Episode 93: Supplier CMO Series, Jason Lucash with Origaudio

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. Hello and 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. My guest today needs no introduction as he's one of the most highly visible contrarians in the industry today, Jason Lukash. Jason is the CEO of Oregadio, a supplier brand that's equally known for its high-quality products as it is for its quirky personality-driven brand. Jason is a unique guest on the CMO Series as he's not only the CMO of the company, but he's also a co-founder and CEO. I love speaking to CEOs who have marketing in their DNA because they often create the most original and exciting brands in the industry today. This conversation with Jason covers everything from how Aurig Audio positions itself in the marketplace to how Jason's approach to marketing will evolve now that his company was purchased by the Hub Promotional Group. Interesting times lay ahead for the Irascible Jason Lukash. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Hey, Jason Lukash, it's a great pleasure to have you on the Skucast. Thanks so much for being with us today. Welcome to the program.

Thanks for having me, Mark.

So, Jason, for the very few people in the industry who do not know the name Jason Lukash, can you give a little introduction as to what it is that you do?

Maybe it's better that people don't know the name Jason Lukash. So, I'm Jason Lukash, CEO of Aurig Audio, guy guy in charge of marketing and creative at OrgAudio and guy in charge of marketing and creative at Hub Promotional Group now as well, as of 2 months ago.

Yeah, that was a crazy announcement when that happened. At the time of this recording, that was about 2 months ago, September 2018, that you were acquired. And I just remember thinking like, what a crazy announcement, but it was just so exciting to just see how this is going to impact the industry and is also going to impact your role as a marketer. And we'll get into that.

Yeah, a lot of people are waiting with the same anticipation that you are.

I mean, some of us, some of us thought you'd be, uh, on a beach for the rest of your life, but knowing you and Mike, yeah, that's not the way you could be.

But yeah, I'd get sunburned and I wouldn't know what the hell to do with my life all day. So yeah, exactly.

Given that the, the Skewcast here is a podcast that's focusing on the down and dirty of marketing, I wanted to get your perspective as a CEO with a marketing focus, how you balance your time between leading the company as a CEO versus that of being a chief marketing officer.

It's really hard. Uh, Origato, so I'm in charge of marketing and creative, I'm in charge of product development, and I'm in charge of running the company. So those are 3 major things at a pretty good-sized supplier. Based on before the acquisition, we would've probably been about like number 45 or 46 on the top 40 suppliers list based on our math. It's a lot to do. You know, I definitely divide and conquer. It depends on what's going on from a product development perspective because that's usually in seasons, right? We launch product once or twice a year. So that ebbs and flows depending on what goes on. Running the company, that has to be done on a day-to-day basis no matter what, otherwise the company doesn't run. And then the marketing and creative is not really the icing on the cake for me, but that's how I spend at least probably a third to 40% of my time. But if I had my choice, I would just do the marketing and creative all day, every day here at Auric Audio because that's what I love the best.

Can you tell me about the makeup of the marketing team as it exists right now? I mean, we know that you're, you're heading it. You've got some folks that I know work alongside you as well. Can you tell me what they do?

There's me, there's Casey, who's our creative director. He is in charge of all the creative at Oregano, so packaging, graphic design, and so forth. There's Barry, who's our retail marketing manager, so he's in charge of the retail marketing and the brand marketing side of our business. There's Brooklyn, who's our content marketing. She's in charge of all of our video, all of our content. There's Howard, who's taking over as a marketing coordinator too, that's in charge of a lot of more of our client-facing marketing activities. And then Anne, who's a designer and she's a graphic designer on the marketing team as well too.

And, when you think about when you started 9 years ago, were you the marketing department?

Yeah, it was me. We actually didn't have any of these people up until July of 2016. So, I was doing all the marketing along with Huey who was our creative director for a couple years who left a couple months ago. Him and I were kind of heading it up for the first almost 7 years of existence. We've only had a marketing team for almost 2 years.

What was it that happened 2 years ago that caused you to look at your marketing team of 1 or 2 and then decide to blow it up in terms of really adding some headcount to it? Was it purely sales-driven or was there some other shift?

No, I think it was a combination of sales. We were growing, you know, I think in 2017, we— or sorry, 2016, we were like, you know, $13 million in revenue. Oh, I'm up here in the Bay Area, so I moved back up here and I was kind of like a breaking point with my partner, Mike. Not with Mike, but I told Mike I was at a breaking point where I was doing all the jobs for everyone here in our office in Northern California. I was in charge of marketing, I was in charge of product development, I was in charge of purchasing, accounting. And I said, you know, the only way we're really going to scale this business is if we double down and try to bring in more personnel to help fuel the growth and make sure that we stay on the trajectory that we need. So marketing was a big part of it. Not to like devalue multi-line reps or our industry in general, but in a sense, like on the supplier side, no one sells anything at all. We don't actually sell product. You know, I'm not calling Brand VN saying, hey Jim, you want to buy like 1,000 drones? That's not the way it works. There's such an emphasis in this industry on marketing on the supplier side because all we're doing— any supplier in this industry is just marketing our products to distributors, and then it's up to the distributor to go ahead and sell the product to the end user for us. So, you know, I said if we're really going to be a force to be reckoned with in this industry, we have to make a major investment in the marketing side because we're only as good as our company-wide marketing, and that's the only way we're going to grow as a supplier in the promo industry. Right.

