Meeting Title: Robert Tseng’s Personal Meeting Room Date: 2025-05-06 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Bencohen
WEBVTT
1 00:02:31.600 ⇒ 00:02:32.669 bencohen: Hey? What’s up?
2 00:02:33.190 ⇒ 00:02:33.790 Robert Tseng: Hey! Man!
3 00:02:34.200 ⇒ 00:02:35.310 bencohen: Sorry about that.
4 00:02:35.670 ⇒ 00:02:38.970 Robert Tseng: All good need a few minutes for the caffeine to kick in.
5 00:02:39.940 ⇒ 00:02:42.500 bencohen: Needed to make it dude.
6 00:02:43.530 ⇒ 00:02:44.340 Robert Tseng: Oh!
7 00:02:44.460 ⇒ 00:02:45.420 Robert Tseng: Fancy!
8 00:02:46.810 ⇒ 00:02:48.020 bencohen: Has to be done.
9 00:02:48.280 ⇒ 00:02:48.890 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
10 00:02:50.510 ⇒ 00:03:01.799 bencohen: Alright. So let me so just let me know how I can be most helpful. If you’d like to go very high level we can, if you’d like to get more
11 00:03:02.280 ⇒ 00:03:06.089 bencohen: into things that are probably closer to
12 00:03:06.540 ⇒ 00:03:09.700 bencohen: tactical, can do that, too. Just you let me know.
13 00:03:10.130 ⇒ 00:03:22.620 Robert Tseng: Yeah, sure, I’m happy to drive. You know, I kind of, flashed this doc earlier. I kind of want to go through it. I still had some questions there. So that’d be helpful like, I understand that there’s a particular skew you want to optimize, for
14 00:03:22.830 ⇒ 00:03:34.791 Robert Tseng: I may have some point of view on that as well, but, like I I think, kind of filling in the the blanks around that for me would be most helpful. I think my kind of expectation coming out of this call is
15 00:03:35.750 ⇒ 00:03:43.779 Robert Tseng: yeah, like, obviously, we, there’s this little. There’s a sense of like, I kind of get the sense of urgency from both your your perspective and Dan’s perspective.
16 00:03:44.120 ⇒ 00:03:51.399 Robert Tseng: But I want to be able to bring that back to the team and be like, okay, this is how this is where we do the way we think about roadmap here. And
17 00:03:52.750 ⇒ 00:03:58.329 Robert Tseng: yeah, I think that’s that’s really the exercise that I want to get out of that. Get done here.
18 00:03:59.950 ⇒ 00:04:08.499 bencohen: The pool industry. Just I’m going to give you both. The pool industry is dominated by 3 companies, Hayward, Pentare, and Jandy. Okay, you would call this
19 00:04:09.430 ⇒ 00:04:20.170 bencohen: Nike Adidas, and a 3rd one that’s of similar size. They occupy the absolute lion’s share.
20 00:04:20.519 ⇒ 00:04:26.199 bencohen: We’re along with several others, a very small player. So
21 00:04:28.680 ⇒ 00:04:40.720 bencohen: we they for the most part focus on old school distribution to get their products into people’s hands. So they don’t really do a lot of D to C, traditionally, the pool industry.
22 00:04:41.690 ⇒ 00:04:48.319 bencohen: You know, the the technician that goes into your backyard to clean your pool is typically your salesperson, and they make a huge
23 00:04:48.620 ⇒ 00:04:53.359 bencohen: huge markup on all the products they sell you. These people are
24 00:04:53.750 ⇒ 00:05:04.500 bencohen: not the brightest, but they’re in this position of power because they have access to those products that normal people do not. You can’t buy these products.
25 00:05:04.740 ⇒ 00:05:11.750 bencohen: You have to get them through distribution. And the very now most industries have started like this, but they.
26 00:05:11.990 ⇒ 00:05:25.460 bencohen: the Internet, hit them in the face, or whatever the case may be. This one has for the most part held on, and this requires full cooperation from kind of the whole chain. We set out to break it a little bit.
27 00:05:25.660 ⇒ 00:05:34.479 bencohen: and we’ve been successful. I mean, we are selling directly to homeowners. Of course, if people in the trade want to buy from us, we’ll sell to them, too. But we’ve we focused on
28 00:05:34.680 ⇒ 00:05:38.629 bencohen: marketing directly to the homeowner, because at the end of the day
29 00:05:38.830 ⇒ 00:05:46.019 bencohen: the only group that’s been really fucked in all of this is the homeowner, because they’re sponsoring all these levels of margin.
30 00:05:46.130 ⇒ 00:05:47.200 Robert Tseng: And.
31 00:05:47.470 ⇒ 00:05:53.950 bencohen: No one’s thought about them is basically the bottom line, like I have a pool.
32 00:05:54.590 ⇒ 00:06:00.889 bencohen: it’s a pretty luxurious town. It’s it’s luxurious to have a pool in the northeast. I have a pool person.
33 00:06:01.660 ⇒ 00:06:10.669 bencohen: Their favorite way to visit is when they come and do a service, and they see that it’s not functioning, and they call up the homeowner.
34 00:06:10.950 ⇒ 00:06:26.010 bencohen: And this happens in Florida. This happens at all levels. Ben. Come on down. I got to show you something. Your your pump is 9 years old, and I think it’s the last leg is here. I don’t think you’ve got another week. I’m gonna
35 00:06:26.230 ⇒ 00:06:34.459 bencohen: run to the supply house and get you brand new, variable speed pump much more efficient. It’s going to save you a lot of money over the long term
36 00:06:35.080 ⇒ 00:06:43.350 bencohen: and energy efficient. And I could get it in your pool by today. I’m gonna run. So let me know if I can do that.
37 00:06:43.610 ⇒ 00:06:46.720 bencohen: You know the I’m recommending this pump. It’s
38 00:06:47.240 ⇒ 00:06:52.900 bencohen: all in installed. It’s $2,700. Say, oh, man, that’s a bit much.
39 00:06:53.740 ⇒ 00:06:59.739 bencohen: and he goes all right. Well, I can show you this, and it’s $2,200. And then, you know, they get you because they they show you like
40 00:06:59.980 ⇒ 00:07:02.460 bencohen: gold, and then they show you silver.
41 00:07:03.640 ⇒ 00:07:10.429 bencohen: Our pump competes with those pumps. It’s not as good, but it also costs a fraction, and because we don’t
42 00:07:10.650 ⇒ 00:07:14.029 bencohen: sell it to the distributor who sells it to the local distributor
43 00:07:14.280 ⇒ 00:07:22.410 bencohen: who sells it to the pool Guy, we can offer a much more competitive price for a comparable product. It’s not as good in some cases, but
44 00:07:22.610 ⇒ 00:07:25.100 bencohen: for a 3rd of the price.
45 00:07:25.300 ⇒ 00:07:40.810 bencohen: It’s fabulous. And even so, we also have resources to help people install it themselves. If they’d like to. So we are have differentiation with a couple of areas. One is price 2 is our brand recognition. So like, when I bought this house.
46 00:07:41.070 ⇒ 00:07:44.490 bencohen: I did not know the brand names of any of the equipment on the house.
47 00:07:44.860 ⇒ 00:07:57.880 bencohen: Unlike Adidas and Nike, these are not household names. These are names that no one knows people with pools their whole life still will never learn. Hayward, pentair, Jandy Black, and Decker, the license that we made a deal with, everybody knows.
