[EP 10] Modern Merchant Podcast: How to Evaluate a New Distributor w/ Educators Resource

Below, you will find a transcript of the episode.

Austin Rose:

Looks like we are live. Welcome to the Modern Merchant Podcast. I’m Austin. We’ve got a really good episode today. We’re going to be talking about how to evaluate a new distributor. And we have a guest on today, obviously besides Travis, CEO of Flxpoint. We have Frank at Educators Resource. Frank, thanks for jumping on.

Frank Trice:

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Austin Rose:

Absolutely. It’s always great catching up with you and talking with you. Frank works for Educators Resource, and they have been a really long partner of ours at Inventory Source. And now with us ramping up Flxpoint, we’re helping out a few other customers of yours. Just give us a quick little readers’ digest about your background and a little bit more about Educators Resource.

Frank Trice:

Sure. Sure. So gosh, I’ve been here at Educators Resource for about 12 years now, and I was really hired to help the brick-and-mortar customers, and have completely failed at that. Now we’re doing pretty much almost 100% e-commerce fulfillment in the education space.

Frank Trice:

So I’m the sales manager here, and our company’s growing, gosh, about $2 million a year for the past three or four years. So COVID hit, and we thought it was going to slow down and it just sped up. And back to school started about four months ago, and that’s not let up. Yeah, so we’re just hanging onto the bucking bronco that is e-commerce right now, so [inaudible 00:01:36].

Austin Rose:

Nice.

Frank Trice:

Nice to be on your show.

Travis Mariea:

Awesome.

Austin Rose:

Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome to hear. And I bet you guys got some stories just in regards to where you guys started, whether that was brick-and-mortar, to just shifting online and e-commerce, and maybe we’ll get into that here in a little bit.

Austin Rose:

So starting off, obviously the podcast, we like to talk about what’s happening in e-commerce and retail this week. Some interesting headlines, I just pulled some stuff that I thought would be interesting to maybe talk about a little bit.

Austin Rose:

One thing, Walmart teamed with a D2C brand called Bubble. This is the bid to tap into the Gen Z market, which is kind of interesting. Walmart’s trying to stay hip. I think Bubble’s products are cheaper clay masks and toners and cleaners primarily geared around the younger skin. So I don’t know, I thought that was interesting, Walmart trying to tap into the Gen Z market.

Austin Rose:

Another one which I feel I would never see a headline like this is 30 new stores opened up in June and July for Ross, and Ross is sticking to a plan of over 3,000 locations that they want to open. So it’s kind of like a post-pandemic thing to open up more brick-and-mortar stores, which was interesting. Everything’s shifting online, so I thought that was an interesting headline.

Austin Rose:

Another one that I feel like we’re seeing nowadays, and it’s in the next one as well, is Macy’s is debuting a private-label apparel brand. It’s called And Now This, which I feel is not proper grammar. But I guess the brand is touted to trend-forward pieces at affordable price points. So what’s interesting here, and I’m about to talk about another one, Dick’s Sporting Goods is opening up five new store concepts. And I read a little bit on that, where these big retailers are doing a D2C brand push of their own private-label branding and own private-label apparel. So I thought that was interesting.

Austin Rose:

And to piggyback off Dick’s Sporting Goods testing five new store concepts, they are doing sports facilities now in their stores. There’s one that had a brand new rock wall that they created in there. So I thought that was cool. I know at Dick’s Sporting Goods they always have a small simulator for the golf section, which I always like, the putting green, and then we see people create havoc on the putting green or anything like that. But they’re doing that, they’re doing a D2C private-label brand, and it sounds like they’re doing a little bit more stuff. So that’s interesting to see the big-box retailers doing more D2C stuff.

Austin Rose:

And then another one which I feel like I’ve haven’t heard about with this brand, a few months after they went for a more direct-to-consumer strategy, Wilson’s Sporting Goods is opening up its first brick-and-mortar store in I guess a popular neighborhood in Chicago. So it’s just interesting seeing more of these big brands and big retailers going direct to consumers and opening brick-and-mortar stores like the pandemic never happened.

Austin Rose:

So I don’t know, just some interesting headlines. Travis, do you have any thoughts on some of these?

