Season 2 Episode 9: Building brand awareness to increase brand recognition

TRANSCRIPT

This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, playing, game, pickleball, paddle, product, ideas, retention, store, big, talking, scott, smash, post, bit, tim, tennis, concept, friends, week

SPEAKERS

Mariah Parsons, Brian Lastovich, Scott Brown, Tim Swindle

Mariah Parsons 00:04

Hey there, I'm Mariah. And I'm Bryan and this is retention Chronicles. Ecommerce brands are shifting their strategy to retention in customer experience. And so we decided to reach out to top DTC brands and dive deeper into tactics and challenges.

Brian Lastovich 00:20

But here's the thing. We love going on tangents. I teach Brian all about the latest trends, and I teach Mariah that it's a waste of time, and we discuss

Mariah Parsons 00:29

all things in the Shopify ecosystem. So go ahead and start your workout or go on that walk and tune in as we chat.

Brian Lastovich 00:37

Retention Chronicles is sponsored by Malomo Shipman, an order tracking platform, improving the post purchase experience, be sure to subscribe and check out all of our episodes at Go. malomo.com

Tim Swindle 00:55

Hey, Mariah, how are you? Good. How are you? Good. Tim. I'm Brian. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Hello. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Hi, Brian. Nice to meet you.

Brian Lastovich 01:07

Nice to meet you, too. Scott, how are you? I'm good.

Scott Brown 01:11

Yeah, got out and played some pickleball today. So that's always a good way to start the day.

Tim Swindle 01:18

We just spent, we just spent an hour on a call with a customs broker. Trading things of being an entrepreneur is just like, sounds brutal. Yeah, just bringing in product from overseas is like a huge pain in the butt. And there's all these like tariffs and duties going on right now. And it's majorly impacting us and other people like us. So it stinks that we're like these small, small guys just trying to like, get it going. And we kind of unexpectedly got hit with like, it was 12% of our invoice was hit with a tariff. So like, it's a lot, I don't know. We weren't anticipating that like in our financial modelling, basically. And so we're trying to figure that out right now. So that's what we got going on.

Scott Brown 02:10

The bummer is that the reason for these tariffs is to incentivize people doing business in the US. And then we reach out to us companies, and they all tell us know that we're too small. They won't do business with us. Why it's why people do business with Chinese because China will do business with startups. They'll

Brian Lastovich 02:26

do small amounts. Yeah.

Scott Brown 02:28

I mean, I have tried, I bet a dozen times to do business in the US and then told no 12 Straight times that were too on too small with whatever I was trying to make. So it's it's a tricky spot to be in as a startup in the US trying to manufacture in the US the type of manufacturing we're doing. So you guys take injection molding? Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Swindle 02:52

No, that's not what this podcast is about. No.

Scott Brown 02:56

That's boring stuff. All the fun stuff on the podcast.

Mariah Parsons 02:59

No, I mean, that's what's like part of the fun and why we start recording just when we hop on the call, because it's interesting to like, get kind of the behind the scenes of whoever we're talking to like what's going on in their lives. So no, this is interesting. Like I would have no reason to know about

Brian Lastovich 03:15

a motor conversation with 10s OTS to whenever we're talking to them, southern Tennessee.

Mariah Parsons 03:20

Well, welcome to retention Chronicles. On this week's episode, we are joined by Tim and Scott, thank you both for being here with us. We're going to chat all about retention and your most recent endeavor, huddle Smash, but before we get along to doing so, we'd love it. If both of you could say hi, give us kind of your background, how you arrived to founding the company paddle Smash, and how did you guys get to meet each other?

Scott Brown 03:47

Yeah, well, nice. Nice to meet you both. Thank you for having us on. And I'll start and give a quick and dirty version of my history. I got through just a series of lucky breaks, invited to join a venture capital firm in Chicago that was hiring entrepreneurs in residence. So they were like, Hey, we're gonna try this new thing. We're gonna hire a bunch of kind of scrappy young guys, young kids, guys and gals, and give you office space and, and potentially give you money to test out ideas you come up with. So we were brought into the Chicago office, it was like the kind of early stage of that whole Open Office idea, ping pong tables around and everything like that. We were kind of at the cutting edge of that. And they were like, alright, every week we're going to have a brainstorming session, we're going to come up with ideas, or like pain points that people are facing. And one week we came to the table with this pain point of cognitive decline. We'd read an article in The New York Times about talking to deep clamping of major fear of baby boomers. And we all kind of thought like, is there a business opportunity there? And we started to explore it and found out that there are a bunch of people Still trying to address it a bunch of interesting products available in the market. But no one really aggregating them together this, we thought maybe this is the thing, like we become the go to store for all things brain health. And so it's like the follow 2008 A really brutal time to be starting a business. To be fair, this is like startup a recession. But the one really fortuitous thing about it was that the, the kind of available space in brick and mortar retail was really great. Because a bunch of people were being cautious about opening new stores. And so we were approached by a store just off of the Magnificent Mile in downtown Chicago, a mall had an open vacancy for that holiday season. They're like, please just come in, we'll give you super cheap rent, or like this is it perfect. So we opened that store and really liked from the opening of that those doors, like we felt like we had something pretty good, like people kind of flooding into the stores, and really interested in the concept. The quick version of that is like over the course of many years, we tested a bunch of different concepts around that. We learned that the vast majority of our customers preferred toys and games for a way to workout their brain. And then we learned kind of the best type of store, which is an in mall store. So as we learn that, then we started to rapidly expand, we ultimately grew to have 40 stores across the US. And what we were known for was finding cutting edge product, it was a little bit like a Kickstarter meets brick and mortar retail, where we were like looking for the up and coming ideas up and coming games and bringing them into our stores and allowing them kind of an optimal environment to succeed. And so I was always on the lookout. And that's actually how I met Tim, because Tim was the inventor of a brand new up and coming game.