48 00:08:00.350 ⇒ 00:08:10.540 bencohen: So that’s kind of the 2 areas that we have really found some success which is serving the homeowner who’s familiar with our brand and undercutting
49 00:08:10.810 ⇒ 00:08:16.219 bencohen: the Big 3 with a comparable, less expensive product and trying to
50 00:08:16.690 ⇒ 00:08:20.870 bencohen: enable them to install themselves if they’re handy and willing.
51 00:08:21.290 ⇒ 00:08:22.890 bencohen: That’s where we come in.
52 00:08:23.020 ⇒ 00:08:25.789 bencohen: We’re like 3 years, 4 years selling this.
53 00:08:26.060 ⇒ 00:08:40.699 bencohen: this, this variable speed line that’s gone very well. On Amazon. We’re doing $10,000 a day very profitably shopify. We’re having some problems there. I think a lot of that is.
54 00:08:41.240 ⇒ 00:08:51.049 bencohen: I think a lot of the success is due to the product is actually good. So on Amazon, you get the compounding effect of reviews and organic placement because
55 00:08:51.740 ⇒ 00:08:57.779 bencohen: Amazon is pleased with our return ratio. The the 4 and a half 5 stars keep coming in.
56 00:08:58.120 ⇒ 00:08:59.789 bencohen: and it’s working.
57 00:09:00.431 ⇒ 00:09:08.020 bencohen: We don’t spend much media there because the organic is good, and we’re just trying to slowly fuel it with a little bit of paid, but not much.
58 00:09:09.360 ⇒ 00:09:21.030 bencohen: For a long time. We’ve been very focused on shopify, on selling heat pumps. Those are heaters. They’re electric heaters, not too dissimilar from what would heat your house. They
59 00:09:21.790 ⇒ 00:09:24.940 bencohen: are very high ticket, but low profit.
60 00:09:25.500 ⇒ 00:09:30.479 bencohen: and the shipping is crazy because it’s freight. It’s not like a normal parcel.
61 00:09:32.940 ⇒ 00:09:40.060 bencohen: So lately I’ve had the feeling we need to move away from those, especially with, like a post tariff world, where, even if the tariffs don’t
62 00:09:40.620 ⇒ 00:09:45.019 bencohen: stay where they are here today. Suppose they just moved down 40%.
63 00:09:45.380 ⇒ 00:09:57.269 bencohen: We need to raise those a ton. It’s just not easy. And we’ve undercut a lot there. And I just think that it’s just been a losing proposition. But the variable speed line is very profitable.
64 00:09:57.420 ⇒ 00:10:04.000 bencohen: If there was a 100% tariff. We could be fine, totally fine. And
65 00:10:04.850 ⇒ 00:10:08.910 bencohen: our marketing right now is way. Too much reliance on paid.
66 00:10:10.000 ⇒ 00:10:13.800 bencohen: We may not be doing a great job with the paid. I can accept that
67 00:10:14.130 ⇒ 00:10:19.970 bencohen: our messaging, our conversion rate, all these things may may all need work. I can accept that
68 00:10:21.870 ⇒ 00:10:29.180 bencohen: So we need to figure out what to do there and get. I’d like to get the shopify
69 00:10:29.410 ⇒ 00:10:37.419 bencohen: operation to actually look a little bit more like the Amazon one, the Amazon one. We never messed with heat pumps because the commission that Amazon takes
70 00:10:37.660 ⇒ 00:10:40.250 bencohen: broke it completely. It made it impossible.
71 00:10:40.460 ⇒ 00:10:47.770 bencohen: It’s like a tariff. It just was too much. So we just never bothered with it, and it proved to be a very.
72 00:10:47.940 ⇒ 00:10:52.480 bencohen: very smart strategy, because year 2 years later
73 00:10:53.820 ⇒ 00:10:58.599 bencohen: everything we’ve done there is really focused on these variable speed pumps, and the listing is strong.
74 00:10:59.730 ⇒ 00:11:04.029 bencohen: And now I look at shopify, and I wish we had done that earlier. But
75 00:11:04.240 ⇒ 00:11:16.280 bencohen: it’s a different game you don’t get, you know, traffic without, but we have. We have some SEO traffic that we invested a lot in years ago, but it’s a different beast versus marketplace. So
76 00:11:16.570 ⇒ 00:11:20.350 bencohen: we’ve got to find some gains there, because that line
77 00:11:20.590 ⇒ 00:11:27.219 bencohen: it’s very profitable. You know, the return rates low. It’s it’s it’s a it’s a winner.
78 00:11:28.650 ⇒ 00:11:29.330 Robert Tseng: Got it.
79 00:11:30.670 ⇒ 00:11:37.699 Robert Tseng: Okay? Yeah. I mean, basically, I’ll let me repeat a bit about what what you said. And then I’d like to kind of keep going with.
80 00:11:38.220 ⇒ 00:11:50.589 Robert Tseng: I’ve looked at your data. So I think it kind of confirms. Like, you know, you’re basically adding the language to some of those trends that I’ve already been seeing. And then I have some more hopefully, rapid fire questions that are, you know, a bit more bit more targeted.
81 00:11:51.860 ⇒ 00:12:14.180 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I would. I think, basically, you’re telling me is okay. You have this like, one line of product, this, these variable speed pump, variable speed pumps that have been doing well, you you want to bet on it. You want to keep. You want to keep gassing that one. Yeah, you’ve obviously looks like it started off as a pumps 1st company. I understand that you have all this inventory that you were sourcing through
82 00:12:14.514 ⇒ 00:12:38.679 Robert Tseng: basically helping other retail stores clear out their inventory. I don’t know if you still do that, but like there’s like a different, not all of the products that kind of come onto your site are obviously products that you, you know, developed. You also have this like one strategic partnership with Black and Decker and and I mean. I’ve seen the trend of that, you know, when when it 1st launched impressions, views very high kind of it’s obviously dipped over time.
83 00:12:38.680 ⇒ 00:12:45.229 bencohen: Very low, very low price Point. I’ll have one thing. If you were to dig into the data, you would see we were selling it at like
84 00:12:45.460 ⇒ 00:12:51.501 bencohen: crazy rate, because we were just trying to get them out there and get the brand some visibility. Yeah,
85 00:12:52.730 ⇒ 00:12:58.519 bencohen: yeah. Then we got more profit focused a year ago, or something like that, we started to actually turn the profit. And then
86 00:12:58.690 ⇒ 00:13:02.019 bencohen: this year is not we just kind of lost our way.
87 00:13:02.800 ⇒ 00:13:20.430 Robert Tseng: Sure. Yeah, but I mean right, for right now, you know, I would say something like 70 to 80% of revenue is driven by, mostly black and decker, like part like labeled skews. Right? So it’s, you know, there’s obviously big big reliance on on that brand partnership.
88 00:13:20.580 ⇒ 00:13:40.539 Robert Tseng: But you know, as any strategic brand partnership. If equity dilutes over time, probably maybe other entrance that kind of come in. I don’t know if you thought about like landing another black and decker, or it’s kind of just ride and die exclusive. Just keep keep like multiplying products like through through their brand. So I mean, there’s some questions around that like
89 00:13:41.060 ⇒ 00:13:52.459 Robert Tseng: skew, I mean, in in terms of what you thought about in terms diversifying your the your skew portfolio, not just from like a functional perspective, but also like
90 00:13:52.580 ⇒ 00:13:59.780 Robert Tseng: branding perspective as well. Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure you’re aware of that. Any reactions to that.