Travis Mariea:

We’re switching over to Wi-Fi now. Am I good? Am I coming through?

Austin Rose:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Travis Mariea:

Switched over different Wi-Fi.

Austin Rose:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Travis Mariea:

Cool. All right, good. Yeah. So the first thing that pops out to me is really this… Well, I mean, Walmart, honestly, they know what they’re doing. I mean, they’re leaning on TikToK, and they know their next buyer is coming through. And you think about the commodity items that Walmart really pushes, and the brand side of things has not always been there. It’s not really their forte. It’s about things you just need, and honestly, a lot of back-to-school stuff, I’m sure. Obviously people are shopping at Walmart there.

Travis Mariea:

But yeah, I mean, it makes sense. They’re going after the younger side of things, so there’s no doubt that. There’s been a trend that we’ve seen from Walmart with the TikTok partnership and all of that.

Travis Mariea:

Ross, the initial one with Ross is interesting because they’re staying on brand. They’ve been saying this for a while. Ross and TJ Maxx have been anti-online. Everyone’s got a strategy. Some people, this works a lot, you go the opposite route of everyone else and you get noticed. So it seems like they’re continuing with that strategy.

Travis Mariea:

Those are the two big ones. I think there are other ones making sense, obviously, with online becoming a bigger deal. And Dick’s, they are a very online digital-forward type company. They’re a big dropshipper. They’re an advocate for dropshipping. Getting people into the stores makes a lot of sense. You need to build your brand in a different way, so that one makes sense.

Travis Mariea:

But now I’m curious, Frank, I don’t know how much you deal with Walmart or Ross, and it’s just being in your space, if anything kind of [crosstalk 00:06:34] there?

Frank Trice:

Sure. Well, what sticks out is the Rosses and the TJ Maxxes, there’s always going to be ladies that need that shirt for the event that they didn’t know they had, and they need it now. E-commerce is not fast enough for them. So they need immediate help. They have an event that pops up. They’ve got to get something quick.

Frank Trice:

And I see the same thing in Dick’s Sporting Goods and Academy. My son’s a tennis player, and you lose a cooler or you’ve got to have one of those pop-up seats for the courts, and so there is no waiting even overnight for an Amazon Prime delivery or whatever the case may be. So when I go in, I see all the softball players and basketball players, baseball players, I’ll run in to get something quick.

Frank Trice:

And having some of those more interesting storefronts that have something other than just racks of clothes, having the experience, having some sort of sensory experience like the climbing wall, they probably know what they’re doing too. You want to get people in there and hang out and play a little bit.

Travis Mariea:

Yeah. It’s like if you think about it, you’re seeing more and more people buy off Instagram when they’re not really looking to buy. You’re just scrolling, scrolling, you go, “Oh, that’s a cool shirt, that’s a cool hat,” and you decide to buy. It’s essentially the same kind of concept here. “Let’s go to the rock wall, then let’s go climbing for a little bit.” And then, “By the way, I need a new rope, I need some more chalk, I need new shoes,” whatever.

Travis Mariea:

So it’s a lot tougher to build that out, a lot more capital intensive to build out experiences. But it seems like everyone was talking about that pre-pandemic. I think Nordstrom or Macy’s or maybe both were talking about re-envisioning their stores as experiences.

Travis Mariea:

And it seems the pandemic halted that for a lot of people, or at least slowed it down, but this seems like a point in the right direction, where retail online is obviously accelerating, but in-store experiences and just brick-and-mortar is not going anywhere. It’s just going to be different, it seems.

Frank Trice:

Yeah.

Austin Rose:

That was a good point. So yeah, quick little recap of the week in e-commerce. Let’s get into the bulk of things.

Austin Rose:

We work very closely with Educators Resource, one of the top distributors that we partner with, and there’s always this conversation of, “How do I evaluate a new distributor to work with? How do I re-engage relationships with distributors or wholesale suppliers, dropshippers, things like that.” There’s just all this conversation of fostering this relationship.

Austin Rose:

So let’s start at the bootstraps, at the beginning, and that’s just finding a wholesale distributor. Obviously the big thing is supplier directories, Inventory Source supplier directories, SaleHoo, Worldwide Brands. I’m sure, Frank, you’re on a handful, Educators Resource is on a handful of directories.

