April 10, 2024 • 42 mins
Unlock the secrets of entrepreneurial triumph as we sit down with Jeremy Parker, the visionary behind Swag.com's explosive growth from a modest side hustle to a multi-million dollar behemoth. Jeremy not only reveals the strategic chess moves involved in snagging a premium domain but also gives us an authentic look at the tightrope walk of nurturing a thriving enterprise alongside the joys and challenges of parenting. Get ready to absorb a treasure trove of wisdom on brand development, the art of scaling a business, and the subtle dance of maintaining a personal life amidst entrepreneurial chaos.
Imagine a world where high school and college students can leapfrog into the entrepreneurial arena without the burden of startup costs. That's the reality we dissect in this episode, highlighting the untapped gold mine residing within the swag industry. With platforms like SwagSpace acting as launchpads, Jeremy and I sketch out a blueprint for young go-getters to ignite their careers even before tossing their graduation caps. You'll learn how cultivating sales acumen and leveraging repeat business can unlock pathways to success, demonstrated by Swag.com's impressive partnership roster, including tech titan Amazon.
Finally, strap in for a ride through the evolution of the promotional merchandise industry, led by yours truly. From orchestrating brand deals for YouTube stars to the lightbulb moment birthing Swag, it's a chronicle of adaptation and understanding the demographic shifts in the corporate buying landscape. The conversation takes a turn through the strategic alleyways of swag marketing, from transforming office managers into brand ambassadors to embracing the network effect with pivotal partnerships. Listen and learn how agility, customer focus, and a willingness to embrace the entrepreneurial rollercoaster can pave the way for monumental achievements.
As you're inspired to embark on your side hustle journey after listening to this episode, you might wonder where to start or how to make your vision a reality. With a team of experienced marketing professionals and a track record of helping clients achieve their dreams, we are ready to assist you in reaching your goals. To find out more, visit www.reversedout.com.
Can't keep up with AI? We've got you. Everyday AI helps you keep up and get ahead.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Subscribe to Side Hustle City and join our Community on Facebook
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, myco-host.
Let's get started, all right.
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
(00:25):
Kyle Stevie in my co-host.
Let's get started, all right.
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Kyle Stevie in the building tomy right once again.
Yeah, made it in man, norequirements of kids or anything
.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
He came in here complaining Dude, if you're an
entrepreneur and you don't havechildren yet and you're 30, if
you're an entrepreneur and youdon't have children yet and
you're 30, don't fucking havechildren.
There he goes.
You'll save all your money,you'll save all your headache
and you'll probably look a lotyounger when you're 43, like me.
These are Kyle's problems rightnow, every day is like
(00:58):
something new.
It's like you guys weresupposed to be past this.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, well, you get to deal with it, and we've got
Jeremy Parker today on thepodcast.
Thanks for joining us, jeremy.
Thank you for having me.
Great to be here, jeremy.
You got kids or anything?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
I do.
I have two.
I have a three and a half yearold daughter and a 60 month old
son.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Okay, when did the problem start?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Kyle yeah, for us it didn't start until they were
teenagers.
Okay, well, jeremy, you gotthat to look forward to all
three of them.
And we're we're fine growing up.
It's the the teenage, but thehormones are just I remember
these days.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Well, yeah, it was, it was 20 something years ago,
but I know I try and I try to dothat and I try to put myself in
their position and beunderstanding yeah, and and like
35 seconds into it, I'm likeknock it the fuck off.
Quit being pansy, suck it up,move on, figure out a solution
to your problem.
I can't stand listening to youwhine about it any longer.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Well, Kyle deals with it.
Kyle's got this stuff.
He wants to be an entrepreneur.
He's working at a company.
He's been there for a while.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
I just interviewed to be an adjunct professor today.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Oh, good for you.
He's actually got his lawdegree.
He's never.
He hasn't done anything with it, but he keeps, he keeps paying
the only thing I ever do with.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
It was the only way I qualified for this position was
because I had a JD oh I love it.
And the guy emailed me and saidDr Stevie's like fuck yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
I am Dr Stevie now.
So, jeremy, let's talkpromotional products.
Man, swagcom, swag space.
You started swagcom and I havea question about that.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
How long ago did you have to buy that domain, or how?
Speaker 1 (02:39):
long.
Yeah, that's a great domain.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah, so it's actually a very interesting
story.
We started swagcom in 2016.
Having the brand name swagcomwas very important for kind of
my thesis.
The thesis, high level, is thatpeople you can't just advertise
swag Like it's not impulsepurchasing.
So if you're like browsingFacebook and you see an ad for a
(03:03):
pair of shoes, you might justbuy that pair of shoes because
you might want it for yourself.
But if you ever see an ad forswag on Facebook, the odds that
you need to buy swag in bulk$3,000 worth of corporate
promotional products at theexact right time it's just
unlikely.
So what we found is we need toget in front of people, let's
say, in January, through ads,but ultimately they're going to
be placing their order inSeptember, november, december,
(03:24):
during holiday season, so wehave to stay top of mind to
people later on in the year.
So the whole idea was we reallyneeded this brand name to
convert offline conversations,like what they have with their
boss and their co-workers, toonline purchasing and we felt
like swagcom was the right name.
Now, I didn't have the money atthe time to buy the name.
They were asking, I think, alittle over 1.2 million.
At the point I figured it wasgoing to be expensive because
(03:46):
that's a prime name, veryexpensive.
But what we did is we weresomewhat creative about it and
we negotiated a deal.
We brought the price down.
Obviously, we negotiated theprice down, but we also worked
out a deal where we couldexclusively license the name for
a two-year period with theoption to buy, and for that
right we did a couple ofinteresting things, but
basically it allowed us to havethe domain from day one without
(04:07):
actually having to purchase it.
We were licensing it and thenultimately, we could see is this
business going anywhere?
And if it is, then we'll havethe money to.
Either we could raise moneyaround it or we, with the
profits, we could use that moneyto buy the name full out.
Or, if it doesn't work, youknow there's no skin off our
back and we didn't lose anything.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Nice, Nice.
Well, that was creative.
I mean, that's what you got todo in business all the time.
I mean you have to, especiallyif you're a young company.
You have to get creative withsome things.
You have to get creative withthe way you compensate people
who are working for you, Even uh, there's a lot of things you
have to do.
How big was yourcom up and thenyou sold it at one point?
(04:44):
Now you're with the acquiringcompany, building another
product inside of their brand.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yeah, exactly so swagcom when we got acquired I
don't know the exact number wewere a little over 100 people at
that point.
We started in 2016.
I'll do a quick rundown of thenumbers.
Initially, we did about 350,000of sales our first year.
Me and my co-founder, josh,were traveling salesmen knocking
on doors.
We had no technology platform,we just had a.
(05:10):
Oh, we should probably want touse them as well.
So that was our initialstrategy Learned as much as we
could about the industry,ultimately launched the first
(05:32):
version of our eCommerce site in2017.
We did about $1.1 million in2017, 2018, $3 million, $19
million, $7 million Then went to$15 million and went to $30
million a year, and in 2021,when we were completing a little
bit over $30 million a year,custom Ink who's like the
largest leader in our industryacquired us, and I've been
(05:54):
running as CEO for swagcomunderneath Custom Ink for the
last two years up until December, where I left that role and I'm
starting a new divisionunderneath customing called
Swagspace and high level.
Swagspace is taking all of thetechnology that we built over
the last eight years withswagcom, and swagcom makes it
easy for companies like Amazonand Google and Facebook to buy
(06:16):
promotional products.
And our idea is what if we tookall that awesome technology,
white labeled it and gave itaway for free to the 23,000
other promo distributors whowant to easily make sales?
Wouldn't it be amazing if theyhad the technology $20-plus
million worth of technology tostart selling to their clients?
And then, once they actuallymake a sale, it hits our back
(06:37):
end and we become the de factosupplier as well?
And then this technology is sopowerful that we're thinking
well, it doesn't just work forpromo distributors.
It could also work for the20,000 screen printers or the
70,000 party planners or the150,000 graphic designers or the
college kid that wants to starta business.
It's basically a business inthe box, like instantaneously.
Anybody uploads their logo,selects a brand logo, you know
(07:00):
colors, it instantly spits outan amazing e-commerce experience
with 7,000 products.
If people check out through thesite, it hits our backend, we
handle all of the work and wegive the seller a large
commission on every order.
So it really allows people toscale up and build a really
amazing business for themselves.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, I think the key here is the number of products
that you can print on.
I think there's a lot.
I mean, if you're a dentist, Imean I'm looking at toothbrushes
right here I mean there's allkinds of promotional things, but
I mean there's stuff that'smore than just promotional on
here.
I mean you're, you canessentially like, use this and
build a, build your own brandout of this in a way.
I mean there's blankets,there's candles, there's all
(07:40):
kinds of stuff on here that youcould like you could start a
company totally and we have withswag space.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
We have, um, we had a person who, about three months
ago when I was in beta, we justlaunched swag space about 25
days ago, but the last quarterof last year I was doing some
tests and trying to refine theuser experience we had somebody
who's never sold swag in theirlife.
He wasn't in the promotionaladjacency space.
He was never like an eventplanner who could sell swag to
their audience, or a designer.
(08:07):
He had no experience and he hadno connections.
He started, he built the sitefor free in seconds and he
started knocking on charitiesdoors and reaching out to like
local high schools and differentthings and he's done over a
hundred thousand dollars ofsales in like three months.
He started the business fromnothing and now he has a
business and he's making a largepercentage commission and
(08:27):
honestly I think he'll probablydo a million dollars this year
in sales.
I believe that and he'll makeover $300,000 for himself.
So before he had to get everpaid $300,000, you have to have
a really, you have to have a lotof experience, you have to get
an amazing job, you have tospend a lot of work building a
really amazing business here.
You can literally start it forfree and just start selling,
(08:49):
because every singleorganization charity, et cetera
company buy swag.
So as long as you're good atsales, this is a great space for
you to be in.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Oh yeah, 100%.
I mean, it's just, you know, Iwas at a high school today.
I was talking to these kidsabout things that they could do.
And these are high school kidsI'm talking to right and I'm
telling them like hey, there'sexisting businesses out there.
You can go on broker websites.
You could buy cash flowingbusinesses.
You know, apprentice undersomebody, learn how to be a
plumber, an electrician,something like that.
There's so many of thosebusinesses out there that are
(09:27):
cash flowing that you could usean SBA loan to acquire right.
You could do that.
Or you could do something assimple as this while you're
still in school.
As long as you've got salesskills and you've got a little,
like you said, a little grit, alittle ability to go out there,
you're not afraid to talk topeople.
I mean, this is a self-madebusiness for a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Exactly, right.
And there's no upfront costswhatsoever, not even just cost
for the platform itself.
There's no cost for likewarehousing products.
