Where is Wondersign? The real story w/ Kaspar Fopp CEO

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hey, welcome to the RTO Show.
I'm your host, pete Chow, andtoday we're going to do
something a little different.
Now you know that at the RTOShow, every time that we're on,
I want to bring you somethingnew, something compelling,
always about the RTO industry.
Well, today we're doing ahead-to-head.
I have probably the bestcomeback story I've heard in a
long time, but I'm not going tobe the one to tell you.
Today.
My guest is Casper Fopp.

(00:30):
Now he works for Wondersign andWondersign has been a part of
the RTO industry for a few years.
But if you haven't heard aboutit, there's a reason for that.
I'm going to let him tell youabout it, because they were
everywhere and now they might becoming back to see you again.
So, before I get into the wholestory or anything, we're going
to get his background, we'regoing to see what's going on and
we're going to bring you ourfirst RTO show Head to Head.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
How are you doing?
Thank you so much, I appreciateit.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
So we met very recently through a friend, adam
Ball, who you've got tounderstand the scene, everybody.
So we're working at the RTOWorld 2024.
And Adam Ball, who is a friendof the show, comes up and he
says listen, I have probably oneof the best compelling stories
that you've ever heard andyou've got to hear it now.
And so it was like you know,you never understand what that

(01:22):
is.
So you just get up, we get upand I met Casper there, which
you start telling the story, andimmediately I got kind of taken
in, because Wondersign issomething that I've known
through the industry for yearsand actually it was something
that was a staple in almostevery single rental home store
that I've ever worked in.
And guys, I've worked in quitea few stores, and so the thought

(01:42):
process was let's find outwhat's going on.
So before we get started, right, you created Wondersign, is
that right?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
With help, I mean.
Yes, I'm not the technicalperson, right, so I didn't
necessarily create it myself.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
But I definitely birthed the brainchild.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
There you go.
So that's what I did.
Yes, and it was actually.
It was in vegas, um, so it itwas.
We were invited to vegas market, the furniture market in las
vegas, um, and I have to take acouple steps back, can I?

Speaker 1 (02:16):
can?
Oh, absolutely.
You start from the beginning.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
All right, let's start from the beginning.
So we, we were in this weirdsituation as a company where we
said, okay, we're probably twoor three months away from
closing the door, from shuttingthe whole thing down because it
just doesn't work.
We came here.
The company was founded in 2002in Switzerland, in Europe
that's where I'm from, hence theaccent but we started over

(02:42):
there.
We got picked up by O2, whichis Telefonica, which is the
European equivalent to AT&T.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
One of the largest carriers.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
So what they did is they said okay, this is a great
tool for our small andmedium-sized businesses.
They have a lot of bakeriesthat use them.
They used our platform tobasically distribute content
onto little touchscreens inbakeries, for example, because
they have a lot of likelegislative requirements to show
you know calories, ingredients,allergens, that kind of stuff,

(03:13):
so they used it for that.
So they were like this isamazing, this is good because
it's easy to use, right?
So one journalist over inEurope I still remember that he
called us the iPhone of digitalsignage because it was so simple
.
That's a pretty, that's apretty heavy monitor, right
there.
I mean I can't claim, I mean Ican't take credit for that.
But so he basically said, okay,the ease of use is what really

(03:34):
compelled them, so you can dragand drop content into a playlist
and then it shows up on ascreen that is hundreds of miles
away, right?
So that's the premise of theplatform, and we came over here
all guns blazing.
We were very ambitious and veryoptimistic and probably not
very realistic when it comes tothe American market, but we
thought we can replicate thesuccess we had in Europe here on

(03:56):
a much larger scale.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Is there a real big difference between the two
markets, like when you're sayingEurope and here, based on what
happens, the way business istransacted, it's enough to say,
wow, there's a huge differencebetween one and the next.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
It's very different because here in the US you have
a somewhat homogenous market.
You have 300 million peoplethat speak one or, let's say,
two languages.
Right?
With two languages, you canreach everybody.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Right.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Where I grew up.
I drove 25 minutes and I was inGermany.
Completely different country,different language different
mentality, different approach tolife.
You have to approach themdifferently.
You cannot use the same wordsbecause they might be offensive
or they might be, you know, notfitting for the culture.
So it's so fragmented and it'snot this huge big pool of 300

(04:44):
million people and they're allpotential consumers of what you,
what you have to offer,absolutely.
So you have to compartmentalizeand then you have to shape it
for each market individually andthat's just it's.
It's a lot of money that youhave to spend in order to reach
the same amount of people.
So, long story short, came overhere kind of blind to what the
requirements are here in the US,and said, yeah, let's just do

(05:06):
the same thing, let's just findwhatever AT&T, verizon have them
, basically push the SIM cards,because that was the play right.
They wanted to push SIM cardsand data plans and used us as a
vehicle for this, and we failedmiserably.
Miserably because we didn't.
Here's what we didn'tunderstand we didn't understand
that we need to target eachvertical separately.

(05:28):
You can't just go out and say,oh, it's for everybody, anybody
can use this, right?
Are you a retailer?
You can use this, right?
That doesn't resonate.
So that was mistake number one.
And then mistake number two wasthat we were focusing on some
of the wrong target audience,the wrong customers.
So we went to a trade show.
We landed Kaiser Permanente.

(05:49):
Kaiser Permanente is a bighealthcare chain on the West
Coast.
They have hospitals inCalifornia and Colorado.
They used us as their waitingroom infotainment system.
Did this connection happen inVegas?
That happened in.
That was a market, that wasbefore right, so that was.
I'm still not even oh we're noteven there yet.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
No, no, okay, we haven't even touched furniture.
All right, do you have a fewhours, as much time as you like.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
So we were at this trade show.
We ended up with CasaPermanente, which is a big name.
That's a good logo to have umand we ended up with a google
partnership.
So we started developing forthe chrome operating system,
which was then later used rightfor the furniture kiosks, right.
So that was good, it waspositive, it was a good, it was

(06:34):
a good trade show.
But the problem was we startedgetting pigeonholed into this um
waiting room infotainmentsystem and it was a very
demanding client because it wasa big corporation and they're
used to just demanding things.
So all our development effortbasically went into this
particular instance.
And then there's a lot oftechnical problems that come
with this.

(06:55):
So we were stuck and we didn'tget the growth that we were
looking for.
So we had a very honest andtransparent conversation,
because my visa at the time wasdependent on the business.
Oh, wow, right.
So I had a year.
It was a non-immigrant workvisa through the company.
I had one year After 12 months.

(07:17):
It's goodbye, you have to goback to Europe if you're not
succeeding.
So for me, everything was onthe line and a lot of sleepless
nights, a lot of like anguish.
What am I going to do?
I need to do something.
So we were, and I think inhindsight this was perfect.
We were so desperate that wewould do anything.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
And that's what happened.
Is it necessities of mother ofall invention?
Right, I mean it without,without that stress of where do
I come from and how do I tackleit.
We don't come around and thinkof the extras that we need to
pursue that perfection.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Oh, absolutely, and every time I think back to
moments in my life that shapedme or helped me grow, it was
always adversity.
For example, I lost my dad veryyoung.
I was 19 when he died.
That was in hindsight it soundsweird the best thing that could
have happened.
I was on the wrong path.
I was basically becoming analcoholic, I was working in bars

(08:09):
and all this kind of stuff andreally on the wrong path, very
much on the wrong path.
That ripped me out of that,forced me because my mom didn't
have access to the bank accountsand it was a legal issue.
And then I had to pay themortgage.
I ended up as a 19 year oldpaying her mortgage right
Because she didn't have, therewas no money.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Well, first off, I'm sorry to hear that, thank you,
but you know, it speaks volumesto the person that you are,
because adversity can make orbreak people.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
It can't.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
And it almost, it almost sheds the outer shell and
you find out okay, are we goingto get this done or are we
going to let it beat us out?
Okay, are we going to get thisdone or are we going to let it
beat us?
And when you have that mindsetkind of puts you in the position
where you are right now to bethe CEO of Wondersign, because
you see the adversity and youtackle it.
So you start taking care of ofhome Like it's, like it's your

(08:57):
own.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
I had to.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
I was forced to.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
So at that point in time, yeah, to me again, that's
in.
Obviously, back then it washorrible, but in hindsight it
was a huge, it's a hugeopportunity.
Every time I grew it wasbecause of something negative
that happened, and I don't wantthe negative to happen, but at
the end of the day you have toembrace it and then you'll.
It helps you grow.
So the adversity here was crap.

(09:25):
I don't want to go back, right,I want to be here, right, I
mean I always.
The first time I came to the usI was 21 and I came here
through um, my, my job, I gotinto public relations and then
one of our biggest customers wasmicrosoft, their xbox division.
okay, so they flew us to la, toe3, which is the biggest trade
show gaming yes, beautifulmoments right, it moments right.
It was amazing.
So they had us fly to E3 andthen facilitate all those

(09:49):
interviews and help with thelaunches, and we did like the
Gears of War 3 launch and Halo.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
Get out of here.
Listen, you're speaking to myhistory now.
Okay, I'm going back a littlebit, a little bit outside RTO,
but I mean, that was our thingback then.
Gears of War was like you know,that was the.
Thing it was a huge launch and,and, and you know cliffy b and

(10:14):
all the guys and we were all intune into that.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
So so my, that's, that's a lot.
My favorite memory of thatgears of war 3 launch that was I
wasn't 21 then.
That was later, but thatfavorite moment there was the
interview with ice tea, becauseice tea is a voice actor in
gears of war.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yes, right, yes, so the interview with ice tea,
because ice tea is a voice actorgives a worthwhile, right?

Speaker 2 (10:25):
yeah, so the interview with ice tea, and then
we ended up drinking at the barand and having a good time wow
uh, he's such a nice person.
He's down to earth, he's such agood person I wish I knew him
more, like you did.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
Well, I mean, but I mean what I've seen and the
things I've heard about him andhe just seems very down to earth
.
He doesn't allow his successesto change how he treats people
and how he interacts.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
And you will appreciate this as an
interviewer he's interested inthe person.
It wasn't a transactionalsituation.
He didn't care.
He's like yeah, I know we'rehere for Gears of War and I know
we're here for Microsoft andthey pay the bill and you know,
pick up the tab, I don't care.
So he sat down and I I, beforeI get the first question out
he's like so where do you comefrom?

(11:07):
Like, what do you do?
Like who are you.
Wow, right.
And then we started talking andthey kind of kind of hit it off
somehow and it was just it wassuch a good, such a good
conversation.
But anyway, I digress, I'msorry, um, so we were in, in, um
, in this predicament that we'resaying, okay, what are we going
to do?
So we seriously hadconversations Andy, the previous
owner and CEO of Wondersign,and myself because it was just

(11:31):
the two of us here in the US,here in Tampa, in a little
shared office space, a REACHESoffice, you know those rental
offices that you can have.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
Well, now you're in Kennedy, right?
Yeah, just so everybody knows,we are actually in Tampa right
now, off of Highway 60, or AdamO'Drive, however you want to
call it.
So he's actually in town nextto us and I didn't even know
that, which was crazy, becausewe met somewhere else.
And then we come here and it'snice to know that we're all back
in Tampa, back at home,absolutely, absolutely.

(12:00):
So I just want to throw thatout.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
so everybody knows Absolutely.
So the conversation back thenwas okay.
He told me he's like I lookedinto firehouse ups franchises, I
looked into a couple otherfranchise models.
That might be the saving grace.
But then what that means is youhave to go back right Because
the visa is purpose bound.

(12:22):
It's very directional, ohabsolutely you come here and
then you submit what are yougoing to do like?
What is?
What is the?
The desired outcome?
Why are you here?
Right, and the the why are youhere?
That that rings in my in myears?
Because later, a couple yearslater, when I turned by, I
switched the visa to animmigrant visa and then to apply
for the green card you have togo back.

(12:43):
You have to go back to thecountry where you came from and
then there's a final interviewwith a visa officer over there
oh, wow, so I went to theamerican embassy in switzerland
and had the interview with himand and it was all very much uh,
and right before this interviewwe talked about government and
you know that kind of stuff itwas very um, structured and and

(13:04):
yeah, let's look at this formand that form.
And then at some point he looksup and he looks me straight
into my soul.
I felt like, and he said MrFaub, what are you going to do
in the US?

Speaker 1 (13:17):
So this is getting serious.
Now he's down to brass tacks.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
I was completely unprepared and I'm like, sir,
I'm going to create 40 Americanjobs.
I have no idea how, I have noidea when, but I will do that.
And he's like, can I hold youto that?
And I said, absolutely, sir,you can hold me to that.
It took us a few years, but wegot there.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
But that's taken care of.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Good that's great, but I fulfilled the promise
right.
So I feel like, personally, Ifeel like I earned my stay.
I'm allowed to stay here, I'mallowed to be here, besides
paying taxes since day one, butthat's a separate story.
Death and taxes as an Americancitizen, one the most important

(14:03):
question you need to askyourself is do you want to be
under the jurisdiction of theIRS for the remainder of your
life?
Because once you're an Americancitizen, no matter where you
are on the planet that followsyou, you're taxable.
Yes, right, you have to paytaxes to the IRS and, as a
you're as a Swiss, I'm a dualcitizen.
Now, I'm a Swiss and anAmerican citizen.
As a Swiss citizen, swissgovernment doesn't care.

