Episode 344: Too Fast to Ship with Joel Freet (Cutter & Buck)

[]

[00:00:00]

[00:00:01] Bobby: What if improving your customer's buying experience didn't just reduce friction, it actually doubled their sales with you? And what happens when your fulfillment system is so fast you have to slow it down. Well, on today's show, we're exploring how Cutter & Buck is using both digital and physical automation plus AI to scale smarter and faster.

[00:00:21] Welcome to the skucast, the podcast for innovators and maverick thinkers in the promotional product space. My name is Bobby Lehew. I'm glad you're here.

[00:00:31] Our guest today, Joel Freet, started as an intern in the corporate division back in 1999 and became the CEO in 2014 to lead Cutter & Buck to become one of the industry's leading suppliers.

[00:00:42] Today we talk with Joel about the compounding impact of EPO adoption across their customer base, how AI is being used for everything from inventory forecasting to product content refreshes, and Joel shares a story about how they had to slow down their fulfillment time.

[00:00:57] Because it was too fast. Today's episode is brought to you, courtesy of us at commonsku. Over 900 distributors powering 1.8 billion in network volume. Rely on commonsku's connected workflow to process more orders, connect your team and dramatically grow your sales.

[00:01:13] To learn more, visit commonsku.com. Now here's my chat with Cutter & Buck's Joel Freet.

[00:01:19] Welcome to the Skucast. I am so glad you are back, my friend.

[00:01:23] Joel Freet: Thanks for having me again. It's great to be back. Great to be seen.

[00:01:27] Bobby: Yeah, we don't see you as much, but I know you're out there a lot, so glad to have you back.

[00:01:34] Joel Freet: Thank you.

[00:01:34] Bobby: You don't do this a lot, so this is fun to do. And we're gonna catch up with a lot of things, but before maybe there's some new listeners. And for those that are new, can you explain briefly the corporate and retail side of Cutter & Buck?

[00:01:46] Joel Freet: The basic thing is we do both. We do both corporate and retail. Cutter & Buck was founded as a retail company, making super high quality sportswear in 1989. We've been doing that ever since. We've been in the corporate space since the late nineties, and we just love it. It's just an awesome space for us. Corporate allows us to get our brand out there to a lot more fans, that's really what it is. And the retail business, no matter what we do, I think I told you this last time, Bobby, but it stays true. No matter what we do, they both grow together and we just can't

[00:02:16] Bobby: It's crazy.

[00:02:17] Joel Freet: break through 50-50. It's 51-49, or 48-52, or back to 50-50. It really, they really grow in lockstep.

[00:02:24] And so far this year corporate's really strong. Retail's a little softer. We're making a little bit more ground in corporate. The holiday season is upon us.

[00:02:35] Bobby: Yeah. Right. It's coming, right? Yeah.

[00:02:38] Joel Freet: We'll snap back into 50-50. So,

[00:02:40] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:02:41] Joel Freet: We do both businesses and lots of different channels in each.

[00:02:44] Bobby: I love how last time we were talking you said the intelligence from each side also helps each other as well. Like one of the things that really surprised me. You're the first person to ever say this, that you're actually getting trending insights from the corporate side, whereas we're always used to that coming from retail.

[00:02:59] So that was really fascinating. How has digital transformation impacted how you've seen both? Now program business or corporate business and consumer business running parallel. And you're big in tech and automation. So how have you scaled those simultaneously?

[00:03:13] Joel Freet: We've really invested in the core infrastructure. The core infrastructure for order fulfillment and order processing. We just keep investing in that. Try to be excellent

[00:03:21] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:03:22] Joel Freet: at that, to be the best sportswear supplier that we can be. Since we talked last we opened a really huge improvement to our fulfillment center here in Seattle with a big investment with AutoStore where we invested in a fulfillment engine that just delivers products directly to our people and makes it really easy to pick orders. And so we've gone from really a couple hours or maybe a

[00:03:47] couple of days of work in process that we have to now down to minutes. And so our work

[00:03:53] Bobby: Wow.

