Episode 322: Vantage Apparel's CEO Rob Watson on Success and the Connected Advantage

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. SkewCast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

Check out this rich history. More than 40 years of experience, over 760,000 logos, 33 billion stitches, and a ton of creative innovation. Vantage Apparel is now one of the 5 largest suppliers of custom merch in North America. They operate 3 facilities across the US, an East, West, and Central hub, and they have close to 1,200 embroidery heads, in-house screen printing, laser appliqué, laser etching, DTG printing, and heat transfer decoration. Now get this too, they are a 13-time winner of PPAI's Distributor Choice Award. Distributors love Vantage, and they've won the Gold Pyramid Award for embroidery 28 times in a row. Founder Ira Nieman has built one of the most reputable creative apparel companies in the industry, and you know what, it all started with a small catalog of just 6 in-stock items. Today, Rob Watson, CEO at Vantage Apparel, joins me to talk about their look into the future and the aspirations and realities they are creating as a tech-enabled pioneer in apparel. Rob is a 20-year-plus veteran of the promotional products industry. He was formerly ASI Senior Vice President of Marketing and User Experience. He's also served as the Global Chief Marketing Officer for several U.S. UK-based distributor companies. Rob has helped position Vantage Apparel as a leader in integrated single-piece e-commerce solutions, boosting distributor sales upwards of 235% through online digital revenue. And most recently, Rob launched a new collab between Vantage and women-owned, made-in-Canada apparel favorite whom we all love, Redwood Classics, with Kathy Chang. Today, Rob and I talk about the enormous capabilities of Vantage, why they've become the most respected contract decorator in addition to being a leader with their own apparel line, And we talk about this moonshot, one-piece minimums that are now a profitable reality and how this is even possible. We also talk about the tremendous growth in technology that Rob is passionate about and our new integration at CommsCue with Vantage, what we can expect in the future as it relates to growth. And finally, we talk with Rob about his new partnership with Kathy and her team at Redwood. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Chief Content Officer at CommsCue. One quick note before I chat with Rob, we added a shiny new report to your Reports tab, the Rep Comparative Report. Now the Rep Comparative Report allows you to look at invoice orders by client or by order rep and compare it to the previous month, quarter, or year. As usual, we make it so, so easy. You can find the new Reports tab on your left nav on the platform. And here's the thing to remember, we are very passionate about helping you grow and bringing you more reports like these to give you the business intelligence insights you need to make decisions. If you're not on CommonsQ and you want a faster, easier workflow with more control and clear visibility in your business, you can learn more at commonsq.com. Now onto our chat with our good friend Rob Watson, CEO at Vantage Apparel.

Rob Watson, so good to finally have you on the SkuCast.

It's been way too long. We've been trying to do this for some time. We have.

Yes.

Jumping right into it. Let's talk about core capabilities because I want to ask you about something. I know it's a tremendous benefit to CommsCue customers. You are the number one contract decorator in the industry.

I don't think—

I don't think a lot of people know that. I mean, can you give us the idea of the scope and scale of your facilities?

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. We have conversations with customers all the time and sometimes they only know us for apparel and sometimes distributors only know us for decoration. So Vantage is not only a great provider of fashion, but we're also the leading industry decorator, like you mentioned. Every year since— oh gosh, for the last 28 years, Vantage has won the PPAI Golden Pyramid Award for embroidery. Every year since—

wait, wait, every year for the past 20, 28 years?

Wow. Years in a row. Wow. And then the ASI used to do an award called the Distributor Choice Award, and every year— and they don't do it anymore— but every year Since they started the Distributor Choice Award in the, in the decoration category, Vantage was a winner. And so we've been awarded and outfitted with tons of awards for the quality of decoration that we offer in the industry. We love it. We stand behind it. Our team loves to hear more about it. But to answer your question, we have 3, we have 3 locations in the US. Our flagship headquarters and production studio, which also acts as our HQ, is here in New Jersey. We have Avenel, New Jersey, St. Louis, Missouri, and Santa Ana, California. Interesting, some people don't know this, we are the largest embroiderer in North America. We have 1,200 embroidery heads across the entire network.