Austin Rose:

And really, back in the day, and it’s probably picking up now, I know we just recently went to a trade show, but trade shows were the way to find distributors to work with brands, to work with to source products from. Is there any other thing that pops out to you, Frank, or a good way to find just companies in general, or maybe places you guys are marketing on, that people just don’t know about?

Frank Trice:

Yeah. I mean, since trade shows… I remember trade shows. I mean, I think they will rebound. I think people want to have that experience again. And we go to the education trade shows, the ed markets and some of the catalog trade shows where people can discover us.

Frank Trice:

I would say probably the majority of the folks find us straight up with just a regular Google search, because they’re looking for a wholesaler in the education space, and we’re the only main one. There are some people that play on the periphery of what we do, but if you want to sell educational supplies, you’ve got to talk to us. So we really just see people funnel through us directly that way.

Frank Trice:

And I think what’s important for your customers is, whoever the wholesaler they’re talking to, is to really reach out and make a connection, a telephone call with the sales manager. Just talk to them a little bit, tell them what you’re trying to accomplish, and they may save you a lot of time. May not be the right company for you, or it may not be able to fulfill what you’re trying to accomplish. And instead of sending a bunch of emails back and forth and getting set up and going down the wrong road, maybe have just a baseline conversation before you waste everyone’s time, I think might be a good solution there too.

Austin Rose:

So you would say starting the conversation with a wholesale supplier. So if I’m on a trade show wherever or whenever, I’ve found a distributor in my space, and I’m curious to get a conversation, so you think that personal touch of a phone call is really going to set everybody up for success, rather than just back and forth emailing?

Frank Trice:

You get a lot of emails every day. I get 400 emails every day, and I get 15 Amazon sellers, eBay sellers, every day. And I don’t particularly want to work with all of them. I will say that if it’s a Flxpoint or an Inventory Source customer, regardless if they’re playing in that space, we work with that.

Frank Trice:

So that’s one great selling point for you guys, is that if they come through Inventory Source, if they mention that anywhere in our little inquiry form, we’re going to give you the time of day. We’re going to open the account. And we don’t do that for everybody, or anybody, really. So that’s a good feather in [inaudible 00:12:14] cap.

Austin Rose:

Nice.

Travis Mariea:

I’ll send a check. The check’s in the mail, Frank, appreciate that.

Frank Trice:

Perfect. [crosstalk 00:12:21] I said Venmo.

Travis Mariea:

There you go. Yeah, a carrier pigeon will be delivering it. Yeah, I’m just curious, since we’re talking about that, I’m assuming you’re saying that really because a lot of the initial setup is technical, there’s basically a lot of hoops that someone needs to jump through to get going, especially if they’re dropshipping. And I mean, I guess you’re always looking for partners like us, and just in general to streamline that onboarding process. Would you say that’s one of the biggest hurdles in bringing on new resellers, is the technical conversation, or what else might be there?

Frank Trice:

Well, I think the main thing is you just want to differentiate yourself from so much noise. There’s so many people that are going through the process. And so I think, like I said, reaching out and having the conversation, and so I will remember you. I’ll remember your voice. I’ll remember what you’re trying to accomplish, what part of the country you’re in.

Frank Trice:

I think that’s going to work for any wholesaler. And that sales manager’s going to give you some tips or hints that’s not on the onboarding documents. “There’s nothing on the website for this tip that I’ll tell you about,” or it may be a common mistake, and we’re not going to put the common mistakes in the frequently asked questions.

Frank Trice:

So just having that quick conversation, and that’s probably the best way to kick off any relationship with any wholesaler. I think just having a conversation, 15 minutes, but it’s important. And I remember those customers and try to go a little bit above and beyond for those types of guys.

Travis Mariea:

Yeah. And it seems there’s a lot of content out there, and we’re in the space so we see it a lot. But just in general, I come from running an agency where I always heard the new thing was starting an agency or starting a content or educational course or whatever on how to make money online or how to get… It’s probably not true they’re looking around.

