Darren & Phillip - Brian Nolan

Speaker A: All right, welcome Back to the pod with Brian Nolan, a classic OG who sold his company Cellbrite to GoDaddy and now has done all sorts of different stuff.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah.

Speaker A: So what do you do?

Speaker B: Thanks for having me back in the.

Speaker A: So cool.

Speaker B: In the cool space.

Speaker A: Yeah, you were. He was. People listening. He was in our home. My home. And this at this table actually.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And now the table has moved into the studio and eventually we'll move to the pawn shop.

Speaker B: But yeah. What's been going on a lot since the last time I was here.

Speaker A: Actually I, I think you were at GoDaddy.

Speaker B: I was at GoDaddy, yeah.

Speaker A: You got acquired and you were there.

Speaker B: Got acquired in 2019 and I spent two years at GoDaddy as like director of product for their e commerce tools. So they end up building and adding all these tools to upsell to domain customers. And that was part of our acquisition. So they wanted to add website builder and e commerce tools which is where we were. So. So yeah, I spent two years there and the first year flew by and it was still sort of transition, still leading my team felt kind of normal. Second year just felt like corporate, you know, and as a startup guy. No, no, like not ragging on GoDaddy itself. The people were great and they treated us well. But it's a big company.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And moving from a, uh, you know, small startup essentially to a 7,000 person company that has quarterly business reviews and you know, you're spending a third of your time just preparing to tell the CEO what you did last quarter and. And then we moved to like monthly business reviews and I was like, okay, so that second year dragged. Good people. But yeah. And my team started moving around and you know, so I was like lost all that kind of stuff. So I was ready to go after two years and I didn't really know what I wanted to do next. And right at like the last month that I was at GoDaddy, a friend of mine reached out, Roy Rubin, who's the founder of Magento, a big, back in the day, big e commerce platform before like Shopify and all that. Yeah. And he said, hey, what are you doing now? What are you doing after GoDaddy? We're uh, putting together this company and we're looking for a co founder, CEO, tech CEO. And I said, tell me more. So that was the start of Book Outdoors, which was my next venture after sellbright. And Book Outdoors was a travel booking site like Expedia or booking.com but focused on outdoor accommodations. So think RV parks and campgrounds and cabins and things like that. Right. Not national parks or, or airbnb style properties, but more like commercial campgrounds, businesses that were rv.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And things like that. Right. So we connected. I, uh, connected with Roy. Roy had uh, another guy, Amir, who we connected with, who owned an RV park. And that's kind of how it all came together. Like he had the pain point of. He had actually several RV parks. He had a pain point of not having distribution channels like hotels have. And I guess had been tried a couple times in the industry to build like a travel booking site. But there's always like non tech people or you know, non e commerce people that did it. So we made a run for it and um, we ran it for three years.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And I'll give you some details, but

Speaker A: is it a big market? Just out of curiosity, is it like.

Speaker B: It is.

Speaker A: And you had Covid. Right. So it's like maybe that helped accelerate some.

Speaker B: So it was on the back of COVID Yeah. Because it's 2021 now. Uh, like middle to end of 21.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So kind of almost winding down, you know, on the really boom of like outdoor travel for Covid.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: So that fueled, certainly fueled the investments that we got early on. We ended up raising four and a half million dollars vc.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: On pre seed, like just on the

Speaker A: idea, uh, Brian Nolan's involved. Let's go.

Speaker B: Mostly Roy, he had a much bigger,

Speaker A: you know, actually love when that happens though. I mean, like, look, a bet's a bet and if you have the right team, that's half of it.

Speaker B: That's right. And you know, and again, yeah, we're coming off a hot shiny object kind of thing in the VC world of outdoor travel.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Everybody was this, this market all of a sudden exploded because people who had never been camping before or never been RVing or even maybe even in a cabin or something all of a sudden have now have done that. And they're like, oh, yeah, I would do that again. That's fun. Right. But it was still super painful to try to find and um, book any of these spots.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: It was so fragmented.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You had the national park website that, that was contracted out by the government. You had. There was a site, there is a company called Hip Camp who ended up actually acquiring Book Outdoors. That was doing more of the peer to peer. You have your own private land, you want to rent it out as a campground kind of thing.

Speaker A: Okay, interesting.

