Our Best New Accounts Are Coming Through LinkedIn

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Stephanie Stucky talks about how she's been winning her biggest retail accounts for Stucky candies without a sales pitch she also explains her latest manufacturing snafu which she calls the case of the squishy pican log rolls Laura Xander meanwhile tells us about the supply chain challenges she's faced getting product from China Vietnam and South Africa plus she talks us through how her latest price increases have resulted in a doubling of orders even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners and which you can subscribe to at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews and please stick around at the end of the podcast for a new feature Steve kraws marketing minute joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Stephanie Stucky who is CEO of Stuy the snack and roadstop business best known for its pcan log rolles and Laura Xander who is CEO of Jimmy beans wool a digital yarn store based in Reno Nevada and meline Tosh a yarn supplier based in Fort Worth Texas the episode is titled our best new accounts are coming through Linkedin welcome Stephanie and Laura Stephanie we haven't spoken to you in a little while what's going on so we've had some ups and downs I think the world of small business it's often two steps forward one step back but as long as you're moving in the right direction that's positive I'm going to start on an upbeat note we're opening new accounts and we just launched an 250 easy that's e Z convenience stores we in all of their units mostly in Texas but also Arkansas and they are selling our pcan law girls our Divinity our pralines and our milk and white chocolate Gophers so that launched this week and we've got a couple of other big retail chain accounts in the pipeline so that's super exciting have you done anything different to uh to win those accounts what is this a change in strategy or just continued hard work that paid off it's continued work that's paid off and here's the interesting thing the vast majority of our new accounts are from LinkedIn especially the large retail accounts it's LinkedIn connections people will message me on LinkedIn and say that they're interested in our brand no kidding yeah how involved are you in in these new accounts I mean are you the first Contact yes I do the lead I do the pitch and then my business partner is more of the closer but he is also really a Adept at negotiating these large retail accounts and I hand almost all of those over to him after I do the initial pitch and quite often I'll bring him in on the initial pitch I think we've got a good vibe going where we know what each of us does best and he's very good at figuring out the logistics and figuring out the pricing because even though we have a main price spreadsheet we alter that depending on the model and the distribution are we are we shipping to a centralized distribution Center is are there slotting fees which is what you'll find in grocery channels do they expect us to bake in quarterly promotions so there's different pricing formats that they they'll often ask for so we'll we'll take a base price sheet and then curate it based on what the individual stores want and or the chains and that's what my partner is really good at I frankly really enjoy the smaller mom and popop retail outlets that are more brand forward and I'll coordinate with them on social media post by really think help to elevate our story and they're more intimate so and most of those accounts actually we get from trade shows so between trade shows and Linkedin that's where we're getting our leads from and we always have stuff in the pipeline it's just when it finally hits it's a bit of a celebratory moment so we had that this week with easy Mark I'm really curious about using LinkedIn this way are you actually doing a pitch on LinkedIn or I know you have a big following on LinkedIn is it just a matter of big accounts coming to you how does this work this has been absolutely fascinating to me I am just telling my story on LinkedIn and it's not just my story it's the story of Stucky it's the story of the road trip but I'm so entwined with the story of Stuy since it's a family brand and it's my name but if you read my post if you follow what I do very rarely do I actually put out there a sales pitch it's just talking about my journey as an entrepreneur in the duckies comeback story and then people are messaging me and saying I want to be part of this would' be really interested in talking with you about carrying your product in our stores and that's what happened with EZ the account you just mentioned yes so that actually goes higher than that it was the parent company the CEO of the parent company reached out to me GPM Investments and we had a call and that's a company that owns small sea store chains I say small to me it's a good size but their sweet spot is convenient store chains sorry for using Ringo convenience store chains that have about 200 to 250 units and they'll buy those they'll keep the brand name and the brand Integrity intact but they provide support and management and under the GPM umbrella are about 2300 sea store units and so this is our test if we do well with Easy Mart then there's the PO potential to expand out across their portfolio it's so neat again to see that the validation of just be yourself right and just tell your story and just like you don't have to push it um to be a successful small to mediumsized business it's I just love that like that makes me feel so good I did a post called the myth of the girl boss which I think Laura can relate to and it's to the point of being yourself and I got very frustrated seeing these post on LinkedIn which is just that your typical I'm at a ribbon cutting or I just got this award blah blah blah which I post too it's important we all want to share in those wonderful at a girl at a boy moments but it gets a little redundant a little repetitive and I just had a day where things had been really hard for me and I thought I people just need to post more about what the reality is of running a small