Mariah Parsons 06:57

Okay, awesome. Yeah, so

Tim Swindle 06:59

I'll jump in there. So prior to being in the toy game space, I was a software entrepreneur was building a software company, based in Chicago. And it was a very high tech industry, you know, the opposite of toys and games. We were VC backed, burning a ton of cash, managing big teams, just kind of a very stressful environment to be in. And during that time period, I had the idea to pursue this like Passion, passion project, the side hustle, if you will, I had read an article in Ink Magazine that had described how Cards Against Humanity came to light, it kind of gave their blueprint for the Cards Against Humanity, guys, they happen to be from Chicago, and I enjoyed playing that game. So I read that article. And I was like, it got me thinking, I have a game that we've been playing with friends at Lake houses for a number of years, just late at night, looking for something to do, we had this game that we came up with, and everyone always had a ton of fun playing it. And it basically the concept was like you speak in you say silly phrases and funny, funny voices. So one example would be like, you know, British is the accent for the round. And everyone's got to go around and like say something and then a British accent. And it just got a lot of laughs more than anything. And there was really no point in winning the game. And so anyway set out to bring this game to the to the world kind of following the Cards Against Humanity blueprint, I did a Kickstarter like they had done, it didn't blow up or anything like you see some of these Exploding Kittens and whatnot, do millions of dollars. But we got funded, it was our first win. And from there, I was introduced to Scott actually. So through a mutual connection, and known about his brand marbles, the brain store had a really good presence in Chicago, kind of knew that they were into looking for games like ours. And so we got in touch. And from there, he was the first retailer to actually carry my game under nonsense. And from there, you know, we got to know each other really well and became good friends and now we're business partners.

Brian Lastovich 09:08

There's so much. Okay, so first of all, I'm I'm from Chicago. I live outside of Chicago right now, but boy, does that Siri, the sandbox industries. I'm very familiar with sandbox industries. I think AI is in the West Loop. Correct? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So a good friend of mine was just talking to today was at a company called doggy loop, which was our sandbox industries as well. I remember was there. Yeah, there was your friend. His name is Alon mosbacher. And he was I think a VP of Marketing there at the time. But yeah, small world. I remember going in meeting him and just getting the tour of sandbox industries and that was like revolutionary, like, I'll check out this place. It looked amazing. It was in the west loop. And I remember now the marble store because there's a few I mean, If you said 4040 locations, yeah, so probably all the malls and the suburbs and all that stuff, right? That's where you're at like Woodfield Mall. All that. Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay, so a lot of lot of points. I'm sure we know a lot more people than, than I make sure. That's right. Yeah, well, okay, let's make sense now like the concept. One thing so Mariah, did you look up other nonsense before this caller now? Sorry to put you on the spot.

Mariah Parsons 10:30

I didn't know. But now I'm gonna do it. Because I don't know what you're gonna

Brian Lastovich 10:34

know. Well, here's the thing. It's like, what I found really interesting between both of you is that the like, concepts are a mix of two three things with a new perspective put on it. So when I first started was like, oh, let's check out this other nonsense. Like the first thing that came to my mind was not Cards Against Humanity, but like apples to apples. Because of okay, letting you know, everyone puts a card down. Mariah Do you remember apples to apples or no? Yes. Yeah, okay. Well, well, it's a like, I don't know, if people still play that today? Probably not. I haven't played him years and years. But I guess my question to both of you is, I'm kind of going outside the box. But is that is that kind of like how you have thought about even like previous inventions, which is like, taking a concept here, a concept here a concept here, and then putting a new approach in perspective of it. And thinking about it differently than anything else? Like I see something similar. Again, we'll get into it with pal Smash. But is that like, a familiar concept to both of you? Yeah.

Scott Brown 11:43

So you know, the industry, the toy industry is interesting. cart, or apples to apples was a massive success. And what tends to happen is when there's a massive success, everyone looks at that as a model. And they think, Okay, well, then. And so really, for the next 10 years, I was in the middle of getting in venture pitches all day long. And I would say, half of my venture pitches were started with this is like apples to apples. But and that's what we do in the industry is we just do kind of variations on a theme. It's like, I love to cook. And there are no new ingredients. Generally in cooking. There's just rearranging of ingredients. And it's the same thing in the toy industry. There's generally not kind of new elements of a game, there's just a rearranging of the elements to create new games. And I mean, it's a great thing. For me, whenever I talk to new inventors, or aspiring kids wanting to be inventors, I'm like, listen, you're not inventing the wheel here. This is just like, the wheel already is out there, us figuring out how to reuse the wheel in a new and creative way. And that's how I've thought about my games. I think it's how Tim thought about is, I mean, frankly, Cards Against Humanity is a variant of apples to apples. It's the arbitrary judge. And so you present, and then some arbitrary judge decides which one he or she likes the most. And there's, you know, there's probably 50 games in the market right now, they that use that as their mechanic. And like, every few years, there's some new big mechanic that kind of disrupts the industry. And everyone tries to be a fast follower of that mechanic.

Brian Lastovich 13:18

Yeah, there's a there's this book called, where big ideas come from, it's by Steven Johnson. And it's like a it's that concept, where mostly, it's just more exposure to anything leads to more and more ideas, because it's just about connecting the dots. And if you have limited dots to connect, ideas, will will be a little more difficult to achieve. But the more exposure you get, the more ideas and then it's just connecting those dots together. But interesting, okay. Yeah, I didn't I didn't think that I didn't see the connection between Cards Against Humanity and apples to apples, but now I do. Really interesting.

Scott Brown 13:59

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's how we think about the product we're working on right now to honestly, it's a funny thing. When you're coming up with ideas, how often it happens that you like, put it out to the world. Yeah. And then you'll find out there's like, 15 other people at the same time that have come up with something similar. And it's just like, I don't know how to explain it. But there's something that happens, like it gets into the ether, and people pick up on it. For whatever reason, I think ours is very obvious. You know, we're coming out with this new game called paddle smash that combines elements of pickleball and Spikeball. Well, both of those have been massive successes. I mean, pickleball, especially, it's the fastest growing sport in North America. And so, you know, Tim and I were brainstorming ideas of what we wanted to do next, we came up with like, even sketched out a rough version of this idea. And the next week we were inviting introduced to an inventor who had come up with this game. And so it's just like, it's actually kind of a beautiful thing. Sometimes it can be frustrating because you You're like, Alright, I've got this new amazing thing, you launch it, and then you find out someone else did it at the same time. But for me, I think it's beautiful. I'm like, I love when things get in the ether. And it's kind of like this weird thing where we've got sort of this connectivity. And I mean, right now, definitely in the ether is pickleball. And I think definitely the three spike ball. And we just took those two ingredients and rearranged them and took kind of our favorite elements and smashed them into this one thing.

