Episode 83: Creativity And Collaboration

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.

But it also is such a critical differentiator if you're trying to carve out a niche or niche in the space. You know, talking to a client and asking those deeper questions around what are you trying to achieve, it makes them pause and they're like, you're really different.

You're hearing the voice of Denise Tashrow, co-founder and CEO of Vancouver-based distributor Fareware. Denise is one of the 7 voices you'll hear on this episode about creativity and collaboration. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at Commonsku, and this recording took place at the headquarters of Chameleon-like in Gilroy, California, just outside of San Jose, thanks to the invite from Pierre Martichoux, President and Founder of Chameleon. Joining us on this journey and in this conversation are Steven Musgrave, Vice President of Sales and Operations at Right Sleeve.

I always tell them, if you can't go back to your client and bother them for the information, you better get real good at asking them for it the first time you talk to them.

Mark Graham, Cometscue's co-founder and chief platform officer.

It's really exciting to work on both sides when both parties are equally excited about where you're both going together.

Jasmine Keen, national account executive at Chameleon.

One of the first things I learned when I started at Chameleon was always slow the customer down when you're on the phone.

Alex Sims, national accounts and the digital marketing manager, Chameleon.

So the more that you can collaborate with us To be honest, the better that we're both gonna be.

And of course, Pierre.

That's where the trust comes in. You know, I trust you that you're gonna go sell my product and that you're gonna present it. The walls don't work anymore.

Our topic was ambitious. We were exploring how collaboration can fuel creativity and what creativity can mean to our identity as brands and how it impacts the bottom line. This episode is brought to you by Commenscue, the effortless business management platform that powers you to process more orders and grow your business. To learn more or to start your free trial, visit commonsku.com. And by the way, we're excited to announce that registration for SKUCon, held in Las Vegas on January 13th, is now open. In its 6th year, SKUCon is the industry's inspirational kickoff event for entrepreneurs and mavericks and has sold out venue after venue due to high demand. Secure your ticket now by visiting skucon.com, and you can learn more about the speakers and their session topics. We hope to see you there. And now an epic conversation with a great group of friends on the subject of creativity, and collaboration.

I've always been a little concerned and curious that we claim to be a very creative industry, but we spend very little time talking and learning about creativity. So the purpose of this talk is for us to uncover how creativity and collaboration leads to sales growth and how to cultivate more creativity in our work. We have entrepreneurs who are brand new to the industry that will tune into this podcast. They've been in the business for a year, so we need to set a baseline for what collaboration is like. By the way, for our listeners, I want to set the tone for where we're at. We are at Chameleon Lights headquarters and we're surrounded by this hive of incredible creativity. We have this custom-made product where we just walked the factory floor and we're all so blown away by how impressive the hands-on, high-touch product that we get and probably take for granted a lot is so brilliantly creative and very imaginative. So we're sitting in a good place to talk about this topic. We have wine, we have espresso, we have everything we need to have this kind of conversation today. Thank you, Pierre, for all of that. So Marc, what's the current collaboration process look like for the average distributor?

It'll be interesting to get your perspective on this, Pierre, in just a second, but I think that the traditional relationship is the distributor knows everything, and it can usually be a relationship without a lot of give and take. And a distributor that feels they know everything because they have the client relationship, and then they then take those demands to the supplier. I think that that's what traditionally happens.

Isn't it ironic that even the distributor does not have all the information most of the time when they start working on a project? Yes. How does this literally work for a brand new entrepreneur to the business? Client calls you and says, I have this thing, it's in 3 weeks if you're fortunate, it's probably more like 3 days from now or next week, and I need blank.

I think what happens, again, if I'm making a general statement, because I think this is what you're asking me, is that the distributor feels they've got this mandate. Okay? So they have this customer and they're now going to the distributor. Now the distributor is the buyer. They're the ones who are in charge. They then go to the market and go to a Chameleon or they go to a Polyconcept or they go to a SanMar, whoever the case may be, based on the product they're looking for, and they say, "I need this at this particular price, this particular time, or else." And again, I have to be careful in saying that this is a general statement, but I think that there can be some entitlement there when you're the buyer and the buyer feels or can come across like they've got the power, and as a result, they're then going and then taking these demands to a supplier and sometimes being unreasonable about them. So that's negative in terms of how it can work. I think we'll get into talking about ways that suppliers and distributors work well with one another, but I think that that's where you hear the worst horror stories, and you hear the resentment suppliers have towards some of these distributors because there's this sense of entitlement because they're the buyer.

Right.

So Pierre, how does the collaboration process work on the supplier side?

So no resentment here. But I know— but Mark, I know exactly what you're talking about. What advice I would give, right?

Yeah, yeah.

To distributors is for us, like in the past week, we got 2 requests, right? It's like one of them, we get an actual brief. And granted, the distributor doesn't know always, but at least they should know their client. Okay? And if they don't know their client, I mean, that's what they— we know our product. I always say, we know our product, you know your client. So tell me about your client. Okay? And then come up with a couple of ideas on your own. So that's how the collaboration is not "Hey, I have this. Come up with something great." And we get that every day, including from some veterans. I mean, they come and call us and say, "This is a new client. We want to knock their socks off. Give me a wow." We get that, I mean, every day, not every week, right? We get also, "This client, this is what they want. This is the feel. Here's a couple of quotes that I researched. And maybe I went on your website and I looked at this item, but—" "Tell me what idea you have." But at least they put something on the table. Collaboration is an exchange, right? And the exchange can't be, "I'm the buyer, come up with the ideas and I'll pick within the ideas. And by the way, sometimes I call you back and told you, 'Well, that's not going to work,' when we had no direction." So, I mean, I think, because it's a lot of work, right, for us to come up with concepts.