91 00:14:00.840 ⇒ 00:14:07.160 bencohen: Very yeah. We’ve added stuff. The problem is
92 00:14:08.970 ⇒ 00:14:16.629 bencohen: unless it’s like a big name brand. It’s very hard to get things moving. So we we use the blue torrent brand for a while, just
93 00:14:16.630 ⇒ 00:14:17.060 bencohen: so that
94 00:14:17.060 ⇒ 00:14:31.109 bencohen: it just doesn’t get in the momentum. You just can’t get it rolling the same way, all of a sudden it becomes a question of price and warranty and nothing else matters. And then, like, you’re kind of the Amazon game where you’re just. You’re racing directly to the bottom.
95 00:14:31.552 ⇒ 00:14:39.189 bencohen: We like the idea of sticking with black and Decker because it it really we already have, like in the industry. We’re known. Now we’ve made enough noise.
96 00:14:39.850 ⇒ 00:14:41.910 bencohen: Okay, the challenge is.
97 00:14:42.010 ⇒ 00:14:46.500 Robert Tseng: Adding skews, takes a very long time.
98 00:14:47.250 ⇒ 00:14:57.330 bencohen: With black and decker and we also are not that fast? So like Dan’s father-in-law, who’s our supplier.
99 00:14:58.300 ⇒ 00:15:05.630 bencohen: you know, like I mentioned, like 3 and a half years ago. I think salt generators are probably the next big thing for us.
100 00:15:05.810 ⇒ 00:15:06.430 Robert Tseng: Sure.
101 00:15:07.250 ⇒ 00:15:13.059 bencohen: You know, a year. Everyone ignores the request. Kind of a thing. Year 2. We start
102 00:15:13.660 ⇒ 00:15:17.350 bencohen: testing different ones that are out there talking to the factory.
103 00:15:17.470 ⇒ 00:15:30.520 bencohen: Now we have a prototype. We have to send it to Black and Decker. They’ll have some feedback, and it’s just slow. We’re not going to be able to add products quickly enough to like, really execute a different type of strategy. It’s just too slow.
104 00:15:31.010 ⇒ 00:15:31.710 Robert Tseng: Okay.
105 00:15:33.860 ⇒ 00:15:43.639 bencohen: It’s definitely the correct move. I mean, I’ve been saying for a long time. Our catalog is way too thin, and it’s hard because we may invest a lot to find a customer
106 00:15:43.790 ⇒ 00:15:50.960 bencohen: and sell them something. But if we don’t have anything viable to sell them for 3 years until something else breaks in their pool.
107 00:15:51.250 ⇒ 00:15:52.449 bencohen: That’s a shame.
108 00:15:52.990 ⇒ 00:15:59.280 bencohen: Yeah, but the same issue stands like, suppose we, added the salt generator a year ago.
109 00:15:59.610 ⇒ 00:16:02.989 bencohen: the person that bought the variable speed pump 3 years ago
110 00:16:03.570 ⇒ 00:16:06.239 bencohen: they might not have a problem until year 6.
111 00:16:06.630 ⇒ 00:16:11.920 bencohen: They would be totally happy with chlorine, or already have a good salt thing going.
112 00:16:12.220 ⇒ 00:16:18.870 bencohen: They may not heat even heat a pool because they live in Arizona, or they’re happy with their pool heater, and
113 00:16:20.080 ⇒ 00:16:24.729 bencohen: you’re left with chemicals as like really the only thing that people consume a lot. But.
114 00:16:24.730 ⇒ 00:16:25.869 Robert Tseng: Regularly, yeah.
115 00:16:27.880 ⇒ 00:16:33.792 bencohen: and and like, unless you want to get like to like the floats, and like the fun, which is not a good business,
116 00:16:34.050 ⇒ 00:16:34.630 Robert Tseng: Sure.
117 00:16:35.470 ⇒ 00:16:40.479 bencohen: It’s a tricky one, because you have high. You have expensive stuff. You can sell them like pumps and heaters.
118 00:16:40.800 ⇒ 00:16:43.409 bencohen: but you have to be really patient with these people?
119 00:16:44.304 ⇒ 00:16:47.809 bencohen: Because they it’s not an area
120 00:16:47.960 ⇒ 00:17:01.040 bencohen: that your people invest like money all the time, like you might. It’s like a Home Improvement project like you might have to repaint your house every 5 years. It’s sort of like something will break here and there. And
121 00:17:01.920 ⇒ 00:17:06.320 bencohen: so what we really need to do is we need to basically assess
122 00:17:06.829 ⇒ 00:17:11.490 bencohen: the best products and then find the customers in the most efficient way.
123 00:17:11.810 ⇒ 00:17:12.560 bencohen: And
124 00:17:14.220 ⇒ 00:17:21.929 bencohen: the variable speed is a is a monster product, I mean, as far as the replacement market is concerned. So when fixing things that are broken.
125 00:17:22.160 ⇒ 00:17:30.319 bencohen: it’s like a killer option, because people have gotten more savvy, especially as millennials have started buying more and more and more homes. The last
126 00:17:30.620 ⇒ 00:17:33.310 bencohen: call it like, since Covid.
127 00:17:33.760 ⇒ 00:17:34.270 Robert Tseng: Yep.
128 00:17:34.270 ⇒ 00:17:35.139 bencohen: Alright,
129 00:17:37.010 ⇒ 00:17:50.610 bencohen: People are doing more savvy shopping, so they’re not as willing to get fucked by their pool. Guy, like in the description I gave you early on, they might go online and see what they could find. Yeah, that’s a big area of opportunity for us.
130 00:17:52.600 ⇒ 00:17:58.290 bencohen: we just need to be more efficient with it. I think that we honestly may not even be doing
131 00:17:58.860 ⇒ 00:18:00.430 bencohen: anything wrong.
132 00:18:00.810 ⇒ 00:18:04.869 bencohen: I probably would think that we can do many things better, but I don’t think
133 00:18:05.338 ⇒ 00:18:11.259 bencohen: philosophically, we have anything incorrect. I what I think is, we probably have an over reliance on paid.
134 00:18:11.730 ⇒ 00:18:15.940 bencohen: We probably took the foot off the gas on our search
135 00:18:16.290 ⇒ 00:18:22.200 bencohen: on our organic search. And I think that Biden.
136 00:18:22.970 ⇒ 00:18:34.569 bencohen: this is very Macro, I think. Biden barbecued the economy in the the middle class kind of there are a lot of middle class polls.
137 00:18:36.060 ⇒ 00:18:52.070 bencohen: I just think that the consumer has not been buying things for a year, especially a high, expensive thing like, if they’re like pump is on its last legs, they might opt to repair it, or like let it die versus being proactive and getting a variable speed pump before its death.
138 00:18:52.450 ⇒ 00:19:04.109 bencohen: And then, I think, trump came in. And now we have a whole different set of drama. So I think that it’s been well over a year of consumers being like relatively concerned about opening their wallets
139 00:19:06.620 ⇒ 00:19:13.470 bencohen: for expensive items. This is not an essential. This isn’t a grocery, you know, like this is a luxury
140 00:19:14.490 ⇒ 00:19:21.019 bencohen: regardless. We have to find a way. And and anyway, we raised prices so like it’s we we’ve probably gotten further from them
141 00:19:21.320 ⇒ 00:19:23.840 bencohen: and made this all more complicated.