That's interesting to hear you say that. So I understand it correctly, you took the funds you had available, or at least for this particular side of the business, and you directed them into marketing almost exclusively, and you took it away from the sales side. Is that right? Because you saw marketing as the thing that would really drive sales as opposed to sales driving sales?

Yeah. Like in 2016, I remember Mike and I were like going back and forth. Should we hire a national sales manager? Should we bring on like more like regional salespeople to help like really sell product. And we said, what value do these people have? And I'm not trying to like throw anyone under the bus here on the supplier side. What value does a national sales manager have, you know, that's managing multi-line reps? Our multi-line reps do their job. Like having someone oversee them isn't really that important. I'd rather have a kick-ass marketer on our team that can maybe help them a little bit managing the multi-line reps instead of having a national sales manager that has no marketing experience whatsoever and is just a salesperson. So we decided then it was better to just bring in some really phenomenal marketers to help fuel the growth of the company and have them do some other jobs like managing our rep force simultaneously.

Right. I mean, that's very different from how a lot of suppliers think. And that doesn't mean that other suppliers have made the wrong decision. It's just that it's very different that you speak to the typical supplier in this industry. They're going to be spending way more money on a sales force than they are in marketing. I suppose like in many things you've done at Auragatio, Jason, it's almost like you flipped the script.

Oh, we tried to because here's my gripe. I'm a marketing person by trade. Before this, I ran, you know, the marketing at JanSport, the backpack company, and before that, Major League Soccer. So I've always done marketing. And you'll agree too, Mark, because you are a marketer, you're creative. Everyone thinks they're a marketing person, right? Andrew, our controller, who will chime in from time to time on like logos, and I'm not just trying to like make fun of Andrew, but he'll say like, hey, this is how we should like rebrand this, or this is how we should do our booth design. Because everyone at one point has done something in marketing. Everyone at one point has either set up a trade show booth or given feedback from like a market research perspective. But everyone thinks they're a marketing person, but the only real marketing people within organizations are marketing people, creatives, right? So we thought, you know, instead of bringing in national sales managers type of personnel, it's better to bring in a marketing person that could be taught how to manage MLRs instead of trying to teach an Apple sales manager how to market.

Yep. Yep. I've also been of the belief, and I think that your story and our story is, is similar even though we're not a supplier, but that marketing is one of the, those things that if it's done well, you can generate a significant ROI on it. It's also the thing that I've found in my experience that if you're young and you're scrappy and you've got no money when you're first starting out, if you can create a great brand and a great personality, it doesn't have to cost a lot of money, but it does cost a lot in creative energy. And, and if you've got that, then it's such a wonderful way of coming into a market that's not necessarily marketing creative driven because you stand out right away. Now, of course, you can get your butt kicked by a competitor that's got 50 salespeople that's blanketing the country. But at the end of the day, you can get a foothold, I think, a lot easier if you invest in that marketing side. So Kudos to you.

If you want to talk marketing budget as well too, we spend nothing. We literally spend hardly anything on marketing. The only marketing we actually spend money on is really trade shows. We've never done traditional advertising. We've never really spent money with ASI from like a pay-for-placement type of thing. We have always done homegrown organic marketing because that's what's worked best for us. So yeah, I definitely think we do things a little differently. Allocating our marketing spend is for sure different than how other people in this industry do it.

Your online presence is really spectacular and engaging, and it's clear that you spent a lot of time and energy in building up your online presence. Within that context, you also spend a fair amount of money on your trade show experience, and at first glance, one might think that that's rather unusual given your expertise in online. But trade show is that one investment that seems to stand out as your significant offline expense. How do you justify that?

As you know better than most, this industry is old school and ass backwards, and trade shows in this industry are super popular because people want to like touch and feel and see what's new. People go to trade shows and take pictures, and that's how they remember all their products of what they're going to sell for the year. So we're definitely not shying away from traditional trade shows. I mean, we're reallocating our spend a little bit. We used to do a lot of like EMEs and facilitates and power meetings, and we actually pulled out of that whole format because we thought the format was a little overlapping and I don't know, it kind of played out a little bit. So we definitely try to put a big emphasis on our trade show booth experience. We don't do traditional trade show booths, as you know, we try to do an outside the box approach to our booths, whether it's, you know, making a secret booth within a booth, having like a bouncer let people into us on like a red carpet. We, we always try to bring our Orgadio special sauce approach to our trade show booth experience, but we, uh, we definitely feel like in our industry, in the promo industry, that's something that's a necessary evil is we have to do the traditional trade show booth as much as I don't want to actually do it.