Very simple Imagine you're acollege kid that wants to make
an extra $10,000 in the year.
Right, that could belife-changing for a lot of
people.
To pay off college debt, totake themselves out for a
vacation, to go on dates,whatever they want.
All they have to do is go topeople who want to buy swag,
(10:04):
that's, their local chapters,fraternities, sororities, I mean
just literally.
There's millions of potentialclients out there, tens of
millions of potential clientsout there.
They go out there and they makea sale.
Now, what does that person buy?
That person can buy t-shirts,hats, notebooks, candles,
whatever they want.
We have 7,000 products on oursite.
But they upload their logo.
(10:25):
So let's say they go to a localcoffee shop and the coffee shop
says yes, I want to buy somehats.
The coffee shop finds the haton this college student site.
It's fully branded, fully whitelabeled.
They upload the coffee shoplogo, they mock things up, the
pricing is done in real time.
The coffee shop pays $3,000 forthose hats and t-shirts, et
cetera.
It hits swag spacesspace'sbackend.
We do all of the productionright.
We give 30% of that order tothe college kid.
(10:49):
So if they sell $3,000 worth ofstuff, that college kid just
made $900.
Didn't have to touch theproducts, didn't have to front
the money, didn't have towarehouse anything.
They can start focusing ontheir next sale.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Essentially just linked someone over to a website
that looked like their websiteand really that's it, and let
the client do the work andthere's more.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
They're more like just a finder's fee.
Yeah, so for the sales people,I guess repeat business for
something like this would bevery important.
How frequently do you I mean Iguess that's a good question,
I'd be I bet I get let me phraseit so it doesn't sound like I'm
stuttering how often do you seeyou guys get these big accounts
with repeat customers?
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Oh, I mean I, we're so new to this new thing.
But I'll tell you from theperspective of swagcom, we have
customers who check out anaverage about three to four
times a year and the averageorder size for a client is
$4,000.
So if you could kind of playthat out, it's 12, $16,000 a
year for for a good client.
Some of our clients arespending millions of dollars,
(11:49):
and then so Icom I mean you canget really big clients.
You spend a ton.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
So they just go straight through, they go, they
go through the portal orwhatever that the salesperson
gave it, and so it's notsomething like he has to send a
link every time, like I'mthinking, I'm thinking what I
recommend clothing.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, I guess this is what I recommend.
You know the odds that somebody, a college kid, has a website
and shares a link to Joe'scoffee and says, hey, joe,
figure it out yourself.
It's probably not likelybecause Joe's not.
He doesn't want to be pawnedoff to a site.
So what we recommend and whatwe did at swagcom, that's worked
.
We built tools where, let's say, jennifer the college student
can go builda cart for Joe'sCoffee.
(12:26):
So she's talking to Joe, she'shaving a normal conversation
like a sales rep and Joe says,yeah, I'm looking for Moleskine
notebooks and this hat, this mug, this water bottle, etc.
Jennifer goes into her site.
She finds exactly the productsthat Joe wants.
She uploads Joe's logo.
She does all the work.
It takes 30 seconds.
It's like a really simplee-commerce experience.
There's a button that sayscreate cart.
She presses that button.
(12:46):
There's a link created.
She shares the link with Joe.
All Joe has to do is click onthat link.
Everything is already definedand priced out and perfect for
him to check out.
All he has to do is put hiscredit card information in the
checkout.
What we found is, when Jennifer,in this case, does that about
two to three times for eachcustomer, they get so confident
They'll start buying stuffwithout ever speaking to
(13:06):
Jennifer.
They'll go into their my Orderhistory and see all the order
history to easily reorder.
So we've seen the same thingwith Swagcom.
You have to kind of guide themand handhold them through the
first couple of orders, but it'skind of like allowing them to
dip their toe into doing itthemselves and eventually, like
(13:27):
with Amazon, have we have aclient, amazon.
I mean we have 45 differentbuyers within amazon buying at
swagcom.
The first couple of orders wehad to do we had to manually
create cards for amazon.
Now they never talk to us andthey just check out because it's
so easy.
That's the.
That's the.
That's the point.
You gotta kind of use yoursales ability to get the sale in
.
We make it really easy withthis build a cart feature, with
this presentation deck tool.
We've all these kind of cooltools that make it easier to
make sales.
Once the sales come in, you canalways you know upsell them and
(13:47):
they can always do itthemselves eventually.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
So there's not like a risk of having, like multiple
reps with one customer right.
Like the same coffee shoporders twice One.
I get the credit one time, youget the credit the next time.
Once that's more customers onthe website, that's my customer,
totally Okay.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Interesting customers on the website.
That's my customer, totallyokay, interesting.
So what is this?
Uh, you know, do you get a lotof people who have, since I'm a
graphic designer, I'm an adagency people send me crap logos
all the time.
Yep, white backgrounds, right.
They oh my, my artist sent methis, right.
They don't know.
They're seeing a vector in araster file.
Yep, it's not scalable.
It's like a gif from theirwebsite that they'll drag off
like how do you control for that?
What's the?
(14:28):
Is there any quality controlmechanisms in place?
Is there is there any ai tiedinto this or something that
maybe like cleans it up a littlebit before it goes on the
product, or are you just?
Do you give people like ahow-to guide or something like
that?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
yeah, we make.
We make it really simple.
So this is how it works.
Imagine Joe's Coffee, in thissituation, uploads a logo and
let's say the logo is a low res.
Our system detects that it's alow res in real time.
So they upload the logo.
It detects it's a low res.
Let's say they upload the JPEG,there's a pop-up on the site't
have one press here and continuewithout it.
(15:03):
Fine, they can continue withthe low-res file.
They can mock it up.
We don't want to stop anybodyfrom checking out.
They ultimately check out.
It hits our backend.
We're custom ink, we're ownedby custom ink, we have 2000
employees.
We have a whole team thatconverts low-res logos to
high-res logos.
What we do is, once the ordercomes in, we see it's a low-res
logo, we redesign that into ahigh-res vector art file and
then we have a virtual mock-up.
(15:24):
We send the virtual mock-up tothe college student who's now
the Swag Space member to reviewit to make sure it looks perfect
.
If it looks perfect to thecollege student presses yes,
jenny says it looks good thenautomatically gets sent to Joe's
Coffee to get approval fromthem.
Only when Joe's Coffee looks atit and approves it does it ever
notify us to go into production.
So we have a lot of differentthings built in to make the
(15:45):
process super smooth.
But in terms of convertinglow-res to high-res, we do that
in-house.
We handle it, we streamline theentire process and for you in
general, you're a designer.
If you create a logo forsomebody, they're going to take
that logo and they're going togo to a custom bank to buy their
swag.
That's what they do, or they goto somebody else.
Why don't you make the moneyoff of it?
Wouldn't it be great if youcould just say hey, by the way,
(16:05):
we just created this logo.
Here's a couple of products wedesigned specifically for you
that we think will look good foryou, be within your brand
guidelines, etc.
And they could check out.
They check out.
It hits our backend.
You don't have to deal with anyof it and now you have a whole
new revenue stream without doinganything.
Yeah, this is a no brainer fordesigners.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
I mean, when I do a logo for somebody, anyway, I've
got an Envato product I use,called place it, so I'll just
upload.
The logo is a high, you know,higher res kind of PNG.
It is like, you know, 1400 by1400 or something.
I'll drop it on there and itcan, it automatically places.
It does all the wrinkles andeverything on every.
You know they've got somemapping tool or whatever and I
(16:43):
don't have to do any image oftheir logo.
I'll send it on products, right, I'll send it.
On ads, I'll send it.
Depends on who it is.
Like.
It could be, uh, it could bePPE masks, right, it could be,
uh, you know, workout outfits,if it's a athletic brand or
whatever it is.
They've got pretty muchanything that you can mock it up
(17:04):
on, right, which actually wouldbe a probably an interesting
acquisition for custom ink or ifyou guys had something like
that, that.
But it's really cool because asa designer, I can send that out
.
And then people are like, wow,I really like this on the shirt
and I'm like, oh well, we canmake you shirts, I mean, for an
agency or for a designer orsomebody like that.
This makes total sense becauseI find myself recreating
(17:25):
people's logos all the time andthere's things you can upload
logos to.
Now that'll take them fromraster to vector and then then
you can go in and kind of adjustthem afterwards.
You don't have to like recreatethe whole thing and it's.
I'm assuming that's somethinglike you guys are using as well,
but for someone in my businessthat makes sense.
We had a lady on the show awhile ago who's been doing
(17:46):
custom products.
She was from New York or NewJersey, remember her, and she
does custom products.
She did custom products foryears and she's using a
different type of service orwhatever.
She was funny, she was reallyfunny.
Yeah, but this to me I'm goingthrough your products and
everything.
I mean these products.
I mean they're, these aren'tthe typical things I normally
(18:06):
see.
I mean these are like reallynice, there's some really nice
stuff on here and it's it's notyour everyday stuff either.
I'm like I'm seeing things I'venever seen on a site like this
before.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Did that come with custom makes, uh, purchasing of
swagcom, or was that?
Um, no, that was, that wasswagcom for the focus.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
When I was starting this business, it was very clear
I wanted to make sure we offerproducts that people actually
want to keep Like.
The worst thing you could do isif you're Facebook and you buy
swag and it's a bit of trash,it's costing the company money,
it's not good for theenvironment, it's tarnishing
your brand, but swag is such apowerful impact if it's actually
done right.
So that was our whole thing.
Let's just focus on the qualitystuff.
If we're going to test out 1000mugs, we only want to offer the
(18:47):
top 20.
We don't want to have to be, wewant to be a place where people
get lost by too many optionsand 99% of it's bad.
Everything on our site has beenhand selected by us, has been
tested by us, has been comparedto others in the light
categories, like us.
And then we have, you know,obviously a lot of cool brand
names that are not traditionallyfound in the industry.
Right, we like no more Londonbackpacks and we've sell all
(19:08):
birds, sneakers and we have allthese kinds of cool things that
are just super different thanwhat the industry is offering.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah, I really like it.
I mean there's JBL speakers inhere and a bunch of other things
.
Yeah, it's because, like when Ithink of swag, I think of cheap
, like koozies and things likethat.
Like that's what I'm thinkingof.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Am I going to get cancer from touching this, that
type of stuff?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
It's just crazy like garbage stuff, right that you
like garbage stuff, right, youtake to a trade show and you
don't care about cause it's.
You know 10 cents an item andyou know this is stuff like you
actually keep in is.
So what were some of thechallenges?
I mean, you started this.
I mean, did you just start thisfrom scratch?
I mean, did you have a?
Are you?
You sound like you know SEO,which is helpful.
Did you learn SEO while doingthis?
(19:47):
Did you have a technicalco-founder?
Did you like this?
Did you have a technicalco-founder?
Speaker 3 (19:51):
How did you get this thing kicked off?