142 00:19:26.380 ⇒ 00:19:41.780 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, mac macroeconomic headwinds aside. I mean, you could. You could also kind of weave into some of that back into some of the impact we were. We were measuring the impact of that rubble as well and trying to assess consumer, demand the dips and whatnot. And if you were to adjust pricing like you actually, except if
143 00:19:42.289 ⇒ 00:20:08.650 Robert Tseng: ironically, as you move up the market, you get to a less you know, recession resistant like group that doesn’t really care about price like it’s they’re not really impacted so much. I would imagine pool owners are generally not, you know. They’re not all low ballers, or whatever like they’re generally willing to spend on things. But understand that like as far as like Price Point goes, for this like category of product. You’re on the lower side because you’re going after direct to consumer.
144 00:20:08.830 ⇒ 00:20:19.690 Robert Tseng: Or you’re also going direct to the pool Guy. Rather than going through the traditional like kind of like chain and selling to kind of like all the other middlemen in between. So
145 00:20:20.389 ⇒ 00:20:28.150 Robert Tseng: I guess I’m kind of pivoting away from, or I understand. Students see the limitations there. Why, your perspective is that
146 00:20:28.650 ⇒ 00:20:39.510 Robert Tseng: the velocity to launch skew is not very high, and you don’t really see that changing? Maybe there’s like a way there’s a world where we could give you that catalog of like
147 00:20:40.231 ⇒ 00:20:49.269 Robert Tseng: for different categories of products like there are certain ones that are faster to launch. Obviously, pump seems like something is high R&D, and whatever. So maybe.
148 00:20:49.270 ⇒ 00:20:51.130 bencohen: The thing is, if you, if you said.
149 00:20:51.130 ⇒ 00:20:51.700 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
150 00:20:51.700 ⇒ 00:20:59.699 bencohen: If you said you’re missing it. This thing we can pair together, or
151 00:21:00.120 ⇒ 00:21:03.110 bencohen: you’re just missing it. This product is fucking amazing.
152 00:21:03.570 ⇒ 00:21:08.909 bencohen: like you have to make this product. You you guys are totally missing the game. The data says, this is what you need.
153 00:21:09.440 ⇒ 00:21:20.969 bencohen: We can source it. We can make it. We can. We can figure it out. We. We have access to more stuff, and we have a warehouse full of stuff. Just a lot of it’s is like totally uninteresting, like.
154 00:21:21.270 ⇒ 00:21:33.180 bencohen: for example, like we’ve sold at some point, you’ll see in the data an enormous amount of like these, I call them like they’re pretty like crappy steps, for above ground pools, steps, and stairs.
155 00:21:34.020 ⇒ 00:21:44.029 bencohen: They’re they’re really bulky. The shipping is is ridiculous. They honestly, they honestly break a lot, too. So like you end up getting slammed with refunds.
156 00:21:46.060 ⇒ 00:21:52.609 bencohen: So like. But like like the 8 million that Dan was talking about, it is a fact. But a lot of it is like.
157 00:21:52.960 ⇒ 00:22:01.509 bencohen: you don’t want to go there like it’s there. There may be areas that we’re missing, but like we’ve done some of those we’ve put up. Really big numbers, like
158 00:22:01.810 ⇒ 00:22:06.149 bencohen: some of those are just silly like, you’re just like you’re chasing your tail.
159 00:22:06.660 ⇒ 00:22:07.240 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
160 00:22:09.060 ⇒ 00:22:28.559 Robert Tseng: yeah, no, I I’m not gonna go and like, scan the entire panel. I mean, I think it’s good to have just to kinda have that in mind. But I think, rather than backing into the answer from your existing inventory, it’s just like really understanding. What do people spend their money on in pools. And what are those like? Where’s the biggest dollar going? And where can you really go in and enter that right.
161 00:22:28.560 ⇒ 00:22:35.389 bencohen: Yeah, okay, so I can help you. I’ll help you there. So yeah, got a few things with the pool. You got the pad, which is your equipment. Pad.
162 00:22:35.390 ⇒ 00:22:35.880 Robert Tseng: Yep.
163 00:22:35.880 ⇒ 00:22:50.683 bencohen: Same as your A/C. Or you know, utility room and house kind of a thing. You’ve got a heater, a filter, a pump, so we do sell all 3 of those under the black and Decker brand pump was first, st the heater was second. The filter was last year
164 00:22:51.270 ⇒ 00:23:07.859 bencohen: the problem with the heater and the filters. They both ship on pallets. So it’s a rather expensive thing, and the pump is great. You have some other things in the pad like Chlorinator salt generator. We don’t have any of those for sale.
165 00:23:08.840 ⇒ 00:23:10.126 bencohen: We could.
166 00:23:11.340 ⇒ 00:23:12.890 bencohen: Then you go into the pool.
167 00:23:13.020 ⇒ 00:23:31.329 bencohen: You have chemicals, which is a good one, because it’s regular, very regular. I do, based on my research. I would actually appreciate your guys, help with this. It seems to me a complete race to the bottom. It’s a total commodity. All chlorine tablets are made the same, so.
168 00:23:31.330 ⇒ 00:23:31.780 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
169 00:23:32.257 ⇒ 00:23:33.689 bencohen: I don’t think
170 00:23:35.070 ⇒ 00:23:41.129 bencohen: I mean there’s an argument to be made that it’s a great way to get people into the funnel, get their email address and and such
171 00:23:41.490 ⇒ 00:23:43.199 bencohen: fine with that
172 00:23:44.660 ⇒ 00:23:49.469 bencohen: But there’s that there’s some maintenance products
173 00:23:49.590 ⇒ 00:23:59.431 bencohen: like we have. The brush is really good. We have. It’s patented. It’s it’s a very high quality product. I’d love to sell more of them. We have a good amount of them.
174 00:23:59.840 ⇒ 00:24:05.279 bencohen: Then there’s like shit. I would again put it in the commodity area, like like leaf rakes.
175 00:24:05.520 ⇒ 00:24:17.694 bencohen: Just shit like everybody has the same plastic shit. I I’m just being totally honest. Every pool, has it? It doesn’t matter, you know. It is what it is.
176 00:24:18.550 ⇒ 00:24:21.460 bencohen: cover pumps. We used to sell a lot of them, but we
177 00:24:22.560 ⇒ 00:24:31.240 bencohen: Amazon we kind of pulled away, because basically, what we were learning was, people were just using them once and returning them, and we have no way to protect ourselves against it
178 00:24:31.350 ⇒ 00:24:34.139 bencohen: on shopify we could do more, but
179 00:24:34.830 ⇒ 00:24:45.229 bencohen: they’re inexpensive. So it’s just one of those things we need like. We need to mind returns and shipping, and make sure that we just have it fully dialed. I kind of
180 00:24:45.950 ⇒ 00:24:51.770 bencohen: made a hasty decision to just kind of like make the price so high that no one would buy them, so that we just like
181 00:24:52.170 ⇒ 00:25:00.720 bencohen: kind of freeze it because it wasn’t. It wasn’t working. It was just making our top line go up. In fact, a lot similar to like the heat pumps like
182 00:25:01.420 ⇒ 00:25:09.266 bencohen: we had the top line up to like 1518,000,000 in a year. It wasn’t very hard, actually, but
183 00:25:09.790 ⇒ 00:25:14.490 bencohen: it’s just like a lot of lot of volume of shit
184 00:25:14.820 ⇒ 00:25:23.020 bencohen: between customer service tickets, returns, problems, negative reviews like it was like the volume of everything, just kind of expanded.