Brian Lastovich 15:25

Yeah, Spike, Spike ball space, or was based out of Chicago as well, too. Right? Where

Scott Brown 15:30

are ya my retail stores, we were one of the very first to carry them. So I got to ride that wait, it was just fun to see their success and how it happened. It felt fast to me, I'm sure in their spot, it was like 10 years of slogging along. Not fast, I'm sure. But God, it is a really great success story.

Brian Lastovich 15:50

So go ahead. No, no, you go ahead. Brian, I was gonna ask a big question here. But I think I'm most curious about this, because you've developed multiple games. Throughout the last what, what was it like? Would you say 10 years or so?

Tim Swindle 16:06

More than 18?

Brian Lastovich 16:08

Yeah, what's changed the most about executing, getting the game into the hands of the target persona. Again, this, we can go in so many different directions. But what comes to your mind when you think about what is really changed the most?

Tim Swindle 16:27

Well, I'll say you starting from back in the day, the way that you would typically launch a new product is there's almost a pre Amazon was that you'd go the kind of Mom Pop, specialty, hobby game route. And you've got to start there and get into these one off stores, get some traction, years of sales track records. From there, then you make Megan a meeting with a buyer from like a target or Barnes and Noble, you know, one of the bigger players, but they wouldn't look at you, if you were just launching a new idea, they wanted to see some level of traction on came Amazon. So that's a big, you know, level setter now, because now you don't need to be selling into anyone, you can set up your own Amazon store. And you're automatically plugged into a number of consumers who can buy your product, they can review it, they can give you reviews. That's all data that buyers across all industries are looking at, and they can look at. And it's really like a breeding ground for them to understand, like, what trends are happening, and what do they want to potentially bring into their stores. You also have kept the Kickstarter right route. So that's again, like a very visible way to launch a product and then just see, did it get traction that it gets sales? Did it get? You know, what does that how's that doing? That's another one. So you've shortened the cycle from launching your own product to be able to get it into if you're wanting to go into retail distribution. And you can show some of these things where it's like, hey, you know, this, this, this is happening, this is something that people want that got you see the reviews, here's my sales track record, obviously, Shopify websites now you can, you know, create your own storefront, you can drive traffic using social media, to you know, so you can build a very nice business without ever going the retail route, which I think when DTC first started, I think that was the goal was that they're just going to control their own destiny and only go direct I think you're seeing now it's just like Omni approach where you're wanting both, you know, the retail strategy, as well as your own direct state direct strategy. And so, so that, you know, that that's kind of like the way things work today. And that's what we're doing. So we're starting out with our own Shopify website. We're starting out on Amazon. And we're going to use those platforms then to hopefully, which, fortunately, we've already got traction with retailers to be getting into, you know, the retail market.

Brian Lastovich 19:11

So is that still a fit? Like, I don't wanna say Finish Line, because there's still so much to do. But getting into the big box retailer, like, it sounds like that hasn't changed, though. It's a different direction to get there. But it sounds to me like that's still a place that you want to be if you're someone like Aerosmith. Yeah, just

Tim Swindle 19:30

because the volume that they can do. I think it put more pressure on manufacturing related. Sorry,

Brian Lastovich 19:38

I said it obviously puts more pressure on you with manufacturing needs now, like we just talked about before the

Tim Swindle 19:44

start in terms of like the size, the volume that you need to do and yeah, that you do, but like I'll just say those are probably good problems to have. You got a big purchase order. Like I think you'll find a way to finance it. But yeah, I think those big box retailers may have a lot more leverage now. Because it just all of the big boxes that have gone out of business, you know, so now it's like, Please join gamespace it's like Target, Walmart, Barnes and Noble, like, as far as ones that like, do real serious volume that are going to move the needle. Those are kind of it. And so I would say yes, I mean, and then for us, you know, we're not necessarily going after with patio Smash, it's more of like the outdoor retailers. So it's like, Dick's Sporting Goods, shields, Academy sports, those are some of the bigger players in that space. But yeah, I think it is. I mean, I just say like, you know, these people have these companies have, you know, in some cases, 1700 stores and targets instance. I mean, they're just doing massive volume. I mean, like for my email or nonsense, just total sidenote, like, we got in almost like, shortly after Scott took us in, so we went straight from like, launching into 1700 stores, which is crazy. That doesn't happen, typically. So there's a lot of learning there. But I look back at that. That was awesome. Like, I wish I could do that with everything. My answer, as much as it's difficult to

Scott Brown 21:06

do. But you're highlighting. So a shift has been that the targets, especially if the world had been more willing to take chances on brand new products, but it also highlights the risk for a brand new company, because while target will take the risk, that risk, they're still protecting their downside. And so they'll only put in the small purchase orders, and they can immediately cancel. So they may say to you, you're going to need this many units for the fourth quarter, we want to launch August one. And then in September, they may say, it's not doing well enough, we're canceling the rest of the year. And you're already on the hook for all that inventory. And that is the risk. And it's why we're proceeding with caution with with mass market with our product, we would rather wait to get in there and build at least enough awareness so that it's not, I mean, because you really are you're putting it on the shelf and praying that people will notice it, because you are not in control of that anymore. And so we really are being cautious about this and trying to get enough awareness first to at least have some brand recognition when it goes into that. Branding, especially on social media, is really important for ecommerce brands.

Mariah Parsons 22:19

Would you say that's the stage that Patil smashes in, right? Like you're you're building that awareness for your brand? Right. Okay.

Scott Brown 22:25

Yeah, I mean, I will say, like, you're always went into this thinking, we went into this thinking, we're going to hold off on any brick and mortar retail opportunity until at least the spring of this next year. We were like, This is our stance, because we want to build up awareness. And then Dix came to us. Well, we, we presented to Dick's a few weeks ago. And they were like, We want to expedite this, we want to bring it in for this quarter, they got really excited. And I think our plan sort of went out the window. It's a little bit like the mike tyson line, like everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Well, like everyone has a plan until I get kissed on the lips to sounds good. Let's do it. Like we were going for it. So you know, we're breaking our own rules a little bit. But we are it's a test with them. It's only 20 locations, it allows us to do a little bit of a b test with them. So it's very little inventory risk for us. And overall, I think it gives us all the chance to learn a lot before we would go into more stores. Right?

Brian Lastovich 23:26

Tangent? What's the last define that this attended? What's the what's the price? For the consumer?

