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The Unstoppable Marketer®
Trevor Crump and Mark Goldhardt bring you quick marketing and entrepreneurial tips, tricks, and trends for DTC business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers. These are lessons they've learned through the years of being right in the thick of scaling dozens of businesses. Whether you have an established business looking to grow, just starting your business journey, or trying to become a digital marketer, this marketing podcast will not let you down.
The Unstoppable Marketer®
EP. 130 Building Brands Through Product Innovation w/ Jon Richards, Co-founder @ Nomatic
In this episode of the Unstoppable Marketer podcast, Jon Richards, co-founder and chief product officer of Nomatic, discusses the company's journey from wallets to premium travel gear. He shares insights on product development, market expansion, and the challenges of entering new product categories like women's bags and apparel. The conversation also explores the impact of AI on business and content creation, offering a glimpse into potential future trends in technology and consumer behavior.
Please connect with Trevor on social media. You can find him anywhere @thetrevorcrump
It wasn't until we had launched like two different bags or three different bags. All of a sudden it was like, okay, we're more of a travel brand now and we started kind of like leaning into that. We were getting feedback from customers. The number one word people use is quality when they describe nomadic products. So it's like all right, we're a quality premium brand for travel. That kind of just started to get defined over time. Let's make the best products we possibly can, and I think we were more meticulous than most people are about our products. We go through like 10, 20 different prototypes until we were like it's ready. If it wasn't ready, we would just throw it out and be like it's not good enough yet, let's start over. We weren't making products to try to just grow revenue as fast as possible. It was like no, let's make the best backpack we possibly can.
Speaker 2:Yo, what's going on everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer podcast. With me, as always, is Mark Goldhart, my wonderful co-host, business partner. How are you?
Speaker 3:What's up, sir?
Speaker 2:I'm during dirt. Doing good, doing good. Welcome back. You've been traveling.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've been traveling. I've been traveling, glad to be home for at least a good couple weeks. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no trips ahead of you.
Speaker 3:Some camping, but that's not like travel to me. Yeah, I agree with that Same time zone, you know.
Speaker 2:Couple nights. Couple nights rather than like a week. Yeah, for sure. I'm excited about the podcast today. Yeah, me too. We've got a guest on that. A local legend.
Speaker 3:Yeah, as some would say.
Speaker 2:What's funny is I've had to. I've like been talking to him for like what we're like I feel like a year and a half now in the making.
Speaker 3:It's all two years.
Speaker 2:Just like back and forth, like hey, year and a half now in the making, it's all two years Just like back and forth like hey, and it's always been like very passive, aggressive by me, like he'll like comment something on LinkedIn and then I will like comment on his comment like hey, when are you going to come on our podcast? It's like very rarely. Like a text message like hey, do you want to do this? So I'm excited to have him on. So I want to welcome John Richards, the co-founder and chief product officer of Nomadic. How are you, john?
Speaker 1:I'm doing good. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Yeah, sorry it took so long to make this happen.
Speaker 2:You know what it makes for a better introduction when people take longer versus.
Speaker 3:you know you got to play hard to get.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you play hard to get and have a little mystery, it's going to make the podcast a little better. We're setting expectations too high already. Yeah, that's what we do best, is we set the expectations high, um, so okay. So so welcome john's, john's local here in utah. Uh, tell us a little bit about nomadic. How long have you guys been around for and what do you guys do?
Speaker 1:so nomadic has been around for um 11 years now. We make the most functional travel gear ever for people who live life on the move. So life on the move for us is defined as someone who's trying to become the best version of themselves and these days, like you think business professional and you think of a guy in a tie and a white shirt and you know suit or something, for us, like a business professional is someone who's just hustling and building like could be a podcast, could be software, could be whatever right. So we support those people for commuting to work, traveling on planes and also we make, uh, creator bags. Well, so like photography bags, for cameras and stuff like that. And yeah, so we just launched Apparel last year to kind of like, kind of tell a bigger story about how we support people who travel and stuff. So Nomadic's been. It's been a fun ride. Yeah, we're 11 years in and it started out with just me and my cousin, my business partner, and now we're up to about 32 employees.
Speaker 3:Nice. Wow Started with wallets right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really. Yep, just a little small minimalist pull tab wallet. You still got it. Still got it. Nice, this isn't the OG, but we've made variations on it.
Speaker 3:Our CTO, jordan, still has his.
Speaker 2:Does he? Yeah, we've made variations on it, but our cto, jordan, still has his does he?
Speaker 1:yeah, nice. So yeah, we launched this on kickstarter actually, uh, in 2014, just like a pull tab wallet that you, oh, pull the tab out and it ejects your cards and then it's got a little pocket on the back for cash, coins or a key or something. I like that. Anyway, it was just a side hustle. It wasn't supposed to turn into nomadic. It was just like let's launch something and see what happens. We had a goal to raise $10,000 on Kickstarter, ended up raising $170,000. Wow, and it was a super profitable product.
Speaker 3:The Kickstart days.
Speaker 1:It was like the glory days of Facebook ads, right, yeah. So we launched it in that first week Like friends and family. We'd backed up back about $5,000 worth of funding and we're like we might hit our goal, like we were pacing that. And uh, then we met someone that knew Facebook ads and he taught us, and then we went from like 5,000 in the first couple of weeks to 5,000 a day. We just started cranking. I was like, oh my gosh, like Facebook's a little bit of a unlock here. Um, and so we really focused heavily on Facebook ads for the next 10 years. I guess we're still running ads?
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, that's so cool. What's been? This is just kind of like a random question that just you've been around for 11 years what has been the best piece of advice you've been given, as you've been an entrepreneur running your own business Kind of on the spot?
Speaker 1:Yeah, From just like anyone, anyone, any piece of advice a mentor, best piece of advice, that's a really good question.
Speaker 1:Hmm, I think the best piece of advice we got in the early days was, like you know, I think you, you start a company, you realize how many cash constraints there are around. Like growing, and the best piece of advice was just like this the concept of Kickstarter. Like using Kickstarter as a platform and as a business model for us. It literally is the only reason we're in business today. Like it, it helped us scale the business from zero to about 15 million in revenue without any outside funding. Yeah, so you get.
Speaker 1:You get your customer base up front. You get approved the product out to make sure people actually want it. Customer base up front. You get approved the product out to make sure people actually want it. You can you can make changes to that product because the customers are saying, why didn't you launch this with waterproof zippers? And oh dude, I didn't think about that. Sure, you make that change on the fly and then the product they're getting actually has waterproof zippers. Sure, that's what they really wanted, and so you're able to adapt their product. You're able to prove out that price point.
Speaker 1:get your customers up front but then the biggest part, obviously the cash. Like you get the cash before you even manufacture the product. That's game changer for in terms of a business model. Like you don't have to go raise money, you don't have to take debt.
Speaker 2:Um so me and my business partner from like in the first five years of the business we grew up from like but zero to 15 million we hadn't taken any outside funding or any debt nice raised almost 15 million dollars through kickstarter yeah, that's such a cool, underrated piece of advice because, like I know, we've launched products before where, uh, like you have an idea, like hey, I think these things are going to sell, um, and before you know it, like, let's, if you've got 10 SKUs, two of them are the only ones that end up selling, and then you have these other eight SKUs with however much inventory that you have to like, try to you know, either discount or maybe you're giving them away for free as gifts to influencers or customers or whatever. And so the Kickstarter. I've been actually surprised with how little Kickstarter is used used nowadays. Do you guys still use it when you launch new products?