Right. But isn't that interesting how in our online space everyone is so used to this digital experience now that in some cases this offline approach, when done well and done creatively, can actually create a ton more interest because people just aren't seeing great offline experiences these days. I mean, yeah, an example of that is lumpy mail, right? Like, lumpy mail 10 years ago would have been a waste of time, but now who receives mail?

So I don't even check my mailbox. I actually don't. But we just try to bring more of like a unique experience of the trade show booth, you know, for our industry, for these like promo products. People really want to like touch it, and I think it does better— some of the products do better in person than they do online. So let's take for example like our bags, our backpacks, right? We launched backpacks like 2 years ago. They've done incredibly well. But I honestly think for our backpacks— and I'm not trying to throw other suppliers, you know, under the rug here— our bags online look like other suppliers' bags in this industry. But when you touch and feel and see in person, you see like we spend a lot of money on making sure, you know, our product's retail-grade product. We're building retail bags for the pro industry, but for a picture online, it doesn't do as well as they do in person. People, I think, want to have that touch and feel experience for most of the products in this industry. I'd say apparel is a big one, right? You really want to— you can't tell the quality of a piece of apparel unless you actually touch it sometimes.

Well, and listen, I personally, I mean, I know that I come at it from a distributor perspective as well as that of someone in the software space, but my perspective over the last 15, 20 years in this business is that we're in a very tactile business. I mean, think about what distributors sell to end clients all day long. They sell physical product. Like, that's, that's what our business is all about. And whether it's a Google employee or someone at an insurance company or someone at a summer camp or a school receives some physical product from us, they get excited about that when it's done well. If we didn't have that excitement, then I think we'd be in a much bigger problem in this industry. So it's, it's maybe no surprise that trade shows on the trade side still continue to thrive because you've got these distributor salespeople that need to feel the product because they know that their customers will ultimately be feeling the product.

Yeah, I've seen though, and I'm sure you have too, trade shows like besides PPI, um, let's use other shows I go to. I go to CES, I go to MAGIC, I go to other like big industry shows outside of the pro industry. I've seen those shows shrinking actually and making— those shows are not so much a let's go and see what the latest and greatest product is, is more— they're more experiential. So whether it's like a Google activation at CES, or Samsung's got, you know, like the 4K VR, like motion picture experience type of thing there, it's less and less about product and more or less about getting customers to engage with the brand, is what I've seen. I bet you in the future there's a huge paradigm shift for the actual, like, trade show on-site experience, and way less big booths with the product and more like, hey, what can we do to get customers to engage with our product, right?

And are you exhibiting at MAGIC and CES? Are going there as an attendee?

Yeah, we're going to shop. We used to experience, or we used to exhibit at CES, but, you know, for the exact reason I just mentioned, we pulled out of it because there was very little business being written at the show. 10 years ago when we first did CES, people were actually coming to write orders. We actually like took orders at the show. But now over the last, you know, probably 4, 3 to 4 years ago, it's more like press are going to CES or people are just going to say like, hey, I'm at CES, what can you tell me about your brand? There's less purchasing happening. But we go to shop the markets and just to see what trends at Outdoor Retailer or MAGIC or whatever shows they are. See, but yeah, Berlin, it just depends each year what the hottest show is.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm excited to see what you guys have in store this year, and I'm sure it'll be very different given that there's now this connection with all the other companies, but we'll get into that in a second. All right. So we're gonna switch gears. So let's imagine you're speaking to someone at a dinner party. Who is not from the promotional products industry. You're seated beside this person. You're in San Francisco, so let's say they're in the tech business. How do you describe the Auragadio brand to this person?

Honestly, the thing I say is we make cool shit. And, that's the first thing that always comes out of my mouth because that actually reflects who I am. I mean, you know me pretty well. I tell how it is. People ask, "What do you do? What is Auragadio?" I'm like, "We make cool shit. We make cool lifestyle products. I used to say like 5 years ago, I was like, we make speakers and headphones. But as we've expanded as a brand and, you know, with the product that we're launching at PVI in 2019, we're definitely going way more lifestyle because we see the promo industry going more in the lifestyle direction. So I honestly just tell people we make cool shit. And then people are like, well, where can I buy it? I'm like, well, you can't actually buy it really unless you're a brand director at a big brand or buying promotional products because we private label. So a lot of times you have no idea that we're the ones making it, but we're the cool shit purveyors in the corporate gift space.

And I'm sure you get some raised eyebrows when they're like, what are you talking about? You make cool shit? I ask that because I think it's so interesting when you're, when you're describing this industry or even describing your company and what it is that you do. And as a supplier, it's got to be weird because on one hand you're describing what it is that you do. They then say, well, how can I buy it or get it? And you're like, well, you might want to go speak to such and such a person, or who's the distributor that your marketing person works with? And they're like, what are you talking about? I'm just some software engineer.

