Episode 375: Fashion-Smart Merch with Tiana Gamble (Goodmerch Supply)

9 years ago, our guest turned a small promotional products distributorship into what is now an incredible brand success story. Good Merch Supply is today a team of around 30 employees in Honolulu, with clients like Ritz-Carlton and Hawaiian Airlines, and with a thriving and growing US business as well. On today's show, we're exploring what that journey was like, and what a fashion buyer's eye can do when she points that skill toward merch. Welcome to the Skewcast, the podcast for innovators and maverick thinkers in the promotional product space. My name is Bobby Lehew. I'm glad you're here. Tiana Gamble is president and founder of Good Merch Supply and of her retail business Bikini Bird, a swimwear boutique chain which is about to open its 6th store at the Hotel Del Coronado in California. She came to Promo from Fox Racing in Billabong, and she's built one of the most design-driven distributorships in the business. We talk with Tiana about her in-house design team, running 2 companies on the US, and how CommerceHQ impacts her team's selling model, and a whole lot more. But before we get to Tiana, a quick announcement: CommerceHQ Payments is here. Now, what is CommerceHQ Payments? Well, credit card and ACH payments can now be taken right inside CommerceHQ. Making it a whole lot easier on invoices, sales orders, deposits, and shop checkouts with the invoice marked paid the moment the money comes through and the settlements posting to QuickBooks Online every night. Reconciliation stops being that end-of-month nightmare. I sat down with Dave, our Chief Partnerships Officer, and Nathan, our Technical Product Manager, for just a few minutes here to talk about why we built it and what it means for your business and your cash flow. Here's that quick chat. Welcome, Dave and Nathan. Hi.

Hi, Bobby.

Hey, Bobby. Dave is our Chief Partnerships Officer. What made payments the right thing for Common Skew to build?

Well, you know, honestly, it comes down to watching how our distributors actually work, and Nathan can touch on this in a lot more detail. But you think about the way a distributor works in Common Skew. They build the presentation, they win the order, they manage production with the supplier, they invoice the end client, and all of that currently lives in Common Skew. And then the money shows up and suddenly they're working in a separate system. You know, maybe they're waiting on checks or they take a card in another processor, and then they're having to key that payment into an accounting platform and then match it back to the right invoice. So they've got double entry, they've got manual reconciliation. It's slow, it's error-prone, and, and frankly, nobody got into this business to do that.

Right.

So a truly integrated payments platform is kind of a missing piece of our Commscue connected workflow. You know, if we can take an order all the way from idea to cash in one place, then the payments post against the invoice automatically. Reconciliation stops being this giant monthly headache, and the distributor frankly gets all those hours back to start, you know, spending more time building relationships and selling. So it wasn't really about adding a new feature so much as it was for us about closing the loop on what our customers are already doing in Common Skew today.

I know the audience hears us talk about connected workflow a lot, but this truly is that kind of thing. And I'm real surprised by how many distributors are still not accepting ACH or credit card or faster payments because of cash flow. I mean, cash flow is just so critical to running a business today, especially when things move so fast.

It is. And in this industry in particular, if you've been in this industry long enough, you know that money moves in mysterious ways. You know, a lot of distributors, they don't have terms agreements with their key suppliers. So you think about like a big order, they're committing dollars to a supplier for the goods and decoration well before the end client pays them. And so You know, in many cases, every order you win puts cash out the door first. That means growth can actually hurt you. If you land a big program, you may need a line of credit just to fund it. Yeah. So if you think about the faster you get paid, the less your cash is tied up waiting. You know, there's some research out there from Xero and Forrester and others that say if you have invoices that have built-in payment platforms, you could shave roughly 2/3 of the time you wait on payments to come in. And so that's, When you have that cash flow working for you, you can grow gracefully as opposed to sitting around waiting for cash all the time.

Yeah. Well said. Nathan, why use Comiskey Payments over something else?

As Dave was saying, it's all in one place to start with. So when the payment comes in, we know which invoice it needs to be marked as paid. We can push that information over to QuickBooks to make sure that both systems are in sync. And it really just cuts down on time. You know, you're not spending hours reconciling and Pouring over spreadsheets and it frees up your finance folks to do more meaningful work other than going over a spreadsheet and finding, hey, that payment from that shop 3 weeks ago is not lining up here somewhere. What do we do with it?