Speaker 1:only if the product is new, unique and innovative, like if it's just like a new colorway or a new version of a bag we've already launched. We don't use it okay but, like when we launched our apparel collection, we dropped it on on kickstarter first. Nice, uh it's. It's becoming less and less of a platform we're using like day to day just because we have revenue outside of Kickstarter. That's generating cashflow.
Speaker 1:You have profits, but there are companies that continue to crush on Kickstarter and they're still raising crazy amounts of funding up front. Yeah, so it's a great channel. I don't have any problem with it at this point. It's more just like Facebook used to drive a lot of the Kickstarter success for us sure not like it was going viral all the time or something. It was more just us spending dollars to make dollars, but the dollars would just go further on Kickstarter, sure. Anyway, so that it's still a platform we'll use into the future, we're working on a couple of collections right now that I could see us putting on on Kickstarter Very cool, yeah, very cool.
Speaker 2:What was the product that? So you started in wallets?
Speaker 1:Yeah, wall was the first and we launched a notebook and we launched a watch actually and at the time we were thinking let's make an everyday carry brand. This is just stuff you'll carry with you every day. But then we researched it more and more and found that, like travel bags did well, on kickstarter um, we launched that first travel bag and typically our campaigns we were doing like 170 000 or 300 000 the travel bag campaign. We raised three million dollars in 60 days crazy so I was like all, we're a bag company now.
Speaker 1:Like forget wallets and notebooks, let's focus on bags. So that's kind of where that transition happened. At the same time, we actually shifted that was the travel backpack. Yeah, it was a travel bag like a duffel.
Speaker 3:Okay, it wasn't that backpack.
Speaker 1:That's our best seller.
Speaker 1:It was more of like a duffel bag that also had backpack straps on it yeah, yeah and it was like the exact size of carry-on dimension, so it looked like just a black box, really like we never designed a bag before. This was us just like messing around in adobe illustrator trying to figure out how to design a bag. Yeah, um, so that that product was. That product was fun, like a fun first attempt at a bag. But yeah, I think the biggest takeaway from that was like bags are a higher price point, right, a $20 wallet, you have to sell tens of thousands of those to make the same that you would have to sell a $300 travel bag for, right. So we were making a lot more money selling travel bags and we shifted from basics.
Speaker 1:Products was the name of our company. When we launched that wallet, okay, notebook. We got a bunch of cease and desist letters because everyone has like a basics line, yeah, so amazon and on air and all these other like random brands have like their basics, yeah. And so we were getting like cease and desist letters like you can't launch a basics notebook, we own that, you can't launch this. And all of a sudden we're like dude, we're not going to be able to exist as basics, yeah, yeah, that's when we switched our name to nomadic. We launched the travel bag and the new name at the same time.
Speaker 2:Nice. Anything ever like serious happened from the cease and desist.
Speaker 1:I mean it was just, it was just scare tactic stuff. I mean, as a young entrepreneur, when you only have like one or two employees, you're like dude, we're done. Oh yeah, business is over, yeah.
Speaker 2:We, we, uh, when. So I, a friend of mine and myself, we launched a company called Asher golf and we got a cease and desist from the masters because we created like a they they are like the most on top of it Organization imaginable. We were an absolute nobody, you know, probably making like $500 a day, and we created this that we just called it the Masters Collection. There was no like T-shirt or golf club or anything.
Speaker 1:It was there green and everything.
Speaker 2:But we, just because we titled it the Masters Collection I mean, it was within probably an hour of me launching the collection we had a c synthesis from him, like instantaneously, and I was like terrified. I could not even believe what had just happened yeah you know, but luckily all we had also in the golf world.
Speaker 3:That's like the one brand you don't want to yeah, they own. They own a trademark to everything yeah like every single thing, you can't say it's just a storied brand too like you don't want to very legacy get on the wrong side of the masters. Yeah, that's funny well, that's cool.
Speaker 2:Okay, so backpacks, which probably was like less margin. Funny enough, I actually know I own the planner, really. Yeah, do you?
Speaker 3:nice, not anymore, but Really. Yeah, do you Nice, not anymore, but I had a plan.
Speaker 2:You bought it Nice Back in 2015.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that would have been when we launched it. 16, I had the plan you were the Kickstarter backer. Well, you know, I got back from Argentina and I needed a planter, that was the best one.
Speaker 2:That's cool.
Speaker 3:So now I've got the bags, got the sling and the carry-on. Nice dude got the bags, got the sling and the carry-on. Nice dude, so really quick. When you you go up to the big size and we've been in the bag space so we know, we know obviously it's the margins are better.
Speaker 3:You know you're selling a bigger product, but the profit margins are better yeah, the profit margins are better, but it also comes with just less right, like Like you're not dealing with, like you said, like you don't have to sell thousands of wallets, like you can sell hundreds of bags. So you advance into this more premium space. How did your content strategy change, going from the basics to the premium space, dude we were just so scrappy.
Speaker 1:Like it was literally me and my cousin with cameras trying to like take pictures for social media. Like if you scroll all the way back in our feed, it's almost just like embarrassing. Like there's one picture where he was posting like a collage of himself with like shaving his beard from like you know like all the different phases of shaving it, where it was like at first it was a beard, and then it was a goatee, and then it was a mustache, and like that was like one of our posts for our company. And I look back and I'm like this doesn't make any sense. Like why do we even post this? And it was just us doing whatever we could to just like make content. And you know you're holding a wallet up in the sky with like the Eiffel tower in the background and you take a picture and it's like, yeah, it's just like stupid content now that I look back on it, so that there was really no strategy.
Speaker 1:Like when you ask what was our strategy? Like there wasn't a strategy, it was more just trying to figure out how to exist on social media, how to exist as a company. Um, it wasn't until like it wasn't until we had launched like two different bags or three different bags. All of a sudden it was like okay, we're more of a travel brand now and we started kind of like leaning into that. Where it was premium travel, like the quality, we were getting feedback from our customers.
Speaker 1:The number one word people use is quality when they describe nomadic products. So it's like all right, we're a quality, premium brand for travel. And so that that kind of just started to get defined over time. It wasn't, it wasn't something where we sat down in a conference room or like we're gonna stand for premium quality travel bags. It was like let's make the best products we possibly can. I think we were more meticulous than most people are about our products. We go through like 10, 20 different prototypes until we were like it's ready, um, and if it wasn't ready, we would just throw it out and be like it's not good enough yet, let's start over, and so we weren't afraid to like we weren't making products to try to just grow revenue as fast as possible.
Speaker 3:It was like, no, let's make the best backpack we we possibly can yeah, the interesting thing about you guys is progression is, if you start off with Kickstarter, you you're up fronting product market fit, right, so, like you're able to, you know theoretically you could get to product market fit faster.
Speaker 3:So do you think the kickstart route also helped you once you got to the premium goods? Because you, you already had this kind of mentality or these, this muscle memory of iterating a product really fast, right, to make sure it fit what the the consumer wanted, even off of feedback before they got the product right. Yeah, so was that muscle memory good for you to say okay, like if it's not good enough, it's not good enough, like we're good, we just want the best quote product that's gonna be the most wanted, right, because we always say product market fit is often the most important factor for just marketing. You know, like it's a lot easier to market something that people want yep, that has product market fit for an audience, than it is for something that people like may or may not want or they feel lukewarm about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's a really good question. Um, I had a couple of thoughts while you're talking. I think the first one was Kickstarter forced us to have that muscle memory, but it also forced us to think about our customers in a different way. So we would actually send surveys to these customers, like very often, where we would say what product should we make next? And then, when they give us feedback, we'd dial into that and say you said you wanted us to make functional travel apparel. What does that look like? Like okay, you're saying a jacket, like how hot do you want this jacket to be? How cold do you want it to be? What features are important to you?