(14:24):
It's like you're not here,you're not using any of our
services, goodbye, right, wedon't charge you.
So that's something that'sunique, but anyway, so we're in
this situation.
We have prepaid for a marketingshow and it was almost like a
matchmaking, like a speed datingsituation.
So you pay a lot of money sothat you, as a vendor, you can

(14:47):
go and meet these bigcorporations, and we signed up
for it.
It was $25,000 a ticket.
That was our last money,basically that we had, and we
said well, we have to, becausewe're not getting a refund, we
have to go.
Might as well go with and makethe best of it, and one of the
companies that was on thatroster was ashley furniture and
it was the vp of marketing forashley furniture there we go was

(15:10):
at that was at that show and hemet with andy, sat down with
him.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Each vendor gets 30 minutes with um, with that
company, and then it's kind oflike so you were literally speed
dating, like so you're pitching, you're pitching brand and
what's going on and what youhave to offer, and then they go
to the next person.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Yes, and it's a double opt-in so you wouldn't be
paired with somebody who saysthat's the dumbest thing on the
planet, I don't need any of this.
So they have some sort ofinterest.
So Cole must have checked thebox and said I want to hear what
these Wondersign people have tooffer and you give them a
little elevator pitch.
Same thing I did with you inOrlando.
I said, hey, in 30 seconds,here's what's going on.
So, yeah, he sat down with usand then, after those 30 minutes

(15:53):
, cole gets up and he walks overto the organizers of the event
and he's like my next meeting,cancel that and give me 30
minutes to sit back down withAndy.
Oh, wow.
He was so enamored with thisidea Because from his
perspective and that's somethingI never understood until later

(16:23):
From his perspective, the mostenticing aspect of what we had
to offer was that he, as a brand, as a manufacturer, would be
able to control content thatgoes onto those TV screens, in
the vignettes, in the showrooms.
Every showroom has and I mean Idon't know, like 10, 15, 15
years ago it was those fake TVs,you know, the plastic TVs that
are on the media center.
Then they turn into real TVsbecause TVs became so cheap,
right, you could just have go toBest Buy and get a couple TVs
and put them in there.
So that's exactly what happened.

(16:44):
So then, at that point in time,our pitch was to say instead of
having I don't know ESPN or FoxNews on it, or use a flash
drive with your own stuff, youcan remotely control what goes
on.
So, if you have 50 locations,you can from Europe, I mean from
the Bahamas.
Basically, you can drag anddrop, remember?

(17:04):
the iPhone of digital signageRight.
You can drag and drop yourvideos in there.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
That's cutting Well, I mean, we're talking about the
time Seriously cutting edge,especially for a company that
has so much to offer.
There's a lot of product andthere's a lot of product
diversity, depending on whatcompany you're talking about,
whether it be rent to own,whether it be actually retail.
Because you know, and the crazything is, I mean, ashley has

(17:30):
their own sales floors and thenthey support quite a bit of rent
to own as well.
And I couldn't, I couldn'tpossibly tell you any rent to
own dealer that I know of thatdoesn't or hasn't used Ashley
furniture, right, and I'veactually seen them almost within
the same square mile.
Oh, absolutely Right.
So here, in being very close toBrandon, I mean, we have one
right down the street on 75 andand highway 60.

(17:51):
And then you have other buddies, locations, you have ranking
locations, you have happylocations that are, and we all
sell that furniture.
But to be able to diverse whatyou put on those screens for
whoever's using them, that'shuge, especially when you're
talking about dialing into theminute.
You know, hey, this issomething that we need to change
and we can do it immediatelyfor that particular company or

(18:13):
whatever they're selling,whatever product that they're
pushing, because with theirlineup.
It's so huge that you canalmost have a selection and you
can have a selection.
They don't, they won'tintertwine, right, that's great.
I mean, that's you're, you're.
You're talking about puttingsomething at a time frame that
wasn't even close to thought of.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
So that was in 2014 and and um, you just had the
same reaction that cole had,because cole all kinds of lights
I'm sorry, all kinds of lightswent off right for him and he
said wait a second, we could dothis.
We could do that.
You, we can have assembly videoson it to, you know, take the
edge away.
People are, you know, anxious.
Can I build this myself?
Whatever else for RTA furniture, the small footprint stuff.

(18:52):
He was very much ahead of histime and that really led to him
basically saying at the end ofthis why don't you guys come to
Vegas market?
I'll invite you and I'll makeyou a vendor on our floor and we
had no idea what that meantright, I mean you hadn't been to
Vegas market before that?

Speaker 1 (19:13):
No, I had no idea about the furniture industry.
So two years ago I went to theVegas market.
It blew my mind how big it was.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
You know, uh, at the time, well, when I went, it was
a three buildings and we weretalking about 14, 18 floors of
nothing but furniture.
I mean, you're talking aboutshowrooms that are huge,
professional, well-built, andeverybody's dying for a little
bit of your attention, and itwas amazing.
I mean, lunchtime was probablythe best time because you can go
to any one of them and they allhad something to attract you

(19:40):
and you know free drinks andfree food and come sit down, and
as you're sitting there, youknow free drinks and free food.
And come sit down and as you'resitting there, you know they're
talking on their tablets.
Like what are you looking at?
You know it was.
It was like it was probably oneof the most mind-blowing
situations I've had in vegas.
I've gone to vegas for otherreasons, but that was amazing.
So if you hadn't seen that, Ican only imagine how it was to
not only be there but be a partof it as well.
I mean.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
To us it was completely exactly like you just
described, right?
Yeah came in from outside.
We had no idea, we didn'treally understand that the
dynamic of ashley, you know,being the largest manufacturer,
having this huge sales force,but also having ashley's retail
arm, the home stores, and andhow it all intertwined.
And how did the marketingspecialists they call the reps

(20:21):
marketing specialists how theyum, what role they play and it's
more than just a rep you know,there's so much more that goes
into this so yes to your point.
We had no idea what we weregetting into.
And he's like bring as muchstuff as you can, but also bring
your catacord swiper, becauseyou're going to probably walk
away with hundreds of thousandsof dollars in your in your

(20:43):
pocketbook.
Be sure to be ready to execute,because we can make or break
companies and we have brokencompanies before.
If we bring something and it'sa good offer, but they can't
execute, that's almost worse.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
Right, it's worse.
So we have something that'sgreat and everybody wants it,
but we can't support that.
You can't execute right.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
so that's, that's the worst.
So we were nervous but excitedand we're like, okay, this is
the greatest thing on the planet.
So we brought pretty muchwhatever we again we, we spent
the last money we had, broughtwhatever we could, and nobody
understood what the heck we weredoing.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
So he was way ahead of his time.
So he he was he was.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
He was thinking, forward thinking and everybody
was still kind of way trying tofigure it out.
He was probably five or sixyears ahead of his time.
So at that point in time I'msitting there and in this mini
booth and this table booth setup and everybody that comes by,
there's a lot of traffic,there's a lot of people coming
by, right then in the backthousands that was obviously.
That was the probably the peak,or maybe a couple of years
before the peak.
Everybody you talk to nowadayssays, yeah, that was kind of

(21:49):
like that was right there.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
Oh, yeah, it was a great time.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah, that was an amazing time Sometimes you're
like this on the showroom, youknow you have no room to walk
and you have.
There's a line for the men'sbathroom and that's usually an
indicator there was a line onevery elevator, every, and they
had like six elevators.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
There was a line for the escalator that went up and
then, at when I went, actuallyhad three floors.
So they had, like you know,case goods and then they had a
furniture and then they had youknow the difference ones,
whether it was, uh, bled outbecause there was so much of it,
or they had the outdoorfurniture or whatever.
So it was three separate floorsand so some of the Ashley reps

(22:29):
that I know, you know it wasfunny because I could see one on
one floor and then I would seeanother one on another floor and
then they had, you know, onearea was complete bedding and
you know the bedding section washuge, and so you know, to even
be invited to that, I meanthat's great.
I mean he definitely saw whatWondersign can do for Ashley.
But now you're getting me kindof worried because I know that I

(22:50):
saw Wondersign everywhere andthat sounds like it didn't
happen just then.
But you're on the cusp of itbecause Ashley is a huge company
.
I mean they are great to therental industry.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Absolutely, and we're almost there.
We're maybe a day away from itnow at this point.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
So and we're almost there.
We're maybe a day away from itnow, at this point right.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
So we're getting close to the end of the market
and I'm getting very nervous andI called andy and he came in
later, or he was planning oncoming in later, and then he's
like well then I'm not evengoing, I'm not spending money to
fly out there from tampa.
Um, that makes no sense.
If this is really another dot,this is again.
We were kind of deflated alittle bit, so one of those
marketing specialists, one ofthe reps, walks up to us and is
at the booth and he's playingaround with we had a little ipad

(23:30):
in an enclosure and we wereshowcasing the app and and
that's I forgot to tell you, butthat's part of what our program
did.
It turned anything that isinteractive into a touch
application on a touchscreen.
Okay, so you could, even withvery basic html knowledge, you
know you could build somethingoffline distributed to that

(23:51):
touch application, to that touchdevice, and then it turns into
a touch app so you can buildyour own app technically now in
2014, that's huge absolutely so.
He's playing around on thisdevice and then he comes up to
me and he says does this meanthat we can put the entire
Ashley Furniture product catalogon a touchscreen like this?
And I'm like opportunity.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
Opportunity, there you go.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Absolutely, Of course .
That's what that means.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
The thousands and thousands of SKUs that you have
are now at the touch of a button.
I had no idea about that.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
I had no idea about distribution control and how
tight Ashley is on distributioncontrol.
So you could have a store andthere's a store across the
street.
You have not the same SKUlineup, correct?
The pricing is differentbecause you might be part of a
different buying group If youhave special pricing through
Trib.
The other guy doesn't.
I mean there's so manyintricacies so long.
The other guy doesn't.
I mean correct, there's so manyintricacies, so long.

(24:46):
Story short, he's like let metalk to some people.
So he left and then he cameback with a group of people and
one of the people in that groupand back then I had no idea who
that was was carrieliebensberger, back then the
president of ashley, right?
So carrie comes up and carrie'slike so you're saying this can
be your catalog.
And I said yes, of Anything,whatever you want, just keep me
in the country.
Um, and then, and then at thatpoint in time, um, he, he said

(25:12):
okay, um, cole, um, I want him,I want him in the bullpens.
And then Cole comes to me andhe says okay, so tomorrow
morning, seven, 30, you're goingto be up on stage in front of
the marketing specialist.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
Just in case you weren't aware, tomorrow you have
a meeting.
Yes.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
So, just in case.
And then I'm like, oh okay, sowhat am I presenting?
And he's like the digitalproduct catalog for Ashley
Furniture and I said, okay, cool.
So called Andy on the way tothe hotel and said I think we
have a problem, it's good.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Don't get me wrong.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
It's a great problem.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
Don't be alarmed.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
It's an amazing problem, but we need to execute
now.
So I went back, I put ittogether in PowerPoint.
That's what I had right at thatpoint in time.
I'm not.
I'm not a programmer.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
No, it makes sense.
I mean it makes sense.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, it makes sense.
So I put it together inPowerPoint, I made it look good
and later, much later, I heardfrom marketing specialists that
then I befriended, we becamefriends, we talked more openly
and they were like well, thereally enticing pitch wasn't

(26:16):
what you demonstrated on stage.
That was kind of confusing.
To be honest with you, peopledidn't really understand what
you were doing right.
To be honest with you, peopledidn't really understand what
you were doing right.
The pitch was beforehandbecause Carrie came to us and
said do you like having boxesand boxes of paper catalog pages
shipped to you every week andyou have to load it into the

(26:37):
trunk of your car?

Speaker 1 (26:39):
and drive to every single store that you go on.
I forgot about that.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
And you have to exchange the pages.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Yes, Now that you mention it, because you have to
exchange the pages.
Yes, I, for, now that youmentioned it, because you're
bringing that back, because, yes, I forgot that that had
preceded wonder sign.
Yes, they would send us allthese these lists and sometimes
they would even get outdatedbecause people just it would
just took too long and it was somuch, and every single page was
like this nice wax page, it waslike that, that it was great
magazine type, but I mean,you're talking about we had

(27:04):
three or four books that weighed20 pounds because it was just
that much.
So our job, or your job, wondersign, was to eliminate this,
make it immediate and put itsomewhere where somebody can
access it right away and again,that's what I'm saying in
hindsight.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
You always have these insights in hindsight.
It's clear to me the targetaudience immediately was the
marketing specialist.
It wasn't the retailer.
That didn't even hit theretailer.
Yet the marketing specialistwas the person to say oh my gosh
, this is going to make my lifeso much easier, right, if I
don't have to haul aroundcatalog pages and they're
obsolete the moment they rolloff the printing press.

