Episode 82: Supplier CMO Series RJ Hagel, Goldstar

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. Welcome to Skewcast. This is Mark Graham, and we are back with another edition of our Supplier CMO series. In this series, we interview prominent marketing professionals on the supplier side to uncover what it takes to market effectively within our industry. Supplier marketing professionals often play a less visible role compared to their sales colleagues. This is not entirely surprising given that sales is very much at the front lines of our business. This series is designed to uncover the personalities of our supplier marketers and to better understand the role that marketing plays in bringing promotional products to market. In today's episode, I get the chance to speak with RJ Hagel, Marketing Manager for Gold Star. RJ is an experienced hand at the head of Gold Star's marketing group. In this conversation, I wanted to get inside RJ's head and explore what's involved in managing his team to how he makes writing instruments exciting within a crowded and noisy category. And it gives me great pleasure to welcome RJ Hagel to the podcast. Welcome, sir. It's great to have you here.

Thanks, Mark. I'm very excited to be here.

Absolutely. All right, well, let's jump into this. I've got lots and lots of questions for you, so let's start off with the first one. What were you doing in the industry prior to becoming the marketing manager at Gold Star?

I've actually been in the industry quite a bit of my life. About 20 years old, I took a job as an assistant manager at a Things Remembered doing personalized gifts, and that was kind of my, my first introduction to the world of promotional and personalized gifts. And from there I ended up working at a couple different trophy and sign shops doing engraving, sandblasting, pad printing, a little bit of silk screening as well. Got really introduced to the decoration side of the business. And that actually ended up leading to my parents starting a business upon my dad's, you know, early retirement from the corporate world for them almost 3 years. I ended up leaving working for my parents to kind of branch out and explore more for myself. You know, it's being part of a family business certainly has its, its, its challenges. And I felt like I needed to get out there and, and do something for myself. And that, that actually led me to my first real promotional job, which was as a vendor relations manager for a relatively large distributor in my area. And, um, I ended up working for them for about 5 and a half years, worked on general marketing and then did vendor relations as well. Built up a pretty good network of contacts with the suppliers that supported me. As I mentioned, we did, we did about $5 million of business. So people paid attention to us and, you know, built some great relationships there. Right before coming to Gold Star, I started working at a general contractor doing proposals for them. In, in the general contracting world, proposals is a marketing function. I worked there for about a year and a half and kind of realized that was not where I wanted to be and ended up running into Kenny Vett, who's our Vice President of Sales, and told me that we're looking for a, a marketing manager and One thing led to another and here I am. I started with Gold Star about 5 years ago as their very first marketing manager. Prior to that, all of the marketing responsibilities were done by their sales department. And so I kind of got the ship started.

And when Kenny asked you to take on that role, I mean, when you were coming into the role, you didn't have any formal experience in marketing management. Um, so tell me about what that first 3 months was like on the job. Was it a sort of trial by fire? Or were you able to draw upon some experience that really set you up for success in those early days from a marketing perspective?

When I came in, everything was wide open. The, the biggest things I had to jump in quickly were understanding all the search engines, which I was familiar with Sage prior to, prior to coming because that's what I used as, as a distributor. You know, understanding all of the, the media channels and, and where our advertising partners were. The company didn't do a lot of different types of advertising. It was a lot of email. There wasn't a lot to overcome, but really my, my, my biggest role there was kind of envisioning what our brand could be, helping establish ourselves as a, as a, as a writing instrument company in our market. And so, you know, it was really working with a team to understand where some of the challenges were, what we need to do to grow. And a lot of it was really grassroots type growth. It was networking, including myself, not just with sales, but networking. Engaging with people through social, doing things that didn't really require us to, you know, grow our marketing budget.

Right. And you mentioned that Kenny and his colleagues on the sales side were heading up marketing before you joined. Can you tell me how marketing evolved under your leadership as a true dedicated marketing professional, as opposed to a VP sales managing marketing? Because I expect that the approach would be a bit different between those, those professionals handling marketing?

The, the biggest things were, um, actually there was a couple things. Uh, product was one. We, we didn't— a lot of our product that we were selling at that time was picked up from our parent company, and, uh, we were selling just kind of the same products that, that they were in a very different channel. And there wasn't a lot of selection of color and variations, and our decoration was good but not great. So a lot of my early days was work working on operational things that the company really needed to do to be a true writing instrument company. And so a lot of it was just kind of building out the, our product line. It's reevaluating where we're spending money in marketing and what, what, what we were trying to say. We were very, very focused on price. We did a lot of email marketing. I think when I started, we were sending out emails 5+ times a week. So it was at least once a day for a very niche product line. So it was kind of reevaluating everything that we were doing. Figuring out what we needed to grow. One of the things we did early on was establish a CRM. About a year in, we ended up working with Salesforce and did a lot of work to clean up the data that we did have to get it in Salesforce. So in some kind of usable format so we can use for marketing or be able to track more lifetime value for our customers and our customers meeting salespeople, you know, within the distributor world, your clients are their salespeople. They aren't necessarily the distributor company itself, and we didn't know who was buying our products. So a lot of discovery from that standpoint in setting up systems and reporting, giving the sales team and even just the management more visibility to what's really happening with the business. Right, right.