business so I posted up there amen the myth of the girl boss I had me in a it was a photo of me in a t-shirt I was completely unglamorous I was working at the warehouse helping put together new Concepts for our gift boxes and I said there's a lot of days that are hard there's a lot of days you're not glamorous there's days when you are putting in insane hours in fact that is those are most of the days and I know that there are women out there I was talking about women in particular who just look so polished and they have the perfect husband and they have the perfect families and they put it they put it all out there and it just seems so wonderful and more power to them if that is actually their lives but that's not me my life is messy I'm a divorced mom I've got two kids I'm I'm raising them of course I have support from my former husband but still it's it's messy it's tough It's Complicated and it's messy what a great word yeah that's life and so I just put that out there it got I don't know last I saw it was it was like 3,000 likes and about 600 comments and wow I think like 400,000 engagements whatever that means views so it was a lot it was a lot of response and and I really paid attention to the comments and there were a lot of women who said thank you I feel that way too I love that I'm on a mission to make LinkedIn interesting again or maybe I don't know if it was ever interesting I'm on a mission to make LinkedIn interesting that's quite a cause you've got a lot of work to do Stephanie I want more interesting post from CEOs and from everyone I think what people connect with is just rooting for us to make it everyone loves a comeback story you like to root for the underdog there's a reason why Rocky is such a great movie or I just watch hooers again and we love to root for the underdog and so I think there's this sense of yeah we want to see them make it and how can we be a part of that Journey okay so Stephanie you told us that you were starting with some good news you seem to be suggesting that you had some other experiences to share and now for the messy part so the case of the squishy pan log roll this was not a fun call I get a message from our warehouse and I get in touch with them and they said our new batch from our new Candy plant of pcan log rolls are signature item arrived and the first the top layer in every box was flat so they weren't pcan log rolls they were I don't know what you call them pcan Flats pan log flat bars they're bars they're like Power Bars yes and Squishy and easy to chew yeah so our distribution facility is in Eastman Georgia so I drove down personally to to check out the situation it's the shipping process and also I think it's a factor that it's summer that's not helping it's very hot in Georgia and so it's a variety of factors so we had a long conversation with our candy plant manager and we changed the caramel recipe we make our caramel from scratch and and so we added the thickening agent we added some more thickening agent so we just changed the quantities around you have to be very careful because we've already done the packaging and the labeling and the nutritional contents and the ingredients so you can't add new ingredients but we could change up some of the processes and we let the pecan new the logl nougat sit out overnight to harden up so not to get into too much of the det DET I think the big thing is that we had a big strategy session we came up with the plan of action we tried it out and it does appear to be working how much bad product do you have or not bad but um squishy product it actually tastes delicious we're talking about uh I think it was 4,000 units it's it was a good number it was not a insignificant amount and how big a problem it is the adjustment that you had to make to prevent it from happening again not that bad fortunately it's just changing up the processes and we're still in a bit of a trial and error mode because we bought a candy plant they had to figure out our recipes our ingredients and make sure that the process worked for us this is a building year for us we're building our team there's going to be some days like that so 4,000 of them I mean what what did that cost you you know like what's the maybe the opportunity cost or our cost are 69 cents per unit okay so you lost a couple thousand bucks let's say if you were to sell those maybe you sell them for a buck 50 or something so a buck 50 times $4,000 $6,000 I'm just thinking we so you know we have a factory in Texas you know it's funny I often talk about on the podcast and with people about all the people issues and problems we have and it doesn't even occur to me until right this second we have these sorts of factory issues once a week um all the time our supplier just ran out of a die that we use for our yars granted I don't have like FDA and food quality and all that stuff we don't have those restrictions so it's a little different but um like we just ran out of a die and we knew we've been trying to order it for three months and the supplier has doesn't have it doesn't have it doesn't have it and it's affected you know 20% of our business and so we've got the head kitchen manager in there you know redoing all the recipes to try to figure out okay if we could use a little bit of this and a little bit of that we have about 400 colors that we work with you know how could we recreate some of these colors and not lose business and blah blah blah and then we just had um you know there's a yarn that we got $100,000 worth of it uh delivered to us and we dye it and it doesn't die the right way because of the way it was treated and so it's been a six Monon process like we finally we've sent stuff out to Tennessee to try to get it fixed we've tried to fix it locally you know blah blah blah blah blah um so I I guess you know it's funny because now having this Factory for a year and a half or two years now I have come to terms with the fact that these sorts of things are just a daily part of business like it is there we never not going to have some sort of product issue some sort of Supply issue you know some sort of QA issue because I've just been watching it and