Episode 303 - Rupt: A Chat with the Disruptors, Jason Lucash and Mike Szymczak

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.

Jason Lukasz and Mike Simczak, the two founders behind one of the industry's most ingenious companies, Auric Audio, are back. Jason and Mike sold their very successful company Auric Audio to HPG in 2018, and after a few years, both retired from the industry. But that retirement didn't last long. The two entrepreneurs, known for their innovation in product production and distribution, have launched a new brand with a bold new mission. The company is called Rupt, and it sounds just as it was intended—an idea meant to disrupt the industry, especially the status quo when it comes to transparency in sustainability and also in production and distribution. Rupt, in their words, is a manifesto against the ordinary. Drawing inspiration from their prior success, they saw an industry yearning for change. So they created a new product experience, one that crafts avant-garde masterpieces from recycled materials with a focus on radical transparency, carbon neutrality, and redefining packaging as an art form with a purpose. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Chief Content Officer at Commonsku. At PPAI's Expo, we got the chance to interview Jason and Mike on the show floor. While the booth was being constructed. Rupt launches with 4 categories: audio, power products, bags, and drinkware. And in typical Jason Mike fashion, the product is extraordinary, but the production process and the transparency around sustainability is the most disruptive part of their new company. Today, we're bringing you a chance to win a Rupt gift set created with the Commons Cube branding. It features 3 products, the backpack, the double-walled bottle, and the Boomz portable speaker. To qualify to win one of these sets, just hop on over to the show notes for this episode found at community.comandsq.com and answer this question: How do you plan to sell more sustainable solutions to your clients in 2024? Share with us your sales action plan and we'll put your name in the drawing for one of these awesome gift sets. Today's episode is brought to you by Commitscue, 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 Commitscue.com. Now here's our episode live from the expo floor with Jason and Mike about their new company, Rupt.

All right.

So we're hanging with Jason and Mike here at the Rupt booth. And the first question I have where obviously you can tell things are— they're still putting things together. It's a great metaphor for where you're at with this. A little bit.

Wait, you have to build a booth today?

So the question I have first is, why this business model? Like, what did you see in the industry itself where you're like, this is not right, we want to build something that's going to completely answer that? Jason, first.

Nice. Thanks for having us, Mark. This industry if you're not in this industry, it doesn't get the best rep, you know, like brand fill, landfill. The industry is phenomenal, but like from an outside, people think of it as like cheap plastic stuff or whatever, right? Which isn't right. Like the industry needs to be elevated and have a better standard, I think. Yeah. So that's part of the reason. The other part of the reason is this business is built out of customer demand and what people have been asking for for 15 years I've been in the industry, or 20 indirectly. So we decided to kind of conquer both those things, uh, lack of transparency in supply chain, a bunch of stuff. And that's where— how we're coming out with Rupt. So Rupt is product that's made— we're launching 30 products in 3 different categories: tech, drinkware, and bags, all made out recycled material. Every single product's made out recycled material, which is cool. Across the board, everything's carbon neutral. So all products carbon neutral. And then we're decorating product on 3 different continents in 48 hours, which is crazy. Yeah, yeah, all the packaging second life. So This was made out of just customer demand and just what people have been asking for. Answer people's demand. Yeah, I, I want to get to that in a minute.

Mike, what did you see when you, like, the model you guys are kicking around, like, what did you see yourself about the industry that you were thrilled?

Yeah, the two market, the two market gaps that Jason alluded to, but also just a revivency in product, um, design. I think it's got a little stagnant. I mean, COVID did play a part in that where, you know, designers couldn't go to China as much and develop as much, so just coming to market with new product design is just really, you know, capturing for me.

Speaking of that, can we look at some of the product as we kind of walk around and hang out here?

For sure. See what's up.

What do you want to start with?

I'll start with— I mean, closest, but it's my favorite. All right.

Oh, that's your favorite?

I got a different favorite. Oh, you got— you both got favorites? Like, this is not my favorite, right? Right.

Mike's not your favorite? Mike's not my favorite, but you both have your favorites. Okay, cool.