185 00:25:23.450 ⇒ 00:25:29.950 bencohen: But the cover pumps are not bad. The 1,500 moves a lot of water. I actually need one. I’m not
186 00:25:30.260 ⇒ 00:25:32.819 bencohen: have them where I’ll send you one later.
187 00:25:35.440 ⇒ 00:25:41.409 bencohen: Then you have like fun stuff like floats and pool games and stuff like that
188 00:25:42.450 ⇒ 00:25:46.880 bencohen: again, I think, similar to chemicals.
189 00:25:47.240 ⇒ 00:25:51.470 bencohen: It’s a good way to get people, I think.
190 00:25:52.500 ⇒ 00:26:06.660 bencohen: but unless you’re like you’ve got something super trendy that, like no one else has for a year. I think it’s you’re just trying to sell a trend. I don’t. I don’t think so. We’ve never leaned into it hard we we dabbled with it, but it didn’t
191 00:26:07.700 ⇒ 00:26:10.240 bencohen: we? You know we didn’t have anything special.
192 00:26:11.490 ⇒ 00:26:12.080 Robert Tseng: Got it.
193 00:26:12.230 ⇒ 00:26:24.529 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, if I could just share one like anecdote from I mean from the rug industry like for ruggable, and how they even like started doing washable rugs, I mean, took a similar approach, started off like doing
194 00:26:24.890 ⇒ 00:26:30.819 Robert Tseng: building like an industrial rug cleaner for the home. So it’s more of a tech company at that point.
195 00:26:30.820 ⇒ 00:26:31.330 bencohen: Hmm.
196 00:26:31.587 ⇒ 00:26:35.189 Robert Tseng: And then kind of like in the R&D process, it was like.
197 00:26:35.350 ⇒ 00:26:37.869 Robert Tseng: Okay, I mean, similar kind of like
198 00:26:38.000 ⇒ 00:26:51.600 Robert Tseng: many different folks, you, you, your broker, is like this industrial or kind of this rug professional person who comes in and like kind of does all the stuff within your home. And that was kind of the relationship that they’re negotiating.
199 00:26:51.977 ⇒ 00:27:11.039 Robert Tseng: Eventually they settled on, you know, floor area rugs as like the main product line, because one like it’s hell easy to make like, yeah, it’s just like fabric. And then you just print something on top of it. But I think that was like an interesting finding that it was less like finding the utility like the the most.
200 00:27:11.230 ⇒ 00:27:33.010 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like moving away from utility and more towards the design like allowed them to kind of like, have like a more like elevated brand, I suppose. And then you start selling to the people who are wealthy who are just like looking to change the rug design every season. Kind of thing, right? And that’s that was like the biggest shift of the business after within the 1st few years.
201 00:27:33.010 ⇒ 00:27:52.150 Robert Tseng: I don’t know how that applies to the brooks like I don’t know how people often people want to change the design of their of their of their pool. But I think that, like even beyond like maintenance itself, because maintenance is kind of a race to the bottom, the more you go, Diy, the more people want to, you know, modularize things like they want to pick it apart. Be like kind of.
202 00:27:52.380 ⇒ 00:28:07.280 Robert Tseng: you know, to take on more of the risks themselves, and therefore they expect the price to decrease right? But like I don’t know in within, like the pool experience, if there are even like people have to like redeck their pools, or like kind of change, certain like.
203 00:28:07.360 ⇒ 00:28:28.240 Robert Tseng: I don’t know. I have to change the material, and even in the in the construction of the pool itself, like there’s there’s maybe like stuff beyond, like the ex, the current life cycle of the pool that I think is open, open, like I don’t. I don’t know if there’s if there’s room from from your side, from your perspective in terms of innovation. There.
204 00:28:34.680 ⇒ 00:28:37.820 bencohen: Not that I think we can access. I mean.
205 00:28:38.410 ⇒ 00:28:42.860 bencohen: there’s like a hard like landscaping, hardscaping, which.
206 00:28:43.240 ⇒ 00:28:43.880 Robert Tseng: Okay.
207 00:28:44.250 ⇒ 00:28:45.970 bencohen: I don’t, I mean, like
208 00:28:46.130 ⇒ 00:28:51.400 bencohen: that’s a for an e-commerce company, that’s, you know, like that’s like literally having a crew come and like.
209 00:28:51.810 ⇒ 00:28:59.190 bencohen: demolish your like, you know, stone or concrete next to your pool, and that’s like a manual job.
210 00:28:59.920 ⇒ 00:29:00.510 Robert Tseng: Okay.
211 00:29:01.480 ⇒ 00:29:09.719 bencohen: Think that in terms of like lawn and garden like maybe there’s maybe I think we’re really getting far away. But I think maybe like there’s like decor.
212 00:29:09.830 ⇒ 00:29:10.505 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
213 00:29:12.090 ⇒ 00:29:18.539 bencohen: But I mean, I guess we’re we’re I mean, like, you know, we’re in the backyard. So anything in the backyard is fair game.
214 00:29:19.860 ⇒ 00:29:22.469 bencohen: It would just be a matter of finding something.
215 00:29:23.310 ⇒ 00:29:27.129 bencohen: you know, a little special that is very obvious.
216 00:29:27.800 ⇒ 00:29:33.509 bencohen: And and you know, I’m fine with thinking outside the box. But,
217 00:29:36.140 ⇒ 00:29:40.159 bencohen: I don’t know what what the data would would find. Okay.
218 00:29:40.160 ⇒ 00:29:45.389 Robert Tseng: No man. I’m just. I’m just put pushing the envelope to see what kind of adjacent things you thought about. Yeah.
219 00:29:46.927 ⇒ 00:30:14.002 Robert Tseng: and then, in terms of like. Okay, let’s take out of the backyard space other categories themselves like spas aquariums like I work with. We more. We work with bed Spa companies. And I know all the industry kind of like data and trends around that. You know, they’re blown up everywhere. Everyone’s really into health and wellness right now, and you know every Spa has, like, you know, tanks that probably would reuse like. Have you thought about repurposing skews for other industry use cases.
220 00:30:14.650 ⇒ 00:30:21.679 bencohen: That’d be great. That’d be good, I mean, I don’t know exactly.
221 00:30:21.820 ⇒ 00:30:28.050 bencohen: I mean, if that’s just a matter of like cloning a listing and changing copy and trying to
222 00:30:28.150 ⇒ 00:30:33.600 bencohen: back into it. One second, each one to stop messaging.
223 00:30:33.880 ⇒ 00:30:37.580 bencohen: I’ll message you later, trying to focus
224 00:30:49.950 ⇒ 00:30:52.610 bencohen: if the market, is there? Yes.
225 00:30:53.064 ⇒ 00:30:56.660 bencohen: I don’t know. I don’t I? You know I don’t want to make any assumptions about
226 00:30:56.800 ⇒ 00:31:04.719 bencohen: a market, you know. Maybe there is one. Maybe there isn’t 1. i don’t. I don’t know. I don’t know what like what people use, and
227 00:31:05.990 ⇒ 00:31:13.469 bencohen: if there’s regulations around it, if you know for commercial use. You know, wildlife, that I don’t. I’ve never looked into that.
228 00:31:13.470 ⇒ 00:31:13.980 Robert Tseng: Sure.
229 00:31:14.200 ⇒ 00:31:17.469 bencohen: Listen. They move water. It’s a relatively simple thing.