Yeah, it's so weird. Luckily for us, we sell retail too, so it's easy. So I tell someone I make cool shit and they're like, well, where can I buy it? I'm like, well, if you want it with your logo, you have to talk to Sam Kabertz of the world, like of the promo distributor. Or if you're just like a person that wants to buy like literally one piece of cool shit, you can buy it on origaido.com. So luckily for us, we have that different channel where we can do that. But for most of the suppliers in this industry, it's super hard to explain.

Yeah, but having that retail channel is huge because most suppliers in our space don't have that. It's a little bit more opaque for them. So what, what is the split approximately? Just give percentages between your retail business and promotional products business.

Retail's 5%. If you asked me this question 6 years ago, it was 80% retail, 20% promo, but now we're 95% promo, 5% retail, but that's growing. I mean, obviously, the scale of our business has gotten a lot bigger in the last couple of years, but I'll say next year, retail will probably represent 10% of our revenue. So we're slowly making dents in it. Will it ever be a true 50/50 split? I highly doubt it, because promo is what we cater and what we kind of build product for, but retail for us is always icing on the cake. And we see retail too as a huge driving factor for brand recognition and brand awareness to help drive promo sales.

Yeah, this is just something I thought of right now, but it's— there's a parallel between what our experience with common SKU and selling software has been. So your retail is the same as our content and event strategy. So content and events is certainly a big part of what we do, but it's not like it is a moneymaker by any stretch. It's something that brings people together. It's great from an engagement perspective within the industry. We have a ton of fun doing doing it. We're not defined from a revenue perspective by our content and events. We're defined by software that we ultimately sell to people. And all this other stuff is like the cherry on top or the whipped cream that just makes things that much more special and recognizable.

I love that. When I was at JanSport, that was my job. I was in charge of events, promo, and corporate marketing for JanSport. So it was all about selling backpacks was the end goal, right? The biggest backpack brand in the world. But My job was literally to go to South by Southwest, Bonnaroo, Coachella, throw like kick-ass parties and experiential events that would just get consumers to engage with the brand, whether it was, you know, college football tailgate tours or whatever. I was that guy that was the cherry on the top. That was my whole job. So that for us was always good because it provided a lot of like marketing content for us to utilize throughout the year from our actual events. But did those events drive sales? Probably not. Did it engage customers with the brand? 100%. So I know it very well. I love that form of marketing. And, you know, like I was saying, for trade show environments changing, I really think more brands are looking for outside-the-box ways to engage with consumers. And I really think events are a big part of the whole marketing sector.

Yeah, absolutely. So on that note, what is the most effective marketing channel for you today?

For the promo side of our business, the most effective form of marketing, I would say, would probably be our monthly, like, self-promo and spec sample e-blast we do. So each month we take some of the new product that we've launched for the year, and we heavily discount it as a self-promo or spec samples special and e-blast it out to our distributor database. It works really well for us. You know, those spec sample self-promo sales generate $20,000 to $50,000 depending on the sale. And for us, they do well because we're different than most suppliers where we literally have no barriers to entry. You can literally order one. So a lot of consumers or a lot of distributors wait throughout the year to see if that item's going to go on sale. It's not an end quantity sale. It's literally for Mark Graham at Right Sleeve to order 10 Right Sleeve branded Presidio backpacks or 10 spec samples to try to open doors with their customers. And that for us has worked really, really well. We do awesome creative video where our video content team here gets me like dancing or doing ridiculous stuff. It's fun. I think I really have seen a lot of orders come from those spec sample self-promo specials that we do each month. That's the backbone of our marketing here at Auric Audio.

Yeah, that's amazing. And, the fact that you've got that flexibility to be able to do those one-offs, it's going to drive cost down for you. You can produce it quickly. And, you're right, I mean, you're not the only supplier to have that experience where putting a Google logo on a speaker for someone like Sam Kabert allows him to walk into Google and have a conversation, right? Hopefully, he gets the order and doesn't go to someone else, but—

Sometimes that happens though. Someone does a Google spec sample, Sam Kaber walks into Google, and then like Google calls Brandvia, you know. Sometimes that happens, but I think what we're different than a lot of other suppliers, these monthly self-promo spec sample specials, we literally just do it at cost. Like, we don't care about making money on it because it's a true marketing expense. Best form of marketing we can have is getting our product in people's hands, and that's worked really, really well for us.

Hey, listen, and if you can charge just your cost, I mean, you're already one step ahead of the game, and I think you're smart to do that because is if you were comping these products and the distributor wasn't paying for it, A, I don't think that they'd be valuing it as much. B, I think you'd be losing a lot more money. But I think when the distributor is invested, then they're a lot more motivated to go out and make sure that they can see an ROI on that investment.

Yeah.

And 10 free spec samples, a lot of salespeople go, well, that was nice of Jason, thanks so much, and phone just rang and they're on to the next thing.

