Episode 340: Tariffs, Tech, AI & Building Teams: Gold Bond's Britney Godsey

Here's a brave question: are there positive impacts from tariffs on our industry? Well, on today's show, we talk with Brittany Godsey, the dynamic Chief Revenue Officer at Gold Bond, who is brave enough to tackle the hard questions around tariffs. Plus, we talk about the exciting tech innovations Gold Bond is rolling out, including enhanced EPOs with CommonSkew, their AI-powered podcast Brand Lab, and their intense focus on team building. Welcome to the SkewCast, the podcast for innovators and maverick thinkers in the branded merch space. My name is Bobby LeHew. I'm glad you're here. Most of you know Gold Bond. For over 75 years, Gold Bond Inc. is a multi-award-winning industry leader who excels at service, from their customization to their lightning-fast zip-ship same-day service to their eco-conscious Green Gallery collections. Brittany brings a wealth of experience from various roles at Gold Bond, and in her role as CRO, she oversees 8 departments that now integrate sales, marketing, and service. For an exceptional customer experience. But before I chat with Brittany, we added a brand new AI workshop to SKU Camp Scottsdale. It's called the AI Revolution at Work: How Distributors and Suppliers Use AI to Transform Their Business. Now in this workshop, we'll unpack survey results from attendees on how they are using AI. Come hear how the best in the biz harness AI's potential to drive sales, optimize ops, and elevate their marketing. It's a hands-on peer-to-peer discovery share. You'll gain actionable insights, discover new tools, and leave equipped to lead your team into an AI-powered future. To join us, head over to skucamp.com. There are only a handful of tickets left, so register today. Today's episode is brought to you courtesy of us at Commonsku. Over 800 distributors powering $1.8 billion in network volume rely on Commonsku's connected workflow. Process more orders, connect your team, and dramatically grow your sales. To learn how, visit commonscue.com. Now here's my chat with Brittany from Gold Bond.

Brittany, it is long overdue. I am so glad you are here, my friend.

Likewise, it's great to see you. Always lovely to spend time with you.

You became the CRO in 2021. Just so folks can get an idea of you and your role, and for the folks who may not know you— I think everybody knows you, but for those that may not know you, what are your primary responsibilities at Gold Bond and what do you oversee?

Yeah, I love the question. Thank you for asking. I am the Chief Revenue Officer here, like you said, and I have 8 departments that are cradled under the revenue team. But I essentially oversee all things sales, marketing, service, customer-facing. So, my role is really to be the integrator between all of those revenue-generating functions and the customer experience. My responsibility is towards aligning how we go to market with what our customers actually need and how quickly and creatively we can deliver on it, right? So, That could be things like launching our new zip ship, same day production speed to market campaign, maybe developing some brand-led campaigns that appeal to younger buyers or just simplifying how we service our distributor network. My focus is essentially always on growth, but done in a more tactical, hopefully more strategic way.

What I love is that you don't separate the sales and service function of the business like the sales and customer experience. It's all one, right?

Yes, it's all under one umbrella. We did that intentionally. It hasn't always been that way, but we felt like it provided more cohesiveness when it comes to how we service our clients.

So what's a day in the life like for you?

It starts with a heavy dose of caffeine, right? All throughout the day. Just kidding. Now, normally the first, first bit of my day is really going in and glancing at a lot of our performance dashboards because you're always trying to spot any trends or issues early on in the process if we can. From there, it's really a mix of product innovation meetings because I have product development under the revenue team, marketing content reviews, strategic partnership calls, and a lot of internal huddles with our team just to clear out any bottlenecks that might be in play and make sure we keep our momentum going. But no two days are the same, which is what I absolutely love about this industry and my job.

Yes.

Most of my time is actually spent listening. I try to listen to our team, listen to our customers, what the market is telling us. The faster we can act on what we hear, the better we can perform.

