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Consumer Product Innovation: Scaling Retail Brands with Anish Patel · The Growth Class with Phil Masiello

• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Growth Class where we deconstruct what it really takes to scale, innovate, and build sustainable revenue engines.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: My guest today is a founder who's mastered the art of physical product innovation and consumer brands at scale.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: He's the founder and president of Ashtel Studios, a premier consumer product and personal care manufacturer that has landed on the Inc.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: 5000 list of America's fastest growing companies.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Starting from the ground up, he built Ashtel Studios into an industry powerhouse handling everything from brand incubation and design to global manufacturing, massive retail distribution.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: So whether it's bringing disruptive oral care brands to market or navigating complex supply chains knows what it takes to pivot, perform, and turn raw product vision into a multi-million dollar growth.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: So welcome to the growth class, the founder and president of Ashtel Studios, Anish Patel.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Anish.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for taking the time to join us.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Phil, how are you today?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: So so if you could just take us back, I I know I I tried to do a do you justice with the intro, but if you could just take us back to how you started, you know, what you were doing before, how you got into this, and and how you uh have scaled it.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this whole uh journey started 25 years ago out of my dorm room.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's one of those stories.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was a graphic designer, um, initially just doing web design out of my dorm room uh for faculty members on campus.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And from there, once I graduated, I started doing like lots of different small businesses.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of the businesses I ran into was a dental supply company.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: It got me intrigued when I was helping that gentleman with his uh website and his catalog.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of these phone calls coming in of dental offices complaining about you know service and things that uh they needed for digital equipment.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time I was trying to find a way to make some good revenue.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, just really trying to figure out my path where I wanted to go.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I found a little niche in the dental industry and started uh my second division, I guess you can call it, which was Ashtel Dental.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole premises of that business was to convert dental offices from film to digital.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And while going through that journey, um I built that business up, um, you know, selling to over 10,000 dental practices over the US.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the challenges I ran into with that business was um we would sell equipment, it was a one-time sale, and every year I had to keep chasing more and more business because there was no repeatable business in there.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I was looking for something where I could build into uh some kind of a repeatable business where once I acquired a customer, they would be with me for the long term.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And once again, another fluke.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was at a trade show, my neighbor happened to be a toothbrush manufacturer at that time.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And as you know, during trade shows you have a lot of little mini gaps, and you know, you're chit-chatting with your neighbors, and he's like, Hey, why don't you come to my factory and I'll show you how a toothbrush is made.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So went to his facility, was got blown away by how a toothbrush was made.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And what I was really blown away was by was the cost of manufacturing the toothbrush.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: So my designer mine, I came back uh from that trip, and the first thing I did was took a piece of paper and started sketching.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the idea came about was I'll do something for kids, then I'll do something for teen tweens, and then I'll do something for adults.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the first product I designed was uh a dog.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a little sketch of a dog as a toothbrush.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time I had a kindergarten next to my office.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I took the piece of paper to this kindergarten.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I tossed the kids, like, hey, this was a toothbrush, what would you like it to do?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, they're all excited.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, oh, we want it to bark, we want to sing, we want to do this.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, great.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And by this point, I had a nice network of dental practices I was, you know, uh selling to.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to a lot of these dentists that I'd gotten to know and asked them what would be a great product for kids that they could recommend to their patients.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he'd be like, Well, one of the biggest problems we find with brushing today is um, you know, guiding them to brush the right way.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: So making sure they go to the back teeth, the front teeth, kind of walking them through that.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can figure out how to do that, that could be an amazing product.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: So my first ever invention was a talking timer toothbrush for kids.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I got into actually creating a product.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that journey was a several-year journey just trying to figure out how to make it.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because no one had put a chip inside a toothbrush and make it waterproof at that time.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a different story I can share one day.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, we finally did make the product, took it to retail.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and every single retailer I took it to said no.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, Well, you're one SKU company, we don't know if you'll survive the next year.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the following year I made more characters, um, took it back.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, Well, it's still one SKU, just different characters.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: The following year, um, I invented these guys that you see back here.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're called the brush police pop-in.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you press the little belly button of the character, the brush that pops up, so the head actually acts like a little travel case in a way.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Took it again to retail, and they're like, Well, it's only two SKUs, we don't know if you'll be around for the next year.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it got a bit frustrating, you know, three years of rejections.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um went back to my roots of web designing, developed the e-com site, started selling online.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I could not make it to a point where it was sustainable.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: So my dental business was supporting this part of the business.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I was looking for a way to market this online through influencers, mommy bloggers, and different creative ways.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So this is back in 2009, 2010, I was doing research and trying to find a way to market this product.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the one person every time I went on social media, so at this time there was MySpace, Friends, YouTube was taking off, you remember.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so the one person that kept popping up, um, and every time I would go to his channel and he would get over 100,000 followers or 200,000 followers, was Justin Bieber.