And can you tell me about your marketing team size and the roles that each of those people on your team play at Gold Star?

Sure. So, you know, as I mentioned, I was the first marketing person and we've grown quite a bit since then. Just hired somebody recently. I categorize our marketing department in kind of 3 ways. One is product development and product management. And then you have your more traditional marketing, which would include email, digital marketing, direct mail, all those types of things. And then you have sales support, which is really being able to not just support our sales team, but also support some of the requests that distributors have. So that would be virtuals and samples, custom kits that we've done. And that could range from, you know, we're attending an end user show and we want to do some kind of creative campaign and do things a little bit differently. Than we normally would, we would, we would kind of run that through our sales support department. So as far as our staff goes, we've got— my goal was to put a lead into each main position within the business. So we have a product development manager. He started about a year and a half ago. Um, he was in the industry prior to that. On the marketing side, we have a digital marketing manager and he manages Salesforce, our email, which is also done by Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and then our website as well. And then just 2 months ago hired a, uh, content manager. And she's coming to us to help us develop more content, keep things on track, get us moving a little bit more strategically in the, in the content that we're delivering and creating everything that's usable by our distributors and repurposable for them so they can help market to their clients as well. And then I mentioned sales support too. I have a, a sales support coordinator. She does a lot of different things. So she not only supports our sales team and their requests, helps get them samples. But she also helps me manage all of our product data on search engines, helps manage the catalogs and all the different materials that we move through the business. And then I have a virtual manager who basically manages all of our virtual and spec designs, and she deals with our overseas art team to help create those things and communicate through our sales team on the products and what we're able to do. And then I also have a designer, full-time designer in-house. She's our lead designer. And also contract 2 designers overseas as well that support us with anything from images for our website to templates to, you know, some basic graphics for advertising as well. I also have 2 other people that we outsource work to, including some social media and a photographer.

Right. That's amazing. You know, considering that you just 5 years ago, you joined just as yourself and presumably you were doing a lot of what you just mentioned yourself, and then it's since grown to, I wasn't counting there, but it Sounds like upwards to 10 people that are now on the team. So that's, that's really interesting. It's actually very similar to the story that Brandon Brown, VP Marketing at Snugs, was sharing with me on our previous episode where he started off and it was a tiny team of just, I think just maybe 1 or 2 people and he was doing the majority of the work. And then now his, that, that, that team has just exploded. And I mean, that's clearly a function of your sales growth, which is great. And you now get more marketing resources, but hats off to you for being able to steer that ship over the last couple of years.

Well, thank you.

Yeah.

Yes, it certainly has its challenges, but it's exciting as well. I mean, when you're seeing a company grow based off of the work that you're doing and everybody's coming together as a team, it feels really good. And our industry is feeling it as well. I think, you know, there's a lot of positive momentum in the industry and we're happy to be a part of that.

Yeah. So Gold Star is part of a larger organization, Sympris, publicly traded global company. How do you leverage the resources of this global corporation to help you in your marketing role at Gold Star?

Yeah, I mean, so I— like any business needs to do, you, you know, you take a look at your strengths and your weaknesses and what you can do to grow your business based upon your situation. With, with us, we have the leverage of a much bigger company, so, you know, we, we get extremely good shipping rates, which allows us to offer free shipping on our, our writing instruments. We have a lot of operational advancements for the product side that allows us to decorate faster. Probably got more equipment, decoration equipment, than anybody else in the industry. We have a huge product development team that supports us, not just for Gold Star, but as a company. You know, we're able to leverage a lot of the technology advancements. And really there's a lot more to come. I think it's a big piece of our business and our future growth. And so really the major benefits of being part of the bigger company has more to do with the products itself. Because otherwise, we function as a very separate business. We do that on purpose to keep ourselves separate. We, we leverage what we can, and, and we grow our business independently. We manage all of our data and all our finances all independently. So what's great about it is we have the resources of a big company, but we have the mentality and support system of a smaller business. So, you know, we hope that our customers see that we make it easy for them to do business with us, and we're friendly, and we do embrace their, their relationship with us because it's, it's really important.