So like drinkware, we did tech before, we did bags. I mean, the tech and bags are like way more elevated than what we did before, in a good way. Like, we've learned a lot more from production, but I think there's a big gap in drinkware in our sector. So we've developed everything for Rupture, we've developed from the ground up. So my favorite new bottle is called the Lucid bottle. So from a decoration perspective, it's like crazy. You get a full digital imprint on one side, full digital imprint on the second side, full digital imprint on the top cap, plus a full digital imprint on the whole interior bottle, which is really cool. So you can do like Really, really cool. Yeah. Yeah. And this bottle is like 60% recycled, made out of recycled ABS plastic. The box for this turns into a greenhouse. So literally—

what do you mean, like a little desktop?

Yeah, you can plant like succulents in it, put your potting soil in it. So I really like the Lucid bottle. That's cool.

What's your favorite? I got two because I got two favorites. This is cool. Just like almost like your grandma's side of your house. You can go spigot on the side of the house for your hose. So I like this, just the mechanism of which you open it. And then the sleekness of the perfora. So nice like perforated slits here and your seamless deco where the logo and everything matches up. Just simple.

I'm just laughing because when I showed Mike the idea for this, he's like, I don't know. I don't know about this one. I was like, it's industrial, it's cool. He's like, I don't like it. And now it's like his favorite product.

Yeah, I pulled it off the shelf first, you know?

Is this all the same packaging for those 3 bottles?

No, each one's different. Each one's different? So each water bottle packaging has a different secondary functionality to it.

Like this one, the box turns into a bird feeder. Right. I love that one. Yeah, yeah.

It turns into a time capsule. Time capsule.

That's very cool. Okay, so talk a little bit about materials for a second because you use two terms that I know folks in the sustainable world are familiar with and it's cradle to gate and cradle to grave. What's, what are those? What are those two terms? Big difference.

So cradle to gate is production to distribution in Austin. So that's cradle to gate. Cradle to grave.

And to clarify, the retail sector, that's to retail store. Yeah.

Okay.

Right. How they utilize that. Right.

So to clarify, you're saying Austin— Austin's where we want to mention. Okay.

Sorry. Yeah. We're purchasing product out of Austin. So for us, it would be manufacturing, raw material extraction, packaging, packaging, build, transportation, storage. Then into those numbers also is energy consumption, waste. That's all calculated into total carbon kind of footprint. Cradle to grave is to end of life. Yeah. So for tech, we will publish some of the end, some end-of-life stuff based on some data that we just know. But across the company, it's cradle to gate. All these details will be available obviously on the website where you can see not just product but all of that live on ruck.com. Yeah. All right. There.

How do you like that?

Is, is, is our clients— is your purpose, did you build it also so to educate in clients at the same time? For sure.

It's an end-user-friendly site, obviously. But we've got We publish the full bill of materials. There's a full diagram of every single product showing every single part of what that's made out of and the total recycled percentage by weight for each one too. Wow. We want to show full transparency. There's brands that do this great every time.

Everlane and Allbirds are two of your favorites, right?

Yeah, I love both those brands. They kind of like embrace full transparency and we'll be the first in promo to do the full transparency.

When you say first in promo, there are other people doing things like this.

What is it about Ruff that is doing it in a way that's different To my knowledge, no one's doing full transparency in supply chain of their entire catalog, of their entire catalog and the full— no one's publishing full bill of materials on like online and the hard, on the hard goods side. Shirts a little bit easier, right? Sure.

It's cotton and it's cotton, it's cotton and there it is, you know?

Right.

But on the hard goods side, nobody's really doing that. Yeah.

No one's doing the international decoration on 3 continents with those. Yeah.

Yeah. Talk about that a little bit. So we have 3 locations. Why did you choose those locations and why are they strategic?

Mike threw some darts at a globe. Yeah, I'm sure. No. Just Amsterdam. Over the last decade, there's been such a— just Amsterdam. That was good. Yeah. Could have been a cheaper country as well too. Right. So over the last 10 years, there's been so many distributors that have opened up shop in Europe and bought distributorships in Europe to get kind of that European footprint to service their clients' global footprints. Yeah. So over the years, so many people have been asking like, hey, can you ship to Europe? Yeah, we could. Before, for the prior business, we could ship to Europe. It just was expensive. Yeah. It would take longer. Right.. But as we've seen so many people go into Europe, we said we want to be the first people in our industry to have decoration in Europe and the same product in Europe, the same product decorated in the same techniques and the same packaging in Europe.

You said on the same machines.

On the same machines.

So there's no disruption. Even like-for-like product doesn't really exist out there. You know, it seems such a, such a wild goose chase for some of the distributors who have, you know, stuff they needed to get Germany. You gotta find a new supplier. Is it budget-ish? Is it similar-ish? You know?