Wow.

Which is pretty cool.

Yeah, I don't think people realize that.

It's massive. I mean, the facility here in New Jersey is 250,000 square feet. It's like 2.5 football fields. Right. You don't recognize it when you first drive up, you're like, oh, it's a nice supplier, and then you get the tour and everyone is mesmerized. If you are, a customer and you are considering bringing your customer to Vantage for a tour, they will leave placing an order. It's impressive. I'm impressed and I work here every day.

You do a lot of tours, customer tours?

Tons, tons. Yeah, but here in New Jersey, we— this is where we stock all of our Vantage merchandise and we offer all of our decoration capabilities: screen print, appliqué, embroidery, DTG, direct-to-film heat transfers, patches, laser etch. Our other two facilities are just contract decoration facilities. They don't stock any Vantage merchandise, and we only do embroidery and direct-to-film there. So those two locations plus New Jersey can act as a contract decorator when we have free inbound freight from SanMar Alpha and S&S for quick turns.

Yeah, I want to get into that a little bit. One of the things I do recall is that every year Vantage would release the new decoration techniques that they were pioneering, and And you could say for our industry, there was some fairly avant-garde stuff that Vantage has been at the very tip of the spear of in terms of decoration techniques. But it makes me want to ask about something that I've wanted to ask you about, and I'm sure there would be folks listening who would have the same question. One-piece minimums were once seen as a moonshot in this industry, and I want to get to more capabilities of yours in a minute, but I want to talk about this topic because that would seem like impossible, too expensive. It's not practical. I think it remains a misnomer. So what's changed about the possibility of one-piece production that's both now practical and necessary?

Well, I think you're smart to acknowledge that there's two caveats of the industry and single-piece deco trend. First, practicality. It has to be cost-effective and extremely organized to remove any sort of overhead to be profitable. Buying single-piece equipment is just a fraction of the solution. Advantage, and this is way before the pandemic, we have become experts in integrations and enhancing that order experience by connecting our system directly with the distributor's platform. This made orders flow naturally without any type of human touch and allowed us to share some of the savings, uh, to integrate, keep the cost low. The second piece you mentioned is necessity. This is interesting because offering this single piece solution, I think, is a great sustainable conversation. We're never producing more than what's needed. We're reducing waste. Plus that necessity comes with this massive popularity in web stores. This, digital transformation that we're seeing in our industry. Right. It's exciting. And I think web stores gives our industry that e-com retailer stake in the conversation to grow new business.

Yeah. I want to get to Commscue and the digital transformation and connection with— for Commscue customers in just a minute. But I have more questions about capabilities because you're an East-West, you're East Coast, West Coast, and Central hub for decorating. And I just want to make that clear because I know speed is a big issue for many distributors. Yeah. And as you know, a contract decorator, and I hate to just keep going to contract decorator, we will get to some other apparel because Vantage has always been a fashionable brand. And then the Redwood conversation we'll get to in a minute. But yeah, the contract decorator relationship with a distributor is usually an intractable relationship. So they, they have a reliable contract decorator, they partner with them. What should make me rethink Vantage as a partner? You mentioned Sandmar and the freight thing. Can you talk on that just a little bit more? And also the East, West Coast and Central locations?

So I think if you're looking for a really quality decorator, then to lean towards Vantage. You've got all the awards that we've won, which are great. You've got the variety of decoration options. But just like I mentioned before, we're experts in that single piece conversation, so great for programs. In addition to that, you've also got a massive infrastructure that can handle large 10,000 placement capacity, you know, whenever you need it. Because we're so large, our lead times are relatively low in the industry. We have limited impact during the holiday where Others may be, you know, overspent pretty quickly. The Sandmar Alpha S&S piece is an interesting one too, because we offer free inbound freight there. There aren't any restrictions in that. So as long as Vantage is decorating the item and you're shipping to one of Vantage's 3 locations, then you receive that free freight, free inbound freight to Vantage.

Wow. One piece.

