Latest / Beyond The Trailhead / Enlightened Equipment CEO Chris Schawlow | Beyond the Trailhead Podcast Ep. 27

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Enlightened Equipment CEO Chris Schawlow | Beyond the Trailhead Podcast Ep. 27 · Beyond The Trailhead

• speaker-0: All right, everyone, welcome back to Beyond the Trailhead. We got an incredible guest for us this week, or with us this week, not for us, but it's for everybody. But we got Chris over at Enlightened Equipment. Chris, thank you so much for being on this week. I really appreciate you taking the time. speaker-1: No, I appreciate to have it an honor. So I watched a bunch of them and they're really fascinating. Can't hear everybody's story. speaker-0: Awesome. Well, if anybody's been living under a rock for any amount of time, then I've somehow never heard of enlightened equipment. Basically, you guys create a bunch of ⁓ quilts and other products for the trail. And if you're on the AT or PCT or any trail at all, you've probably seen ⁓ one of enlightened equipment's quilts and they're awesome ⁓ from what I understand made in America as well. so without further ado, before I... give a spiel about in-line equipment. I'll let you tell everybody a little bit about in-line equipment and how you guys all started. speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. know, kind of humble beginnings for sure. Tim Marshall is our owner founder. He got going kind of on the DIY, early DIY scene back in, know, I think as early as 2009, you know, but was building stuff from kind of really for like youth groups. He was a church group youth leader, taking kids in back country, realizing that, you know, lighter, especially on the kids was better even for him. And he's very creative guy, kind of started you know, figuring out what the stuff was made out of, finding places to source it, you know, back when like DIY gear supply was kind of new, Thrill Hiker was new, you know, you're paying kind of still premium for materials, but could kind of start, it was edging into that world where you could have access to them, where now like thanks to companies like Ripstop, either, it's prolific, you know, anybody that really has the desire can basically have access to the same materials that we use in like equipment. Yeah. But back, you know, in, in, you know, 2010 era, that was a pretty kind of new idea. lot of people bouncing ideas off of each other, but Tim kind of, yeah, he just started making it mostly for friends, family, youth group things, being an active participant on backpacking light. ⁓ And slowly that kind of morphed into people wanting to, you know, buy one off things from him. ⁓ You know, he, kind of made that leap of faith that all entrepreneurs eventually kind of have to make if they want to go that next level and. ⁓ he took an overnight job where he was, ⁓ you know, more or less sleeping. He was getting paid to sleep, but in the daytime he was watching kids and started cranking out quilts by himself. Yeah. So kind of a wild, ⁓ a wild beginning for sure. ⁓ it kind of quickly, you know, morphed several times in the next couple of years. He hired a couple people. ⁓ he was working actually on cutting things in his basement, sending off shells to friends, families, people. Um, that he knew, you know, that we're close to him. They were basically sewing those things up at his house, sending them back to his house. He stuffing them with down and, very small scale operation, but it was kind of coming together. It was kind of bringing in some dollars. Um, but yeah, 20, uh, 2014, he moved into his first actual building here in Winona. I think it was maybe like 4,000 square feet. Uh, but just crammed to the gills with synthetic pinning tables, couple improvised stuffing machines made out of leaf blowers, glass top cutting tables that you put masonite templates on using Crayola twist crayons to kind of mark everything. And that's really when we started to kind of get some traction. 2016, we moved into our current building that we're in now. It's an old call center for a company called Windcraft that is kind of a I guess a local kind of thing, but significant sized upgrade in the building. I think we're around 50,000 square feet here. ⁓ just started filling it with people and machines and cutting tables. And ⁓ that's about the time that I got involved, 2016. And it was just, yeah, it was fascinating. It was chaos. It was just really exciting to be around. Yeah. speaker-0: That's cool. That's cool. So you've been there since 2016, you said. Yeah. Right. Okay. So how did you or what was your position when you started? speaker-1: Yeah. mean, kind of a, kind of an interesting backstory really. It's like a kind of a, probably one of the riskiest things I've ever done in my career, to be honest. I had an entire, ⁓ about a 12 year career in, in fundraising, not nonprofit leadership. worked for a local Boy Scout council for eight years, camp director. ⁓ that was really close to my heart. have Eagle Scout growing up. Yeah. And so that was a ⁓ tremendous passion for me. That led to some opportunities as an executive director for a big brother's big sister's organization. And then my final landing spot in the nonprofit space was a foundation director at a local college. So that's kind of, that was kind of what I was doing up until the point of coming here. But the coming here part was pretty, pretty wild. I think my family thought I was having a midlife crisis or something. But I had. I'd started to kind of lose some steam on the fundraising, the nonprofit side. was, was either passion wasn't really there anymore. And, and as a result, you know, as a, was starting to really get involved in like the ultra light backpacking scene myself. I was getting some of my buddies kind of involved in it. I basically went out one day, kind of on a lark. I grabbed a Singer sewing machine at Goodwill for 17 bucks and started making hammocks and tarps. Backpacks, was making synthetic ⁓ top quilts and under quilts for my hammock. Kind of actually emulating a lot of the companies in the space already liking lighting equipment. ⁓ It was a thing I kind of kept quiet. I kind of kept it to myself, most of my peers, people in my family didn't really know I was doing it because I kind of felt weird about it. know, like sewing, like some of the people that I did tell I was doing it, I got kind of mixed reactions like, what? Like it makes a makes your sewing things? like what are you up to tonight? I'm sewing things, you know, it was like, it was kind of weird. And similarly to a much smaller scale, I started like a small Facebook marketing business called Driftless Custom Gear. I was making, you know, similarly in the forums, I'd post things, I would get people that say, oh, that's cool. Like, what would it cost to make me a tarp or a hammock? And I was just doing like a little one-off things. Yeah, all the while kind of looking at these bigger brands that were starting to like really hone in on the ultra light backpacking space. As I got more confident, I started to talk to some of my coworkers about it at the college and they were surprisingly interested, think just mostly out of curiosity. So I brought some stuff in to work one day. It was a top quilt and under quilt that I had made for somebody. And the community, education coordinator at the college looked at it and she said, wow, that's really interesting stuff. That's a lot like what enlightened equipment makes. And I was like, yes, it is. How in the world do you know what enlightened equipment is? Yeah. And she said, well, they're in town. They're in they're here in town. ⁓ it was like, what? Yeah. It's like my brains is like fell out of my head. I was like, are we talking about the same thing? And she's like, yeah, they're in the like the little no name. We called it the Cinderella shop. was an old, yeah, was an old fabric kind of store and no signs on the wall, no nothing. You had to get to it from like almost like a side road alley kind of entrance. You'd never know it was there. And ⁓ man, like that was kind of the end of me. know, once I knew that that was in town, I kind of long story short, I reached out to Tim. We ended up meeting up a couple of times and he was in this like crazy scaling, trying to figure it all out mode. And he started to kind of prod me to come work for him. ⁓ And yeah, long story short, I quit my super stable union kick butt job in a career I'd been doing for 12 years and I and made 13 bucks an hour as an R &D sewer. ⁓ speaker-0: No one heard me speaker-1: Um, her name's Jenny. She's our, our still our, our, um, lead production, uh, product designer. Uh, she had been sewing since she was four and she could sew anything. was