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this is when my I guess business mind clicked, and I'm like, well, if I could partner with him to do something, it would be amazing.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So while I was trying to navigate to find a way to get a hold of his management team, um, I came up with the idea that okay, try the kids, didn't work too well, let's go to the teen tween, and he has a massive teen teen following.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, can I create something for teenagers that makes it very unique?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: So came up with this idea of a singing toothbrush where you would have two buttons, one for morning and for night, so we encourage them to brush twice a day.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then the song would play for two minutes, which is the long time that dentists recommend you brush your teeth.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you when you press the button, plays for two minutes and then it'll kind of get them to brush their teeth.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um so pitched that idea initially did not go through too well, kept refining it, and finally we ended up getting the deal done.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so this was beginning uh beginning of 2011.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a pretty massive risk for me because we mortgaged our house, uh, took all the money to get this deal done.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I had a gold mine, I'm like, okay, this is it.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Went back to all the retailers that I'd built over the last four years of you know working through this journey.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And every single retailer said, no, we don't want to take risks with this.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So at this point, I'm all in.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: I have maybe a few thousand dollars left.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um we've paid everything, um, mortgaged everything, and I didn't have a any other way to look at it.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I have to get this product on the shelf because I believe this is gonna be a product that's gonna change the journey for us.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So as I was going through this journey, I was meeting a lot of people, and I ended up running into a broker that um was selling products in the S9 TV department.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, as you know, there's in retail, um you have different categories, you have different shelves, and there's a section called Signon TV, it's a small section, and the products are constantly rotating in there.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I met a buyer, uh so he took me to this retailer, it's one of the largest pharmacies in the world.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um had a meeting with uh the buyer there and the buyer says, Okay, I'll give you a shot, but it's a guaranteed sale, meaning if it doesn't sell, you gotta take everything back.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: I had nothing at that point, so I'm like, I gotta take the risk.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I took the risk, said, Sure, we'll take it.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Got the PO.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this was probably around March of 2011.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: By the end of April, we ended up going to all the other retailers, trying to sign them on, all on.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And in July of that year, we launched the product.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And within two weeks of launching the product, we sell out.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, nice.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the journey of getting into retail, understanding how it all works, getting the product on the shelf, and then sell through.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: By the end of that year, we became the number one selling toothbrush in the market.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, a nobody that basically came into a category and started competing with the CPGs.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where the real journey of understanding retail, understanding shelf space, understanding white spaces, and all that started.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And from that point on, we went from oral care to paper goods to sanitizers to soaps.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're in about 16 different categories.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're distributed in all major retail stores around the US.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we have kind of a very unique model which makes it very different.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we do branded products, we do private label products, and then we do licensed products.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of my journey on how we've got here so far.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now I've I I know that journey, believe me.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've been through that a couple of times.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: I uh and I tell people all the time, you know, you try and make as much noise as possible online if when you can with your products before you go to retail because then you have a little bit more uh negotiating leverage, so to speak, you know, to to work around certain things with retail.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's tough, man.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's tough.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's tough to get in there.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Getting that first skew in, uh it's not easy.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um a lot of people make it seem that way, but it's it's a lot of work, a lot of credit storage.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, everybody wants to go into retail right away, and they don't understand the cost because it's not just about getting into retail.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Once you're in, you get that purchase order, you've got like 60 days to fulfill it.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got to buy all the ingredients that you need, all the product to produce the product, then you deliver it in 60 days, and then it's another 60 days at least before you get paid.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So you're really out for you know 120 days, sometimes 180 days.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: So you've really got to carry that float, and that gets expensive.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then on top of it come the you know, the deductions, the rebates, the discounts, the accruals, the slotting fees, things like that.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like you have to have an accountant with you at all times to just uh deal with what's going on in retail.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: So lots of different challenges that uh just like as you named off.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it these are all learnings when you first get in.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: You think, okay, once you get the product on this and on the shelf, that's it.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's your that's your win.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, that's just the first thing you put the product on.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now you've got to sell the product because if you don't, the back end is it's pretty pretty crazy because uh we had that situation in 2014 uh where the singing toothbrush crashed, it basically that business crashed for us, and when it did, I had millions of dollars worth of product were getting returned.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: I had products in manufacturing that it would destroy.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um we always meant from having a crazy high to a full full-on breakdown where we almost went bankrupt.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to pivot my entire business very quickly to survive through that journey because a lot of people don't realize that if you stop that sell through and it doesn't work, they're gonna come back pretty quick.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And when it comes pretty quick is the faster the money came in, the faster money goes out.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um and if you can't pivot during that time, I mean it can crash pretty quick.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: What what what made it crash?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um well at that time uh it was a lot of the press that was coming out of adjusted.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um so when that happened, retailers didn't want to have the product on the shelf, even though the product was selling really well.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so they decided to pull it off the shelf and return it back to us.