230 00:31:17.650 ⇒ 00:31:18.210 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
231 00:31:18.210 ⇒ 00:31:21.099 bencohen: So could it do it, I’m sure.
232 00:31:22.860 ⇒ 00:31:26.960 bencohen: would need someone to do some legwork to see if that’s a real possibility.
233 00:31:26.960 ⇒ 00:31:29.840 Robert Tseng: Opportunity or not. Yeah, okay.
234 00:31:30.400 ⇒ 00:31:35.639 Robert Tseng: okay, so yeah, I mean, yeah, let me just pause. And I want to kind of keep keep going. But basically, we talked about
235 00:31:36.198 ⇒ 00:31:46.709 Robert Tseng: yeah, like possible adjacencies and industry possible adjacencies and like products in and outside the pool without. So kind of in the backyard like other things that you thought about there.
236 00:31:47.350 ⇒ 00:31:57.529 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think I’m I’m I’m I’m aware, like I’m not assigning priority to it in this conversation like, I understand that you. Still the pump is the the focus and kind of extending the
237 00:31:57.630 ⇒ 00:32:05.259 Robert Tseng: setting. The you know that that life, that life cycles as much as we can is is the is is the priority. I mean.
238 00:32:05.260 ⇒ 00:32:13.279 bencohen: The easiest. The the lightest lift is definitely going to be figuring out what we could do better
239 00:32:13.490 ⇒ 00:32:25.180 bencohen: with the variable speed pump. It’s easily the best product we have. It’s not even close people, absolutely love thing. Yeah, we need need to figure out. I mean, on Amazon. It’s organically doing much more volume now.
240 00:32:25.370 ⇒ 00:32:26.949 bencohen: less ad spend.
241 00:32:27.140 ⇒ 00:32:36.538 bencohen: It’s just, you know, 2 or 3 weeks ago, I basically said, stop marketing the heat pumps. They’re just not working anymore with the new pricing.
242 00:32:37.280 ⇒ 00:32:53.159 bencohen: and I thought we would probably especially the time of year is a good time of year. Just I thought we would sell probably 15 grand a day of them based on the things of the past. Now, if we were priced to 20% lower we might be. I don’t know.
243 00:32:53.520 ⇒ 00:33:00.669 bencohen: My sense is we have a combination of macro issues price a little bit higher than it’s ever been.
244 00:33:01.460 ⇒ 00:33:03.860 bencohen: Maybe the marketing needs more time
245 00:33:04.030 ⇒ 00:33:13.328 bencohen: since we’ve made a big change with moving more focus from the heat pumps to there. So I guess there’s probably a few things. But
246 00:33:14.830 ⇒ 00:33:24.950 bencohen: I think that’s where you guys will be best served looking. Because I think if you find a couple of things that we’re doing that need to be better, which I think you will. Fresh eyes always find something.
247 00:33:25.130 ⇒ 00:33:30.489 bencohen: We can probably double our our variable speed sales in a short time, which wouldn’t be hard.
248 00:33:30.660 ⇒ 00:33:33.710 bencohen: We’ve done it before. It might just be a
249 00:33:33.850 ⇒ 00:33:37.529 bencohen: little price adjustment, some better copy.
250 00:33:37.710 ⇒ 00:33:42.509 bencohen: a look at a couple of campaigns that you don’t like, and you know it could make a difference.
251 00:33:42.770 ⇒ 00:33:48.440 bencohen: looking trying to figure out like adjacencies and things like that. I think that’s a very long term effort that
252 00:33:48.950 ⇒ 00:33:58.769 bencohen: until I I think we can work on it, but I don’t think we can put a lot of effort and energy and resources for a while. I think that’s a good I mean, it’s a great
253 00:33:59.380 ⇒ 00:34:09.489 bencohen: listen, if you told me that, like the data supported like, if you’re selling a variable speed pump, sell grass, seed and hose
254 00:34:09.710 ⇒ 00:34:15.459 bencohen: that these things are like made to be together. I would be like fuck. Yeah, we’ll find it.
255 00:34:15.699 ⇒ 00:34:28.780 bencohen: We’ll bring into the warehouse, and we’ll bring it in, you know, for a test wrap, and I think that I honestly think that there’s probably some truth there. Maybe not that exact combo. But I do think there’s probably a play there
256 00:34:29.030 ⇒ 00:34:34.149 bencohen: where you take something a little bit odd, and you just you just you know you just nail it.
257 00:34:34.830 ⇒ 00:34:53.069 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, those are the 10 x bets. What you’re asking for is the small cuts, which is fine, and you’ll you’ll get incrementality from that. But yeah, I think I I wanna you know, I I’m the way that I used to doing this is, I will just turn every I’ll just turn every stone and and try to make bets everywhere.
258 00:34:54.250 ⇒ 00:35:16.739 Robert Tseng: but yeah, I mean, as far as like, the let’s kind of let’s talk talk about marketing. Briefly. So to me, that’s just distribution distribution problem. So obviously, we talked about Amazon and shopify channels. I know that you guys have explored other channels. You’ve worked with influencers before, you know, I’ve listened to your guys. Podcasts like, I’ve done full shows. And you know, other other channels like that are not your traditional paid
259 00:35:16.740 ⇒ 00:35:30.349 Robert Tseng: channels? Yeah, like, how much thought is going into that right now? I know from Kim’s perspective. We only give her the paid. Kpis. But yeah, like, how how much of that is like their game to go in and push on as well.
260 00:35:31.110 ⇒ 00:35:37.710 bencohen: I think everything is fair game in the start. We invested a lot in search.
261 00:35:38.180 ⇒ 00:35:39.270 bencohen: Yeah, bombs.
262 00:35:40.200 ⇒ 00:35:43.020 bencohen: And of course, that’s like a 6 to 9 month
263 00:35:43.760 ⇒ 00:35:51.760 bencohen: kind of delay before you really see the fruits of the labor, and I think that we did a really good job for a few years of keeping the pressure on
264 00:35:52.328 ⇒ 00:35:59.580 bencohen: I think we’ve slowed down a bit too much. At the same time, I think like there’s just only so many things you can talk about with pools.
265 00:36:00.550 ⇒ 00:36:05.839 bencohen: but we do get significant traffic there. I think we probably need to consider
266 00:36:06.080 ⇒ 00:36:19.409 bencohen: tripling down on that which is fine, especially with AI. It’s a little bit easier now. The other issue, though, is, is making sure that those are revenue producers. So we have some articles we know that. Make some money. But
267 00:36:20.590 ⇒ 00:36:24.719 bencohen: you know, that’s that’s an issue. You need to make sure that you get something out of them. And
268 00:36:25.560 ⇒ 00:36:28.340 bencohen: the only thing you really do with ones that have traffic
269 00:36:28.810 ⇒ 00:36:43.090 bencohen: that don’t sell anything, is you? You know, you pixel them, and you can retarget them with because you no one searches these topics unless they own a pool. That would be nuts. That’d be really scary if someone cared about a green pool and didn’t own a pool. Yeah, nuts.
270 00:36:43.570 ⇒ 00:36:44.140 bencohen: So.
271 00:36:44.140 ⇒ 00:36:47.090 Robert Tseng: Do display. Ctv Youtube ads, or graphics.