[00:03:53] Joel Freet: in process is really small now. So orders that are placed online through cbc-corporate.com or from an EDI partner or a connected partner from commonsku

[00:04:03] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:04:04] Joel Freet: or promo standards, just, they're ready to go out the door in minutes. And so we're picking and packing orders really fast. If they're going into decoration, they're getting into decoration really fast. It enables us to schedule our orders really well, so we're able to get more and more efficiency with decorated orders. So that's enabled us to take a tool or a business that we've really grown in retail the last several years. Last time we talked I was like, Hey, when is corporate gonna kinda wake up to this thing? So

[00:04:33] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:04:34] Joel Freet: It allows us to have this intense speed so that we can do single unit orders bulked together or batched together, as we might say, and delivered out

[00:04:43] to end users or to company employees that are in their own homes or whatever location they're at. So

[00:04:49] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:04:49] Joel Freet: We're taking that drop ship capability that we have in retail and just putting that right into the corporate space. And the distributors and partners who are aligned with that.

[00:04:58] They're just killing it. They're just absolutely crushing it

[00:05:00] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:05:01] Joel Freet: like in retail where we have this really tough market, it comes down to even the retailers having a hard time like

[00:05:11] figuring out how to account for it. Here we have distributors, they're just getting profit and they don't

[00:05:11] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:05:12] Joel Freet: touch the goods.

[00:05:13] Bobby: Wow. That's amazing.

[00:05:14] Joel Freet: They are a little bit more used to that of just Hey, it's just going direct from the supplier. But that's been really potent for us. So our capability to do it has been there for several years, but now our efficiency of doing it is at the world class level.

[00:05:27] And so we're really proud of what we've been able to build and it's going great.

[00:05:31] Bobby: That's amazing. I want to talk about the digital side and the physical side, but first on the digital side, we just, at commonsku was just reported this morning. We just had our biggest month of EPOS ever. So to see that kind of traction in the business is pretty astounding. And obviously now Cutter & Buck is a connected plus supplier.

[00:05:48] How do you see that even changing? Yeah, like where you were to where you are now has really changed the speed. How do you see this even changing further down the road?

[00:05:56] Joel Freet: It opens up the resources to have us all stop working on order processing

[00:06:02] Bobby: Yeah,

[00:06:03] Joel Freet: and get to adding value in the value chain. Our POs on paper, making corrections on POs, all of those things that add up, you know, checking stock and oh, the stock's not available

[00:06:14] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:06:14] Joel Freet: because it was sent in the wrong

[00:06:16] Bobby: Right.

[00:06:16] Joel Freet: way, whatever that might be. We just, it's freeing up our brains to be like, okay, now we're not doing that anymore. Now how do we

[00:06:22] Bobby: Yep.

[00:06:23] Joel Freet: help our customers really thrive?

[00:06:26] Bobby: Yeah,

[00:06:26] Joel Freet: That's where the change is that it really just takes away the easy but hard work that gets to be a drag

[00:06:32] Bobby: Yeah,

[00:06:32] Joel Freet: and allows us to really focus.

[00:06:34] Like you said, we're. Every month is our best integrated month ever, every month. And it's been,

[00:06:39] Bobby: Yep.

[00:06:39] Joel Freet: I don't know, 75 straight months or something every single month. Our business keeps increasing in some form of integrated orders. Promo standards has been huge.

[00:06:51] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:06:52] Joel Freet: Lots of EDI connected customers as well. Just every month it keeps growing. And what we're finding, and I think you guys are seeing the same on your EPOS and how you're seeing it, is that whatever the number of engaged customers is, the number of orders coming from them is about double that percentage.

[00:07:09] This is what we're seeing. If we have 5% more customers placing orders through a digital path, we're getting 10% more orders.

[00:07:17] Bobby: Wow.

[00:07:17] Joel Freet: So the leverage is there, so that just keeps signaling to us that the less time you spend on just the shuffling of the paper, the more time people spend doing business.

[00:07:27] And so you get more orders, everybody wins.

[00:07:30] Bobby: It's so amazing. The math checks out. What is also interesting to me is how in just the intangible part, the halo effect around the relationship between the distributor and supplier just gets better. Even just that, I mean, we can all measure the tactical things, and that's a huge gain in efficiencies and profit and where you can focus your energy, but just the emotional gain

[00:07:49] of being able to work with your customer on a different level, on a creative level, more so than just a tactical level. It's fantastic. Catherine and Dave visited your facility and they were really blown away by your robotic system. We have some video we'll play for those that are tuning into the video.