One piece. Now, now here's the crazy part. Because we're going to talk single piece and our— so every item from SanMar, Alpha, and S&S is preloaded into Vantage's ERP or our order system. So we've always talked to customers about, you know, we're trying to get to this single PO, one-stop shop type thing. We blew that out of the water because now you can send Vantage an order that has a SanMar item, Vantage is decorating it, our system automatically orders it, on the distributor's behalf. They don't have to worry about making sure that the contract goods get, gets over to Vantage. We do a slight markup on the cost of the blank just because we're administering the good. If anything goes wrong, if there's a damage, if there's— they sent larges instead of mediums, Vantage takes care of all that back and forth. So just think about eliminating all of that unnecessary phone calls and emails back and forth. We handle all of that. Plus, Instead of getting Vantage's contract Deco run charges, we give you Vantage regular Deco run charges as if you're ordering a Vantage item because it's being ordered from our system. So that little markup just to administer it, it goes away because you're getting so many other things on the back end. You're all fine, plus savings in the, in the Deco.

That's amazing. So that people don't think I'm just obsessing about one piece, how many pieces of decoration you think goes through the Vantage facility every year? Either, either that question, and I know it's a big number, or give me an idea of a size and scale of large order in your business.

A large order, like for one order, how many units?

Yeah.

Oh, I mean, you could have 150,000 units and an order that goes out. I mean, that's—

yeah, I just want to paint a picture of the scale, right? So that distributors know they can partner with you, that they don't just lean on— I didn't want to sound like I was beating this one thing because One Piece is just, to me, it's always been the moonshot. So it's fun to talk about. But I mean, I, I've heard in rumors about some of the, the orders that go through your facility, and they're massive.

They're massive. I'm glad we're talking about big orders too, because I'm like, oh, right, I'm gonna get every single piece order in the industry. We'll take them, we'll take them for sure.

Right, right.

But, you know, I— the, the conversation of single piece orders has changed dramatically. Yeah. You know, you think about, like, you call it a moonshot. Not anymore. I mean, you have to, you have to lean into it. You got to be there, you got to do it. I think we do it really well. Yeah. But we, we handle thousands of single piece orders every single day.

Let's talk again about— yeah, I'm glad we talked about that. Let's talk again about why that's even possible now, which is the digital transformation. I know that's a buzzy word and people kind of get a little numb to it, but you have been really passionate about it. And at Commscue, naturally, we're very passionate about it. Now we have this partnership with Vantage. But what does digital transformation mean for you in practice? What does that look like, for example, with our partnership?

Yeah, regardless if it's buzzy or not, the fact that people are using it, I'm excited about because it means it's part of the conversation. Yeah. Think about, think about the ability to automate processes and functions within your own business that for so long have been manual. Do you even realize how much you're doing today that's manual? So this digital conversation, this digital transformation is about our ability to connect people and share ideas faster than ever before, to have our systems integrate, to reduce order errors, to get real-time information in milliseconds. And those have steered away from that conversation, they really need to make a concerted effort to inject technology into how they improve their business. We love, love the Common Skew platform. The sheer amount of information, the ability to collaborate. Imagine just for a second for your Common Skew users, if you were taking that piece of technology away for a day to not be able to collaborate in real time, to not have order status at your fingertips. Oh, by the way, that was 5 years ago. Right. Digital transformation. Has been— we're all benefiting from the fact that so many of us are leaning into it and executing.

Yeah. For those that have been involved, as you said, this 5 years ago, for a while, it's so refreshing because we do feel like the change is here and the change is now, and that those that are really thinking about growth in the future, they know it begins at efficiency and scale. What can distributor customers expect now that Vantage is a connected supplier?

Well, I think first and foremost, the ease of ordering, right? We— Common Skew makes it super easy to connect all of Vantage's products and services. Yeah. And get real-time information right back. You're gonna have access to all of Vantage's products. And thanks to the technology, we're also able to offer the new integrated pricing to all of our Common Skew users. Merchandisers and marketing teams from Vantage are constantly inside the tool, refreshing some of the product collections that you can easily add to your own curated collections that you share with customers. And I think you'll start to see a lot more innovation and ideas in how we respond back to the feed for requests for ideas. We love that, love all of that. And, and also just the ability for us to kind of flex a little bit and share some new deco techniques in the way that we respond.