Yeah, we never do free samples ever. We always want to have the distributor have skin in the game. The monthly self-promo and spec sample special is good. And as a company, our policy is literally if you do a spec and it turns into an order, we refund the spec. So it's free, it costs you nothing. And hopefully other suppliers do that. If not, they should be, because that's the best, you know, way to get an order is to get your product in someone else's hands.

Yeah. Okay, so how about the least effective channel? Something that you've tried that you just continue to throw bad money at.

Do you want me to be honest?

Yes.

I won't name the company, but they're pay for placement. I really don't see a big ROI on pay for placement and search results. We tried it a couple of times and we paid for the speaker category to get our product up there in the top 5. We paid for the backpack category to get our product up there in the top 5, and we literally could not track an ROI on it. We didn't know if the orders were actually coming from that search because that's not the way they're set up to give give you that type of data. And we stopped spending money with that organization altogether because we did not see any ROI on it. It was impossible to track. That's the hardest thing about our industry is it's impossible to track really how the sale actually gets generated. Is it Mark walking in to show the product to someone? Is that person searching for it on the web and contacting a distributor? Like, it's impossible. So traditional forms of advertising, pay for placement, we cut altogether about 3 years ago because we saw literally no benefit to doing it and we're just throwing money away.

Yeah, and I'm certainly no expert on pay for placement on from some of the prominent platforms that are out in the industry. But do you think it has anything to do with the fact that your product line is a premium price point?

Yeah.

And some suppliers that are doing products like yours that are a little bit less expensive may show better when they're paying for placement? Like, again, I'm speaking from a point of ignorance, but it's just—

no, you're right though. I actually met with this organization last week because now, for, you know, part of Hub Promotional Group, I'm in charge of the spend for all these different brands. And yeah, Origotti is a premium product, so If someone's typing in speaker, you know, you got our $65 speaker that's showing up there next to like a $3 crappy speaker from XYZ supplier. So it's a little different. But for commodity-based products, I think pay for placement might be a little more beneficial because that person's probably looking for the best value they can provide to their clients. So it just depends. But for us, I think it was a factor. It was two factors. One, it was, you know, we're not commodity product. And two, we were already getting impressions with those, you know, distributors anyways because our reps that were in the field, they're getting our e-blasts, they probably have a sample kit, they met us at a show. So like, we didn't really see the benefits just throwing the money out.

Right, right. What is the biggest marketing challenge facing you today?

The industry?

Why don't you give me 3? Because I think it's a long list.

Okay, so the promo industry, right? That's the biggest marketing challenge I have because We're not on the supplier side. We're literally not selling anything, right? You know, we talked about this a little bit, but I'm not calling Jim Childers at Brandvia and saying, Jim, hey, you want to buy 1,000 drones blank and then figure out whose logos you want to put them on? Like, it's hard because the biggest marketing challenge we have is our whole company and everyone that works at Origadio is a marketing person, right? All we're doing is marketing our product to distributors, and that's a crazy challenge because We can do it the best we possibly can, but then we have to, you know, wait or hope that the distributor can deliver the same message to their end user customer. And that's the double sell approach is very difficult. So I'd honestly say that is the hardest challenge we have is literally trying to make sure the distributor preaches our message the best that we can preach it to them. And, you know, a stagnant old school industry. Luckily there's platforms, you know, Comiskey being one of them that have helped change the way that suppliers can get their product in front of distributors, but it's a slow roll to get this industry really up to the speed of, you know, some of the other industries that are out there. But for me, I honestly think the double-sell approach is really, really hard.

So here's, here's an interesting question because, so I hear you on the mature nature of the business and the other challenge you mentioned, this idea of the whole double-sell, like you're not the one who is selling the product to Google, it's ultimately an organization like a Brandvia or a Jack Nadel or a Whitesleeve or whoever. And that, that can be a great thing or it can be really annoying because you're not directly in touch with that customer. So those are two crappy, frustrating things for a supplier on the marketing side. On the other side, I actually remember it was a podcast a long time ago. You had said something about how you guys started in retail and retail was a pain in the ass because people didn't pay. And then you found the promo industry and you're like, oh my gosh, the promo industry is Like 4 million salespeople.

Yeah, exactly.

Money in the bank. And yeah, it's a great group of people. So how do you, as a marketer, reconcile those two things? So on one hand, promo industry, awesome, because you've got this great sales force and they pay their bills and they're going to rep you guys. Whereas on the other hand, it's old school, mature, and you're not connected directly with the end customer. How do you reconcile those two things? Or is that like the craziness of Jason Lukasch's brain where you're just constantly at war with yourself.