(27:40):
They're basically outdated, likeyou said and then if it's
something nice, then theconsumers rip it out.
It's just, it's not a goodexperience and you're not able
to sell.
And there's not price.
There's no inventoryinformation on it, we have it in
real time and it can be fullypriced with the dealer's refill.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
Well, the great thing about that, too, is if you have
an immediate change in yourlineup or you all of a sudden
you want to cut that line outand you know you're putting it
on a discount and you got sixweeks of product left, you can
immediately go in there and say,hey, this is now discounted 15,
20, I have this money in thisparticular warehouse.
Order it or don't order it.
But you know you can save rightnow because it will be gone on

(28:18):
paper.
We would be making phone callsand texts and emails and who do
we know is going to know theanswer to this question.
And you know it saved a lot ofproblems with the customers,
truth be told, because I wantthis and you're like oh, you
know what I just found out it'sdiscontinued.
I can only get so many loveseats, not enough.
You know sofas, and so that was.
I'm glad that you did that,because you did make it a lot

(28:39):
easier for a lot of us.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
Well, thank you.
So that was the catalyst, thatwas really what put us on the
map.
And yeah, I mean Ashley put uson the map right.
I had some conversations withother people where this came up
and I'm the one to say I haveabsolutely no problem saying
this Ashley put us on the mapperiod right.

(29:02):
I mean, it was such a blessingto have such a huge company see
something in us and then give usthe opportunity to go there
present this.
And, yes, then it took off.
So it took our engineering teamabout a year to really build
something that was functional,that worked.
And again I was the one saying,yeah, no problem, you can do

(29:22):
this right, I'm not just to belynched by our IT team that
actually the engineers have tobuild it.
They ran into all kinds ofissues.
It was, I mean, in thebeginning it was a cluster, it
was a little bit.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
It was a difficult situation.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
Oh, very much.
So what really helped us and Ithink that's something that the
marketing specialist helped ustoo the moment we started
visualizing their data, becausetheir data back then wasn't that
clean, it wasn't that greatright, and that's no secret.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Well, they're still printing it out on paper, so
they didn't have a reason to goto that digital sense yet.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
Absolutely, and on paper I mean.
Anybody with a graphic designbackground knows you can make
stuff look good on paper.
It's nicely designed.
Their catalog pages were verynicely designed, yes, but the
information was lacking in adigital format.
So we consumed what we hadaccess to and it wasn't
necessarily the greatest.
So the moment we startedvisualizing this on a big 40,
50-inch screen in the middle oftheir showroom, we had a line

(30:18):
First market.
We had a line of marketingspecialists at the kiosk with
their notepads on giving usfeedback saying this group is
miscategorized.
This group doesn't look this way.
This picture is wrong.
This shows a piece that is noteven available.
This data is wrong.
So we took this list and wewent back and for the first two
years we probably had dailyconversations with the data

(30:40):
teams in order to make the feed.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
Well, I mean obviously it.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
It matters to be 100 correct on something that is
going to be live all the timeeverywhere everywhere,
everywhere, yes, and it's sovisual and it's right there, so
that's why I tell you advocate,it's not just live here it's
live everywhere, so yeah, so Imean it, it's, it's compelling
to hear, but this is, and Iwould be very daunting.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
But then cue the adversity right.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
That's how you get, that's how you you use that to
to overcome yeah, I mean I, ifwe had let's say we had a a good
business, a lot of stuff goingon, we probably would have said,
nah, we don't want to likeinvest all this money.
I mean it was, it was like thewhole thing, the whole.
The whole expense was probablyabout $70,000 to go to Vegas,

(31:28):
bring all the stuff.
We had a crate built, a woodencrate.
We had it shipped on a truckwith all the equipment.
I mean we brought equipmentgalore.
We probably wouldn't have donethat.
We probably would have said ohit's another opportunity, but
said, oh, it's anotheropportunity, but it's okay.
We probably would have said noto that and again I'm so
thankful.
We were so desperate back thenand needing to do this.

(31:50):
So anyway, we're here, we'redoing this and then as soon as
we started placing this in thefirst locations because it was
just Ashley Ashley felt a hugebump right.
So the first few locations thatrolled this out it was the
first seven stores Ashley had athree to 500% sales lift.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
Wow, now, when you say the first seven stores, were
they only Ashley stores?

Speaker 2 (32:17):
No, they were regular retailers that carried all the
brands, but they also carriedAshley.
Ashley was either, you know, alarge portion of their floor or
maybe just some portion, but thenumbers were so outrageous
because you have kiosk comparedto no kiosk, right.
And then people come in.
You know it, you've seen it,consumers gravitate towards this

(32:41):
.
They're like, oh, this is cool,this is big and shiny, what is
this?
What can I do here?

Speaker 1 (32:45):
I mean, look, there's nothing like a screen to just
pull somebody in, Whatevercontent it is.
There's nothing like a screento pull somebody in and go, what
is this?
And then they can play with itAbsolutely.
I mean, they love the player,no-transcript.

(33:09):
And now everybody's interestedin this.
So Ashley's putting out thewonder sign as brand new content
compared to other retailers.
Well, the retailer, but thepeople who are selling against
you.
It could be coaster, it couldbe any type of furniture.
They don't have this and sothey're taking home the bacon on
this.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
They're making huge, huge strides.
Massive advantage, which isseven stores, massive advantage.
So that was the moment whenthey invited us up to Arcadia,
wisconsin.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Where Ashley was headquartered or is still
headquartered.
They have a big office in Tampanow, but back then it was all
Arcadia and we were actually onstage in Arcadia in front of
thousands of people, yes, andreally demonstrating the future
of catalogs and how thisrevolutionizes furniture buying

(34:00):
and all that kind of stuff.
So that was.
It was explosive.
And after that, if you look atthe numbers, hockey stick growth
right, that's what every SaaScompany is looking for is the
hockey stick, the hockey stickgrowth.
Oh, absolutely when it takes offand it just.
I mean we were, we had at somepoint 5,000 accounts using.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
Now, when you say accounts, are these separate
locations under?
No, that's the retailer.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
And when you say accounts, are these separate
locations?
No, that's the retailer.
So it could be the name of theretailer.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
So 5,000 accounts could be 15,000 stores.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
I think it was like 15,000, 16,000 locations.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
Right.
Wow, Huge, huge jump from likehey I don't know what's going on
in Vegas to.
I've got somebody who I'mliterally 15,000, 16,000
different locations.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
Two guys somewhere in a rented office here, you know,
in downtown to.
We have to hire customerservice.
We have to build up a customerservice department.
We have to build a call center.
Never done that, so we'rebuilding WonderSign from the
ground up literally no it wasjust the two of us.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
So Ashley comes in and they literally figure out
that this is probably the breadand butter that we need to move
into.
This is a great mindset.
Where does Rent to Own pick upon that?
Okay?

Speaker 2 (35:10):
So thank you for getting us back on track.
It's, after all, called the RTOshow, not the retail store show
.
So the first person to reallyhelp me out I got help from a
vendor at the show because shefelt like I was completely lost,

(35:30):
I guess, and her name was-.
Which show are we talking about?
The Vegas Market.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
So we're going back to Vegas Market.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
I was there.
Her name was Erica Sparrow, orstill is.
She's now the VP of marketingat Ashley.
Back then she was with a vendor, a website company, but she
felt bad for me.
I was completely lost.
I didn't know what to do.
I had puppy eyes probably, andI don't know.
She took me under her wing,help me, help me, so, um, that
really, I mean, that was, thatwas very nice and she really,

(35:57):
you know, showed me the ropesand what's going on.
The other person there was, asecond person that helped me,
was gary jones and gary joneswas the vp of rental accounts at
ashley furniture, okay, andgary uh, gary was looking at me
because I was.
That was the saturday morningand I was scheduled to speak at
7 30 in front of those marketingspecialists and I had no idea

(36:18):
where to go.
And he's like you look lost andand why are you here?
It's like you look lost and whyare you here.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
It's like who are you ?

Speaker 2 (36:25):
It's 6.50 in the morning, why are you here?
And I explained it to him andhe said oh OK, all right, Let me
show you where to go.
And then we went to, like yousaid, those floors, Because we
had one meeting was downstairson the 14th, the other one was
on the 15th Right.
And as we were walking and Isaid thank you so much for doing
this for me.
I appreciate you, and I said so, what do you do at Ashton?

(36:46):
He's like I'm the VP of RTOaccounts.
I said, oh cool.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
What is RTO?
What are we talking about?
What's RTO?

Speaker 2 (36:55):
What is that?
And he explained it to me andI'm like that's a wild concept.
Okay, but I get it because,coming from Europe, rto doesn't
exist in Europe, right?
Oh, really Not to this extent.
I mean, now you have a lot oflike dollar store equivalents
that have overstocks or maybedamaged merchandise from fires
or whatever else that is beingpushed out for underprivileged

(37:17):
people, but RTO as a system doesnot exist.
That doesn't exist.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
Casper, are you saying that we need to go to
europe?
Are we in the wrong?
Are we in the wrong countryright now?
Do we?
Do we need to expand?

Speaker 2 (37:30):
listen, if you want to if you want to write off a
europe trip as a, uh, as a, as aas a business as a as a
business expense, because you'redoing market research,
absolutely.
Um, no, I mean, the legislationis completely different.
I mean the, the consumerprotection laws are so much more
strict.

(37:50):
Yeah, right, so gdpr is aonline consumer protection law
that came from from europe.
Um, I mean, you can't even.
There's a lot of stuff that youcan't do now.
You have some buy now, paylater, schemes that are that are
, um, obviously, with theeconomy not going so well, uh,
the latest numbers from germanyare a little alarming, right, so

(38:10):
they are, yes, they're justdropped by two and a half
percent.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
It's different reasons, but still that and if I
drive 25 miles, I'm gonna endup in saint pete, not
necessarily in another countryso when we're talking about, I
mean the size of florida, andnot that Florida is huge, but I
think it's the third or fourthor maybe the fourth or fifth
excuse me largest state in theUnited States.
That might encompass a fewdifferent countries, so it would
very well be different in everyarea.

(38:35):
So it might not be the ideathat I would love to do.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
If you go from Tallahassee to Tampa, to Miami,
you would be in Germany,Switzerland and Italy at the
same time.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
Wow, yes, so that's the scale, that's the equivalent
.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
So at that point in time I didn't really have an
understanding of what RTO meantand what that is.
And then later that was a yearand a probably later Gary Jones
came back to me and he's likehey, this kiosk of yours, could
we use this in rental?

(39:10):
And I said, I don't know.
You tell me.
I mean, what do you need?
And he said, well, we needweekly rates, bi-weekly rates,
semi-monthly rates, monthlyrates.
And then we need to displaytotal cost of ownership, but
only in certain jurisdictions.
And then we need to cost oflease services ownership, but
only in certain jurisdictions.
And then we need to cost oflease services, but only in
certain jurisdictions.
And then we have certain statesthat can only display this.
And then you have the same ascash price, but in some cases we

(39:31):
can't say same as cash.
And I was writing down like amaniac and I'm like, well, okay,
it sounds kind of complex, butI think we can do it.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
I was gonna say is this where catherine goes?
I think we got, yeah, I thinkwe got this.
Of course we're back to that.
We're back to 0.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
It's like oh yeah, no problem.
No, I I learned my lesson.
I wasn't like this negligent,but um, at this point I'm like I
think this is doable because wehave a pricing engine that we
built into the platform.
You can set the pricing, youcan automate this to a degree.
This is just an additional stepof math right, you just need to
divide it by the term, by thenumber of weeks, right?
So if you have whatever 78weeks, then you want to divide

(40:08):
the number by that.
So it took us, I think, abouttwo months to build it into the
platform and test it and makesure it QA and it works quality
assurance and we went to him andit was Gary Ferryman I think
Gary was the president of aprilat that time.
He might have been.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yes, and gary was like I love gary.
Gary, if you're watching, we'rea big fan absolutely, and it's.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Let me tell you, there's something and we'll get
to that.
We'll get.
I don't want to take away fromthis, but the.
There's something unique aboutthe rto industry when it comes
to those iconic figures.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yes, and Gary is one of them.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
He is Right, he is, so he's one of them.
So he was the one, and it wasat a I think it was at a
primetime show.
He was there.
Gary Jones brought him in andsaid hey, gary, you need to come
check this out.
And then Gary was like well,let me see, young man, what you
have here, what's going on?
It takes a lot to impress Garyjust so you know.

(41:08):
He's like we are sometimesmandated to display the total
cost of ownership.
I said, click here.
Sometimes the cost of leaseservices has to be broken out.
Click here so, because Garygave me all the information.
We had it all built in.
So at the end of thepresentation gary sits there and
he looks at me and he goes.

