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

All right, so we're hanging with Jason and Mike here at the Rupp 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 is a little bit

we 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 this.

Completely answer that.

Jason, personal.

Thanks. Thanks for having us. This industry, if you're not in this industry, it doesn't get the best route. You know, like brandfill landfill. The industry is phenomenal, but, like, from an out there, people think of 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.

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 for 20 indirectly. So we decided to kind of conquer both those things. Lack of transparency in the 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 three different categories. Tech, drinkware, and bags, all made out recycled material. Every single product's been our recycled material, which is cool across the board. Everything's carbon neutral. So all products carbon neutral. And then we're decorating product on three different continents in 48 hours, which is crazy. Yeah, yeah. Second life. So this was made out of just customer demand, just what people have been asking for. Answer people's.

Yeah, I want to get to that. Mike, what did you see when you, like, the model you guys were kicking around? Like, what did you see yourself about

the industry that you were thrilled that

you could the two market. The two market gaps that Jason alluded to, but also just a revival in product design, I think it's got a little stagnant. I mean, Covid did play a part in that where, you know, designers can go to China as much and develop as much. So just coming to market with new product design, this is 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 drink okay.

All right. Oh, that's your favorite. I got your favorite.

All right. Oh, you got.

You both got favorites.

Like, this is. Mike's not my favorite.

Right, right'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 drinkw in our sector. So we've developed everything for rup. We've developed from the ground up. So my favorite new bottle is called the Lucent 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 functional artwork.

Yeah, yeah.

And this bottle's like 60% recycled. May I recycle Abs Plastic. The box for this turns into a greenhouse. So literally.

What do you mean? Like a little desktop.

You can plant like succulents in it. Put your pot. So I really like the Lucent model.

That's cool.

What's your favorite?

I got two, cuz. I got two favorites. This is cool. Just like almost like your grandma's side of your house. You can little spick it on the side of the.

Yeah.

Or the house for your hose. So I like this. Just the mechanism of which you open it and then the sleekness of the Performa.

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 assume like the idea for this, he's like, I don't know. I don't know about this one. I was like, it's industrial school. He's like, I don't like it. And that was like his favorite product, you know?

Is this all the same packaging for those three?

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

Like this one, the box turns into a bird feeder. Right?

I love that one.

Yeah, it turns into a time.

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 great.

Cradle to gate.

Cradle to gate and cradle to gray. What's.

What are those? What does this.

Big difference. So cradle to gate is production to distribution in Austin. So that's cradle to gate, Cradle to grade.

And to clarify in the retail sector, that's cradle. It's to retail store.

Yeah.

Okay.

How they utilize that.

Right.

So to clarify, you're saying Austin.

Austin's where we want to mention.

Okay, sorry. Yeah. Producing 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. So for tech, we will publish some of some end of life stuff based off of 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 rough.com. bob.

Yeah.

All right.

How do you like that? 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 published the full building 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 percent stands by weight for each one too. We want to show full transparency. There's brands that do this great.

Everlane and Albert.

Yeah, I love both those brands.

They're.

They kind of like embrace full transparency and we'll be the first in promo to do it. The full transparency.

When you say first in promo. There are other people doing things like this. What is it about Ruck that is doing it in a way that's different than something.

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 building materials on like online.

On the hard good side, shirts a

little bit easier, right? Sure. Yeah.

It's cotton and it's cotton.

It's cotton and there it is, you know. Right.

But on the hard good side, nobody's really.

Yeah. No one's doing the international decoration on three continents with this. Yeah, yeah.

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

Mike threw some darts at the globe. Yeah, for sure. No. So over the last like decade there's been such a.

That was good.

Yeah.

Could have been a cheaper country.

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. 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 in the same packaging in Europe

you said on the same machine.

So there's no even like product doesn't really exist out there.

You know, it's just such a, such a wild goose chase for some of the distributors who have, you know, stuff they needed to give Germany. You got to 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. This is all at one piece within a week's time. Like. Yeah, that's the crazy part about it.

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

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, into distributors in Europe. We're utilizing 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 U.S. 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 pick to align ourselves with. The company's called out to see out of Europe full transparency.

You're like conversations like us.

Full transparency. A factory guys you have here if

you want to make some 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 faster.

Yep.

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 we do something again.

I'm super proud of what we built before we birthed the baby together, which was weird to say, but I'm proud of our now teenage baby. Right. That is off at summer camp with hpg and HPG is crushing it. And I hope original 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 California. Or I'm from California. We live in California now.

Yeah.

Not the best state from a, like from a distribution standpoint to decorate and you lose business on these 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.

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 like restart and go off with a bang.

Yeah.

Correct the things like, like you said before, distributors complained about this. Distributors complain about this. Let's fix those out.

The don't just complain, but we love

distributors have ideas we can make.

Well, that's helpful.

We just do it right off the bat.

Yeah.

We get that nice fresh sleep to

come up 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.

Yeah.

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 onto 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 and 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 was like a little good market go to market. Now it's education as a whole. Right. Plus product. So. Right. 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.

Midnight Life.

We.

It's a good tech.

It's a great tech. There's a lot of people from California that move to Austin.

Yeah.

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. We're stoked on Austin and centrally located. We can ship anywhere in the country in three days from Austin, which is awesome. California was five days before. Yeah. Right.

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

Hit the Galindo there.

This is the bag. I'm actually carrying it. Mine is. Here's mine. Full of, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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 around the front face of it. You've got your luggage passer on the back. There's a hidden passport pocket behind it, so you can drop in passport or your money or whatever you need.

Is this your favorite, too?

Yeah, but I got another favorite because you're my one. I didn't mean interrupt you. Because we're showing products.

Right?

Interrupt.

All right, all right.

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.

It's cool.