Do you get enough information on those inquiries? Is there a lot of back and forth on these collaboration requests when you first start working with customers? I know that's a very broad question because you probably get all kinds.

But on the back and forth, I usually, from the inside sales people, sometimes they're like, oh my God, this quote, I'm going back and forth and back and forth. And I tell them, I tell them, that's good. You want to go back and forth.

Well, good point.

First you get a better product and you know he's interested. Yeah. You know, you want to get back and forth. I mean, I tell them all the time and, you know, the other day it happened and we even asked, and by the way, what is the quantity? 3,000. I'm like, that's really good. You go back and forth for 3,000 pieces. You always change And then she gets it, and when we get the order, we're like, you see, that's a big order. It was worth all that work.

Yeah, well, because in the distributor's office, then what's happening, they're just moving to the next fire, and their intention is not to slight the supplier at all. It's just they're moving on, they're moving so quickly, and so they need that push, unfortunately, sometimes, to say, oh yeah, I need to get Pierre and his team something a little more substantial for this.

I think really the best way our collaboration process works when we know as much information about the project as possible. It allows our team to be as creative as we can be, whether it be a price point, whether it be the industry or the use or what they're used to purchasing. The more information that we can get in that process, the better the return is going to be in the item that we're going to pick for it, maybe even the virtual mock-up that we're going to provide for them. And then also, you know, the actual price. Garbage in, garbage out, right? So we say that a lot. It's very true. Yeah, I mean, there are times where, you know, if we get a request and it's, "Here's a logo file, can you just give me some ideas?" Odds are very much so that the results are not going to be to the best that they could be, right? They're not going to be amazing. When you tell us that, "Hey, I have a client and they have a budget of $7,000 to $10,000," Then we can narrow it down to the price. You tell me it's being used for a trade show, we can even get down to some of the creativity about putting like an agenda or information about the speakers or stuff to do at the night in the city. So the more information that we can get, the better the output's going to be.

And then my advice to distributors: don't be shy about asking your client, you know, because sometimes I feel distributor, I can't go and ask, bother my client for more information. You know, but they really should.

I always tell them, if you can't go back to your client and bother them for the information, you better get real good at asking them for it the first time you talk to them.

Exactly.

It's actually a— it's a very good habit to have. Those should be the things— it's okay to ask your client. You don't have the answers, and if you don't ask, you're not going to know. And it's the same thing that we say to our customers. If there's something that works for you, and you don't tell us, we can't change it, we can't make it happen. So the more that you can collaborate with us, to be honest, the better that we're both going to be.

With the old saying, haste makes waste, I think the reason why a distributor has that reflex is because they're hearing the haste in their customer's voice, the impatience, the panic themselves. So the customer themselves are typically panicked with something, they submit that request that way, and then as a distributor you feel like you really can't trouble them, you really have to trouble them again.

It's funny, like that concept, and this moves a little bit away from collaboration between distributors and suppliers and more just into client management. But when you're having that initial conversation and the questions of, well, who are you going to be giving this to and what do you want them to do with it when they get it? What do you want them to think of your brand when they get it? All those kinds of questions that seem like, I can't ask those, they're in a huge rush. But it's those questions that are more important to ask when you're in a huge rush 'Cause you're gonna get off the phone with them, you're gonna talk to the supplier and find out that the exact thing that they asked for is not possible. And then you're gonna be like, well, could I make a suggestion of something else that would work for them? Maybe if I had any idea what they were trying to have people think when they give it out and what they wanted them to do with it. Maybe the custom journal book from Chameleon doesn't work, but maybe one of the kind of stock pieces that they have that they can put a logo on would work better if I know like, a little bit more about what they're trying to do and why they want what they want, then it helps.

An interesting one is working through people's historical process. So when I'm thinking of the clients, they have a history of working with distributors whom are offering a service of putting a logo on a product, and so they're not used to getting those questions, and they might seem a little awkward or uncomfortable at first, but it also is such a critical differentiator if you're trying to carve out a niche or a niche in the space, talking to a client and asking those deeper questions around what are you trying to achieve, it makes them pause and they're like, you're really different. And then you can pepper in, well, this is how we did it with so-and-so, or I saw a really good example of this brand doing it, and you start to share that intel. And I have to say that a takeaway for me today, just this morning, was being with your pre-production team and looking at some mockups up on the screen. And seeing, we were chatting a little bit about how do you, for example, leverage merchandise to change your employees' behavior. So HR goals, and it was a really interesting project, and just the way it was laid out and the kind of language and words for this client on this proof that I saw, right away I thought, I could use that with 3 or 4 of my clients. I would've never thought of that, but had I briefed Chameleon, they would've come to me and said, we've seen this before. Here's how so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so has used it. So for me, the big takeaway this morning was just being reminded that you're on our team, just like we try to remind our clients that we're an extension of their team, reminding ourselves, reminding our sales team that you're an extension of our team, and thinking about it through that lens, I think, will be more helpful for our company going forward in terms of working with suppliers.