(41:28):
You really thought ofeverything yeah and I said yeah,
we have yeah and thatkick-started our journey in rto.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
Well, I mean cue the entireness of wondersign being.
And there was there was a timewhen I couldn't think of a
rental owned dealer that didn'thave a wondersign by their
counter or in somewhere in theirshowroom where it would
literally pull people to.
And sometimes there was one ofthe stores that I was in we had
to, like, put seating around itbecause they would stand there

(41:56):
so long they would be like yougot some, you know what, I'll
get you your own seats.
So we had seating around.
They would just sit there andsit there and sit there and
before you know it, they had alist of everything that they
wanted.
They already knew what it wasgoing to cost.
They kind of knew okay, thismatches this and this is a good
set with that.
And you know what?
I've tried it with these lamps.
I've tried it with these lamps.
I think this is going to work.
This is what it looks.
Not only that is that you know.

(42:16):
You could tell right away canwe get it quick?
Can we get it?
You know whatever?
And the customer knew rightaway it was.
There was no like long-term.
Hey, I'm flipping these pagesand wait a minute.
I got this page, not that page,and hold on, this one's coming

(42:38):
out because somebody's liked itso much that they pulled it out
and it was great and it waseverywhere.
But the key word in that is wasyes, and because you.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
This triggered a memory that one of the most
powerful feedbacks that I'vereceived from it, from a dealer,
was a guy in the northeast, aterritory where people hackle
all the time, and he was on anrto operator.
He was a retailer, but he saidthe crazy thing about your
product is people stop hackling.
And I said do you know what itis?
And he's like no, I have noidea, I don't know why it is.

(43:15):
And I said because the price isdisplayed on the system 100%.
How many times have you calledJeff Bezos last week and
negotiated a price on Amazon forsomething?

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Never, that does not happen.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
No, it doesn't happen , because you assume this is the
best possible price, this iswhat it costs, this is what it
costs, this is advertised thisway and you say, okay, I'm
making a decision to either buyor not buy.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
Right Simple.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
And I said so what was your process before the
kiosk?
And he said well, we had to goin the back room, do the
calculation on the calculator,write it down on a piece of
paper and come back out.
And I said, if I was theconsumer in your store, no
offense, but I would thinkthat's sketchy.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
I would think the same thing.
Well, honestly, what do youthink?
You think that somebody goes inthere and goes let's give them
the bottom deal price, becausethey're going to accept that
first, no question.
And then they're going to leaveand the thought process is no
matter what you're selling orwho you're selling it, you walk
out into that situation and ifsomebody has that air about
negotiation, guess what You'regoing to negotiate.

(44:18):
Right, that's just the way itis.
But when you put a dollar amount, like you said, almost on a
screen, you're advertising this.
You don't want to advertise ahigh price, because then what
does somebody else do?
Wow, they're getting someserious margins on that.
I can undercut them by 5%, putit on my advertising and it

(44:40):
looks great, right?
So it's like, if you're goingto put it out there and it's not
going to be one of those haggleprices, then it's got to be a
worthwhile price.
It makes complete sense,honestly, and I think that's
what made it such a great toolby the counter.
And I'm telling you, we used tolove it and it was almost that
integrated silent salesman If Ihad somebody incoming taking a
payment and somebody that wasinterested in something.
Hey, let me show this to you.
I'm going to take care of thissituation real quick and I'll be

(45:00):
right back.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
listen, this is what it does for you, and before I
knew it, they would have anorder ready by the time I get
back I didn't have to doanything, it was just sold it's
a great babysitter and and agood silent salesperson,
absolutely, and yes, let's,let's get to the point right,
because you did this the secondtime you had to ask me it was
wise, it was we're getting tothe climax.
So just one step before that,yes, we, we got picked up.

(45:23):
We were in back then.
It was Renne Center, rightBefore it was upbound, aarons,
lots of smaller regionaloperators.
Now are we talking about 2016,2017?

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Probably 2018.
Because I want to say 2018wasn't racked right around 3,000
stores.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
Same thing for Aarons somewhere around the 3,000,
maybe 25, 27, somewhere in there.
We weren't in all those stores,though, so I don't want to
misrepresent.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
Even if you got 70%, you're talking thousands of
stores.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
I mean, we had a large number of stores, more so
on the Aaron side.
But the kicker for us wasreally and let's get to the
point, let's get to the point,let's get to the, let's get to
the was.
I had a meeting as soon as thistook off and ashley started
running like crazy.
Carrie liebensberger sat downwith me and he said listen, this

(46:17):
is great and we'll support youand we'll put you on the map and
my sales force of 655 people isgoing to run for you.
You don't want to hire themyourself and it's taking years
to do that, but Ashley is theonly vendor on there.
Do we have an understanding?

(46:38):
And I shook his hand and I saidKerry, we'll keep it Ashley
exclusive.
And we kept it Ashley exclusivealmost to a fault, right q 2017
, 2018, maybe and, like I saidbefore, there's these pivotal,
iconic people in this industry,absolutely.

(46:58):
And here's another one mike tisit oh, we, we did it.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
We mentioned the Tissot effect.
It's on here, mike, we love you, but now we're going to bring
you into the story.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
So Mike has a part in this.
So Mike has.
Obviously Mike has our kiosksbecause Ashley placed them there
and helped us place them thereand he's using them.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
Now we're talking about rent-to-own countryside
rentals in Ohio.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
Correct Countryside had kiosks.
Mike cancels his subscriptionand back then I didn't know how
influential Mike was.
I had no idea.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
When he did this, did you guys talk about it?
Did he just, out of the blue,say I don't want this?
He?

Speaker 2 (47:39):
canceled the subscription.
I reached out to him and senthim a text message and he sent
me a text message back and Iappreciate the way he
communicates.
He's a straight shooter.
He's very straight, very direct.
I am, he's very straight, verydirect maybe some sorry version

(48:08):
of a couple others.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
Right, and I said so is that the caveat?
Because it wasn't the serviceitself.
It doesn't sound like it's morelike the caveat was it's this,
but more.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
It's only an Ashley kiosk, right, and the
positioning as an Ashley kioskwas really what?
Obviously, of course, driven bythe marketing specialists.
And, if we're being honest, ifthe marketing specialist goes
into the store and sells thetool, then ashley sells the tool
.
Right, it's being viewed as anashley tool, correct?
Many people the first few yearsdidn't even know who we were.

(48:45):
They said what is this?
Is this a scam?
What, what is WonderSign?
They were like we have anAshley kiosk, but Ashley sold us
that.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
You are so on point, because I didn't even know that
WonderSign was a WonderSign name.
We actually didn't know.
One day we had a problem.
It was something simple, it wasan update or something like
that.
It wasn't connecting to onlineor whatever.
And we went to reach out andthey said, well, you got to call
WonderSign.
Who, what, who's that?
So they tell us to look at theback and I'm like, oh, it does

(49:16):
say that we never looked at itbefore.
It was just no need, yeah.
And so we called it.
Of course, it got taken care ofright away, but that was the
first time that I even knew thatthe WonderSign was WonderSign,
because you're absolutelycorrect, correct.
When they came in it was like,hey, how's the kiosk working?
Are you guys finding everythingokay?
Uh, or if they rolled out anupdate, hey, just do me a favor,
take 5, 10, 15 minutes,whatever it takes, to just

(49:36):
double check the math and makesure that we got it in right.
You know, the weeks are right,the terms are right, whatever it
is, and uh, so like, probablyevery two weeks we go in and
kind of just check several spot,check a couple things and, you
know, maybe find something.
Okay, we get fixed in 10, 15minutes, whatever.
I had no idea either, so it's.
It's one of those things likeeverybody uses your product and
nobody knows your brain nobodyknows your brand.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
Yeah, so at that point in time, um, I replied, I
said, look, mike, um Iappreciate your honesty and
candor.
Um, I get it, I understand andI didn't even try to like fight
for the business or anythinglike this, because there's
nothing to be had at that pointin time, because he made his
decision that it was a done deal.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
Now, when he said that in your mindset, was it
because you know that it wasjust Ashley directly, that it
was hard to say?

Speaker 2 (50:25):
there's a reason why you should stay, because you
kind of know that I can'tcounter that argument at that
point in time at that point intime I'm like, well, yes, you're
right, it's ashley only becauseI made this handshake, this
gentleman's agreement withcarrie, and said we're not
allowing other vendors on theplatform.
There's a way, there's aworkaround.
You can add external websites,but that's not the same.

(50:47):
Stuff isn't priced, it's not asfast.
Right, you know, it's correct.
That's the advantage of havingit natively built into the
application versus just poppingup a website so, casper, is this
the first time that yourealized that there was that
caveat?

Speaker 1 (50:59):
that might mean that much, or had you thought about
it beforehand, but it justhadn't gotten there?

Speaker 2 (51:03):
we knew it before, but I think it wasn't really, it
wasn't threatening us at thatpoint in time the the way it did
.
The moment mike sent that textmessage, that to me, was the
wake-up call to say crap, weneed, we need to figure
something out, we need to dosomething because this, this is
the beginning well, because youmentioned mike, you, you

(51:24):
mentioned mike tisson as asbeing those, one of those
figures.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
Right, you got gary fairman, yeah, you've got mike
tisson now, who is taking a lookat this and going I like, like
it.
But there's, there is somethingelse going on and I think I'm
going to go in that direction.
What, and not that it was good,bad or indifferent.
But then how soon after Mikemade this assumption and this
idea, hey, I'm going to head ina different direction.
How fast did the cards fall?

(51:48):
Fast did the cards fall it'sbeen a while, so I would say
based on my memory maybe months.
Really, it didn't take a year.
No, that's no months, that'sfast, it was fast.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
So I called gary jones over at ashley and he was.
He was kind of get on the wayout and then Mike Case took over
.
Michael Case- yes.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
Great, another Great we're actually trying to get
Michael on, so I just want youto know.
I love Mike.
I love Mike to death.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
Absolutely.
Mike Case is a heck of a human.
He's such a good person and,yeah, mike Case became the
strong figure for Ashley, thestrong figure for for Ashley and
RTO.
But Gary Gary Jones was waskind of on the way out and then
Gary's Gary was honest with meand he said, yeah, you have a
problem, man, you have a problem.

(52:41):
You have somebody out therethat is that is eating your
lunch, actively eating yourlunch, and that was Amtab right.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
You know, what's funny is that that is the exact
term that we use when we have astore that's in trouble, Like
somebody's out there eating yourlunch.
What are you going to do aboutthat?
Yes, so Mike makes a call.
A couple months later werealize how drastic that hockey
stick turned around, and Amtabis what the difference was
between saying wonder sign iswhere we're at to now we're

(53:11):
making this shift.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
So Amtab was Patrick Henley.
He's smart, right, he's a smartguy.

Speaker 1 (53:15):
He is.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
So he came in and Patrick said well, here's the
limitation that we're hearingfrom these customers.
They say well, we love thesystem, we like this Absolutely,
but we hate the fact that it'sjust one vendor and it's forcing
us to just use one vendor andif we want to showcase something
from another vendor we have tojump through hoops or it's not
there or it's just complicated,correct, and that was by design.

(53:37):
So Patrick goes in and hispitch immediately to all these
RTO businesses was that he saidall your vendors, right, no
limitation, no exclusivity.
And if I was him I would haveexploited that too.
That would have been my angletoo.
Absolutely, of course, if youhave somebody else that's stupid
enough to you know, limitthemselves to just one vendor,

(54:00):
of course.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
Well, I mean, it just seems like a series of events,
because before Ashley there wasa lot of turmoil and not sure
you know.
You don't know the future orthe destination of the boat.
You get them on board and theycreate this ability to not only
scale but scale in a huge way,and then that almost becomes the
achilles heel, absolutely so.

(54:23):
Yeah, so it was a liabilityright.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
So I went back to carry and it was in high point
at another high point furnituremarket and I remember the
conversation.
Because I was dreading theconversation, I didn't like it
and I sat down with carrie and Isaid, carrie, I have to be very
honest with you, I were introuble.
Um, mike tis had pulled theplug and that kind of set, some
sort of domino effect in in play, and the entire rto world now

(54:48):
is suddenly switching.
They're all jumping ship rightand everybody I talk to says the
same thing.
They say it's not necessarilysomething that's inherently bad
with your product.
We love it, we like it, butit's just one vendor.
It's, it's just one.
So at that point in time I said, carrie, I, we cannot continue
like this and it's not in yourbest interest if we go out of

(55:10):
business, if we don't have theresources to further develop the
platform.
That doesn't make any sense,correct?
I feel strongly that.
I mean there's two possibleways to play this.
Either you cut access to theproduct catalog for other
vendors, like amp, and.
But I said I don't want you todo that because that's the
opposite.
The free market capitalism.
That's the opposite.

(55:30):
The free market capitalism,that's the opposite of what we
should be doing.
Right, okay, but that would bean opportunity, that would be an
option, but please don't do it.
And the other option is pleaseallow us to add other brands.
And Kerry thought about it for asecond and he looked at me and
he said there's no benefit forme if you're gone.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
You need to do what's best for your business.
So this, so you and I thinkit's a great idea that you had
to talk with him, because yousaid it was based on this
gentleman's agreement.
So it wasn't really in writing.
No, there was no contract.
Okay, so it's not a writing andyou have this ability, but
you're going to bring it to themanyways.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
And, of course, because of all the great
opportunities that they they'vebrought to the situation.
We would be nowhere right inthis industry if it wasn't for
him and ashley right, right, soI owe them, of course.
I owe them at least the decencyto sit down and say, hey, I'm
sorry, we need to make a change,right we?