[00:08:04] What role does this play in your fulfillment process? We talked about digital automation, so what have you done at Cutter & Buck with the robotics?

[00:08:11] Joel Freet: It's enabled our people just to be much more efficient. It's safer. They

[00:08:15] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:08:16] Joel Freet: know, everyone doesn't have to, basically, this is gonna be an exaggeration, but run around so much.

[00:08:21] Bobby: Yeah. Right.

[00:08:22] Joel Freet: They sit at these nice stations where they're just packing orders or they're sending orders over to embroidery. It's very calm. It's super quiet, it's peaceful. There's just really good

[00:08:31] Bobby: That's amazing.

[00:08:32] Joel Freet: The automation gain that we've had in that operation side has just enabled a better work experience for our folks. And they're just, they're processing orders so much faster without feeling like you're working harder.

[00:08:44] Isn't that the dream of automation is that you work

[00:08:46] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:08:47] Joel Freet: faster without, while feeling like it's easier. And so that

[00:08:51] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:08:51] Joel Freet: just enables us to keep that work in process really short so that we can use our space wisely. The rent is very high where we are at, up here in Seattle. It's an expensive place to do business

[00:09:02] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:09:02] Joel Freet: so we like to be nice and dense. So just not having even as much as not having to have as much work in process materials. It just makes our decoration operations from there run a whole lot smoother. In fact, Bobby this is maybe a trick question that the team will hear, was that we actually have to slow down a little bit because oftentimes people have some kind of order change or something.

[00:09:22] They're like, Hey, oh shoot, I

[00:09:24] Bobby: Oh,

[00:09:24] Joel Freet: entered the wrong size.

[00:09:27] I did 24 larges instead of 24 extra larges, whatever. And it's oh shoot, sorry, it's already in the truck.

[00:09:32] Bobby: This is a great problem.

[00:09:34] Joel Freet: It might be in the truck

[00:09:34] Bobby: Yeah,

[00:09:35] Joel Freet: I just entered it. It's yeah, it's in the truck. So those things we do throttle it a little bit 'cause it just enables our customers and everything just to move smoothly.

[00:09:43] Bobby: That's astounding.

[00:09:45] Joel Freet: So yeah,

[00:09:45] We had a setup where it went from six minutes from order entry to in the truck, and we just found out it was like too fast. People were like, this is jarring. It's jarring

[00:09:56] Bobby: That's hilarious. Wow, that's amazing. What a change. And you have distributions all over. You're also expanding some of your decoration capabilities, if I understand it right.

[00:10:05] Joel Freet: Yeah yeah. We've added we've added more heat transfer. That's been a big one. But the really big change has been partnering with what we call share ship, or with a network of really strong decorators across the country

[00:10:17] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:10:17] Joel Freet: as distribution points.

[00:10:18] That's been what's been a huge

[00:10:20] Bobby: Hmm.

[00:10:21] Joel Freet: leverage point for us is to find great decorators that have all the business already. Maybe they're doing program business or what have you. And that's just where it feels like it's decorated from us, but it's just because it's just so smooth. And we ship

[00:10:33] Bobby: Yeah. That's cool.

[00:10:34] Joel Freet: out to them, daily from here in Seattle or in Cincinnati where we have our other distribution operation. And it's just getting to those locations so fast and then they're

[00:10:43] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:10:43] Joel Freet: ready to ship.

[00:10:45] Bobby: Moving from efficiencies to brands. You've expanded brand categories, so what kind of brands are really performing well for you right now under Cutter & Buck?

[00:10:53] Joel Freet: It's like, like we talked about a minute ago, 75 months straight of growth in digital orders or integrated orders. Cutter & Buck has just been on a really hot streak for a long time. So I've been with Cutter & Buck for 26 years. If

[00:11:06] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:11:07] Joel Freet: you can believe it

[00:11:08] Bobby: Wow.

[00:11:08] Joel Freet: I can hardly believe it, but this is a really long growth streak for us.