like, me away. She still does this day what she can do. Yeah. Um, but she didn't have as much backpacking experience. She didn't have like any real industry knowledge. So Tim paired me up with her and she kind of got my sewing chops early spun up. I got to contribute to a lot of big projects like. ⁓ Enigma, know, foot Fox redesign, convert redesign helped, ⁓ you know, design and so set test samples like Torrid jackets, the mitten with like the stronghold men. Now the Torrid men was like my first independent project. ⁓ rain wraps, all of that stuff I got to kind of be part of and, and, ⁓ yeah, help, help through it all. And it was just, ⁓ it was awesome. It was so cool. speaker-0: That's awesome. So you went from there to sewing to your position now, which is? Yeah. So how do you go from? Yeah, I don't know. forget her name, from sewing to CEO. ⁓ speaker-1: CEO. Yeah, I mean, well, I had a couple of things going for me. Like I had been doing leadership for 12 years. Yeah, I was in the space. Like I used the gear. I knew the brands. Like I knew a lot of stuff that a lot of people in the building currently didn't know. They were really just kind of winging it, you know. And so working in R &D gave me this tremendous advantage because I got to learn how all the stuffing stuff works, you know, all the fill schedules, all the everything, you know, how are we cutting things? How are templates made? How does all go together? How are new products being launched into the production spaces? I just got to know so much. I got to know a lot of the people. was kind of in all of the departments simultaneously. And as things really kind of started to like shoot up, ⁓ we needed leadership at a lot of levels. So they kind of took all of production and they split it into a manager of production and a couple, I think they called them production coordinators. speaker-0: Okay. speaker-1: Uh, so I applied for a production coordinator job, which was over all of cutting, stuffing in bags and straps. And, uh, I got that position. That was kind of my first, like, uh, salary role here. uh, yeah, that kind of just kind of continued to lead to opportunities. It was just, I had a pretty well run situation going on. I had a good rapport with Tim and the other managers, the couple administrators that were here. I think they all saw that, you know, what I could bring to the table is a lot of like organizational leadership, ⁓ and just really like good natured with people and kind of cultivated the best out of a lot of my team. And so, yeah, that kind of led to an opportunity once a production manager left, I applied for that. kind of now stepped up. had a couple of coordinators below me and then is kind of layers kept building. There was a need for more of a high level operations person that kind of oversaw. you know, some of logistics and inventory, some of the facilities. I applied for that. got the operations officer, eventually chief operations officer. And then two or three years ago, I kind of invented the CEO role. Like it wasn't a thing, know, Tim, our owner founder was the thing, but, know, he was overwhelmed by it all, you know, like he's an amazingly talented product designer. He's like one of most creative problem solvers I've ever met in my life. But just as the thing started to really kind of grow, I think he just found himself doing a lot of jobs that he didn't want to do. You know, it just wasn't what he came there to do. And I basically just said, like, I could do this for you when, and if you're ready to trust me to do this for you. And you know, over time he kind of, kind of said, yeah, I've trusted to do it now. think it'd be a good opportunity for you and me. So we just kind of went with it. speaker-0: That's cool. I think it speaks volumes for someone who can work their way up through a company. You know, I'm sorry. Like when you can work your way up, you have that trust of everybody in the company. It's not just all of a someone shows up and now they're CEO and now everybody's like, ⁓ who's this guy? think he is. speaker-1: He doesn't know anything. Yeah. Totally. Like it's great because like we have really high retention with our team. So I mean, I a lot of like production specialists, production managers that I mean, I remember bringing them on and teaching them how to sew stuff sacks or straps. And like we have that like immediate rapport, you know, it's like, yeah, like I, I get you, I get what all this is and how it all works. And so I think that just gave me a tremendous leg up. we, we brought in We did bring in some people along the way, like as we needed, you know, help in roles that we didn't really feel like we had the good fit internally. And they were, they've all been failed experiments, you know, it's for the reasons you described, they kind of come in with like a very preconceived, you know, thought about how manufacturing should work, what it should look like, you know, it should all just kind of, but at the end of the day, like that's not us at all. We're such a, like any of our cottage, you know, you know, friends, family, businesses. We don't fit that like to traditional like stamp out the manufacturing mold, you know? And it just, it's different. Like our production team is not sorting things into a bag. They're effectively, we're training them to do craftsmanship level stuff, you know, from basically zero experience most of the time. And it's just, it's interesting. speaker-0: Yeah, I mean, think most businesses can learn from that too. I know it's great when you can bring someone in who has another perspective on things, but it can also have that negative impact of just they come in and think they know everything and they don't work with the company and the way that they've been doing things. Especially when you're been growing a company and it's been successful, that's different than a company that's been... lagging behind and everything else and they need to bring someone in from the outside that has a different perspective on things. guess tell people a little bit about Enlightened Equipment as a business kind of, know, what things you guys offer, but also what kind of sets Enlightened Equipment apart from other brands, I guess. speaker-1: I agree. Yeah. I you know, we've like, we've been pretty deliberate to try to stay in our wheelhouse, ⁓ you know, which is primarily like insulation and some apparel. ⁓ we've dabbled in a lot of things, you know, we've done, you know, very cool, like bug net covers for hammocks and tarps and, extremely popular rain jacket, which, you know, we're, working on some things always with that. It's that's more fabric kind of challenges, but you know, really where The origin story is quilts. know, it's the idea that you can sleep more comfortably and warmer in many cases, lighter, less volume with a sleeping quilt versus sleeping bag. And so really kind of started with Revelation and really everything is kind of a variant on the quilt side of the Revelation. It's just a closed foot box or it's a full zip or it's a closed foot box or the partial zip. You know, apex versions, synthetic versions of them. But really it was a deliberate choice along the way to try to like do that thing really well, you know, try to be as relevant as we can in that particular conversation, ⁓ as opposed to kind of watering herself down and you know, there are like amazing backpack makers out there, like tremendous, you know, tense. There are, there are all things that like, of course we've played with, we've been interested in. I think we've even like developed some pretty cool prototype things of them, but that's a great them We did come out with a torrid synthetic line of apparel, is a jacket, an anorak version of the jacket, mittens, booties, a hood. speaker-0: Sorry to cut you off, like that tour jacket, was just, me and my wife were walking through the airport in ⁓ LaGuardia and I was like, I saw a guy leaning on a pole with like a tour jacket on and I was like, wait, and he's like, he wasn't hiking or anything. He just had the tour jacket on and my wife and I were like, hey, I know that jacket. And I was about to walk over to be like, hey man, I love your jacket. And then I was like, no, it's going to be. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: We had to get going and I was like, okay, my wife said, don't do it. You're just, you know. you're half hour conversation. Exactly, we would have talked forever, so. speaker-1: It's really wild. Like the Torrid jacket, when we developed it, like it really was just the basic idea was, you know, we were, we had actually been working on a down jacket. ⁓ but ultimately, you know, we already had at that point, synthetic booties, ⁓ you know, and we had a synthetic hood and we were kind of like, we felt, I almost think like along the way we kind of felt like we were making it down puffy because that's what everybody expected us to make. And we started to really think about it and we're like, man, we have such a recipe here on other things and it handles moisture so well. handles like body oils and it's durable. You know, you can, you can slash it. Nothing's going to spill out. It can get wet and you can wring it out, dry it in the sun. And it like the size of a jacket, like the benefit of lightweight insulation, especially if you're not going to go like super fill power. If you're going to put like 550 or something in there is pretty minimal, like in terms of loft, you're having to deal with baffle lines and like, know, pinch points where you're at zero loft and lots of things to snag. We like talked ourselves out of a down jacket basically. And we said, well, I guess like nobody's really doing like a synthetic jacket like this. So it's kind of differentiates herself. And we did believe it would be like a better, warmer jacket is the more we started to like run bombs and understand what the weight of it could be. And so, yeah, we kind of just started pattern work, started, you know, building them out for product testers. like, amazingly, like, you know, I don't, don't want to name drop it, like cool, like very cool people that I admire in the industry were coming back and like saying, this jacket is legit dudes. Like this thing is gonna, I think this thing could be really something. You know, tweak the pocket zippers, tweak this or that, add this or that. And so we just kind of dialed it in a little bit. It started off a little bit slow. There's even like some old articles where it was like, you know, why a synthetic jacket kind of like brow beating us for even hearing it. But now, you know, we've had a couple of years in the last couple of years where like we're the number one or the number two jacket on the PCT on trail exit surveys and stuff. it, and kind of like you said, it's like proliferated into lifestyle. People are using them for travel, airplane jackets. like, you know, we have, we have a speaker-0: Yeah, no, that's crazy to just, I love it because I can just throw it in and it's super, super durable. And I think it's great what you said is you guys talked yourselves out of, because so many people have an idea and they go, I'm going for it no matter what. And then even if like there's 50 bad things that are coming out of it, they still have those two good ideas that they're like, you know, because it has two good things versus the 50, I'm still going to go ahead and. go forward with it. And I know some companies, have a hundred, 200 skews and they're having a hard time selling things because they have so many fingers everywhere. They can't have a clear, clear direction. That's a good point for anybody who's listening, you know, that if you're running a company and you have an idea, go with that idea first and make it and refine it and do it well, and then add on to that front, you know, moving forward. So. speaker-1: right Yeah, kind of the next logical succession, you know, kind of felt like in lane equipment was kind of so like boomtown for a minute that it was like, well, crap, we have to have a tent, we have to have a backpack. And then all of a sudden we're kind of like, well, the Enigma footbox needs work, though. Like, shouldn't we do that first? And it's like, yeah, we should. Like that it doesn't really make sense to make something new when we know, you know, the way we're creating this thing that's, you know, a flagship product for us is not as good as it could be. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. was, I was on the AT, um, about a week ago or week and a half ago, like when people were starting their trail and I've talked to this one guy, cause I'm doing these things where like, I'm like, Hey man, I love your, love your setup. What are your big three? Right. And so we ended up, me and him ended up talking and he was like, yeah, I'm, I'm here at, I can't remember the store. It's always there. I'm right by blood mountain, but where everybody kind of does it like a little bit of a gear. speaker-1: Yeah, cool. Yeah, Shakedown, speaker-0: Yeah, a little shakedown. So he was like, yeah, the, can't remember the company that he had, but he was like, yeah, the, the way that the baffles are and stuff like that. I'm a side sleeper. Like the, the down was pushing down into one side. And he was like, yeah, I'm to swap out for, ⁓ can't remember, but we started talking about in land equipment and other companies and like, cause I've used so many and I was like, well, you can try these brands, you know, depending on what was in the store. Cause I hadn't, yeah, story yet. but I was like, man, I never even thought about that. And so like, like you're saying, like refining it over and over again, cause you know, as you grow, you have so much more information coming in. Cause there's only so much testing you can do on your own before you're like, you get feedback from people. Like when the iPhone came out and it was got bent in half and everybody's like, how did they not know that it would bend? And they're like, well, we just never thought people would sit on it like that or do that with their phones, you know? speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, it's crazy because like at surface level, the revelation doesn't really look that much different than one that was in like 2015. Yeah. But like behind the scenes, a ton of stuff has changed, you know, based on like feedback that's come through. You know, we used to use an old serger thread called Maxi Lock that's like on paper. It's awesome. But like over time, it can start to kind of get a more braided, more fuzzy. It it seems like it's more susceptible to like body oils and things, and we were getting a lot of thread breaks and things like that. And so even just subtle things, it's like, hey, we're starting to notice this could be an issue. What is the most bomber Tex 30 thread that we can put in this thing that will effectively never be the part that will break? How we used to fill it with. fill gaps kind of up through was a product of necessity. Like we had no way to do it better because of our old improvised like leaf blower stuff system. But like as we, you you get somebody that's now hike triple crowned in it. They've washed it multiple times. It's doing things to the product that like you could never replicate in R &D. And it's like, well, shit, we're getting some down migration. We're getting some stuff. We got to figure that all out. you know, so we... and made the fill gap, we fill it completely different than how we used to so that everything can kind of be unique in its chamber, it can never really leave. Yeah, like, you know, even like DWR down versus untreated down, like lots of things like that have kind of evolved over the years, but I think at its core, it's still very similar to what Tim was making, you know, back in 2010. speaker-0: Yeah. So do you find on a yearly basis, you're ⁓ not so much innovating, but just kind of tweaking things? how ⁓ on average, like what do you find? Is it like a yearly thing where you find, ⁓ there's this one thing that you're, cause I know some people they're like, okay, I'm going to make sure that this year I focus on tweaking two things on my product. Or is it just as comments come in, you're just kind of fixing things. speaker-1: I mean, there are things that are more real time, you know, like if there's anything that's happening, that's like, Ooh, this is not a thing that should wait for an iteration change. know, cord lock is maybe breaking or something like that. Like those are immediate. Like we want to address that stuff right away. But like, you know, the torrid cuffs, for example, are a thing that people have kind of, ⁓ not been a huge fan over the years. It's just a simple elastic, you know, with a casing that's sewn in. It's got some stretchiness, but depending on like, You know, how big of a person you are, it can be kind of tight on your wrists. So this year, um, we changed that out to a power stretch cuff. It's got a lot more range. It's a lot more comfortable on your wrist. It handles moisture and stuff better. It's like such a small tweak that like you really, you could have two of the same jacket and not even maybe even notice it right away. But it's definitely an improvement. Um, you know, just where, yeah, I would say that it's, it's pretty frequently, you know, we actually have a. tracker board through customer service that is like, kind of categorize things as they come in as like things that we should maybe