Travis Mariea:

It seems like e-commerce has definitely picked up. Shopify has pushed a lot of people selling online. Amazon has been fostering an ecosystem around reselling products and private-labeling products. And so I do see it a lot where, you mentioned, Amazon, eBay resellers are coming out of the woodwork. They’re coming out of everywhere. And there’s all these courses on how to resell branded items or how to private-label.

Travis Mariea:

So I’m curious how you guys think about it, because each distributor is a little bit different in how they might approach it and think about it. Some are saying, “Hey, we don’t allow anyone to sell on Amazon or eBay.” Some have a vetting process. I’m just curious, how do you guys approach these sellers?

Frank Trice:

I mean, yeah, we have a vetting process now. If your website is under construction, I don’t really care to talk to you. I don’t really care. It just really doesn’t matter to me if you’re under construction. I’m looking for people who have experience, people who actually work with other wholesalers. They understand how it works, how everything flows, how to deal with the content.

Frank Trice:

And I like when they work with Inventory Source, you guys keep them between the navigational beacons. You’ll instruct them what to do, how to sell our products, make sure they’re not selling the Amazon products that they’re not supposed to or no Amazon products. That’s why we work with pretty much every customer y’all bring us.

Frank Trice:

There are people coming from other directions, and they don’t really know all the different rules or don’t know what MAP is. They don’t know what MSRP is. They don’t know these just very basic things. I don’t have time to… And I bet you all of the wholesale distributors, none of them have time to teach anybody. So that’s not my thing. I don’t have time to teach anyone. I really want to work with people that are already moving and know what’s going on.

Travis Mariea:

And you guys still see value in the experienced Amazon seller, right, because you guys are sticking true to being a distributor. We’ve seen some that say, “You know what, for Amazon we just do it, and we don’t allow anyone else to compete with us on the same ASIN.” But it sounds like you guys still see value in allowing at least some people that come and work on the same ASIN?

Frank Trice:

We still do. I mean, I have really, really big Amazon customers, I’d say about five that are multimillion-dollar Amazon sellers. They all seem to be able to play in the same sandbox. They don’t seem to step on each other’s toes when I see a product, our product. And there’s still a lot of older teachers that are not web savvy, don’t care to order through the internet, so there’s always there’s always that.

Frank Trice:

We got into the e-commerce game in ’98, which is early for most people, and really poured a lot of resources into the EDI part of it about five years ago, and so we knew that was the future. Our customers that probably do the best, that really do the best, they just have great abilities to find synergies, or they are buying in bulk and maybe they’re bringing products to a warehouse and then redistributing. Maybe they’re not just using us as a dropship service. Maybe they’re buying in bulk.

Frank Trice:

Maybe they’re doing backend stuff in another country. We have customers of Indian persuasion. They are in New Jersey, but their family is in India, and they’re doing all the stuff. They’re making the orders overnight. So we see an order drop in at midnight where someone was where it was daylight. Over there, they’re actually putting the orders together, doing a lot of work. So that’s our highest-end e-commerce customers, and it’s pretty impressive to see how they do it.

Travis Mariea:

Yeah. And so the larger online retailers, it sounds like, are sending you a lot of Pos. You mentioned you’d be invested in EDI. Are they coming to you with EDI specs each time and saying, “We want to integrate”?

Travis Mariea:

Obviously in the mid-market, we’re going to help with these connector stories where Inventory Source helps with the technical stuff, and so does Flxpoint. But are you seeing and having to build to custom EDI specs often? I don’t know if you can speak to that or if it’s out of your control?

Frank Trice:

No, we really don’t. Yes, and that’s a little bit out of my area. But no, we don’t. We have just our flat, regular EDI, the stuff people have been doing for 25 years, and it works. We don’t do any of the APIs and things like that that are out. We deal with people that are really, really extremely talented and know all the cutting-edge stuff. And we’re like, “We’re not cutting edge.” We’re doing simple handshakes back and forth, and it works, right?

Travis Mariea:

Right.

Frank Trice:

And so it’s all we really need. The only thing is, we have an hourly inventory file, for which we could have a real-time inventory feed. That would probably be the only thing I would wish for. But you don’t have to have that to run a successful, a very large, successful e-commerce company.

Travis Mariea:

Right. Just needs to work, like you said, right. As long as it works.

Frank Trice:

If it works.