Speaker 1:And so we would actually survey our customers until we got to data points where it's like people are telling us they want this and people would be most likely to buy this, to the point where we're even showing them our renderings and mock-ups to say which style do you like best? Yeah, like that we went. We would go down those paths to say, let's, let's create something, um, with our customers, and that's what kickstarter really helped us do. I would say there's all there's kind of two parts to this the product side, because you can only go so far with that, where you get a product where you say, okay, I think most people are going to want to buy this product or it's going to fit the market really well, but there's this piece where, when they get it in the wild and they start testing it and using it, all of a sudden they have all this additional feedback or right.
Speaker 3:You miss the mark on something and it could be like pretty detrimental or some of the features they think they want end up just being a nuisance yeah, gimmicky features.
Speaker 1:It's like oh, I thought I wanted a key leash, but I don't really care anymore. I never use it or whatever right, um. So yeah, there's, there's pieces to it that we've had to adapt over the years. So we've come out with, you know, v2s, v3s of our products, because after it's out there in the wild, people are coming back and saying, or we actually survey them and say how often do you use the waist straps that we include with every bag? Or how often are you using this?
Speaker 1:thing. And once we get the data, then we can say dude, everyone thought they wanted this, but they're not using it.
Speaker 3:Let's make it, let's dial it in even more, simplify it. And the waist straps yeah, you know, it's never use them exactly, you know, uh, I used to use them.
Speaker 2:Uh, I used to be a rollerblader when I was in middle school and I had like a rollerblade backpack.
Speaker 1:Once a rollerblader always.
Speaker 2:That's true, that's true and I had my senate backpack and I'd put my blades on the back and when I did that, I would put my backpack and I'd put my blades on the back, and when I did that, I would put my waist straps because they were heavy and it just felt cool, so I would use them, but a blader huh of course, bro you were in the skater crowd well, I started skateboarding once a rollerblader. I switched when I got into high school and I skateboarded in high school but were you a fruitbooter?
Speaker 1:No, I was a skateboarder. Oh man yeah.
Speaker 2:There's a rivalry between them. Well, so this is something that's interesting that we talk about. You've said a couple things that have kind of piqued my interest, which is we always talk about how challenging it is to pivot or to own a specific market. And when I say own it and I don't necessarily mean own it like you're the biggest person out there, but like where you're maybe doing well in a specific market. So, for example, you're in wallets and you're doing really, really well, and then you enter into the backpack realm, which is sure there's some like correlation potentially to that, but they are two very different products.
Speaker 2:You see a lot of brands who will do this. They will try to. Maybe a menswear brand, for example, tries to go into women's wear and it fails miserably. Um, or uh, uh. What's another one? Like a kids pajamas company, it launches a women's diaper bag and it doesn't work out right. Like there's these. Have you guys? How have you guys? How have you guys been able to navigate waters like that? You went from wallets to bags and now you're in this bag space and you're just jumped into apparel. Like, how has that gone for you guys? Obviously, the backside worked really well.
Speaker 3:Um, what made you guys decide to go into apparel and also that seems like a natural evolution because you're so small at that point I agree.
Speaker 2:I agree with that the bag.
Speaker 3:You can establish as a bag company the bag to apparel, though how's that been?
Speaker 1:yeah, um, maybe I'll give you two different examples of this because I think it's interesting to to note.
Speaker 1:Like bags, toarel, it seems like a big jump and I think it was a big jump. It is a big jump for us still because you market them in completely different ways, totally To get people to trust you around apparel, I will say that's probably more on the side of the product, where once they, once they get our apparel, they use it Then. Then they become like evangelists because they're like dude, like nomadic, actually nailed it, like I thought they were just trying to do apparel, but it's like now that I actually wear this jacket, like every single day, I'm like I'm gonna, I'm gonna always buy nomadic apparel, right, so you, you kind of have this. The product proves itself. It's like example you gave of the company that's uh rompers that launches a diaper bag or whatever right, like if they don't nail that diaper bag, that that product has no chance of success because the leap itself is a big step yeah but then if you don't nail the product, there's no chance it survives.
Speaker 1:If you nail the product, even if that's a big leap, yeah, it just takes longer and it takes more time to convince people that you are as good as you say. You are right, yeah, and that's that's how it's been in apparel because, like, our feedback has been amazing, like people absolutely love it, I think we nailed the first five items, four items that we launched. We're launching another five items the end of this year, yeah, and we're working really hard to make sure that we nail those products yeah but I will say, like apparel has been slower growth than
Speaker 1:I had hoped, right like it's. It's. I think in the last year it did like a million dollars for us, which is just a very small portion of our total revenues, but it's like it was. It was a step in the right direction where it's like all right, next year maybe we land dillards, and next, the next year, maybe, it's sure, um, you know, we launch these other styles or we do a collab with someone and it takes off. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't your bags and wholesale yeah, they are, yeah, they are.
Speaker 1:Um, and I want to get to that in one second. I want to finish this thought on this other piece of just the product being the right fit, because we launched a product with Peter McKinnon, the videographer, youtuber, and we'd never done camera bags before. So the average camera person that carries cameras, they care about their bags, they care about what's protecting their gear because they're carrying around five thousand dollar setups, whatever, right, totally. So it's like all right, this is, this is an important gear to me. I need the bag to perform.
Speaker 1:So for nomadic to make a camera bag without a trusted source like peter mckinnon yeah, we would have probably seen something similar to apparel, where it's just like slow growth until we can prove it out. But because we had like one of the biggest faces in the industry coming out and saying I made this camera bag with Nomadic and it's the best camera bag you'll ever have in your life, then all of a sudden, overnight, it was like a success because, people believed it from the beginning and they bought into the product once they got it because it really was some of the best camera bags they've ever used.
Speaker 1:So I think I think there's two pieces to that. Um, anyway, just wanted to wrap up that thought, but can I ask?
Speaker 2:can I ask a question though? Yeah, before we jump, how is the peter mckinnon collab do? Have you guys done that with anybody else when you've launched into a new market? For example, did you do that with apparel?
Speaker 1:We didn't do with apparel Okay, we had some influencers post about it but we didn't do like collections that were built around these people. It was more just like hey, can you give us a shout out? Yeah, we felt like the market fit was good enough, where we were literally building apparel for people that already buy our bags, so it wasn't like we needed permission to exist in that space got it.
Speaker 2:So you were. When you launched the apparel. It was, uh, maybe long term it was about, hey, anybody should be wearing us. But in the short term it was like, hey, everyone who's bought our bags. How many bags did you guys sold at the time, like you have? You guys have a running total. I wish.
Speaker 1:That would be amazing number to throw out right now, but you probably have a ton right. We should be able to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we should be able to get five to twenty percent of our customers who are using our bags to buy our apparel. That was kind of the initial thought.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well and you look like. You look at brands like built and um cuts and you know roan or lululemon, like these brands are billion dollar brands or a hundred million dollar brands that have built a company literally just around apparel. Yeah. So for us it was like if we can nail it, this could double, triple, quadruple our business over the long term. And so if you look at apparel as if it's its own product category, like year one we did a million dollars, year two, we do two. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, year three is it four million. Yeah year two, we do two, yeah, you know year. Year three is it four million? Like if we're able to double that year over year, whatever. Pretty soon, when you fast forward 10 years, apparel could be a 30 to 100 million dollar product line for us? Yeah, for sure so I think for us we're taking it a little bit slower. On the apparel side.