Yeah. Yeah. And I think honestly too, like we're seeing people go to Asia too. So like we're decorating product out of Hong Kong to deliver and fulfill within the APAC region. Yeah. And this is all at one piece within a week's time. Like, yeah, that's the crazy part about it. Yeah.

So that's what you've always been really, really good at. What about Portugal and Hong Kong was unique?

So Portugal, so Hong Kong existing like printer that we've known forever there. Portugal, so there's a business, it's a partnership with a company out of Europe that's selling our product into Europe. Distributors in Europe. We utilize them to decorate and fulfill our product for US customers that need distribution in Europe and vice versa. So if they've got a European customer that needs distribution and decoration within the US, they send us the order. If we need Europe, we send them the order. So we've known these guys for a long time. They came out of the gates with the same go-to-market sustainable message, carbon neutrality. It's just who we picked to align ourselves with. The company's called Audacy out of Europe. ACI.

Full transparency. You're like, you're doing that, you're in conversations like that. Full transparency.

Your factory address, you can have beer if you want to go. Yeah, it makes amazing tech boxes. That's amazing.

So Rupt for Disruption, there are two key things I'm taking away. That is the fact that the product itself, full transparency about all the materials in the product, and then the supply chain itself. The other disruptive part is that global distribution. Yeah. Small quantities. Yeah.

And fast turn. Yeah.

What, what is it you're both trying to correct? Like, you've done this before successfully with Org Audio, and you obviously learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes, but you also were this colossal success. Yeah. What about that process that you're like, you know what, we're going to completely do this over, and we're thrilled to get the chance to like do something again?

I'm super proud of what we built before. We birthed the baby together, right? Which was weird to say, but I'm proud of our now teenage baby, right? That is off at summer camp with HBG and HBG's crushing it. And I hope Origadio still continues to flourish. Yeah. You know, when you like start a business over time, there's so many things like you wish you had done differently. Like we were in California before. We're both from Cali, or I'm from California. We live in California. Yeah. Not the best state from a, like from a distribution standpoint to decorate and fill product out. We lose business on the East Coast. Like we had all of our employees in California before, expensive. Like we wanted to go into Europe, we didn't do it. So like all the things that I wish we had done differently before, we're now able to do, which is cool. And like, that's, I think that's unique and compelling.

How about you, Mike? It's not a startup this time, it's a restart. And we have all the knowledge of, you know, 30 years combined in this industry and running it to be able to like restart and go off with a bang. Yeah. And just, yeah, correct the things. Like, like you said before, distributors complained about this, distributors complained about this. Let's fix those out the gate.

Subscribers don't just complain, but we love these subscribers.

Subscribers have ideas about how we can make better.

Well, that's helpful. And then we just do it right off the bat. Yeah. We get, we get that nice fresh slate to come off as well.

This time too, like we pushed the industry before, right? To adapt to new standards of like quick turn, no minimum, no setup, full digital, 5 days like we did before in the prior business. Now I want to push the industry from a, from a product standpoint and a go-to-market standpoint to adapt to this as the new norms. Transparency, recycled, sustainable. Multi-continent carbon neutrality. Like, I hope the industry latches on to that because it'll make the industry better as a whole and elevate even further.

And you have a couple initiatives with this, knowing you two and how you do content marketing, branding, is that you're both educating on product and this entire system.

Yeah, it's, it's weird this time because it's not just product. Before at Org, it was product and it was like a little go-to-market. And go-to-market. Now it's education as a whole, right? Plus product. So It'll be easier to sell product once we can educate people. Yeah. So if we can educate people first on the new norm of how we're doing it, the product will come second, right?

One more question about location. Why Austin other than a central locale? Good barbecue.

No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a good nightlife. We, uh, no, it's a good tech epicenter.

It's a great tech epicenter. There's a lot of people from California that moved to Austin. Yeah. Um, and we love Austin as a whole. It fits the ethos of the brand too. Like this brand is an Austin type of brand. So we're stoked on Austin and centrally located. We can ship anywhere in the country in 3 days from Austin, which is awesome. California was 5 days before. Yeah, yeah. Brutal, right?

I'm a bag junkie, so can we just look at one more product? Sure. Like one more favorite product from both of you?

Hit the Galindo there.