Travis Mariea:

Yeah.

Austin Rose:

Should we bring Michelle on? Let’s get her to just do a full-on EDI conversation.

Frank Trice:

She just would tell you, “No, I don’t have time for this.”

Austin Rose:

Oh, man. And I see the emails setting up EDI, because we are ordering through you guys with EDI and, yeah, that’s a fun conversation.

Frank Trice:

We’re very happy to show. We have a great EDI team and support system, but she was the main integrator, especially with Inventory Source. And she has a new person named Dean that is in her office becoming the second Michelle, and we’re really excited about that. We needed him a couple of years ago, but I’m glad he’s learning. And so maybe Michelle can take a vacation or something. So we’re excited about that.

Frank Trice:

We’re trying to get some redundancies. We had some growing pains. We grew so fast that we have people that are just really important, like our warehouse manager. There’s entirely too much load on him, and we needed some redundancy so the guy can take a break. And we see that in our director of IS and our warehouse guy, so we’re bringing the COO in to kind of help him out.

Frank Trice:

And then we’re bringing in some expediters, someone that goes in between customer care and our IT department, because we have a lot of IT problems that customer care doesn’t really know if it’s an IT problem, is it a partner problem, is it just a customer who doesn’t know what they’re talking about issue?

Frank Trice:

We’ve got an expediter in there right now. He’s going to be learning how all these things work and trying to figure out the problems. We’re all problem-solving every day, and this guy, his job’s to figure out where that problem’s coming from. So we’re excited about that.

Austin Rose:

That’s a good point. So you say the growing pains right now, because I’m really curious, I mean, you guys have been, from what you said, just growing exponentially. What do you guys deal with from a warehousing perspective or shipping perspective that’s been difficult to get over?

Austin Rose:

Is it the manpower? I know a big thing with warehouse management and shipping is getting seasonal workers in and hiring the right people, training the right people, and getting ready for back to school. Is that like what you guys have been dealing with issue-wise?

Frank Trice:

I mean, so it’s been weird. We’ve always had to ramp up a huge amount, so maybe like 75 warehouse employees would have to come in at the beginning of June and work all the way through August. So you’ve got lots of college kids and that sort of thing.

Frank Trice:

This is the first year we’ve actually allowed seniors in high school. I think you had to be 16 or 18, but people that are still in high school could come to work for us. And instead of having a batch for the season, we’ve had one that started in like April, basically, so it’s been kind of crazy.

Frank Trice:

It’s tough. Working in a warehouse is really tough. There’s no air conditioning. We have big fans. We have the big-ass fans all over the packing stations, big 20-foot fans. It’s pretty cool, and that does help. We’ve had an extremely rainy Mobile, so we’ve had like 47 inches of rain, which has actually been good, keeping the temperatures down. When it rains in the warehouse, it cools everything down.

Frank Trice:

But I mean, our biggest issues are getting enough inventory in. So we have about…

Frank Trice:

… and get all the Wi-Fi set up for the scanners and so we can do the packing at this other distribution center. So all these little different growing pains just put a lot of pressure on IT. He’s running from place to place. And then we have our digital merchandising and sales. It’s at an office downtown in Mobile, so about 10 miles away from our warehouse. That’s how much we’ve grown. We’ve run out of office space. So now the IT guys have to come down and fix our printer, reset routers or whatever, stuff like that, so [crosstalk 00:23:07].

Travis Mariea:

Yeah. Well, with that kind of growth, I mean, you guys, I don’t know if you’ve had time to even stop and think what’s next. I mean, you have increased revenue coming through. Are there any major initiatives that got pulled forward or things that you guys are thinking about as far as driving the business in a new direction or just faster? What are you guys thinking about for something new?

Frank Trice:

Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of adjacent industries, or verticals. We’re looking at fine arts and some different things that would just go right with school supplies. We don’t really want to get into the office supply industry because there’s people that do all that. There’s major, major guys that are all in that with DCs all over the place. But, yeah, we’re just looking for these little opportunities that no one really seems to be filling.

Frank Trice:

So I think the guys, Jack and Brad Summersell, who started the company and have been here much longer than I have, always have their antennae up. And then when we’re talking to vendors or even some of our bigger customers, we’re asking like, “What are your pains? What are you having trouble getting?” We’re constantly probing to see what their pain is, and maybe there’s a way that we could solve that.