272 00:36:47.090 ⇒ 00:36:56.479 bencohen: Yeah, yeah, we we paused. We paused. Criteo a couple of weeks ago. We were only spending about 5 grand a month there. But I would be fine to turn it back on if we
273 00:36:56.640 ⇒ 00:36:59.198 bencohen: felt it made sense. But
274 00:37:00.880 ⇒ 00:37:05.470 bencohen: yeah, just with the tariffs, and you know, like the dangers to the company. We
275 00:37:05.770 ⇒ 00:37:09.880 bencohen: basically tried like shrinking everything in the last month. It’s not. It’s
276 00:37:10.050 ⇒ 00:37:13.580 bencohen: frankly we may have made mistakes trying that because.
277 00:37:14.180 ⇒ 00:37:18.989 bencohen: given the time of year 8, march 15, th to like June one.
278 00:37:19.370 ⇒ 00:37:20.700 Robert Tseng: Yeah, this is your time.
279 00:37:20.700 ⇒ 00:37:29.660 bencohen: Yeah, it’s very hard to know. But at the same time we’re spending a fuck ton on Google. And we weren’t. We felt it at times it wasn’t worth it. So
280 00:37:30.420 ⇒ 00:37:33.018 bencohen: everything is experimental. What I’m saying. But
281 00:37:33.390 ⇒ 00:37:33.980 Robert Tseng: Sure.
282 00:37:35.440 ⇒ 00:37:44.526 bencohen: We own one Facebook group, we have it’s called like a lease of another. We can market quite a lot in it.
283 00:37:47.030 ⇒ 00:37:51.390 bencohen: pool conferences whatever podcast
284 00:37:53.030 ⇒ 00:38:02.290 bencohen: I don’t know. I mean, the issue is pool industry. People might be engaged in this pool, owners okay.
285 00:38:02.290 ⇒ 00:38:03.110 Robert Tseng: Come on. Yeah.
286 00:38:03.110 ⇒ 00:38:11.459 bencohen: You know, it’s hard to. The groups were very strong for a while. That was me mostly. And then it’s just like too much.
287 00:38:11.860 ⇒ 00:38:17.949 bencohen: It’s like, so micro, I really couldn’t spend more time like talking people on Facebook. But
288 00:38:19.910 ⇒ 00:38:25.169 bencohen: those organic areas are fabulous. I mean that you heard the AI stuff this morning like we would like to just
289 00:38:25.490 ⇒ 00:38:28.559 bencohen: not be so reliant on renting traffic.
290 00:38:29.010 ⇒ 00:38:29.590 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
291 00:38:31.480 ⇒ 00:38:39.850 Robert Tseng: Okay, maybe. Last last kind of thing to touch on would be, where do you kind of start talking about it a bit
292 00:38:40.150 ⇒ 00:38:53.400 Robert Tseng: more on my product product development or product lifecycle, whatever you want to call it. I guess a couple of questions in terms of yeah, like, how are products in the catalog selected?
293 00:38:54.360 ⇒ 00:39:05.286 Robert Tseng: yeah, like. And I guess it’s I don’t think we, the our team has been close to you on like. I don’t. I don’t. No one’s been able to tell me like, what new products you guys are working on.
294 00:39:05.560 ⇒ 00:39:11.889 bencohen: One generator is the one that I think is a big one that we will do really well with. I mean, I was the 1st one to say it.
295 00:39:12.160 ⇒ 00:39:15.099 bencohen: because I saw the trend in Covid when
296 00:39:16.280 ⇒ 00:39:25.200 bencohen: in Louisiana or Mississippi, some very big chlorine factory had like a fire, and then there was a huge chlorine short. So a lot of people started upgrading, they said, like
297 00:39:26.050 ⇒ 00:39:30.439 bencohen: no one really likes chlorine, anyway, and salt.
298 00:39:30.960 ⇒ 00:39:34.309 bencohen: even though the salt actually creates chlorine.
299 00:39:34.770 ⇒ 00:39:40.250 Robert Tseng: It just smells a bit different. It’s but it’s chemically the same thing. It’s just a different way of approaching it.
300 00:39:40.670 ⇒ 00:39:45.490 bencohen: Lot of people started switching to it. So that’s when I was like, I think we have to take this seriously. But
301 00:39:46.820 ⇒ 00:39:52.939 bencohen: we’re very slow with product. I mean, there’s not that many products. 1st of all, like we’ve already accomplished the 3 big ones.
302 00:39:55.130 ⇒ 00:40:00.160 bencohen: You know, we have a lot of filters. There’s like many different. There’s the sand filter, the cartridge filter
303 00:40:00.950 ⇒ 00:40:09.349 bencohen: above ground, for in ground different sizes for different pumps. I mean that we we have a bunch of above ground pumps. We have different in ground pumps. I mean, we have
304 00:40:09.600 ⇒ 00:40:17.520 bencohen: variance within these these buckets, but we’ve already accomplished the 3 big products that a pool has for equipment.
305 00:40:17.520 ⇒ 00:40:18.070 Robert Tseng: Okay.
306 00:40:18.360 ⇒ 00:40:23.760 bencohen: I would say the 4th one is certainly the chlorine, or.
307 00:40:23.900 ⇒ 00:40:30.120 bencohen: you know, whatever is the sanitizing layer of the of the of the of the system. But there’s not.
308 00:40:30.680 ⇒ 00:40:34.520 bencohen: There’s not that many products, you know. You need water. You need the pipes.
309 00:40:34.750 ⇒ 00:40:38.129 bencohen: the hole in the ground, and then you need the pad with the machines.
310 00:40:38.730 ⇒ 00:40:39.330 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
311 00:40:39.500 ⇒ 00:40:45.859 Robert Tseng: And then do you only list products that are live? Or do you ever drop ship like you pre list skews. But like coming soon.
312 00:40:45.860 ⇒ 00:40:46.650 bencohen: We’ve never.
313 00:40:46.650 ⇒ 00:40:47.890 Robert Tseng: The way of testing, yeah.
314 00:40:47.890 ⇒ 00:40:51.066 bencohen: We? We only really do stuff that’s
315 00:40:52.030 ⇒ 00:40:55.129 bencohen: You know, we have stock of. We’ve not we all, you know.
316 00:40:55.290 ⇒ 00:40:57.719 bencohen: I’ve talked about the dropship stuff.
317 00:40:58.290 ⇒ 00:41:02.140 Robert Tseng: Yeah, just another way to like low risk way to gauge demand. Right? So.
318 00:41:02.140 ⇒ 00:41:05.933 bencohen: I I would be into, I would be definitely into testing it.
319 00:41:06.650 ⇒ 00:41:10.789 bencohen: for sure. I don’t know how much money there is to be made there, but
320 00:41:11.050 ⇒ 00:41:12.529 bencohen: we have to find out.
321 00:41:12.930 ⇒ 00:41:18.129 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I just mean, like as a way of, you know, if we’re pushing new bundles or making product sessions rather than
322 00:41:18.370 ⇒ 00:41:31.059 Robert Tseng: waiting to speed up the product development life lifecycle. It’s more of a marketing gimmick, I guess, to try to like, get the interest and then use that as like to build the case, for we should go and source these materials and go and.
323 00:41:31.060 ⇒ 00:41:41.163 bencohen: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s great. I mean, we we should definitely do that. It’s a way to get certainty around what we’re investing in. So that’s really good.
324 00:41:41.890 ⇒ 00:41:46.630 bencohen: the issue is like, suppose like, so like, this is where we have to figure it out like, suppose you have a successful test.
325 00:41:47.130 ⇒ 00:41:47.800 Robert Tseng: Yep.