I think it's really interesting when you talk about haste makes waste because one of the first things I learned when I started at Chameleon was always slow the customer down when you're on the phone. You know, that was, that was one of the things that like— yeah, yeah, take notes and slow the customer down. You— they always call and, you know, they're always in a rush.

Jasmine, can I, can I say, can I interrupt you just to say, for distributors that are listening, that is great advice for them and their clients because their clients are in a rush and in a panic and they're getting that request. Go ahead.

And, and so it's always about collecting as much information as you can and Granted, when I first started, I didn't know all the questions that I needed to ask, but that's something that you learn. And I think taking notes and having a set list of questions, you know, what is it for? Who's your audience? How many do you need? What's your budget? Where is it going? What's your in-hands date? Those are all really important. And I feel like sometimes our customers will gloss over that and just say, come up with something, and you have to be the one, or I have to be the one, or the salesperson has to be the one to ask those questions so that you can give better ideas.

The poet Mary Oliver says that trust is an essential ingredient in creativity. What does that mean for a supplier-distributor and how does distrust— as Pierre pours me another glass of wine, I trust you with my life, Pierre, thank you, a lot of trust here. So what does that mean for a supplier-distributor and how does distrust damper creativity?

So one of the first things when I get requests, why also is they tell me, oh, this, this, and I say, Who is the distributor, right? Sometimes I feel like, am I discriminative? Am I trying to discriminate? But in reality, it's huge. Who asked you the question? Oh, so-and-so for— Now I know because what that distributor wants, or I have a really great relationship with them, as opposed to someone who calls for the first time. And that's the reality. And we service everyone, right? But we will go further with the people that have been dealing with us for many, many years. That's why I answered that question because then I've worked on project with them, all that. So, there's trust. I think a lot of time comes from past relationship, like past transaction, I want to say. I mean, you see what I mean? Like her history basically. Who trusts someone right off the bat? If I never met you and never talked to you. I don't distrust you, but maybe there's not that closeness, intimacy, or whatnot.

The reason why I asked this question too is I'm afraid it still exists, and I wish it weren't the case anymore, but I think present company excluded, the Wrightsleaves, the Fairwears of the world don't distrust suppliers like this because they have such a unique value prop they bring to their customers. What I'm getting at is the average distributor that doesn't trust you with information about their which hinders creativity. Now, I would like to believe that's gone and that that's a time of the past.

And I wonder whether it's a function of what kind of supplier you are. So I'm thinking here as we toured your factory here today, Pierre, that you're not in the commodity business. Everything that you're doing is completely custom and unique to a specific distributor and a specific end client. Now, is it different if I were to go into a more commodity-oriented supplier? Good point. And I was buying a stress toy or I was buying a stock journal, and I might be at that point a little bit more hesitant to say, "Hey, Pierre, I've got 10,000 units that's going to Budweiser," because maybe that's where the supplier has loose lips, and then you go off to another distributor that says, "Hey, this joker's got an opportunity with Budweiser." Why don't you try to get in on it? You hear examples of that. Logistically, if that were to happen at a place like Chameleon, I just think it would be a lot messier if you were to be that person to say, oh, hey, go after Budweiser.

It would not be—

it wouldn't work out as well for you. So I wanted to make that observation, and I'm not suggesting that distributors lack trust in their supplier partners. I think with a more commodity-oriented supplier, you should be as trustworthy of them as they are with Pierre.

Trust me with, you know, am I gonna deliver on time? Trust me with, am I doing a good product? You know, that's where the trust comes in, you know? And I trust you that you're gonna go sell my product and that you're gonna present it. This is— the walls don't work anymore.

I love that. The walls don't work anymore. And as you guys were speaking, I kind of had these two experiences and one is on the supply chain side and I feel like it was one of our biggest lessons as a company. It was a bunch of years ago, big, project in the drinkware space. We needed to audit the factory. It was a 40,000-unit job, big job, super complicated artwork, custom packaging. Everything about it was a gong show. And in retrospect, we kept all the parties siloed. We were constantly the intermediary. We talked to the suppliers, and we talked to the client, and we talked to the auditing company. And in retrospect, I wish I sat everyone around a table like this with a bottle of wine and chocolate and said, let's succeed in getting this project to deliver. And I think it would have been unheard of then to even broker that conversation with the players in a way that it isn't now. And one thing I was chatting with Alex last night, we're starting to see a level of transparency in the supply chain that is really encouraging for us and what we stand for as a brand. But we're also seeing transparency on the client side. And I was explaining that we work with a lot of consumer product companies. And some of them, maybe they're natural products, a cosmetic company, and they're sourcing aprons for their retail staff. They're not getting it through our channels, but they're sourcing it at a fair trade factory in India. And we're doing their tote bags somewhere else. We're starting to do factory sharing. With our retail clients where we have major manufacturers saying, here's where we're doing our recycled polyester pom-pom hats in China. Where are you doing blah, blah, blah? And we're not going to get that order anyways, but we do a lot of business with them and it's just trust. It's like, let me share with you because you're going to grow, we're going to grow, we're all in this for the long haul, and let's understand where we need to be competitive. And where we can be collaborative. And like, what is your mojo that you might not want to give up? And what are those things that would be so insightful and useful for someone, knowing that down the road they're going to give you something that's so insightful and useful? And that's what I'm getting encouraged about, is it's, it's not even just between supplier-distributor or between distributor-client. It's this whole flow of information from the top to the bottom. And I feel like that's starting to bubble up into the, you know, as a future state for our industry?