Hmm.

Right? It's automated, it's easy, and less stuff slips through the cracks. So it saves you time. At the end of the day, it saves you time and it's all in one place.

That reconciliation is no longer a nightmare in that sense too. How quickly does a card or ACH payment reach a distributor's bank once it's taken?

Cards, I believe, are T+2, so it's 2 days to make it to the bank for cards and it's 4 days for ACH.

Okay. And Nathan, how's the beta going? How many distributors are taking part now and how's, how's it going with them?

The beta is going really well. We have, I think, 10 distributors actively on. Aaron Couture is adding people week by week. And they're loving it. You know, they're, they're running tons of transactions through and we're seeing a lot of great success.

What does the payments dashboard show a finance team they couldn't see before?

So the biggest benefit is that we've actually exported a bunch of data from common SKU into separate columns in that dashboard. So when you export that data, you can actually see what's the project name, what's the project number, what's the invoice number, What's the shop name? What's the shop number? What's the transaction ID? So if there is something that you need to chase down and reconcile, it's all right there. And you can use, you know, your favorite Excel query to go and figure it all out or throw your best friend Claude at it. And, you know, it's just able to figure it all out a lot faster because it's got the data.

Cool. Last question. What part of the build are you most proud of? Nathan, you've had a hand in this. You've worked with clients, you work with a lot of clients, especially enterprise clients. What are you proud of about this?

Honestly, like, I'm so proud of the team for everything they accomplished. We were given a very tight timeline to deliver this project and have it in customer hands, and they delivered on the day. So, you know, if you've been around software for any length of time, software rarely gets delivered on time and like accurately. And it's just the nature of software. Bugs happen, things happen, deploys go sideways. This one, they delivered every single piece of it on time, on budget, and it worked great.

Awesome. Nathan, congrats to you, the engineering team, Dave, for shepherding this thing through. Thank you both for joining us for a quick chat about payments.

Absolutely. Thanks, Bobby.

Thanks, Bobby.

Thanks to Nathan and Dave for hopping on to chat about payments. And now to my conversation with Good Merch Supplies, Tiana Campbell. Tiana, welcome to the SKU Cast.

Thank you. Thanks for having me, Bobby. I am a huge fangirl of yours, so it's always fun.

I, I was just telling Tiana before we hit record what a big fanboy I am of their brand, their company, their team. I just love every time I get to interact with you guys. Um, okay, so I have a very easy question to kick us off. Because you are in such a beautiful location, what does an average morning in the life look like for you?

Oh, well, you have to add in that I'm also a mother of 2, so my average morning is Preparing the kids, getting them out the door. I mean, I would love to say that I'm frolicking in the ocean first thing in the morning and— That's what we thought. Yeah. But I, yeah, but I do go for a walk in the back, the beautiful mountains. And I usually, if the kids leave in our carpool scenario, I will jump in the ocean. My CFO, we've surfed once this year together, which was really fun. Cool. But it's, it's not as frequent as I would.

Yeah. Well, I know the business, and you're busy, and it's crazy all the time. But you're in Maui today, I think, right?

I am on Maui today, yes. I'm here just doing some work. We work with a few of the hotels. And then I also have a second business, which I make a lot of merch for, Bikini Bird. So I was here— I'm here for that as well.

I want to talk about that. OK, since you already talked about the hotels, like some of your clients. So some of your clients are Pendry, Ritz-Carlton, Turtle Bay, Ritz-Carlton Santa Barbara. These are some incredible hotels on your team's client list. I'm so envious of such a client list. Um, and hotel, I'm assuming it's all kinds of categories. We always jump to hotel gift shop merch as a potential category. Are there other categories though? Do you just tend to do lots of different types of projects for these?

Oh yes. Uh, absolutely. It's sales. We work with food and beverage, so we've done menus for new restaurants that open. We do uniforms for multiple restaurants. The best business is I make the, um, cork coasters for a couple hotels, and those are just reorder. It's a great reorder business. Water bottles in hotels for refill. Fillable stations. Yeah, I mean, the opportunities are endless, to be honest. And then there's a lot of anniversaries. So a big hotel group that we work with, it's their 150th year anniversary. Wow. So we do a lot of that type of merch. There's also the Sheraton Hotel, which is a chain, but they do a little gifting suite if you're at a certain level of a member. So you, you walk through this little experience down.