Frank Trice:

But right now, we’re just not seeing an end in the education space. I think there’s multi billions of dollars that are being pushed into schools to help them, and just recently. And they’ve got to spend all that money, and some subset of that will float through our customers and through us, I would imagine. So I’m just trying to hang on right now.

Travis Mariea:

Nice. Well, you guys are definitely progressive in that you’ve got so many SKUs, you’ve got a lot of customers, and you don’t really have to, it seems, engage in the dropship business, because you’re the number one player in your space. And a lot of these distributors will just say, “We don’t dropship. You’ve got to buy at least this minimum,” or whatever it might be.

Travis Mariea:

What have you guys thought about… I guess when did you start dropshipping? Were you part of that decision? Maybe it was before, maybe it wasn’t. And how do you guys see it as a strategic advantage?

Frank Trice:

Well, I mean, to be able to ship one product in a box is pretty valuable. Our brick-and-mortars, as they realize that they… The problem is we have so many SKUs, and any brick-and-mortar store would always need to have 18,000 SKUs, but nobody has the shelf-room for that. So they started really begging for that. Probably right when I came on, it was really starting to become a bigger thing.

Frank Trice:

So we were setting up accounts and child accounts. One might get a fulfillment account that had a freight allowance, and then we had another account that was designed for dropshipping and may have been able to use SurePost or different shipping options that would be helpful for that. And so that’s just become bigger and bigger and bigger over the past 12 years.

Frank Trice:

And it’s been interesting to see how the shipping options have changed, like SurePost used to be a really terrible way to send products. UPS would send the product to the post office, and it would sit there, and it wouldn’t go. Even though the post office is going to all those residential addresses, it wouldn’t get there. I don’t know what… They didn’t think it was important, I guess.

Frank Trice:

So now the post office understands e-commerce a little better. I think that’s making things flow a little. I mean, I get all my SurePost packages really quickly now. So that’s probably what the majority of our customers are utilizing for a really low-cost option.

Travis Mariea:

Yeah. So dropship, obviously your customers are asking for it. So your customers ask enough, good customers ask, you end up doing it, right? That’s basically the story there.

Frank Trice:

Make them happy.

Travis Mariea:

Yeah.

Frank Trice:

Make them happy.

Travis Mariea:

And then you guys are able to figure it out, which it sounds like was an investment. And that’s a huge competitive advantage and gives you guys that foothold even more so in your space.

Travis Mariea:

There’s one other question, I’m just curious, just having so many SKUs, having a lot of resellers being around in the business for so long, the data side of things, has that evolved at all? How do you guys use it, maybe that other companies don’t? Just curious to know more about how you guys leverage data to do your job and do it better?

Frank Trice:

Probably the most important part of… Well, when you say data, I think our digital merchandising team, which is one of the reasons why we had to move to these new offices downtown, is with about eight to 12 digital merchandisers who are constantly working on all the content, the still images, the video images.

Frank Trice:

And they’re working with the vendors trying to get them to fill out our enhanced content templates. So you have spreadsheets that have 120, 200 different — probably more than that, that’s probably the last time I’ve looked — but different columns of data for each little product. And this becomes extremely important when we push stuff like an Office Depot or a Staples or a Target or Kroger. We work with some of those guys too, and they want as much data as possible, and utilize that.

Frank Trice:

So there’s just folks working on those all the time, and they’re helping get products into different portals and that sort of thing. So it’s extremely important to have really good folks, and our folks are just a cut above. They’re all really super smart. I mean, our biggest challenge is keeping them, because they’re usually very smart and very impressive and want to move up the ladder. And so they’re going to go somewhere else if we don’t make them happy.

Travis Mariea:

Right. And so product data, right. So the first thing that came up in your mind when I talked about data was product data. And that makes a lot of sense.

Frank Trice:

Product, yes.

Travis Mariea:

Yeah, makes a lot of sense, because that’s a huge differentiator for a distributor. I mean, that’s a value add. I mean, logistics is number one when you think about a distributor and just having access to the product, but getting the products from a brand who doesn’t take much time to really build out the data, rewrite descriptions and things like that, that’s a huge piece of what your reseller’s looking for, right?