I think, I think that's a really interesting observation because if you look at Cimpress, I mean, a lot of its expertise as an organization is working directly with consumers. I mean, if you think about the success of Vistaprint, Vistaprint is a direct-to-consumer website that's very effective at selling printed products, and it's an entirely different marketing value proposition. It's a very different sales proposition, different price points, an entirely separate business. When you think about Gold Star, you're, as you said at the very beginning, your client is the distributor salesperson. You're actively involved in the Promotional Products Association. You go to those trade shows, you support that market. And if you didn't function as a separate unit, as a separate focused unit, then your marketing message would actually be very confusing to people in the promotional products industry because they would question who your customer or who you're really focusing on. You might totally mess up the whole channel conversation. You might not communicate the language of a salesperson. So I think you've been very smart in not mixing those lines because they are completely different businesses at the end of the day.

They are. I mean, we recognize that our clients have a different tastes than maybe some of the traditional online sellers do, where they're really focused on moving product. Whereas working with a distributor salesperson, they have a lot broader interest in their clients and what they need and picking the right products and having the right colors and all those different types of things. So we provide a lot of that support to help them sell and be more educated and overall provide a really good quality product and We, we have done a lot of work to differentiate ourselves so we, we can show that we, we do add additional value and we can help our distributors add value to the end users, right?

Well, you know what, that's a great segue. I'm going to ask you about this. So in preparing for this interview with you, RJ, I was, I was struck by the fact that I think you have a very challenging job in that you are selling writing instruments, and writing instruments has to be one of the most competitive commoditized, arguably in some cases kind of a boring category where that does not have a ton of respect despite the fact that without writing instruments, our industry would be a fraction of the size. So I, I say that by, I have long admired how Gold Star has been able to position itself as a very unique brand with a very unique value proposition within a pretty crowded space. Can you tell me how you've been able to do that in terms of fighting for attention in a very crowded category?

So a couple of things, you know, talking about strengths again, one of the things that we do extremely, extremely well is full-color decoration, which is not something that a lot of people do. We have a few competitors that do it. Typically their turnaround times are very long. I would say I've seen them from 7 to 15 days, and that's even domestic printing. We have, you know, a huge depth of product in that space as well as colors and equipment that can back it up. So we're able to do 1200 DPI printing our pens, at least most of our pens, the wrapped pens, which we call Simple Color. We have domestic manufacturing, so we're actually making some of that product in the States and actually in Tennessee. So we have, I would say, depth of inventory, but really have unlimited inventory if we really need to fill a large order. We can, we can turn around tremendous orders very quickly. So there's a whole value just in that decoration method and our product line that supports that. And then again, we have a, we have a lot of depth in product because of our ownership and our parent companies and what they can offer us. So we have a really deep breadth of product. I think the, the advantages of pricing and the operational advantages have given us the ability to sell extremely well from a pricing standpoint while still offering a lot of value. And then we have, you know, we've done a really good job hiring. I think that I certainly don't want to hide that. Kenny Vead's been in the industry for quite a long time. I think most people know him at this point. Charles Dugan, who's our national accounts manager, also well-respected in the industry and been here for a long time. And their presence and the presence of the rest of our sales team makes us fun and easy to do business with. We're here to help. I think people, and I think people notice that. And not to say that other suppliers don't do it well, but I think relationships are really important in this industry and being out in front of people and hustling. There's no question that this is not an industry that you can just walk into, spend some money, sell a bunch of product, be successful, and walk away. We are a tight-knit industry, and I really actually enjoy that about who we are as a promotional products.

Yeah, and I would concur with all that. And as someone who has long been fascinated by the art and science of marketing, I think that the journey you've been on in terms of how you have built this category around full-color, infinite inventory type of product is really interesting because you don't hear that message anywhere else in the industry because you were the first to really define that. Or if you weren't the first, you're certainly been the loudest and most effective at communicating that. And just like you think of other suppliers, you might think of them as being the trendy pen supplier or the one that has maybe the the highest-end sort of high perceived value pen supplier. And all that is fine, but I think that the smartest and most successful of the writing instrument suppliers are the ones that have been able to establish a firm position within the market, and then they just double down on that and don't stray from that message so that you're trying to be all things to all people.

Yeah, it certainly is tough because I think the, the tendency for everybody is to want to be everything to all people because you, you know, you don't— if you, you care about the business that you're in, you don't want to let people down. You don't want to tell them you can't do something, which is part of the great thing about having a real deep product line is that's one of the things we want people to know us as. If they're going to have one writing and sync company that they want to do business with, we want it to be us, and we want them to think of us. And, and that really again comes down to the services that we offer and the support that we give. The, the long game is really the important piece in this industry.