Scott Brown 23:32

Yeah, so it's 199 99 retail. So it's a higher ticket item. For kind of toys and games, especially in the outdoor game space there. There are quite a few products around that range. Lots that have been very successful. So doesn't, you know, we think we can be very successful with that price range. But it is a little you know, there's an inventory risk because of the cost of that.

Brian Lastovich 23:54

Now, what's your expectation? Like, I'm just imagining myself as a consumer. So walking in the decks, do you think the consumer doesn't know about paddle smash sees it and says, You know what, let's try it out. Or do you think the path is more likely they've seen it somewhere else and recognize it from somewhere else? And then it's the it's, you know, you're trying for availability, mass market availability, and oh, it's there. I've seen this before. Let's try it out. Do you think it's that path? Or what's easier? What do you think about? It's like a marketing play, right? Like, you gotta put more granular and aside and then you see it, and then you buy it, or is it like, I don't know anything about it? Oh, this is interesting. I'm going to try it.

Tim Swindle 24:34

Because we're so new. It's probably the ladder of that somebody's coming in and they're not familiar with it. That would be the assumption at this point. That being said, you know, the nice thing about games in general is that there is an inherent viral coefficient because you playing a game, you're generally playing it with somebody else. Yes. And maybe you're bringing it to a party. You're seeing it be played out in this case, like you're seeing it being played. So that's one thing we really have going for us with this type of a product, especially, is that it's just, it's a very visual product. And like, if people were walking around playing, you're playing at the park, like you're saying, Oh, what is that, and, you know, you're maybe going and buying a store. I mean, we're seeing that a little bit, even with like, oh, we only launched like two weeks ago. But we did have Scott living in in, in Utah, near Salt Lake, he went to like a local festival, where he had it out and have people playing, he did a little pop up at shields store. And it's just funny, like, without really trying, basically, here we're getting like, almost all of our sales are from Utah. So there has to be this correlation of like, you know, people have bought it in a particular location, and now they're playing it. And so then it's just getting picked up by other people who probably have seen it or played it. And then the other thing, is your point about like, our people going into stores not knowing what it is. That's the beauty of cell phones these days. I mean, we have QR codes on our packaging, just in general, if I'm at a store, and I'm like, Oh, what's this, I can just whip up on my phone. And I'll just look it up search and just see what it's all about. And just see, like we've had, obviously we're on social media, people can see it being played. So that's another just beauty of technology today, where, you know, even if you're not familiar to it, if people aren't familiar on shelves, they can kind of quickly just look it up when they're standing in front of it and see if it's something they're interested in.

Scott Brown 26:36

And I'll just add, I think this is also part of the reason why we picked the kind of two ingredients we picked is that they are so well known that they become anchor points. In my store, when we'd have a customer come in. One of the things we told our employees to do was always look for an anchor point that would ground someone to that product. So they would always say some product that was like that product, and the person would go Oh, I get it. Okay, so it's like Trivial Pursuit or, like Scrabble it well, our package, both front and center says pickleball meets around net, or pickleball meet Spikeball. And so I think you know, enough people know those two products. Well, now that it's an intriguing idea. Like, ah, I love this sport. I love this sport. I mean, our most common comment on our social media posts is my family loves Spikeball and loves pickleball this seems perfect for me. And I think there's just enough people out there that are like that, that we'll be able to get the ball rolling a bit, just with that. And again, me is maybe it's a small market. But I think it's enough of a market to get the ball rolling. You know,

Brian Lastovich 27:43

it's the same concept like So Brian, you and I were talking about, we were working on Malomo messaging and positioning. And it's the same concept. Like you have to figure out where the anchor is. So the customer comes to a website and purely like, understands in two seconds, what it is, and you have to anchor yourself to something that they already know, or a category that they already know. And then once you do that, and then like the next step is okay, can we create a new category now that people know this? Standout? More? totally get it? Right. Have you ever played pickleball?

Mariah Parsons 28:18

So I have Yeah, um, it was in college, but I think it was like, just it was just with friends. So like, not like competitively, formally. Yeah. And like, gym class in high school.

Brian Lastovich 28:29

It's all around me and I have not played yet. Why is it? Why Why all of a sudden, in the last few years, is it trending? Is it just the pandemic that because obviously, it's been around for that? Like what? Yeah,

Scott Brown 28:44

that's a good question. Like, what caused the tipping point? Pandemic certainly helped. I think everyone was searching for something to do. I, you know, I think there's just this tipping point concept where enough people become aware of it, that it tips over. And what that tip caused was a bunch of a bunch of cities and towns building their own courts. And when you have access to courts, like we do now, it then can just facilitate that growth. But it is amazing, the rapid growth over the last four years, like it is like hockey stick growth. And you know, you see like LeBron James now investing in football, like it's like real now. Like, there are some reasons why it's as a sport catching on, and I'd say like, it's accessibility across a broad range of ages is the biggest, where tennis is very limiting. You know, the surf and tennis is hard to hard to do. And if you're not matched well, with the person who's playing on a surf perspective, you just get dominated. And then also, it's just a lot of cord to cover. And so as you get older, it's like harder and harder to cover that much space. So you shrink the cord down dramatically and make it so it's an underhand, sir or that almost always goes in and everyone can execute. And you like, immediately eliminate two of the biggest limiting factors for, for why people don't play tennis. So now it's like in my local community, they've converted half of our tennis courts into pickleball. Courts, they just built for more tennis or pickleball courts. I mean, it is real and taking over tennis, not saying it's anywhere near the size of tennis. It's nowhere near that size. But I think it will be. I think, if we could fast forward 20 years from now, it's going to be a real sport, rivalry rivaling tennis.

Brian Lastovich 30:36

Well, I could see like more people talk about tennis, the more people talk about pickleball, the more people talk about, like that's like, I could see that right. Especially if you look at if you look at tennis, too. Right. You had the was it Serena Williams that was retiring? Roger Federer all retired. I think there is something I don't know, I feel like there has been a lot of buzz around tennis, which then has transpired to pickleball and so forth. That's really interesting. Yeah,

Scott Brown 31:03

I don't think pickleball are so like, we need to take over tennis. It's not just like, it's the growth of this amazing sport that's really accessible. I mean, I love it, I go and play almost every day. It's just really like an it's a great community experience. It's like play pickup style, and you go and put your paddle on a wall you rotate in. So it's really great. And we believe that our product will be able to ride the coattails in many ways that movement, some of our early sales have been people that are buying it to be able to set up outside of the pickleball courts. Because the courts are so busy, and you're sitting around waiting to get in the game. The college is active and warm while you wait to get in and play.