This is the bag I'm actually carrying. Mine is— here's mine full of crap and stuff. But this is the Galindo bag. So this bag is made out of like 60 to 70% recycled polyester. You've got a full digital imprint right on the front face of it. You've got your luggage pass-through on the back. There's a hidden passport pocket behind it so you can drop in passport or mule money or whatever you need.

Is this your favorite too? Yeah.

But I got another favorite. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Because we're showing products, right? Interrupt? Interrupt. All right.

All right.

Tough crowd.

This one's cool. That one's still my favorite, but this one's silver for me. Nice. Like, this is like legit, like steel. Built-in, like full transparency, like $2.30 in China. Yeah. So it's like just for that material, just for this buckle. Wow. And also the Jacquard material just has a different unique feel from what we see out in the industry.

You just said full transparency. You told me the raw product costs. Yeah. That's your—

just the buckle. The buckle.

Yeah.

I've been through the rust. What's the price on that? That bag?

This one's $45. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So tell it, talk while— use this, use these as examples.

That's my wife's favorite.

I'm glad you said that. Materials-wise, tell us a little bit more about What's behind them?

Recycled TPE, recycled nylon on the webbing, recycled EVA foam on the inside, recycled bias tape. Like, there's a lot.

This meshing's recycled. Zipper pulls.

Yeah, recycled stainless steel in the zipper pulls.

And we get down to like the granular, like this is like 0.2 grams of material used for this part.

The carbon footprint on this bag is probably like 4 kilograms of CO2. That's completely carbon neutral and offset as well too. Wow. It's cool. My wife loves this bike.

Yeah, yeah, love it. I love the size of that one right there. Let's talk about the journey a little bit. Like, the European market is light years ahead of us in terms—

talk about that a little bit. Like, I was at PSI last week. Yeah, okay.

So what does the European— for those that are sort of new in our market, what does the European market look like, and how does yours sort of bring that into the US?

Man, Europe is like— it makes the US— this is no shade of the US, I love America, US is light years behind. It looks like elementary school over here compared to Europe. If you go, like, I was at PSI last week, I walked the whole show, right, supporting our European launch, which was last week. But the minimum viable product has to be sustainable, has to be eco, has to be recycled. Like, that's what everyone's doing. Like, minimal packaging. Like, right.

Yeah.

There's no one doing this here. Like, why? Why is Europe and Asia and everywhere else so far ahead of the US? It shouldn't be that way.

Mike, what did you think about? What do you think about? What are you bringing? Sort of, you're bringing that whole concept here.

Yeah, I think what the other things the European market brings is just a clean design of everything too, which is an elevated look. Right. It's not like they're more sophisticated than us because like Jay said, America, but it's just a more sophisticated overall business experience and buying experience in the industry. Not the fact that they just have like espressos and pints at their booth. That part's nice too. That's nice. But definitely just an overall better buying experience and go-to-market strategy. Right.

What's been the hardest part about doing this? Oh, that's like— I know there's probably been lots of hard parts, but is it—

Have you seen how weathered and tired I am? Oh yeah. It's— when we started before, you go first. We were young bucks, right? Right. I'm not saying we're like old and weathered, but we were, we were 26. Yeah. No families, no wives. I was dating my wife at the time. Mike hadn't met his yet. Kids. Kids are the toughest. Kids for sure. Kids are tougher. But now like, We're— so there's all that. There's the family dynamic. We're older. We're knowledge— we have way more knowledge now. Yeah. But we're trying to start here. Yeah. When we started at Org, we were here. It was two dudes in a garage. The only way—

the only way was up. Two products at a table. Right.

And now it's like—

and then two tables. And then— yeah. Now we're starting here.

We're starting at like almost like year 5 to 7 of Org. Um, because we want to go that much faster. And honestly, we we know a lot more now. We know what not to do. Sure. And there's just a lot of pressure too. Like, there's a lot of pressure. And building this all on an accelerated timeline from September to now, getting stuff built and like launched, and the website, and it's like launching the brand, launching 30 products, getting all those products, launching the whole business, launching a production facility on 3 different continents, hiring team.

It's a little stressful. And capital, capital-intensive investment.

We put we've got a lot of skin in the game on this on our side, millions of our own cash. And then we raised a round from friends and family and all the people that over the years were like, man, I wish I got in or it goes like, well, no one had the opportunity to, but like all those people, like when we're ready to come out, we're like, we should call that crew back and see if people want to get in on it. Yeah. So we raised a round. And so we've got investor money too, like, which is another pressure.