Well, I think to that point, when people come and ask you about things that you may not do, I'm wondering whether that was the motivation for getting into different product categories. I mean, it might be a good segue to ask you about some of the non-writing instrument business that you've started to get into. Do you care to talk a little bit about that, the, the journey to developing new products that are complementary to writing instruments?

Yeah, I mean, stationery I think was one of the, the very first places that we we moved into because, you know, writing, uh, writing instruments and stationery go hand in hand. Our full-color decoration equipment also has the ability to decorate on stationery, or at least specific stationery items, which that was a perfect segue there. And then from there, we started to grow really into some of the larger categories. And when we're looking at the top hard good categories in this industry, it's writing instruments, drinkware, and bags, which we are all now in. We're working diligently to kind of grow those product lines for us. We launched it earlier this year, so we've We've been selling some bags and drinkware for about 8-9 months now. We're really just getting our feet wet. I think you're going to see a lot of growth in those two areas coming from us in the future, but we also don't want to stray away from being experts at writing instruments. You know, that is a core strength of our business and what we do really well. And whatever we get into, we want to be able to do really well, which is why in some cases we're, we're going maybe slower than, you know, you could anticipate as far as our growth. But we want to make sure that we're servicing people and we're giving them good quality product and we have the inventory to properly promote the items.

And is it the same with regard to the bags and drinkware and stationery that you've dipped your toe in the water? As you say, you're being a little slow and calculated with how you're launching that. Have you gone to market with the same defining value proposition that led or that made you successful in writing instruments? So full color, infinite inventory, fun. Good value products. Do those traits extend to drinkware and bags as well?

They do to a degree at this point, and we are looking at opportunities to grow further into that. So, you know, one of the things we did with both bags and drinkware just out of the gate was we eliminated setup fees. That is something that, that we did on writing instruments and we held firm on is we don't need to charge people a fee to do business with us. And so that was a core strength that we've had for the last 4 years or so as far as our pricing model. Both myself and Howard Coverley, who's our general manager, when we first started, we felt very strongly that setup charges were just one of those things the industry really doesn't need. It's a given that there's setup charge. So why would you not be able to bake that cost into the price of the product? So we've definitely moved that direction. We do a lot of our drinkware right now is US sourced. We're not manufacturing in-house, but it is a US business. That manufactures them. So while we don't have the ability to do unlimited inventory, it's very quick turn. You know, we can get inventory arrive in a matter of weeks instead of months. And then as far as full-color decoration, yeah, you'll be able to see some stuff coming out pretty soon, actually very soon from us. Something we're working on. Yeah, momentarily. But, but yeah, I mean, we're really trying to make sense of our business and stick to our core for who Gold Star is. And, you know, we want to be known for, you know, one of the easiest companies to do business with.

Yeah, well, exactly. And I think you just have to keep pounding that message, and that's the hallmark of a great marketer, right? The solid communication, building that into your brand, and really baking that into your overall experience. Shifting gears just a little bit here, RJ, I'm curious to understand what your most effective channel is to reach distributors today.

So being a marketing person, this is never a great answer, but sales. I would say account management is really our most effective way of growing our business, investing into our sales team, and in turn, having the marketing focus very heavily on sales enablement has been our absolute most effective way to grow. It's a traditional way. It's probably places that people don't want to hear, but it's true. Outside of sales though, as far as marketing, it really comes down to branding and being able to put together a consistent message and spread it across all mediums. I don't know if one particular way is done better than others. I do know that getting product in people's hands is a really good thing. And, you know, a lot of our product is, is mailable. You know, direct mail still works really well for us. Again, it's, it's more of a traditional response, but it, it works. And then, you know, social media has done really well for us. I think a lot of people in this industry have maybe struggled with social media because it's allowing our business lives and our personal lives to get very closely intertwined. And, you know, some people have done that by opening, you know, secondary accounts for social media for just their business. Some people embrace it and make it part of their everyday life and just kind of own the space that they're in, you know, so the creativity with what we're putting up on social and having our sales team share the information with their network, been very successful. And then email continues to do really well for us. I mean, our email rates are are above industry. I wouldn't say industry, but above the average as far as email marketing in general. And then when we're targeted, when we're following up with specific actions, or if we interacted with somebody and it was something we did to follow up on, on a meeting or a trade show or something, we've seen our open rates exceed 50%. A lot of it's still very traditional as far as, as where we're finding our, our success. And just, you know, it's just keeping yourself visible Everywhere. Um, I think this industry is going under a large change and there's new media channels popping up and then there's the traditional ones and, you know, being able to play a little bit in each space is certainly one of the big challenges, but, you know, it's just constantly monitoring what you're doing and making sure it's working. You know, that's, that's definitely a needed thing.

