Episode 308: Purpose Built Pro’s Ryan McAlister

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.

Purpose Built Trade Co. is a one-stop outfitter for tradespeople and businesses. Their first store opened in 2010, and their original mission was to serve local markets and solve the simple need of carrying what blue-collar families needed, from boots to uniforms to safety equipment. Purpose Built is known as the home of the trades, And the word trades today takes on a different meaning. It expands beyond blue-collar work, as we'll explore with our friend Ryan McAllister, who came on board at Purpose Built to become the director for Purpose Built Pro. Purpose Built Pro outfits not only traditional trades like plumbers and welders, but a much wider variety of businesses, as Ryan will explain in our interview today. But first, I want to play you a quick clip from one of Purpose Built's stories with one of their customers. Since you're listening through audio, I'll set the scene. Ryan is walking into a workshop. There are machines and sheet metal and tools everywhere. And this is the kind of amazing and real people marketing that Ryan and his team do by simply highlighting stories from folks who are their customers.

Today we're at Furtado Heating and Air at their sheet metal fab shop, just catching some content for our partners. Set them up with some new uniforms. So we're highlighting some of the new gear as well as the work they get done every day.

So I've been in the trade for about 11 years now.

Your favorite part about sheet metal fab?

Building stuff from the ground up. Not too many trades get a flat piece of material and have to form it all the way up to the final product. A lot of people, or a lot of trades, they buy their 2x4, you buy your piece of conduit, and then you cut it down. We get raw material and fab it into pretty much whatever you need. Small mom-and-pop shop, keeping that kind of keeping that alive. A lot of these big companies, you just kind of get lost in the sauce. Yeah, they kind of forget about you. But here, like, we do everything. There isn't one part of this trade that I haven't learned how to do with Furtado Heating and Air.

Hi, friends. I'm Bobby LeHew, Chief Content Officer at Common Skew. Today on the SkewCast, we talk with Brian about this incredible business they've built in California. Their expansion into the industry providing workwear and more, plus how their audiences have widened to include not only the trades, but also this huge market for transitional workwear. One quick note before our chat with Ryan, we opened registration for SKU Camp held September 15th through the 18th at the Virgin Hotel in Nashville. Now, if you're new to SKU Camp, think of it like a business bootcamp where we deep dive into essential and timely topics for today's promo professional. It's the perfect opportunity to focus on your business rather than just being caught up in it. So whether you're wrestling with scaling, crafting a killer sales strategy, or building an unstoppable team, SKU Camp is where we tackle the most pressing challenges and the biggest opportunities for today's modern distributors. And if you've been to SKU Camp before, we've got a few changes for you this year. We have not one but two workshop leaders Steven Shedletsky, otherwise known as Shed. He's the delightful and erudite author of the book Speak Up Culture, who teaches how to amplify your team's best ideas, how to be bold with vision, disagreements, and feedback, and how to encourage innovation that creates outsized momentum for you and your team. Also joining us is Leah Garvin, bestselling author of Unstuck, a TEDx speaker, and host of the top podcast, Managing Made Simple. She has experience leading team ops across Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Bank of America. As the team whisperer, Leah will talk about how to build unstoppable teams resulting in higher retention and high-impact results. And as always, an incredible lineup of fresh leading voices from within the industry. But probably the most important change we've made is making more time for deeper connections with your peers. SKU Camp attracts some of the brightest minds in the biz, and we wanted to give you more time to tap into that community collective to help you restore, refresh, and most importantly, build toward your vision of success. Join us September 15th through the 18th in Nashville. And as a reminder, this event really does sell out quickly and seating is limited. So if you're thinking about going, grab those tickets today at skewcamp.com. Today's episode is brought to you by CommonSkew, 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 commonskew.com. Now here's my chat with Ryan McAllister, director of Purpose Built Pro.

Ryan, it is so awesome to have you here on the SkewCast.

Thank you so much, Bobby. I'm excited to be here.