watching it and so now I'm just surrendering to it and just accepting the fact that that that's just the way it is and I guess that's kind of like people issues you're just always going to have somebody's not going to get along there's always going to be some sort of drama and to try to get it to not be that way is just like banging your head against the wall it's so true I think the thing I've learned is just act quickly and don't try to minimize it really address the problem right when it happens because it will only get worse and my initial reaction with it squishy pan log roll was just roll it it'll get better and then I I went for a walk and I thought about it I'm like no you got to get a handle on this get your butt down to Eastman go see it go have a powow with a candy plant manager we need to tackle this ASAP no problem gets better by just letting it sit there so you just have to get a handle on it you know Stephanie I have found for me P just for my personality type and maybe this is yours as well but these kinds of things are actually my favorite part of the job because I get to come up with Creative Solutions when I'd heard about the squishy rolls I'm like oh my God this is awesome could you could you just mold it a little bit and make it into a cane could you change the shape and put a you know put a Christmas sticker on it and all of a sudden you have limited edition log cane you know or whatever you know pecan canes for Christmas charge twice as much for them and then you can see if they sell really fast and then all of a sudden you have this new product that you had never even realized or can you turn them into a heart these kinds of issues are where we get a lot of new product things you know a lot of new product ideas and it gives us a chance to test things out that we had never planned on testing before um and had never really thought about I subscribe and I I purchase clothes from this place called imagene and Willie in Nashville and they it's so awesome because they will they do hand you know design t-shirts like you know the $60 t-shirts and every once in a while like I just got an email from them that they made some mistakes right they're selling the mistake t-shirts for $235 because they're oneof a kind and and I'm like and they sell out and I'm like this is so brilliant absolutely freaking brilliant and so we do the same thing like if we mess up you know quote unquote mess up a whole batch of stuff then we're like one of a kind you'll never be able to get this again limited edition okay I want to ask you both about uh whatever supply chain issues or shipping issues you may have recently had but but first we're going to do something we've never done here before on this podcast which is we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor work better now have either of you ever tried a virtual assistant no but I would love a virtual assistant and I've thought about it I've just never taken a leap it seems so intimidating well I'm about to talk to the co-founder of uh work better now so listen up and we'll be right back okay I'm here with Rob Levan who is co-founder of work better now which provides business owners with virtual assistance how's it work rob you know as well as anybody Lauren that the pace of change in business has never been faster today's business owner has more to do than ever and if you don't focus on important stuff like Business Development and your next product and service and your customer experience and your team it's impossible to keep up much less to grow your business an assistant could do the one thing that everybody thought was impossible to do which is to give you more time your day by taking all of the administrative tasks off of your plate how much does it cost it's 1,7 $750 for a full-time dedicated assistant and fellow listeners of the 21 hats podcast can save $150 for the first three months by mentioning the word warrant all right to learn more work better now.com that's it workb better now.com all right we're back Laura we've talked about a lot of issues involving your business we haven't talked about the companies that you operate in China and Vietnam for quite some time and with all the supply chain issues that have been in the news I'm curious what's going on with them that's a great question um Vietnam has been locked down and the lockdowns continue to um slow things down so our general manager and product developer she actually has taken on all of the development and the work in China and Vietnam for the last uh for the last year or so um but last I heard uh Vietnam has been locked down China's been okay you know um you have a bag manufacturer I we do yes so it's called Dela um and we actually we had two different brands we had delq which was produced in Vietnam um was a business that we purchased and then Namaste was a business that we purchased that was produced in in China but we brought the two of them together so we dropped the Namaste brand um and we are now selling everything under Del Q so now Dela Q which is bags we're doing some of the production in Vietnam and some of the production in China have you been able to get product during the lockdown or is this shut things down completely um it's shut things down so we we had a heads up that it might happen so they were pushing really really hard before that happened to get some stuff to us um so we're just we're kind of rolling with it we're placing much larger orders you know just in case this happens again and um so it's affected us um what's affected us more actually is like right now in South Africa we had a container of yarn that was supposed to be here now and we just found out a couple of days ago that our shipping company dsv did not realize that the container never made it on the boat so they lost our container and it's still they just got it on the boat a couple of days ago but it sat um in South Africa like in a yard somewhere for a month without anybody realizing that it was there so now I've got a my task this week is to talk with them and negotiate and we're going to have to figure out how to Airship some stuff because it didn't make it on the boat