Yeah, no, and I love that. I appreciate you being so specific about the things that have worked really well for for you. And, and I don't think there's any shame in, in acknowledging that some of those tactics are traditional. I mean, at the end of the day, you'd be not a very good business person if you were investing in all these new and sexy channels that your customer base was not responding to. I mean, that would be the definition of insanity, right?

We've actually found certain things that are, are newer to be much less effective, and maybe it's because we now have deeper analytics on what we're doing. But I mean, like, digital banner ads, for instance, is something we don't really find a lot of success in, something that the industry continues— I would say the industry, the whole digital world continues to push. And, and when you do research on it, really nobody is saying it works as far as from a data perspective. Now, I do, I do believe heavily in branding, and there is something to say about being able to serve somebody an ad for them to see your message and your brand. Without them taking action or clicking through. I don't think that is always the, the way to, to track success. It requires us to question ourselves all the time and what we're doing and going back to what works.

So how do you balance the tried and true methods of connecting with distributors? So the, the traditional things you just talked about— trade shows, email, catalogs could be a part of that, account management you'd mentioned as being one of the more traditional things. With the newer school forms of marketing that may be favored by some younger entrants into this industry, the more modern distributors? How do you balance those two? Because I suspect they're probably in conflict with one another.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's something that I'm challenged with every day. I would say it's probably one of my biggest challenges is that again, a lot of the traditional stuff still works. I think, you know, being able to, to place products as a priority in the search engine still works. But we know to be a leader and to push forward, we have to embrace some of where everything is going. And so social media is a big part of that. There's video, there's other forms of what we've considered content marketing that we've, we've started to, to embrace. So social media has been, been pretty good for us as far as our growth. Like, as I mentioned before, you know, there— it has its challenges. I don't think the engagement in our space is what you'd expect in the consumer world, but we do find success in making people laugh and entertaining people. Video is something that we've been talking a lot about recently, and we haven't done a lot of video, mainly because, you know, just finding the resources and really kind of deciding on what's working for today's world. And so, but we are recognizing that the video is becoming a lot more prominent. So we're— it's part of our strategy for 2019 that we're working on right now. Right.

Well, that's great. And I think that that balance will will never, will, will never change, right? As things change and there's ebb and flow in, in customer base that in the market, you're always gonna be having to balance these things. And if, if you didn't have to, you probably wouldn't have a job, right?

So, sure. Yeah. I mean, I think at this point our, our industry has a very wide net as far as the demographic. You've got a lot of people who've been in the industry for a long time. They've got great clients. They kind of figured, hey, why do I want to retire? I've got, I've got clients who love working with me and I love working with them and I'm making money. And then you've got people coming to the industry right out of college that have great new ideas. And I mean, even just the idea of using terms like swag versus promotional products. I think I saw a survey recently online and it was just interesting to see how people reacted. And you still see primarily promotional products was that was the winner. But if you look at the trends, those percentages are starting to get a little bit closer together. You know, I look for cues like that to make decisions on really where we feel the industry is going and really just staying connected, you know, going to trade shows and going to events. I'll be going to SKU Camp to see you guys later next month and, you know, looking forward to hearing about some of what you guys are doing. And those are things that really help me make decisions. Decisions and speaking with other people on where they find success. That's certainly—

yeah, well, we're excited to have you. We're excited to have you there. It's going to be a lot of fun. I think on that note, can you tell me from your perspective why you invested in the Common Skew channel and how it's become a part of your marketing toolkit today?

Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that, that you guys have done really well is pushing the boundaries of technology in our industry. I think most people would agree that we traditionally have been very far behind as far as allowing kind of the outside world to penetrate the promotion market. You know, one of the things that you guys did was figuring out how to help distributors with managing their, their business on the back end, but giving them a channel to connect with suppliers. So that could be just the social pieces that you have within CommonSKU to just recently connecting with Distributor Central and now having API to take their product data that we've already published there and, and give that as a tool to distributors. So what you guys are doing are providing us a platform to communicate. I think it's, it's, it's very easy to navigate as far as, you know, there's not a lot of questions on, you know, how, how do I need to get in front of people? Can I outbid the much larger industries, um, or larger companies in this industry to get my products in front of people? It's a lot more grassroots. And it gives me hope that just by, by working hard and connecting with people and spending our, our time using your platform is going to net us much greater results. And then just the, the type of distributor that you guys are going after. I mean, again, you know, being very technology focused, people that, that you guys have brought onto your platform are going to be typically more technology savvy and forward thinking. And, you know, again, getting back to a comment I made earlier about Having, you know, part of strategy in this industry is, is long-term. There's a direction that we know we want to go towards, and establishing ourselves as a forward thinker and a leader in this industry takes time no matter what. And I think you guys can offer that platform to allow us to do that.