Back to the area of trust, I don't think that there is a distrust on a supplier end. I think there may still be a traditional distrust from the distributors to release information to the supplier in the simple fact of fear. They've heard stories about direct selling suppliers, they've heard of stories of you know, someone showing my products to another distributor to go sell it down the road. I don't know if it happens. I don't. I've never heard any stories about that happening. I can tell you very honestly and truly is that even if we do something as simple as a virtual, that it's yours. In fact, we put your name on it. It's yours. We don't show it to anyone else, and, and that's the way that business should be done. But I think because of that fear, sometimes you don't get all of the necessary information that you need to be able to be successful. Successful in the project. I don't think it's from the supplier. I think it's more on a traditional distributor. Not the ones that we are talking about here in the room, but just the old distributors, the old traditional type of distributors. The more information that you can give to us, the better. But if we don't get that information, we can't work to our fullest extent.

So I was thinking a lot about this because we're talking about big picture, like creative collaboration and like sharing ideas and a lot about that idea of like keeping your cards close to your chest because you don't want to disclose a bunch of information about your client, you're worried about your competitors. But one of the big challenges like I find when we're trying to be like a collaborative distributor is like the little tiny like everyday collaboration you have to do. Because even if we're just taking one of your guys' stock books off the shelf and putting a logo on a one-color print on the front. We're still collaborating together. I didn't make the notebook, you don't have the client, we're still working together on this. And it's this really long history of combative relationships between suppliers and distributors versus a collaborative, I find, can be such a challenge for just those little everyday things. Like, I've got a PO in with a supplier, the timeline is a little bit tight on it, we just spent 2 days going back and forth about whether you can get it out in time or not, and then you suddenly just say, "Well, I mean, we could, but there'd have to be a rush charge of $50." I'm like, "I'll pay you $300 to give me the last 2 days of my life back. Like, why are we even talking about this? We're on this one." But you know what I mean? But it's this thing where— But I feel like it's decades of a distributor being like, "What do you mean there's a $50 rush charge? Like, that's insane." But we're all trying to work together and there's occasionally, I'll find we're working with a supplier where I'm like, "Oh, we're not trusting each other. We're not working together to try and do the same thing." And it's like, "You've got an $18,000 purchase order from me that you want to charge me a $50 rush fee on? Go for it. Who cares? Let's make some cool shit. Stop fighting us on this. Let's just do it together." But it's that little everyday kind of collaboration can be a struggle sometimes because We've got 10,000 other people out there fighting about a proof charge that's $12 instead of $8.

Sometimes you have to set up those— I'm assuming you have to set up those kinds of policies because of the opposite factor, that you've got low average orders coming in from distributors that are not spending enough money with you, and that's a protection hedge. And so when you— it just doesn't fit in the framework of this $18,000 order at all.

Well, but even on the smaller orders, it's like, don't fight me on it, just tell me about it and we'll work it out together, you know?

We love it like when a distributor calls us and says, "You know what? Let's save that order. How do we get that order together?" No one tells— I mean, it's very rare, but when he does, then it fires us up. Yeah. You know what? Let's save that. Sometimes there's a hiccup. Let's try to get it together. You know, this is what it's all about. I mean, I want the order just as much as you do. All right.

A very broad but important question. I know this is broad, so I want to see who's the bravest and who's going to tackle this first. How does creativity impact the bottom line? How have you seen creativity impact your sales? I know it's a broad question. I know it's big. My axe to grind here is that we don't talk enough about this topic and how it impacts the bottom line.

Creative comes at a cost, right? It does come at a cost. It's not necessarily, oh my God, it's creative, I can sell it for so much because it does have a cost to it. I think when you're creative, you know, by definition you're not the same as everyone else. You might have someone else who is also creative, but you're going to create different things, right? So that's about making yourself unique and offering something that is unique. You know, and we talk about commoditization in the promo world, which is pretty big. So I think for us, because we make stuff here, it's not rocket science, but there's a lot of moving parts. And it's not only the made in USA thing, which, you know, for some people matters, is because we make it here, we can include in the product a lot of like custom creative things that you can't if you have a stock piece. I don't even know if we really worry about how it affects our bottom line because that's part of our DNA. That's what we want to be and that's why we're in business. A lot of people think about us because of that. It puts pressure on us, to be honest, but you know, how am I going to compete with my main competitor, Drum Books, who's owned by PC&A, if I'm not drastically more creative? I can't. I mean, I just can't. You know, they're bigger. Creativity is your answer to consolidation. For the distributors, I would think it's about the same.