Can I have both? Because that's the best, you know. Can I have retail industry but with promo customers? No, right? So man, it's, it's like seriously, it eats me alive because retail, we could crush it if we had our customers from just from the pro industry, but it's not the case. For the promo side of our business, if I could run direct ads retargeting Instagram story ads, whatever it is, direct to end-user customers, game over, right? We would just dominate the whole, I think, corporate gifting industry, right? But I have to rely on distributors to go out and sell my product. And I love distributors, there's no way around that. That's, you know, the only way we sell corporate branded stuff. But if I could like team up with a distributor that would maybe like split some ad costs, run these ads, ads. That's how we get a lot of our retail direct-to-consumer online sales on our retail site is we pay for acquisition via Google AdWords and Facebook and Instagram and we convert sales left and right because of that. If I could have some distributor partner up with me, maybe like a Harry Iain of the world or whoever it is that's willing to put some skin in the game and run some direct ads to generate some revenue, I think that's kind of like the best hopefully form of marketing out there because if I'm going after that guy that's spending a lot of money on corporate gifts at Google or Twitter or Facebook each year and I can directly get my product or get our message out in front of them somehow, I'm willing to spend money on that, but I need a distributor to help front the cost because I'm not going to process that order.

So, on that note, favorite category of distributor? I know I'm putting you on the spot here and you might be uncomfortable to answer it, but— Online distributors. Or offline distributors?

Offline, honestly, mostly because foreign print, we have never sold to them ever. Interesting. Like zero, which is crazy.

Is that by choice?

No, like we don't know anyone there. We've never talked to them, but now that we're part of Hub Promotion Group, that's like one of Hub's biggest customers, so that's going to change drastically. But honestly, our perfect distributor would be the mid-tier, mid-level distributor that is tech focused that has customers that are willing to pay a premium for goods, right? Here in the Bay Area, I've got 3 or 4 of those guys that we just clean up with because that's kind of who we're making our product for. And across the country, there are those people, whether it's the Sobey's down in Miami, it's the Canary's out here in the Bay Area, it's the CIC's in Chicago, it's the Zorch's of the world. It's the customer, it's the distributor that gets our model and lives and breathes it and pitches it first to the customer. They're the ones who we do the best with. So that's my favorite customer, is the one that understands our model and gets behind us.

Right. And so when you specifically mention the mid-tier distributor, is there, in your experience, the larger a distributor is and maybe the more online they are, does it become more about price and some kind of discussion in the procurement department as opposed to a discussion with a creative rep that really wants to go sell your gear?

It's exactly that. It's— you're talking to the vendor relations and supplier relations people, these huge enterprises, and they're not the ones out there pushing the product. They're not the creatives. They're caring about rebates in their pocket, right? Instead of the Chris's at Sobey's of the world, who are another creative person that's going to go out there and just hustle your product and push it for you. So yeah, it's a little different paradigm, I guess. And that's why we kind of took an outside-the-box approach to getting our customers and our traction in this industry. We start Started with the guys like us, and then slowly you start working with the Staples and the Halos and the I Promote You's and the Geigers of the world, but we always started with the guys that were like us, 'cause they were the ones that we could associate and resonate with.

Right, a little shout out to the great Chris Ferder in Miami. Yeah, Chris is ridiculous. Certainly one of the better creative salespeople in this industry, him and his whole team. So I wanna make sure that we spend a little bit of time talking about Hub. So as people know, or most people in the industry know, in September, you and Mike sold your business to Joe Fleming and his family to now be part of the Hub Promotional Group. And so I'm interested from a marketing perspective how your job now changes drastically.

I'm in charge of all marketing for Hub Promotional Group companies and product development and running Aurig Audio. So that's 3 major things. So We're rebranding, so we're rebranding Hub Promotional Group. The name isn't sexy at all, the image isn't sexy. So one of the first things I'm trying to tackle is the rebrand and the repositioning of what is Hub Promotional Group, or what is, you know, Mark Graham's Toy Company, whatever we call it. What does that look like to the distributor? What do we bring to that distributor? What common— maybe it's like centralized ordering or whatever it is— what value can we bring to the distributor for them to associate and do business with all Hub Promotion Group companies. So one of the first things we're doing literally right now is rebranding it. So we already have a name picked, can't say what it is because we're relaunching it at PPAI, but that's one of the first challenges. And then second, after that, we'll focus on the individual marketing strategies and positioning of each of the brands that are part of, you know, Hub Promotion Group currently. The analogy I've been using for people is Hub Promotion Group is like Procter and Procter Gamble, right? So, the Procter Gamble name isn't that prominent, but all the individual brands are whether it's Tide or Gillette or whatever the brands are that make up P&G. The brands are the forefront and P&G is always the background noise. We have to be very strategic about how we handle that and we want to make sure we go to market as the individual brands because there's a lot of value in the Hub Pens, the Depcos, the Oregadios, the Beacons, all the brands. Names that we've built up over the last 9 to 20 years as individual companies, we don't want to lose that. So it's pretty interesting. It's definitely a different approach to marketing that I haven't really worked with before, but I'm hoping what we've done at Origadio can resonate in our marketing style hopefully at some of these other companies over the next however many years.