Well, well, thank you for that perspective. And I think that I think back to one of the first things— you've actually said it on a couple of occasions— this notion of this industry favors relationships and people buy from people they like and how the bulk of your marketing budget goes towards account management and Kenny's great team that is out in the market like meeting with people and how you've tried to kind of create this like colorful brand. And what I think is really interesting, and it's certainly been our perspective at Commonsku and certainly lots of other platforms have, have, um, you know, gone down the same path, I think is this notion of how you use technology, which is new school and modern and all that stuff, to leverage the tried and true and traditional in the business, which is the relationship side of the business. It's the selling side of the business. It's the branding side of the business. And how can you bring those two things together to allow Kenny to thrive in this modern sales environment so that way, He's still able to go and sell the traditional way, but you add some jet fuel to that because of technology, and that can scale in a way that you couldn't do before. So I think that for us, that's a question that we tried to answer in the very early days of the application, and I think continue to, and I think it's very interesting to be on the journey with people like you, so thank you. So you actually made a comment about distributors posting questions, and one of those issues was how to get in front of a customer. So I, I'm always, always love to ask this question of people, and it's what advice do you have for distributors that complain about online competitors selling at unreasonably cheap prices?

That is definitely a topic that we hear quite a bit. I don't have this as an elevator pitch to speak to somebody directly. So this is kind of a little bit more off the cuff and some of my answers you're going to hear other places, but it's really about adding value. I think the world we live in today, If you're, if you're chasing price, it's a losing proposition. There's always going to be somebody out there that's going to do it cheaper and faster and potentially even better. But it comes down to the relationships distributors have with their clients. And if it's a new end user that's engaging with them and they are focused mainly on price, I suggest to be competitive, you know, go in there and do what you have to do to get the orders and be able to prove yourself as somebody who can offer value and that value could Suggesting products, it could be offering different services like print or creative or video or any other type of marketing services. It could be lots of different forms. And, and as people build trust, the ability to now go back and get your pricing back to where you feel like it needs to be for you to operate your business becomes much easier because now the relationship is based off of trust and quality engagement and not just price. But I, but there is a reality that that's part of the game you have to play with companies out there like the Amazons of the world and the, and the other businesses in our industry that function somewhat similarly is, um, you know, sometimes you just got to do what you got to do, but I think there's room for everybody. I think we've proven that. And a lot of the growth in the industry this past year has been with web-based organizations that may, you know, sell at a cheaper price, but, but the rest of the industry continues to thrive as well.

What 3 industry brands do you admire the most and why?

So a couple of them I, I know you guys are very closely connected to, and, and there's actually quite a few. This was, this was a little bit harder list to put together, and I'm going to give you 3 that I admire because of things that they do, and they're typically smaller businesses. The first would be Snugs. One of the last podcasts you guys had on was Brandon Brown, somebody I respect very highly. I love what they're doing from a creative standpoint, especially with social media and video. It just blows me away that they're— the quality and the, and the, the, the attention to creativity and strategy is at the level of what you expect large B2C companies to be doing. And it's very impressive. The second one is Numo. Another Melissa McCauley I know has been fairly connected with the Commscue community. And I met her for the first time 2 years ago at PPI Expo. And I talked to her about her booth and she actually designed their booth, which looks like you're inside of a home. And then from their perspective, their products, their ability to cut and sew on demand and the flexibility, they really bring a retail flair to the promotional industry, which is something I think we're, we're certainly moving towards. But I think it's really, really important for us to embrace quality products moving forward and not just cheap junk that gets thrown in the trash can. Third is Org Audio, led by Jason, somebody who I respect for bringing a different perspective to this industry and willing to step outside of the tradition and open a retail brand prior to starting a promotion brand. I think it's something that people have been scared about for a long time as far as breaching those two industries, and he's done it with a lot of integrity, continues to service promotion industry extremely well, and building a a brand name for himself that he can scale into, into a broader market.

Some great answers. And I think, I mean, you're right, there's a long list and sometimes hard to focus on those 3, but that the 3 examples that you, that you give are right at the top of, of my list as well. And just in terms of how they have created these very strong positioning statements and they've a real strong product vision. And it's not to say that they, can't be not competitive on price, but what's interesting about those suppliers is that price is not the primary driver of their business, at least as a general statement.