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then I had a deal with uh another artist that I was doing at that time where we had finalized the US rights, but unfortunately, last minute another CPG came in, got the rights, so that's another challenge you run into.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we got um pushed out of the US market and uh we only had international markets, so we had l millions of dollars of sales that were pre-confirmed.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I had to give up on all those.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: So navigating those two things, it wasn't easy.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um so that's when we kind of changed our business model, where I went after character licensing.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um so now we have it you know licenses with Disney, Mattel, Hasbro, all the major studios.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started get got into private label uh because it was a low margin uh entry in, but at least we had guaranteed amount of volume that was coming in with private label, and then I had a brand of business, so that's how the three pillars of business became uh what it is today for us.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's smart.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um We what we had a client who who heavily was invested in uh doing deals with celebrities, getting celebrity endorsements and licensing and things like that.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I I kept telling it was too much exposure because one he had one that was with uh a celebrity that, you know, same thing, got arrested and it was just a disaster, and everybody was pulling the product, and they had a their product in Walmart and uh you know it cost a tremendous amount of money, and then there's nothing you can do with it except dump it.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the dollar stores didn't want it, nobody wanted it.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you know, they did that multiple times.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I I said, you know, you I don't know why you keep doing this.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: You're hitting yourself over the head.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's like ridiculous.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, you could be you you could just be doing your own business.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, we we we uh we did a beauty brand early on with a woman named Carol Alt, and she was a model, and um but she was a partner in the business.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: She wasn't any kind of endorsement or anything.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: She was actually a partner, but she was the face of the brand because she had written books on the raw lifestyle.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: We built it around her raw you know, theory.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we launched it on the shopping channels, and that worked out.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: But I am not a fan of celebrity endorsements just because uh of what you what what you said.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can't control it.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's uncontrollable.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Something happens, and the next thing you know, you've invested so heavily in it.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: But it's smart to do uh private label as well, because that that sort of ties you into that retailer a bit, gives you a different um I guess a different relationship with them, so to speak.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been very interesting because having both the branded side and the private label side, the relationship is pretty deep because now we can service both ends of the spectrum for them.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what makes us unique because usually companies only focus on one or the other.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like we actually do both.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it gets us a really interesting uh relationship that we build with our accounts.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: No, it is it's it's it's good.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was in the supermarket business for a while.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: We we had retail stores in Washington, D.C.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: marketing, we got acquired by a supermarket chain, and I had to run the perishable side of it.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: And when we had, we did have some suppliers, you know, in different categories that were doing our private label as well as our um our as well as their own branded product.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: And those were the guys that were in in the office quite often.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: They knew what was going on, and you you needed them and you trusted them.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so the relationship was a lot different than somebody coming in.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: The one thing about retail that I tell people all the time is when when you go into when you go into retail, if you're going into retail with a unique product, it's generally easier to capture the buyer's attention, especially if you've got some uh proven sales numbers behind you, whether you did it online or on Amazon or whatever you did.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, but if you're going in there with a Me Too product and you're just trying to unseat an incumbent, it's going to be very difficult and and very costly.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you're going in there with another pasta sauce, the world does not need another pasta sauce.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: It just question is, you know, what's unique about yours, right?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: So But like you're I I'm I'm surprised you had such a difficult time uh getting your first set of products in because it's targeted towards kids, it was a unique product.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, you know, that that child, that that uh uh focus on children is always a a big deal.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, but anyway.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean our whole strategy is problem solution.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um what what I realized really early on is um that's great, you have a unique product, but what are you gonna do once I put the product on the shelf to drive the sales, right?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that kept coming up where the marketing side of things was one of the things that retailers were very interested in learning is um how are you gonna move the units on that shelf?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can't move them and you don't have a story behind that or how you're gonna drive people to the store to buy it, it doesn't really give them enough conviction to put your product on a shelf.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: I can see that.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, retailers today have become more accountants than they are merchants.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Except uh and everybody bashes Walmart and and and uh Costco, but you know, doing business with them, they actually try and work sales.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they focus on sales more than than anything else.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've done business with Walmart and I think they're one of the most ethical retailers out there in terms of of how they operate.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely Costco.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: But um but you know, i i I think um uh retailers have sort of lost that ability to sell and they focus more on you know the economics of the buy, so to speak.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: So uh so where to now?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Where where are you heading now?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Just building the brand, scaling the brand, coming up with new concepts every day.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: You go home at night while you're sleeping and you come up with a new idea?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Basically.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean we are expanding pretty deep with each account.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: So now it's more of uh how do we get deeper into each of the categories we play in?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um so instead of just having one SKU, how do you get to 10, 20, 30 SKU?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um But overall as a business, you know, we have a vision of trying to hit that billion-dollar enterprise value.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we're trying to get to that level where we hire we're narrowing it down to certain brands that we're really focusing into and building them into uh you know national brand plays, basically.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the big tools we're using is TikTok, um, which has been an enormous uh traffic driver to the retail stores.