I am a big fan of your work and what you're doing, as people will hear as we unfold this conversation. But I just want people to know straight up, I'm a huge fan of what you're doing at Purpose Built. Can you define— before we get started, can you define trade? I just want to make sure our audience level sets with what trade means and who you serve.

Sure. Yeah. So Purpose Built Home of the Trades, our company name, and we are, we're big into the trades, but our definition of trades might be a little different than you're used to. We feel like everybody has a little bit of blue collar in them, and it's less about the, the physical work stigma that kind of goes along with the trades. And it's more about just being a doer, getting stuff done, using your hands to do something dope, whether it's a hobby or it's how you pay your bills. So think A barber who's cutting hair on the side because he really enjoys it, loves the conversations, or an electrician who's got a multi-unit company and this is how he's changing the world.

That, that's an amazing definition. I absolutely love that. And I can actually call myself a proud member of the trade then, I guess, by that definition. Purpose Built Pro is your branded merch division. Is that correct?

Correct.

How did Pro start as a division of your retail focus? And maybe we should tell folks that, like, where you're sitting right now, for those that don't have the luxury of listening or watching via video, they're listening through a podcast, tell us where you're sitting right now.

Sure. I'm sitting in, right in the sales floor of our Pleasant Hill location. This store is new, but it also is a version of our oldest store. So our oldest store was basically built in 2010, but it was an old building. And as our company got larger and we changed the way that we represented ourself, we moved it. So this is the latest and greatest. We've got our boot wall behind us, some of the merchant stuff we make with our direct-to-consumer lines. But in general, Purpose Built, we're more than a retailer. We're a one-stop outfitter and friend dedicated to the essential support of America's tradespeople, doers, and businesses. So that encompasses people that want to come and get recommendations, purchase items from us in store, but also, like you mentioned, we love to work with businesses on the pro side. And that's where, that's really why you and I are here and how we met is you helping me solve some complexity inside the pro B2B division.

Yeah, we're going to get into that part too. And so to understand, and forgive me for oversimplifying it, you started as a retail workwear establishment, probably provided much more than that, but a workwear establishment that grew where you had folks and customers coming in going, hey, can you get us uniforms for our company? Is that how it began?

Yeah, pretty much. When I came on board, we had a couple active accounts, local places that were buying stuff in bulk, but we kept getting the question of, hey, can you order me 100 of these Carhartt t-shirts? And we're like, of course we can. But the next question was, what are you going to do with them? And they're like, we're going to take them down the road here and we're going to put our logo on it. And our goal was to be a one-stop shop. So we started looking into how can we do that for our customers and create these relationships. And initially we started working with local screen printers and embroidery people and providing that service. And we learned quite a bit. We learned really fast that it's a complex, very complex time-consuming job. But yeah, that's how it started is we just had customers that were looking for the service and we've since found some ways to make it a great experience for them.

Who are some of your best customers? Can you give us an example of a customer type?

Yeah, we, we have lots of different types of customers. I'd say our best customer that shops in the store is someone who's gonna come in and will leverage our experience to make sure that our, that they're choosing the right items for the job they need. So whether it's a custom fitting for footwear or it's the rainy season and they need a hi-vis jacket that's gonna fight the elements for them. Them. So on the retail side, our best customer is going to come in and just be loyal and allow us to help serve them. On the pro side, my best customers are our customers that understand our mission, which is to make each trade and community stronger and partner on a deeper level. I don't want to be the provider of the shirt on their back or the, just the boots on their feet. I want to have a true partnership to where we're looking at their whole uniform program as a whole. And finding pressure points, creating processes that are easier, and also providing a solution to where we can get them kind of the best quality gear that looks great, performs great, makes their people work harder, have pride in their business, all out of value.

Are there certain archetypes or even industries that tend to work with you the most?

Sure. Yeah. Inside of our retail business, we have our tried and true, which is As you would imagine, your typical blue, blue collar worker who comes in, they're gonna buy 5 of the same shirt. They're gonna buy the same pair of safety footwear that they've been buying for 5 years. It works for them and we'll see 'em every 6 months. And when they come in, they want us to have that, those items in stock. We have our next generation doers, which are more younger people in the trades, and they're more interested in looking good, feeling good, performing good on the job. They like transitional wear, stuff that they can wear on and off the job that's stylish and fits the trend.