and um and then we've got the issues like I mentioned before with the dyes you know so the products that we use to create our products you know the shipping industry is still just overwhelmed you know and just can't get stuff out you know two years ago or a year and a half ago we would say okay I've got a container's worth of stuff can you ship it out can you fit it on a boat next week and they would say yes absolutely and now it's like can you fit a container on the boat in two months so um you know the delays are just super significant Stephanie have you had supply chain issues either absolutely with our packaging from China it we ordered the packaging in February the shipment got lost in the Port of Savannah uh for a couple weeks but it was delayed for a months it was in that Panama Canal Mass when it was there was the blockage and everything was delayed and we did not get that packaging until about two weeks ago late August it actually got all the way to Savannah but then got lost yes couldn't find the tracking number the something number there was certain documentation paperwork and delay delay delay at the ports and it's not just Port of Savannah I'm not being on Port of Savannah this is every port it is due to worker shortages is what I'm this is what I'm reading in the industry and the trade Publications and the cost of containers has skyrocketed if they're all stuck with delayed shipments in Port and they're not turning the containers as rapidly there's a shortage of containers so that's jacking the cost up containers usually cost a couple thousand like two to three grand for shipping it's gone up to 20,000 and up and the big retailers like Walmart and Target are coming in and paying these absorbent prices because they want to make sure that their customers are guaranteed to being able to get the product they want which means the smaller businesses like stues we are not able to afford the shipping costs so we either look for domestic manufacturers or we look for uh you know there are some distribution centers or some uh vendors here in America that had the had the forsite to see this coming and started stockpiling inventory so we're working with some of them or you get we're getting a lot of product from Mexico so we're not having the shipping container issues from Mexico so we get falsa blankets and Baja jackets out of Mexico so you just get creative and certainly the we always like to buy American anyway we want to support our local economy and the tariffs are pretty exorb depending on what your product is uh especially from China right now so there's just a myriad of issues related to supply chain most of it the finger of blame would be pointed to co you know it's all covid delays it's been a rough year yeah are you passing on some of these extra costs we have not met we've held tight and we've been fortunate in that now that we own a manufacturing facility we do make our product ourselves so that is saving some cost but it's coming we're we're not going to prevent ourselves from being profitable and earning the kind of income that we need to for our team so we it's coming and every time we get a price increase from one of our partners we save it I have a whole folder it's labeled price increases where I save all the messaging so when it does happen for us I've got the messaging points I can read what others have done and we certainly will be consistent with our partners uh the one we got most recently just a couple days ago was moon pie I was also going to ask you what about the wages you know of the people in the factories you know and the people in your factory and the people who work for you are you seeing a h huge wage increase because we are right we're seeing um I was actually just talking to a guy last night that owns a trucking company and he's increased his hourly wages by 40% in the last year I mean we've done some similar some similar things as much as 40% Laura yep actually I've been thinking about it for quite a while but we're really evaluating like our business model and we have been moving towards less volume um less re not necessarily less less Revenue but not trying to grow revenue and trying to grow profit margin um so that we can increase wages uh the way that we need to so like we've raised our prices um we announced a price increase for next year and we um for our Factory you know for our products in Texas and we sold out like what we've been doing now because we can't keep up with the demand is we say if you want some of our products next year tell us now and within 3 days we double sold what our capacity was for next year at the new higher prices yes at the new higher prices and we added anq like a a minimum that was double what the minimum was before um like per product so we put so that we can get some efficiencies so that we can you know increase margin so that we can pay our people more you know and provide a better environment I mean that's what it all is really boiling down to it doesn't change you know anything for for the bottom line necessarily um we're just trying to shift money around and also what I believe is that the really astute business owners that purchase from us they recognize that if we raise our prices that means they raise their prices which means they actually make more money as well and the consumer is happy to pay an extra dollar you know or an extra $2 or an extra 50 um you know most of them don't notice it well the timing of it is interesting that you went ahead and announced q1 of 2022 will have an increase oh yeah and I'm surprised you're getting all these pre-orders that's that's really interesting to me I I would think that people would just start buying up your product now before the increase goes into effect we have found that from what has worked well for us both on the retail side and on the wholesale side is that if you're going to do a price increase you give people maybe a month either a month to six months depending on if it's direct to consumer or whatever and we have driven sales so high like when we announce it so if you say okay you know in three months there's going to be price increase so stock up