Speaker 3:It's also just so many skews what I'm gonna say is how different it is with a bag. You know, know the number of 15 total bags.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly 150 SKUs or something, with all of our bags and accessories combined to like I think we're like 2000 or something. Now, crazy, that was like a year. Yeah, what are your sizes? Like small to double XL? Well, just for the joggers it is. But when you get into pants, we have waist sizes, inseam lengths, fit. So we have like colors fit and colors like yeah, you, you have a slim fit and a classic, you just doubled your skis right there. It's like oh man, yeah, exhausting. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3:what I always think about, though, with what you just did, is the bag space. The bag space is hard because people don't need bags that often. Yeah right, right, so it's really good from a first customer acquisition standpoint.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's this is a good point it's harder lifetime value sucks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, lifetime value is not great because, like, for example, I got my nomadic carry-on five years ago, exactly like I don't need another carry-on.
Speaker 3:Maybe you would need a second for your wife, maybe, or you buy a suitcase to pair it with, or something right so we have luggage, we have other things like that, but I think a lot of people are probably like me right where you probably get a carry-on, it's like, hey, this carry-on is amazing yeah like it's like war proof, so I don't need to care, I don't need a carry-on, like maybe if I travel more I might want, but you know I'm not like a big airplane travel guy, it's like usually business, so that's all I need.
Speaker 3:But yeah, lifetime value sucks, yeah, but then you. So it's kind of like I equate it to like restaurants, like the bag space is closer to like a unique restaurant experience, right, it's like a high end restaurant where apparel is fast food. Like your margins in the fast food industry are not great, right, but the scalability is great. Yeah and that's what we saw. So the margins aren't necessarily bad with apparel, but it's just. It's a whole different ballgame right, totally.
Speaker 2:Well, they definitely are bad compared to bags, probably.
Speaker 3:Huh, it's the consistency of the experience that people are looking for, but it takes time to build.
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Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So we launched our apparel and people were buying like one or two items and then they will come back and buy seven items, sure, and you're like Whoa, like it was a different buying cycle, right With the bags. It was like one time five years you don't see them again. And maybe, like I think it was like a 1.2, like they'd come back 0.2% of the time and buy a packing cube or a toiletry bag, something to go with the bag. But when we launched apparel, it was like they buy one t-shirt, one pair of pants, something like that, and then two weeks later they're back and they bought every color of pant, every color of t-shirt and they dropped $700.
Speaker 3:And you're like okay, yeah, they got. They caught the vision Within like 60 days, right yeah, because they try it on.
Speaker 1:They're like no, this is legit. Like I'm going to go back and buy it or you can. You can market to them faster too. Like you can send a email about apparel every week. Where bags? It's like hey, you've hit me 15 times about buying a bag, I already have a bag. Like I'm an unsubscribe right. Like apparel it's always top of mind.
Speaker 2:It's like like it's a quick $50 purchase or whatever you know, yeah Well, the bags are oftentimes are like need spaces versus want spaces too, whereas apparel is. Even though it is a need, it becomes more of a want because people buy it like, oh, they just dropped a new colorway.
Speaker 3:What I will say about part of that, though can I just add to. What makes apparel harder is it's a lot easier to showcase the uniqueness of a bag. Yeah, is it's a lot easier to showcase the uniqueness of a bag, yeah, in ads, yeah, then it is apparel for sure, because apparel all your, all your focus, like it's really hard, because it's like, oh hey, it looks good, it's comfortable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cuz they like that shirt, my shirt like from from a distance, am I wearing nomadic? You know like?
Speaker 4:For sure am I wearing nomadic, you know like for sure Very, very hard.
Speaker 3:It's kind of like jewelry it's harder to visually demonstrate where, with a, with like a nomadic bag, yeah, you could do everything, from like throwing it off a building to like rolling it next to a car, to like how much stuff you like there's just so many more packing it content ideas to show like how awesome it is, yeah. Or with clothes, it's usually like okay, unless you're doing something that's like this is the most durable pant in the world, yeah, right, yeah, it's hard to showcase we did find that.
Speaker 1:Actually, where, when are you when you rank like how much revenue we've done by product that we launch with apparel? Our jacket, for example, is like the number one and it's because it's got like it folds into a pillow for travel, yeah and it's got these perforated armpit holes that like let it breathe and it's like so you have actual features. You can point to where a t-shirt it's like trust me, it's really soft like.
Speaker 3:This t-shirt is great.
Speaker 2:It's so comfy you know it's so funny people.
Speaker 3:There's this kind of again once you get, once you sell, and we always say sorry to cut you off again. But I just want to say the thing about apparel, though, is, if you can change your mindset and I do want to ask you about the mindset is because the mindset is very differently from, like, a marketing perspective, an ad dollar perspective for bags then it's going to be for apparel, because apparel, like you said, if you, the more you sell, the more you sell, right? So, like, you kind of have to adjust, like what your expectations are of cpas and rois based off of the product, because an apparel it's harder to showcase, but once people wear it, like, oh, they come back in 60 days. As long as it's good, right, as long as it nails, sweet, yeah, well, I need to totally reconsider what, like, my perception is, yeah, of ad strategy yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2:I was also going to say that the the thing about bags too, like as we were playing this, like, like, not, not devil's advocate, I don't even know what I'm just like the difference yeah the difference is like what is?
Speaker 2:nice, though, about like bags that even though they you don't have a good ltv oftentimes in the bag space or a high quality product that you don't need to continue to buy and over, over again, over and over again, your biggest sales uh like acquisition channel becomes your customers because they're like it is, they're like hey, like, for example how many people have used told about nomadic, Like probably dozens yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, even with my wife on our anniversary trip, I was like we don't travel enough, but I need to get you one of these.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the beauty of it. So, yes, that person doesn't come back and buy for themselves over and over again, but oftentimes these high-quality good products that you don't need for a long time.
Speaker 1:We have golf bag companies that we work with and we see all the time in that space. I was gonna say, when we were using bessie for post-purchase or whatever, I think I think word of mouth was our number one oh, I guarantee it was yeah, for sure, top two yeah for the bags, for bags, yeah what are your thoughts?
Speaker 2:uh, you you'd mentioned cuts and built, and did you just hear that steven barelli is stepping down? No of cuts, yeah, he just announced it yesterday that he announced it. Yeah that that's what does that?
Speaker 1:what does that mean? He's just not. That's what I was gonna ask you well, this is my.
Speaker 2:I mean, this is my we can speculate. Yeah, well, what's been so interesting is he's been the kind of like face and leader and he's been trying to create content like crazy and he's talking about it. We met him last year in LA at an event, so I'm like way stunned by it.
Speaker 3:To me it feels like he was maybe pushed out Personally, because he's been so, gung ho, his post did not seem very happy, like relieved how do you say it? Like, hey, this has been awesome.
Speaker 1:When you're stepping down, you're either going out for you're getting pushed out or you're going out for mental health reasons. But if it's mental health, then it's like they usually make a call to that where they're like I need to take a break for a little while.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't think but you know, maybe he's going through something or maybe he's not, let me look it up, we gotta look it up now. But you do have in the apparel space, you just have a lot of competition. I just think the apparel space like sometimes we tell brands that we work with it's better that you start now than if you had started four years ago because you like you just have like the expectations of like 2017, 16, 15. If facebook ads, like a lot of companies, like that mind shift, like even from bags to apparel, like there is a mind shift change, that it's like hey, we got to strategize differently for different kinds of products.
Speaker 3:Like it's not all the same, like yes, you have a blended cash flow, whatever for your company, but like they're totally different sale cycles, lifetime values, you know retention rates, but apparel, again, it's harder to demonstrate, but you can if you just keep hitting people like a true classic tease yeah and if you can find a way to demonstrate because, like true classic t's like broke the code of demonstration right, they figured out how to like showcase the feature of their of like a basic t-shirt this makes you look skinny yeah based on fit yeah right, so like they crack that code and then they just jack spend yeah, the whole uh, like we don't need.