[00:11:13] So we just committed to modern great sportswear several years ago and just really committed to categories like polos and layering knits and outerwear and just things that feel like athleisure and feel like things that feel like they're really ready for your all day active lifestyle. It's just worked great. It's just really has worked great even as we have. During that growth period. We have even dialed back in like more traditional categories like sweaters and woven shirts. Those just got dialed back really through supply chain challenges that I'm sure we can get to in a few minutes. Even with that, we've had tremendous growth, even with categories

[00:11:48] Bobby: Wow.

[00:11:48] Joel Freet: that are smaller than they used to be. Yeah, layers, things that people can wear over and over again for their work life

[00:11:55] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:11:55] Joel Freet: as well as for their active lifestyle. Those are things in the Cutter & Buck brand that have really thrived.

[00:12:01] And the growth has been tremendous in that. Yeah, and then our Clique brand has gone really well as well. It's more in the everyday affordable essentials for promo and otherwise. That one, we've launched a lot of more premium outerwear into the space

[00:12:14] Bobby: Hmm.

[00:12:14] Joel Freet: so that's been good. All right. Premium isn't exactly right. It's more like better outerwear because the value is

[00:12:19] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:12:20] Joel Freet: insanely good. So we're

[00:12:22] Bobby: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:23] Joel Freet: in a great position with the Cutter & Buck brand as well as with the Clique brand. And then coming in 2026, we're actually gonna be launching more brands into the US market.

[00:12:32] So we have

[00:12:33] The Swedish outdoor brand called Tenson, which is a really gorgeous collection of, now that's premium outerwear, that is truly premium outerwear. And then also from the Nordics.

[00:12:44] The really, like the, this is gonna be the quickest elevator pitch. The Nike of the Nordics which is Craft. Craft Sportswear is a huge sports brand. That is part of our New Wave group family of brands. It has become a juggernaut of a brand in the Nordics and across the European countries.

[00:13:04] And we're gonna be partnering with them to bring Craft into the US market in 2026 as well. So we're really thrilled to, so then we'll have really performance sports. We'll have the active, we'll have the athleisure, we'll have the premium outerwear, we'll have the, then we'll have the everyday essentials with Clique.

[00:13:22] So we'll really fill out a really strong brand portfolio over the next few years.

[00:13:26] Bobby: That's amazing. Congratulations on those big brand launches. That's a big deal.

[00:13:31] Joel Freet: That's where all the fun

[00:13:32] Bobby: Yeah,

[00:13:32] Joel Freet: is, right?

[00:13:33] Bobby: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the other thing that's outdoor lifestyle, like premium wear and like, so I was following someone that I follow, an influencer who was at the Milan fashion show, and he was walking through the Milan fashion show right on video and he said the most exciting thing happening is outdoor apparel.

[00:13:50] And I thought that was kind of an interesting take, right? The outdoor apparel is where some of the most exciting things are happening. So that's become huge growth categories for you, obviously, what do you, what is resonating the most with corporate buyers? Specifically, what are you seeing resonate with them?

[00:14:04] Joel Freet: What we're seeing the most is really in like mid layers where we're taking from an outdoor influence, taking from an active lifestyle influence that kind of goes into outdoor, that mid layer. You could even include like vests, like wearing vests and kind of the quilted vest or something like

[00:14:19] Bobby: Yes.

[00:14:19] Joel Freet: that.

[00:14:19] Just things

[00:14:20] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:14:20] Joel Freet: that's what's just continuing to flow really well. 'Cause people just wear it. And when we're talking about promotional apparel, you want people to wear it. And these are just the categories that people are wearing for their lifestyle.

[00:14:32] And it really translates back and forth to work into date night to all these things. And people, I see people in Seattle all the time out on I want to just quote, unquote call them dates, but, out in the social life

[00:14:44] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:14:45] Joel Freet: with our promo wear on, I see it almost

[00:14:47] Bobby: Yeah,

[00:14:48] Joel Freet: every day.

[00:14:50] Bobby: Yeah,

[00:14:51] Joel Freet: I see somebody in a great Rainier vest and it's got their, you know, you name the company logo here, and they're at dinner.

[00:14:57] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:14:58] Joel Freet: They're jumping onto their boat. They're doing their thing. It's like you see it all the time. So isn't that the dream? Isn't that exactly

[00:15:04] Bobby: Yes.