Mariah Parsons 31:43

Yeah, I would say if I had to guess like, I don't know why the turn happened. But I think it is a pickleball the becoming more popular, I would say the age range and the low impact. Like, yeah, of the body in the sport, right. Like, because I think a lot of people with the pandemic were, like looking for something that is low impact and can be played with many different people. And I don't, I think now just with the pandemic are way more body centric of like taking care of ourselves. And so pickleball like, we were we're growing up playing it in gym because it's easy to catch on to as well. So I think it's pickleball

Brian Lastovich 32:21

and gym class. Yeah, that's

Scott Brown 32:23

cool. Yeah. Where did you grow up? New Jersey? New Jersey. Interesting.

Brian Lastovich 32:28

That's cool. Oh, SecondMarket.

Mariah Parsons 32:31

Yeah, let me know. Whether Yeah, but so we'd play like in like backgammon or badminton not get back in. And so I just played backgammon with my grandma last week. It's top of mind that, like they're very, they're, they like appeal to the masses, because it doesn't matter. You know, if you're, you know, not extremely athletically inclined, like tennis might require you to be because you can have, it's easier, and it's more accessible. So I think that's why it's going up so much. And same with I see the appeal of paddle Smash, because, like you said, Scott, you can take it off the courts, and you don't, it removes that barrier of needing a court to play on and now you can just transport it wherever you want to go like a beach or a park or whatever. Yeah, it makes morning.

Scott Brown 33:23

In this this morning, I went and played pickleball. And I'm playing against like 70 year old 70 year olds, and actually like, it's very competitive. Because it is like a game a lot about brains over brawn. Like, if you're smart with your strategy, you do not have to be really physically I mean, fit is helpful, but like physic physically agile the way you do with tennis. Yeah. And in fact, I'd say like, it feeds into the origin story of our product. I've been talking a lot. I want to hear Tim tell the origin story, because it's kind of a fun one. And it actually like feeds right into what we're talking about. Yeah, So Ron, if I go with that,

Brian Lastovich 34:02

guys, go go for it.

Tim Swindle 34:05

Yeah. So there is a gentleman by the name of Joe Bingham. He is, yes, seven kids, six boys. And he lives up in Ogden, Utah. And he's a structural engineer by trade and his family. They all love playing pickleball but pickleball courts are like 20 minutes away from their house, like a lot of people that are into pickleball. Right now. It's like kind of hard to find courts. The courts are always crowded, and he, his family loved used to love playing playing Spikeball, but Joe's a little older now. Spikeball is kind of had their moment with their family and they're just all in the pickleball now. So Joe is being an engineer and a tinkerer. He was like I like I want to figure something out that we just play in our backyard together. And they they do a bunch of trips up to like Bear Lake and they go on vacations together and all I was looking for something. So that's what he did. He just started tinkering in his garage as an engineer, he's just got like, a CNC machine and a router that he's, you know, familiar with using. And he just started creating prototypes of what he thought, you know, could be a good idea, which was kind of combining these two worlds of, of Spike ball and pickleball. And he eventually created one that he took around to like neighbors and obviously played with his family and invited friends over. And it played really well. And they had a ton of fun with it. So for like, the past two years, that was like where it was, and he'd wanted to bring it to market, but just kind of didn't have the know how. And that's where he was put in touch with Scott, they're gonna have a mutual connection. And so Scott went, checked it out. He, as he mentioned, we we had been kind of circling around a concept similar to this anyway. So it was a bit of like, a eureka moment when he saw this. And, and so, you know, Scott saw it, and then told me, I need to come see it. And so, same thing came out and played it and what Scott and I played it, and we just were like, yeah, there's there's definitely something here. And so that was the origin stories of battle Smash.

Brian Lastovich 36:13

That's amazing. And so can you walk us through the well, just your two responsibilities at the end of the day? Like, how do you divide up? Who works on what?

Tim Swindle 36:23

I'm trying to figure that out?

Brian Lastovich 36:26

Well, you can do it here, right now you

Tim Swindle 36:28

want to do the conversation last week, to be like, I think we're getting to the point where we do that, you know, there's like, when you're an early startup, there's just so much to do, and it requires, it's just like, whatever fire is lit, like, hey, like you hop on that, like I'm taking care of this. And so there's a lot of just dividing and conquering. And so now I think that we're getting into it. So Scott is like a very creative person. He's a really good artists, and he's just like a very creative person. I'm not as creative. I'm certainly not as artistically talented as him and so he's got maybe a little bit more of like the front of house brain for like, being in sales and you know, the white things with the website and whatnot. Whereas like, I'm a little bit more task oriented. So things operational wise, finance wise, dealing with like our warehouse and whatnot. So more of like, called back a house. So I'd say that's kind of, you know, for, for a moment, Scott Scott's the party in front.

Brian Lastovich 37:29

I was gonna say, sounds like Scott gets to work on the rug. Keeps the

Scott Brown 37:33

business and the front end party in the back.

Tim Swindle 37:34

Yeah, maybe I'm, I'm the business in front of Scott's the party. And that's what

Brian Lastovich 37:39

it is. Okay.

Scott Brown 37:40

He does the boring stuff, and I do the fun stuff. Yeah, I did.

Brian Lastovich 37:46

Okay, so let's get into like panel smash a little bit in terms of like, if we can go into numbers or what you would like to at the end of the day. So you're running, DTC, you also are on Amazon as well. And retail, big box retail, and I would say probably mom and pop store stores as well.

Scott Brown 38:07

A little bit here and there, but it's not something we're pursuing. It's sort of an if they ask, we will probably work with them. But you do open a can of worms there. Okay. Yeah, they're good for building momentum. But they, the juice sometimes isn't worth the squeeze. I used to be a specialty retailer, but I we can be a headache specialty. So if you're

Brian Lastovich 38:31

gonna wave the magic wand, like what's a great percentage of sales that you're looking for when you're looking at a big box retail do to see an Amazon? Like, would you want it to be 5050? Would you rather just say 100%? Big Box or, like, tell me a little bit about

Scott Brown 38:46

like, magic wand? If I can magic wand it? I would say it's 100% DTC because our margins are so much better. But the reality is, I think we're probably likely to follow the same pattern as other success stories in the space. So Spikeball would be one price net would be another and they tend to fall 5050 DTC versus, versus retail.