I know that this is a favorite quote of Danny Rosen's at Brand Fuel, where he often talks about where there's mystery, there's margin. And it's a great comment, and I think that, I mean, that might come across as negative, But I think that where there is creativity, I think all of a sudden you're inspiring the client with what they can do with the promotion. And I think at that point, that's where price objections just start to melt away. So yes, it takes more time. Yes, there's a creative resource that you may have to build into the cost of this, but now you're competing in a much different arena. It's just interesting. Interesting to note how drastically the price objections or price comparisons drop when there's an element of creativity in the proposal. How many times does an average right sleeve rep get, "I found this on the internet for cheaper. Can you meet the price?" I'm sure it happens, but—

We've always been a creative company, but especially over maybe the last 3 or 4 years, I've seen us kind of taking it more seriously as like you have to be creative every time. And I've noticed the amount of price objections we get going down a lot. It's also things like when I started at the company, we had an online catalog on our website with product and prices and we don't anymore. We don't talk about price in our marketing. We don't talk about any of that. And as I've seen us move away from us talking about price and just talking about the creativity, I find we get grinded on price a little bit less by people. It doesn't come up. Every once in a while somebody's still like, "Hey, check out this link from 4imprint." I'm like, "That's cool. You should buy it there." Or that's like, I'll talk them through, I'll do like the cheesy apples to apples thing. I'll talk them through why what we're showing them, unless it's the exact same product, then it's another challenge. I think about this a lot because the question is, How does creativity impact your margin? It gets us higher margins.

Boring is the alternative to creativity. Commodity. A couple of thoughts on this, and one is the idea of getting those creative projects, working with clients, and actually landing them. They can be hard. Sometimes you go into it thinking you're going to get really good margin. Just because of all the variables or maybe unknowns, the margin isn't great. We've started to view some of those projects, though, as marketing endeavors. And, you know, my business partner always talks about them as the eye candy. And for us, it might be upcycling products. You know, we upcycled ski uniforms into tote bags, and that story has a lot of legs. It was a really hard project, but it was an incredible outcome. And the story has brought us business, and the story has brought us clients. So there's that side of it, is thinking about it as getting this incredible product to then tell, you know, the story over and over and over again to bring people to you. But the other thing that I feel like we're starting to identify is you can get very efficient with creativity. And an example for us would be we do these one idea decks and it's like, here's the trend, here's how it might look with your brand. It's a single product. And we do it for all our top accounts or key prospects, and we've just started to do this. It's the same trend for everybody that we think that trend would work well with in terms of their branding. It's one piece of design work that then we just swap out slightly across our portfolio, and it's a very efficient exercise, but it feels really unique and bespoke and creative for the end user. Not confusing creativity always with lots of time, lots of cost. We do these little giveaway packs that are kitted in a way that creates this almost unboxing experience. And they're $1.50 a pop. They are inexpensive, but the way we've pulled it together, it's like a tattoo and a pin and a sticker, but the experience and the kitting and the packaging has made it a really creative product. So I think people sometimes get caught up in it has to be expensive or it has to be complex, but it can be simple if you just tie it together in a way that's kind of unique or just a little bit different.

The industry is a scenus, and let me— be patient, let me explain, because this is not my word. This is from Brian Eno. You probably know the music producer Brian Eno that used the term scenus, which is a portmanteau of the word genius, genius plus scene. So, some examples are Greenwich Village and the folk movement, the impressionists. So, a quote from Brian Eno, "Like all art students, I was encouraged to believe that there were a few great figures like Picasso and Kandinsky, Rembrandt and so on who sort of appeared out of nowhere and produced artistic revolution. That wasn't really a true picture. What really happened was that there was sometimes very fertile scenes involving lots and lots of people, some of them artists, some of them collectors, some curators." thinkers, theorists, all sorts of people who created a kind of ecology of talent. And out of that ecology arose some wonderful work. So here's a broad question: how does collaboration fuel creativity? Not just the typical, hey supplier, here's my project. How does it accelerate creativity? And we're looking for answers here about how we can use our collaboration between suppliers and distributors to make better projects, build bigger projects, and we're forcing ourselves to think outside of the boxes even we have, and we've got a pretty progressive audience sitting around the table here.

Well, I was just going to make the observation that you know that feeling you get, forget about the industry for a second, but you know that feeling you get when you're brainstorming with a friend or a colleague about something that's exciting, right? You're painting this picture about We can do this. And your friend then chimes in and says, yes, this could be great. And how about this angle? And then there's this great creative energy that comes from that. I think that in my experience, when that happens with a supplier, it's really exciting because you're both charging towards this common vision. So if let's say there's a— I mean, we in the day did some really exciting work with Red Bull. Where there were a number of really neat events that they were producing that we played a big role in producing merchandise for. I remember speaking to various suppliers that we were working with on that merchandise, and it was really exciting to explain what this client was up to, what they were trying to achieve, and the role that we played in it, and to then get ideas about how we could to produce this A, on budget. Some of the just-in-time inventory was also really, really important with this particular program. I know that we were able to get ideas that we wouldn't have got on our own because the supplier was as equally excited as we were about servicing that client. Then of course, you have examples where that doesn't happen at all and it's really shitty, but I think that's an example of where it's exciting. I know that we've also had of examples with Skucamp and Skucon, just even with the merchandise we've done, all the partners that have come on board are excited about what that represents and the kinds of people that are there and the kind of merchandise that can, that can be produced and the types of designs that can be produced. And it's really exciting to work on both sides when both parties are equally excited about where you're both going together.