It's a good question.
In 2016, I noticed I used to bein the industry very briefly
when I was 22 years old, in thepromo space somewhat, I guess,
somewhat adjacency.
I work for a company called MVSport and they're a very large
company in the collegiateapparel.
So college apparel and promo issimilar.
They use similar suppliers,they go to similar trade shows
(20:13):
and I remember I just kind offell in love with the industry
when I was like 22 years old andI used to go to different trade
shows and then I left theindustry by 24 or so and I just
People.
When you're young, you changejobs and you do different things
.
In my mid-20s I started abusiness with my brother and we
did it One of the first, I think, product placement companies.
So imagine right now, everybodyon Instagram makes a lot of
(20:35):
money by having brands in theirvideos and YouTube stars make a
lot of money by havingadvertising in the YouTube
videos.
Right Back in the day, this is13, 14 years ago, youtube stars
were living in their parents'basement and making no money,
but getting more eyeballs inAmerican Idol, right.
So what we did was we partneredup with like State Farm,
colgate, verizon and got thesebrands into YouTube stars video
(20:56):
and just made them millionaires,frankly.
And that's what we started todo.
And then it kind of expandedfrom there.
We said why are we stoppingwith YouTube and product
placement?
Why don't we partner up withmajor celebrities and own their
Twitter and Facebook feeds?
Right, I mean Twitter.
At this point, just to put inperspective, when we reached out
to some of these celebrities onTwitter, they had like 3000
followers.
That same celebrity has like 70million followers now.
(21:16):
So we were very, very early andour idea was why don't we buy
the rights to these celebritiesprofiles where they couldn't do
any product deals or any kind ofmarketing deals without us,
like we would be their de factoagency, if you will?
And we signed on a lot ofdifferent celebrities and
ultimately, within a year period, we sold that company to a
(21:36):
publicly traded company.
So I was 25 years old.
I sold that to a publiclytraded company because we
noticed that there was a shift.
It was like we were buying oilbefore.
People knew how valuable it wasand we knew that this was going
to be the next thing.
I mean if Twitter or Facebook,I mean we own major celebrities.
Everyone's heard of socialpresences for like a three-year
period, so we knew we hadsomething really valuable.
I then did a startup that failed.
(21:57):
I spent three years on it.
It was a social networking appand then when I wanted to start
swag ultimately I was 30 yearsold and I loved the promo
industry for my earlier days ofworking at MV Sport and the
college apparel side, but Irealized it was kind of a big
aha moment to me when I was 30.
And I was trying to think ofthe business I wanted to start.
The buyer was changing.
That was it.
(22:17):
I saw the industry growing.
I was following all theindustry magazines because of my
experience 10 years prior, 8years prior.
But the buyer was shifting.
The buyer was becoming youngerand younger and when I realized
(22:37):
that, I realized well how manythings of a business need to
change if the buyer is different.
If the buyer eight years agowas a 40, 50-year-old office
manager, they're probably buyingit one way.
They're buying it throughcatalogs.
They're buying it through backand forth emails.
They're buying it through avery fragmented way of selling.
The buyer today is a millennial.
They're 23 years old.
It's maybe their first job outof college.
They're 23 years old.
It's maybe their first job outof college.
They're given a budget fromFacebook to buy swag for the
office, and now they have a lotof pressure to buy $10,000 worth
of swag.
What's their main motivation?
Their main motivation is not tolook bad.
(22:59):
They don't want to buy crapthat ends up in the trash.
So everything shifts when yourealize that this one aspect
that changed the buyer changed.
So I realized that and I saidwell, let me build today's
platform for the current buyer,the millennial, the Gen Z, et
cetera.
And I went all in on that buyerand started talking to so many
people trying to understand howthey buy it.
From how I remember them buyingit eight years prior, that
(23:20):
makes sense.
Yeah.
And I learned a lot in thoseearly days and I kind of figured
out the right solution to build.
You know, initially I thoughtand I was wrong I thought I
would go after the marketingteams, yeah you just assume that
yeah.
I would assume that Marketingteams make sense.
You can have a 10-personcompany, but they can have 1,000
customers.
That means they can buy 1,000items of swag.
There's bigger budgets, there'sa bigger use case.
(23:42):
But what I realized in theearly days, knocking on doors
and I literally knocked on doorsat different startups and I
would go up and down WeWorkhallways to talk to people I
realized that everyone's goingafter the marketing team
Everyone.
What's going to differentiate meas swagcom a coming soon
website, label website, noproducts on the site, nothing
built out, just me and myco-founder, josh.
(24:02):
What's going to differentiateus from the 23,000 other people
selling swag?
Yeah, and I realized there wasa key insight I had early on.
It's that we should not begoing after the office manager,
we should go after the.
We should not be going afterthe marketing teams, we should
be going after the officemanager.
It kept leading back to theoffice manager.
Now, what's the office manager?
Most people don't even knowwhat that.
That's even a real job.
(24:22):
They control the office.
They're buying swag forinternal purposes.
If it's a 10 person company,they're the ones that are buying
the 10 t-shirts for thedifferent employees.
This is kind of like the secret, like it was the key insight.
It was like an aha momentbecause they do not have the
biggest budgets right, it'snowhere near the marketing team,
but they're the gateway intothe company, they're the Trojan
horse.
If the office manager at ahundred person company is buying
(24:43):
a hundred t-shirts, everyt-shirt is going to say swagcom
in the inner label.
That was one of our marketingstrategies in the early days
printing our logo in the innerlabel.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
So, like removing bella and canvas, removing, you
know, nike, whatever is puttingswagcom as the inner label,
because that will like be a waythat you know obviously swag is
meant to I was gonna ask aboutthat, like how do you
self-promote even though, like,if people are holding on to this
gear, how do you self-promoteif at&t's logo is on there, or
if Verizon's logo, or if P&G'slogo?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Yeah, so we found that we put in the inner logo,
and our tagline at the time waswe made this.
It's kind of a cool thing.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
We made this, but also everybody sees swagcom.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
We made this.
At&t uses swagcom.
We should probably use swagcom.
And because swag is meant to begiven away, that means
everybody who's buying swag fromus ultimately will be giving it
away.
It's like a pair of jeans whereit gets cooler the more you
wear it.
They give it away.
So now we're getting all of ourcustomers marketing it for free
to all of their contacts andpresumably, if a client is
giving out swag to somebody else, that person who's receiving it
(25:44):
probably has somedecision-making ability.
And we found ourselves justgrowing because our clients were
doing the marketing for us.
So there's all these differentlearnings and things you have to
figure out.
I mean, there's not like oneanswer of like, oh, we were good
at SEO.
No, honestly, we didn't evenstart SEO till our third year.
It was probably one of thebiggest mistakes I made is that
I only started in the third year.
I didn't really know about SEO,frankly, when I started it.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
I was doing more so you weren't tagging.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
No, not really, we were just putting them up there,
yeah, putting it up there,knocking on doors, making sales,
maybe doing a little bit ofGoogle ads to drive more
awareness.
Google ads are way tooexpensive but we learned based
on those customers.
Then we started SEO, then westarted partnerships, then we
did.
I mean, now our company, youknow, is doing a lot of money
per year and I mean we're doinga lot.
(26:28):
It's a real business at thispoint and things are going
really streamlined and we have10 different traction channels
that are driving traffic.
And so I would just say forentrepreneurs listening, you
don't have to have all theanswers.
A lot of times you don't haveany of the answers.
You just got to start.
You got to learn on the way.
Listen to your customer, figureout the right thing.
(26:49):
I'll tell you one quick storyBefore I started Swagcom, and
the reason how I think it wassuch a success from the start is
because I had the mentality oflearning from customers from the
early days.
My previous startup that failedthat social networking app I
mentioned earlier.
I was the head of product, so Iwas like head of design.
I lost sleep every single nightthinking about every little
(27:09):
detail about this thing whathappens when you swipe right or
left or what, what should thiscolor of the button be, what
should this do and all.
And then we launched a yearlater and I realized all the
things that I lost sleep overand cared about no one else
cared about.
The customers didn't give ashit about that, Like there was
other things that they reallywanted that I wish I just got
out of my own way and launchsomething.
(27:30):
Anything You're trying to makeit perfect.
Yeah, yeah.
I try to make it perfect.
And I was making the wrong, Iwas building the wrong thing, I
was building the thing that Ithought was the right thing.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
You jumped ahead in your MVP kind of thing Like you
weren't.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
you weren't just building, and that's what they
always say.
Perfect became the enemy ofgood.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yeah, you got to again ask your customer iterate.
That's one of the things youlearn that we didn't know.
Like, I didn't know that eitherwhen we were doing our startup.
Right, I no clue, but you saidsomething.
You just kind of got to jump inthere and you learn right,
especially when you're doingsomething innovative and
different, because you don'tknow, there is no benchmark,
there's nothing else you canlook at.
(28:07):
You know, maybe you didn't goto business school.
I didn't.
At the time I hadn't gone to.
You know, I didn't get a MBA orany of that kind of stuff.
So I mean, me and myco-founders just kind of had to
learn.
And then one of our co-founderswas just an animal and he he
kind of took it, ran with it,did a lot of the work, getting
our investors, finding, you know, customers early on, going to
(28:31):
trade shows, all that kind ofstuff, just to get the name out
there.
And eventually one thing leadsto another when you just never
know when that meeting is goingto hit that changes the
direction of your company.
It could be one client thatjust changes it all.
Like we had Keller Williamsright, which at the time they
had 80,000 agents.
They signed up.
(28:52):
That gave us instantcredibility.
We didn't have a group that big, and then 85% of the work they
did was with other brokerages,so they became our salespeople
and when you said something yousaid, they did our sales for us.
Right, that's what you need.
You need to hit that networkeffect where your customers then
become your salespeople.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Totally, and I would even say, even take us even a
step further.
I had a moment in 2017, we werein Techstars, just like an
incubator program kind of like aY Combinator Texas.
Chicago and I was at thisprogram.
I was there for three monthsand I mean it's fine, we learned
.
We learned some things, we metsome people, all good.
There's the last couple ofweeks they connect you with
(29:33):
other entrepreneurs, localentrepreneurs to kind of meet
and network, et cetera.
So one of these entrepreneurswas the CEO of a company called
Jelly Vision in Chicago and Imet with Jelly Vision, a fairly
big company, 200 plus employees,I believe.
I'm trying to remember it'sbeen a while, but we went to the
office and it's a really cooloffice and the CEO said hey, I
want you to connect to my officemanager Because at that point
(29:54):
we knew the office manager wasthe buyer.
We were already doing sales.
So she's like meet with theoffice manager and learn as much
as you can, ask some questionsWhenever you want you have them
for the day to learn.
And I went to their office andI saw the office manager with
five, five of our coworkers allon the floor unboxing swag that
they bought from differentlocations, repackaging it up in
(30:15):
boxes, writing handwritten notecards, and I said what are you
guys doing?