[00:15:05] Joel Freet: the business that we're all in is getting your logo on

[00:15:07] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:15:08] Joel Freet: the backs of people who are proud to represent it and proud to wear

[00:15:11] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:15:12] Joel Freet: it into their lifestyle.

[00:15:13] So that's not going away. That's just going to be different

[00:15:15] Bobby: Yeah. Yep.

[00:15:17] Joel Freet: different flavors of it now coming.

[00:15:20] Bobby: That's so true. Let's talk a little bit about the topic that's been on everybody's mind all year long, and, you know, the scale of Cutter & Buck is significant. So you've got some interesting insight on this. How are current tariffs, current tariffs now, as we record this in basically the first week of July?

[00:15:38] How is that impacting business, particularly with such a large footprint like you have.

[00:15:43] Joel Freet: Yeah, we've been, we've just been attuned to global trade, you know, global trade from our founding, and we've been paying attention to the way the wind is blowing for a long time. Yeah, it's, there's been some surprises this year. The level of surprise to us has been something that we're prepared for.

[00:15:58] We crack open the playbook and say, okay, where's our next move here? And otherwise, I had a challenge this year 'cause I thought we had settled in on tariffs and I committed to holding pricing and then we just got walloped. And I was like, oh geez. So I had an embarrassing kind of a moment that felt like we were well protected and then we weren't. There was some surprises there. So we've been very optimistic about our positioning now moving forward that we're well positioned with a lot of diversity in our supply chain. We work with, we're picky about suppliers, so we work with really great suppliers from all over the world. In the areas that have had the heaviest kind of tariff focus, we've been fortunate

[00:16:40] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:16:40] Joel Freet: or otherwise enough to not be very concentrated there. So it's just

[00:16:44] us from the global, the larger or kind of the broader tariffs that's gonna affect all of us. We're still in the branded production model where we design, market and otherwise, but we do use contract manufacturing, so that does call that into question overall. But,

[00:16:57] Bobby: Sure.

[00:16:58] Joel Freet: I see that the supply chain just keeps moving. It keeps adapting to new labor markets and such. And certainly in China per se like the economy has moved upwards.

[00:17:07] It's moved out of really a lot of like apparel production and they're working on producing electric cars and computers

[00:17:14] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:17:14] Joel Freet: and laptops and cell phones and those things. And so the market has shifted into other areas as well, and that's,

[00:17:20] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:17:21] Joel Freet: honestly, that's as old as America that's been happening

[00:17:23] Bobby: Yeah. Right, right.

[00:17:25] Joel Freet: for decades. Yeah.

[00:17:25] Bobby: Sure. We're heading into the one of the biggest selling seasons, particularly in some of the categories that you sell into in late third and in fourth quarter. How are you feeling about that with the tariff trade winds and the uncertainty around it? How are you feeling heading into third and fourth quarter?

[00:17:38] Joel Freet: I feel really great. We've spent the last couple of years really working to shore up our inventory levels and just be really certain that we have we're able to fulfill as many orders as we possibly can for the holidays. So we've been shoring that up. So again, like good, you know, it's an old fashioned saying, but good clean living.

[00:17:56] We've been planning on serving our customers better and better across all channels. So we currently have our highest inventory levels we've had ever.

[00:18:05] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:18:06] Joel Freet: Again, like 75 straight months. But we have our highest inventory ever. We are still getting more inventory in for the rest of the year.

[00:18:12] Just to share our peak season,

[00:18:14] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:18:14] Joel Freet: August 15th. That's when

[00:18:16] Bobby: Okay.

[00:18:17] Joel Freet: tons of back to school business starts happening. NFL season,

[00:18:20] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:18:21] Joel Freet: college football, just, and then everyone comes back from vacation at the same time. At the same time

[00:18:27] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:18:27] Joel Freet: in the corporate world. So we go from like August 15th until December 15th is our peak. And so we will be fully loaded for that time period in all of our best, all of our best products, which is really exciting for us

[00:18:39] Bobby: Okay.

[00:18:40] Joel Freet: right now. So we're feeling very good about it.