And I've been in your factory. It's an amazing facility, amazing people. You're in the heart of the country. In fact, we have to jump right into the topic that everyone's going to be tuning in for anyways, and that's tariffs. Because if we put that too far down the conversation, people are going to fast forward to that button, go, what, what's Brittany have to say about tariffs? So let me just ask, and I love how bold you always are, so we'll jump into tariffs in a previous chat, we touched on ever-evolving change. When I say ever-evolving, wow, like it's daily. You mentioned a China Plus One strategy. What did you mean by that?

Yeah, so China Plus One is a sourcing strategy where our Chinese vendors are opening up factories in other countries, things, places like Cambodia or Vietnam, so that you aren't shipping from China. However, they're still the main source of raw materials. So in most cases, you're now seeing materials shipped from China to let's say their Cambodia or their Vietnam factory as an alternate country, which essentially increases the cost to try to avoid other points of friction like tariffs or made in China label connotations. They're just aiming to diversify beyond China to mitigate some of that risk. And I think it's a phenomenal solution to explore. It's not always the solution for us. We're constantly exploring vendors that are strictly from Vietnam, Indonesia, and Taiwan. But that infrastructure associated to some of those countries are, typically a challenge, right? They don't have the raw materials to produce or the infrastructure just isn't built up quite enough to handle our needs. So it's important. It's an important move for resilience and cost management. It really just depends on the business if China Plus One is a good fit for a vendor or not.

Okay.

And as we're recording this, it's Thursday, April 10th at 2 PM. I have to stress that because it could change by tomorrow morning. In the past 24 hours, for folks that would need a refresher by the time this goes to air, for the past 24 hours, we went from having massive tariffs on virtually every country to now 10% across the board, but high tariffs on China. And so I'm going to ask a dumb question because that's my job. Is Gold Bond is a very broad category of items. You have the Gold Bond Golf Division. You have all kinds of things under the Gold Bond umbrella. So what per— I think people are trying to ask the question, what are dependencies on China and what is like Gold Bond's dependency? And is that concern your kind of— what level of concern does that have for you at this point?

Yeah, I think it's a fantastic question. You're right, at 3 o'clock everything may change again. So this might be a completely moot conversation, but there's definitely a ripple effect. There's a lot of dependency on our Chinese vendors right now, which has always been a really critical resource for us because they have more access, less labor constraints. It's more cost effective overall to source and innovate through China. The effect that it's having on us is, is a combination of things. Right now we're in this weird gray space of understanding, should we hold on purchasing additional inventory to wait and see what stabilizes and know what we're really working with, or should we hurry up and blitz and try to get as much as we can in here because they continue to rise? And with this being a public feud, who knows if it will continue to go up or if they'll de-escalate the situation. So it presents a unique challenge for pacing our inventory levels and then how we're going to accommodate ongoing programs, warehouse and fulfillment opportunities, the ripple effect of amortizing the cost with our existing inventory with the new cost of inventory coming in and seeing what China Plus One strategies are available and what alternative resources are out there that can mirror the same sort of quality and price that we've been getting from our partners overseas today.

Okay. There is a question I'm begging to ask folks in the industry, and of all the people that can probably handle this question, I think it's you, Brittany. Do you see tariffs— this is a brave question because it might be the dumbest one I have to ask— do you see tariffs positively impacting the industry in the long run?

Yeah. What a supercharged topic for so many people across the world. And every day I think we, we like celebrate and then we get mad all over again. It's an hour-by-hour crisis.

Right.

You're right. At the time of this recording, there's 125% tariff on China. That is not a positive for us by any means. And I'm not an economist or a financial analyst. So I think I understand. I've been trying to consume as much knowledge and articles as I can, and I've tried to break down what I think the administration's logic is. And really, it's around the debt that the United States carries and how do we eliminate that debt and make it a more profitable, sustainable country overall. And it looks like he has 3 main levers that he's going for. Just to lay down context, as of March 5th, the United States had a little over $36 trillion in debt. And in 2025, they anticipated that our spend would be around $7 trillion. And the government in 2024 collected $4.9 trillion. So that means $2 trillion that we would need to borrow, further continuing to sink the United States into more and more debt, right? So the question is, how do we fix that? And again, I'm not an advocate one way or the other or an evangelist. I think I'm just trying to wrap my brain around it like everybody else that might be listening to this.