Interesting. Yeah.

And then a newer, a new archetype for us is your thrill seekers. Think like action sports. So these are the people that work hard, play harder, your moto group, outdoors people, fishermen, that type of stuff. And then our last, which is very important for us, is our mini-doers. We know that for every 14 people that leave the trades, only 1 person is coming back in. And these people are essential to building our country. So we want to lean into the mini-doers and make sure that we have products and stuff so we can get them set up for the trades early and involved and understand that there's huge opportunity for them as they come of age.

I love these archetypes. And Ryan, I notice you're not letting me pigeonhole you into just a plumbing industry or the oil and gas industry or anything like that, because you— starting with your mission, your definition of trades is a much broader definition than I think we typically allow.

I appreciate that. Yeah, we, it's, we have customers on the pro side, which is growing for us, but we will work with a brewery. We'll work with a school district who needs shirts for an event they're having with their kids, some screen print. We'll work with the oil, some of the oil companies, refineries are just right down the way right here. So we have a bunch of flame resistant gear here. So yeah, we definitely try to be a one-stop shop for these people. And it's, it's astounding how many different people fall into the category of kind of blue collar or trades worker.

Yeah, I totally agree. We used to sell flame-retardant clothing into oil and gas industry, so I'm a little familiar with some of the work you do. And of course, I'm in what I would call blue-collar country here anyways, because we have a highly industrial area with lots of factories and manufacturing going on. So it's an environment I'm very familiar with. What does the pro division do specifically? Is it uniform safety programs? Any other particular niche?

Yeah, pretty much that. So we'll do head-to-toe uniform. So from a hard hat all the way down to footwear. Footwear voucher program. So what that entails is you have small businesses, large businesses, government municipalities, and they all purchase different levels of stuff. Some people are just buying t-shirts, which everyone in the promo industry knows you can purchase some t-shirts, put some logos on it, and people look great on the job. We have other accounts where they're providing a stipend annually for all of their people to make sure that they're in uniform or safe on the job. So that's where the footwear vouchers comes in. So we'll set up a program. Where they can come into our store and purchase like on an account, and our team will fit them to make sure that they have the, the correct footwear for the job that they're doing. We do hard goods, pretty much anything printed, anything that a company can need, whether it's in the office or out on the construction site, we, we provide that stuff.

Let's talk a little bit about the growth of your company because you came in to start the pro division. You had this retail establishment, you're working with folks in the trade and more, and you start this Pro Division, how has it grown since you started?

Yeah, that's a great question. As I mentioned earlier, when I came in, I was primarily doing operations. We had 2, 2 locations at the time. The company actually had a different name, and the goal was for me to help understand the opportunity, which we found pretty quick was very large for us in addition to the retail stuff. And we had just a few active accounts. We now With, as our retail location has grown, we've got 5 stores working on our 6th right now. We've grown substantially. So we went from serving 2 to 3 customers a month to 80 to 100 from a unit level economic increase, but also to just our overall impact has changed substantially. We, we have events that we run where our pro customers are actually being sponsors or getting involved with. So we have the community aspect that's grown from A technological standpoint, again, we were working in the Stone Age with the pro division. So we spent a lot of time building up the tech stack and infrastructure to allow us to scale. From a people perspective, we've added multiple headcounts and leveraged the other divisions or the other parts of our organization that are required for building something that's growing. And in general, it's been a really fun ride. We definitely, we have A lot of people on our team that are helping this come to life for sure.

How did you discover this industry and Commscue in particular?

This industry specifically, again, it fell on my lap with a relationship that I had with a previous employer, Chris Johnson, who is the owner of Purpose Built. Him and I worked together in the past and he had a connection with this company prior ownership and convinced me over time to come on. So I fell in that way. And then for Commonsku specifically, I was doing a bunch of research because I had a lot of processes that were taking a long time, and I knew that there were solutions out there. So just through research and some calls to, to test out different software is how I ended up with Commonsku.