Speaker 3:I'm sure people bought, like you said. I'm sure people tried one and then they're like, oh, I need seven of these yeah I think that we I know you me have even talked about this a lot.
Speaker 2:Like we talk about how benefits sell over features, but like in the ad game I don't, that's not always true like well it's calling out.
Speaker 1:Calling out the features of the product is huge. Yeah, we push features the first eight years of our business that's like literally the only thing we pushed, especially in bags, right like super easy to demonstrate a few brands that it's like it's all about the brand, because it's like kind of like movements and like, but we always push in the ad game.
Speaker 3:It's like you're always going to have evergreen products that work better, usually because they show better. So they just show better, so you can sell them better, you can angle them and position them. Or sometimes, again, like with clothes, we've seen a lot of clothes crush it. But sometimes it's harder to scale at certain kinds of efficiency rates because, well, well, there's a million people in this space, right, like you said, there's lululemon, there's roan, there's cuts.
Speaker 3:There's built, there's yori yeah yori now yeah I mean, yeah, you name it, but if you can just be like, accept it and figure out whatever the operational margins need to be, you can be there too. Like you said, yes, it's only this part of your business, but the more you sell, the more you're selling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very cool. What's your favorite thing you guys are doing right now at Nomadic? What are you jazzed about right now?
Speaker 1:Oh man, this is right along the lines of what we already talked about, but we're actually developing a line of bags for women right now, oh cool. So the big question on everybody's mind can nomadic transition from men's to women's dude?
Speaker 3:this is my favorite discussion. Hold on it work, would you well? First of all, I want to back up, because I don't think you guys ever said you were a men's brand before well, we're not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess. I guess, when you look at our demographics, like but I'm sure the demographics look at the email list or whatever like, yeah, you know, it's like it ends up being 80 or 90 percent men and we build our bags for a frame that is bigger, so it's like there are women who use our bags oh, interesting.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you like, when you're building the the width of a backpack we're actually building around a male build, average male build okay, but some women, it works for them and they love it. Um, but when you ask a woman like if, if I were to take a nomadic bag and walk around at a trade show and say what do you think of this for you? They'd say it's too boxy. Or they'd say a woman a woman would, yeah too, masculine, um, even the colorways probably too black, yeah, black olive, yeah black, all the navy right yeah I love the olive though great color.
Speaker 1:So anyway we are. We have been working on women's bags for like three years now.
Speaker 1:Really like, really this is actually, this is a fun story. I'm going to tell it because we're in this setting. This is fun. We um started working on women's bags. We hired a woman designer out of new york who had worked for, like corey birch and coach and like high-end designer bag brands. We're like we want to nail this, we want to make sure it was designed by a woman for women and that it does really well. So we get these prototypes back. They're like, imagine, like high-end bag brands like louis vuitton or something meets function, right, so we add like cool features to them. Bags were awesome.
Speaker 1:But we we held multiple focus groups with women once we got these bags and every single one of them was like this, this is not nomadic. Like just felt so off for them to see a leather bag that was like women were saying. Women were telling us like this doesn't feel right, like it's not what I imagine. A nomadic bag for women to look like. Um, because they women are very particular about the brands they carry totally, and so for them to want to come in and be like, oh, I really want to own a nomadic designer looking bag, this doesn't make sense. They'd way rather have a brand name that they actually totally care about, yeah. So we were like kind of hit a wall there and we're like, what are we gonna do? Um, meanwhile, some like crackhead breaks into our office, steals all of our prototypes, like he. He gets into our office, he climbs on the roof, waits till everyone leaves, whoa, and then he sneaks back down this ladder and and came into our office like after hours. He had, like he like lined all this stuff up.
Speaker 1:He was no, we don't, but we have. Like it was very, it was very clear, like the door was broken open and stuff like he, he like actually like broke the door open so we knew we'd been robbed because, like all our camera gear got stolen. Oh um, he didn't. He didn't touch a single laptop, like very particular about woyjuk, it was just stuff that like I'm pretty sure he just wanted to flip it on ksl, sure? I mean long story short. Like he literally took all our women's bags, thinking these are like high-end, nice bags, right yeah so when he stole them, we were just like all right, we're starting over.
Speaker 1:So like we literally just like throughout those designs it was the permission you needed it was rid of your sunk cost by exactly. We're like let's just start over, and we did, and I'm so excited.
Speaker 3:How long of a process was that, though, before?
Speaker 1:that was probably I Don't know we probably working on for about a year at that point.
Speaker 3:I well. I asked that because I think a lot of business owners would say let's just make it work. Yeah, totally, I right. We've put all this time into it instead of just being like it's not right. Yeah, I think that's what takes? A lot of guts.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people don't do that enough the fear of getting it wrong for us is is way bigger than the fear of like. Look what we've invested into this. Like. We want to make sure that when women use these bags, that it's like they'll tell every single woman about it because, like I found the new, like best bag for women's travel specifically. So we're focusing on a line built around travel. We've done a ton of focus groups and try to just pull all the learnings we've found from them.
Speaker 3:Have you guys hired a research firm to do focus groups or do you guys hold those internally?
Speaker 1:A little both actually. So we do the in-person ones ourselves and then we do like just straight data um surveys. So we'll we'll have like um uh I actually don't know the name of the company, but it's a brand, it's a guy that's worked with like traeger and other brands, where they'll do like consumer research studies to say, like, what would you be willing to spend for something like this? Or when you're looking for a bag, what do do you consider? Or what items do you carry in your purse? So we'll do a pretty extensive survey with thousands and thousands of people to get to the data and then we'll do our own internal surveys once we have the general data, to actually ask people in person. I think we held four focus groups with five different women in each group and we would just have them bring their own purses have them bring their own purses, have them bring stuff to pack out.
Speaker 3:Our did you guys?
Speaker 1:go as far down as doing like in-depth interviews, like one-on-one um. It kind of became that within the focus group because once they would express a strong opinion about something, we'd end up like drilling in with that person, having them specifically pack it out their way, asking, asking them specific questions about it. It wasn't like just us and them in a room that we never got to that point. But the focus groups would be like two hours long sometimes and we're getting very specific with each person to say what things do you love particular you could. Just there is a lot of group think that sometimes happens in these. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so sometimes you gotta, but if you have a good moderator.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do it the moderating, but also the way we survey. Like we have like the, all of them answer a survey up front about specific questions we want to know, trying to eliminate the bias of the group. And then we go deeper with them in conversation afterwards, so after they've kind of submitted the survey to say, here are the different things, um, I like or don't like about these, then they can start talking with other women about them and everyone's not jumping on the same thing like, oh yeah, that's true, I do hate that, you know. And then right, so lots of learnings there. It's taken us a while to like dial that process in, but we've done it enough now that I think they're pretty efficient, the focus groups we run that's.
Speaker 3:That's really interesting because a lot of times we talk about how you can move fast and mess up when it comes to content and ads. Like people are too worried about making the wrong move with an ad because it's like, oh you know, it needs to be on brand it's gonna hurt my brand.
Speaker 2:It's gonna do this.
Speaker 3:It's like well, you don't need to worry about that because you know, it's, it's. If it works, then it's working, and then it's not hurting your brand. If it doesn't work, guess what? Like people are gonna forget about this tomorrow, like yeah no one cares but I think it's the opposite approach with product for sure, right like you don't want to just throw product at the wall maybe in the first stage, right like they did with like a wallet and a you know like.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I don't even think they, I don't even think that would be considered throwing it at the wall because it was a kickstarter. So they got the feedback fair enough, yeah, right. And the validation yeah, before it became a brand fair enough. But a lot of people, will you know, they'll stretch certain product launches just because they're getting quote desperate or feeling desperate, even though they might not actually be desperate from a business standpoint. Yeah, like, oh, let's just hurry and do a new product. Yeah, oh, we like, oh, it's getting hard in this space, let's move over to this space. But they don't spend. I mean, three years for a product launch is a long time, right, and maybe it doesn't need to be three years all the time, but it doesn't and we are to our timelines, usually 18 months.