Speaker B: And then there was us and doing the commercial campground. So we had, you know, Campgrounds of America, Koa Sun Outdoors. These are the bigger Margaritaville. Like these bigger brands in the outdoor space that have hundreds of properties. We were going after them and bringing them in.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So we raised all this money early on and started rolling. And what we found was a lot of these campgrounds in the RV resorts and so forth. There's a huge long tail and they're run by mom and pops as lifestyle businesses a lot of times post retirement kind of things. And it was a hard sell to get them to want to be online. Like some of them didn't even have their own online booking on their own website or even maybe not even a web phone call. They wanted the phone call, which, you know, they never answer the phone because they're out doing stuff around the park too.

Speaker A: Uh, what an interesting.

Speaker B: But they wanted to talk to everybody that booked. And they certainly didn't want to pay for a booking because we were taking a commission. Just like media or whoever. Right. We would take a commission m on the booking. So yeah, okay, maybe they would get on our site for free, but they certainly weren't going to pay us for it. So the bigger companies, the KOAS and the Sun Outdoors and those guys, they had business development people, they had heads of revenue. A lot of them came from the hotel world. So they got it right. They understood. They wanted to be on what the industry calls OTAs, online travel agencies.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: It's a necessary evil in hotels. They, uh, they would rather have everything booked direct, but because Expedia and the like get so much traffic, like they have to be there.

Speaker A: Totally.

Speaker B: And we were trying to do the same thing here, but it was a lot of friction. And so we ended up getting about a thousand properties across the country, uh, on, on our site, which is pretty good. But there's like 15,000.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: In the space. So. But ultimately fast forward, I mean we, we made some mistakes early on with hiring that tripped us up and slowed us down in the beginning. Burned some cash doing that. But ultimately I got a good team in place. And then two and a half, three years later, we went out and tried to raise the next round of funding. And by then outdoor travel was not now AI was the new shiny object in the PC world. Outdoor travel was no longer in favor. Call it, uh, even the industry. A lot of people Covid's now over people are like up back to hotels, back to going to Europe or whatever.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So bookings for campgrounds and everything went back like 2023 was more like 2019. Sometimes even lower than 2019. Cause the pendulum swung the Other way. Right. So we just had trouble. Ultimately, the demise of the companies. We couldn't raise more capital.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: We went to VCs. I pitched to probably 150 VCs. Geez. We went, then shifted focus to strategic. So we started looking at other bigger companies in the space that were, um, VC backed already or private equity backed. Yeah. And we got some interest there. And then those discussions led to them saying, well, what about an acquisition? Maybe we just bring you in and create. Start creating this outdoor travel. Like a couple of them rented, um, they did like peer to peer RV rental. RV rentals, like the vehicle itself.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So I said, okay, well what about if we do that and then we'll bring you in and so you rent the RV and the spot, you know, together. And so those are the discussions we were having while you're having these VC

Speaker A: meetings, like the 150 you mentioned. And it's not probably going well. What's. Because I'm like scared of this where I'm like, you just have blind faith at some, um. Right. Like you're never really thinking you're not going to get the money. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah. You have to have blind faith and like the thickest skin in the world because you, you just get gut punched every day.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And you have to go into the next meeting with as much conviction and enthusiasm as the first one. Even though you've gotten 100 no's before this and 100 people telling you why it's not going to work.

Speaker A: Yeah. And they kept saying the same thing. I imagine they're probably like Covid's over, this is done or no. What are they saying? The tech doesn't work. These people don't like the tech.

Speaker B: It had nothing to do with the tech. It was really around the market, like total addressable market. How do you. How big is. How big can this be? Nowadays these VCs have such huge funds that for them, you know, they're looking for the grand slam. That's all I need. They need one, the next Airbnb to pay back the entire fund. So they're looking for multibillion dollar businesses. And now the funds are $1 billion. So most VCs, I shouldn't say there are some that are willing to take. They're in the game to like just hit single after single after single and just make like Synaxis. But most of them are looking for big tam, like big total addressable markets.

Speaker A: Was your pitch like, we'll get a likely acquisition by these companies. Like at some point, if you Prove it then. It's an easy plug and play for a larger conglomerate. Yeah, maybe.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's Exactly. Expedia, booking.com, like, okay, they want to have all the different types of accommodations. They got decimated through Covid. Right. Bookings went to zero at hotels. So the big hotel chains.

Speaker A: Crazy.