Brian Lastovich 39:07

And do you think your put your focus on 5050? Or does one take up a lot more time and resources than the other? And why and why not?

Scott Brown 39:16

I think the resources are probably pretty evenly split split between the two. There's annoyances of the wholesale. But that's usually just at the beginning where it's like getting in and getting the paperwork done. But once you're in it's a little bit like you get it in there. And they kind of do the work after that. That's not always the case. There's their stuff, but but the DSC stuff is just you're always having to keep your eye on that ball. So but the margins are much better on DSC. So there's just like it's a balancing act. And I would say, yeah, we'll probably target that as our ultimate balance between the two sides of this. Do

Brian Lastovich 39:50

you have any marketing, like aware like we were talking about awareness and marketing programs today, to help with awareness, to get people to DTC brands like what are you doing today? When it comes to that?

Scott Brown 40:03

Yeah, lots of things. I'd say one that I think has us the most intrigued is probably what and this is, again, learning a lot from this success stories ahead of us. There's been some great pioneers. And luckily, like, I've made friendships with those companies. So as Tim, and so we're able to kind of ask them questions. It's a generous industry, where people are like, hey, like, rising tide raises all ships like, Yeah, and so, yeah, I think the big thing that they've both found is that, as Tim said, inherent in, in this type of game is just that virality, because people see it being played, and they want to know about it. I mean, genuinely, if I were to go out to my local park and start playing it, people will always come up and ask about it, invariably want to know where I bought it. And there's just like some nice part about giving an incentive to someone to tell someone where they bought it. And also, you get a little paid back. So we've got a program on our website. Right now. We're using an app, kind of a Shopify app called snowball. And the way snowball works is it's basically a widget on your website, we call it paddle cash, it rhymes with battle Smash. So the idea of paddle cache is if you are you, upon purchase, immediately get sent a QR code, you're immediately made an affiliate for us. Whether you're not wanting to or not, you get to be one, you don't have to use it. But you could take that QR code. And anytime you're out playing, if someone asks you about it, you can offer them 20 bucks off. And if they buy off with your QR QR code, you get 20 bucks back. And I think that's just like a great way for us to start to spread the word is to incentivize people to be talking about it, get them a little bit of money back for doing it. So that that is one that has got me really excited. It takes some effort just to kind of get that initial momentum. So like, how do you even get those first perfect purchases, and we're figuring that out, it's a little bit like, we sent a lot of free products out there, right now. Like we're finding people in the space, and especially we'd say, in the pickleball space that we can see product with. And we get two things, we get content back that we can use it on our social channels, and we get them out playing it, and then people asking them about it. And I'd say those two things we think will help us to get enough momentum.

Brian Lastovich 42:26

Yeah. That's Mariah. Well, yeah, go ahead. Well, I was gonna ask you, what was the when we talked to Ali pop? What was the widget that they used? That was more about like, post a video?

Mariah Parsons 42:41

Um, downy. Bounce bounty? Yeah. Yeah. Down to you. Yeah. So that, was there a follow up? Or? Well,

Brian Lastovich 42:51

that might be a good I mean, this is not a time to pick up ideas to accompany but I'm curious that like, that might be another idea. Because I think that was pretty automated for the influencer affiliate. Right, that makes that purchase to?

Scott Brown 43:08

I'm writing that down. That sounds compelling. That's also what we just need content. Yeah, this is like you see it being played online. You want to know more? So we're just trying to get people playing it online? Or yeah,

Brian Lastovich 43:18

public too to but yeah,

Mariah Parsons 43:21

they had it so little bit. Yeah, a little bit of background on it. We talked about it in our last episode, our last merchant episode with Ali pop, and so their post purchase email. So like, I ordered from Ali pop to see the whole experience, because that's what Limbo does, right? We're all about retention in those transactional emails. So after you order, the, you know, if you send out through Klaviyo are attentive, those those post purchase email saying like your orders, confirmed, your order is on the way your orders delivered. All of those, what they had was the platform widget, downy. And so it's right under there, it's like your orders confirmed. Here's I think they had a referral pop up and then bounty. And that was pretty much all they had on the order confirmation page. And so obviously, being curious, I signed up for it myself, and it's super easy. So more than willing to tell you about that. But what they do is they pay a user to create tic toc content and you of course give them the rights to like reshare it if they if they so choose to but it's organic because obviously it's it's through like a person's account rather than coming from the ollie pop creator or company page. And so definitely a great platform to look into it could definitely work really well with what you guys are doing snowball. And it's interesting to my one of my high school friends actually is the founder of snowball. So when you said it, I was like, oh my god, that is so wild.

Tim Swindle 44:50

we've chatted with him. He's a good guy, Noah.

Mariah Parsons 44:53

Yeah, yeah. Okay, this is so funny. Wow. Yeah, This.

Scott Brown 45:01

Yeah, yeah, he's a really great job with that

Mariah Parsons 45:04

he is Yeah, so he, I mean, we were childhood best friends like growing up and everything rode together in high school, so shout out no one snowball, but so that affiliate marketing is definitely something that I think when I think about games, the market hits, like that makes a ton of sense to me, because I know if I like spike ball, I didn't really hear about it until one of my friends brought it to some, I don't even know like some barbecue, right, and then like, everyone's playing it, and then it started popping up everywhere. And I'm from New Jersey, like I said, so at people, I started seeing it more and more and on the beach. And I could see the same thing with paddles mash of, I think two on your website, you have testimonials. And it might have been that day that you brought it to festival or the park or whatever it was got. But I'm like one testimonial was like, Oh, I saw it at the park and like went home immediately was like, I need to buy this and playlists. So I think there's a lot of it makes sense to me from a consumer point of view that if you see someone playing a new game, and like catches your eye, and then capitalizing on that for this, like game and toy space, as a consumer makes a ton of sense to me.