Speaker 1 (56:27):
have we do version 2.0.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
We need a version 2.0 because right now we're going
to die on the vine if we don'tmake these changes if we don't
make these changes, because atthe end of the day, yes, of
course we can be a catalog forashley, that's probably a nice
little business, but that's notwhat the company wanted to do.
The company needed to grow andat that point in time we cannot
grow.
You, you know you've reachedthe limits.

(56:49):
At some point in time we cannotgrow.
You know you've reached thelimits.
At some point, the territoriescame back and these marketing
specialists said hey, we placedenough of those units, there's
nobody left.
We have everybody that carries.
Ashley has a kiosk.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
Right?
Well, I mean just so thateverybody understands everybody
had a wonder sign.
Every store that I went to andI'm not saying everybody in the
sense that every single store,but you would see more of those
wonder signs out than not, andeverybody was an expert At least
one person in the store can getto anything you wanted to on
that sign in a quickness, and sosometimes we even reference

(57:24):
them like hey, why don't youtalk to Julie?
Hey, why don't you talk to Bob?
I mean, he knows that he'd get,just get in there.
Boom, boom, boom.
And here you go.
So we have this rise, thishistoric rise, where we're
nowhere near thought of to indevelopment.
To now you have one of thebiggest furniture carriers in
the country backing you andsaying hey, we want to take care
of our customers and you havethe best way to do it.

(57:48):
We show this instrumentalgrowth and then the RTO sector
jumps on and then they, almostas fundamentally, come off.
So now we don't see as many orany.
Honestly, I haven't seen any.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
No, I mean.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
Any wonder signs in the story, and so the reason I
say that is because there's areason why you're here.
It's not just a story.
I would imagine that this isnot just the end of the wonder
science story.
And then we're, we're done, andyou left.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
And that's it.
This is the moment when you'redeflated.
You're sitting in that chair inthe movie theater and you maybe
go for a little round ofpopcorn.
And you know, this is not over,right, we're going to come back
.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
The Phoenix popcorn.
And you know this is not over,right, we're gonna come back.
The phoenix rises from theashes.
This is the intermission.
We're going to the intermission.

Speaker 2 (58:35):
Right, it's so dramatic, there's no ashes here,
but it's the phoenix analogy.
Might, might not be good, butum, no, so for us.
That was the.
That was the moment that reallydid the wake-up call to say,
okay, are we a business, is it aviable business idea for maybe
this industry and otherindustries, or are we just an
Ashley catalog?
Right, and we want to stay that, and that's okay.

(58:55):
I mean, there's legitimacy inthat too.
And at that moment we had thesecond handshake agreement.
I shook his hand again andKerry said you need to do what's
best for your business.
But that also meant that theday after I left, kerry was out
there looking for a replacement.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
Because he's a good businessman, of course.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
Right, no, because he was.
I mean you don't become thepresident of sales at Ashley
Furniture, and I mean he waswith Ashley for like 30 years,
Absolutely.
Right and he he grew, he helpedgrow Ashley to the chuggernaut
that that they are.
He, to a degree, as Iunderstand, coined the term
marketing specialist.

(59:34):
He was the one that said stopbeing a rep, Stop acting like a
rep.
You're more than that Be themarketing specialist Bringing in
vendors, that whole concept ofendorsing marketing vendors.
He basically Kerry, to me isalways the Michelin guide.
Are you familiar with the storyof the Michelin guide?

Speaker 1 (59:51):
and how that came about.
So I do know it is one star,two star, three star and they go
around, but I actually don'tknow the inaugural story.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Michelin is a tire company out of France.
Right, why would a tire companyprint a book that rates
restaurants?
I've always wondered, but I'venever known, because it gets
people to drive and there you go, there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
I've always wondered, but I've never known, because
it gets people to drive.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
But I, and there you go, there you go, your tire
company.

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
Because I mean and from what I understand, because
I've known people who havediscussed it, and it's not easy
to get a star, Absolutely Two orthree, I mean, you've got to be
exquisite and they are few andfar between Worth the drive
Worth the drive.

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
So you're a destination, you become a
destination.
So this whole concept is wouldyou sit in the car?
I'm a foodie.
I would sit in my car, myvehicle, for three hours, just
to drive to a restaurant, justto find some place good to go
other people might think that's,that's lunacy and and it's not
worth it for them.
That's okay.
For me it is so.
For me, the guide michin or theMichelin guide would absolutely
lead to me probably having toreplace tires sooner.

(01:00:54):
That whole idea I find itfascinating To me.
That's such a fascinating story.
Carrie is the same way.
Carrie is the one that saiddon't go in and pitch hard.
How many slots you want to geton the floor and how many
placements you get.
That's the end right.
Pitch the way there.
Make them more successful, helpthem with marketing.

(01:01:15):
Bring the website agency tothem.
Be the one that helps themdiscover somebody like Esquire
Advertising with the unmaskedpixel right.
Adam was on your show.
He talked about this.
That's one of those pivotaltools.
It's such fascinatingtechnology, that's something
that if Ashley, as the vendor,brings that to you as the

(01:01:36):
operator, you're always goingback to the Ashley marketing
specialist saying what else doyou have for me?
What else you got, like, can youhelp me with this?
Can you help me with that?
So you become an advisor to thebusiness versus the rep from a
different company that is justconcerned about his paycheck and
his commission and hascommission breath and you smell

(01:01:57):
it and it's like that's notpleasing.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
Well, it's almost like a partnership right
absolutely this benefits me andit benefits you.
Let's do this together, let'sfigure this out together.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
Let's market research this together so he's that kind
of visionary.
So he and again, I'm not mad athim for doing this, because
that's what he needed to do heneeded to find a replacement, so
he, he enabled everybody andtheir mother to compete with us
on the Ashley floor, which isokay.
I embrace competition.
I love it.
I think it's great.
It makes us better.
Again, I'm a huge proponent offree market capitalism.

(01:02:23):
I think capitalism is thegreatest system on the planet.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Like you said, when you have 300 people, 300 million
people, who are a potentialcustomer, it creates a good
opportunity.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
Oh, absolutely, and it forces you to be better.
That's why I love capitalism.
You vote with your dollar,right?
So Mike Tissot voted with thedollar.
He canceled his subscription.
He said I'm not paying youanymore.
That was the wake-up call thatwe needed, right?
That's why it works so well.
So long story short yes, we're.
We still have presence in rtoum, but I had a conversation

(01:02:59):
with dennis shields, another,all right, iconic, pivotal
you're mentioning a lot of namesand if anybody doesn't know,
dennis shields helps run a trip,so you're now on the trip board
.
So Danny had a conversation withme and he said listen, dude,
you dropped off the face of theearth.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
And I said, wow, yeah , I've never looked at it this
way, but he's like from the RTOperspective.
You need to understand RTO is afamily.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
Yes, it's not an industry.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Yes, it's so tight.
Understand RTO is a family,it's not an industry.
It's so tight-knit.
We're a family.
So if you don't show up to thefamily gathering, if you're not
at the turkey dinner,thanksgiving, people at first
might think, well, maybesomething's wrong.
Second, third year, if you'renot showing up, they're
forgetting about you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
He's absolutely right , because that's the truth

(01:04:13):
no-transcript.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
Then we went to rto world, um, as a sponsor and as
we're a trip, uh, vendor sponsoras well.
And then there was a goodconversation.
We had this banner on our booththat said first-time exhibitor
Wondersign.
First-time exhibitor.
And somebody came up a customerof ours.
She came up and she's like whatdoes that mean?

(01:04:42):
First-time exhibitor?
Right, right, we have yourkiosk since 2015.
Right, no, 2016.
And I said, well, it's thefirst time that we as a company
are here, because in the past wepiggybacked off of Ashley, we
were part of the Ashley booth,we had kiosks, we brought kiosks
, we set them up, we operatedthem, we manned them, but we
were inside the Ashley realm,correct?

(01:05:04):
So now this is the first timethat we're actually there on our
own.
And she's like oh, that makessense.
Now, I get it, okay, but to methat was the takeaway from that
conversation was like, oh crap,yeah, we kind of missed that
opportunity.
To really again to your point.
It was known as the ashleykiosk nobody knew.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
It was wonders it was .

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
So we really have to be there and and and make a name
.
So at that point in said, okay,let's decide now that we're
going to be at every meeting ofthe minds, every trip, every, um
, uh, rto world show, we'regoing to go to the Heartland
show in Missouri and, uh, let'ssee what we can do in order to
sponsor, to support, to just bepresent and show people.

(01:05:48):
We're not gone, in fact, we'reback.
And we're back with a vengeanceright All right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Here's a comeback story.
Here's the comeback.
Here's the comeback story.

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
It's not going to be another hour.
I'm not going to bore you todeath, also because a lot of it
is in the future, so I can'treally talk too much about it.
But what I can tell you is MikeTissot has been influential in
more than one way and he doesn'teven know.
I guess he knows now.
I'm sure he listens.
He will know now, he will knownow Shout out to Mike what's

(01:06:27):
absolutely fantastic about Mike.
There's multiple things thatare great about Mike Tissot, but
what's great about Mike is thathe is a stickler when it comes
to KPIs and metrics.
That is really what he focuseson.

Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
You know, what's funny is in an RTO world, it's.
One of the things that he wastalking about was the KPIs,
absolutely yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
And he forces operators to think about things
like this.
You know where operatorssometimes maybe don't look at a
KPI like this or a metric, orit's not that important to them
or they didn't even think aboutit.
And he says, no, you need tounderstand how can you improve
something if you don't measureit right?
You need to measure all these,all these things.
So one of the aspects when itcomes to data and measuring KPIs

(01:07:07):
when it comes to our product iscompared to what you're doing
on a website.
Everybody I guarantee youeverybody in your audience has
Google Analytics or uses somesort of analytics tool when it
comes to the website traffic andyou get signals from that.
But you also get a lot of noise, a lot of white noise, a lot of

(01:07:27):
noise.
You have stores in, let's say,you have stores in Tampa.
If you have people frommaryland on your website,
chances are they're never gonnasign an agreement with you.
They never said not anytimesoon.
Not anytime soon unless theythey get ahead of a move down
here or something, but for themost part you have people.
They cross shop you.
Maybe they come in directly ona product page because they're

(01:07:50):
cross shopping and a darcy sofafrom Ashley, they end up on your
website.
They will never be customers,that's noise right, Right.
That's noise that takes awayfrom the signal.
So you have to do a really goodjob online in finding out where
do people come from, how dothey come to me?
Is it a search term?
Do they come to the product?
Do they come to the home page?
And then figure this out.

(01:08:12):
That's tough and there's again,there's a lot of noise that
takes away from the signal andsometimes it can be misleading.
What nobody does is finding outwhat people search for when
they're in your store.
Wouldn't it be great if you hada tool that captures searches

(01:08:32):
from people while they're inyour store?
Wait, isn't there a tool thatis in the store that does that?
So we started doing this forsome of the top 100 retailers in
for in the on the retail sidein furniture okay and
mind-blowing.

(01:08:53):
Suddenly the merchants say waita second, I don't have to use
gut feeling anymore in order tomerchandise my floor what I
think they want, because I thinkthis is selling absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
You're going after what customers are walking in
and saying this is really whatI'm looking for.
Yes, at some point I'm reallylooking for this, this.
I might look at that and Imight look at this, but my
initial what brought me throughthose swinging doors was this.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
So every search, every product discovery, every
additional option, variant,every attribute on a kiosk, on a
salesperson's tablet, on acomputer has to be captured, is
captured and then is beingpresented as actionable data.
So if you go and you look intoa store in South Florida and

(01:09:40):
it's all white furniture but thenumber one search term on the
color attribute is dark brown,you mis-merchandise your floor.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
You probably should change what you have.
Put some brown on the floor,right, right, and see how that
sells which sectional shape isthe most popular?

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
is it l shape?
Is it u shape?
Is it with the chase?
It's always the chase, it's thechase, but it's really let's be
honest.

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
But so how does this work?
So we we have a kiosk fromWondersign.
We no longer carry them, orthere might be some older
versions out there, whatever thecase, but it's not the
mainstream that it was.
Amtab is something that it is alittle bit different and
correct me if I'm wrong, butAmtab is usually used by the

(01:10:28):
actual companies themselves, theretailers, to purchase the
product, the several differentproducts.
The difference is that it's nottied to one right.
You're going to one platform formultiple different vendors,
whether it be Ashley or Coasteror whatever the case is, and
that's what made it relatable.
So what you're saying is that'sgood and all so go ahead and

(01:10:50):
find a place where you can do alot of shopping, but what you're
shopping for is what wondersign is now bringing.
If you, if you have a place toshop for it, that's great.
In other words, if you have theamazon of ordering for the rto
industry, great.
But the hot sellers?
I'm going to tell you whatthose are.
I'm going to tell you what thegreat things to go after are.