be on the lookout or like potentially warranty types of trends. But also we get a lot of customers that say like, Hey, this thing could be awesome if X, Y, and Z. And we track all of that. Yeah. compile all of it. And like, if there's enough of a thing, like, Hey, we should have one more size hood. You know, I got a big head and like the large doesn't fit. Like I would love your product if there's an XL or like size inclusivity, like three XLs, you know, like, you know, people just wanting the jacket. There's not a lot out for them in that space. And they'd like, love you guys. Like my friends have, but like a two X is too small. Cool. We like work with Jenny. She grades one up. Now it's available on custom. So I would say like, we're, really in like this stage of our company where it's, it's, we're trying to like, continue to try to give a customer like a very refined product at a price point that feels approachable, know, high value for the cost. Yeah. Just that it's really thought out and tried and tested. speaker-0: Yeah, do you find then, I guess, I think that's a good thing then if most of your stuff is made on location in America versus shipping it, you can kind of tweak it and say, hey, okay, maybe we don't offer a triple XL, but maybe someone needs it, we can do a one-off and it's not as big of a deal as versus saying, sorry, we can't help you because we I have to order 10,000 extra triple XL jackets. speaker-1: Exactly. like we're like actually I think another unique, another thing that's unique about us is that we have effectively two tracks for our customers. There is a custom option that is anything custom is made in Winona and that does give them the most range of sizes and temperatures and colors and you know, all of those kinds of extra features that are, that we know are cool and that people would want, but they're hard to kind of make them maybe viable at like a ⁓ purchase and import kind of model. And then, and also there's a lead time element to that. You know, there, might be seasonally up to like, you know, after like the holiday sale, might be at 12 weeks of lead time or something. ⁓ know, spring, might be in like six, eight weeks. And if, you know, if people are like me, I'm terrible at planning. I like kind of get to the moment of truth and I'm like, crap, need something now. ⁓ we have that track available too, you know, where we, you know, we have a some great manufacturing partners in Vietnam that make all of our torrid, ready to ship items. We have great manufacturing partners in China that make a lot of, several of our ready to ship shells for like Revelations and Enigmas. But they come here empty. It keeps our options open, know, like down is a very expensive thing. Like companies that are putting all this down in products, in boxes. It's a lot of commitment. It's a bigger commitment than typically we're able to make. So we can keep it in a bag here, get the order, pull the shell, fill it, close it, and get it out in a couple of days in our most popular skis. speaker-0: Yeah, that's cool. I personally love the customization. mean, I have a bunch. think there's one, I don't know if you can see it over my shoulder, probably can't, but there's ⁓ one there. I got some of your jackets and everything else. And I love being able to customize stuff as much as possible. Yeah. Because then you have your own little flavor when you're on the trail. Totally. seeing people that like have a completely different like full... speaker-1: color matched everything. speaker-0: It's like Trail Flare. I'm like, ⁓ I the color match people. do like, with all their gear just laid out on the ground. And like, I saw this one and she had gotten like everything in turquoise. speaker-1: I've seen some They're amazing. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, it's like Tiffany Blue. Everything was like Tiffany Blue. That's crazy. speaker-1: That matches my OCD brain pretty well, actually, when I see that. speaker-0: Yeah, you're like, how did you get that in that color? That specific. speaker-1: Socks, everything. A lot of hard work, I'm guessing. Yeah. speaker-0: So I guess my next question would be, what's one thing that you thought was gonna be really, really easy in your role that ended up being a lot harder? speaker-1: Hmm. I mean, I kind of never take easy for granted, to be honest. there's, there's, I think like the, the thing that I thought would be, guess more possible than easy is that I would still be able to be as hands on with work in projects as I was in previous roles. You know, like I, I really kind of felt like as I, as I kind of moved through various roles that things that I really liked to do, which are very nerdy and kind of most people probably wouldn't like to do them, like programming our production management software with all the products and operations and times and being like super hands on with that thing. think along the way, I realized that I was not doing anybody any service by trying to hold onto them and do them myself while still trying to kind of, I'm the sole administrator here outside of our founder. like, every manager or director reports to me. And it's so tempting for me to say like, Hey, I got that for you or I can do that. ⁓ but I've learned over the years that like, that is just unfortunately not a part of my job that I get to really do as much. So I've had to really shift into like empowering my team to like, you know, key in on like what I'm looking for at the end. ⁓ support them along the way, but like the to-dos end up having to really kind of get farmed out in a way that I didn't anticipate. Like delegation, think is, it's a very, it's a very interesting and hard skillset for people if they are like very prideful in like how they want that thing delivered in the end. You know, I'm very like, when I turn it in, I want it to be like the crisp stamp of approval on everything. but you kind of got to let some of that stuff go and know like when you need that stamp of approval, when like it's good enough, you know, if it's, it's somebody else's stamp of approval. So I think that's been the hardest part of it is like just realizing that I got to step away from some of like the doing and really just lean into like providing support and leadership for the group and being really clear on the communication, like where we're trying to drive to, you know, what are the missions that we knew to accomplish this year. ⁓ but I've really learned to love that part of it too. And it's, it's, ⁓ it's very cool to kind of have. Like for anybody, I think that is like thinking about what they, I guess, enjoy and embrace in their job. You know, autonomy is so underrated, you know, like being able to help like forge your own destiny and kind of make calls and have input on things. I think it's the difference I think between a lot of people really enjoying what they do. versus just doing what they do. speaker-0: Yeah, that's good. So I guess in what you just said there, what was one moment when you realized kind of, oh, wow, this is actually working when it comes to a problem you were trying to solve, or maybe it was giving up a little bit of that responsibility to somebody else? speaker-1: Yeah. mean, I think like marketing is an area that I think there's been kind of some tight control in over the years. And it's mostly because it's an expensive one. You know, there's a lot of dollars that funnel through there. It's also super public facing. So you're kind of always wanting to feel like it's all just right. And it's, know, how are we spending it? How is our, and I think like, um, I think really As we had a, we had a director that had left, was overseen marketing and it felt like an inflection point where we really needed to think about it differently. ⁓ they had really had the reins pretty tight. They were making a lot of calls. ⁓ but we had a team of people that I really felt like were ready to step up and kind of take on like a whole, a whole, just re just look at it completely different. You know, like is our stuff stale? Like what, why, what do we even, why are we even doing half the stuff we're doing? It didn't make sense to me half the time. ⁓ but I think like that, that particular, you know, era a couple of years ago where we really took some of our, you know, our praying, our primary doers in marketing and kind of elevated them into a role and said, it's yours. Like if you want to change it all, if you want to throw it all away, you know, you can. Like, let's see what we can do here. Let's just try something totally different. And it was honestly a little scary, but I had a lot of confidence in the people that we were doing that with. And I had a feeling that they would come up