Speaker 1:That's like a very normal cycle for us to say, from like idea to like finish, golden sample or even to like production. Sometimes we can pull it off in an 18 month window nice I would say. Two years is like when we're really trying hard to nail it. Three and four years is like we're getting into an entirely new industry here and if we don't nail this, we're going to You'll lose all respect and trust immediately. How long was the?
Speaker 3:Peter McKinnon bag.
Speaker 1:It was 18 months, 18 months. I went to lunch with him. 18 months later, we launched on Kickstarter.
Speaker 2:Are you guys talking about launching with any creators for this women's stuff?
Speaker 1:Big ones talking about launching with any creators for this women's stuff, big ones, nice, yeah, I'm really excited about this. Actually, this is like. This is where I focused most of my time and attention over the last couple months is lining up big influencers and brands to do an unlimited edition bags with them. So smart. So when we go to launch, we're going to have five different influencers, or maybe four or five different influencers that are posting on their channels to each each have millions of followers, and we're going to host a big event in, like california, texas, utah and new york. We're going to throw big influencer events when we launch these, where all the women coming are getting decked out with all the brands that are participating, plus all the bags that we're launching. Just gonna, we're gonna go all in on this strategy and just try to like that day when we launch. I want, like, every woman to see it in their feet at some point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just like very cool. Yeah, so do the influencers have their own collab bag too, or is that just the brands?
Speaker 1:both sweet. Yeah, if they're big enough, we're actually designing custom bags for them, so smart, and they'll have their name on it inside or their colorway or whatever. Yeah, um, and we'll do like an initial run with them and then, if it crushes and they sell out, well, we can order more, or we'll have, I think, four different bags in the collection when we launch, so they can jump to a different bag if they want to very cool.
Speaker 2:That was one that we we we used to be on the brand side with a company called Fond Design here locally in Utah, and that's when we would launch a new bag. We would oftentimes do it with a creator, and it was always super awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm excited for that.
Speaker 2:Very cool. I like that. What are your thoughts on? Are you guys using AI to help out with any of your product development right now?
Speaker 1:Let's see AI. So there's only like three or four places that we're really using it in the business. Number one is Sidekick, which I'm sure you've heard of. It's just plug an app. You can get data from Shopify really quickly to just ask any questions. We have Yep Pretty useful. Another one we're using locally is Particle. Yeah, and just anytime we create a new product, we're looking at the data of all our competitors to say what colorways are moving the best for them, what bags are doing the best, what apparel items are moving the best, and we've built a lot of our strategy around that actually. So I would say that's probably the biggest one is using data from particle and I again that's maybe that's not here. I don't know how much ai they're using, so maybe that's not a great answer for your question, but we use that, but we use particle combined with some ai to do some analysis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay so, yeah, that's. That's been very useful. Um other places. For me personally, it should become like a brainstorming tool, so, like for this women's line, brainstorming names or brainstorming different ways to position it. Yeah, um, I just I find myself just riffing back and forth with it. Just try to like, develop the marketing campaigns and the story around it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, do you use it as a personal therapist?
Speaker 1:Not, yet it's getting there.
Speaker 3:You do. I don't know if it would be therapist, but like, like you said, it's just like a place to jot down ideas. Yeah, like I like using it to jot ideas down because a I never write to my journal, so it's a way for me to like, just like, throw some ideas out there, yeah, and then you know, you get the feedback on those ideas.
Speaker 2:I've been doing the same thing. I've been doing that for like the last six months.
Speaker 3:Let's remind me of this.
Speaker 2:So I I create content and I'll write all my scripts out. Personally, and I've been like throwing out ideas of like brands that I like and and anytime like a brand does something cool, I will plug in like my thought into chat GPT on how I'm feeling about like what, what nomadic is doing when they're launching this women's bag or you know whatever. And this week I started to just like ask it to create my scripts now for me, based off of the memory I've given it, and it's like been wild, do you find?
Speaker 1:that it remembers the memories really well for some reason mine it updates and then like five days later it forgets what I not forgets, but like I'll specifically give it a prompt, like don't use emojis anymore, yeah, or whatever, and like literally five days later it's throwing emojis back and I'm like you didn't listen to what. I said Like yeah, I, I just need, I need like a crash course on like here's how you update the back end of.
Speaker 3:Usually just chat GPT.
Speaker 3:Yeah so there's a few ways you can do it. But I would just create your own agent, and so what you would do is like first you Categorize all this stuff right and then you just basically say, hey, I'm going to create an agent based off of this information. You now know, give me like the best agent prompt, and then you stick that in the agent prompt and so then it'll remember in the agent, so every time you can just start new conversations with the agent, but it'll remember all those things. But yeah, if you're just like doing, doing conversations, it's not, it has a hard time remembering or it starts like hallucinating based off of, like the.
Speaker 3:You know how, however long your conversation is, it'll start like hallucinating things together. Yeah, it's really weird.
Speaker 1:Huh, it's almost like it's so close, but sometimes it'll say something where I'm like dude, now I can't trust what we've been talking about because you forgot. Something's very specific. I told you not to forget, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's always frustrating.
Speaker 3:Just like treat it like it's your friend, with like severe ADD, like wait what? What are you talking about right now?
Speaker 1:Remember Talked about this yesterday. Oh yeah, we did oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say, do that. But no, I think AI, ai is interesting. We I mean we use it all the time it's. It's super helpful in in some things. It's not very helpful in other things, but it'll be weird to see where it goes, that's for sure, you know.
Speaker 1:Like I was listening to, um, something today day that was saying it's going to take like five to ten years or whatever to like make a difference. I'm like, I guess, for me someone, I guess I'm probably one of the early adopters, right, I'm not, I'm not like super into ai, but you can still ask, like my brother or sister, and they probably haven't even touched it yet, sure, sure so most people are just still using google, right, but now google is.
Speaker 3:Did you see what google is doing? Uh, they're going to ai mode oh really. Yeah, so not to pat my back, but I called this three months ago so I'm like why would google not just swap their search bar for, like an ai engine? Like you're gonna lose, quote money like I know the compute power and the cost, right, but like you don't want to lose, like you don't want to lose your edge, you don't lose google yeah, because people are going to check.
Speaker 3:You don't want people to say chat gpt, that yeah. You want people to continue just to say google, that yeah, very true. So I was, I, I was like and they've got. They're gonna switch it eventually, like I don't know how. You know it's like a freemium version of gemini, but yeah.
Speaker 1:But yeah, you'll see it in your search, like this is different than the gemini thing that's been popping up every time you search.
Speaker 3:This is like you can opt to say just go to ai mode, yeah yeah yeah, I think.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think it's, I think that ai is going to, I think it's going to put a lot of businesses out of business of the people who are just mediocre at it, because they're not going to, because people are going to find that what that mediocre service that someone was offering they can just get from chat GPT.
Speaker 3:So yeah, and software is interesting.
Speaker 2:Software is interesting, I just wonder I think product-based businesses like yours are really in a really good spot, obviously because they're physical goods that people need Our world gets a little shakier.
Speaker 3:I think a lot of software goes to zero, though. Oh for sure it does.
Speaker 2:We have a Cto of our agency. He literally just built uh like a. We don't. We have a post-purchase survey, you know. But he just built a quiz side of it, so like it's a pre-purchase surveys, now to quiz like, hey, what bag's right for you?