Scott Brown 46:16

Yeah, I think, you know, it just takes a lot of luck. To get something to move, it just does, I've tried hundreds of times to get products off the ground. Some of them have, and some of them haven't, and a lot of its luck. But I think Tim has a great line, which is that you're trying to spread out your surface area of luck. And so just like, like, we're trying to get product out there and hope that something catch, and it's a little spray and pray. But I think it's more strategic than that. I think we're like very strategic about where we're seeing this. And then you know, there is a little bit like hope, hope it catches. But again, the pioneers in the space, it's been that they've like spread the word. And then it started to catch with a few of those people they spread it out to and then it just kind of gets enough momentum. It's like a train, like it takes a lot of motion, it takes a lot of energy to get the train going. But once it gets going, it holds the momentum pretty well.

Mariah Parsons 47:10

Yeah, I do want to ask too. So you had mentioned the that you're looking for people to kind of give away free product and then have that add to that momentum? I feel like most are a lot of founders might be hesitant to do so like give away free product. Would you agree with that? Or is that just from like a consumer point of view? I feel like people would be hesitant

Brian Lastovich 47:35

Tim's gonna say yes. To say no, that's how I actually.

Tim Swindle 47:41

I mean, our founders weary of giving away their product. Is that the question? No, I actually would not say that's the case. Because, to me that that is just one of these tried and proven ways of getting the word out there, I think what we've learned is that you need to be selective with that and be targeted, because it gets pretty easy. Once you get in that mindset of like, wanting, like, this person could seem like a good fit, like, next thing, you know, like, I don't know, you've given away half of your inventory. And I think what we're trying to do is like, be very measured and targeted with who we are wanting to get product to. And then also have there be some sort of, like, at least verbally, what they're going to do with that product. Right? Anyway, like, because we I mean, I give examples, we looked into a couple of different like influencer platforms, where you go sign up, because you're an influencer. And you know, then you sit you kind of post to that group of people. And it's 1000s of like, Hey, here's this product, like, do you want are you interested? And so we looked into that, and I don't know, that feels more like people are just like, trying to get free stuff. Like, I think it's true. And and even if they did post on it, I'm like, I don't know, Larry out. And you know, Kansas is probably not our target demographic, you know, just Larry didn't Yeah, sorry, Larry. Sarah no longer want to be, you know, is her is her audience really, really going to be interested in it. So, anyway, it just like, we realized, like, okay, you know, we'd let's go find five or 10 like that we just think like, fit our brand. And go and try to like really coddle that relationship and nurture that relationship into something meaningful. And I think that's where we're landing on right now. And so we're currently in the process of trying to get that established.

Brian Lastovich 49:47

Let's talk a little bit about well retention, and I feel like it's great like you're, you're in the mindset of potential, like you just want to sell as many apparel smashes as possible right now and I think about retention. But obviously we all know the benefits of GDC is that you can understand who these customers are they're buying from you. At this point in time, right? There's only one product that you sell, which is paddle Smash. Like, have you had those thoughts of All right, do we? Do we allow like additional, you sell additional balls, additional paddles, as add ons upsells, is that a conversation where that you've had yet or you're just not there?

Scott Brown 50:29

We've had it, but we're not there. It's kind of both, like we talked about, we recognize that there will be a long term business opportunity to have additional excuse to sell. But we're not there yet. I think we want to keep our focus on the thing that we're trying to sell right now. And like, we have not sold that thing yet, enough to kind of be thinking about kind of a long term strategy. But we do recognize the opportunity there. I think where we think about retention most right now is just making sure people have a really good experience with the game. And you know, the big worry here is that, like most games in this category, they take just a little bit of time to figure out. Like, honestly, every time I played this game with anyone, there's five minutes of awkwardness, where you're like, it gets it and you're trying to like trying to figure out the rules, and then it clicks. And when you see it quick, you just see the change. And everyone's like, okay, now I get it, this is really fun. And we just need to get people through that first five minutes. And so we're a lot of what we're trying to do in our follow up emails and post purchase is to help them through that five minutes of awkwardness. So we've filmed a product, how to play video, using just like, casual players. And this is not like the pros like diving all around. This is like casual play, here's how to play in under two minutes. And we just like hit it hard here the basics and kind of get people through that. And it's very visual, there's no talking. It's just like, you'll see it and there's titles on screen. So really, that's what we're doing a lot of is just how to make sure everyone has a very positive experience out of out of the box.

Brian Lastovich 52:12

problem, though, is that to know if people are having a positive experience or not?

Scott Brown 52:18

Well, that's a good question. So yeah, I think my watch keeps thinking I'm talking. That's your watch. Yeah. Yeah, I don't I mean, I think that you can do some post purchase surveys. Like, you know, did you figure it out?

Brian Lastovich 52:34

Or not? Is that? Yeah, have you done that yet? Or no post purchase survey,

Scott Brown 52:38

we don't know, for certain how people are doing. I mean, what we're what we are seeing is like people sending us videos of them playing it and playing, right? Like one of the like, Okay. I'm sure this is the case with anyone that makes products, but like one of the best things is seeing your product out in the wild, when you didn't know the person that bought that thing. Like, I was at a I was at a friend's house recently, and like, was looking at their game shelf. I bizarrely always do this. And I saw utter nonsense on the shelf. And I'm like, That's awesome. That's Tim's game. Like I sent him a photo of it. And it's just like so fulfilling. Well, I had a buddy. So talking about paddle Smash, I had a buddy send me a text like a screengrab of a text that his friend had sent him basically saying, check out this new game, I just came across paddle Smash. And they were two weeks old. And like already, like friends are being told about this product. And he had no idea that this guy knew me. And it's just that like, there's that. And so he sent me a video of them playing it on a houseboat in Lake Powell, Utah. And they like we're playing the right rules. They had like, all of the QR code on our packaging, to be taken to the video and they figured out how to play. We're doing a lot of outreach to our early purchases purchasers to find out how they found out about it, and how it's going for that. So I think that's going to just be a lot of Tim and I kind of boots on the ground, following up and asking. Yeah, oh,

Mariah Parsons 54:03

that'll be really exciting. I mean, it already sounds like it is right, just getting those texts. And that reminds me, our co founder of Malomo had gotten a text from because his cousin or something and it was like, I bought this and then saw that it was like a really great experience post purchase and then saw that it was Malomo like scented, it was like oh my god, dude, I had no idea and so like that, those little affirmations of like, oh, you're checking out the the game or the service, whatever it is. It feels good. Right? And so it's fast. Yeah, very exciting time. So you guys send the QR code I wanted to ask this so I came back up but the QR code doesn't go to that video of how to play or what are you sending people to

Brian Lastovich 54:44

the video on the homepage right? Then it has the captions on the top it says like it pauses the video. Is that what it is? Yeah, so

Tim Swindle 54:52

there's a few so we have a QR code on the on the packaging. So so that's why you know people first Get it, they can scan like how to play. And it takes them to directly to the website under like our How to Play section that like explains the rules and whatnot to them.