winners on it. And it really did. It kind of changed everything. And I mean, to a lesser extent, other departments as well, but that marketing pivot was kind of like, wow. These folks like know what they want to do. They are totally kind of changing the way I think about things. And it's really kind of become the model here where we're really trying to let our department leadership really drive. If they want to try a different software, they want to do a chat bot, they want to do stuff that maybe I've never thought about. It's kind of like, well, let's do the number crunching. Let's kind of understand it. then You're gonna, you're gonna actually do it, right? Like you're gonna do it all. You're gonna take it as far as it can go. And they're like, yeah. Then it's like, all right, hell yeah. See what can go. Let's see what can come out of this. And I think it's made everybody so much more fulfilled in their role when they can, they have their own autonomy and can really say like, this is, this is my thing. And we're gonna, we're gonna show everybody in the building that we can do this. speaker-0: Let's. Yeah, it's just like when you owned it for the company and some of that you own it and you want Chris's stamp of approval. I'm sure like your marketing guys are like, hey, I got this, you know, all that good stuff. know my wife works with a lot of social media people and they want to dictate our white dad, Asian mom stereotypes videos that we do and the collabs that we do. And she has to tell them like, hey, that's a great idea, but The reason we grew the way we grew was because we were doing it this way. And we can do a collab with you, but we have to do it our way or else we're not gonna get the views. Cause you have to trust us that we know what we're doing. And that's why we have the thing. That's why we get millions of views on all the videos is because she's got, and I always, I always run my stuff by her now. like, Hey, so I know you got the formula down for yours. So how do I do the formula for mine? Cause my little different and she's like, she's like, Oh, do it like this and like this. Great, and I do it, and then next thing you know, it gets all kinds of views or it gets all kinds of engagement, and I'm like, I guess I have to listen to her more, even though I think I know what I'm doing, and you have to stay relevant. So it's like the revelation quilt, it's like you have to have a revelation with marketing and with every aspect of it. speaker-1: So yeah, I think like I think I think really to be like a good leader, you have to just understand you don't know it all, you know, that you can't know it all and you don't actually even want to know it all. Like it's you have to kind of understand like this is this is my this is my go to person on this particular topic. And I got to just trust that they're going to do the right thing for the company and for their team. And it really, I think, does really shape the culture a lot around here now that. There's kind of a point person for all of these things and we kind of know when we need to have like shipping and logistics in the same meeting or when it makes sense to have customer service and marketing in the same meeting because I know for sure if I made all the calls and I decreed like this is what it's gonna be like this is hey you know graphic designer by trade this is what I want the graphic to look like it's not gonna be as good as if I just said make it really cool graphic yeah you know like I my guess is like You know, in talking with like some of our graphic design folks, it's kind of like graphic design is hard because just like you said, a company comes to them and says like, I want it to look exactly like this and I want a moon here and I want it this and this. And it's like, well, I'm the creative here. You're me to be creative and for my skill, just let me run a little bit. Let me eat, you know? And so like, I think once you get past that hurdle and you can just like, let your team kind of do their thing. ⁓ man, it opens up a lot of stuff. speaker-0: Yeah, no, that's good. mean, from a marketing side, I know we're talking a lot about marketing, but I think a lot of people miss the boat when it comes to marketing their company. And they they're wondering why it's not flourishing. And a lot of times it's just ⁓ it can just come down to bad marketing. Every time we drive by a restaurant that just opens up by our house, I go, OK, they'll fit. They're going to be closed in six months because like, for example, down the street from us, there's a L.A. fitness gym. and there's a strip mall that's just set in this really weird spot that no one ever really goes to. And there's a, not a Planet Smoothie, but a smoothie, there's a Smoothie King. And I go to the gym every day and I've not yet seen that Smoothie King partner with the LA Fitness that's in that same parking lot. And I'm like, it's right there. And then there's no one ever there and it's so hidden. And I'm like, ⁓ other than the fact that they're a Smoothie King. speaker-1: Yeah, come on. speaker-0: if there were anybody else, they would have already been closed a time ago. ⁓ we do lot of photography for a lot of different brands. And I always like to find out what their overall kind of look is. But then just like when I shoot a wedding, I'll tell people, hey, send me your favorite four or five pictures that you've always wanted to have on your wedding day, because you always thought about those pictures. But then trust me as an artist. that I'm going to not only get what you kind of wanted, but go over and above and just let my artsy fartsy mind just kind of go. speaker-1: It's gonna net the best thing every time. They can't even imagine like your brain is just limited so much by like just what you know. And if once you realize that, they know better and they can absolutely blow this away compared to what I could ever dream up. Man, it's like sky's the limit. It really is. speaker-0: So I guess going to people who are running a business on their own, what would one piece of advice you'd give them for say, hey, they run it on their own, they're trying to find a social media person or somebody, I'm sure when it comes to marketing their product, they have to find someone. What would be like one of their first hires outside of accounting or whatever so you don't have to worry about that stuff? speaker-1: Yeah, mean, it's tough. mean, because I do think that marketing has, it's so multifaceted now. You know, you have so many things to worry about, know, know, AEO, SEO, know, running ads, Google ads, meta ads, know, graphic design. Like it is extremely hard, I think, to find a one size fits all kind of person that can do all of those things. Like we have tried that and it's mostly failed. because you don't get enough of any of those things. Our team now is we have a marketing manager and then we have effectively a graphic designer that we've basically invested in to teach him some of the things that he just fell short on or gave him a long leash. I think we've definitely in areas like that where it's like, hey, We just don't know a ton about meta ads and like how to go deeper on that. Like that's where I think if you can bring in, think somebody that is willing to learn, you know, like that they are just a go getter. They, have had some marketing experience, like our marketing manager now, you know, we picked them up after he did an internship at a wildlife refuge, ⁓ in Minneapolis and on paper. You know, it's light, you know, it's like there's not a lot of meat there on the resume, but like when you talked with him, it was like, you know, and you looked at what he had done so far just to grow the audience on that, you know, that kind of, that social media area. It's like, I don't think this guy is limited, you know, by like what, by what he can do. It's just what he knows right now. And so, you know, just getting them in. You know, more, it's more of a personality and fit hire for me a lot of times. It's like, can this person really kind of be a go getter type that's going to get along with the team? That's going to be a collaborator and is willing to learn. Cause I think if you have that man, like, like we can, you can get them in Google ads classes. You can, you can, you can get them involved in some community where they can learn from each other. I, I'm I'm not, maybe I'm different this way, but I'm not really like a skill higher guy. Like most of our people have come from all walks of life. You know, we got a, you know, a former brewery owner. You know, we have a musician degree that was, you know, traveled in bands, our logistics role. You know, it's like, we are a motley crew for sure, but we all kind of