326 00:41:47.800 ⇒ 00:41:50.970 bencohen: And then we need like 18 months to like, actually like
327 00:41:51.700 ⇒ 00:42:01.350 bencohen: design development testing approval with the brand more testing, we usually need to get it into the field. For.
328 00:42:02.050 ⇒ 00:42:08.090 bencohen: like actual, there’s there’s factor testing. And there’s like backyard testing. We usually try to do one season with, like.
329 00:42:08.240 ⇒ 00:42:11.390 bencohen: you know we try to keep an eye on it, so it takes a long time.
330 00:42:11.610 ⇒ 00:42:21.260 bencohen: What would be nice is, I suppose we assess that something was good, and we drop shipped successfully if we could, instead of waiting all that time, we actually just made it like a profitable
331 00:42:22.390 ⇒ 00:42:24.640 bencohen: thing with some other brand. I would be fine.
332 00:42:24.640 ⇒ 00:42:26.840 Robert Tseng: White label, something else. And for that one, yeah.
333 00:42:26.840 ⇒ 00:42:31.600 bencohen: White label, or just, you know, don’t don’t even white label just give them the credit, you know, whatever.
334 00:42:31.600 ⇒ 00:42:31.930 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
335 00:42:32.200 ⇒ 00:42:40.310 bencohen: If it. If it makes money, it would be good, you know it would be fine to to continue with it, so we don’t have all the any dead time.
336 00:42:40.710 ⇒ 00:42:46.010 Robert Tseng: Yeah. Last question is, do you ever discontinue skews? Or when you’re thinking about skew? Okay, yeah.
337 00:42:46.010 ⇒ 00:42:55.630 bencohen: Yeah, yeah, we’ve done that. I mean, discontinue might be a a harsh word, but we definitely have had skews that we said like, this doesn’t work and pull it.
338 00:42:56.370 ⇒ 00:43:05.160 bencohen: We’ll raise the price a ton, so it doesn’t make sense for someone to buy it. And you know we will not focus on it. We will kind of remove it from marketing and just be like
339 00:43:05.540 ⇒ 00:43:12.089 bencohen: this. One doesn’t work for this online market. It might work really well for wholesale, or something like that.
340 00:43:12.720 ⇒ 00:43:23.830 Robert Tseng: Okay. But it doesn’t really sound like you’re that concerned about. Oh, your inventory is getting bloated. You should go and like, Go review like which skis you should be sunsetting like. Set a threshold for anything that’s like, okay.
341 00:43:23.980 ⇒ 00:43:29.051 bencohen: No, I think we just. I think we need to just focus on the winners and
342 00:43:29.500 ⇒ 00:43:35.760 bencohen: overtime decrease our reliance on paid. I mean, we were kind of doing that. And I
343 00:43:37.110 ⇒ 00:43:39.430 bencohen: I’m not sure what happened.
344 00:43:39.780 ⇒ 00:43:41.200 bencohen: Not sure what happened.
345 00:43:42.230 ⇒ 00:43:48.869 bencohen: There’s been a lot of I think there’s been too many changes in in in how we’ve approached the business from a higher level.
346 00:43:51.060 ⇒ 00:43:56.120 bencohen: We haven’t had pricing stability we’re always raising because we started so low.
347 00:43:57.570 ⇒ 00:44:13.044 bencohen: Now we’ve raised again. I think we’ve raised too much. Amazon is less sensitive to that, because people have this guarantee that they could just send it back, and we’ve got like the one day shipping thing like it’s there’s like a blanket of security on it.
348 00:44:14.380 ⇒ 00:44:20.900 bencohen: I’d be curious if we reduce the price, you know, 20 bucks across the board on the variable speed line.
349 00:44:23.740 ⇒ 00:44:24.569 bencohen: I don’t know.
350 00:44:24.890 ⇒ 00:44:33.019 bencohen: We’ve we’ve played with it. I think we may have played with it too much. But now me and Dan are basically in this pattern where we think
351 00:44:34.250 ⇒ 00:44:36.279 bencohen: everything is going to get tariffed.
352 00:44:36.510 ⇒ 00:44:43.840 bencohen: even if the tariffs relax, our competitors are going to go up. We have to go up, too. But I think that we might benefit from
353 00:44:44.830 ⇒ 00:44:49.969 bencohen: an outside data company saying, you guys are like $17 too high.
354 00:44:50.330 ⇒ 00:44:54.300 bencohen: you know. Here’s here’s what we want to see if we want to see it for a week.
355 00:44:55.360 ⇒ 00:45:03.300 Robert Tseng: Where can I see, like the pricing changes that you guys have implemented? I’d like to go in. That’s that’s an easy sensitivity and test that we should go run across like our sales.
356 00:45:03.300 ⇒ 00:45:06.489 bencohen: I think that’s our biggest problem right now. I think we’re too high.
357 00:45:09.110 ⇒ 00:45:20.966 bencohen: and I think that price. I I wish it wasn’t the case. But like this is, these are relative. These just move water in the hole, you know. Like I I they don’t do anything more. You know what I mean, like it’s it’s not
358 00:45:22.110 ⇒ 00:45:33.240 bencohen: I don’t like. It’s not like like I don’t know like like that bioluminescent water in Puerto Rico, where you like move your hands, and it like glows, like, you know there’s nothing’s it just moves.
359 00:45:33.240 ⇒ 00:45:35.990 Robert Tseng: It’d be magical. That’s just yeah. Living water. Yeah.
360 00:45:35.990 ⇒ 00:45:47.580 bencohen: I think that Price, the ultimate lever, is price. I think that we are. We have gone overboard, and I understand there’s fear, and there’s concern, and we have to mind our inventory. But
361 00:45:48.220 ⇒ 00:45:53.979 bencohen: I really want to see us double our sales, and I think that we can do it probably easier than we think we can.
362 00:45:55.110 ⇒ 00:46:10.359 Robert Tseng: Yeah, okay, let me wrap this up. Thank you for this, and my couple of follow ups would be if I could get like pricing history. I don’t know where I mean. I could go and just go into the platforms and click around and look for that. But I don’t know, if you guys keep have like a pricing change like tracker or something.
363 00:46:10.560 ⇒ 00:46:13.930 bencohen: Ask a better he’ll be quick.
364 00:46:13.930 ⇒ 00:46:14.270 Robert Tseng: Okay.
365 00:46:14.270 ⇒ 00:46:15.190 bencohen: Good answer.
366 00:46:15.570 ⇒ 00:46:29.099 Robert Tseng: Sure. Okay? And yeah. Well, anyway, I’ll I’ll kind of compile my my thoughts, bring it to the team, and then I’ll I’ll put something in front of you in terms of like outline of what we’re what we wanna, what my proposal is to kind of go after.
367 00:46:29.100 ⇒ 00:46:29.880 bencohen: I think I think
368 00:46:29.880 ⇒ 00:46:36.490 bencohen: there’s probably a few things we can. We can. We can knock out quickly and we’ll you know you’ll have our support.
369 00:46:36.930 ⇒ 00:46:40.489 bencohen: As long as you know, the whole thing makes sense, which I’m sure it will. And and
370 00:46:40.850 ⇒ 00:46:42.479 bencohen: yeah, we’ll make this all happen.
371 00:46:42.950 ⇒ 00:46:46.040 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool, alright. Well, thanks for your time, Ben.
372 00:46:46.310 ⇒ 00:46:47.939 bencohen: Thank you. I’ll talk to you soon.
373 00:46:48.070 ⇒ 00:46:49.399 Robert Tseng: Hi Christine! Bye.