(01:11:11):
How do you do that?

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
So I think you mentioned something that's
important there's a place forboth systems.
If you need to submit POs, wedon't do that.
We have a direct orderingcapability that is built into
the platform, but there'sintricacies when it comes to RTO
.
It's not as simple as retailwhere you just say okay, here's

(01:11:34):
the price, it's $500.
You want to pay it?
Okay, here, apple pay done andyou place the order right.
Right.
It's just not that simple.
You have to make sure there'san agreement in place and they
have to sign the agreement, andmaybe you take a down payment or
whatever it might be.
There's a place for AMP.
I'm not here to say, oh, getrid of AMP.
Not at all.
There's a place for AMP.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
Patrick, we're saying that there's a place for you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
I mean, I don't want to sound arrogant, but it's a
good product.
The thing is it's notconsumer-facing right, and I
think that's something that wealso had to come to.
The realization again is we'reexperts when it comes to
consumer facing information,when it comes to displaying it
in a way that it's so intuitivethat somebody from the street
can walk into a store notraining whatsoever.

(01:12:19):
They've never seen it right,they can walk up to it and
within two seconds, that's the.
That's basically the.

Speaker 1 (01:12:25):
You know the learning curve they have gone through
the learning curve.

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):
They have to know what to do right it has to be
that intuitive right and wespent a lot of time and money
and effort and energy intomaking sure that that is the
best possible experience and wekeep inventing, reinventing this
yes, the consumer facing theexposed interface.
That is us Right, and that is asfar as I understand.

(01:12:50):
Patrick back then thought okay,that's an easy one, we already
have the data there, theyalready use it for ordering and
purchasing.
That is as far as I understand.
Patrick back then thought okay,that's an easy one, we already
have the data there, theyalready use it for ordering and
purchasing.
Why don't we just expose it ona touchscreen?
And I think that was themiscalculation, because it's not
that simple.
You can't just take data thatis meant for the retailer or the
operator and just expose it tothe consumer and say, okay,
here's a bloody mess.

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
And navigate it, just learn and navigate.
We have these guys.
We pay 40 hour, 40 hours a weekto learn it, but you learn it
in five minutes and we're allgood, it only has 40 different
fields.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
No, it's.
You can't do that.
So it we're.
Basically, what we're doing isand, and, again.
I'm, I'm go, I'm speaking in thefuture a little bit to a degree
, but we're developing for anyscreen, so the phone is becoming
a carrier for the app yes thetablet is becoming a carrier,
for the app already is, butwe're making the tablet app much

(01:13:43):
, much better and it's reallyabout making it so intuitive and
simple so that anybody can useit and people start using it,
because that's the mostimportant thing.
You need sessions.
You need to know what they'redoing.
What they're doing, whatthey're searching for, what
they're looking for.

Speaker 1 (01:13:56):
It's funny you mentioned it that way because
you know I went to theWondersign website.
Kind of look at it and it'spretty simple to get to where
you want to go.
It's pretty quick to understandsomething that you want to do
and the layers aren't so deepthat you're kind of going into
multiple menus to get to whereyou want to do and the layers
aren't so deep that you're kindof going into multiple menus to
get to where you want to go.
And was that the idea increating the website as well?

(01:14:18):
I'm going to show you how toget it done because it shows all
the all the companies that youwork with now, not just the
rental home company, but ofcourse, the retail companies of
course Ashley's still on thereand, uh, and it seems very quick
, very easy to use.
Was that always the idea whenyou're going forward and saying,
hey, being in the customer'sspace and the fact that they
might not understand anything ofwhat's going on but they can

(01:14:40):
digitally maneuver and find andresource whatever they're
looking for within clicks?
and kind of understand how itworks, because I can tell you
right now and nothing againstAmpTime but I know that if I was
a consumer directly going therethat would create some issue.

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
Well, because you're taking information that is not
designed for you and you'reexposing it to a target audience
that shouldn't be exposed to it.
That's what I'm saying.
It absolutely has its place asan ordering tool and to do your
purchase orders, your salesorders, that management or even
see inventory from brands,that's okay, but it shouldn't be

(01:15:20):
consumer facing.
That information should not beconsumer facing, correct.
Well, there's a lot.
So the number one thing thatwe're developing right now is
something that is calledsemantic search.
Semantic search is how peoplesearch today how you search with
Amazon Alexa, how you searchwith your Siri on your phone.

(01:15:44):
You have to use the exact termand then it searches only by
title.
That was the version one of theapplication Two.
We can search by attributes, wecan search by collections, we
can search by categories and allthat kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:16:00):
Now, but we're still not where I want it to be.
So we're saying the differenceis SKU number versus black
leather sofa with four chairsand nail heads.

Speaker 2 (01:16:08):
Yes, and now it's like I need something that seats
eight people and is great forfootball Sundays, but I also
have pets.

Speaker 1 (01:16:17):
Right, so dialed in.
That was such an AI searchright there.
It's like, hey, just find thisfor me, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
But it's also disconnected.
It's kind of like, well, mymind goes everywhere and I'm
like, oh crap, I also have.
You know, woofie, you know andhe shits a lot and all that kind
of stuff.
So you need performance fabrics.
So the system needs tounderstand okay, we need
performance fabrics.
Probably maybe leather would bea good idea, so it's easier to
clean instead of fabric and itsinks in.
So how do you teach a machineto understand something like

(01:16:45):
this?
So that's where all ourinvestments come into play over
the last five years into data,and I think that's something
that I don't want to makeexcuses.
I hate making excuses and thisis not an excuse, but part of
the problem for the last maybefour years is that there's not a
lot of visible change to whatwe did, because every dollar

(01:17:11):
that we invested we invested onunder the hood improvements,
data model, normalization ofdata every single vendor catalog
, over 100 vendor catalogs nowon the platform every single
vendor catalog is normalized.
What does that mean?
Stupid example Somemanufacturer calls it mushroom,
the color, another calls itcoffee, another calls it

(01:17:32):
espresso chocolate.
You name it whatever.
Whatever the marketing teamcomes up with, the system has no
idea how to differentiate that.
So you need to tell the system,by the way, this is dark brown.
And then you also need to tellthe system, by the way, if the
recipient of that data is awebsite, it's actually called
saddle brown, because that's theweb three term that the website

(01:17:54):
understands in order to renderthe correct swatch.
Because if you tell the websitethis is dark brown.
The swatch is empty because thewebsite said I don't know what
that means, right?
So you have all these differentlanguages that these different
systems speak.
So that's an improvement, I cantell you.
And a podcast is a great formatto have a conversation between
two humans.
How do you put this inmarketing and say hey, operator,

(01:18:21):
I know we suck because theapplication hasn't changed in
the last six months, because weinvested all our money and
effort into making improvementsunder the hood so that we have a
data model that isunderstandable by an AI system,
so you can say X, y, z and thestuff comes up right.
It's a tough sell, so we haveto find the balance.
And now I mean, I'm in this newjob for what?
Now?
Four months, or something likethis right, so I'm past the

(01:18:44):
honeymoon phase.
Well, crap hits the fan, but no,but it's.
That is one of the number onethings that I want to do is we
need to find a balance betweenjust making under the hood
improvements that are notvisible to people and tangible
and also making sure we have avery solid development track for

(01:19:05):
the application itself.
So, very soon and I hate doingthis it's oh, it's coming soon,
you know, just wait.

Speaker 1 (01:19:12):
Coming soon to a store near you.
Coming soon to a store near you?

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
Yeah, if it's.
Oh, it's coming soon, you know,just wait.
Coming soon to a store near you.
Coming soon to a store near you?
Um, yeah, if it's still there.
Um, coming soon is the um.
There's a facelift going on onthe application side.
There's features andimprovements that are coming.
We just implemented 3d and arum, so that's something that's
brand new.
Um.
You're probably still familiarwith the texting off of the
kiosk right the texting One ofthe most popular features that

(01:19:36):
we've ever built.
There's 350,000 text messages amonth are being sent from those
kiosks and the text message nowturns into an AR model when you
get it.
So if somebody's in the storeand the decision maker, the wife
, is at home, always, always,always, he can text her and on

(01:19:57):
her phone that turns into an ARmodel and she can see it in the
room.

Speaker 1 (01:20:01):
Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
Right there on her phone.

Speaker 1 (01:20:03):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:20:04):
So she can immediately say, yes, this fits,
color looks good, size looksgood, it fits in the room.
You have measurements.
Obviously, correctly, we havescale built in so you can see.

Speaker 1 (01:20:13):
So you've really kind of overhauled it.
Oh, absolutely.
So we've got this regularvehicle that came in.
We've got a 2014 vehicle with a2023, 2024 engine model inside
of it, right?

Speaker 2 (01:20:28):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:20:29):
Now it's streamlined.
So when I say that, the reasonI ask is because so it's still a
wonder sign.
So when somebody comes in nowthey have the wonder sign,
they're doing their searchesthrough the wonder sign and now
all these are available througha wonder sign in the store.
So you're capturing all the, allthe data that's being searched
for everything, all the ARmodeling, all the texting,

(01:20:50):
everything that happens multipleplatforms of different carriers
and different companies is allhappening.
So in these last couple ofyears I don't see them as often.
Is there another reinvestmentinto the signs?
We're going to put more signsin there.
Do you have newer versions thatare going to be going?

Speaker 2 (01:21:08):
out at the stores?
Fantastic question, thank you,I was going there.
But another big aspect is thehardware itself and one thing
that we had to learn, and it wasanother painful learning people
are okay with replacing aniPhone every year, every two
years, and spending a thousanddollars.
You don't feel it because it'slike you know you make your

(01:21:30):
payments, but they're okay withdoing that, but after six years
of using a commercial-gradetouchscreen in a store and it
has to be replaced, you get alot of pushback.

Speaker 1 (01:21:41):
Well, it's a very intricate piece of inventory or
equipment, I should say, becauseit's a big investment it is.

Speaker 2 (01:21:50):
I completely understand it.
Psychologically speaking, it'slike wait a second.
I paid $3,000 for this damnthing and I have to replace it
after six years.
Six years is a long time forelectronics.
It is nowadays.

Speaker 1 (01:22:08):
It is, and that cycle is so fast and I'm waiting for
the next iPhone to happen, likeI'm waiting for them to do the
iPhone and then go, hey, andthis is when we're letting out
the next iPhone, because it justhappened so fast and and I, and
I honestly believe that in theworld of electronics, phones are
actually they're, they'reactually holding on to them
longer, because you couldprobably have another version
within eight months, right, soit's, it's, it's going so fast
now and the cycle is soridiculous on the on the phone

(01:22:29):
side now that it's kind of like,well, okay, do we really need
to do this right?

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
so, on the kiosk side , so we actually haven't even
talked about this, but we werepurchased.
The company was purchased innovember of 2023, okay, by a
company called giga cloudtechnology and, um, they're a
big b2b marketplace, so theythey connect sellers and buyers,
um and and then, uh, facilitateend to like, end-to-end
shipments.
They do a lot of drop shipping,a lot of e-com business and

(01:22:58):
part of their publicly tradedcompany on nasdaq.
So part of that also means thatwe have access, obviously now
to bigger tools, um, more money.
I mean, before it was, it wasbootstrapped, right, it was just
it was andy retirement.
Basically, in the company.
We never had outside investors,we never took a dollar, it was
all just self-funded.

(01:23:19):
And now we just have access toa bigger scale.
And what that means on thehardware side is that we started
sourcing hardware.
We found a vendor for a 4Kkiosk at a third of the cost of
the previous one.
Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 (01:23:37):
Yes, the kiosk was an Echo Elo, elo.
Yeah, that's what it was, elo.
And I remember that every storehad an Elo somewhere in there,
whether it be the small kiosk orthe big one and we don't
abandon Elo.

Speaker 2 (01:23:51):
I mean Elo Touch is, by the way, the inventor of the
touchscreen.
Right, they invented thetouchscreen in the 1960s.
So Elo is a phenomenal companyand Elo is still absolutely a
vendor of choice.
It's just that we havedifferent target audiences.
Elo is basically Elo is thego-to McDonald's touchscreens.
The self-ordering touchscreensare Elo screens.

(01:24:12):
Target is using them, Walgreensis using them.

Speaker 1 (01:24:14):
I mean, I do see them a lot.
I do see them a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:24:17):
It's state-of-the-art , that's pretty much what it is,
but it also it's an Americancompany.
It's also expensive, right?
So we have, obviously we haveoperators, and especially in RTO
.
I think that's something thatit's funny.
Adam said the same thing onyour podcast when he said I had
to understand first that RTO hasless money to spend, right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:36):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:24:36):
Because it's not a retail business and you're
making $2,000 today.

Speaker 1 (01:24:41):
Up front Right.
Correct it's over a period oftime.
It's over a period of timeright.

Speaker 2 (01:24:45):
Over the lifetime of the customer.
So you have to.
That changes your mindset, thatchanges how you approach things
and how you buy things.
So we're working, especially onthe rto side, we're working
very hard to have something thatis almost like it's almost like
a zero percent interest programfor the hardware to bake it
into the cost of thesubscription.