Yeah, you said now that we have integrated pricing. Can you unpack that a little bit, what that means versus non-integrated pricing?

Sure. So we revealed earlier this year, got us probably back in the end of Q1, a new integrated price list. Advantage is passionate about our ability to connect more in our order process with, with distributors. How are we connecting our, the order that we receive, reducing overhead? And if we can get connected and get integrated with a distributor, then we want to be able to share some of those savings, right? For, for Vantage, we're reducing a lot of the overhead to enter the order, and for the distributor, we're reducing the necessity to go back and forth with phone calls and emails to check on the status of an order. Yeah. And so our new integrated pricing is up to a 30% discount. Wow. Savings on that decoration run charge. For us, it's an incentive to explore the values of connecting our systems together, removing a lot of the headaches.

Yeah.

And all those back and forth for, for order updates. So integration is at the forefront of what we're doing, and I think we'll be at the epicenter of conversations for really partnered approaches between Vantage and the distributor network in the future.

That's amazing. So that's obviously automatic for all common SKU distributor customers.

That's right.

Let's talk a little bit about Redwood because that's some, some really big news. The partnership with Kathy and her team at Redwood Classics. We love Kathy. We've always loved Kathy and her team. I have nothing but praise for Kathy. What was that collaboration about? Why was it important to you?

You know, I would— before I answer that question, I would say that the passion and the excitement that you have for Kathy, the person, is— is— it's her— her energy is magnetic. I don't— I haven't met anyone since we announced this partnership that doesn't have a Kathy story and they're not beaming from ear to ear. So, so we share all of that. But, you know, Vantage has always gone— it prided itself, gone to market providing really high-quality fashion. The same thing holds true for Redwood. You know, there's a commitment to quality craftsmanship and innovation. Innovation, I, I say not in the technology sense, but always driving new ideas to the fashion conversation. So it made us perfectly aligned. You know, we're both dedicated, and this was important, that we were both dedicated to sustainable practices. We weren't big on fast fashion. We did— we don't create apparel that ends up in landfills after a single wear, and that both lines are intended to be worn over and over again. I always like to say we're creating fashion that allows, that allows you to create new memories every time you wear it, and that every time you wear it, you'll not only remember what you did this time, but when you wore it the last time. Um, and I think, you know, and I, I've seen many of our, uh, friends and partners in the industry, other suppliers who have done, I guess, a similar collaboration, but to us it was more than just carrying the goods. And it's always been a dream to, to work with Kathy. We've had, you know, we got introduced a couple of years ago through some industry friends and we started the conversation. But to hear what Kathy and Redwood has done, a woman-owned, minority-owned company, their impact on the world, you know, so we get to learn from each other every day. And I think that's what makes a really good partnership.

Cool. Aligning on values first, that's such a, such a great play because you can figure everything else out.

I think so too.

These products can now be available, like if I look in the search engines I can see a Redwood and Vantage connected product, right?

That's right. You can see any— you can see the product that we have from Redwood anywhere you can find Vantage product, whether it's common SKU, ESP, Sage, Distributor Central, Promo Standards.

Do you see these kinds of collaborations growing with Vantage as you continue to grow?

I think wherever Vantage sees value in expanding its offering to distributors, then we're open to the conversation. But The demand for quality and continued innovation. Again, innovation being bringing new things to market is always gonna be a requirement.

Since sustainability is so important and we're talking about Cathy and Vantage, tell me a little bit about the Earthwise collection. What is it I should know as a distributor about the Earthwise collection?