[00:18:42] So we're very optimistic. Again, the corporate has remained strong. So that's been very good. And then, you know what little dips and dabs we see in retail? Those get so quickly overcome with, again, back to school season

[00:18:55] Bobby: Mm.

[00:18:55] Joel Freet: and just as the holiday period gets upon us, corporate gifting, all of those things really get strong.

[00:19:01] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:19:02] Joel Freet: You know, we're still not a big enough player to say oh, the market shares are, it's no, there's tons of business out there. And so

[00:19:08] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:19:08] Joel Freet: when we have the full scale of products. We're ready to go. And I would just mention this

[00:19:13] This is the first time we've ever been able to use enough intelligence and really starting to use AI. Maybe we should go there and we're starting to use machine learning

[00:19:21] Bobby: Yep.

[00:19:21] Joel Freet: to say look, we have products now that we can sell 10x of versus its little brother and sister products.

[00:19:29] And you don't quite know that in more traditional planning methods until you really let the machine learning come in and say look, you could, if you look at these signals closely enough, you could sell a hundred thousand of these if you have 'em, versus three or 4,000 of something else.

[00:19:46] So if you have the color, a navy blue one, you could sell a hundred thousand of 'em versus a cardinal red where oh, you're only gonna sell 6,000 of them. And so the differences are

[00:19:57] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:19:57] Joel Freet: really like exponential, which has been really

[00:19:59] exciting. So we have the first time ever, we have a lot of styles that have, or a lot of, style colors.

[00:20:02] We call 'em SKUs, style colors that have 30, 40, 50,000 units on the shelf.

[00:20:09] Bobby: Wow, we were gonna talk about AI next. And so is that one area where you're seeing AI? So you had an amazing statement last time we talked and you said whatever your last best experience was is now your minimal expectation. Right? So that's the customer's experience. That's customer experience in a nutshell.

[00:20:26] How do you, you just mentioned AI is really informing your intelligence in terms of inventory, it sounded like in inventory buying and decision making. How else is it impacting the work you're already doing at Cutter & Buck?

[00:20:35] Joel Freet: I think for us it's a lot of work that almost goes undone because we can't get to it. It's like,

[00:20:41] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:20:41] Joel Freet: you wanna redo all of your product content, it's okay, we've got some new insights. Let's look, let's refresh that

[00:20:46] Bobby: Hmm.

[00:20:47] Joel Freet: and it's oh my gosh, how many SKUs do we have out there?

[00:20:49] How many syndicated products do we have out there? So some of these things in the digital world, they feel overwhelming 'cause they're such heavy lifts. If you want to

[00:20:58] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:20:58] Joel Freet: say change, like a good example is managing your product content. Like how do you do that? If you install some AI tools to that, it's fast.

[00:21:06] You can give it an instruction set and you can, in the course of hours, days, weeks, you can have all of your product content updated with the latest things, latest insights that you want. That used to be like a, okay, next year let's plan to do that.

[00:21:19] Bobby: Right,

[00:21:20] Joel Freet: You know what I mean? So it's

[00:21:21] Bobby: Right. Yeah.

[00:21:22] Joel Freet: exciting that you just can get

[00:21:24] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:21:25] Joel Freet: you get better. So your last best is okay, as soon as we see like a great product description or a great way that's really resonating with our customers, let's have that influence a lot of our content, and you just don't have to wait and you can actually

[00:21:38] Bobby: For sure.

[00:21:39] Joel Freet: get that work done.

[00:21:39] And for us, that's where we are. There's lots of companies looking at super exciting things utilizing AI. I think that there's a lot of ways that it

[00:21:47] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:21:48] Joel Freet: can really help our customers with suggestions and all of that. We've, we already had some tools in for that, but we're

[00:21:54] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:21:55] Joel Freet: working behind the scenes looking on that, but I think it's about the work that goes undone that you can now

[00:22:00] Bobby: Yep.

[00:22:01] Joel Freet: really get into continuous improvement mode and really be serious about it and not have, again, months to years go by, like, how come we never got to

[00:22:10] Bobby: Yeah. Right, right. We,

[00:22:11] Joel Freet: it.

[00:22:12] Bobby: Yeah. Yeah. We, you can imagine we are so bullish on AI and you can, and we both have these massive data sets from customer purchasing trends, all kinds of things like the, it's phenomenal what can be done today. Mapping AI to our data, do you see, how do you see AI really impacting the industry in the future?