They said, well, we're doingthis thing called account-based
marketing, which is basicallythe ability to send swag in the
mail to individual, different orbest customers to say thank you
for something or to engage withthem, and it's been really
helpful for our business and Ileft that one meeting in 2017
being like this is the future.
I don't know when we're goingto be able to build this, but
right now our site can handleswag bulk orders.
(30:37):
People could buy 1,000 t-shirtsand it sends it to their office
or to their trade show booth.
But wouldn't it be cool if theycould click a button and we'll
hold the swag in our inventoryand then give them the tools to
individually distribute thatswag to remote employees?
They tools to individuallydistribute that swag to remote
employees.
They could upload a CSV file ofdifferent ship to addresses.
Our system will detect theshipping costs.
They pay for the shipping andnow we're boxing things up
together for them and shippingit globally, all over the world.
(30:59):
That was kind of the idea and Istarted building that.
I got back to New York 2018.
I started building this feature, integrating with the three PLs
.
I wasn't so efficient at it,but we ultimately got it to a
place where we were launching itin January of 2020.
Now, obviously, everyone knowswhat happened in 2020.
The world shut down.
We launched in January of 2020as this account-based marketing
(31:21):
platform meaning all of ourhomepage, our branding, our
website, everything was designedto help marketing teams do
account-based marketing.
Now, when the world shut downin March of 2020, covid hits.
There are no events.
There are no events.
There are no trade shows.
No one needs our service at all.
Right, right, but here's thething.
There was a disconnection.
Everyone who bought swag forthe office, no one's in the
(31:42):
office.
So how do you keep companycultures thriving even when no
one's in the office?
You send them swag at theirhome addresses.
So we repurposed all thattechnology, all the sites, all
the advertising, everything, theSEO, the content marketing, our
ads everything was changed tohow to keep company culture
thriving even when no one's inthe office.
And our business, the industry,went down 20, 40% in a year of
(32:03):
COVID.
Right, it makes sense.
Everything is shut down.
Our business scale from 7million to 15 million.
Wow, we were able to capitalizeNext year, 30 million.
How do we do that?
So, as you said, you never knowwhere you're going to go.
When I started swagcom in 2016,I never thought of account-based
marketing.
I never heard that term.
I didn't know individualdistribution, I didn't know
COVID was going to hit.
You kind of have to putyourself out there and meet with
(32:24):
people and no one said, hey,jeremy, do this.
I was in the room, I saw thingshappening and I realized maybe
this is our future, this iswhere we could go, this is what
we could do.
It became a nice to havefeature or something that maybe
some companies needed ourdistribution platform to frankly
need to have Everyone'sdisconnected, and we were the
only platform that built it.
So we had this amazing solutionthat no one else had and that
just comes from.
(32:45):
I don't know what you call itIs, is it?
There's a lot of things that gointo it, but I would say, just
get, get out of your own way.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Reach out to people, talk to people, learn, change,
pivot, and as long as you keepdoing that constantly, you're
going to keep learning andgetting better with it I'd like
to say that beside I meanoutside of your company the, the
energy that you speak with andthe passion you speak with
reminds me of um a few of thevery, very, very successful
entrepreneurs that I know.
Seems like you've got that itfactor to lead an organization
(33:16):
to you know, beyond all plateausand to where you want it to go,
where you ultimately see itgoing.
How, how, how is your officestructured?
Do you, do you guys, work froma centralized location?
Is everything decentralizedoffice structure?
Do you guys work from acentralized?
Speaker 3 (33:33):
location Is everything decentralized?
How's that set up?
Yeah, so with swagcom we wereall working in an office in New
York City.
Covid hit and we never wentback.
We have everyone's remote, thewhole company's remote.
It's not an ideal situation butwe were very lucky that our
business could still grow andthrive even in a remote
environment.
We didn't need to be in aphysical place.
You know, some people go in andout of the office here and
(33:54):
there if they want to see peopleor if they want to, you know,
change the scenery from workingat home.
But, um, so we have likedifferent hubs in New York city.
We have an office in Fairfax,virginia, for custom ink that's
where their hub is and then wehave an office people could go,
but most people just work fromtheir computers and do it.
And you know, for us, becausewe're disconnected, we like to
(34:16):
not have a lot of meetings.
I hate sitting on meetings.
That waste time.
But we schedule a lot of like10 to 15 minute catch up
sessions, so it's like somethingwhere you could see somebody
talk to them, connect with them,without having to kind of waste
everyone's time, because I findat least most meetings are run
fairly poorly.
Um, and 90% of the room is justsitting there waiting for other
people to do stuff.
It's like I don't really need tobe here.
Why am I even here?
And then you feel bad of doingother things while you're on the
(34:39):
meetings.
You have to focus and you'rekind of wasting it.
Everything is wasted.
So we just cut that out and wedo like quick 10-minute,
15-minute meetings.
If we book a 30 minute meetingand it gets to the minute 10 and
we realize there's nothing elseto speak about, all right, guys
, we'll see.
See you next time.
Like we don't, we don't justhave to fill up space because
you know people feel the need tobe on the call.
Like you get on the call, youget on a meeting, we say, hey,
(35:00):
if you don't think you need tobe here, just leave.
Right, there's no.
Like you don't have to stayaround and try political
corporate game.
Yeah, that's not.
It's not our environment yeah,that's, that's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
I mean, it doesn't seem like you're the kind of guy
that would be in theenvironment for a year more.
The way you speak, how quicklyyou speak, it seems like you're
more of a let's get shit donetype mentality, as opposed to
tell me how you're gonna get theshit done.
Yeah, right tell me how you'replanning to make this happen.
It's more along the lines of Itrust you.
You guys are here, let let'sget it finished, yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I, I, um, yeah, I, I feel thatway, I a hundred percent.
I also feel like I don't knowall the right answers.
So I I like, when my team comesup with ideas, there's no
stupid idea.
Every idea that anyone comes upwith, as I said before, you
never know where it's going tolead.
It could spark something else,it could spark somebody else to
(35:56):
come up with something reallycool.
So that's just kind of thementality we always have, from
even swagcom days to now swagspace days.
It's an open door policy andthere's no bad ideas and let's
just kind of come up with theright, right solution.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
I love it, man.
Well, this is great.
I love, I love the energyyou've got.
I love the entrepreneurialattitude.
It sounds like you dideverything right and you
continue.
I mean, you obviously have aton of value to add, otherwise
Custom Ink wouldn't keep you onand have you run a brand new
division, this swag space stuffyou guys are doing now, and I'm
(36:21):
definitely going to check it out.
I'm going to recommend it topeople.
I was just at a high schoolearlier today, the one I went to
.
It's an art school, and thekids were asking, like you know,
I was telling about mybackground and everything and
they're asking, like, well, whatcan we do?
And I'm telling them you knowreal estate and this and that.
But this would be a great thingfor kids.
I mean, if you're a high schoolkid or whatever, go knock on
some doors.
Man, you want to make somemoney, and this is an inner city
(36:45):
school, this is downtown in thecountry, but these are the type
of things that people can signup for and take advantage of.
That weren't available to mewhen I was in high school, but
this would be a great one foryoung people to start.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Yeah, totally.
By the way, when I was startingswagcom if Swagspace existed, I
may never would have startedswagcom.
Honestly, we did all the work.
You know.
It's legitimately nearly $20million of tech work.
We reinvested all the profitsevery year into this business.
Yeah, you did so.
All the technology thateveryone gets is the swagcom
platform I love it, by the wayand every new feature that
(37:18):
swagcom builds will also beavailable to the swag space
members.
So it's we're going to.
This is just the beginning,where we have so many amazing
ideas of how to make this evenbetter and better and keep
building things and to make thiseven better and better and keep
building things and and justmaking it a really great
experience.
But anyone instantaneouslycould have a business Anyone's
thinking about.
I want to be an entrepreneur,start a business overnight, for
free.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I would think that the coolest thing you could do
if you were thinking about doingthis would be to get an actual
like database of some sort thatcodes.
You know all industries havetheir own codes so that you know
, like every industry has a LasVegas exhibit, I mean convention
, everyone will have, like, aLos Angeles convention.
They'll have a Miami orconvention in the Chicago
(37:58):
convention.
So you know which conventionsare coming up in the companies
that are in your area and youcan contact them and say, hey, I
know this is coming up.
You're going to need, you know,potentially you're going to
need this, this, this and thisto give away to people as
marketing.
Oh yeah, how about you take alook at a site that I can
provide you and let me know ifthere was something?
Speaker 1 (38:19):
that I could help you prove Yep.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I mean this totally makes sense, but having the
codes, having the business codesand just lining them up like
that, yeah Because.
And just lining them up likethat, yeah Because you have like
concrete guys.
You could have people thatbuild that, create conduit, like
all these little obscurecompanies that run with like 40
to 50 guys that nobody knowsabout yeah, these manufacturing.
Instead, it was like here inCincinnati, oh, I'll go to
(38:42):
Kroger, no, you won't.
I'll go to Procter Gamble no,you won't.
No, no, they're going to kickyou right out the door.
That's right.
But if you go to bob's bob's uhgypsum company or go down
silver grove, and where they'rerunning all this drywall.
You know they go to conventions.
They need this stuff like that.
Those are the guys that if youwere looking to get into it, I
(39:03):
would think that'd be the firstthing you'd want to do is get
that, that, that rolodex, thatyeah, don't go to an apparel
conference.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Don't go to a custom products or a products
conference.
Go to a conference for aspecific industry where a guy
might not be there selling thesethings.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
And you've got the whole supply chain.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
He's giving you the whole supply chain Like
everything's figured out.
You just Everything, you signup yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
Front end, back end, inventory, logistics, shipping,
everything, State taxes.
I mean.
Just imagine you go to thelocal coffee shop.
Joe's Coffee spends $3,000.
Swag Space is collecting thefull amount.
We're collecting the sales tax,we're remitting the sales tax.
So now the local entrepreneursdon't have to worry about any of
that stuff.
They don't know any of thatstuff Hits our back end.
(39:47):
We handle the mockups, wehandle converting the low-risk
files to the high-risk files.
We handle the production.
If Joe wanted to do customboxes of five different products
kitted together, we're the oneskitting it together.
If Joe wanted to hold inventoryand do individual distributions
to his best clients, hisinvestors, whoever it is, we're
doing all that.
All the sales rep is gettingthe products in front of Joe and
maybe in the early days,building the cart for Joe, which
(40:10):
, as if you ever went to anye-commerce site swagcom it takes
literally less than threeminutes to build a cart for
somebody.
Build a cart, press a button,have the link, share the link,
let the person do it themselves.
I love it, man.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
I love it, so tell people how they get on here.
What is there a?
Speaker 3 (40:33):
is it custominkcom slash something, or did they go?