Since we're talking about trade, we'll talk about digital trade for a minute because I want to quote someone here. Scott Belsky, the CEO of Adobe, recently wrote that the tools we use to create influence what we create, and no one can understand that better than you working with the trades. The tools we use to create influence what we create. How would you equate what Commonsku has enabled you to do at Purpose Built?

That's a great question. First and foremost, Commonsku has helped us with efficiency. In the past, we would use multiple systems of record. We would touch items multiple times, so we would be using one system for an estimate, and then we'd have to recreate it when we'd created a purchase order to order the items from the vendor, and then we'd recreate it when we had to send the bill to the customer. So I think, I estimate, it's a rough number, but we probably increased productivity about 40% just by switching like the sales aspect of Common Skew to Common Skew. But also what's important to us is like how we present ourselves to our customers. So our, our presentation, whether it's the consistency between an estimate all the way through an invoice, our ability to add product images and have just accurate descriptions on all those different types of documents is just tenfold improved. With Commonsku. And then as any business knows the importance, billing. So Commonsku has allowed us to get paid faster, short and simple, which is an important part of business. Specifically the Stripe integration, we can not have to pick up the phone to have someone pay us over the phone for a call, which we did in the past, which is just part of us learning and growing. We also chose Commonsku with the promise of ACH integration, which you guys have come through on. Which is fantastic, and overall better tracking. It's a complex business and you have lots of moving parts and orders and items that are on backorder. But with common SKU, we have all of our purchase orders in the same system that we have our billing, and every bill is tied to an invoice. So we have a system to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. So we're not missing anything on the purchase order reconciliation side or on the billing side.

As a leader now that you're growing your team, what's it allowing you to do that you weren't— you haven't been able to do?

What would you—

what are you doing now with it that you can't do without?

Yeah, first of all is the payment options is a big thing. The second is we spent a lot of time sending pictures and links of images to people, which I initially did, but now we have the ability to have that all in our system. So they're looking at it at one place. A big deal is our PO reconciliation to making sure that our accounts are all up to date with our vendors. So we just have a much better clear view. Well, in our world we call purchase orders, in common SKU it's called bills. We are just much more efficient with the accounting side reconciling that to make sure that our overall financial position inside the company is much more clear. And then the reporting for me is big. I've got a good sales team and a service team and we, there's just a lot of complexity and a, a lot of numbers that we have to manage and, uh, we have it all in one place now. So CommonSKU's been fantastic with allowing me to quickly export data, get it into the right format to make decisions.

Thank you for that, Ryan. Appreciate that. And let's get into a little bit of, one of the most magical parts about your business, and that is marketing. All the models on your website are actual customers, correct?

Correct.

That's amazing.

Yeah, we—

Go ahead.

Yeah, it's, it's something we take a lot of pride in. A lot of these, a lot of the people that we call ambassadors now, which it's a cool word, but really they're our friends. These are people that we met in face-to-face conversations. We, again, this all started when we had 2 stores before the company was rebranded. We used to be called very literal East Bay Workwear before Purpose Built came. But during those times, we were building a website and we had a social platform with very few followers that we wanted to capitalize on and take advantage of that form of media. And so we started doing photo shoots. We literally would go behind my house, which was under construction, a construction zone, and take products, some stuff that we had customized, products we were selling in the stores, and just take photos. And it was just a few of us out there and we'd bring our friends and family and Over time, people would see that on social media or they'd talk to us in the store and they just started asking how they can be involved. They really liked what we were doing and we weren't, definitely weren't going to say no for anybody that wanted to help us. And the cool part was, is a lot of the people were actually using the stuff that we sell. So it was an easy yes for us to get them in the door and start being a part of our branded videos. And now we're at the point to where we have scheduled shoots where we were getting ahead of all of our seasonal drops. And we have our photographer, videographer that come out and a list of people and our store operations team does a fantastic job making sure all the products are ready. We have all the sizes for them. So it's just turned into this really fun thing that people want to be a part of.