Frank Trice:

Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, so we deal with a lot of really small mom-and-pop sort of vendors that we bring in, and they’re just very unsophisticated. They’ve been making a product that the teacher loves, but it’s very basic. I’m talking about time timers and seat sacks, little sacks that go on the back of a kid’s desk that has a little pocket. These are very non-technical things, and so you kind of have to drag them into the 21st century.

Frank Trice:

And so I need to have all this data. I’ve got to have it all. It has to be right. And so I think we’ve been pretty successful with that. And when we realize when someone’s just not capable but it’s a good product, we’re just going to do all the work ourselves. We’re going to do all the images. We’re just going to do it all ourselves, because we have to have robust data. It’s got to be right. You have to vet it and make sure it’s right, but it’d be nice if they’d give it to us correctly in the first place.

Travis Mariea:

Sure. Sure.

Frank Trice:

And I think as far as data in general about our business and where we’re selling things, what part of the country, I think there’s tons of improvement that we could… Like we don’t even focus on that, because we just haven’t had time to. There’s probably so much more that our company could really do if we just had an opportunity to sit back and relax.

Frank Trice:

So that’s not my job. It’s probably the CEO’s and the executive vice president’s job, but maybe one day we’ll get to take a breath and start focusing on all those other things too.

Travis Mariea:

Yeah. Yeah. I always have to ask about that, because we see it a lot where you lose a lot of that insight as a distributor when you sell in bulk. You sell, like you said, those kids’ seats. You sell a couple of pallets of that at the start of a season, and you never know when that picks up sales. You don’t know if that’s sold all on the first day or the last day of the season. I mean, you see the reorders, but it’s such a lagging indicator that it’s tough to really tell.

Travis Mariea:

With dropship, we see that being an advantage. I don’t know, I’m sure you guys at some point are going to dive more into it or maybe someone is, but in general, seeing those dropship orders come in and seeing them happen in real time, essentially, has been a huge thing we’ve noticed with distributors picking up on that data and then helping that buying process.

Travis Mariea:

Because we talked about trade shows earlier, going to trade shows, you look at your past sales data, what did it do last quarter, what did we do the quarter before that? But I think we’re seeing more with dropship and just real-time sales transactions, this buying cycle is speeding up, because you have that data in your hands. So it’ll be interesting to see how that evolves.

Frank Trice:

Yeah. I mean, we’re currently hiring a CEO that’s going to be someone above the warehouse manager and someone who works probably over the director of IT as well. We’re literally in the hiring process right now. And I’m just thinking about what sort of genius do we need to run that? It’s a beast. I mean, to have all the warehouse experience and all the IT infrastructure experience, and to marry that all together, I don’t know what person… I’m really excited to see who it’s going to be, because they’re really going to have to know what’s up.

Frank Trice:

Hopefully they’ll have some experience in some of the more high-tech warehouses. I like to think we’re high-tech, but there’s no robots yet. We do have a machine that’s going to be automatically boxing products. It’s, I think, on the way. Really excited about that. If you see the big rolls of corrugated boxing material, and it pre-cuts, and the product goes in, and it measures it with a laser, it makes the box and sends it out the other side. So we’re about to get one of those, so we’re very excited about that.

Travis Mariea:

Yeah, that’s amazing. That is really cool. I bet the warehouse technology space is just… I mean, it is blowing up. We’re seeing all this investment go into three 3PLs and warehouse management systems, and I bet we’re just going to see some really cool stuff in the next 10 years, really in five years, in the warehouse space.

Travis Mariea:

We had Aaron from ShipHero on last week, and I just saw an email newsletter from him today where they’re actually doing something where there’s a camera above each packer. When they’re packing the items into a box, it’s automatically taking a picture before they close it up just to confirm what’s in that box for customer fraud, I guess you want to call it. Or just if it’s an outsourced warehouse, making sure you’re putting in a black T-shirt not a blue T-shirt. So really interesting stuff, I think, on the horizon

Frank Trice:

No, we get very small issues, damages, and you’re like, “Did the UPS guy damage it, did our packer pack it incorrectly, did they put a bowling ball on top of an egg carton?” sort of situation. We’ll see heavy things with light things, that sort of thing. And oh, my gosh, if we had cameras taking pictures all along, then we could go back and use that as training for our packers.