No, no, no, no, you can go to aswag dot space.
So the url is swag dot space.
It's not dot com, just swag dotspace.
There is a apply button on thetop right.
We're having applications, umto.
You know, we want to look itover and you know what.
We're happy to approve somepeople.
Once they get approved, weonboard them, we train them up
and they're ready to go man, Ilove this guy with the domain
names.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
I mean this is the second.
I mean custom makes behind younow, but that's a great domain
name to swag dot space.
Yeah, perfect, man.
Well, jeremy, I reallyappreciate your time today.
I thank you for coming on,something I'm going to check out
.
I'll recommend it to some otherpeople.
But this is great.
Guys, check it out Swag dotspace.
(41:12):
Guys, check it out swagspace.
Thanks, jeremy.
Thank you, guys so much.
Have a good day.
Thank you, thanks for joiningus on this week's episode of
side hustle city.
Well, you've heard from ourguests.
Now let's hear from you.
Join our community on facebookside hustle city.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
(41:34):
Thank you.
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, myco-host.
Let's get started, all right.
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
(00:25):
Kyle Stevie in my co-host.
Let's get started, all right.
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Kyle Stevie in the building tomy right once again.
Yeah, made it in man, norequirements of kids or anything
.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
He came in here complaining Dude, if you're an
entrepreneur and you don't havechildren yet and you're 30, if
you're an entrepreneur and youdon't have children yet and
you're 30, don't fucking havechildren.
There he goes.
You'll save all your money,you'll save all your headache
and you'll probably look a lotyounger when you're 43, like me.
These are Kyle's problems rightnow, every day is like
(00:58):
something new.
It's like you guys weresupposed to be past this.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, well, you get to deal with it, and we've got
Jeremy Parker today on thepodcast.
Thanks for joining us, jeremy.
Thank you for having me.
Great to be here, jeremy.
You got kids or anything?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
I do.
I have two.
I have a three and a half yearold daughter and a 60 month old
son.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Okay, when did the problem start?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Kyle yeah, for us it didn't start until they were
teenagers.
Okay, well, jeremy, you gotthat to look forward to all
three of them.
And we're we're fine growing up.
It's the the teenage, but thehormones are just I remember
these days.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Well, yeah, it was, it was 20 something years ago,
but I know I try and I try to dothat and I try to put myself in
their position and beunderstanding yeah, and and like
35 seconds into it, I'm likeknock it the fuck off.
Quit being pansy, suck it up,move on, figure out a solution
to your problem.
I can't stand listening to youwhine about it any longer.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Well, Kyle deals with it.
Kyle's got this stuff.
He wants to be an entrepreneur.
He's working at a company.
He's been there for a while.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
I just interviewed to be an adjunct professor today.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Oh, good for you.
He's actually got his lawdegree.
He's never.
He hasn't done anything with it, but he keeps, he keeps paying
the only thing I ever do with.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
It was the only way I qualified for this position was
because I had a JD oh I love it.
And the guy emailed me and saidDr Stevie's like fuck yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
I am Dr Stevie now.
So, jeremy, let's talkpromotional products.
Man, swagcom, swag space.
You started swagcom and I havea question about that.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
How long ago did you have to buy that domain, or how?
Speaker 1 (02:39):
long.
Yeah, that's a great domain.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah, so it's actually a very interesting
story.
We started swagcom in 2016.
Having the brand name swagcomwas very important for kind of
my thesis.
The thesis, high level, is thatpeople you can't just advertise
swag Like it's not impulsepurchasing.
So if you're like browsingFacebook and you see an ad for a
(03:03):
pair of shoes, you might justbuy that pair of shoes because
you might want it for yourself.
But if you ever see an ad forswag on Facebook, the odds that
you need to buy swag in bulk$3,000 worth of corporate
promotional products at theexact right time it's just
unlikely.
So what we found is we need toget in front of people, let's
say, in January, through ads,but ultimately they're going to
be placing their order inSeptember, november, december,
(03:24):
during holiday season, so wehave to stay top of mind to
people later on in the year.
So the whole idea was we reallyneeded this brand name to
convert offline conversations,like what they have with their
boss and their co-workers, toonline purchasing and we felt
like swagcom was the right name.
Now, I didn't have the money atthe time to buy the name.
They were asking, I think, alittle over 1.2 million.
At the point I figured it wasgoing to be expensive because
(03:46):
that's a prime name, veryexpensive.
But what we did is we weresomewhat creative about it and
we negotiated a deal.
We brought the price down.
Obviously, we negotiated theprice down, but we also worked
out a deal where we couldexclusively license the name for
a two-year period with theoption to buy, and for that
right we did a couple ofinteresting things, but
basically it allowed us to havethe domain from day one without
(04:07):
actually having to purchase it.
We were licensing it and thenultimately, we could see is this
business going anywhere?
And if it is, then we'll havethe money to.
Either we could raise moneyaround it or we, with the
profits, we could use that moneyto buy the name full out.
Or, if it doesn't work, youknow there's no skin off our
back and we didn't lose anything.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Nice, Nice.
Well, that was creative.
I mean, that's what you got todo in business all the time.
I mean you have to, especiallyif you're a young company.
You have to get creative withsome things.
You have to get creative withthe way you compensate people
who are working for you, Even uh, there's a lot of things you
have to do.
How big was yourcom up and thenyou sold it at one point?
(04:44):
Now you're with the acquiringcompany, building another
product inside of their brand.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yeah, exactly so swagcom when we got acquired I
don't know the exact number wewere a little over 100 people at
that point.
We started in 2016.
I'll do a quick rundown of thenumbers.
Initially, we did about 350,000of sales our first year.
Me and my co-founder, josh,were traveling salesmen knocking
on doors.
We had no technology platform,we just had a.
(05:10):
Oh, we should probably want touse them as well.
So that was our initialstrategy Learned as much as we
could about the industry,ultimately launched the first
(05:32):
version of our eCommerce site in2017.
We did about $1.1 million in2017, 2018, $3 million, $19
million, $7 million Then went to$15 million and went to $30
million a year, and in 2021,when we were completing a little
bit over $30 million a year,custom Ink who's like the
largest leader in our industryacquired us, and I've been
(05:54):
running as CEO for swagcomunderneath Custom Ink for the
last two years up until December, where I left that role and I'm
starting a new divisionunderneath customing called
Swagspace and high level.
Swagspace is taking all of thetechnology that we built over
the last eight years withswagcom, and swagcom makes it
easy for companies like Amazonand Google and Facebook to buy
(06:16):
promotional products.
And our idea is what if we tookall that awesome technology,
white labeled it and gave itaway for free to the 23,000
other promo distributors whowant to easily make sales?
Wouldn't it be amazing if theyhad the technology $20-plus
million worth of technology tostart selling to their clients?
And then, once they actuallymake a sale, it hits our back
(06:37):
end and we become the de factosupplier as well?
And then this technology is sopowerful that we're thinking
well, it doesn't just work forpromo distributors.
It could also work for the20,000 screen printers or the
70,000 party planners or the150,000 graphic designers or the
college kid that wants to starta business.
It's basically a business inthe box, like instantaneously.
Anybody uploads their logo,selects a brand logo, you know
(07:00):
colors, it instantly spits outan amazing e-commerce experience
with 7,000 products.
If people check out through thesite, it hits our backend, we
handle all of the work and wegive the seller a large
commission on every order.
So it really allows people toscale up and build a really
amazing business for themselves.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, I think the key here is the number of products
that you can print on.
I think there's a lot.
I mean, if you're a dentist, Imean I'm looking at toothbrushes
right here I mean there's allkinds of promotional things, but
I mean there's stuff that'smore than just promotional on
here.
I mean you're, you canessentially like, use this and
build a, build your own brandout of this in a way.
I mean there's blankets,there's candles, there's all
(07:40):
kinds of stuff on here that youcould like you could start a
company totally and we have withswag space.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
We have, um, we had a person who, about three months
ago when I was in beta, we justlaunched swag space about 25
days ago, but the last quarterof last year I was doing some
tests and trying to refine theuser experience we had somebody
who's never sold swag in theirlife.
He wasn't in the promotionaladjacency space.
He was never like an eventplanner who could sell swag to
their audience, or a designer.
(08:07):
He had no experience and he hadno connections.
He started, he built the sitefor free in seconds and he
started knocking on charitiesdoors and reaching out to like
local high schools and differentthings and he's done over a
hundred thousand dollars ofsales in like three months.
He started the business fromnothing and now he has a
business and he's making a largepercentage commission and
(08:27):
honestly I think he'll probablydo a million dollars this year
in sales.
I believe that and he'll makeover $300,000 for himself.
So before he had to get everpaid $300,000, you have to have
a really, you have to have a lotof experience, you have to get
an amazing job, you have tospend a lot of work building a
really amazing business here.
You can literally start it forfree and just start selling,
(08:49):
because every singleorganization charity, et cetera
company buy swag.
So as long as you're good atsales, this is a great space for
you to be in.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Oh yeah, 100%.
I mean, it's just, you know, Iwas at a high school today.
I was talking to these kidsabout things that they could do.
And these are high school kidsI'm talking to right and I'm
telling them like hey, there'sexisting businesses out there.
You can go on broker websites.
You could buy cash flowingbusinesses.
You know, apprentice undersomebody, learn how to be a
plumber, an electrician,something like that.
There's so many of thosebusinesses out there that are
(09:27):
cash flowing that you could usean SBA loan to acquire right.
You could do that.
Or you could do something assimple as this while you're
still in school.
As long as you've got salesskills and you've got a little,
like you said, a little grit, alittle ability to go out there,
you're not afraid to talk topeople.
I mean, this is a self-madebusiness for a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Exactly, right.
And there's no upfront costswhatsoever, not even just cost
for the platform itself.
There's no cost for likewarehousing products.
Very simple Imagine you're acollege kid that wants to make
an extra $10,000 in the year.
Right, that could belife-changing for a lot of
people.
To pay off college debt, totake themselves out for a
vacation, to go on dates,whatever they want.
All they have to do is go topeople who want to buy swag,
(10:04):
that's, their local chapters,fraternities, sororities, I mean
just literally.
There's millions of potentialclients out there, tens of
millions of potential clientsout there.
They go out there and they makea sale.
Now, what does that person buy?
That person can buy t-shirts,hats, notebooks, candles,
whatever they want.
We have 7,000 products on oursite.
But they upload their logo.
(10:25):
So let's say they go to a localcoffee shop and the coffee shop
says yes, I want to buy somehats.
The coffee shop finds the haton this college student site.
It's fully branded, fully whitelabeled.
They upload the coffee shoplogo, they mock things up, the
pricing is done in real time.
The coffee shop pays $3,000 forthose hats and t-shirts, et
cetera.
It hits swag spacesspace'sbackend.
We do all of the productionright.