Yes.

And he's got these 3 levers that I think is what his strategy is, which is how do we cut our spending, which is Doge, right? What you've been seeing with Elon Musk, their goal is to cut $1 trillion and eliminate Social Security fraud where 150-year-old individuals are collecting their Social Security payments. Lever 2 is how do we increase revenue coming into the United States by $1 to $2 trillion? And the goal with tariffs was to increase that revenue collection from $80 billion up to an anticipated $300 to $600 billion, which is a wide swing but still positive. And people are saying, hey, those other countries are going to retaliate. I think I think the benefit that the United States does have, if I'm trying to figure out a positive, is we are the largest country for consumer spending. It was over $20 trillion in 2024, and we're the largest importer. We import over $3 trillion in 2024. So I think he's saying, hey, if we level the playing field, get more on the tariff revenue, that could help offset the debt that we continue to sink into. And we want to create a fair trade market where, let's say, U.S. cars entering Europe face a 10% tariff, but European cars entering the U.S. face a 2.5% tariff. He's trying to just look at how do we level that playing field. And when they did that initial side-by-side, I think it was a week and a half ago, it looked like he had implemented half of whatever the rate imposed to the United States was, which to us still feels like a crazy amount, especially across so many countries. But I think he's banking on the fact that if those taxes essentially from tariffs are so high, we'll be looking to source domestically more and you'll see more domestic businesses start to develop, which he's banking on a long-term strategy because it's probably going to take a factory 3 to 5 years to get up and running. But more taxpaying businesses in our country could be a good thing and could lead to more foreign investment. From other countries coming in. And he's got this gold card thing, which I guess he's saying, hey, if 100,000 high net worth individuals around the globe are willing to pay $5 million for a gold card to get US residency for a lifetime, that's incremental revenue. Doesn't offset it, but it's incremental revenue. And then the third lever is reducing taxes for the American people. If he can successfully cut $1 trillion in our— in waste, add $1 to $2 trillion in revenue, then the US would essentially have a surplus of revenue. We're no longer in debt, we're making money, and that would afford opportunity for him to cut things like corporate taxes to 15%, making the United States a more attractive country to invest in and create business in. Again, super long-term strategy. Right now it feels like none of that is working, right? Because all we think about is the burden that it imposes on our everyday lives and our businesses. But that's the logic that I can assume is happening based off everything I've gotten to see. My only selfish thing that I— is probably controversial, but I could see being a positive— is the opportunity to disintegrate the level of breakage that's happening in our supply chains. When I first started in this industry, and Bobby, you were one of my mentors, so I appreciate this, our supply chain was sacred. Suppliers didn't go direct to end users. Distributors had no desire to go direct to manufacturers. And over the last few years, you've seen more and more distributors are cutting out suppliers and sourcing directly from those overseas manufacturing, manufacturing facilities and labeling it as doing what's best for their client or staying competitive. But every time they do that, they further erode that supply chain. And I could see them eventually forcing the hand of suppliers to stay alive, right? Because they're actively shifting revenue away from suppliers. They're gonna have to figure out— those suppliers are gonna have to figure out, how do I make up for that revenue that's now going elsewhere? And I think that's when we start to see, unfortunately, muddy waters in our industry. It gets diluted, and all of a sudden suppliers and distributors are sourcing and selling to whomever. There is no supply chain at that point. So that's one thing that I do feel like could potentially be a positive. Any of those people that were previously sourcing direct, maybe this creates some pause and reinstills confidence in those supplier partnerships and protecting that tradition. But I think that's short-term selfish gain for me because I'm a supplier.