I just want to speak to something that's maybe not directly to the question, Although the preamble to the question was awesome. But it's around the kind of human element of it. And as you get to know your suppliers better, and you just mentioned, I thought of it because you mentioned SKU camp and the SKU con. And for us, I can think of two suppliers where we came home and changed our programs over to them because I met them, I liked them, I felt like they understood what we're trying to achieve as a, very particular kind of brand, using our business to drive change and social and environmental outcomes. They didn't nod off or their narcolepsy didn't kick in as we were talking about our passion. They actually got excited with us. Those are the people we want. We have enormous fidelity to our suppliers because of our supplier onboarding and how important supply chain is to us. When I get even a glimpse of engagement from a supplier on that. We get it all day long from our clients. Our clients call us because of that. So we get that sort of juice from our clients, but it's kind of rare on the supplier side, to be honest. And so when we find someone who gets excited and we can talk about the paper stock and where it's coming from, or the refurbished brewery and the labor that goes into printing umbrellas, I come home and we change our supply chain as a result. It gets to the importance of distributors not shopping out of catalogs, to going to the shows, to meeting, to having the people come in and do PKs. It's so critical because you understand them and they understand you, and it makes all the difference in the world. Yeah.

You just brought up something really important, and I'm chasing, sort of going off on a tangent here. You, because of the nature of your company and your DNA, and because of your sustainable focus, you naturally have a very controlled environment from the standpoint of your suppliers. Most distributors do not, and they think that they should do business with practically everyone. Yet I've noticed that productivity and creativity increase when you take that pool, you shrink it down smaller, because you can only have deep relationships with few people not everyone. So not only does that maximize your creative ability, it maximizes everything. Time you spend with those suppliers, the bottom line. On the back end, just the accounting nightmare of working with 250, 350 vendors a year is outrageous. So even distributors, maybe there's new distributors in the business, who they go to the shows and they see that they can do business with everyone. It's not wise to do business with everyone. We all know that if you've ever tried it like we did. In a very painful way. But it does affect creativity because you aren't able to enter into a relationship. For example, I asked you a question once, Pierre, about what people do not know about Chameleon-like. They do not know what we know now walking the floor about how much you are capable of.

Yeah. And to the human element, again, pick up the phone, right? I mean, once you met someone, I think, but There is collaboration, creativity. Emails has its limit. I love emails. I mean, I'm not trying to be, you know, those kids, they all do email. No, it's not that. You know, they do and they should. But if you talk about creativity and collaboration, there's nothing like talking.

I just want to speak to the idea of collaboration, not vertically but horizontally. And I think that's, again, thinking about the future. Historically for me, this industry felt like there was a lot of— the walls were high. People were very secretive. I'll always remember the day I was in Eaton Centre and I cold-called Mark to tell him I had a competitor crush on him. It was scary and I was a little bit nervous, like I'm calling this stranger to essentially say, "I just admire your company and we're in Vancouver and we're not in the same space, but I just feel like I could learn from you. And you just so happen to be who you are. And so we had a great connection and we've nurtured a friendship from then. But it's one thing to share behind the scenes. And wouldn't it be interesting if there was more collaboration across competitors to work on projects together, to land clients together? And we've done a little bit of that. And again, we're so unique that we have this thing that not many people in our industry have. And we're getting more competitors calling us saying, hey, Hey, can you come and work with us on this campaign or issue that is your expertise, not ours? We've been forced into conversations with competitors through clients who say, you're these little guys up in Canada, you can't service the scale of our company, you'll never pretty much be able to service the scale of our company, we'd love you to work with our mainstream huge distributor supplier, and we get on the phone and those folks, I literally have had a distributor competitor say to me, the only reason I'm talking to you is because this big client asked. I think my boss would be really uncomfortable if he knew I was on the phone with a competitor. I don't understand why we're having this phone call. And I was like, OK, like super different call than when I called Mark, right? Or like whatever. I think that is next frontier is that horizontal collaboration, not just this vertical. Collaboration. So it's interesting to see where that might go.

That's a great point.

To just kind of tie that to the introduction that you had to this question, building that community of suppliers and of distributors, that's something that I've never even seen or even thought about what you were talking about, Stephen, where we work horizontally saying, oh hey, ETS, you're bringing in this new collection of mugs, maybe we can bring in a new collection of materials for our journal covers that would match and you can have coffee and note time in the morning, you know what I mean? And I really think that it's the community, like you said, you can't evolve, you can't bring about a revolution without having more than one person buying into it. And I think that, not to kind of get any brown on my nose, not that it's not already brown, but that like Common Skew really brings that together, that's the next step, that's the gateway into it. And so you're seeing that collaboration between suppliers and distributors or even scrolling through the feed and saying, oh, hey, where can I get a really good mug? And me as a supplier saying, oh, have you tried this person? Have you tried ETS? Have you tried Gary Line or whatever?

I love that. This leads right into the next question, maybe our last question here on this topic. What does the future of collaboration look like? And I'm going to— this is going to sound like a setup because I work for Commonsku, but I really can't think of anyone better than Mark Graham to answer this question. So, uh, let me know.

I have no idea.

Let me tell you about our Collaborate tool. I know.

No, hey, hang on, hang on.

So let me actually build a widget for this.

Steven asked me earlier— Steven asked me, to be fair to people that are listening, Steven asked me He's like, is this whole topic a setup for collab— the collaborate feature? I'm like, no, it's really not. This topic is paramount to the success.

That's a Steven Musgrave.