And it's a tremendous investment that you've made in time and people and resources to make that a very important part. Your branding is amazing. We can, we link to this in the show notes and people can tell I'm fawning over kind of your purpose and your mission and what you're doing with marketing, branding. But from a storytelling perspective, it's phenomenal. Just you walking into someone shop and talking about your customer in such a casual way, you can tell you're integrated as friends, that you're connected with these brand ambassadors at a level of friendship and not just these are marketing subjects, but these are folks who are very important to you and you are very important to them.

Yeah, I appreciate that. It's funny, we have one of our good customers. He's also one of our good friends. He, anytime we have a new drop, he's always texting us and wondering when he can come in, wants to have the store opened early so he can be the first to come. Get the new designs, and it's, it's like you can't, you can't create that. It just happens organically and naturally. And we're very blessed and fortunate that we have people that support us.

That's amazing work. Tell us a little bit about some of the mission with Purpose Built that is so tied to your ethos, like the Purpose Built Car and Truck Show and your missions and nonprofits you support, like Death to Cancer.

Like, what is the— for those that might not be familiar with Car and Truck Show, What is the, what is that?

Yeah, so we were lucky enough that our, our second store has a really huge parking lot. So we decided one, one year, a few years ago that we wanted to have a car and truck show and we had never done anything like this before, but we knew it could be impactful. So we put together a plan and saw how it went and it went really well. We had a lot of people that were involved. So what we did is we started tying these to different initiatives that we believed in as a company. So now we run multiple event series throughout the year. So Death to Cancer, which is a very important one, which we can talk about for sure. It's in October. We've done first responder campaigns. We've done car and truck shows to raise money or get donated school supplies. We've done car shows for a local fire foundation, stuff like that. So yeah, it's essentially what we do is we, we utilize our parking lots in our locations and spend some time on marketing, letting people know that we're going to have an event. We'll bring in vendors. We've had pop-up shops there. We've had some of our vendors that sell in our store or other local vendors set up booths there. And we, we just have a good time. We bring out a live band, people bring their cars, they come hang out. We'll have food. Sometimes we barbecue. Sometimes we have food trucks out there. But yeah, it's great. It's, uh, it's all, all in the purpose of finding different opportunities to give back to our community, but also have a lot of fun during it.

What an amazing way. To blend true purpose into your marketing. And it's not just a tactic.

It's—

you can see how this does blend through the ethos of the business. Why is this part beyond just a marketing strategy? Why is this important to Purpose Built?

It's another good question. I'll speak about DTC specifically, which is our Death to Cancer campaign. That's the one campaign that hasn't changed and won't change that we've been running since the beginning every October. So Chris Johnson, who's our owner, his mother's battled cancer, and I think pretty much anybody has had some sort of level of impact in their life due to cancer. So it's, I think it's a cause that anybody can get behind. And again, our mission is to make each trade and community stronger. So there's no better way for us to find a way to help somebody in need and leverage our platform for that. Our first quote unquote sponsor our person that we, we helped with our campaign. This was 2019. His name was Ben Griswold. We had a kickoff call like we do each month, and he actually showed up, and our team was small at the time, but he showed up in person, and he was the first person to donate, and he actually slapped some money on the table himself. He was a cancer survivor, and he just really believed in what we were doing, was a good customer. Years later, we were able to give back to his family when they need, when they needed it.

Wow. That's amazing.

So yeah, there's a lot of emotion behind something like that. And since then, last year we sponsored Alex's lemonade stand, which has a family connection with our company. Very familiar with it. Yeah, we find these causes and these people that need help and it drives us. It allows us to, to truly go out there and try to make a difference. And for us, it's not about the optics of doing something great. There's lots of people out there that can do that, but we just, if we can give someone one more day to fight, help their family in a hard time, it makes it all worth it for sure.