If we look at 10, 20 years from now and kind of where things are going, and there's a lot of talk about millennials and that sort of thing, but one of the things that I really respect about the millennial generation, which I'm really on the cusp of, I'm still Gen Xer by all means, but I kind of associate with both, is Millennials typically don't want to spend money on things that don't have quality and value assigned to them. I think there was a post just recently, it was actually something maybe I think you even did on Facebook, where we saw a koozie laying in the mud next to a trash can. And I don't think we're seeing that the younger generations want that. They're not asking for it. They, they want quality. They don't want to create extra waste. And, and then some of the talks, what's happening with, with China right now and some of the challenges the US is going to have with tariffs, I think that's going to change the way that we view inexpensive, cheap product. And so I respect the companies that aren't chasing the dollar necessarily and kind of focusing on where, where we're going and being more responsible from that standpoint.

I've always said that, that I think there's a little mini revolution that is taking place in, in our industry that is celebrating the design forward, maybe domestic manufacturing-focused suppliers that are not afraid to go forward with a strong personality and where design and product is at the forefront. And I think it's really, really interesting and there's no surprise that the companies you just mentioned are the ones that you see on the top lists or the fastest-growing supplier lists because they're doing a lot right.

Okay.

I wanted to ask you about 3 non-industry brands that you admire the most and why. I love those industry ones, but now let's switch to non-industry.

Sure. So this was surprisingly, this was actually more complicated for me, but there are a couple that, that are more maybe top of mind today. I would say that every 5 years or so, you know, you see things in your life changing. And so what you focus on is a little bit different, but the one core to me, I'm a car guy. I love cars, you know, would love to own premium cars. Of course, dreamed like any kid of having a Ferrari, but Mazda is one of my favorite brands and it's really about their approach. They're one of the smallest car companies out there. They're also one of the last independent businesses. They are not public. They were by one at one time owned by Ford, but now is, is a, a private business. They continue to turn out extremely competitive product. Great design, their philosophies about balance and design and the influence that design can have on your commute and all the things they talk about, about what a car is to somebody, something more than just transportation. Really love that. The second one is Trader Joe's. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that.

I just went shopping there when I was in Pittsburgh and I brought it. They don't have Trader Joe's in Canada, but we brought back some across the border. Awesome. Anyway, sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, they're, they're the kind of— I wouldn't say the last neighborhood market, but they are a neighborhood-type market. You know, they, they're small, but the product they have in their stores is extremely well executed. It's well thought through. You know, they have kitchens in each of their stores so you can taste food. And the staff there, they actually have a cook on staff that comes up with the recipes based off of the products that they sell in store. So you get great ideas. You know, I know when I go there, I'm going to buy stuff that more often than not is not made with GMOs. It's, it's not made with, you know, soybean oils and other types of ingredients that most people don't know about that are really bad for you. They stray away from that. So I feel good because I'm fairly health conscious. So for me, it's just, I want to go to a place I know they're going to take care of me and look out for my best interests. So, so Trader Joe's is number 2. And number 3 is back on that, that kind of health kick is a brand called Onnit. It was originally started by a guy named Aubrey Marcus, and he also produces a podcast I listen to quite frequently. Very well outspoken about health and about some of the new technologies and even just, I mean, technologies but advancements that are coming down the road and some of the things that we're learning that we've been doing for a long time as far as staying away from low-fat diets and things like that. So one of the things I like about the On brand is, is not just the brand itself because they, they make supplements and workout gear and they're kind of a lifestyle brand for people in the, in the health and fitness space. But it's more than that. It's, it's their leadership and the brand he brings for himself, but also around all of the companies he associates with. So I think that's, that's another one. I mean, it's just, it's, it's more the personal branding that I, I like than the business branding. But they kind of go hand in hand.

I think for any marketing person, they could talk all day about the brands that you admire. We could probably have another separate conversation about the 3 brands that you hate the most too, but we'll keep this positive right now. I love that answer about Mazda, this whole idea about putting style in your commute, I think is what you said, and this idea about how you transcend your product. You've got to be more than just the product that you sell. And, that goes back to the comment, maybe the uncharitable comment I made about writing instruments being boring, right? And, I think that you could make an argument that writing instruments are big and boring and price sensitive and why would I need another pen supplier, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, at the end of the day, if you can kind of transcend the product with something where there's some emotional connection or something that just is a little bit bigger than the product, then I think you end up with a formula for success. I just find that to be among one of the more exciting aspects of marketing is when you can think bigger than just my product is cheap and I want to flood the market with it and hope people buy it. I think like that's not the kind of marketing I think is very interesting.