Travis Mariea:

There you go.

Frank Trice:

We’re still bringing in people that may not have done this before, and they’re making just thousands of decisions about how to put things in a box, make sure it’s not wasting space, and packing it correctly so that UPS can deliver it without being broken. Those types of things are pretty cool to see, like cameras that are [crosstalk 00:34:33].

Travis Mariea:

That’s really cool. Do you guys have a Publix in Mobile, like a grocery store, Publix? [crosstalk 00:34:39] Whatever it is, it really is. I don’t know what they do there, the training, but they seem to have it down where they know how to make it… They’re not putting the eggs and the milk jug together each time, so whatever they’ve got going on, they got some tips along the way, I’m sure.

Frank Trice:

If you could take a Publix and Chick-fil-A, the people that do the training I mean, you could… I mean, they should run NASA, probably, I’d imagine so. Yeah, I mean, we could always work on our training. Our HR person, we’ve got new HR folks running our hiring and training, and it just becomes more and more important. People expect the best, and so you’ve got to hire the best you can and train them the best you can.

Travis Mariea:

Yeah.

Frank Trice:

So we’re trying to do it.

Travis Mariea:

Yeah.

Austin Rose:

Excellent. Yeah. No, there’s some good stuff there, guys. I appreciate you guys taking away with it. Really don’t have any more questions. Travis, do you have any more questions for Frank?

Travis Mariea:

No. I really hit all the ones. I was really curious to learn more about your guys’ business. We see you guys doing great and just killing it, and it was really interesting to learn more about it. I don’t know, was there anything that you felt like we should have chatted about that we didn’t, anything we didn’t discuss or we missed?

Frank Trice:

No, no. I got to bring up some of the things I’m excited about, some of the new hires and some of the additions we’re making to our warehouse and how we’re growing. And I mean, we’re really excited. I mean, I feel I have some job security over the next couple of years. There’s so much to accomplish.

Frank Trice:

It’s nice working with great partners like you that make things easy. When I have a big problem that’s not getting any sort of assistance, I can reach out to one of you guys and say, “Hey, help.” And I usually, even if it’s late on a Friday, I get a response back, so that’s nice. I enjoy working with you guys, and hope we can continue to do this over the next few years for sure.

Austin Rose:

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, we enjoy your partnership as well. Well, perfect. Thanks for jumping on, Frank. We really appreciate it. I think we talked about a lot of good stuff. It’s funny that robots and warehouses popped up again. Might be a recurring theme.

Austin Rose:

Everybody who’s going to be listening in on this, give us a little plug on why someone would want to check out Educators Resource.

Frank Trice:

Well, I mean, if you’ve got a teacher or a parent or just children in your life, our products are going to speak to any of those customers. So I think everyone knows someone like that, and our products are valuable, and they ship out the next day, and we’ve got good data. So come visit, come visit us.

Austin Rose:

I think a lot of people picked up some good stuff there. And it was funny, the whole time you were talking, I’m thinking of my fiancee, and she’s going into a new school. She’s been at her old school as a teacher. She’s going back to fifth grade, Godspeed, fifth grade’s wild. But she’s just going through all of the stuff that she needs for her new classroom, because this school goes above and beyond compared to the last school that she was with, with just anything like decorations and all that stuff.

Austin Rose:

And as you were going through all of that, I’m thinking, “Okay, what does she need? Why does she need to go to a brick-and-mortar store? What can she get on Amazon?” And yeah, with back to school, this ended up being a perfect little podcast.

Frank Trice:

It’s perfect timing.

Austin Rose:

Exactly. Frank, thank you so much for jumping on, Travis, as always, as well. So if you guys want to check out the podcast, the podcast is on Spotify and Stitcher, Apple Music, live streaming every Tuesday, or usually Tuesday, sometimes Thursdays, on YouTube. Check us out there, subscribe there. Frank, thanks again. And see everybody on the next one.

Frank Trice:

All right. Take care.

Austin Rose:

Take care.

Travis Mariea:

Thanks, guys.