(01:25:06):
So it's not like you know, Ithink.
I think it's a great idea thoughI mean that's, that's how, to
me, that's how rto does businessright.
It's kind of like you're gonnaunderstand that more.

Speaker 1 (01:25:16):
Number one and number two you're not if you're not
taking that expense up front,especially for smaller dealers.
Because you do have the renacenters, you have the errands,
you have the tis to havecountryside rental, you do have,
um, you know, maybe magic thatyou can do it, but you have some
smaller guys too that you.
That investment with threestores might be very difficult.
But if you're going to inputthat, if it's going to be a part

(01:25:38):
of this monthly plan that I'mon, and so as long as I have the
plan for a year, two years,three years or whatever the case
is, and then we just switch itout because it's part of the
plan, that's a lot more eatable,you know.
It's a lot more digestible whenyou're talking about cash flow
and how I'm going to invoicethis out and how I'm going to
take care of this and how am Igoing to net 30 that, and then
now we're adding another buildto that.

(01:25:58):
So how does that work?
So it's, it's definitelyintegratable to the pnls.
It's like a cell phone, it isright well, it is right, you
know.

Speaker 2 (01:26:06):
So that that's where the the idea came from.
But, uh, it has to bedigestible, yeah, so I think.
To sum it up, on the hardwareside, we're going 4K, that's
double the resolution of the oldscreens.
We're drastically getting thecost of the hardware down to
make it more palatable, andthat's something you touched on
as well, right, so there's a lotof screens out there.

(01:26:28):
At some point they stoppedworking.
There's technical issues andthen it becomes hard to replace
right, because it's again a bigupfront investment.

Speaker 1 (01:26:38):
So we're trying to eliminate that or trying to
minimize at least the impact.
But I think sometimes too iswhen you put an investment in,
the idea is how long is thatinvestment going to last?
And we recently spoke as howfast technology is moving and
what direction it's going.
So if I'm a vendor and I'msaying, okay, I'm going to spend
$3,000, $3,500, whatever thecase is, how long does that last
me?
How long can I guarantee thatsomebody's going to be walking

(01:27:00):
up to this piece of merchandiseand they're going to be using it
for whatever this piece ofequipment and using it for
whatever they need to use it for?
And am I going to get myinvestment out of that, as
opposed to again on our phones?
We have those investments but Ihaven't fully invested it yet.
I'm investing in the month tomonth.
So I know that I'm using itfrom month to month and when

(01:27:22):
that investment changes I caneither upgrade or I can save
money by not doing so.
And I'm that guy.
My wife will kill me and she'llgo.
You have that phone for liketwo or three years.
It still works, but my wifelike you said, they make the
decisions she's got every phonethat comes out.
It's like I want the difference, I want the extra clarity, I

(01:27:42):
want the better battery life, Iwant the USB-C versus the
lightning cable.
I want to be able to see themoon when I zoom in.
That makes her happy, and soyou have the differences.
But having flexibility is ishuge in comparison to the way it
was.

Speaker 2 (01:27:57):
It's key, so so kudos to that and that brings us to
the software portion.
That's the last portion to thisand that that's.
You just hit the nail on thehead, you just said it.
We need to do a better job ofcommunicating all the
improvements and all the stuffthat, right, we can't have the
situation where you know we'rehere and it's kind of I didn't
even know.
Well, then we suck, then wedon't do a good job on the

(01:28:17):
marketing side.
Right, we have to be better.
We have to communicate much,much more aggressively and say,
look, this is all the stuff thatwe're doing, this is, these are
all the investments that we'reputting into the product to make
it better, to make it so thatit feels like you're talking to
chat gpt, to make it feel like,hey, this is something anybody
can use.
Right, you just walk in andit's just, it's exciting.

Speaker 1 (01:28:37):
It was, I remember, the first time I had to wonder
sign usage and it was so easyand intuitive to use.
It actually shocked me becauseI asked somebody how to use it
and, before they had made it tome, I probably figured out most
of the things on my own, becauseit wasn't hard to find.
It wasn't hidden in some submenu.
It wasn't an idea of like I'vegot to learn how to put this in
here and put that in there andmake sure that I use it and

(01:28:59):
execute it.
It was just very simple andthat's one thing I did really
appreciate about Wondersign.
So we have an idea of how weare going to be different.
When I say we, I'm talkingabout Wondersign.
Wondersign is going to bedifferent than it was before.
It is not an amp tab, it isWondersign 2.0.
It comes at an easier cost.

(01:29:21):
It gives you better dial in asto what you should be carrying,
not alone just for what you wantto, because of course sometimes
you go into business going thisis what I want to sell.
I don't want to sell thisparticular thing and we get
emotionally attached to that.
You know, and and every storeand rent-to-own is going to
understand us Rent-to-own has.
Every rent-to-own store has itsown heartbeat, right Depending

(01:29:43):
on the location and what stateit's in and what county it's in.
It has its own heartbeat and sowe get, we get, as people who
run this.
I think we should have this andI think we should have that.
And now we have this toolthat's not only going to be
affordable but intuitive enoughto say you can carry that if you
want to, but if you carried alittle bit of this, you'd
probably be doing a lot better.

(01:30:03):
We're looking for the hockeystick, and so you have that
ability.
What we're talking about now iswhen does that come out?
When does the prize unveil?
When do we get to see the, the,the fruits of your labor for
being able to yeah, do under thehood?

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
and now this is the moment where I get into hot
water, right.
So the hardware is, thehardware is ready to go, the
hardware is shipping right now.
So I think, um, by it's, thefirst week of October 2024 is
when the 4K kiosks officiallyare available in the country.
That's number one.
Number two on the software side, it comes out in stages, but

(01:30:45):
the analytics platform is readyto go within a couple months,
and then the app for cell phonesis going to be in January of
2025.
Yeah, so we're right around thecorner.

Speaker 1 (01:30:57):
With the app on a cell phone.
Okay, because to me that'sgoing to be paramount.
Everybody uses their phone,even when I'm checking the
analytics of the show orwhatever.
Website visits are like 85% nowand it's always peaking a
little bit more, a little bitmore on cell phones.

Speaker 2 (01:31:17):
I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:31:17):
I eventually probably have somebody that's in the
office looking me up and saying,hey, this is the show and this
is what they got.
But I'm going to have to tailorthe website to mobile.
Right now it's in amulti-platform where you can use
it for mobile and you can useit for this, but we're actually

(01:31:38):
looking at making the websitemore to that, because that's
where people are.
They're on the phone.
So when you say the app on thephone, how does that translate
to the consumer using that whenthey're inside the store, as
opposed to just going to Google,because I have like a Google.
You know what does it call awidget?
I have my Google widget and Igo straight to that and that's
what I use.
How do you get a customer inthe store using that app so that
I can get the data that I needto carry the furniture that they

(01:31:58):
?

Speaker 2 (01:31:58):
probably want.
The idea is for the associateto use it on the phone.

Speaker 1 (01:32:03):
So it's not a consumer facing app Part of that
.

Speaker 2 (01:32:06):
we looked into that too, because we had a lot of
customers asking for this andsay, why can't you guys develop
an app for the consumer?
And say, why can't you guysdevelop an app for the consumer?
And the problem is there's agraveyard area on everybody's
phone of apps that they neveruse.
And now iOS does a pretty goodjob of basically saying hey, you
never used this app, why don'tyou just delete?

Speaker 1 (01:32:27):
it.
They do right.
Yes, they do actually, becauseit just takes up space.

Speaker 2 (01:32:32):
I mean, there's even big brands struggle with this.
Home depot had a big.
There was a big uh controversyabout their app usage and all
this kind of stuff.
Because it's everybody came outwith their app and unless
there's a, there's somethingtransactional in it, like target
, where you get the discount andyou have to show that code.
Or, uh, amazon, and if you shopat whole foods you have to show

(01:32:54):
that, the qr, and if you shopat Whole Foods you have to show
the QR code in order to get yourdiscount.
Unless there's a transactionalcomponent, nobody uses the app,
right?

Speaker 1 (01:33:04):
So I'm glad that you've done all this, because
every time that you mentionsomething, it is so spot on.
I'm looking at my life and theway I shop with my family, and
that's absolutely true Because Ihave a Home.
Absolutely true, because I havea Home Depot app.
I have a Lowe's app, and unlessI'm walking in the front door
and literally looking for a toolthat I can't find, and I can't
find anybody around, that'sprobably the only time I use it.
Do I cherish the app Absolutely, but do I use it?

(01:33:26):
No, and I've had.
It's funny you say it, becauseseveral times I've had my phone
go.
This is going to sleep in thebackground, and so it's like oh,
I forgot, I even opened that.
Whenever it was that I openedthat, okay, so move on.
So spot on with that for sure.
So then now it goes to anassociate who helps out the
customer on the front end andsay, hey, I'm looking for the

(01:33:49):
sofa for the game with dog andI'm going to have this, and so
the associate would take thattime to put that in there, and
all those relevant searcheswould then pile up to a, an
amount of data that goes out asa monthly it's, it's available
in in real time so you can go inand you can pull your reports
and you can say, okay, I want tosee across my 17 locations

(01:34:11):
whichSA did which salesassociate did well.

Speaker 2 (01:34:15):
And did financing come up in the conversation?
Did we suggest that?
Or you know, on the retail side, that's important For RTO,
pretty much everything isfinancing.
So the whole idea is to say,okay, as a business owner, I can
go in and at any point in timeI take the data out that I need.
I can go in and at any point intime I take the data out that I
need and I can search byattributes, like I said, you

(01:34:43):
know, the sectional shape orwhatever else, by price point,
by manufacturer, by likeanything that's in the data.
So that was all the effortsover the past few years to
normalize the data, to make thedata uniform across all the
different vendors so that thesystem understands it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:52):
So when we're talking about getting all this together
, and now we have the face,we've got to get the information
out there, because you said Igot it all under the hood, it
looks good, but nobody reallyknows it yet.

Speaker 2 (01:35:02):
We need to get it out there.
So how are we doing that?
So how are we doing that?
So what we did is we alsoidentified and said okay, we
also need a person that isresponsible for this industry.
And that goes back to what wesaid before.
Rto is a family Tight knit, youknow it's hard to break into,

(01:35:24):
but it's also it's easier tobreak into it if it's a human to
human connection.

Speaker 1 (01:35:29):
Correct.

Speaker 2 (01:35:30):
So we identified this and we dedicated somebody.
His name is Evan Lewis.
Evan is on our team.
Evan is basically the Adam Ball.

Speaker 1 (01:35:38):
Oh, here we go, right .
So you guys got to understand.
So Adam comes to me, he gets meover there and we talk about
this, but he had such a firebehind us Like he really made me
go and do that.

Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
I love talking with Adam because he's great, so
you've got this Adam Ball-esqueEvan who's going to take charge
on this.
So, evan Lewis, he comes from aretail background, so he was
working in his brother's store.
His brother has a furniture andmattress store.
He was working in that store.
He did everything.
He was a delivery driver, hedid the sales floor.

Speaker 1 (01:36:10):
He did the whole.
Thing.

Speaker 2 (01:36:11):
Absolutely.
He knows he lives this right.
He knows and it's close to himbecause it's his brother's
business.
His brother is using us and wasso fascinated by what we do.
Okay, that's when he told himhe said you should apply for a
job.
Good, and we hired him because,I mean, he has that, evan has
this.
I don't even know how todescribe this, but there's

(01:36:34):
something in people where it'skind of like you just know they
have the right mentality andhardworking.
You know good, absolutely goodstructure to say whatever it is,
I can learn it Right.
He didn't have softwareexperience.
He didn't have any kind oftechnology experience, but
that's all teachable.

Speaker 1 (01:36:52):
You can learn that.
I try to tell people all thetime when you're hiring, you're
not hiring for what you canteach them, you're hiring from
what they bring to the table.
And that fire, that personality, that drive you can't instill.
Drive you can instill.
This is how you do this.
This is the task right.
You put it here, you cross yourT's, you dot your I's, you hit
enter.
Those are all teachable thedrive to do it right, the

(01:37:13):
gumption to say I think I can dothat better.
Or if I come up with this typeof pitch, I think they're going
to understand it more.
I'm going to be able to relatemore to these RTO companies
because if we approach it thisway, they will see the benefit
of how much more they can getout of this, absolutely 100%.
I'm actually kind of curiouswhat he's like and I would like

(01:37:34):
to meet him sometime soon?

Speaker 2 (01:37:35):
Oh, absolutely you will, you will.
So he's going to be at Meetingof the Minds, he's going to be
at the Heartland Show.
He's going to be at RTO World.
Yeah, evan Lewis, great, greatwork, ethic, and I think he is
absolutely perfect.
He fits right in into thisindustry with a lot of
hardworking, honest people.