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's uh changed the game for us.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, for smaller companies like us that don't have the budget of fixed CPG, we're able to now compete at a level where we weren't able to compete before.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um so the budget that we have now can get enough eyeballs where then we can drive those eyeballs to a store and do a conversion.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And as long as our conversions keep going higher, we get more shelf space and we keep boring, we get more expansion.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: So a few of our brands are doing extremely well, and we're betting big on those to try and make them into larger um placements world.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: What what's your biggest retail channel?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh is it drug, is it supermarket, is it uh mass?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually value.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Value.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, value is our largest.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm talking about Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, um, off-price market like TJ Maxx Ross, Burlington.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's where we drive a tremendous amount of volume.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um what we learned very early is uh with these accounts, it's a net net pricing.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you learn your economics very early in time.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you're looking at a product and analyzing down to the penny and where can you save that penny?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: So our supply chain got so uh so strong in being able to service this account that when we went to the masses and the pharmacies, we were really efficient.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: So our pricing strategy was amazing for them.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like we were able to give them the margin that they needed.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: We had enough margin for marketing, and we were able to drive those units for them.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: But value today is still our biggest uh platform.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: We I only did business with the uh with the uh dollar stores once, but it was amazing to me because when I was talking to the uh buyer, he said, you know, I have trucks on the road across the country all the time.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: You tell me where that product is, I'll figure out how to get it here because I probably got a truck driving right by it, and I don't want to drive empty trucks back and forth, you know.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it was amazing to me that they're really in them, well, you know, Walmart, Amazon even to a certain extent, they're in the logistics business and and they have that supply chain so so buttoned down.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and it's it is amazing, you know.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Walmart will figure out how to squeeze two pennies out of a out of out of a cost.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing to me.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but yeah, it's it's interesting.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I was surprised that you when you said value, but I can see it.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I do I do understand it, yeah.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of volume there, man.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, those it's shocking um the amount of volume we can move at a store.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we do items that are doing over a hundred thousand units a week.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so it it that's a surprising channel that people overlook.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we actually really nurtured it and uh we brought innovation to the category at prices that were unheard of, so that's works in our favor.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and now it's become a great channel for us.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: We kind of use it as a channel to really build our brands and build a lot of placement um overall and get a lot of learnings from them that we can then take to other accounts.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's a fantastic story.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: I love the story.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: I lived part of it.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: I won't say all of it, but I lived part of it in the in the early days of of some of the brands that we built.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: But um, yeah, it's a it's a it's and I understand the frustration of you know just continuing to go, but you know, it's there's a definitely a lesson for uh entrepreneurs.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I speak about it all the time with with some of the ones that I'm coaching, which is, you know, you you you've got an idea, you feel comfortable with the idea, you you you really feel like it's great, and you keep pushing and pushing and you get rejection.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: And if you a lot of people will take that rejection and they just say, you know what, forget it.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Or they say, I'm all in and I have to make it work.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when you break through.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you have to make it work and you're gonna continue to push and push, and you know that it's a good product and you know that there's a place for it, that's when good things happen.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times people just stop, turn around, and give up and go back to their life before.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, sometimes it's their wife yelling at them.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm sure it happened.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Especially when you said I mortgaged the house.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um one story to tell people is it surprises them.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like my first skew into Dollar General, I took 36 trips before I got my first order.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: I had 36 rejections before I got my first one.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: And every time I went in, I had a hope.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm gonna get it this time.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna get it this time.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Kept knocking on that door, and finally, when it broke, that feeling is probably one of the best feelings you get as a as a business owner, right?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, I broke in.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: Finally got it done.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Finally got it done.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, we're almost out of time.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Any uh any last uh any last words?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Anything that that people can go and see your products?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Do you sell online at all?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I mean we have multiple brands, but uh if you go to ashtellstudios.com, you'll see all our different brands, and then you'll be able to get to see all the different categories we play in.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Yaya is one of our biggest brands right now, uh, followed by Aru and then Brush Buddies.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um so those are like the three core brands that we have.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: And sorry, Smart Care as well.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: So people can do you actually sell online?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: Do you sell off the website?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we sell online, we sell on Amazon, we sell through all the major retailers, so they can find our products pretty much everywhere.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I appreciate you taking the time to come on, man.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: I uh it's a great story and uh definitely a great story of perseverance.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I'm gonna I'll I'll go and check out your products myself uh when I go to the stores.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't we don't have a lot of dollar stores around here, but uh I'll definitely find one.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, sir.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was a pleasure.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, thank you.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: And have a great day, and we will see you guys next time.