Brittany, thank you. You tackled two very sacred, difficult topics there. You tackled, can tariffs possibly have a positive impact and nailed that in terms of your perspective on this. And then of course, supply chain disintegration, that's so crucial. I can't tell you how thankful I am for that response. We'll be sharing this more with folks because I think it's critical that we have perspective and that we listen to all these opinions because right now the infla— within days of these tariff changes, it's hard to disseminate the media headlines being so loud versus the reality of what's happening. And what I'm trying to ramble and get to is that you represent both a major importer and a manufacturer in the U.S. So you have how many employees are at Gold Bond?

So it fluctuates seasonally. Right now we hover around 200.

Okay, so you have folks that are manufacturing in the U.S., you're importing, so your perspective is really important. Thanks for that. We will come back to you at some point about tariffs because this is going to be an ongoing conversation. Thank you. Let's talk a little bit about probably one of the most important topics also happening with suppliers, and that is the whole operational shift that's happening with EPOs and the things that are making distributors' lives easier. What was the primary driver behind the development and implementation of EPOs with Commskey, which by the way, we're so excited about this partnership, but what does this mean to you?

Yes, I love it. Essentially, I think of it as speed and transparency. Right. Our distributor partners were looking for a better way to source and order in real time, eliminate a lot of that friction. EPOs eliminates the lag and the guesswork on the distributor side and the supplier side. We wanted to reduce that administrative burden and make the whole workflow more seamless from selection to payment. And EPOs was just the perfect nail in the coffin to help us do that.

Yeah. How does that make distributors' lives easier from a supplier's perspective?

Yeah. So on the distributor side, I can only imagine— I've never been in your shoes, but there's so many variables going on. And how could you possibly keep up with any of the details associated to a project with one supplier at any given time? Giving access to the distributor with live product data means that they're going to get real-time inventory pricing, production timelines, even ancillary charges that may be associated to that particular product. And project. It's not just about finding the right product. It's about knowing whether it's available and doable right now. And that kind of visibility empowers distributors to say yes to more opportunities with confidence, and they feel more compelled to do it with Gold Bond, knowing that they can see everything transparently without having to second-guess or pick up the phone.

At the risk of oversimplifying this, I'm a distributor, I place an order. I think everybody understands this now, but I always like reiterating just how how powerful this change is, and not because I'm flying the flag and I'm with CommsCue. This means a lot. This means we had an engine that worked, but now we have this Formula 1 engine because I'm placing my order with you at Gold Bond, I'm getting those bottles in, and it goes straight to the factory floor. Is that right?

That's correct. Yeah, it's a massive win. They no longer have to chase down order updates, go back and forth over email. EPOs really streamline the communication by pulling data directly from system to system. So that affords us the ability to automate updates, approvals, proofs. Everything happens seamlessly and essentially with little to no human intervention, which frees our agents up to give a more white glove service to things that really do require human intervention and also eliminate the potential risk of errors because we're humans and we fat finger things and we interpret information wrong. And so we eliminate that friction in the process.

I forget the number, but something like 60 to 70% of the orders that hit a supplier's office are full of mistakes from distributors. And I'm one of those distributors, right? So who submitted those orders? So I can say that Gold Bond has identified 4 main pillars for your business. And if I get any of these wrong, tell me. Golf dominance, green gallery, plant-first, zip ship, same-day production, and then technology, even an AI-powered podcast, which is fascinating. Can you discuss like the significance of each of these pillars for your business strategy?

Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. I'd love to. So golf dominance is something that Gold Bond has always had. That's what we're mostly known for in the industry, right? But yeah, it's not just about slapping a logo on a golf ball. We've added brands to the mix like Srixon, TaylorMade. We offer in-house decoration, exclusive accessories like par pouches and recycled towels that we've created, and even seasonal apparel drops. We're becoming that one-stop shop for golf merch that actually resonates with today's players and buyers. So we're trying to really showcase, hey, this is what you know us for, but now we're looking to dominate that space. On the Green Gallery side, the Green Gallery is really a two-pronged give-back collection where all of the items within the Green Gallery collection are responsibly made. But anytime you purchase an item in that collection, we automatically donate trees through One Tree Planted back to urban reforestation in the United States. So we have about 9,500 trees that we've planted so far since its launch, which is exciting, but also proving that sustainability is a standard. It's here to stay, right? We've got more product rolling into that collection over the year, including drinkware, tech items. So the line Stay Fresh supporting reforestation and things like that. And then Zip Ship is our same-day production service that we just launched in January at the Vegas show. Super proud of it. It's an absolute game changer. So glad we did it. Everybody was like, that's scary, right? But we've had over 1,300 invoices processed so far. Our clients absolutely love it because it opens up the window for them to launch different types of campaigns, test markets, deliver on-demand needs for programs without warehousing headaches or capital and risk in the inventory investment, especially with tariffs right now. And then on the technology side, you're right, we launched the Brand Lab, which is an all AI-powered podcast, and it was really just our way of sharing case histories, service launches, things like that. We weren't trying to eliminate people. We were just trying to disseminate information quickly. And we're also in the midst of launching an AI-powered chatbot in addition to our current chatbot, which is human-driven, right? So that will give real-time product answers 24/7, which is a huge step towards reducing friction and increasing that speed to serve in a way that is most convenient to our customer. They'll have SMS feature enhancements so they can opt into text text message updates on their order if they want to right now. They could text any of our agents, say, hey, what's the deal with this order, or can you tell me inventory on it? They can do that today. It will just have more automation availability with it, with it when it goes live. So we're trying to really find simplicity on the go when you need it in a way that's most convenient to you. That's part of our tagline. Our tagline is more than you expect. So we're trying to always put that to the test when it comes to how we service our distributor partners. And those are some of the cooler new ones that we just rolled out or we're working on today.

That's amazing, Brittany. You've had nothing going on lately. Yeah, it's a pretty big list. And this is such a great partnership between us because we both feel so passionately about making distributors' lives easier, making it efficient, fast. The zip ship, I'm assuming that EPO Plus really does make, really does make this zip ship possible faster. And if I'm a distributor, then to oversimplify it, I can place an order at 10 o'clock and it will go out when?

Today.

Yeah, crazy.

I love it.

Yeah, that's insane, right? Send me an order by 12 noon and it's rolling that day, which is awesome, especially when we get up on those holiday or drop ship needs, last minute things that just kind of rifle in. It gives you an escape hatch to be able to provide a solution, which is great.

Fantastic. Yeah, you noted something on the marketing side. You noticed that the— you noted that the future for us is more on the marketing side than on the sales side due to changing demographics and technology. You emphasize the attention economy and social proofing. Like, what strategies are you prioritizing to address those trends?

Yeah, it might be controversial, and I started in sales, so I have a loyalty for sales. Yeah, but we do see that attention is the new currency, right? Younger buyers, Gen Z, younger millennials, they grew up with this level of unlimited options and infinite scroll. So they do their own research, they're highly visual, they expect personalized digital-first experiences. So some of the strategies that we've shifted towards is storytelling, content marketing, social validation strategies. We're trying not just to sell in the traditional way that our industry has grown up with, but we're trying to be discovered, recommended, remembered, and shared. And that's how we're going to spread the love more often. And if we happen to be discovered by consumers, that's fantastic. They'll reach out to their distributor partner and say, hey, I saw this really cool video. I think I want this for my employee appreciation. Can you help me source it? Those are things that we're trying to do or capture attention for.

So for our last little segment here, you spearheaded an initiative to increase employee happiness through sales contests and activities. You're always doing some things at Gold Bond to foster culture. Can you give us a glimpse of what that's like?