are, we're all kind of wired the same way. You know, we really want to... make it work, know, we're problem solvers, we're going to go learn, going to, we want to come to the meeting prepared to like kind of impress, know, ⁓ be, like at a table where everybody's kind of like, ⁓ dude, that's awesome. Good job. Like if you can get that on your team, I don't even know if like what they're classically trained in matters as much. speaker-0: Yeah, that's good. That's really good. So I guess moving on from that then, what would be, we always ask this of people, like what is some like, ⁓ crap moments since inline equipment has been around that you're like, ⁓ my gosh, like I know I've talked to somebody and they had ordered, you know, a pallet full of trekking poles and they were completely messed up and they had to just bite the bullet on it. Like what's one kind of ⁓ crap moment with inline equipment? speaker-1: There's been a lot of ⁓ crap moments over the years. Most of them are like contained detonations, know, though that we're able to kind of like figure it out before things get particularly bad. You know, we've had ⁓ crap moments where we realized we built a bunch of quilts that, you know, failed the down-proof testing. ⁓ my gosh. You know, where people are getting, all of a they're getting feathers like flying you because like the fabric manufactured in... speaker-0: person. ⁓ speaker-1: know, calendar it right. And we basically didn't get that sear on there to keep it down. And so you're like frantically reaching out to people that, know, were in that particular roll of fabric and trying to get it before they have problems responding to those problems, getting them replacements. You know, you basically hope those, crap moments don't go big. know, they don't like get it too far. We've had, you know, like, especially during COVID times, we had a lot of like a lot of parts substitutions. We got in this whole big thing of just the little simple watch clip buckles that we use to put our pad straps on. They're supposed to be the identical part. They were, you know, recommended by our primary supplier. We got in, we started making them. ⁓ we got to the, ⁓ quality control and they did not click into our old watch clip buckles. They clipped into themselves, but that would have meant they weren't compatible with like old pad straps. And it was like, ⁓ crap. Like we had to basically take a of quilts apart, know, go source another thing of watch clip buckles, call customers, it's going to be late, find the right watch clip buckles, get those things in there. You know, COVID was an entire ⁓ crap moment from start to finish, basically. mean, it started by like effectively the company's revenue just turning off almost immediately. ⁓ Then we were closed for five weeks, six weeks, something like that, maybe longer. can't even, I kind of, I think I just blur it out. I don't want to think about it anymore. But like, you know, we're all gone. Orders are like not even a thing, really. It's all kind of turned off. We have no idea what the future is going to bring for are they is it going to come back? Like when is it going to come back? Like how are our teams, our team going to be there when we return? And, you know, then then, of course, it did turn back on and it turned on like a freaking, you know, fire hose and everything went bonkers. And we went from I think we were like 80 employees up to a hundred and almost 20 employees over the course of a year. Uh, so we're developing, uh, like we took our old IT room. It was like, uh, maybe like a 15 by 15 room. We made a six or a seven person classroom in there. So we were like bulk hiring, bulk training, to sell things in a classroom. Um, there's just been a lot of adversity, you know, there's just been a lot of things like there's. But, ⁓ I don't know. That's, think that's the spice of life. You know, that's what kind of everybody on their toes here. think a lot of us here, ⁓ we, don't know if we do great in like day-to-day desk jobs, you know, we're kind of, we kind of need the chaos a little bit where we feast on it sometimes. speaker-0: Yeah, think we all grow from like those crazy, like, ⁓ remember back when this happened. Totally. this happened and then you learn from it. I think that's why I love having this podcast is for people to listen to other companies that are, you know, from really large companies to just one guy doing something, you know, free printing something in his garage or her garage and learning from that so they don't make those. mistakes of, my gosh, even like the buckles you're talking about, they snapped in, you're like, ⁓ they work, but they only work with themselves. wouldn't even have no idea unless you had gone through that. Now you know to look for those kinds of things. I mean, there's really funny things that you'd never think to check. you just, again, like we had talked earlier, like you'll just never know until people get it in their hands and you're just like, ⁓ well, I gotta tweak this thing. speaker-1: It's a thing we check now. ⁓ Yeah, we had another funny one I just remembered. ⁓ was kind of early days, big commerce. We were trying to basically add a bunch of products and variants and things like that. It's all kind of rules and variable based, know? So you have to kind of say, like, when it's this thing, you add this much money or subtract this much money, add this much weight, subtract this much weight. And all of a we started to see like this crazy run on like short, regular 20 degree enigmas or something like that. Also, there's just a ton of them in the queue and we're like, what in the? hell is going on. So we like go onto the product page and some rule is wrong and they were like selling on the website for like $60 quilters like that. Like people figured it out. They're just like, hurry buy now. speaker-0: You can get a Reddit is just like the. Yeah. Yeah, the enlightened equipment buy now page. speaker-1: Yeah, we're like, that's crazy. But yeah, they that something. speaker-0: I think they had that, there was something like in Target or something like that with like a Nintendo or something like, something similar. And everybody was like trying to buy it and then Target came back and said, we're not gonna honor any of those ⁓ things and stuff like that. I think I was even, I think I even got in on that. Maybe it was like a Nintendo Wii or something. Yeah, it was crazy. All right, so I guess kind of winding down a little bit, can you tell us like ⁓ a moment when a customer story or review hit you? really, really hard, like in a good way or a bad way. I'd say a good way. speaker-1: I lots. mean, that's another part of this business that I think is kind of an intangible that makes it super special for all of us. know, we go to a lot of shows. ⁓ We get to hear a lot of stories, you know, just like from kind of more benign kind of day-to-day use, how it worked for them. But I mean, there's been lots of stories of like this jacket, this quilt saved. you know, their life in situ in situations, you know, like, it's kind of funny, like, like a while ago, you might remember there's that dude in Utah stuck in the quicksand. Oh, He was in a tour jacket. Yeah. And we you could kind of notice it from from the the helicopter footage. And so I was a green green green. It was a forest and charcoal tour jacket. Exactly. So we were like all around the office, like, ⁓ my gosh, that dude was in a Torrid jacket. Yeah. We saw it. And so we, I re I found his customer order and I got his email and I reached out to him and I just like connected with him a little bit and just said, Hey, glad you're okay. And he had bought several things from us in the past, like hope, yeah, hope everything's working out. Like, yeah, know, Torrid kept you kind of going in that. And he was like, honestly, dude, like I was, that was the only thing that probably kept me from dying. He was already in a super hypothermic state and he's like, if I wouldn't have had that thing on me, I probably would have died. And so it's like, it is those moments sometimes where you, you know, it is like mostly fun and games. You know, I think most of the people that use our products are, they're not thinking about what if scenarios to that, makes to that end, you know, and we don't put a lot of weight on that either. Like, but we do know, I mean, The picture behind me is base camp Everest with a convert. You know, people take this crap places that like it does have to work like, yes, you know, it can be, it can be great. It can, it can like work, but it's, know, I, I like in it when I talk with our quality team, ⁓ in a way that they probably think is hyperbole, but it's true. Like I think about our products in a