Yeah.

In their hotel. So we continue to fill that as well. So there's, there's a whole lot of nooks and crannies in the Hotel business that you can go after. I love that. For sure.

Yeah. Explain Bikini Bird for those that don't— I mentioned in the intro, but explain Bikini Bird.

Okay. So Bikini Bird is a locally run Hawaiian bikini boutique chain. We started as an online blog, would write about the best, the newest swim that was coming out, designers that were friends of ours or where they started, where they come from, places they love to travel. And then that turned into a store that we opened in 2017. Um, but online we started in 2014 and then 2017 was our first store. And now we're opening our 6th store in San Diego at the Hotel Del Coronado on November 15th.

Congratulations.

But yeah, we have 2 on Maui and 3 on Oahu.

Wow. Congratulations.

So thank you. And I like the parallel between merch and fashion because I always ask myself, merch has been a great business and I love it. I love being in it. Believe it or not, easier than retail, um, because you're not having to deal with as many releases and overhead and inventory.

Yeah.

Obviously there's a bunch of other types of problems that come with merch. I always ask myself why I'm still in the retail side of it, but I think it inspires the merch. I go to trade shows that I wouldn't typically go to if I had only stayed in merch.

Yeah.

And then I'll get inspired. I'll see new lines, I'll meet new designers. So that's been the most inspiring part. And the reason why I keep going, not to mention it is a passion of mine. I love bikini birds, like a little fun thing that I do on the side.

Juggling a small family and 2 full-time businesses. That's admirable. You also answered a question I had, which was how do those 2 complement each other? And now I can see, I can see how trends and things on the retail side impact merch. So in 2017, you were a fashion sales exec. You were introduced to the promo business and you acquired a distributorship. And 9 years later, that's now Good Merch Supply. What did you see in the merch industry that you thought was intriguing enough that you were like, okay, I think that's something I want to do?

Okay. Well, I think back to this party I went to in like 2001, right? It was like a surf trade show and everyone got a free pair of glasses or like they were throwing them out. Right. And whoever could get them first, it's like this big thing. And so my friend and I both got 2 different types of sunglasses and we were like fighting over them. And I just, that's just a core memory to me of just how effective merch can be in an experience. Like, I'll never forget, it was like a T-Pain concert. I have no idea, but anytime I would be at any event, I'm always that person that loves to know what they're giving away. So when I went into this couple's business, which was nothing glamorous, I mean, it was like folding tables from Costco with like a huge stack of catalogs. I mean, thick, huge, old school catalogs. And that's what enticed me, I guess, into the business. But I think what I realized was I didn't know that there was this world of merch. I knew that I'd get something free, but I didn't know how it worked. And I had ordered through John Vo, actually, through Bikini Bird. I had a party and someone in the bikini industry is related to him. And she was like, my cousin John, who is, we call him the mayor, by the way. I don't know if you've heard this term for John.

No, I love that.

But, um, from Woopla, but he had done, uh, some some koozies and some cups for me. When I went, uh, to this, to see this business, I was like, wow, oh, look at this catalog. I mean, there's like everything, like chip clips and pens. And, and I felt like there was like this cool opportunity to make it just more modern. And look, there's all these options and that's what they give me at a party or at an event.

Yeah.

And well, the interesting thing about the business is when I bought it, I didn't really ask about the client list. I knew how much revenue it was doing. It was doing around $800,000 in revenue. And I knew it gave me a client list, though I didn't really look at the client list. I sort of just was like, okay, great, I'll go after those clients. And I went with him on the road for a month. Well, they were all construction companies, unions, painters. I mean, just, I came in this fashion outfit. Right. Went to those guys, just like local 680 or whatever, whichever one I went to. And I was, was so naive. I mean, The girl that I hired, my first hire, and I delivered 1,000 backpacks to this union. And the gentleman that was handing it off, who's 76 years old, was like, okay, so when it delivers, you're gonna tell him that you have to bill him for the shipping when it's done. And so anyway, I go, I get a call, the truck's getting delivered. So I come in my heel boots with like this, this cute dress. Fashion. Exactly. Yeah. And the guy goes, well, they— yes, yes. He's like, you didn't pay for it to come inside. You have to walk these boxes. Into the building. So Christy and I in a dress, he wouldn't help me. It was like this thing. It was like this macho thing. Like, this is your business now. We need to do it. So we literally hand carried it like a truck, you know, like anyway, so I had no idea what I was getting myself into. So the first year was really tough. I was, I was among mostly male dominated businesses and had to win them over first to maintain the business. Yes. And then kind of went into more of the truly fun businesses I had imagined working with.