Scott Brown 55:12

Yeah, so the front of the packaging has a QR code that's like the hero video, we call it. That's like the marketing video, it's just make meant to pump you up and make it look really attractive. So we've got like, attractive people on the beach in Santa Monica playing the game. That's the front of the packaging QR code. But then four more spots on the packaging. It's the How To Play video that is linked to. And we actually don't have printed instructions inside of our game. This is the first time I've made I've made 160 games is the first time I have not included instructions. And I think there are two big reasons. The biggest is this. This is a leading living breathing document here. We don't know the final rules we didn't I will say when we went when we hit go on the publication, there was still a lot to be sorted through. And so over the kind of couple of months that it was in, in production, we were working on instructions. And so now we've got written instructions and a video with the instructions, but it's on the website. So if you want to learn how to play, there's actually like, I believe will continue to modify the rules just like they are in pickleball, like pickleball, there are new rules every year. And it will be the same with us as we kind of learn better and new ways to play.

Brian Lastovich 56:23

I also love that though, because it gives the people a reason to come to your website, though, as opposed to yeah, here's the instructions. And that's it. I think that's really interesting. And that might be a byproduct of that.

Mariah Parsons 56:35

Yeah, kind of keeps them closer to like the brand. And that's exactly what I was gonna say, yeah.

Brian Lastovich 56:42

Submit your email for the instructions. Boom, there you go.

Tim Swindle 56:46

Like, it got me thinking though, because like, that's, that's a good point. I never thought of those in those terms. And with this conversation, right, what do you guys do and retention, you know, another element where we could think of retention is like, also like getting people to learn to play it, but then like posting about it. So how can we encourage to get that word of mouth going and like getting them to post it? Obviously, you mentioned the one tick tock app. But like, one thing we could do is like on the instructions, that could be like a, you know, make make basic, we want to communicate to them of like, you know, some incentive to like, hey, trickshot, like or the shot of the week or something like that, you know, we're doing some raffle. Yeah. And like communicating to him about like, a reason for why they would want to be posting to their social media is because they could be entered into like some raffle to win something for having the best video that week. You know,

Brian Lastovich 57:40

that's yeah, I can definitely see that. It's all about what's the like you said it's what's the incentive. I'm a big proponent of behavior change and how to get someone to change their behavior or do something. At the end of the day, it's how easy it is to do something and then if they're motivated to do it, so it's just just tried to check those boxes off and then that's makes it easier at the end of the day. Yeah, just go ahead.

Mariah Parsons 58:07

Yeah, I was I was just going to add to my love that you brought that up too. I've also seen like, tag us on social and just get more of that awareness and be like, Okay, put you in a raffle like I think all of those ideas that sometimes might like fall through the cracks or will be super interesting for you all to explore as you start seeing you know, more and more awareness and traffic to your website and sales. Super exciting stuff for you as

Brian Lastovich 58:32

Yeah, right as a tick tock proponent I'm gonna say it like that I am not but once we start seeing on tick tock I'm sure Mariah will let us all know

Scott Brown 58:43

well, Mariah post about us on tick tock influence please.

Brian Lastovich 58:50

Influence influence.

Mariah Parsons 58:52

Influence please

Tim Swindle 58:55

throw this out there. We are currently looking for someone to help us with our social media. So if you guys know of anyone,

Brian Lastovich 59:02

are you trying to steal from me right now?

Scott Brown 59:05

I'm listening. But yes, Mariah. All right. Let's talk.

Mariah Parsons 59:10

This is this is so this is like Brian's nightmare, right? Or is it your dream, Ryan? Oh, I know that was that was now I'm just kidding. No, definitely though. We're more than willing to talk like strategy and help anyway again,

Brian Lastovich 59:26

well, I just sorry, last thing on the subject. Well, I just saw that. Right. Like if you just think of marketing, normal hire that you think of is like a content marketing hire. Right? And there's now just a lot more talk around find the platform, right? Like find like a tick someone that like, understands everything there is about tick tock instead of this general content marketing hire. And what we've learned from the previous podcast that we did was tic tac over Instagram reels instead. what it is because people just post but they haven't take that Instagram reel. So it's just one piece of content for tick tock, and then you just post it everywhere else. And so I understand that you don't have to reinvent the wheel now. We hear the same

Tim Swindle 1:00:13

thing. Yeah, I think it's also like you grow into certain roles. And for now we admittedly are looking for more like a generalist, you know, but yeah, ultimately, it would be nice to where like, we are very segmented in terms of like, you know, we have a certain tick tock strategy, a certain Instagram strategy. And you know, and so we'll get there. We'll get there. YouTube, I think he's another good one for us. Maybe more like educational content, how to play rules, things like that. So

Mariah Parsons 1:00:43

there's so many things for you all to go into. Just got to cut we'll have to come back and have you guys back on. Yeah, walk through all this strategy, all the learnings. But this has been so fun. I think it's rare that we get to chat with someone who's so early in the stage. And so it's definitely a different perspective to hear. But all the same. You know, it's so influential to hear about all the different things that you both are considering as paddle smashes growing as we speak, right? It's fast out here. So thank you for coming on sharing with us.

Scott Brown 1:01:16

So we saw two while we've been on the call together.

Brian Lastovich 1:01:19

I was gonna ask you if you get notified by every single transaction, you bet

Scott Brown 1:01:22

I do. Right on my watch.

Brian Lastovich 1:01:25

Wait, is that what it was?

Scott Brown 1:01:27

I think so. I think it like activates it. And then he hears me talking. But yeah, I mean, I still have the like, it's like Pavlov's experiments. Like every time I watch buzzes, I'm like, is it a panel smash sale? Yeah. I love it.

Brian Lastovich 1:01:42

You need to connect it to like your doorbell at home to where it's just like, announces to the entire house like we have sold another one. I think that's a toughy. You want everyone to know, you want all the family to know that you're doing some good work. That's what's important.

Mariah Parsons 1:01:58

That's funny. Okay, well, it's been great chatting with you both. Thank you again. Thank you guys. Thanks, guys.