[00:22:30] Is it in this data intel side? Do you see it impacting the sales side? How do you see it moving the needle the most?

[00:22:37] Joel Freet: I think data intelligence first, like we talk about inventory, really planning for how the business is going to go,

[00:22:43] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:22:43] Joel Freet: all of these different signals, which we can't all listen to, just getting that intelligence. I think that's huge. In the service side, just getting people the information they need really fast.

[00:22:53] Like it just, waiting

[00:22:54] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:22:54] Joel Freet: on the phone seems like an eternity now. Waiting four minutes for an email reply back just feels like forever

[00:23:00] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:23:01] Joel Freet: now. So there are some things in there that are really plausible. So just again, reducing friction is a big one. And then out there selling, I don't know, maybe just giving more opportunities for more companies to run integrated programs.

[00:23:15] Like I think how many times has a client, a corporation in our space said I don't wanna reset my program because I just spent last year setting it up. But when we can just say, oh, it's no problem.

[00:23:27] Just give us a couple indicators and we will use

[00:23:30] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:23:31] Joel Freet: an AI tool to reset it for you, like that's going

[00:23:33] Bobby: Yeah. It's so cool.

[00:23:35] Joel Freet: to help the sales, right? So that then we've got companies out there with their company stores refreshed and just, or just kept fresh all the time and reducing

[00:23:44] Bobby: Yeah,

[00:23:45] Joel Freet: friction, that feels like an opportunity that we haven't had before, or at least not

[00:23:51] Bobby: Yeah, for sure.

[00:23:53] Joel Freet: since the internet

[00:23:53] Bobby: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:23:54] Joel Freet: online catalog started to be quote unquote easier than a print catalog.

[00:23:59] So just imagine that online catalog, maybe it takes weeks to months to update. Now that takes minutes to hours to update. That's an opportunity for selling that I think

[00:24:10] Bobby: For sure,

[00:24:11] Joel Freet: we haven't had.

[00:24:11] Bobby: For sure. We've got one minute left. I want to ask you this. Now, if I remember right, you came into the business as an intern. Is that right? Yeah. And see, and you have been ready, you're the CEO of Cutter & Buck. That's an amazing story. So we'll link to that old story in case you wanna hear Joel's story again, 'cause it's a phenomenal story about your personal growth in this business.

[00:24:31] But to wrap, what do you, what are you reading, listening to? The promo community loves to know what it is you've read lately that's moved you or what's altering your thinking.

[00:24:40] Joel Freet: I feel like I'm most prepared for that question from having these other things. But when, just as things were changing over the winter and the tariffs started to be whispered about and some other changes we went back to some Jim Collins for us, which I'm a huge fan of, the Good to Great universe and our

[00:24:56] Bobby: Same.

[00:24:57] Joel Freet: team went through Great by Choice again and just really thinking about leadership and management through more turbulent times of just as things are changing.

[00:25:06] And so we did six weeks of reading and then boom, ready for the tariff, the tariffs things start to be discussed in early April. And several people on the team were like, man, we just read that again. And it's

[00:25:18] Bobby: Yeah.

[00:25:19] Joel Freet: just getting to the core of your business, we talked about several changes here with automation, changes with AI, changes with global sourcing and other things, but it's always been changing. Just a reminder to everybody that it's

[00:25:30] Bobby: That's great.

[00:25:31] Joel Freet: reminder. It's always changing all the time. So that book was written really post 9/11 about how things

[00:25:39] Bobby: Yep.

[00:25:39] Joel Freet: changed so much. It's yeah, we

[00:25:41] Bobby: So good.

[00:25:41] Joel Freet: have been through these cycles before.

[00:25:42] Bobby: Oh, that's a great way to end, Joel. Thank you so much. Like that is, if there's one takeaway I've had from talking with many leaders like you, it's that focus on your core because the volatility and the uncertainty will always be there. It may be bigger, it may be smaller, but it'll always be there.

[00:25:58] Thank you Joel, for joining us again, my friend. This has been as always a pleasure.

[00:26:02] Joel Freet: Thanks for having me.