now then people just like you know it's amazing it's really cool it's human nature yeah I think three months sounds like a sweet spot but I I need to give some more thought to it and we we have had to increase wages Lauren and answered to that earlier question I don't know the percentage but we looked at it more holistically and are putting together we we've already added some additional benefits some more holidays some more leave time and we also put together a program to allow folks to advance more and uh get higher salaries as they get more responsibility and can get promotions so we we've tried to put a whole structure in place are you short staffed right now yes but we are trending I always try to look at the trend not just the point in time we are steadily adding staff we're getting there we need to add more but we are adding to the candy Line and the pecan roasting line and pecan season is upon us and the shelling plant will be in full operation very soon and you think you'll have enough people for it uh to be determined I think so Laura are you still short staffed or has the uh increase in wage is made a difference um in Texas this production manager that we hired is apparently a hiring Rockstar because he brought in five people yesterday or earlier this week he's got five interviews today we hired three people yesterday um he's we're killing it just it's incredible um really really incredible so in Texas we're doing really well uh in Reno it's harder uh like I said the wages here are just unbelievable um so the competition because this is such a distribution center I guess you know you've got all of these distribution companies so that's where we're you know we've lost I think five people in the last five or six people in the last month and we're really trying to decide do we want to replace them and how do we want to replace them we've been able to hire some customer service but it's the Fulfillment side of things and the warehouse side of things did they leave because of money um various reasons like two of them people cashed out you know the housing prices here have just skyrocketed so like one guy sold his house moved to Michigan and was able to buy his house in Michigan for cash you know another girl did the same thing in Idaho so she Mo they moved to Idaho so people are just leaving one guy you know after covid decided that I he wants to be a pro roller skater and bartender so he left I guess that was um but he'd been there for six or seven years um um somebody else left that we kind of wanted to leave we've had a couple people leave that we pushed out a little bit so um so it hasn't been altogether horrible you know and we're surviving I mean it is what it is have either of you had uh changes in your uh the the covid situation recently W with Delta we have in Texas you know I mean two weeks ago was a tough week we had a number of people out um and a couple of them had just gotten vaccinated they had just gotten their first vaccines too um but in Nevada and Reno we've still you know over the whole two years or the year and a half we've had one instance we had one person test positive and that's been it we've had a key worker and a supervisor level in the candy plant and the manager reg distribution facility neither of whom was vaccinated we have been trying to be proactive and encouraging our staff to be vaccinated we the main staff is at the manufacturing facility so we had the local hospital Jefferson County Hospital actually came on site and gave free vaccines on site to make it super easy we let people have time off from work get get the vaccine obviously if you have any site effect to take the day off and rest up and so we offered that to as an incentive and we did have some staff do that but we had several who did not our candy plant our shelling plant requires Health regulations require already that they have to have hair nets gloves mask and and the person who came down with it it was a supervisor so was not actually working Hands-On with the food production was supervising within the facility so it's rough you know especially the distribution facility we have the number two person has had to step up to the late and manage everything and her she's got Clos family members with Co do you give them a bonus or do you just say thanks or like how do you handle that good question all of this just happened this week yeah I and I'm asking for myself as well you know to be determined that's worth consideration I'm thinking out loud here but it might be more appropriate as part of the year in bonus to have the recognition for the hard work I know and we thought last year was going to be rough right we thought that was it it was rough Laura oh yeah yeah yeah no you're right but I mean we thought that like that was it and we were done I mean January 1 it's all going to be better right all right well lots of threads that we will continue to follow my thanks to Stephanie Stucky and Laura Xander uh as always thanks for sharing guys all right and here it is your marketing minute with Steve crawl of befound online here's today's question Steve Google is making a significant change in July should I be afraid or excited Lauren I am super excited about this update first it's the first truly user Centric update that I think Google has ever made everything in this is user Centric and if you can take advantage of this update which will be rolled out in phases you can LeapFrog your competition I compared a clients's website to their biggest competitor and while the client graded an F their competitor was a d if they jump that F to a c or a B while the competitor is asleep with the wheel opportunity abounds now it doesn't forego the need for great content and regular and recurring content but it means you could give yourself a competitive Advantage by taking advantage of the Google page experience update all right if you want more details look for Steve's marketing minute blog post at 21h hats.com [Music] wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's L ren21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess thubron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]