Yeah. I mean, we've actually, it's a very good point that you brought up because it is that approach that I've taken with some of our marketing in that.

Yeah, exactly.

When is a pen more than a pen? One of the benefits that we have of our color decoration and the, for the most part, a large imprint area, is that we can turn our pen into a billboard. It doesn't have to be a pen with a logo on it. It can be something much broader as part of a message, or you can theme it because now you can incorporate graphics that go along with another piece of your campaign. We've done some case studies in the last couple years that were really focused on the message. It really had very little to do with a pen, but it's how do you make the pen more than a pen? And it's one of the things I enjoy about our business. In the products that we sell. Yeah.

Well, and as you say this, as I'm podcasting on my desk right here, I have a pen which is the one that you did for our SKUCON event just a few months ago in January. And, I remember when we were designing the collection, we talked about how we could make pens exciting and how we could take advantage of all the things that you do so well. And, this is the Innovator pen that I have and we designed them to include all the different personalities of people that were at the event. And to showcase that in sort of full vivid sort of individual color and individual designs. And they were a huge hit. And it's amazing, not only the pen is a great quality, but just how there was an emotion around what could have been just a very basic product and turned it into something totally different than just another pen. And there's a reason I'm super picky around writing instruments and there's a reason I pull for it every time because it writes great, but it also brings back all these great memories of this thing that we did together.

So that's great to hear. I've got a couple, uh, SKUCon items on my desk as well.

Oh, nice. Well, it's coming, it's coming up again in January. So I'll ask you one more question. I mean, we could go all day here, and I, I really appreciate this. It's so interesting, you know, for me to learn a little bit more about your role. And, and as someone who is very involved in marketing myself, I'm always able to learn in these things. So thank you for that. All right. So last question is, if you could have a beer with any marketer, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

There's so many influences from different areas, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick Gary Vaynerchuk, somebody that has come up in the last couple of years and many people know him at this point. I actually got a chance to meet him at PPI Vegas about 10 years ago after he released his first book. He was speaking at an event for Ash City. I believe the owner of Ash City was a large wine collector, and Gary Vaynerchuk is, you know, a huge wine enthusiast and owns Wine Library TV. And I think that's the connection. But I just got a chance to meet him. But, you know, one of the things I like about Gary, he's very real. And to a point, I think maybe he annoys a lot of people, but from my perspective, you can have a great conversation with him. He's very inspirational, you know, for me really enjoying podcasting and And maybe I don't listen to him all the time, but when I do, I know what to expect. I get a lot of enthusiasm and energy and he pumps me up in a day, you know, especially on the way to work. It's just love to sit and listen and just kind of enjoy what he's all about. But yeah, otherwise there's a lot of people, maybe not just marketers, but there's a lot of other people that have been influential for me, especially in the podcasting world. I spent about 3 days, 3 hours a day in the car. And so podcasts and audiobooks have become my friends.

You're right. It's an opportunity for you to learn and to fill your brain with something good and challenging. So, what a great opportunity to learn. I love that story about Gary Vee. I actually remember those wine parties with— his name was Gary Hurwitz. That was the founder of Ash City. And, he's now outside the industry, but you're right, he was big into wine. And, I didn't know that Gary Vaynerchuk was associated with some of those events because it was, it would have been in the sort of Gary 1.0 days when he was, you know, he was a celebrity but not to the degree he is now. And so like, that would have been really cool.

When I met him at the event, there was a few people that I saw walk up to and say, hey, great presentation. But I didn't get the sense that many people actually knew who he was. I did because I had read his first book and I had been introduced. I can't remember exactly how, but it was, it was an exciting moment for me then. And then knowing who he is now and the influence he has now. It's exciting.

Oh, yeah. I mean, that would have been what, 8 or 9 years ago that happened?

Yeah, I'm trying to figure. I think it was about, yeah, something like that, 8, 9, 10 years ago. It was quite a while ago.

Yeah, very cool. Very, very cool. Well, and now, of course, he's not the wine guy anymore, right? He's like the social media, big picture thinking, future jets guy. And so, I think he's left his wine days well past him, but a great example of someone who took a, a pretty competitive category and rose above all the noise by establishing a personality. And I mean, it was amazing, and he continues to do that time and time again. So, uh, good answer, RJ. That's a solid answer, my friend. Well, on that note, I really appreciate you taking the time, uh, to be on the SkewCast to share your experiences, tips, and tricks with fellow fans in the promotional products industry. It was a real pleasure to speak with you today, RJ. Thanks so much for your time. Yeah, thank you.

I was very happy to be here and, you know, look forward to connecting with your audience here in the future.

You bet. 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.commsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.