Speaker B: The big hotel chains were actually trying to diversify. Have diversified and gotten into. I'll put quotes around air quotes. What they call, you know, outdoor accommodations. Marriott Hyatt, I think, did this too. But those outdoor accommodations are like classic Airstream campers that are on bougie kind of.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So it's not like an RV park.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, but that's sort of the first step. Right. They're, like, easing into that and getting down there. So our thesis was eventually outdoor accommodations are going to be just as important as hotels. And you kind of want to have all these options for everybody.

Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense. Okay.

Speaker B: Just like now they have vacation rentals kind of rolled into that, too.

Speaker A: Yeah. So you're getting a lot of, like, interest, I would say, on that side. They're like, they know the story. It sounds good.

Speaker B: We're just too small.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Too small. Those guys. Too small. God, that sucks. Even, like, the Amex. Is Amex Travel or Capital, uh, One Travel of the world. Super interested. You guys are way too small. Like, we have massive scale at Amex Travel.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You need to have 10,000 properties to choose from, not 1,000. So call us back in, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah, There. Okay. Give me a tidbit on, like, something you learned that you didn't know in this market, that it's like a quirk or something. Like, when the parking industry. What I learned was a lot of the legacy software is in the 70s. And so getting these guys on an API even is like. It's a lot kind of like the phone call. Like, they like the phone call. Still very old school. Very like, that's how that world works. And so it felt like we were moving the Amish to the 21st century.

Speaker B: Yeah, same thing.

Speaker A: Same thing.

Speaker B: I call. I use the term allergic to tech. Yeah. Like, they are so comfortable with pen and paper. A lot of them just getting, like, their first tech that they're going to use is some kind of reservation system internally. That's the. That's the logical first thing to do before moving to, like, uh, a mark, you know, a marketplace. Like us.

Speaker A: Got it.

Speaker B: And a lot of them don't even have that. So we would, of course, be at these trade shows, and we partnered With a lot of the reservation systems that were out there so that they could just feed us the inventory and we'd feed them back the bookings.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But I saw the struggles they were going through even trying to sell to these companies, you know, to this. And they're. And they, the campgrounds would just bounce around from reservation system. Like each season they would swap out their whole reservation system and try something new. And they all were missing something. You know, a lot of them weren't very easy to use and.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So I think the tech in campground industry is just. We're still probably 10 years before it gets really adopted. And like, I think what's happening, what we're going to see, what we've been seeing already is that private equity is coming in and buying campground properties. Kind of like parking or, uh, self storage. Right. That was sort of. It's the same kind of model, like low operating expense.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, it's a property play. So we're seeing a lot of private equity come in. We're also seeing a lot of generational turnover. So mom and dad, Grandma, grandpa ran this campground. It's been in our family for generations. Parking.

Speaker A: That's crazy.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And. And then the kids, the adult kids come in that are, you know, maybe 30s or 40s that all of a sudden inherited this and they're like, why the. Why the hell don't we have. Why are we doing this on post? Its totally. Why don't we have some kind of technology here? So it's happening and it needs to happen. It's just slow and it's probably.

Speaker A: So what, what was the conversation for you guys internally when you just decided like, all right, we've tried everything.

Speaker B: It's just, I mean, we just whittled the company. We kept having to reduce our expense. Uh, reduce our. Yeah, our. Burn our expenses all the way down to like a handful of people.

Speaker A: Did you miss the Godaddy office space in year two at that time?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Are you like, oh man, let me go back.

Speaker B: Yeah, I know.

Speaker A: Or no, no. Right.

Speaker B: I would imagine I didn't miss that because I still love the starter.

Speaker A: So, uh, scratching the edge.

Speaker B: My wife probably did. I probably missed the consistency and the low stress and.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, just the. That easy part of it.

Speaker A: But so how did you guys decide

Speaker B: to walk away so. Well, we didn't walk away. We actually found a buyer.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: Um, so we, we basically knocked on every door in the industry and the final one we knocked on was our biggest competitor, which was Hipcamp who are great people. And, you know, we were just head to head with them and they were again, focused on more of the peer to peer. They actually started when they started way back in the day. They started trying to do what we were doing with the commercial campgrounds, immediately saw way too hard, pivoted and started creating more inventory, really, from these private land. Anyway, so we approached them and said, hey, we got, you know, a thousand. We got basically three of the biggest names on board in terms of the brands that Margaritaville, koa. We can bring all this to you. Um, we've. We had by that point built a pretty decent brand in the industry and people knew us. So, uh, you know, we did a deal and basically handed everything over to them. It was a way to recoup something for my investors.