Bigger and bigger, right? Yeah.

From, from a tactical standpoint of putting together product or the supply chain, what was the hardest part about that? Was it, was it sourcing?

Was it the hard— The hardest part is honestly, no, sourcing parts, because I already done it. That was the easy part. Myself and Nacho, our design director, like we'd done it. Like the hardest part was doing on accelerated timeline and building to the standards, the recycle, the global recycled standard, the sustainable standard, like everything we wanted. Like before, if I wanted to make this product non-recycled, just do that way faster. Yeah. Doing it to the standard that we want as a, as Rupt. Yeah. That was the hardest part. Yeah.

It also just devils in the details too. And when we were, like I said, we only had like 3 or 4 people as a whole team, whole company. Yeah. Not, hey, shipping department, handle that. Hey, logistics department, handle that. Hey, design team, I need you to redo all the— like, this was the team. And then some guys behind the camera as well. Yeah.

At Org before, you know, in the beginning, Mike and I were here late night, like, but towards the end, like, we'd show up and be like, what's good, guys? You know? But like, now it's like, we were here till midnight. Like, stuff is not done. Like, it's just like the old days, which is, it's fun. It's reinvigorating for sure.

A lot of us that were there the first day you came in the business are so proud to like watch this journey unfold. And so we're excited to see this. We're watching like fans because I was there. I remember leaving your booth, Jason. I remember going, I don't know that I was even sold to, but I really, really like what you're doing.

I was telling my wife this because she's coming for the show to work.

Our wives are working the booth.

They own part of us too as well, and they've been there since the beginning, but like, my wife's like, do I have to sell product? I don't like selling product. I was like, honestly, I've never really sold product enough. I just, I talk to people I want, just hang out, got the vibes, like talk about what we're doing. And like, if someone wants to buy some product, cool. If not, like, they're eventually gonna buy some product anyways. Yeah, yeah.

What's been— Michael, you go first on this. What, what's been the reception from— so I'm sure you've brought in a few confidential friends to like run the idea by them, distributors, clients. What's been the initial response Oh man.

From the market.

Through the roof. Like, oh my God, can I start buying it now? Can I cut you a PO now for a sample kit of everything?

What part of it?

Like, though, where that, like, just the whole consumption? Okay. This is honestly— Yeah, without even seeing the product too. This is the where, this is where I, I think it's really flip-flopped. I would tell the story, you know, tease it out there a little bit. Sustainability, second life packaging, which I'm like, this is the shit. This is awesome. Yeah. And then I get into the global distribution and that's where their ears and eyes perk up a lot more.

Because they need that.

It's such a need and it's such a massive hurdle because even running ops and things like that before at HBG.org, we would have to charge people like paperwork fees for international documentation and yeah, just the mystery of what the end of cost is going to be on some stuff. That's not just case, which is things everybody's looking up more like the global availability of the same, same. Okay.

Okay. What did you hear? I, I thought it was going to be the sustainability. Like that's what I built the product around. Right. That's like icing on the cake. The cake is the global distribution. Wow. Yeah, that's amazing. It's addressing the distributor's needs. Like, when I, you know, talked to Brian Gill yesterday, great friend at Thumbprint, and he's like, dude, we've, we've had people just asking for this forever.

Yeah, for sure.

If you can do that. And yeah, I was like, wait, it's recyclable? He's like, I need the, like, the global distribution.

No, then the globe's getting smaller, you know? Totally. Yeah, you're top— call it top 100, top 500 distributors here.

They have a global-based client that has global needs. You risk losing clients by not getting that. Yeah.

What are you gonna do?

What are you gonna do? Even us, we're a global company right now. We have, you know, like, you know, we work through DCX, we have some Philippines, we have some employees in Argentina.

Yeah, we're hiring the best people all over the world this time. Right.

So we're, we are the same thing.

What are you gonna do when people say, since that's what they love first, Americans, what we love first, what are you gonna do when they say, can you guys do some other product? And it falls outside of your MO.

But that's what we did before at Aurig. We started in tech sector. Yeah. And then we slowly got into bags, travel accessories. We dabbled in hats that nobody even really bought or knew. Even with two initial drinkware pieces as well. So yeah, the evolution of Rupture will carry the same path as well. But sustainable.