Speaker 3:you've seen apps like that with like a product recommendation engine and all that he just built he just built, uh, an app with the user interface that is beautiful within like 36 hours wow, you know well, it's on a weekend, so it's. He's not like yeah, we're sitting there working all day it's just it's like I'm gonna yeah, I built this over the weekend, guys.
Speaker 3:I think we should test it out with a few people and I'm like, sweet, let's throw it on. Yeah crazy. So yeah it's, it's super cool I also think people have to reimagine, I think, where ai is going um, and this is my hot take with ai I think we all have to reimagine what a website is okay that's, that's my hot take meaning what?
Speaker 3:I mean literally. I think we have to reimagine what websites are and how they work. For example, gen z and younger use voice all the time. Right, like you have young developers that are only talking to chat gpt. Right, kids are growing up talking to ipads. Talking to technology like voice to text is a huge thing. Now, right, like we're kind of in the older generation where, like I I I use it a lot but it still feels like a little weird to be like talking to my like sitting there in my office, like talking, you know, instead of just like typing it. But the younger generations are talking.
Speaker 3:So that's just a good example of, like your inner, like people's interaction with technology is going to shift very dramatically over the next five to 10 years. So I think websites and how people imagine and interact with the website is going to change dramatically. So I don't know if that's going to be some kind of combination of video and voice. I don't know if it's going to be a combination of, you know, more of a lucid type experience that kind of evolves based off of how you're interacting with it. I'm not saying I know exactly where it's going. I just know that the way people are interacting already is evolving with technology?
Speaker 3:Yeah so, but websites are built off of how people interacted with technology 15 years ago. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So AI is going to enable the evolution of how a website is Right. So a good example of that is I've always said hey, 60 years ago, if you went into an office store, a salesman approaches you, right, and you don't always use the salesman, but oftentimes like, oh, yeah, did you have this? Like. That's usually if I go into like a, for example, I needed some loafers or whatever. Yeah, well, let's just talk clothes like apparel, I needed some, some loafers. I was in New York, I was going to the ballet and I didn't have any like nice shoes. So I was like, okay, I'm just going to go get some black loafers. I haven't, you know, I like the loafer style.
Speaker 3:Went to the mall, went I think it was boss was the first store that I saw and I like saw they had shoes out and I went in. Guy comes out like, hey, do you guys have? I don't see any. Do you guys have any loafers? Yeah, they're upstairs. Okay, cool. Guy comes, approaches me what are you looking for loafers? Okay, what size do you need? Nine, but it's all voice right, like that's a more natural way of interacting with people, which is why I think a lot of the younger generation is using voice to technology, but that's how it always worked, right. And then, if you would continue to go to the same store, what would happen 60 years ago? They know your name. Yeah, hey, are you? Are you still looking for this? What are you looking for today? So the interaction in a physical store is very different than our interactions with, like, a website. Like a website is very like manual, you know, like not, it's not.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's intuitive, but at the same time, like it's a little different right like it's not as fluid of an experience as it might be with a store, when you're just like, hey, what, where's that? Oh, thanks, guide me to what I want, right? So I think, as think, as we think, about websites. I think that's how it's going to evolve with AI, because it'll enable that in a very fluid, natural way that right now you can't really get. Like maybe quizzes can give it to you, right, like we've talked about, like quizzes can help guide the experience, but I think conversion rate optimization is going to do some quantum leaps over the next five years fair enough yeah, rant over yeah sorry.
Speaker 1:Well, in three to six months from now, you back.
Speaker 2:I told you I was right, yeah that's true yeah, I mean even the way we consume content right is gonna be so different too. Yeah, like I think eventually ai is going to start to dominate the content market, that we're all going to start to say the content's going to be different.
Speaker 3:Do I look?
Speaker 2:at this the same way you know like talking about this with my family this weekend.
Speaker 1:It's such an interesting concept of like you've been seeing this this. Um, what I always forget, it's not a yeti, it's a. What I always forget it's not a yeti, it's a. Uh, the sasquatch watch, yeah, is it like that?
Speaker 1:that fake ai like sasquatch, that's like vlogging, right, yeah, this is like such an interesting concept the fact that, like, someone can create an identity yeah that you follow and you want to watch the next video, but it's literally all just yeah, made up, yeah, like it's a just a 14 year old. Yeah, voice, voice prompting, is it a 14 year old.
Speaker 3:No, but like that's the joke, right, it's like who's behind it?
Speaker 1:do we know? I'm sure it's probably like a 16 year old, maybe it's yeah the thing I was thinking this weekend is like if everything you're consuming is like fake, what does that, what is that going to do for like real, like person to person interactions and what? How is it going to change our world? Bad, Bad, I was thinking it was going to be the opposite.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, I think what happens no, I mean yes, what you two are saying two different things. Okay, what you're saying is, when everything becomes fake, it's going to be bad for society, bad for the majority yes, in person. What you're saying is in person will become more important. Yes, right, yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's going to be weird, man. You're going to have all human content. I actually think in the future Instagram you'll have an AI option and a non-AI option, or you're going to have some way to use cryptography to ensure that the videos being uploaded on a social medium are actually people. There's going to be a premium for having only real people content versus AI generated content.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think. I mean, I think you're, that's what I think. I think you're in the right ballpark.
Speaker 3:Well, based off of my experience because I was thinking about this in New York, right Cause, like New York is built around, obviously you have the financial sector, right, but then, like the Broadway and the entertainment sector. Like you have the financial sector, right, but then, like the Broadway and the entertainment sector, like you have the sports team, you know you got like the Knicks and the Yankees, some storied big teams, and then you've got all these experiences, it's like, well, why do people go to New York? Right, like you can watch all that stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they go exactly for those things.
Speaker 3:There's a premium to go see a Broadway in person, right Like it's a premium to go see a Broadway in person, right Like it's a very different experience to go to a Broadway than it is to just watch a movie, for example. It's a very different experience. Like my wife you know she was a ballerina and you know she did that in college and so she's always wanted to go back there to the Met Opera house and see a ballet and that's what we did, and you know I'm in this beautiful building it's like, okay, well, hey, I can't really replicate that, replace this yet. I mean, you know there's going to be a matrix option and then next 20 years with Neuralink, but there's still a premium of getting human experiences, yeah, so I think that will only amplify it when you have so much content because, right like, the cost of content will go to zero.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, cuz time right it wouldn't take time to create it anymore, just hop on vo and Give me a seven second video of Sasquatch you holding a GoPro camera running away from a West Virginia man with a steep Southern accent. It's getting wild.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there is that whole concept too, where it's like the content we consume via like streaming platforms will change dramatically. Where you literally just like I've got 30 minutes before bed, I want to watch an action movie with you know, with myself as the lead, you know character and I want him to drive a whatever Corvette and whatever it is Right so you can play out this scenario. And then, all of a sudden, you're watching content as if it's like and it could be generated in the moment and you could actually just see an episode of something that you just thought of off the top of your head. But the thing that's yeah, yeah, the AI man. I mean your feeds right now with social like as you're scrolling. How, how often are you seeing AI come into?
Speaker 2:your feed. Well, there's two different ways I'm seeing it. You're seeing it as the commodity. So I think the commodity like this.
Speaker 3:Hold on. Are we considering the algorithm to be a? No, he's meaning the visual content. I'm just saying, like ai is controlling it, but. But a little bit already.
Speaker 2:But I think you have a commodity piece which is the like bible characters who are vlogging. It's the sasquatch like that eventually, I think, is going to become something that people aren't gonna like.