Yeah. Yeah. And with your background, I would think that having that fashion background especially, and the retail background was such a great beginning for you, even though maybe you couldn't have seen it at the time. In hindsight, having that as your DNA has to be so helpful building a modern merch company.

Yeah. There's always people that are like, what is it like to be an entrepreneur? And I always say, I think I was 39 when I bought the business. I was a design merchandiser before that for Fox Racing and Motocross Company and managed women designers and graphic designers, tops designers, bottoms designers, knit designers.

Yeah.

So you kind of start to learn how to work with people and then being an employee, what that feels like. So by the time I started running my own business, I'm empathetic to a lot of those things that maybe you wouldn't be if you tried to start it Much earlier in life.

Yeah.

Um, and then on top of that, I have a network of designers I've worked with in different industries. So I'm always reaching out to someone that I met, works at Vans now, works at a lot of different businesses. So that's been a really good bonus to entering this business through fashion. For sure.

You fast forward to today, your women-led team, you have such an amazing team. How many folks do you have now?

27 women and 2 men. And poor guys.

And you've talked about taking Good Merch to the mainland. Where does that expansion stand today?

So it's at 35% of our business today, which has been great. It's always good to see us grow. And I hired a sales rep in Southern California, so she runs a lot of our key accounts there. We've gotten really lucky with Hawaiian Airlines. We do their store and they've just recently merged with Alaska Airlines. So that's kind of helped us grow. into other categories as well. So that's sort of where we are at this point.

Yeah. I, I know you do a lot of business in the US, but we are just curious, what's it like to run a distributorship in Hawaii? Is it any different than you think than the US?

I don't think Hawaii is any different than maybe probably a family-run business in the Midwest. Yeah. I would say more intimate and more heart in the, as far as like, I feel for everyone and I know their families and you're gonna see 'em maybe on the weekend somewhere. It's not, there's a, Corporate, I'd say, probably, as it would be if I had run it out of LA or something. Also, yeah, people are very loyal and this is their career. I think, you know, in maybe another state, you're kind of like, I'm going to be here for a couple of years and then I'm going to do something else. And I think there's not a lot of options in Hawaii as far as in this industry, right? And being creative and being able to build a career in fashion or in design. And so at least in my mind, it's my responsibility to offer them the opportunity to grow in the business and for them to stay around.

Yeah.

So I'm always pushing to grow the business and I know I can continue to grow here and maintain, but I love the idea of expanding.

Yeah. Good Merch, you keep an in-house design team and I think so much of this is from your fashion and design focus, but how else does that structure your team differently And is that in-house design team because of that focus on trends and fashion?

Yeah. I mean, it started with having one designer that did mockups. And also my first hire was one of my friends who had worked at this place called Crazy Shirts. And she worked at Gap prior to that in fashion. So she comes from a fashion background as well. So when she started, she would sort of do the mockups herself and then we'd be presenting. So she was like this artist that did both, which I hear is the case in most distributorships is there's kind of like a designer slash They do sales. And then because I come from sales, we separated that out because I made our sales reps separate. And then we hired another 2 designers to sort of take on, I think a lot of the hotels wanted more local-inspired graphics. Mm-hmm. So then we started doing more graphic work for them. And then it went on to small businesses like, you know, coffee shops. I wouldn't say we're full-blown design agency in that sense, but we will do graphics for clients that we work with and maybe they want to add on. They have an event that they're looking at doing.

Continuing to speak about your organization and your structure, I noticed there's an integrator on your leadership page alongside a CFO and a general manager. Sounds like you run EOS. How has EOS changed you and the way you think in your business?