Here's my observation as an outsider, and I'd be interested to see whether you agree or disagree with this. My perspective on a company like Auric Audio is that you guys are a brand first and a supplier second. Whereas if I think about a company like Hub or Beacon or Debco, all phenomenal companies that we've had business relationships with for years, I don't see them as brands. I see them as supplier lines. And I don't mean that as a, as a bad thing. I just think you think about a company like Debco, like they, they have been consistent in their marketing that it's like you work with Debco. Debco means a great customer service, a great inventory, great salesperson relationships, but I don't think that anyone would ever mistake them for a sexy brand along the same lines as, say, an Aurigaudio. So I think that your style of marketing, you've really gone after this Aurigaudio is this brand story, whereas the others really come at it as, hey, we're a supplier line, you can, you can trust us. It'll be interesting to see, and maybe you can talk to this a little bit, as to how the marketing guy who is from the brand first, supplier second, now is going to be changing the story for these more traditional supplier lines like Hub and Beacon and Debco. I don't know if I'm missing some other ones, but those are the key ones that come to mind.

It's very difficult, Mark. Like, what I— in the boardroom, what'd you say? Oh, for sure. But I'm also a person where I, I'll fight tooth and nail on something because I like that. I don't know, I was raised by two New Yorkers, like I don't back down, right? So I think it's going to be really difficult to do because you're 100% right. They are suppliers, right? But a lot of them are also like solution providers, which is a little bit different, right? Like I look at DEPCO as, DEPCO is a company up in Canada, but they're a solution provider, right? If you need something quick with excellent customer service somewhere across Canada, you're going to call DEPCO, right? Yeah, you might call Starline, but Debco is the guys that have probably the deepest inventory. They've got the best customer service and they've, they've built a pretty good company up there north of the border, right? So they're a solution provider. What I think we will ultimately do is hopefully build some brands at each of these companies, and I'll use Canyon Leather as an example at Beacon. So Beacon is, you know, a solution provider or promotional supplier, whatever you want to call them, based out of New Ulm, Minnesota, but there's a brand that they've built called Canyon Leather. So Canyon Leather makes super high-end leather goods that are one piece minimum, like really good quality retail stuff sold at retail also, anywhere between $50 to $400 depending on the piece of leather. But that's almost like a sub-brand that's under the Beacon umbrella. So I think maybe we'll make some private label brands and hopefully try to elevate the overall brand presence at each of these individual companies that are part of Hub Promotional Group. But I'm gonna start with building these out, these sub-brands, to try to get some traction and hopefully get some get some people to buy in and then slowly maybe introduce the bigger brand or rebrand the bigger brand. We're going to take it one step at a time and kind of see which direction it goes, but it's a difficult path to get journey down.

So from an org chart perspective, now that, that Auric Audio has been, been bought and you've been brought into this chief marketing operation, what role do the, the VP of marketing or marketing managers at each of these companies now play? They all roll up into you?

Is, is that how it works? Yeah, they do. There's a team of, oh, maybe over 25 people in the company that report to me now from an actual marketing execution standpoint. So designers, graphic designers at each of the brands, brand marketing managers, creative managers, they'll report into me. So what I'm trying to do is, you know, what's the vision for Hub Promotional Group's actual brand marketing, and then what's the vision at each of these brands from an execution standpoint. So each of the brands teams will have to create their own marketing plan throughout the course of the year. We'll make sure they all align. We want to make sure, you know, Hub Pens marketing is not different from Aurig Audio's, you know, marketing actual like strategy. And after that, we'll have each of these teams, each of these brands actually execute them throughout the course of the year with some guidance from out here in the Bay Area with myself and new director of marketing or whatever that we're going to hire at Hub Promotional Group as well to help execute the strategy because it's a lot. Like I was saying earlier too, this is an industry that all we're doing is marketing. We're not selling anything. So there's such an importance that has to be placed on the actual execution of the brand marketing strategy at each of these 7 different companies currently.

I think it's such a— on one hand, if I were putting myself in your shoes, I would think this is the greatest marketing job of all time.

And then the flip side, I don't know about that, but yeah.

Oh my gosh, what have I got myself into?

It's both, man. Like, honestly, you know, I definitely think that I like challenges. You know, if I wanted to, I could ride off into the sunset if I really wanted to, right? Granted, I live in California, it's expensive to live here. But Mike and I sold our company, we could be on a beach someday if we wanted to. But this challenge is pretty awesome. It's, it's definitely like a ton of work and it stresses me out. I'd actually consider myself more stressed now than I was prior to just running Origadio because I have other people that I'm responsible for. But this is a kick-ass, cool challenge. If I can look back on this 5 years from now and we nailed it, that's pretty awesome experience to have in a portfolio or resume or just something to feel good about. So I love it, but it's stressful as hell.