Yeah, absolutely. We're trying to figure out how do we create recognition and connection, right? And yeah, Our HR team has really taken hold of this and wrapped their arms around this gorilla. But everything from contests to spontaneous shoutouts, we try to prioritize fun and gratitude at the same time. We're looking to create a space for people to grow, and that could mean offering them opportunities to upskill, joining new projects for innovation so that they feel like they're a part of that new launch. Helping launch a new campaign. They feel valued, heard, like they're part of something exciting. It builds loyalty to the company and an emotional investment into what we're trying to do. They become brand ambassadors within our building whenever they have that firsthand connection to it. And our HR team has really been phenomenal. They just— their latest thing that they've done is they started sending out company-wide text messages with employee shoutouts. Anything that's upcoming. Like we did a seminar on here's how to plan well for retirement and other things like that. It just helps people feel connected in a way that they're used to by being a part of their phone, especially our production partners out there. They're not sitting in front of a computer all day, so they don't necessarily have the ability to just walk around, say good morning to everybody, and find ways to keep— finding ways to keep them connected to our community. It can be challenging. So those simple points of recognition, I think, are really helpful. And it could be something as simple as every morning we get sales reports that come out. Somebody had a big day, I'm totally giving them a shout out. Hey, that is phenomenal. What did you get? Share with me a story of the project. Let's all learn from you. They feel seen and recognized. And that's really important to a lot of people, whether they think it or not, it feels good. And we like to feel good. People remember how you make them feel, and that's important.

That's cool. The one thing I wanted to ask you, because you have such a skill set around sales and marketing and the customer experience, but you're also somebody I notice has a keen eye on trends with buyers and how that impacts new generations. What do you think will be the most important drivers for revenue in the industry in the future? Are you seeing some sort of trends, whether it's product, service, that you think will be critical as we head into the next several months or next couple years?

Such a good question, Bob, and I would love to throw it back at you because it always feels like you're trying to catch the next shiny thing, right? But I do feel like there's 3 main levers that we can probably anticipate to see more of as we go, and that's personalization, sustainability, and immediacy. People want brands that reflect their values. They want products that make them feel like they were made for them, and they want delivery that feels like magic. Really tall ask to accomplish any one of those things. But whoever can master those 3 levels, I think, is going to win the market for sure.

Yeah. All right, last question, Brittany. Pick one or both to answer. What brands do you follow for inspiration, or, and what's a book, podcast, movie, or any content that's really made an impact on the way you think lately?

Yes, so I'm actually about 3/4 of the way through The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins, which is a weirder one for me.

Mel is so good.

Yeah, I, so I've never read any of her stuff before. It's challenging me in the best way. As a leader, I, especially in the beginning, even now, I've spent an obscene amount of time overthinking conversations and situations. And so her take on detaching from that need to control every outcome is, I think, freeing. I'm definitely not there yet.

Same.

Yes, but it's influencing how I show up. And I am trying to say, hey, all right, we'll let that be.

That's awesome. That's awesome.

Any brands that you like obsess over and that you absolutely love?

Not so much a brand, but I've noticed a shift in the way that I'm consuming content on social media. So before I used to focus a lot on things that are happening within our industry, and now I've noticed I'm leaning into show me a hack, show me a cheat code, show me something that teaches me something. And I'm really finding that a lot of these chief AI officers, SEO pros, AI leaders lately. I feel like they're coming up with some really radical, practical use cases for how tech— we can leverage technology in the future. And it gives me so many ideas for how we can work smarter and market better. And so I find myself just consuming a lot of that type of stuff lately. Yeah.

Super cool. Brittany, thank you for joining us. And mostly I want to say thank you for being willing to tackle the tough questions. It's not easy to sit in the hot seat in the middle of a very volatile situation. So thank you as always. Congrats to you and the Gold Bond team for these huge initiatives you've unleashed. And you are one of those folks who just make our industry better. So thank you for your partnership.

Thank you for having me, Bobby. It's been a pleasure, and I've always loved spending time with you. You teach me something every time we talk.

Thank you. Talk soon.

Bye.