Well, I think it's a game changer. I think running both Bikini Bird and Good Merch Under EOS has allowed me to have the freedom to kind of work on my business. And when I was in my 20s and given an important job, I think I really just wanted to run it myself. I didn't need to be micromanaged. So I try to remind myself of that when leading, and EOS really helped me to say, okay, just focus on what's really important, ideas. There was problems. Uh, on once a week versus, you know, every day you're putting out a fire. There's a lot of things that other people are capable of doing without, you know, you having to solve.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you sound like the visionary to me for this.

Yes. We did identify that very early on. Yeah. They call me when they make fun of me or they impersonate me. They all say like, I have an idea. I have an idea. Tiana has an idea. So I'm like, definitely the ideator. And I realized that through personality tests and through EOS, It did teach me, you know, everyone's gift and you sort of, not everyone can come up with an idea. So when I'm like, you guys, why are you not thinking about this? It's like, because that's not the way their brain works and it's, their brain is like to be organized. So I brought the integrator in who was a longtime friend of mine and has, is a little more, I'd say, mature in the corporate world. And so it was really good for my team. Yeah. My team's fairly young. Everyone was in their early 20s to mid-20s and They're finally getting to their late 20s, but I think it was just good to have someone else in the room that sort of could lead. Before she started, we really didn't even have an agenda in our meetings. Like it went, it was pretty, pretty loose.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, for those that are listening and you've not heard of EOS, you can put a pin in this idea because we have announcement coming soon about an EOS partnership with more distributors. And we could talk about that a little bit later, but we know so many distributors, speaking of successful operating systems that run your business, it's so funny to me how many distributors as they grow and they get to your size, which is a successful size business, how they adopt EOS and Common Skew. It seems like they run these 2 parallel, whereas EOS is running sort of that, that esoteric part of the business with vision and strategy and tactical ways to hit goals, and then Common Skew, the operating side. Um, how does Common Skew transform the way you and your team, as you've had a growing team, how has that transformed the way you guys have done business?

Uh, one of the main, um, core values in our business is to be flexible. And I remember, you know, I don't know what year I joined Cometscue, but I do remember thinking it was, there was maybe 3 or 4 of us on day, maybe 5. And I was like, I don't know if this expense is worth it, but I really have to say adopting to the operating system early was the best thing we ever did because as difficult as it was, I wasn't switching over 20 people to the system.

Listen, I know you've got some notes there on like how you used to do business. Is that what it is?

Yes. I had to go back and talk to the team about what exactly we did because I kind of forgot, but yeah, so we would create an email. So we'd look up the item and then to send a PO, we would write in the email subject, order to place, and then our PO number was the date that we placed the order. So it would be like, you know, whatever, 8/19/26. Oh wow. Yes. And then we'd add the details, like you'd put the style number and then the name and then the color handwritten, right? And then we'd add our Dropbox links or download it and then upload it back up, which was like a whole nother thing. And then it'd be like all the threats, like, please, in hand, like highlighted red. And so anyway, it was this whole thing that we'd write.

Right.

Then we'd write it down in a notebook, a PO notebook. It was like a, just a normal 5-star notebook, you know, and, and then make an invoice in QuickBooks, send that to the customer. And then I would check off when it was delivered, like off of this book. And that was the way it was done. Prior to CommonSKU.

Wow. Yeah. And now you have so nearly 30 employees. And how is that now as you've scaled and grown? We have found that CommonSKU performs best with teams, particularly team selling. How is that helping you and your team and your leadership team with transparency and just keeping track of things?

I mean, it's just all in one place, the interface that just holds Everything in one area and you can go back and look at the history of a project. Artwork is saved under that customer name. Yeah, I think it's incredibly helpful. I don't really know of any other system that does it as well. And I just think it, it helps that Kathy and Mark both have been in the business. You've been in the business. You just know what the challenges are so you can anticipate them. Um, as far as I would say there was an account recently, a big account. Alaska Airlines lady, but they had mentioned how well they loved our portal and just

how

modern we were with doing business. So I do think a nod to you all for allowing us that tool or giving us a tool to show clients this way, the system. So that was great.

I love that. Wow, that's high praise coming from a big client. That's music to us. So thank you for sharing that.

Yeah,

I'm real curious for some simpler things. Um, on weekends you pedal out. at canoes in Waikiki with your daughters and growing up in Hawaii, as you put it. You know, what has just being in that environment taught you as a human being and running a business? We're so intrigued by your business. I know we over-romanticize it, you know, because you're still in a fast couple of running couple of businesses.