Yeah. Well, and listen, from my perspective, it feels to me like there's an incredible opportunity with what you've got. To create the next big great supplier in this business. And I know that might be a bit of a funny thing to say because Debco and Beacon and certainly Hub are big suppliers as they are right now, but they're not big in the Polyconcept, the hit kind of way, right? And I think that by bringing these groups together, now you cumulatively have got way more revenue. But from a brand perspective, for you to be able to really hone that into a really succinct and cohesive message, I think is very exciting. It's actually very good for the industry as well because it shows a commitment to innovation. And, and I think that we're going to see a lot of change in this space, and, and you're going to be leaving room for some new small to midsize upstarts to take the place of the Auric Audio that is now much larger. And I think that's also really exciting as well, right? There's, there's more room in the ecosystem for other people.

Yeah, I think it's It's amazing. Like, I consider us honestly now, Hub Promotion Group, we technically are the number one hard goods supplier, right? Hard goods only. We don't have any apparel. We're not like PCNA. We're not like Hit. We don't touch apparel. But hard goods only, I consider us actually the number one, not just in terms of revenue, but just product offering and depth, number one hard goods supplier. But we need to unify and have common synergies, right? Like, if you're Mark Graham at Right Sleeve, you don't want want to send in a purchase order for backpacks, drinkware, and pens and send it to 3 different suppliers. There's a lot we need to handle behind the scenes in order to position ourselves closer to the PCNAs and the Hits of the world. But luckily for us, you know, we're all family-run businesses. You know, Mike and I aren't family, but we're technically promo brothers, I guess. All the mindset across all the different companies that are part of HPG currently, family-run businesses, all, you know, entrepreneur or founder started. Kick-ass customer service. I can literally vouch for every company that has like excellent customer service part of Hub currently. And that's something that I think we have a leg up on the competition. And where we take this thing, it's going to be quite the ride. And hopefully distributors are— and then fellow suppliers, like you were saying, are excited about the possibilities for what we have built and are going to continue to build.

Yeah, I, I think that people will be along for the ride, provided you don't screw it up. But you won't.

I hope I don't. And if I did, I'll be first to admit that screwed it up.

Yeah, exactly. But I think you're a fast learner. All right, man, I got 2 more questions and then we can wrap it up. This has been really, really fun. What's on your desk right now?

Hot mess. Actually, no, it's pretty organized. I've got— okay, I've got a stack of hotel receipts from my trip to Asia recently. I've got parts of a new product line we're launching called the Findley Mill. And I'll actually— that's a, that's a common skill exclusive right here. So it's a new line we're launching for our 10-year anniversary next year. It's called the Finley Mill. It's all vintage heritage-inspired stuff. So I've got pieces of that. I've got my old iPhone 6 because I just upgraded to the XS. I've got product samples that I bought at a recent shopping trip that we did in Brooklyn. And I've got a fake plastic shrimp, a little tiny hand with a middle finger sticking up, and I've got a sign that says today will be awesome. So that's what's literally on my desk right now.

There you go. Well, I appreciate it.

That's awesome.

Um, you know, you can always get an interesting sense of people's personalities by what they, what they have. All right, what 3 brands do you admire the most and why? They can be from the industry or non-industry.

Best Made Company out of New York. If I had to describe who I am in a brand, I'm Best Made Company. So just like really cool quirky lifestyle goods, travel-inspired. I really respect Allbirds, the shoe company. I think they do an excellent, excellent job of their marketing and their photographs and their content. Yeah, I'm wearing them right now. Oh, you are? Yeah, so comfortable. Yeah, most comfortable shoes out there, I think. And then last but not least, I respect Everlane. So Everlane, San Francisco started as well too. I respect their marketing and their brand positioning because they're fully transparent. They literally show you how much their stuff costs.. And I think any brand that can do that and still have as much traction and momentum behind them, they've really gained the consumer's mindset and they're going to keep crushing it. So those are my top 3 brands: Best Made, Everlane, and Allbirds.

I really love all 3 of those. That's amazing. Yeah, certainly very interesting brands. And I think what— like my reaction to you naming those brands, it's clear to me that you love these companies that have forged this very strong emotional connection connection between them and their customers and great storytellers. And I mean, it's not surprising that that's an approach that you've employed very effectively at Auric Audio.

I feel like there are also 3 brands too that aren't— I'm not going to name mainstream brands. I'm not going to say Nike, Under Armour, and like Vans or whatever. I'm picking more brands that I think we try to model ourselves after here and we could actually achieve the same status that they have.. So I'm not going to put something multi, multi-billion dollar company in my list of brands because will we ever be like Nike? Probably not, right? But could we be like Allbirds?

For sure we could. I mean, at the end of the day, you're, you're identifying with companies that are plucky. They're fast-growing companies, probably very profitable, taking on a big player in their space, you know, like a Nike, for instance, with Allbirds. I mean, it's a different category, but they are in Ostensibly Nike's market, but they carved out a really cool position for themselves in the marketplace. And that's really, I think, very analogous to what it is you're trying to do. And I think it'll be interesting to see how it is you do that with the new Hub Promotional Group.

Thanks, man. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. Everyone stay tuned for Vegas. It's our first official launch of what's to come in the future.

It's going to be fantastic. Jason, this has been such an awesome marketing conversation. Thanks Thanks so much, sir. 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.