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker B: It wasn't a win for us as a team, unfortunately, but, uh, you know, hey, better than completely shutting. Yeah, that's how it goes. And you know, that's what startups are like and kind of just comes with the territory. And at least we were able to do something where all of our work lived on. Oh, our employees, some of our employees did get jobs there, which is great. So they, you know, they landed there.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, and they got equity as part of that compensation and everything.

Speaker A: So did you have to stay there or.

Speaker B: No, I didn't. No, they weren't. They didn't need another totally, uh, executive level person. I helped a little bit through introductions and transition and then kind of moved on from that. So, you know, they're still going and I'm rooting for them and.

Speaker A: Yeah. Hip camp.

Speaker B: Hip camp, yeah. So backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Benchmark, I think solid. So you got some money?

Speaker A: Yeah, well capitalized. That's a good group.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so then what happens? So then you go back home and you're like, do you have that itch again or do you still have the itch? Or is it like, how long do you spend just whiteboarding, thinking of stuff?

Speaker B: Uh, dude, I was so ready to just like take a break because I basically took between. So I, you know, celebrate was like five and a half years.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: GoDaddy went straight to GoDaddy. Two years.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: Essentially no vacations through that I took. We finally took a vacation after the acquisition, but working hard for seven, eight years. And then I took a month off before jumping right into book outdoors. So I said, let me. My daughter is just about to start kindergarten.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: After that summer. So I told Roy I need one month till she starts school. Let me spend time with her and then we'll dive in. So I was ready for a little break after that, especially after beaten up a little bit.

Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. How did you feel personally? Like, honestly did. Were you. Because it can be like deflating, obviously.

Speaker B: Totally.

Speaker A: You want the win, you assemble the right team, you get the right backing.

Speaker B: I was proud of what we had built. I felt like we built the best platform to date for that industry and educated a lot of people in the industry. And I was proud of the team and like everything we had built. I was disappointed that it wasn't the outcome that we wanted.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I was disappointed that the team believed in me and the vision and came on board and sacrificed a lot for three years. Didn't get a good outcome. That was probably most disappointing. Yeah. I feel bad for investors, but, like, that's the game.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So they're totally fine.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But that was the biggest thing was, like, I liked the people that we had on the team and to not have a better outcome for them was disappointing.

Speaker A: That's honest. Yeah, I get that. And then what happens? So then you take some time.

Speaker B: Hopefully took a little breather. And then my. And then we're wife and I are like, what do we do next? Like, what do we want to do? And I didn't feel A, I didn't really have, like a burning idea that I wanted to pursue.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But B, I was like, I don't know if I could do this 0 to 1 again right now. Like, that's just a lot of work and a lot to put on the table. Totally. So starting from scratch on something sounds tough. And we said, what about if we buy some business that's already got some momentum and has an opportunity to scale and maybe we could take some of our experience and try to scale this thing. So that's what we ended up doing. We found this awesome couple in Australia, actually, that built this brand over the last eight years called Darren and Philip. That's a dog apparel brand. Uh, uh, we make matching dog and human apparel.

Speaker A: Oh, wow.

Speaker B: And so owner and pet, huge cult following.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: Huge social media following.

Speaker A: How did you find it? Were you guys, uh, like customers of this or, uh, how did you find out about it?

Speaker B: We weren't. We are now. We were kind of exploring all different types of businesses.

Speaker A: Did you know they were for sale or did you just approach them?

Speaker B: Well, it was kind of the situation where they had been running it for eight years. Darren and Philip were the names of their two dogs that this all started with. So the Brand started because their dogs started getting a social media following. Two English staffies, which are like little mini pit bulls, kind of got a social media following that turned into, well, maybe we build a brand and start making, you know, merch or apparel or whatever around this. And so that's how the brand Darren and Philip got started.

Speaker A: Got it.