Built in, like, full Transparency is like 2.30 in China.

Yeah. So it's like, just for the material.

Just for his buckle.

Wow.

And also the Jacquard material just has a different unique feel from what we see on the industry.

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

Just the buckle.

The buckle. What's the price on that.

That bag? This one's 45. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so tell talk one.

Use this.

Use these as examples. Materials wise. Tell us a little bit more about what's behind.

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

Recycled zipper poles.

Yeah. Recycled stainless steel in the zipper poles.

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 4kg of CO2. That's completely carbon neutral and offset as well, too.

It's cool.

My wife wants this bag. 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 term. Talk about that a little bit.

Like, I was at PSI last week. 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 U.S. and Europe is like, it makes the U.S. this is no shade us. I love America. U.S. is light years behind. It looks like elementary school over here. If you go like, I was a PSI last week. I walked the whole show. Right. Supporting our European launch of last week. But the minimum viable product has to be sustainable. Has to be eco.

Has to.

Like, that's what everyone's doing. Like. Yeah. Minimal packaging. Like. Right. Yeah. There's no one doing this here. Like. Yeah. Why. Why is Europe and Asia and everywhere else so far ahead of the U.S. yeah. It shouldn't be that way. Yeah.

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

Right.

What's been the hardest part about doing this? Like, I know there's probably been lots of hard parts, but is it.

Have you seen how weathered and tired I am?

Yeah.

It's when we started, before we were young bucks. Right. Right. I'm not saying we're like older weather, 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. Now, like, we're. So there's all that. There's the family dynamics. 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. There's only way.

The only way was up two products at a table. Right.

But now it's like.

And then two tables and then. Yeah, no, we're starting here.

We're starting at like almost like year

five to seven of Org 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. 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 in 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 three 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 around from friends and family and all the people that over the years were like, man, I wish I got in an org. It was like, well, no one had the opportunity to. But like all those people, like when we're ready to come out, like we should call that crew back and see if people want to get in on it. Yeah, yeah. So we raced around and so we've got investor money too. Like, which is another pressure everywhere. Right.

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 the heart? 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 recycled, 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 rupt. That was the hardest part.

Part. It also just doubles in the details too. And when we're like I said, we only have like three or four 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 like at or. This was, this was the team. And then some guys behind the camera as well.

Yeah, I don't work before. You know, in the beginning, Mike and I were here in late night like building the. Towards the end, like we'd show up

and be like, looks good guys.

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.

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 to the show to work. Our wives are working the booth. They own part of Brooks too as well. And they've been there since 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. I just, I talk to people, 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. Yeah. Yeah.

What's been like, 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 from the

market through the roof, like, oh my God, can I start buying it now? Can I tell you a P.O.

now for a sample kit of everything?

What part of it like though or that? Like just the whole. Okay, this is honestly.

Yeah.

Without even seeing the product too. This is the way. This is where I think it's really flip flop. 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, 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 Internet international documentation and just the mystery of what the end of cost is going to be. Stuff everybody's perking up more like the global availability of the 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.

It's addressing the distributor's needs. Like when I, you know, talked to Brian Gill, yesterday, great friend at some point. And he's like, dude, we. We've had people just asking for this forever.

Yeah, for sure.

You can do that.

And yeah, I was like, wait, it's recycling. He's like, I need the, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. No.

And the globe's getting smaller, you know.

Yeah.

Your top. Call it top 100, top 500. They have a global based client that has global needs.

You risk losing clients by not getting that.

Yeah.

What are you going to do? What are you going to.

Even us. We're a global company right now. We have, you know, like, you know, we work. 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 going to do when people say. Since that's what they love first Americans, whatever.

We love first.

What are you going to do when they say, can you guys do some other product? And it falls outside of your M.O.

but that's what we did before at Aura. At Org. Right. 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 of, even though we had two initial drinkware pieces as well. So. Yeah. The evolution of rough will carry the

same path as well.

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

Never.

Those are our pillars.

Yeah. Okay. We will never do that.

Literally our pillars.

I. 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 compliment each other's strengths? You're building another business. Again, that. That was a huge success. I mean, you got to drive each other crazy sometimes. But what do you. What's the dynamic here?

I think. I think we learned, bro. I think.

No. So even before started old company, like, you'd 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.

No, there's a lot of crossover.

No, there's a lot.

He's gonna say, all right, you're waiting.

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

Better looking, smarter.

Oh, no. Talking about your strengths. I think in the middle apart, we definitely carried 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, let him answer that.

What do you. 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, smart.

Well, Mike.

No, Mike is msh. 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 the F Corp. Then we started or 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 elevator. Elevator. Like, on the first day of work. Yeah. And Mike's mshad. Ev. 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 it's a great fast. 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 with, you know, in the. In the form of sales.

Yeah, that's gonna go ahead.

I'll. I'll end on a sentimental note. Yeah, yeah.

Because I was gonna ask, how does it feel to come back in the industry?

Yeah. So I've sat on the sidelines for two years. Is that hard? Yeah, Because I'm a person that. Right. It was cool for two months being retired at 38. Right. But then, like, it was kind of boring because all my friends have jobs still, and, like, this guy still had a job. And I was like, I can ride my bike and become a volunteer police officer and pull houses 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, like, 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 in everybody's friends. I'm friends with other competitors.

Right.

Nobody's accomplish then, you know, I am just as I am with the other distributors. So it's amazing to see the welcoming arms that we've been, you know, 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. It's business, industry, Nothing but friends.

Yeah.

Everyone's excited you're back.

Yeah, we're excited to be back. It's just weird to be back.

Yeah.

But good things always come back. Thank you, guys. Congratulations. Congratulations.

Thank you, Bob.

Great week. Thanks.

Thank you.

Come to you.