Speaker 1 (01:37:49):
Right, so Well.
Industry where there's a lot ofhardworking honest people right
.
Well, I mean, I'm lookingforward to that.
I'm looking forward to theresurgence of where Wondersign
comes from and we're going togive Wondersign an opportunity
to see if it can come tofruition, like we think it does.
And I'll be honest with you anytype of information which I
think, as it did before,wondersign fixes or solves an

(01:38:12):
informational niche that itdoesn't have to compete for.
You know, and I think thathelps, because when you're
giving somebody something andyou're not fighting three other
people, it gives them 100%opportunity to say, okay, let's
focus on this for what it is andnot I've got three people doing
the same thing.
Who does it better?
Let me, let me try all this oneout.
Let me try all this one out.

(01:38:32):
Let me try all this one out.
And I think, with the brandrecognition that you have, now
that you've been in the industryalmost well, 2014 so it's 10
years, yeah, going in 10 years.
You have the giga cloud backingnow that we didn't have before,
but now, now it's going in adifferent direction.
Now you've got evan to be ableto kind of go out there and be
that face to say, hey, you guysreally need to take a good look

(01:38:53):
at this, um, and then you'vecreated this backbone of the,
the backside of.
I have 100% gotten with ourguys to really make this
fruitful.
Under the hood we have.
We've really kind of made it sothat it's really easy.
You can get the informationright away.
You can utilize it on a dailybasis, weekly basis, monthly

(01:39:13):
basis, you can have it in yourquarterly meetings and you can
see results as quick as let meget this order in through Amtab,
maybe, I don't know and get theorder in and get it sold,
because that's really what thisis about finding that
information.
I mean, right now the economy isgoing through so much that we
need to find out what thecustomers are looking for and
not what we think they'relooking for, because it's so

(01:39:34):
important now for their dollarsto meet exactly what it needs to
meet.
I don't want to go throughthree iterations of this sofa
before I realize this is notwhat I want.
This is what I want.
This is the need that itservices and I'll be great to
just walk in and get that.
I don't want to do anythingelse because I can't afford it.
And if we can streamline that,if rent to own can streamline
that, that would be great.

(01:39:55):
I think it's got legs.
That's me.
I'm saying that on the otherside of it Of course you know
I'm and I'm rooting forWondersign because I know you
guys have done a great job inthe past, and I think that this
is a great direction, becausesometimes what people do,
companies do, is they try torevive something and it's just.
It's just a new look on thesame thing.
This is a completely differentdirection, so to speak.

Speaker 2 (01:40:18):
And that was the absolutely.
I couldn't have said it better.
It's.
It's definitely not lipstick ona pig, it's right.
It's overhauling basically theentire I would say the entire
direction of the company.
It's not about the kiosks.
The kiosk is one endpoint andit absolutely is a valid
endpoint and it has to be there.

(01:40:38):
That's why we're investing inthe hardware and bringing in
cheaper hardware and wesubsidize it.
But the kiosk is only oneendpoint.
You know, there's theconversation, Right, there's the
.
Again, people are used todictating the Siri and whatever
else you want to be able to dothat.
That's why I said semanticsearch is such an important
point where you can go in andsay, hey, I'm looking for, I

(01:41:00):
don't know something, grayish,brownish, dead seeds, whatever,
Something that reclines it'scrazy because everybody searches
that way.

Speaker 1 (01:41:07):
Now, of course, you know and I hate showing my age
all the time, but you know but Iam a little bit different when
it comes to searches.
But if my daughter searched forsomething, she would not search
the way I would search.
She would literally hit thebutton and go this is what I'm
looking for.
Just give me my options and tounderstand that that's where the
cycle's been, and to get backon the front of the bell curve

(01:41:28):
instead of the back.
It's so interesting to be ableto see that, hey, we've done
this, we did great, we've mademistakes, we're going to fix it.
And we're not only going to dothat, but we're going to again
enter a niche that nobodyunderstood that they needed and
get in front of the RTO customer, which I think is, I think is a
great idea.
So the newness of it and I knowit sounds new because it's not

(01:41:53):
new, but you're doing this underWondersign, you're not doing
this under Ashley hashtagWondersign, it is you directly.
This is where we're going forit, and then the results will
have a Wondersign name on it.
It came from us, you know.
The app came from us, theutilization came from us.

Speaker 2 (01:42:11):
The information came from us and I'm not really
putting a different name on itwhich is which is, I think,
going to be the betterment of itas well.
Absolutely, and I think themost important thing is it some,
sometimes we have to understandit's not either or, and it's
not black or white.
There's a lot of gray inbetween, yes, and we can make
the move away and basicallyemancipate a little bit and say,

(01:42:32):
okay, this is really, you know,our own app and our own product
and our own platform, and thisis, this is who we are, without
saying, you know, basicallywithout poo-pooing on on
somebody else, right, I'meternally grateful to ashley.
We wouldn't be here withoutashley.
Period, right, right, they putus on the map.
That's that's just what.

(01:42:52):
That's the reality.
We wouldn't be here.
I, ashley, period, right, right, they put us on the map.
That's, that's just what.
That's the reality.
We wouldn't be here I.

Speaker 1 (01:42:57):
When you say that cause, it resonates a lot.
You know, it's funny that youmentioned the name Mike Tissot,
because when, when we were goingfrom season two to season three
, uh, my partner had gone adifferent direction and we, you
know, I kind of went solo andthe ideas was you was how do I
do this and where do I go?
And Mike Tissot was the firstperson to be able to step up and
say you know what?
I'll go on the show and youtalk about that pivotal person

(01:43:20):
and that transactional pointwhere I said you know what, this
is where it should go.
And it worked.
And since then we've had somegreat people on, including
yourself, to where we can seethat all the different aspects
and all the different storiesand all the different things
that happen at Rent to Own and Ithink that's great, that it was

(01:43:41):
an instrumental part to say,hey, you know what we did this
very well, but we need to stepout of it and refine what we
need to do and refine what'sgoing on and then create
something out of that, out ofthe ashes, and go I've got
something for you that youdidn't even know you need.
And now that you can take a lookat the possibilities now, we
can see where we can go fromthere.

(01:44:02):
So I hope that I I hope that Isee wonder signs everywhere
again and that we can make thatwork, especially when you're
talking about integrating that,that price point, into whatever
plan that they have, which Ithink is also a great idea.
I'm just going to say that Ithink it's wonderful.
So if I'm interested and we'retalking about this now and I'm
interested and I have myrent-to-own company, how do I

(01:44:22):
get a hold of you?
Where do I go?
What information do I do to geta hold of Casper and say, hey,
I heard that it looks good.
How do we make that happen?

Speaker 2 (01:44:30):
I mean, the easiest is to go to our website,
wondersigncom.

Speaker 1 (01:44:34):
Wondersigncom.
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:44:35):
And really just reach out to us the moment we see
it's an RTO business, then atthat point in time Evan will
reach out, or myself.
I mean I'm not gone.
Just because we put Evan inplace here, that doesn't mean
that I'm out.
He's just a shiny face.
Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
I'm just.
You know you're right.
Um, the facade, no I.
I do need to be present as well.

(01:44:55):
That's the most important thing.
So it's not just a lip serviceto basically say oh yeah, we're
back.
We just want to have yourbusiness right.
We need to invest again.
This is mike.
Mike taught me you either are atool for a manufacturer or
you're a tool for the industry,but you need to make a choice.
That's what mike taught me.
Dennis taught me.
You need to show up.
You can't stay at home.

(01:45:17):
You need to show up.
You need to be part of thisright.
Gary taught us.
You need to think of everything.
It needs to be a completesolution for the industry,
otherwise nobody will adopt it.
And every single person that weencountered on this journey
some somehow taught us somethingabout this right, and you
taught me now we're, we'recoming to the close to you.

(01:45:38):
You taught me that you have tobe out there as a face and you
have to speak about it and youhave to make sure that people
understand and know.
And there's a lot going on.
I mean RTO.
The industry is in atransformational stage, at least
from what I'm seeing.
You're on the cusp of somethingmuch bigger.

Speaker 1 (01:45:57):
Well, you know, we've always rolled a few years
behind retail.
That's just the way it's alwaysbeen Because, like you said,
the transaction is different andyou've noticed that it's just
not 100% retail.
There's a lot of ebbs and flowsthat happen with that, not only
with the customer, but they'refrom different states.
In any state, you can take $1,buy $1 worth of goods and walk

(01:46:20):
out, but not in any state canyou go rent the same way.
That doesn't mean that somestates don't gather the same as
far as the laws, but there aresome states out there that are
different, so it creates adifference in the way you shop,
and so when you have all thisgoing on, it makes it.
So it's such a great industryto be in, but it is different.
It is different and when you'regoing in a certain direction,

(01:46:42):
it just makes it.
You've got this newness that'scoming around the corner.
Everybody so far has beenmentioning AI.
We have not integrated AIenough into rent to own.
It's coming.
This is going to be a form ofit and, just so that everybody
understands, there is an AI talkthat's been going on for the
last eight months to a year.

(01:47:03):
They're just trying to figureout where the niches are when do
we incorporate that?
Because you still want theface-to-face transaction, you
still want to have thatrelationship.
You still want them to come andtry it out, kick the tire, so
to speak, sit on the sofa.
Maybe you like the color, butyou don't really know how it
sits.
So there's the traditionalthings that we still have.
But then how do you find us?

(01:47:24):
How do I know that I'm in theplaces that you wanna be?
Now that increases your socialmedia, google searches, you know
, am I, like you said, am Igetting the product that's
really going to bring them inthe door?
Because nowadays the doorswings are so few and far
between that, if you come in andI don't capitalize on what it
is that you really want, Imight've lost you for a while,

(01:47:47):
not just a little bit, for awhile.
And so all this comes into thefront side of.
We're rolling in.
This tide is rolling in andit's going.
There's a change coming,there's a newness, there's new
ideas and new fronts that arecoming.
For I mean, if somebody wouldhave told me 10 years ago
Rentone's going to have adedicated podcast, I probably
myself probably would have beenlike really, that's, that's.

(01:48:09):
I wouldn't expect that, butthen and now we're talking on a
dedicated podcast about thingsthat are dedicated to the
rent-to-own industry.
For that particular thing, Iknow there's a retail side of it
.
I know you guys do somethingelse, but because we're focusing
on certain things that happenin rent-to-own, how do you bring
AI into it?
How do you look into certaininformation where the algorithms
are really suited to helprent-to-own?

(01:48:29):
Well, this is one of them andit's happening.

Speaker 2 (01:48:34):
It own.
Well, this is one of them, andit's happening.
It is happening and I think thethe biggest takeaway for all
the technology companies, notjust us, has to be it's not
about you and you're not thecenter of the universe.
And just because you built itand of course it's your baby and
you want to, you know it's veryimportant to you that doesn't
mean other people see it thesame way, right?
What we need to understand iswe need to flow much more.
It needs to be more fluid.
We need to flow with how peopleare searching.

(01:48:56):
We mentioned that the change inhow people approach this and you
can't just force them intosomething and say, well, this is
our search tool, this is howyou have to use it.
Then people won't use it.
You have no adoption, you haveno sessions.
If you have no sessions, youdon't collect data.
If you have no sessions, youdon't collect data.
If you have no data, you can'tmake decisions.
That's the issue.
So that's what I'm saying.
It needs to be semantic search,it needs to be voice search, it

(01:49:17):
needs to be on any device.
It doesn't matter what deviceit is.
We don't need to lock them intosomething and say you need to
use this operating system.
Who am I to tell them thatconsumer doesn't care consumers?
I don't know.
I'm just looking for, I don'tknow, like a dining table that
seats like six people, becausewe have my wife's boss coming
over for Thanksgiving and weneed something, we need to look

(01:49:37):
good.
I mean we need to look good, butI also don't want to spend a
whole lot.
Okay, price point was mentioned, color was mentioned, seating
options.
That is what we need to do.
We need to take the power oftechnology that we have and then
transform that into somethingthat works with the industry.
So I think, to come to a close,the most important thing is to

(01:50:00):
get out of this ivory tower andgo into the stores and talk to
people, talk to operators, talkto associates, be on the floor,
understand what is the issue,what is the need, what is
something that might be outsideof your core business or core
offering, but then you can findpartners, you can bring them in,
or maybe you can make areferral.
Maybe it's not at the end ofthe day for you to you know,

(01:50:21):
make it, make a deal or closethe sale, but at least you can
help.
I think that's, that's what weneed to do.

Speaker 1 (01:50:27):
Well, I think, I think that we're onto something,
I think you're on to somethingand I wish you the best of luck.
Listen, I will tell you, guys,as always, if you have any
questions for the show or forCasper, you're well, well
welcome to hit up the show atthe RTOshowpodcastcom.
You can email me directly atPete at the RTOshowpodcastcom.
Ask me questions.
Anything that we need toforward on, we will forward.

(01:50:49):
We'll answer it online ordirectly, if you want it
directly, no problem with that.
You can also follow me onFacebook, linkedin, instagram
and, as always, guys, I alwaystell you, casper, I appreciate
you being here.
Make sure that you get yourcollections low to get your
sales high.
Have a great one.

Speaker 2 (01:51:05):
Thank you so much.

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