One of my key roles at Right Sleeve is giving people at Common Skew a hard time. Yeah, head skeptic.

All right, so Mark, how can suppliers and distributors collaborate better together? I think we're sitting around a table with a lot of folks who already understand this topic, know this topic. Love this topic and work hard at it every day. You're talking to a young entrepreneur or let's say someone who's 3 or 4 years into their business. How can they better collaborate with supplier? I'll ask you, Mark, the distributor, that, and then I'll ask Pierre the same question.

How can we do this better? So I'm pretty optimistic about the state of affairs, and I was going to give 2 reasons for this. I think number 1 is that the conversation we're having around this table today is not a new one. You hear great panels at the Power Summit, at NALC, at events well beyond Common Skew events about collaboration and sharing. And I think you're seeing more of that conversation happening more now than ever before. And I can say that in my— I got into the industry in the late '90s, I know at that point it was— I was this little kid at the time and I felt like I was walking into this very conservative adult world where people had the walls up. That does not feel the same way as much. Now, the other thing I was going to say is that I think that younger entrepreneurs in this industry, and I've been lucky to have been involved in some mentor relationships through Promo Kitchen, with a number of younger either salespeople or distributor entrepreneurs that are getting into the business. It's refreshing to know that their outlook out of the gate is almost collaborative by default, as opposed to this weird concept of, "I'm not going to share information with you." I find that interesting, so it's almost like I don't need to go on about, "Hey, you should trust your partner." I think at the end of the day, a lot of those distributors are getting that by default. I don't know if that's a millennial thing, but I think that you're seeing a lot more open-mindedness, which is, I think, very encouraging. I'm not answering the question about what the future of collaboration looks like, because I think the future of collaboration is more of what we're talking about right now. What we've got around this table with technically competitors speaking to one another and also a partner with Pierre, I think this is the high watermark. This is fantastic. We need more of this. But the reality is that I don't think that it's just Fair Wear and Right Sleeve and Common Skew and Chameleon that are leading the charge. I give credit to my fellow industry colleagues, and a number of them I think are really stepping up as well. Yeah. And so that, that's my message a message of positivity.

I thought it was kind of interesting on the ride up. This is default for you guys, but I thought it was very interesting on the ride here, the three of us, meaning Steven and Denise, Right Sleeve, Fareware, and then I used to be with Robin, talked shop the whole way and shared information and ideas as a default. It really is wonderful to see that happen in the business, particularly if you've seen the walls.

The first EMEs, I mean, I met you at an EME and that was before Common Skew. And I noticed the craving of distributors talking to other distributors. They loved it. That was brand new, right? Like because of the evening thing and all that, and they would all really love it. And I think that goes to show, I think it's a generation thing. The walls are down. It's not direct and indirect. There's no secret. But then they're like, oh my God, we can talk and learn so much more. You know, from, from our fellow distributors.

I was just going to say, like, even as we're talking, I think there's some practical things that we could all do. And Stephen, you were talking about merchandising collections, and I was thinking about how often we pull together these beautiful decks where we do have 3 or 4 products and they look gorgeous together and you guys never see them. And to be— to be able to show you what we've done with your product as part of a collection or a bigger project And I just realized we don't show you that, or even earlier I was flipping through that deck and there's one element in this big merchandise program that we could potentially collaborate on. But what was interesting, it's like, well, here's the branding and here's the box and here's the t-shirt and here's like, here's how you fit in. And I don't know that we think to do it. And even taking that step, right?

Taking that step.

Well, the only thing that I want to go back to is your comment about sharing the collections. Sharing those ideas with the suppliers. One of the things that we are unfortunately not ever really— very rarely ever known about is the actual collections being shared. If— I mean, I don't know, we would be so floored if we knew that our virtuals, our samples, our specs were actually being used in the project. It would fuel us, it would fuel our collaboration, and I'm telling you, it would make it such a big impact. So I would definitely think that You know, that's a huge, huge thing. It motivates.

It's just like when we showed you how we sent it over, right? And then the person that worked on that, probably it's drop shipped and they've never seen it. And how do they feel when they get that? Well, that's how we feel. That's our way of saying, please also show us what you do with our product. I mean, it's each time. I mean, we really— I mean, the girl who quoted on it, that we really get excited because what you do is so much more than the product that we do. Absolutely.

And I was just to kind of piggyback on Pierre is, you know, when we see what you're doing with our products and what you're using it for, because maybe when we came up with the ideas, we didn't get that part of the brief, it helps us with other distributors who have similar projects to say, hey, you know, I worked on something like that with this person. I think it would really work for what you're doing too.

Let me take that a little further too. Distributors will often follow up on their customers with how, you know, did the product turn out okay, did it arrive on time, but distributors who probably enter the 301, 401 experience start asking, how did this impact your event? How did your company feel? How did recipients feel? How did your top brass feel about this project and how it impacted the business? And that's the kind of feedback we can get ourselves and then pass on to you as well.

This is kind of like aha moment of this conversation of my message to distributors is please, please tell us what you do with what we do. That's great. Because it just fuels our purpose.

While we were just talking, I just sent an email to somebody at our company because one of the projects I was most excited on this year has like one of your books in it. I was just like, yo, did we get a picture of the whole kit together? Can you send it to me so I can show it to them?

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Thank you.