We give 30% of that order tothe college kid.
(10:49):
So if they sell $3,000 worth ofstuff, that college kid just
made $900.
Didn't have to touch theproducts, didn't have to front
the money, didn't have towarehouse anything.
They can start focusing ontheir next sale.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Essentially just linked someone over to a website
that looked like their websiteand really that's it, and let
the client do the work andthere's more.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
They're more like just a finder's fee.
Yeah, so for the sales people,I guess repeat business for
something like this would bevery important.
How frequently do you I mean Iguess that's a good question,
I'd be I bet I get let me phraseit so it doesn't sound like I'm
stuttering how often do you seeyou guys get these big accounts
with repeat customers?
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Oh, I mean I, we're so new to this new thing.
But I'll tell you from theperspective of swagcom, we have
customers who check out anaverage about three to four
times a year and the averageorder size for a client is
$4,000.
So if you could kind of playthat out, it's 12, $16,000 a
year for for a good client.
Some of our clients arespending millions of dollars,
(11:49):
and then so Icom I mean you canget really big clients.
You spend a ton.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
So they just go straight through, they go, they
go through the portal orwhatever that the salesperson
gave it, and so it's notsomething like he has to send a
link every time, like I'mthinking, I'm thinking what I
recommend clothing.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, I guess this is what I recommend.
You know the odds that somebody, a college kid, has a website
and shares a link to Joe'scoffee and says, hey, joe,
figure it out yourself.
It's probably not likelybecause Joe's not.
He doesn't want to be pawnedoff to a site.
So what we recommend and whatwe did at swagcom, that's worked
.
We built tools where, let's say, jennifer the college student
can go builda cart for Joe'sCoffee.
(12:26):
So she's talking to Joe, she'shaving a normal conversation
like a sales rep and Joe says,yeah, I'm looking for Moleskine
notebooks and this hat, this mug, this water bottle, etc.
Jennifer goes into her site.
She finds exactly the productsthat Joe wants.
She uploads Joe's logo.
She does all the work.
It takes 30 seconds.
It's like a really simplee-commerce experience.
There's a button that sayscreate cart.
She presses that button.
(12:46):
There's a link created.
She shares the link with Joe.
All Joe has to do is click onthat link.
Everything is already definedand priced out and perfect for
him to check out.
All he has to do is put hiscredit card information in the
checkout.
What we found is, when Jennifer,in this case, does that about
two to three times for eachcustomer, they get so confident
They'll start buying stuffwithout ever speaking to
(13:06):
Jennifer.
They'll go into their my Orderhistory and see all the order
history to easily reorder.
So we've seen the same thingwith Swagcom.
You have to kind of guide themand handhold them through the
first couple of orders, but it'skind of like allowing them to
dip their toe into doing itthemselves and eventually, like
(13:27):
with Amazon, have we have aclient, amazon.
I mean we have 45 differentbuyers within amazon buying at
swagcom.
The first couple of orders wehad to do we had to manually
create cards for amazon.
Now they never talk to us andthey just check out because it's
so easy.
That's the.
That's the.
That's the point.
You gotta kind of use yoursales ability to get the sale in
.
We make it really easy withthis build a cart feature, with
this presentation deck tool.
We've all these kind of cooltools that make it easier to
make sales.
Once the sales come in, you canalways you know upsell them and
(13:47):
they can always do itthemselves eventually.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
So there's not like a risk of having, like multiple
reps with one customer right.
Like the same coffee shoporders twice One.
I get the credit one time, youget the credit the next time.
Once that's more customers onthe website, that's my customer,
totally Okay.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Interesting customers on the website.
That's my customer, totallyokay, interesting.
So what is this?
Uh, you know, do you get a lotof people who have, since I'm a
graphic designer, I'm an adagency people send me crap logos
all the time.
Yep, white backgrounds, right.
They oh my, my artist sent methis, right.
They don't know.
They're seeing a vector in araster file.
Yep, it's not scalable.
It's like a gif from theirwebsite that they'll drag off
like how do you control for that?
What's the?
(14:28):
Is there any quality controlmechanisms in place?
Is there is there any ai tiedinto this or something that
maybe like cleans it up a littlebit before it goes on the
product, or are you just?
Do you give people like ahow-to guide or something like
that?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
yeah, we make.
We make it really simple.
So this is how it works.
Imagine Joe's Coffee, in thissituation, uploads a logo and
let's say the logo is a low res.
Our system detects that it's alow res in real time.
So they upload the logo.
It detects it's a low res.
Let's say they upload the JPEG,there's a pop-up on the site't
have one press here and continuewithout it.
(15:03):
Fine, they can continue withthe low-res file.
They can mock it up.
We don't want to stop anybodyfrom checking out.
They ultimately check out.
It hits our backend.
We're custom ink, we're ownedby custom ink, we have 2000
employees.
We have a whole team thatconverts low-res logos to
high-res logos.
What we do is, once the ordercomes in, we see it's a low-res
logo, we redesign that into ahigh-res vector art file and
then we have a virtual mock-up.
(15:24):
We send the virtual mock-up tothe college student who's now
the Swag Space member to reviewit to make sure it looks perfect
.
If it looks perfect to thecollege student presses yes,
jenny says it looks good thenautomatically gets sent to Joe's
Coffee to get approval fromthem.
Only when Joe's Coffee looks atit and approves it does it ever
notify us to go into production.
So we have a lot of differentthings built in to make the
(15:45):
process super smooth.
But in terms of convertinglow-res to high-res, we do that
in-house.
We handle it, we streamline theentire process and for you in
general, you're a designer.
If you create a logo forsomebody, they're going to take
that logo and they're going togo to a custom bank to buy their
swag.
That's what they do, or they goto somebody else.
Why don't you make the moneyoff of it?
Wouldn't it be great if youcould just say hey, by the way,
(16:05):
we just created this logo.
Here's a couple of products wedesigned specifically for you
that we think will look good foryou, be within your brand
guidelines, etc.
And they could check out.
They check out.
It hits our backend.
You don't have to deal with anyof it and now you have a whole
new revenue stream without doinganything.
Yeah, this is a no brainer fordesigners.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
I mean, when I do a logo for somebody, anyway, I've
got an Envato product I use,called place it, so I'll just
upload.
The logo is a high, you know,higher res kind of PNG.
It is like, you know, 1400 by1400 or something.
I'll drop it on there and itcan, it automatically places.
It does all the wrinkles andeverything on every.
You know they've got somemapping tool or whatever and I
(16:43):
don't have to do any image oftheir logo.
I'll send it on products, right, I'll send it.
On ads, I'll send it.
Depends on who it is.
Like.
It could be, uh, it could bePPE masks, right, it could be,
uh, you know, workout outfits,if it's a athletic brand or
whatever it is.
They've got pretty muchanything that you can mock it up
(17:04):
on, right, which actually wouldbe a probably an interesting
acquisition for custom ink or ifyou guys had something like
that, that.
But it's really cool because asa designer, I can send that out
.
And then people are like, wow,I really like this on the shirt
and I'm like, oh well, we canmake you shirts, I mean, for an
agency or for a designer orsomebody like that.
This makes total sense becauseI find myself recreating
(17:25):
people's logos all the time andthere's things you can upload
logos to.
Now that'll take them fromraster to vector and then then
you can go in and kind of adjustthem afterwards.
You don't have to like recreatethe whole thing and it's.
I'm assuming that's somethinglike you guys are using as well,
but for someone in my businessthat makes sense.
We had a lady on the show awhile ago who's been doing
(17:46):
custom products.
She was from New York or NewJersey, remember her, and she
does custom products.
She did custom products foryears and she's using a
different type of service orwhatever.
She was funny, she was reallyfunny.
Yeah, but this to me I'm goingthrough your products and
everything.
I mean these products.
I mean they're, these aren'tthe typical things I normally
(18:06):
see.
I mean these are like reallynice, there's some really nice
stuff on here and it's it's notyour everyday stuff either.
I'm like I'm seeing things I'venever seen on a site like this
before.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Did that come with custom makes, uh, purchasing of
swagcom, or was that?
Um, no, that was, that wasswagcom for the focus.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
When I was starting this business, it was very clear
I wanted to make sure we offerproducts that people actually
want to keep Like.
The worst thing you could do isif you're Facebook and you buy
swag and it's a bit of trash,it's costing the company money,
it's not good for theenvironment, it's tarnishing
your brand, but swag is such apowerful impact if it's actually
done right.
So that was our whole thing.
Let's just focus on the qualitystuff.
If we're going to test out 1000mugs, we only want to offer the
(18:47):
top 20.
We don't want to have to be, wewant to be a place where people
get lost by too many optionsand 99% of it's bad.
Everything on our site has beenhand selected by us, has been
tested by us, has been comparedto others in the light
categories, like us.
And then we have, you know,obviously a lot of cool brand
names that are not traditionallyfound in the industry.
Right, we like no more Londonbackpacks and we've sell all
(19:08):
birds, sneakers and we have allthese kinds of cool things that
are just super different thanwhat the industry is offering.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah, I really like it.
I mean there's JBL speakers inhere and a bunch of other things
.
Yeah, it's because, like when Ithink of swag, I think of cheap
, like koozies and things likethat.
Like that's what I'm thinkingof.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Am I going to get cancer from touching this, that
type of stuff?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
It's just crazy like garbage stuff, right that you
like garbage stuff, right, youtake to a trade show and you
don't care about cause it's.
You know 10 cents an item andyou know this is stuff like you
actually keep in is.
So what were some of thechallenges?
I mean, you started this.
I mean, did you just start thisfrom scratch?
I mean, did you have a?
Are you?
You sound like you know SEO,which is helpful.
Did you learn SEO while doingthis?
(19:47):
Did you have a technicalco-founder?
Did you like this?
Did you have a technicalco-founder?
Speaker 3 (19:51):
How did you get this thing kicked off?
It's a good question.
In 2016, I noticed I used to bein the industry very briefly
when I was 22 years old, in thepromo space somewhat, I guess,
somewhat adjacency.
I work for a company called MVSport and they're a very large
company in the collegiateapparel.
So college apparel and promo issimilar.
They use similar suppliers,they go to similar trade shows
(20:13):
and I remember I just kind offell in love with the industry
when I was like 22 years old andI used to go to different trade
shows and then I left theindustry by 24 or so and I just
People.
When you're young, you changejobs and you do different things
.
In my mid-20s I started abusiness with my brother and we
did it One of the first, I think, product placement companies.
So imagine right now, everybodyon Instagram makes a lot of
(20:35):
money by having brands in theirvideos and YouTube stars make a
lot of money by havingadvertising in the YouTube
videos.
Right Back in the day, this is13, 14 years ago, youtube stars
were living in their parents'basement and making no money,
but getting more eyeballs inAmerican Idol, right.