lot of ways, like airbags or car seats, like it's. Most the time you're never gonna need them. It's be just like a, it's a nicety, it kind of enhances your experience, but there are cases where that thing can't fail. It has to be spot on. And we've had lots of cases over the years where people email in or we talk to them at shows and they tell us about time they're in the Sierras or. you know, where things got real shitty and that it would have been a lot different scenario if they didn't have her quilt or have the have a jacket or something like that. So I think those are always reminders that like what we do here while we kind of think of it as like fun, cool. We're in the gear industry. We're making stuff that people like. Like it also has this performance element to it that we can't ever undermine that it has to just straight up work when it when it matters the most. So those are always, I think, great reminders. speaker-0: Yeah, I mean, I know I've been out. ⁓ I've been out with my wife and we'll go and. We were on Mount Rainier and we were ⁓ shooting and then we came back out, but it was like the end of the season and they were about to close down the one road that goes to the one area that you would enter from the. Northwest. Northwest side. speaker-1: where we're. Yeah, it's like a crazy road that goes way up, up. It's all gravel and stuff. not paradise. speaker-0: I think it's not paradise, but sunrise. Yeah. The one that's not open in the winter. Yeah. we were there and there was like sky. speaker-1: like a lookout hike and stuff like that up there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. speaker-0: Exactly, yeah. So we were at that, we went to that parking lot to go and camp. And we had hiked up to this one spot to go and take pictures. Yeah. And so it got down really, really cold and my wife's all worried and I'm like, okay, don't worry about it. The quilt that we have is a zero degree quilt. It's going to go down to a certain temperature. I've got it all planned out. Like I always tell my wife, like, trust me, I've got, I got you covered more than enough, actually. Yeah, And so she sleeps warm, I sleep cold. And so I'm, ⁓ and you gotta rely on what you have. And when it went down to, think it was, gosh, was like. speaker-1: You have to kind of like... Yeah. speaker-0: like I think seven degrees or so. And I'm like, okay, this better work to what it says it's gonna work or else I'm gonna be really, really cold. That's a little bit of backup stuff and everything else. But I slept like a baby and I'm like, all right, it works. Versus sometimes, you go on, ⁓ you know, not hitting on Amazon, but you go on Amazon and buy some, you know, knockoff cheap product that's not filled properly or it says it's filled a certain way or even the. speaker-1: rating system, lower limit, all that kind of stuff. It's just deceptive at times. speaker-0: you've got to really trust the brand that you're doing. I think that's what sometimes people have to understand too is you're not just paying for it, you're paying for the product, but you're also paying knowing that you're trusting this product as well. speaker-1: Yeah, I I think all companies in our cottage space, you know, we're all small enough that we really can't afford to make a bad product. You know, like it's too small of a community. You know, if you make, you know, backpacks that the straps fall off, like you're in trouble. You make a tent that falls apart, you're in trouble. make it, you know, what early days our quilts were, you know, kind of like the main call out would have been that they weren't warm enough. Yeah, we were operating in like early days, like a 5 % over stuff. We went to 10 % over stuff. We're landing on 30 % over stuff, which is now basically like the standard that people buy to a lot of these things because the goals were different at the time. The goals were to have the lightest 20 degree thing that you could possibly get on the market. But as your audience gets bigger and it's more mainstream and you have less. knowledge maybe that's out there and experience, like you have to add in that buffer. You know, got to make sure that people can trust it. That maybe aren't always following best practices, best pad choices, and you got to just, you got to just make sure they're safe. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. No, that's that's crucial. Yeah, that's great. Alright, so ⁓ going into this a little bit more like if your business was a trail, what what what would it be and what mile do you think you're on? speaker-1: Man. ⁓ Yeah, this is really introspective stuff here, Craig. Yeah. I don't know. One of my favorite trails is ⁓ it's not a long trail necessarily, but it's up in Unising in the Upper Peninsula. It's called Pictured Rock Scenic Lake Short Trail. And I think it'd be an interesting correlation because ⁓ it's kind of got three distinct sections of the trail. ⁓ speaker-0: We're going deep now. Okay. speaker-1: Pictured rocks is this beautiful scenic area right on Lake Superior. And the first about 15 miles, it's almost like you're in a dream. You're high up in these cliffs. It almost doesn't even look like you're on Earth. Lake Superior that's just out there. it's just so gorgeous and serene that it's dreamlike. It's really... It's really special. I've hiked it a few times. think the full trail is like 45 miles. So it's, it's nothing crazy, but you can knock it out in a couple of days if you really want to. Three days is great. The next section is called 12 mile beach, which is a lot like what it sounds like. You know, it's a slog. It's a, it's 12 miles of basically walking in loose sand and it's, it's hard. You know, I feel like that. That's an era that I think that we have kind of gone through, you know, it's just, it's a grind. It feels a little bit on repeat. You know, you're having to kind of fight through it every step to kind of just keep it going. But the last section is, you know, another really cool section of trail that ⁓ kind of works up into the Bluffs. You start to really get great scenic views of Lake Superior. It's more diverse. You know, there's lots of dips and turns and steps and, you know, switchbacks and you got like cool, you know, geographic features on top of cool manmade features. It's just really interesting with a lot of diversity. ⁓ And I think that's kind of the phase we're in. You know, I don't not to say the trail's coming to the end or anything like that, but I think that we're, you know, we are in a state where we can kind of enjoy it a little bit. ⁓ you know, some of like the tougher parts of like getting it beyond a, you know, a basement into like what I would, would, you know, dysfunctional at times, but mostly a functional business model. Yeah. You know, we have tools, we're kind of through some of those growing pain parts that like really hurt, but we're in, we're definitely past the dreamlike state where everything's kind of sunshine and rainbows. You know, that's, that's very cool part of that new business cycle. ⁓ But I think we're in a spot that's like, you know, it's a little bit more, a little bit more, it's a little more rugged still. It's a little bit more diverse. There's twists and turns and there's things to figure out, but it feels a little bit more like what you're used to hiking. speaker-0: Yeah, that's cool. No, I like, I like hearing like the story of work where people feel like they're at and everything. And there's all these different stages in business. And I think once you find that flow, you're kind of like, ⁓ good, I got the flow. You kind of know how to, it's like, it's like anything. Like I know in my marriage, I'm like, I had all these bumps and stuff like that. And then I'm like, okay, came out of those bumps, learned from that. And now it's like, kind of like, ⁓ now I can see the, like we're going to Italy, right? Like I told you in a, in a couple weeks we're going to Italy and I'm like, ⁓ this is gonna be so great. It's just chilling and stuff like that. That's cool. Awesome. Well, great. I learned a ton. I'm sure everybody learned a ton about business and the brand. I hope so. No, have people who will DM me and be like, ⁓ my gosh, I learned so much. Thank you for having so and so on. That's cool. ⁓ It's great to hear that people are listening or watching and everything else. So I'm going to go into rapid fire round. These are just a few questions that are pretty quick answers. They're almost one word answers just to kind of get to know you a little bit more. And then I'll kind of let you give a shout out to Inland Equipment where we can find you guys online stuff like that. So, all right, first question. My favorite question is favorite national