It's great. Sometimes we live in this little bubble sometimes of just being— again, I hate to use the word supplier because I don't feel like Chameleon-like is a supplier. We're not. We, we are more a consultant agency that does really cool creative stuff for our clients, right? But sometimes we live in this bubble and we go on these day-to-day activities when we don't know how you use our products. It would be very, very interesting and very helpful to have that information.

Great point, great point. So we're wrapping up here, but typically in a conversation like this, somebody said, "Damn it, I wish I would have said this," but the conversation's gone and the topic is gone. Does anyone have anything else they want to add to this conversation before we close?

My only question was sometimes you hear, "Oh, you know, you lead with the creative, but you need those commodity orders to pay the bills," right? Right. And so I wonder if if that's still the mindset. And I believe in that to some degree, you lead with the creative, but it's hard to make money with the super custom stuff. Sometimes you need that commodity thing.

So, the question then to distributors, is that the case? Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's still true. I'm going to let Steven answer that though, because he's in the trenches with that.

I was kind of laughing a bit because when you were talking about the leading with creativity, but you need the commodity stuff sometimes, one of the The things I find can happen if you lead with creativity and the creativity is good enough and you land that really awesome order, 2 years from now, that'll be like your commodity order where they're just like, "Yeah, we need another 10,000." I was like, "All right, here's your sales order. Don't worry about it." Like you did all that hard work like a couple years ago. So it's pretty hard to do that right out of the gate, but I was just chuckling to myself as you were saying it, 'cause I definitely have orders now where We put so much work into it upfront and now it's just like, "You guys are out. You need some more?" They're like, "Perfect.

Send us a sales order." I'm like, "Great, done." Maybe the moral of the story is be so creative that it'll turn into commodity order.

Well, I also think it's when we talk about creativity too, one of the other things, if we're talking about creative items with cool artwork and things like that versus commodity items that are a little bit more stock, I think one of the things that distributors in particular need to do when they're thinking about creativity is like, you can— like when I was talking before about combining products from different suppliers together in a way that makes them a nice set, it's like, I love custom artwork, I love cool products that are different than what other people are doing, but sometimes like figuring out some weird logistical problem that your client has that they couldn't figure out, something like that takes just as much, a different kind of creativity, but still creativity, and it's that That kind of thing, like, so taking a commodity item but selling it to them, like helping them with it in a way that's not just like— The number of times a client— like, we'll have something go wrong with an order and a client, we'll fix it for the client right away and they'll be like, "The other person just like— we had problems before and they wouldn't call us back when we told them there was a problem." Like, just little things like that where it's like these commodity projects, if you just help the client in the right way with it, can be Not that calling a client back is creative, but you know what I mean? It's like sometimes it doesn't take that much to turn it into a really positive experience, and it doesn't all have to be about the product.

I think too, I just want to add that it's easy to take for granted what we do as creativity, and a recent example for us was actually around Common Ski U and the platform and specifically that present at the presentation stage, and we realize that we take for granted how we show people product and that it's quite unique. And we've started to frame up our presentations as opposed to, you know, click here, his presentation. We now say our collaborative cloud-based presentation software lets you do this, here's how you can use it, here's how you can collaborate within your organization. And it's just interesting to see how it's kind of changed. People are like, what? I'm like, yeah, you can look at this on your phone, and you can share it with people, and that itself is— Mark's giving me money over here. We're in America. I'm expecting American money. But it is in differentiating, like not taking for granted. And I think what often happens— I know. What happens, to your point, is you do something really creative for someone, and then you start to pitch it to other folks in non-competing spaces. And you forget that it's really creative because it was once. And so now it's a commodity for you, but it's still blowing people's minds, but you forget to kind of frame it in a way that makes it exciting. And I think even how we deliver, for those of you who are on the platform, it's like for us, we're starting to recognize that even our delivery mechanism is an opportunity to collaborate and it's a point of innovation or differentiation and we're framing it in a bit of a different way.

Even just the number of clients, and I'm angling for a little bit of a payout from Mark here, But the number of clients who've commented to me that like they just felt more secure when they knew that they were actually clicking approve on a form to approve their order instead of just having somebody in an email be like, we got it, let's do it. Like they felt more secure, but yeah, it is like the presentations are a thing where it's like I've been sending them to people at Rightsly for like 6 years now, so I forget that they're cool, but we have a lot of clients when it's new clients, even like big, It's not a terribly complex thing to be sending them, and we're sending these to people at giant technology companies, and they're like, "This is so cool. I've never seen anything like this." I call them curated mini catalogs. That's what we just throw the word curation in there because it makes us sound cool. Nice.

I love it. It's kind of cool when you see Facebook commenting on presentations. It's like, "Oh, that's kind of neat." Yeah.

Well, guys, thank you so much. Stephen with Right Sleeve, Denise Fairware, Mark Graham, CommsQ, and Right Sleeve, and of course Pierre, Jasmine, Alex. Thank you for opening your business home to us. Thank you for the wine, the chocolates, the wonderful tour. I have to say, at lunch we were talking with your team and they asked if— Mark asked a good question about can we define the culture of your company? And everyone we met is warm, inviting, collaborative as a default. That stem— that comes from the top. I just want to thank you for opening your business home to us today, and we really appreciate it. Cheers!

Thank you.

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SKU Cast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SKU Cast on iTunes or to our blog blog at community.commskew.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.