So what we did was we partneredup with like State Farm,
colgate, verizon and got thesebrands into YouTube stars video
(20:56):
and just made them millionaires,frankly.
And that's what we started todo.
And then it kind of expandedfrom there.
We said why are we stoppingwith YouTube and product
placement?
Why don't we partner up withmajor celebrities and own their
Twitter and Facebook feeds?
Right, I mean Twitter.
At this point, just to put inperspective, when we reached out
to some of these celebrities onTwitter, they had like 3000
followers.
That same celebrity has like 70million followers now.
(21:16):
So we were very, very early andour idea was why don't we buy
the rights to these celebritiesprofiles where they couldn't do
any product deals or any kind ofmarketing deals without us,
like we would be their de factoagency, if you will?
And we signed on a lot ofdifferent celebrities and
ultimately, within a year period, we sold that company to a
(21:36):
publicly traded company.
So I was 25 years old.
I sold that to a publiclytraded company because we
noticed that there was a shift.
It was like we were buying oilbefore.
People knew how valuable it wasand we knew that this was going
to be the next thing.
I mean if Twitter or Facebook,I mean we own major celebrities.
Everyone's heard of socialpresences for like a three-year
period, so we knew we hadsomething really valuable.
I then did a startup that failed.
(21:57):
I spent three years on it.
It was a social networking appand then when I wanted to start
swag ultimately I was 30 yearsold and I loved the promo
industry for my earlier days ofworking at MV Sport and the
college apparel side, but Irealized it was kind of a big
aha moment to me when I was 30.
And I was trying to think ofthe business I wanted to start.
The buyer was changing.
That was it.
(22:17):
I saw the industry growing.
I was following all theindustry magazines because of my
experience 10 years prior, 8years prior.
But the buyer was shifting.
The buyer was becoming youngerand younger and when I realized
(22:37):
that, I realized well how manythings of a business need to
change if the buyer is different.
If the buyer eight years agowas a 40, 50-year-old office
manager, they're probably buyingit one way.
They're buying it throughcatalogs.
They're buying it through backand forth emails.
They're buying it through avery fragmented way of selling.
The buyer today is a millennial.
They're 23 years old.
It's maybe their first job outof college.
They're 23 years old.
It's maybe their first job outof college.
They're given a budget fromFacebook to buy swag for the
office, and now they have a lotof pressure to buy $10,000 worth
of swag.
What's their main motivation?
Their main motivation is not tolook bad.
(22:59):
They don't want to buy crapthat ends up in the trash.
So everything shifts when yourealize that this one aspect
that changed the buyer changed.
So I realized that and I saidwell, let me build today's
platform for the current buyer,the millennial, the Gen Z, et
cetera.
And I went all in on that buyerand started talking to so many
people trying to understand howthey buy it.
From how I remember them buyingit eight years prior, that
(23:20):
makes sense.
Yeah.
And I learned a lot in thoseearly days and I kind of figured
out the right solution to build.
You know, initially I thoughtand I was wrong I thought I
would go after the marketingteams, yeah you just assume that
yeah.
I would assume that Marketingteams make sense.
You can have a 10-personcompany, but they can have 1,000
customers.
That means they can buy 1,000items of swag.
There's bigger budgets, there'sa bigger use case.
(23:42):
But what I realized in theearly days, knocking on doors
and I literally knocked on doorsat different startups and I
would go up and down WeWorkhallways to talk to people I
realized that everyone's goingafter the marketing team
Everyone.
What's going to differentiate meas swagcom a coming soon
website, label website, noproducts on the site, nothing
built out, just me and myco-founder, josh.
(24:02):
What's going to differentiateus from the 23,000 other people
selling swag?
Yeah, and I realized there wasa key insight I had early on.
It's that we should not begoing after the office manager,
we should go after the.
We should not be going afterthe marketing teams, we should
be going after the officemanager.
It kept leading back to theoffice manager.
Now, what's the office manager?
Most people don't even knowwhat that.
That's even a real job.
(24:22):
They control the office.
They're buying swag forinternal purposes.
If it's a 10 person company,they're the ones that are buying
the 10 t-shirts for thedifferent employees.
This is kind of like the secret, like it was the key insight.
It was like an aha momentbecause they do not have the
biggest budgets right, it'snowhere near the marketing team,
but they're the gateway intothe company, they're the Trojan
horse.
If the office manager at ahundred person company is buying
(24:43):
a hundred t-shirts, everyt-shirt is going to say swagcom
in the inner label.
That was one of our marketingstrategies in the early days
printing our logo in the innerlabel.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
So, like removing bella and canvas, removing, you
know, nike, whatever is puttingswagcom as the inner label,
because that will like be a waythat you know obviously swag is
meant to I was gonna ask aboutthat, like how do you
self-promote even though, like,if people are holding on to this
gear, how do you self-promoteif at&t's logo is on there, or
if Verizon's logo, or if P&G'slogo?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Yeah, so we found that we put in the inner logo,
and our tagline at the time waswe made this.
It's kind of a cool thing.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
We made this, but also everybody sees swagcom.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
We made this.
At&t uses swagcom.
We should probably use swagcom.
And because swag is meant to begiven away, that means
everybody who's buying swag fromus ultimately will be giving it
away.
It's like a pair of jeans whereit gets cooler the more you
wear it.
They give it away.
So now we're getting all of ourcustomers marketing it for free
to all of their contacts andpresumably, if a client is
giving out swag to somebody else, that person who's receiving it
(25:44):
probably has somedecision-making ability.
And we found ourselves justgrowing because our clients were
doing the marketing for us.
So there's all these differentlearnings and things you have to
figure out.
I mean, there's not like oneanswer of like, oh, we were good
at SEO.
No, honestly, we didn't evenstart SEO till our third year.
It was probably one of thebiggest mistakes I made is that
I only started in the third year.
I didn't really know about SEO,frankly, when I started it.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
I was doing more so you weren't tagging.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
No, not really, we were just putting them up there,
yeah, putting it up there,knocking on doors, making sales,
maybe doing a little bit ofGoogle ads to drive more
awareness.
Google ads are way tooexpensive but we learned based
on those customers.
Then we started SEO, then westarted partnerships, then we
did.
I mean, now our company, youknow, is doing a lot of money
per year and I mean we're doinga lot.
(26:28):
It's a real business at thispoint and things are going
really streamlined and we have10 different traction channels
that are driving traffic.
And so I would just say forentrepreneurs listening, you
don't have to have all theanswers.
A lot of times you don't haveany of the answers.
You just got to start.
You got to learn on the way.
Listen to your customer, figureout the right thing.
(26:49):
I'll tell you one quick storyBefore I started Swagcom, and
the reason how I think it wassuch a success from the start is
because I had the mentality oflearning from customers from the
early days.
My previous startup that failedthat social networking app I
mentioned earlier.
I was the head of product, so Iwas like head of design.
I lost sleep every single nightthinking about every little
(27:09):
detail about this thing whathappens when you swipe right or
left or what, what should thiscolor of the button be, what
should this do and all.
And then we launched a yearlater and I realized all the
things that I lost sleep overand cared about no one else
cared about.
The customers didn't give ashit about that, Like there was
other things that they reallywanted that I wish I just got
out of my own way and launchsomething.
(27:30):
Anything You're trying to makeit perfect.
Yeah, yeah.
I try to make it perfect.
And I was making the wrong, Iwas building the wrong thing, I
was building the thing that Ithought was the right thing.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
You jumped ahead in your MVP kind of thing Like you
weren't.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
you weren't just building, and that's what they
always say.
Perfect became the enemy ofgood.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yeah, you got to again ask your customer iterate.
That's one of the things youlearn that we didn't know.
Like, I didn't know that eitherwhen we were doing our startup.
Right, I no clue, but you saidsomething.
You just kind of got to jump inthere and you learn right,
especially when you're doingsomething innovative and
different, because you don'tknow, there is no benchmark,
there's nothing else you canlook at.
(28:07):
You know, maybe you didn't goto business school.
I didn't.
At the time I hadn't gone to.
You know, I didn't get a MBA orany of that kind of stuff.
So I mean, me and myco-founders just kind of had to
learn.
And then one of our co-founderswas just an animal and he he
kind of took it, ran with it,did a lot of the work, getting
our investors, finding, you know, customers early on, going to
(28:31):
trade shows, all that kind ofstuff, just to get the name out
there.
And eventually one thing leadsto another when you just never
know when that meeting is goingto hit that changes the
direction of your company.
It could be one client thatjust changes it all.
Like we had Keller Williamsright, which at the time they
had 80,000 agents.
They signed up.
(28:52):
That gave us instantcredibility.
We didn't have a group that big, and then 85% of the work they
did was with other brokerages,so they became our salespeople
and when you said something yousaid, they did our sales for us.
Right, that's what you need.
You need to hit that networkeffect where your customers then
become your salespeople.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Totally, and I would even say, even take us even a
step further.
I had a moment in 2017, we werein Techstars, just like an
incubator program kind of like aY Combinator Texas.
Chicago and I was at thisprogram.
I was there for three monthsand I mean it's fine, we learned
.
We learned some things, we metsome people, all good.
There's the last couple ofweeks they connect you with
(29:33):
other entrepreneurs, localentrepreneurs to kind of meet
and network, et cetera.
So one of these entrepreneurswas the CEO of a company called
Jelly Vision in Chicago and Imet with Jelly Vision, a fairly
big company, 200 plus employees,I believe.
I'm trying to remember it'sbeen a while, but we went to the
office and it's a really cooloffice and the CEO said hey, I
want you to connect to my officemanager Because at that point
(29:54):
we knew the office manager wasthe buyer.
We were already doing sales.
So she's like meet with theoffice manager and learn as much
as you can, ask some questionsWhenever you want you have them
for the day to learn.
And I went to their office andI saw the office manager with
five, five of our coworkers allon the floor unboxing swag that
they bought from differentlocations, repackaging it up in
(30:15):
boxes, writing handwritten notecards, and I said what are you
guys doing?
They said, well, we're doingthis thing called account-based
marketing, which is basicallythe ability to send swag in the
mail to individual, different orbest customers to say thank you
for something or to engage withthem, and it's been really
helpful for our business and Ileft that one meeting in 2017
being like this is the future.
I don't know when we're goingto be able to build this, but
right now our site can handleswag bulk orders.
(30:37):
People could buy 1,000 t-shirtsand it sends it to their office
or to their trade show booth.
But wouldn't it be cool if theycould click a button and we'll
hold the swag in our inventoryand then give them the tools to
individually distribute thatswag to remote employees?
They tools to individuallydistribute that swag to remote
employees.
They could upload a CSV file ofdifferent ship to addresses.
Our system will detect theshipping costs.
They pay for the shipping andnow we're boxing things up
together for them and shippingit globally, all over the world.
(30:59):
That was kind of the idea and Istarted building that.
I got back to New York 2018.
