He said, like, what are the constraints? You know, we can put the assets in place that we need, the people, the products, the processes. What we want to do is, as I said, we don't want to open the floodgates and drown. What we want to do is we want to do it at a level that we can still deliver the quality that we are known for, and in order to do that, we want to do it on a measured basis. So we have a plan to continue to expand and grow. I just want to do it at a pace that we can do still providing the quality and service that the customers have come to expect from us.

Yeah, love it.

Excellent tour.

It's great.

So much.

This was fast. And you've actually seen it at—

I mean, it's lunchtime, right? We kind of got lucky because we got lucky. It just kind of worked out. We haven't interfered with—

right, we could have gotten run over. The original plan was to stick to the outside because it gets hectic. So that's my office up there. Production office. I sit in that corner, literally have sat in that same chair for 18 years. What do you spend the majority of your day—

are you scheduling the next set?

Like, what in your world, what does that look like? Don't schedule emails, questions from the sales team, art questions, and actually running numbers, looking at how we did yesterday. You know, I would normally have been doing this, but you guys have taken taking up 2 hours of my day today. In December, so we're sorry. The Bobby and Mark tax. But it's, yeah, it's basically just going back because we manage every day what happened the day before. So every operator run the numbers, see how they did, then we can adjust immediately. We're not waiting for the end of the month or something like that. You measure everything. Yeah, the tools that for a production guy, the tools that I have are unbelievable. And it's morphed 18 years ago. We used to sit with paper orders and go, this is shipping tomorrow, this is shipping in 3 days' time. Whereas now, because we have the scheduling system, the lady that runs the scheduling system, she's been with us for 18 years and she runs order entry as well. So So it's just making sure that our numbers are right because the worst thing to do is say your order is going to ship next week Friday and we've overscheduled for the day. Now obviously things happen, machine breaks down, something happens along the way and nobody wants to make that call to say unfortunately it's not going to ship today, it's going to ship on Monday, is that okay? But it happens occasionally and but that's, yes, so that's basically what I'm going to be doing now.

One of our guiding principles is honor the commitment. That's what we do, just honor the commitment. Don't overpromise a customer, make an honest promise, but then honor it.

And that will—

that's what we do. Given your background with logistics, that's a large part of what you're doing here, is analyzing logistical output.

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, we measure down to an aerodynamic may have told you, so I might be repeating, but we know how many units of a particular product can be produced on a machine in an 8-hour shift. And that's very important, not numbers for the sake of numbers, it's so that we can schedule accurately and correctly so that we can make those commitments that we can honor to the customers. I don't want to disappoint a customer, I don't want to promise a customer something and not be able to deliver it. I want to be able to say we need to make sure we do it in that timeframe.

Gentlemen, thank you. This has been phenomenal.

Yeah, no problem.

We'll take a walk through here in a moment. Sure.

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Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.