Speaker 3:That's just the stuff that like oh my gosh, these are the equivalent of tiktok trends look what you just did with this right.
Speaker 2:So I think you have. There's a novelty side.
Speaker 3:I'm seeing that but can I add something? That's also because the uncanny valley still exists. The what? The uncanny valley, what? Does that? Mean the uncanny valley is a like, it's like a psychological term to like when you see something that's very human like but not quite human Like. That's the uncanny valley, it's like eh like I see that. Yeah, I know it's not really human yeah. Like it doesn't really fit like a robot, yeah, like, uh, like it kind of gives you the the, the willies. Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's the uncanny valley, so it still exists, like it's really good, but like you see it, and it's like it's kind, of computer animated. Like it's not super real.
Speaker 2:But once that it's almost too perfect.
Speaker 3:Almost too perfect, or just like, yeah, just off, oh, the voice is off. Or like there's certain things that are off, that are obviously not real. That's the uncanny valley. Have you watched the sasquatch? I have, but it's still there. So in your you can tell with the, the angle of the camera, the clarity of the video, the, the way it's talking, like you can tell it's quote, fake and ai generated. But it's gotten so good that people are willing to forgo the uncanny valley now, but soon, the uncanny valley won't exist. Won't exist, yeah, it'll be so real. Yeah, so like what? I'm saying that? Because what you're saying is we have these trends, but the uncanny valley is still there. Yeah, they're just trends and they're fun. They're like little, yeah, like party tricks, yeah, and so I agree with you yes, those are, they come, they go. It's just like, oh, that's way crazy, that's crazy. And then it kind of leaves. Yeah, but soon. What happens when there is no uncanny valley?
Speaker 1:You have to have. It's what you said. You're going to have to have some kind of cryptography to say this is real or this is not. Otherwise, no one can believe anything. They see anymore ever moving forward. Right.
Speaker 3:See, I think the average person won't care.
Speaker 1:They won't care if it's true or not. No, what if it's our president saying something?
Speaker 3:Well, yes, when I talk about news, I'm talking about like, yes, but I'm talking about just like, what they consume on their phones. I think the average person, the same way as so many people, don't care if something's made in China or not, because it's like oh, it's cheaper here, okay, cool it. It's cheaper here okay, cool, it's the same thing. Um, I think the same thing's going to happen with content. I think a lot most the average person is going to say I don't care if person made this or not, if I like it I think for a season, but I think that will be the case personally but I think it's going to turn into a high class, low class thing like going to new york for, like, that's a higher cost activity.
Speaker 3:So to be involved in the human club will be premium, but a lot of people won't care, they'll just be like, as long as it's entertaining, I don't care.
Speaker 2:When are you launching your women's line?
Speaker 1:Wild to think about all that.
Speaker 3:Let's talk more dystopian futures.
Speaker 2:I like it John's getting stressed out I cut it there because, uh, I'm like we could probably talk for another like hour and a half.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true and it's all the same speculation that every other human is making it, yeah, very same moment.
Speaker 2:When is when is your women's bag line launch?
Speaker 1:so we've got it on the calendar in uh, spring, summer of next year. Cool, but knowing us, probably end up being summer, fall next year, so are you?
Speaker 2:when you said three years, are you including or is that? We took a significant?
Speaker 1:break, okay, after everything got stolen. So when you're talking like actual development time, probably like two, two and a half years that it will take got it? Yeah, got it very cool yeah, because we took like a six month break where we're just like, uh, products gone, like let's rethink how we're gonna make this make sure you do it right what's your biggest advice to people with developing product?
Speaker 3:is it spend more time getting it right? Or not necessarily build it with the customers because, like you have these processes that we love. Like we love when people take the time to do a focus group. Like almost no one takes the time, like a lot of people be like oh, I talked to some friends about it and they said they'd love it. It's like, of course they said they'd love it Cause they think they're getting it for free. You know, it's way different than saying like, would you pay 400, 300, $200 for it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is a big indicator. Like when we did our focus group for our apparel. We literally had people in the apparel focus group saying I will buy this, this prototype jacket, from you right now for two hundred dollars, like that's how much they wanted that jacket. Yeah, we're like sorry it's the only one, like we can't, but, but that was very good feedback and that gave us confidence going into it. So it's what you're saying Proving it out with the audience, I think is a big one.
Speaker 1:So when you say should they spend a lot of time, I can't say that they should. If, if, let's say, you're launching a new T-shirt brand with unique designs or something Right, so like you should just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks, at that point I don't think you need to like take months and months and months refining your design and making it perfect. But if you're making a premium product or you're making something that's going to have to be extremely functional or like game changing in an industry, then yeah, you probably need to spend more time than you think on it, getting it right. But I would say I probably fall in the court of like analysis paralysis more than my business partner.
Speaker 1:my business partner is always like let's go, like it's ready, and I'm always the one that's like let's yeah, we're not there yet, and so that dichotomy has been really good for us yeah, it's been good because I'm always holding us back and he's always trying to push us forward as fast as we can, and we end up somewhere in the middle, which is probably where we should be.
Speaker 2:Super smart, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:We always advocate for that for business partners.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we are very yin and yang.
Speaker 1:It's pretty hard to plan for it, but when you get it right, like I think, I just got lucky. But I think if you are interviewing like a business partner or trying to find someone, finding someone that has differing opinions than you and different you know, different way of looking at things and skill sets is important part of having a good partnership, for sure.
Speaker 3:Agreed, Same value, Our values Trevor talks about it all the time. It's like you have to have the same values but then you have to have like very different perspectives. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if your value and goal, vision and values match yeah yeah match, all right, then it doesn't matter what your, it doesn't really matter about anything else like those are the two things I, I started writing a book on this actually, yeah, that's exactly what I was highlighting is like you, you align, your, your, your, you know mission, vision and values, kind of thing, and then the rest of the stuff like yeah, yeah, you can figure that out how you get to point a versus how he gets to point a is different.
Speaker 2:You know right yeah, from point a to point b is doesn't really matter, as long as, like hey, family is really important to me, family's really important to you. Therefore, I already know that that's never getting in the way of the end goal, right like or the goal is never going to get away right of this what's really important. Yeah, love it man dude, this has been awesome. Thank you so much. Uh, where, tell everyone where you can, where they can find nomadic so of course, nomadiccom, that's with the t-n-o-m-a-t-i-c?
Speaker 1:um and yeah, we, we address your earlier question. We're actually in a lot of retail locations. So we were in over, I think, 100 different Dillard's locations. We have our travel bags, luggage, stuff like that there. We don't have apparel in any of our wholesale accounts yet, but Costco's rolling out this year, which is pretty exciting.
Speaker 2:Whoa sweet for travel bags.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for a travel pack. We'll be in 98 different Costco's by the end of the year and we've got. You can find us on Costcocom and stuff like that or Costco Next right now. And then camera stores, of course, because we sell camera bags. I think we're in over 200 different camera locations cool Brad.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much, john, appreciate it and thanks everybody for listening.
Speaker 4:Go take a look at Nomadic yeah, yeah, thanks a lot All right.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for listening to the Unstoppable Marketer podcast. Please go rate and subscribe the podcast, whether it's good or bad. We want to hear from you because we always want to make this podcast better. If you want to get in touch with me or give me any direct feedback, please go follow me and get in touch with me. I am at the trevor crump on both instagram and tiktok. Thank you, and we will see you next week take my word for it. Take Mark's word for it.
Speaker 3:One of our biggest fans.
Speaker 1:We'll call you the nomadic fanatic. I'm the nomadic fanatic.
Speaker 2:That's your newest ambassador, right there.
Speaker 3:Love it.
Speaker 2:Alright, we'll see you later guys.