Yeah.

But what has that experience in Hawaii sort of changed the way you think about life and business?

Yeah. One, it's like a dream. I am grateful that I have a business that's successful in Hawaii. And I think you, you hope That you can build something that you can live off of and have children there and raise your family. And, um, and my husband is a distributor in food, which is ironic because he, so he's slinging pork and I'm slinging like pens. That's what I always say. But the good thing about Hawaii is there's not a ton of distractions. Like you, I guess you could go do a lot of things out and about, but it's not, it's really family oriented. And on the weekends you can kind of slow down. And, um,

yeah,

and have nature, you know, there's not a ton of shopping there. I wouldn't say it's the place to do a lot of that. So you usually do something outdoors or I don't know, just, it's a very family-oriented place. So I do love that about Hawaii for sure. And people always ask, do you get rock fever? But I think when you're so busy, you just, even having a weekend to do nothing is like a gift. You're like, yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Especially in this stressful deadline-driven business. And plus, you know, you have the retail business. Um, I have the last 2 questions for you. One is, who was your favorite speaker at Skew Camp? And what did you enjoy about that experience? Because you went all the way to Montreal. You've been a few of our events. You've been at SkewCon. You've been at Skew Camp. What did you enjoy about that?

I mean, AI obviously was a huge part. Well, just, I learned so much through being in the, at the meeting about AI. And the way people are using AI and the way they're applying AI. And that was a goal. That was, I mean, I've been using AI, but to the point where someone was explaining how they'll track all of the tracking. And then when a customer asks, it will, it will go in, find the tracking and set up a draft to respond.

Yeah.

Or someone said that they used, a customer would inquire and then they would get someone, AI would come in and checked in comments queue if it was a customer or not.

Well, I think what's— what I love about AI and the most in this current culture that we're in is just sitting across the table from other people running a business just like yours and having them talk about their experience with AI is one of the most helpful things that can happen.

Yeah.

This I'm putting you on the spot because I haven't— I didn't warn you I would ask you this. But, you know, you've now run a successful business. You lead a very creative, cool team. I've met some of your team members. What would you encourage Tiana as she was younger? Looking back at your younger self, how would you encourage her knowing what you know now, buying into that business and not having a clue about the merch business? How would you encourage her? What would you say to her if you had a chance?

Oh, oh, wow. I think I would say you're capable of way more than you think you are, because I don't think I would have even imagined that I could run a business or run a team. I mean, I knew I was a leader. It was always sort of in my DNA. Any business that I worked with, um, I would always kind of get put as a leader. I'm always positive and very optimistic, but I think just knowing that there would be a team that I could lead, I think I would've told myself, have more confidence in yourself. I didn't realize I'm the biggest risk taker in my whole group. I mean— Wow. And in my entire group, they're like, Tammy, you're the biggest risk taker. I'm like, really? But I think knowing that, I probably would've taken more risks at a younger age, probably.

Yeah, that's really good advice. I love that.

Yeah.

Okay, so my last question. Anything lately you've watched, read that's been really inspiring or changed the way you think about business?

I mean, I'm always reading multiple books and like a book I'm reading right now is Theo of Golden. Have you heard of that book?

I don't know.

And, um, it's a book about this guy who, um, sort of just moves to this town called Golden, and he buys all these pictures on a wall from this cafe, and then he starts to give them out to people, different people across the town. The interesting thing about it is I think just the human connection and sort of breaking down the walls between people. And I always tell my sales team, it's that the sort of empathetic personality, IQ, like to understand, connect with people. And I think that's the biggest thing to apply to merch is yes, we need to sell something, but like the reality is what is the goal? How are we trying to connect and how are we trying to connect to this brand and that person, right? Not, not even really, you know, if, if she's the marketing director at this place, don't connect just because you want an order, like connect because you wanna connect. It's a, it's another person in your life that's gonna be— Your friend. I mean, I'll be, if I'm out of this industry one day, Bobby, you'll still be my friend. We made a connection, a genuine connection. So that's really what the book inspired me more. I believe that, but I think just sharing that more with the sales team and my team, it's like have that genuine connection. It's just good for the soul more than it is for the business, you know?

Totally. What a great response to end on. I love that. Tiana, thank you. Thank you for joining us.

Well, thank you.