I started building this feature, integrating with the three PLs
.
I wasn't so efficient at it,but we ultimately got it to a
place where we were launching itin January of 2020.
Now, obviously, everyone knowswhat happened in 2020.
The world shut down.
We launched in January of 2020as this account-based marketing
(31:21):
platform meaning all of ourhomepage, our branding, our
website, everything was designedto help marketing teams do
account-based marketing.
Now, when the world shut downin March of 2020, covid hits.
There are no events.
There are no events.
There are no trade shows.
No one needs our service at all.
Right, right, but here's thething.
There was a disconnection.
Everyone who bought swag forthe office, no one's in the
(31:42):
office.
So how do you keep companycultures thriving even when no
one's in the office?
You send them swag at theirhome addresses.
So we repurposed all thattechnology, all the sites, all
the advertising, everything, theSEO, the content marketing, our
ads everything was changed tohow to keep company culture
thriving even when no one's inthe office.
And our business, the industry,went down 20, 40% in a year of
(32:03):
COVID.
Right, it makes sense.
Everything is shut down.
Our business scale from 7million to 15 million.
Wow, we were able to capitalizeNext year, 30 million.
How do we do that?
So, as you said, you never knowwhere you're going to go.
When I started swagcom in 2016,I never thought of account-based
marketing.
I never heard that term.
I didn't know individualdistribution, I didn't know
COVID was going to hit.
You kind of have to putyourself out there and meet with
(32:24):
people and no one said, hey,jeremy, do this.
I was in the room, I saw thingshappening and I realized maybe
this is our future, this iswhere we could go, this is what
we could do.
It became a nice to havefeature or something that maybe
some companies needed ourdistribution platform to frankly
need to have Everyone'sdisconnected, and we were the
only platform that built it.
So we had this amazing solutionthat no one else had and that
just comes from.
(32:45):
I don't know what you call itIs, is it?
There's a lot of things that gointo it, but I would say, just
get, get out of your own way.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Reach out to people, talk to people, learn, change,
pivot, and as long as you keepdoing that constantly, you're
going to keep learning andgetting better with it I'd like
to say that beside I meanoutside of your company the, the
energy that you speak with andthe passion you speak with
reminds me of um a few of thevery, very, very successful
entrepreneurs that I know.
Seems like you've got that itfactor to lead an organization
(33:16):
to you know, beyond all plateausand to where you want it to go,
where you ultimately see itgoing.
How, how, how is your officestructured?
Do you, do you guys, work froma centralized location?
Is everything decentralizedoffice structure?
Do you guys work from acentralized?
Speaker 3 (33:33):
location Is everything decentralized?
How's that set up?
Yeah, so with swagcom we wereall working in an office in New
York City.
Covid hit and we never wentback.
We have everyone's remote, thewhole company's remote.
It's not an ideal situation butwe were very lucky that our
business could still grow andthrive even in a remote
environment.
We didn't need to be in aphysical place.
You know, some people go in andout of the office here and
(33:54):
there if they want to see peopleor if they want to, you know,
change the scenery from workingat home.
But, um, so we have likedifferent hubs in New York city.
We have an office in Fairfax,virginia, for custom ink that's
where their hub is and then wehave an office people could go,
but most people just work fromtheir computers and do it.
And you know, for us, becausewe're disconnected, we like to
(34:16):
not have a lot of meetings.
I hate sitting on meetings.
That waste time.
But we schedule a lot of like10 to 15 minute catch up
sessions, so it's like somethingwhere you could see somebody
talk to them, connect with them,without having to kind of waste
everyone's time, because I findat least most meetings are run
fairly poorly.
Um, and 90% of the room is justsitting there waiting for other
people to do stuff.
It's like I don't really need tobe here.
Why am I even here?
And then you feel bad of doingother things while you're on the
(34:39):
meetings.
You have to focus and you'rekind of wasting it.
Everything is wasted.
So we just cut that out and wedo like quick 10-minute,
15-minute meetings.
If we book a 30 minute meetingand it gets to the minute 10 and
we realize there's nothing elseto speak about, all right, guys
, we'll see.
See you next time.
Like we don't, we don't justhave to fill up space because
you know people feel the need tobe on the call.
Like you get on the call, youget on a meeting, we say, hey,
(35:00):
if you don't think you need tobe here, just leave.
Right, there's no.
Like you don't have to stayaround and try political
corporate game.
Yeah, that's not.
It's not our environment yeah,that's, that's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
I mean, it doesn't seem like you're the kind of guy
that would be in theenvironment for a year more.
The way you speak, how quicklyyou speak, it seems like you're
more of a let's get shit donetype mentality, as opposed to
tell me how you're gonna get theshit done.
Yeah, right tell me how you'replanning to make this happen.
It's more along the lines of Itrust you.
You guys are here, let let'sget it finished, yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I, I, um, yeah, I, I feel thatway, I a hundred percent.
I also feel like I don't knowall the right answers.
So I I like, when my team comesup with ideas, there's no
stupid idea.
Every idea that anyone comes upwith, as I said before, you
never know where it's going tolead.
It could spark something else,it could spark somebody else to
(35:56):
come up with something reallycool.
So that's just kind of thementality we always have, from
even swagcom days to now swagspace days.
It's an open door policy andthere's no bad ideas and let's
just kind of come up with theright, right solution.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
I love it, man.
Well, this is great.
I love, I love the energyyou've got.
I love the entrepreneurialattitude.
It sounds like you dideverything right and you
continue.
I mean, you obviously have aton of value to add, otherwise
Custom Ink wouldn't keep you onand have you run a brand new
division, this swag space stuffyou guys are doing now, and I'm
(36:21):
definitely going to check it out.
I'm going to recommend it topeople.
I was just at a high schoolearlier today, the one I went to
.
It's an art school, and thekids were asking, like you know,
I was telling about mybackground and everything and
they're asking, like, well, whatcan we do?
And I'm telling them you knowreal estate and this and that.
But this would be a great thingfor kids.
I mean, if you're a high schoolkid or whatever, go knock on
some doors.
Man, you want to make somemoney, and this is an inner city
(36:45):
school, this is downtown in thecountry, but these are the type
of things that people can signup for and take advantage of.
That weren't available to mewhen I was in high school, but
this would be a great one foryoung people to start.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Yeah, totally.
By the way, when I was startingswagcom if Swagspace existed, I
may never would have startedswagcom.
Honestly, we did all the work.
You know.
It's legitimately nearly $20million of tech work.
We reinvested all the profitsevery year into this business.
Yeah, you did so.
All the technology thateveryone gets is the swagcom
platform I love it, by the wayand every new feature that
(37:18):
swagcom builds will also beavailable to the swag space
members.
So it's we're going to.
This is just the beginning,where we have so many amazing
ideas of how to make this evenbetter and better and keep
building things and to make thiseven better and better and keep
building things and and justmaking it a really great
experience.
But anyone instantaneouslycould have a business Anyone's
thinking about.
I want to be an entrepreneur,start a business overnight, for
free.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I would think that the coolest thing you could do
if you were thinking about doingthis would be to get an actual
like database of some sort thatcodes.
You know all industries havetheir own codes so that you know
, like every industry has a LasVegas exhibit, I mean convention
, everyone will have, like, aLos Angeles convention.
They'll have a Miami orconvention in the Chicago
(37:58):
convention.
So you know which conventionsare coming up in the companies
that are in your area and youcan contact them and say, hey, I
know this is coming up.
You're going to need, you know,potentially you're going to
need this, this, this and thisto give away to people as
marketing.
Oh yeah, how about you take alook at a site that I can
provide you and let me know ifthere was something?
Speaker 1 (38:19):
that I could help you prove Yep.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I mean this totally makes sense, but having the
codes, having the business codesand just lining them up like
that, yeah Because.
And just lining them up likethat, yeah Because you have like
concrete guys.
You could have people thatbuild that, create conduit, like
all these little obscurecompanies that run with like 40
to 50 guys that nobody knowsabout yeah, these manufacturing.
Instead, it was like here inCincinnati, oh, I'll go to
(38:42):
Kroger, no, you won't.
I'll go to Procter Gamble no,you won't.
No, no, they're going to kickyou right out the door.
That's right.
But if you go to bob's bob's uhgypsum company or go down
silver grove, and where they'rerunning all this drywall.
You know they go to conventions.
They need this stuff like that.
Those are the guys that if youwere looking to get into it, I
(39:03):
would think that'd be the firstthing you'd want to do is get
that, that, that rolodex, thatyeah, don't go to an apparel
conference.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Don't go to a custom products or a products
conference.
Go to a conference for aspecific industry where a guy
might not be there selling thesethings.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
And you've got the whole supply chain.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
He's giving you the whole supply chain Like
everything's figured out.
You just Everything, you signup yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
Front end, back end, inventory, logistics, shipping,
everything, State taxes.
I mean.
Just imagine you go to thelocal coffee shop.
Joe's Coffee spends $3,000.
Swag Space is collecting thefull amount.
We're collecting the sales tax,we're remitting the sales tax.
So now the local entrepreneursdon't have to worry about any of
that stuff.
They don't know any of thatstuff Hits our back end.
(39:47):
We handle the mockups, wehandle converting the low-risk
files to the high-risk files.
We handle the production.
If Joe wanted to do customboxes of five different products
kitted together, we're the oneskitting it together.
If Joe wanted to hold inventoryand do individual distributions
to his best clients, hisinvestors, whoever it is, we're
doing all that.
All the sales rep is gettingthe products in front of Joe and
maybe in the early days,building the cart for Joe, which
(40:10):
, as if you ever went to anye-commerce site swagcom it takes
literally less than threeminutes to build a cart for
somebody.
Build a cart, press a button,have the link, share the link,
let the person do it themselves.
I love it, man.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
I love it, so tell people how they get on here.
What is there a?
Speaker 3 (40:33):
is it custominkcom slash something, or did they go?
No, no, no, no, you can go to aswag dot space.
So the url is swag dot space.
It's not dot com, just swag dotspace.
There is a apply button on thetop right.
We're having applications, umto.
You know, we want to look itover and you know what.
We're happy to approve somepeople.
Once they get approved, weonboard them, we train them up
and they're ready to go man, Ilove this guy with the domain
names.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
I mean this is the second.
I mean custom makes behind younow, but that's a great domain
name to swag dot space.
Yeah, perfect, man.
Well, jeremy, I reallyappreciate your time today.
I thank you for coming on,something I'm going to check out
.
I'll recommend it to some otherpeople.
But this is great.
Guys, check it out Swag dotspace.
(41:12):
Guys, check it out swagspace.
Thanks, jeremy.
Thank you, guys so much.
Have a good day.
Thank you, thanks for joiningus on this week's episode of
side hustle city.
Well, you've heard from ourguests.
Now let's hear from you.
Join our community on facebookside hustle city.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
(41:34):
Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!