That's amazing, my friend. Truly beautiful. Let's talk a little bit about you. And did you grow up in the trades?

It's a great question. I, I did, but I didn't know it until recently.

What do you mean by that?

My father was a a first responder, firefighter, paramedic, which we would consider a tradesperson by our definition. And my mom worked in the agriculture industry in the Salinas Valley, supporting a company that is full of tradesworkers. My dad had side jobs and he'd drag me around when I was young, building fences and repairing hot tubs and stuff like that. So at the time, I didn't really see it as trades, but now I can say that I definitely did grow up in the trades.

That's awesome. I love that story. What do you enjoy the most about working for Purpose Built?

Ah, wow. There's quite a bit. First of all, we're a family-owned business and that's big to me. My previous background was working for a larger corporation and I've seen what happens with big business and you have changes of ownership, corporations come in and you just get a separation from decision makers and the people that are actually doing the job. Here at Purpose Built, the people that are sweeping the floor, we want them to choose. So we know what it's like to work for a big business. We have big business experience, but we don't want to get rid of that family feel. At any day during the week, our CEO, you may find him literally changing a light bulb, adjusting a camera in the store, cleaning the bathroom if it has to. So first of all, it's none of us are too big for the job. So I really enjoy that. We talked a lot about community. I've always strived to have community relationships, business and professional, and I found that with Purpose Built. So there's a huge sense of pride at the end of the day for me, just knowing that I've been able to use this platform to meet people and find people in the community. Selfishly, it's, it's been great for me and a goal of mine to be somebody in the community and just meet lots of people and have those connections. And then from a professional standpoint with specifically with PRO and the freedom that I'm given, I have the ability to test, learn, and fail in a very fast-paced environment, which is just challenging, but it's great. I can go to sleep at the end of the day knowing that I'm building something, which I haven't ever in my life, haven't ever been able to say before. But yeah, now we, we know that we have something awesome that we're working on and I just take a lot of pride in it.

Yeah, you can tell it's really enriched your life. Last question. What would you say is the single most important lesson you've learned building PB Pro? And what advice would you give to an up-and-coming entrepreneur that's sort of in your shoes when you first started and you walk in and go, wow, this is big and complex and What would you advise?

Yeah, great. I, so as I mentioned, I didn't have any experience inside the promo industry, printing. I didn't really know anything about it. I knew stuff looked great. So there was a lot I had to learn. And I think early on I put the onus on myself to try to figure things out. But what I've learned and the advice that I would give is network and be curious. Do not be afraid to ask questions because there are resources out there. And they will help you. And you never know what type of information you're going to get from somebody until you ask. And I feel like even myself in the past, if I could look back and say, Ryan, 4 years ago, you should have called so-and-so earlier. You should have asked the questions. You should have joined a group. You should have gone down the street and asked how so-and-so is running their business. So I think for me, that was the biggest learning. And that's one of the biggest pieces of advice that I would give. Now I find little wins every day just by talking to people who are doing what I'm trying to achieve. And it's about more of solving problems now for me, for my team, or people that come into our stores, problems that I've already explored. So taking that mentality and find the people that have done what you need, or can point you in the right direction. It could be your next big customer. It could be your next software solution. It could be your next idea on how to make a process smoother. And then lastly, I would just say, be brave enough to make quick decisions, but humble enough to ask for help. I think it's important to, to know that you can go and try to do something. And if it doesn't work out exactly as planned, guess what? You now know what doesn't work and you probably are closer to what does work. So just be brave, go out there and make it happen. And then when you need help, go ahead and ask.

Great way to end this conversation. And I'm so sorry we have to end, Ryan. I loved chatting with you and your story and congratulations to what I'm amazing business you've built, to you and the team. We are thrilled that you are a customer of ours and you're such a strong part of our community, and we're very thankful. We're the recipients of that. So thank you very much, my friend.

I appreciate the opportunity. You guys have been great, and I, I wish we could talk for much longer. So hopefully I'll see you soon.

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 on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsq.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.