Oh no, that's what I mean. It's like sustainable second life packaging.

We will never— those are our pillars. Yeah.

Okay. We will never do that. They're literally our pillars.

I love it.

How do you, how do you two, I think, I think, I don't know how people know this. How do you two complement each other's strengths? You're building another business again. That, that was a huge success. I mean, you gotta drive each other crazy sometimes. Of course. But, but what do you, what's the dynamic here?

I think, I think we learned early, bro. I think we're, no, so even before we started old company, like you would read about all these like partnerships and entrepreneurs just battling heads and going out of business because of whatever ego took over or whatever the case. I think we learned very, very early on each of our strengths and which are to be determined.

We should figure it out.

No, there's a lot of crossover.

No, there's a lot of— I want to hear what he's gonna say. All right. I'm waiting.

I'll go. It's a great Venn diagram, right? I think Jason, that's a good analogy. We, we, we both love to dabble in the scene of, of many business elements and aspects. But at the same time, I think Jason's definitely more of a creative without question. Right. Product designer, devil in details.

Okay. And better looking, smarter. Yeah.

Oh no, I was talking about your strengths. And then I think in the middle part, we definitely carry passion for what we're doing. Entrepreneurship, salesmanship, things of that nature. And then maybe on the other side, I'm a little bit more operations minded.

Yeah. Yeah.

Let him answer that.

What do you— Yeah.

Yeah.

Go ahead. That's a great way to do it. Yeah.

Mike's just smart. Mike and I have worked together for 20 years.

By the way, you've always said that to me offline.

He's always said that Mike's so smart. No, Mike is M-S-H-A-D-E-D. We've had the same acronym forever. Mike and I worked together in 2006, Major League Soccer, then at Jansport, part of VF Corp. Then we started Orga. We've worked together literally since we both graduated college. And we didn't know each other. Mike's from Chicago. I'm from San Francisco. We just met in the Major League Soccer elevator, like on the first day of work. Yeah. And Mike's M-S-H-A-D-E-D. Make stuff happen all day, every day. That's what Mike does. Mike just gets stuff done. And like, I'm like up in the sky, we should do this, we should do this. And Mike's like, we need to do this.

Yeah, that's a good way. Airplane ground control. That's a good little— maybe.

Yeah, it's a great— it's a great balance.

It's a great balance. How did—

okay, last question. They gotta land. Was there anything we didn't discuss that you wanted to discuss before we move? I mean, it's fine if not.

I'm a negative person. I was gonna end on negatives. Right.

No, I'm just excited to see what's gonna happen tomorrow when everybody comes through, sees the stuff. See that, you know, the boys are back in the industry. Yeah. And just that excitement and how that carries through the rest of the year when, you know, in the, in the form of sales. Yeah.

Well, that was a good movie. Go ahead. I'll, I'll end on a sentimental note. Yeah.

Yeah.

Cause I was gonna ask, how does it feel to come back in the industry? Yeah. That's what I'm—

so I've sat on the sidelines for 2 years. Was that hard? Yeah. Cause I'm a person that, right. It was cool for 2 months being retired at 38. Right. But then like, it was kind of boring cause all my friends have jobs still. And like, this guy still had the job and I was like, I can ride my bike and become a volunteer police officer in Fort Powders and do other stuff. Like, yeah, I came back. This industry has awesome people in it. And like, we were in retail before. Retail's brutal. People are mean. Like, this industry is built on relationships. And like, I wanted to come back and give the, the distributors that made Org and made us super successful another tool so they can be successful. And honestly, like, have more quivers in their back to go to battle with every single day. So I'm coming back because the people are awesome and I want to change the industry this time for the better. Yeah.

Mike, last word. Last word. I mean, the beauty of this industry too is like the pie is so big. Like everybody's friends. I'm friends with other competitors, which nobody's a competition to me. Then, you know, just as I am with the other distributors. So it's amazing to see the welcoming arms that we've been received with here. Coming back on the stage, you know, digitally, physically here, you know, phones are blowing up. And so it's, it's awesome. Super heartwarming.

This industry is nothing but friends.

Yeah, everyone's excited you're back. Yeah, yeah, we're excited to be back. It's just weird to be back. Yeah, yeah. But good things always come back. Thank you, guys. Thanks, man.

Congratulations.

Congratulations. Great week. Thank you.

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

Mm.