It's one of our most popular collections. So the Earthwise collection is part of 1% for the Planet. And what if you don't know what that is? 1% for the Planet, you apply for it. It means that 1% of your annual sales is gonna be donated to a charity of your choosing. So Vantage chose the charity Clean Ocean Action, which is a nonprofit organization that dedicates itself to improving the world's oceans ecosystem by removing waste and preserving the wildlife. I mean, that's at its core. They are New Jersey-based, just like we are, so that meant a lot. It's cool. The Earthwise collection is made of, of a Reprieve fabric. Reprieve fabric is recycled water bottles. So it's sort of a lie. We're removing plastic and debris from the ocean, most of it being plastic water bottles, these single-use water bottles. And it's our ability to kind of join in on the action. So every part of the Earthwise collection is part of 1% for the Planet, and we give back to Clean Ocean Action. Together, together, the— we've— we have saved— I think we have a team that counts this, but we've saved over 1.5 million water bottles just in the Earthwise collection from, from polluting the beaches.

And as plastics are becoming more and more of a conversation in the sustainability conversation at large, that's such a deal for me to bring that to my customer as a solution.

Absolutely. Sustainability for sure. But when there's a giveback component to it, it just resonates well with the end user. Yeah.

Speaking of my relationship as a distributor with you, Vantage Supplier, what makes a strong, effective partnership in your mind? I mean, are there some aspects of your best client relationships you can pass along a tip or two?

Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think that Vantage flexes best when our distributors come to us for ideas and case studies, whether they're trying to break into a new market. You'd be surprised how many people say, I don't do a lot in automotive. I've seen some of your case studies. I kind of want to dive into automotive. Can you help me? Or maybe they just want to wow their customers with a new idea. Yeah, our best distributors are solution sellers, and they rely on Vantage to help them solve the problem.

You have had a very deep and broad experience in the industry, and as you look at the industry over the next 3 years, you, you have always thought forward. What do you see as the biggest challenges that will take place that will reshape our landscape? I think digital transformation is, is the one that we're in the middle of. You and I have around to where a time where the speed of production was one of the big sort of huge moments that, that ushered in a sea change for suppliers. What do you think is similar down the road?

You call it deep and broad, so that's your very kind way of saying you've been here for a long time. But it's true, it's true. I, I've had a really great career in our industry so far, and I hope that I keep to I keep the ability and are given the opportunity to bring new ideas to the table. Certainly, I've been afforded that for a long time and much like you have made some really great friendships along the way, which I think is paramount. Over the next 3 years, I think our biggest challenges, I'll call them changes. I think you're still going to see a lot of mergers and acquisitions. I think the one that we should lean headfirst into is just the conversation of integrating, having a strong technology platform at your fingertips. In my opinion, it levels the playing field. Whether you're a $1 million distributor or a $100 million distributor, you have access to the same tools, web stores, all the apparel, expert decoration. Personally, I think that the integration conversation is, is going to become a requirement. I think in just a few years I can see where submitting a PDF order becomes obsolete.

Yeah.

And you think back to where our phones were and how they've evolved in such a short period of time. I think the same aggressive evolution is happening right now in our industry. I think it's exciting and I'm kind of here for it.

Yeah, same. Well, we're on the same page on that. So last question for you, Rob. I always like to ask this question because the community likes this question. What book, article, podcast, video, movie, anything that's really made an impact on the way you think recently?

Okay. Not to sound a little nerdy, because I think you want me to say something about some great horror movie or whatever that is, or What do you want? There's this book that I just finished reading. It's called Checklist Manifesto. And if you're a friend of mine, you know that I am a fanatic when it comes to checklists. I like to think I have a really good memory, but everything goes on paper. Checklist Manifesto, it's by— the author's name, Atul Gawande. And it's basically, it goes through this, the necessity of how checklists through our life, how a skyscraper can't be built without a series of lists that everyone has to adhere to, how you can't go through surgery without these steps being followed. And so it's a unique perspective on sort of placing priorities that we have in our life and compartmentalizing them in a way that we can get things done. It's good. It's not a long read. It's not some manifesto. Oftentimes sounds a little long-winded, but it's a quick read and I think you should—

That's awesome. Thank you for that recommendation. I'll be checking it out for sure. Rob Watson, thank you so much for joining us today on the Skewcast. This has been a lot of fun to unpack this with you. Thanks for finally joining us. I appreciate you.

Yeah, as long as I don't get all the single piece orders in the industry, then I think, I think we'll be good. Thanks, buddy, for having me. It's a pleasure.

You bet. Thanks, Rob.

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