park. speaker-1: Man, mean Mount Rainier was pretty epic. Some really great memories in that area with my family. I think I'm putting that trip kind of a Seattle, ⁓ Fugis Sound into the Mount Rainier. That was an awesome trip. I'm gonna go Mount Rainier. It's beautiful. speaker-0: Sweet. That is my favorite by far. It's cool. Rainier. I love that place. I could just go there. I was so bummed I didn't get the Wonderland permit again this year because I wanted to do it again. Yeah. speaker-1: I wanna do more. ⁓ That looks like an epic set of trail and I've saw some of the trails that lead off of that in Rainier Park and it's like, is some stuff. speaker-0: It is epic. did score a North Cascades permit this year. I'll be heading there for like ⁓ about a week and a half. So all right. Next question is ⁓ tent hammock or cowboy camping? speaker-1: Hand make 100%. speaker-0: Really? Hammock. Outside of a hammock maker. speaker-1: Yeah, yup. know, hammock maker in, you know, my spare time. I still am running, you know, hammocks that I made, you know, years ago, but love hammock. I love it. It's, it's kind of perfect for the Midwest, know, boundary waters, Sylvania wilderness, Porcupine mountains. It's all so awesome for hammock. It's so comfortable and I sleep the best in a hammock. speaker-0: That's awesome. All right, next thing is ⁓ favorite trail snack. speaker-1: Peanut butter ⁓ &Ms, I always go in the food bag, guaranteed. speaker-0: Okay, and then now what's your least favorite or worst trail snack you've ever tried? This one's always interesting. ⁓ speaker-1: Um, this, this is, I think so I go to a lot of shows. I get a lot of samples and, and, um, this is, I don't even remember the brand, so it's not going to hurt anybody, but it was, uh, it was like this large pouch of almost like tapioca consistency energy gel. And I threw them in there. It was like a lemon lime one. And it's like, you know, I I'm like, all right, I mean, it's finally time to give this thing a try. think it was. I mean, I drank it. I don't even know if I drank it. was like a mixture of eating it and drinking it. Zero out of 10 stars would not recommend. speaker-0: Yeah. It's the worst too when the food is not good when you're on it. When usually anything on trail tastes great, you know? Yeah, yeah. So that's crazy. Okay, ⁓ next one is one app that you can't live without for work. speaker-1: No. Yeah, totally. Ooh. Man, I think at this point in the game, we use monday.com, it's our project management software. It integrates with a lot of our systems, has lot of automations, and it really is kind of how all of us keep track of each other. But I would highly recommend it. It's super intuitive. It integrates with just tons of stuff, so you can... You can populate Excel sheets from it. can generate all. mean, it's just, it's pretty incredible. We probably haven't even scratched the surface of what it can do. It's keeps us all in line. speaker-0: That's cool. All right, kind of with the business side of things right now, what's ⁓ the biggest splurge you've ever made for your business? speaker-1: Ooh. ⁓ I think it was probably a decision to renovate about 10,000 square foot of warehouse space. ⁓ we had a way more warehouse than we needed, but we also needed high ceilings for ⁓ a commercial stuffing machine. So kind of that entire renovation process took, you know, brick wall warehouse space and converted it all into like clean, super nice manufacturing space. And during that time we added. you know, a huge commercial stuffing machine, like a Zune G3 CAD cutter, you know, with long table bed, all this kind of stuff. So that was probably definitely by dollar amount and definitely by like nicety. It added a ton to the business, but ⁓ it was, it felt like quite a splurge at the time. speaker-0: I can only imagine. I'd love to see that. That's pretty cool. I didn't even think you had to have gravity stuff to do that. But yeah, you need like a big space because down is not small. It compacts small, but it... speaker-1: Yeah Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, a bag of 20 pound bag of downs as tall as me. So yeah. speaker-0: Okay, more. If you could collab with any brand, who would it be? speaker-1: Hmm. Boy. Man, that's putting me on the spot right there. You know, like this is definitely, this is going to get some hate for sure, but one of the, one of the pieces of gear that I have effectively never replaced, I've tried multiple times is my Osprey Exos 38. And I don't. really know why I can't get beyond their trampoline back style vented frame. I've got a like literally like a freaking series of packs in my house. And I always come back to the brain off XOs 38 and it just it's awesome. So Osprey would be a cool one, honestly. speaker-0: That's cool. I think it's great to see like we all have like pieces of gear that we just, you can get a new piece, but sometimes you just always kind of gravitate towards a certain bag or a certain food or a certain quilt or all those different things. That's awesome. All right. And then the last question is what's one word to use to describe the outdoor industry right now? speaker-1: Yeah. Cool. I mean, I got a couple, maybe I'll throw out a few. I think growing and edging into saturated in some categories. Yeah. I just, and it's awesome because a lot of the new and emerging brands are bringing a lot of things to the table. But it's definitely getting crowded. You can definitely see that even from like, you know, non-domestic. ⁓ You know, you're seeing just lots of copycats of designs and really the unfortunate things, a lot of like very cool brands ⁓ have done a lot of IP work to make some of the coolest stuff, but you're seeing just so many knockoffs and things like that. So I think the space is getting a little bit crowded and a little bit hard to kind of lock in on. ⁓ But I think it's very exciting too. You know, I think that like... technology blended with creativity is gonna probably spur a lot of neat things that is hard to knock off. It's hard to kind of catch up with it if you're kind of a step ahead. We got another very cool company that I would have and would like to collab with again is Ripstop by the Roll. And I probably can't say, but we're talking about something that'd be pretty interesting right now. I'm looking forward to kind of continue conversations with them. So yeah, I think that there's a... ⁓ technology adds this interesting X factor to the outdoor space that can really just all of a open up entire sections of things that you thought were closed off for years. speaker-0: Yeah, I think and that saturation can almost help innovation a little bit too. Because then people go, okay, it's saturated, now I've got to now innovate on my product or innovate on this. So that way I don't just get left behind with all the duplicates and stuff like that. So totally. That's cruel. Well, awesome. Well, I appreciate it. I learned ⁓ the ridiculous amount on running a company and ⁓ you know, more hats off to you for even doing it because probably the worst leader ever. speaker-1: Yeah, thanks for having me. speaker-0: Or not leader, but I'm a terrible manager is what I always like to say because I just I can't let go of my baby. speaker-1: Yeah, you've kind of gravitated the thing you like and you've been able to make it work. So, you know, you know, good for you doing that. mean, you're, having fun. You're getting cally shots and do what you want to do. Traveling a lot with your wife. mean, you're, winning, dude. You're, you're absolutely winning. So, so good job. Absolutely good job on that. Thanks for having me. And thanks to all the customers that have, you know, been part of the Enlighten Equipment. family for all the years. I think at this point, we definitely cracked 100,000 revelations at some point in last year or so. So lot of things have gone out the door over the years. ⁓ it's always, like you said, it's cool to see people using it on trail and random cross posts with people in a tour jacket and things like that. It makes it pretty special, but we do appreciate our customers and ⁓ look forward to continuing to serve them. speaker-0: That's awesome. So if anybody's never heard of Atlantic Limiter wants to find out more, where can they find you guys online and on your socials? speaker-1: ⁓ could just Google enlightened equipment. should typically be number one, but otherwise enlightened equipment.com. We'll get you there. speaker-0: ⁓ Well, Chris, thank you so much, everybody. Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to the next episode and have a great one. I'm sure I'll see you on the trail. Maybe I'll come up there. speaker-1: for having me. All right, please do. speaker-0: Thanks Chris.