Speaker B: And that was 2016.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Since then those Darren and Philip have both crossed the rainbow bridge, as we say in the pet world. Um, and then this couple had two young kids, so. And then a little bit of fatigue of, you know, running a business for eight years as well. Yeah. Uh, so they were ready to move on and we, we basically discovered that, I mean they were, they're still involved, I would say, at this point, but they were ready to like step back from day to day operations and, and have somebody else take over and scale it. Plus they were in Australia and they had built a business in Australia and then they started scaling to the US So when we took over, about half the business was us, half in Australia.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: A little bit sprinkled in UK and Europe and Canada.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But, um, I'm still calling it half and half.

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker B: But they didn't really know how to scale it more in the US from Australia, like from where they were and everything. Right. So. But we were looking at everything from like local landscaping businesses and like.

Speaker A: Got it.

Speaker B: The idea honestly was buy some passive income businesses.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Somehow we landed on this one that we thought was more passive than it is. But you know, it's, it's requiring. Yeah, it's a real business and it requires some effort.

Speaker A: That's so fun. I like it.

Speaker B: But it's fun.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And it's E commerce, it's direct to consumer brand. So it's all in E commerce. I felt like I can bring my experience. And again, they have a great following on social media. We, I keep saying they, but at the time they. Right. Had a great, uh, following on social media, on Instagram in particular. A loyal fan base, high repeat customer rate, low customer acquisition costs. Like all the E commerce metrics was like, check, check, check, check. It's got everything. So can we take this and run with it and expand and scale it in the US and we're still in that process. It's been not even a year since we bought it. Right. Uh, end of last year. So part of, you know, the first few months were just really transition and sure tweaking some things. We use Shopify and all the popular tools there, but we're still figuring that out. And There is a component of the Australian market that was loyal to original owners.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker B: And it was more of a novelty Australian brand that they're loyal to. Now that it's not, you know, that hurts a little bit. Uh, but it's a really cool company. And our model is that we do monthly drops of new collections. So are you designing them now? Yeah. So.

Speaker A: So fun. Okay.

Speaker B: Yeah. So we design this stuff in house. So it's like our most popular product are these robes. So fleet. Think of, like, a fleece. Really soft fleece bathrobe for women.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I guess just humans.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: It doesn't have to be women, but that's our core market. Um, with a matching robe for the dog. And the matching robe for the dog not only looks cute, but has a functional component, too. It's these straps that wrap around the body of the dog and kind of Velcro on top. So it creates this hug effect, which has a calming effect on the dog.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So dogs with separation anxiety or, you know, scared of thunder or anything like that.

Speaker A: So funny.

Speaker B: It's great.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But we also have matching pajamas. That was a big thing. Right. So, uh, Christmas is our best drop because there's a lot of people that like to do the family pajamas, but we do. We include the dog. So for Christmas card photos and stuff like that, you got the dog matching you with blanket and everything. Easter is another big one. Halloween. But then we sprinkle in other things, too. We have sweatshirts that match. We have hoodies, things like that. Wow. So we're expanding and thinking of new things we can do. And then the drops every month are, you know, sometimes we'll do robes with a new design, sometimes we'll do a new product. We just did a launch a, uh, couple days ago, and we introduced a new product that's, uh, like this couch lounger. So it's a combination dog bed blanket for the couch or for a car seat or something. And it kind of drapes over the couch. The dog can lay on the couch and not mess it up. And it's cute and everything. It matches the robes and fabric and everything. So it's been a ton of fun. And the customers have been great.

Speaker A: I mean, it's a very loyal customer.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I mean, they're probably buying these things that are so psyched to get them,

Speaker B: which is also kind of fun. We do a great job with packaging, so, like, the unwrapping boxing experience is great. Okay. It's all quality fabrics, fine craftsmanship. So it's a high quality product. Premium price point. But it's a high quality product and, um, people really love it.

Speaker A: Are the X's and O's for you? Like, is it just effectively getting this thing into the major markets of the United States? Like, what are you seeing the opportunity?

Speaker B: Awareness.

Speaker A: I just think probably la, LA and Australia have some sort of connection for some reason.

Speaker B: But yeah, I think because like, that's where everybody flies into. Yeah, flies in LA from Sydney.

Speaker A: And so is it the way you're thinking about it, is it like, just get this thing into like, like Target Boston, Target New York, Target Chicago.

Speaker B: So that. So it's. It's a purely D2C right now.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: We need to drive more just awareness of the brand in the United States. People just don't know about it. Once they find out about it, they love it. Our repeat customer rate is probably too high. Honestly, it's great to have repeat customers.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: But eventually these customers churn out, their dog dies or like, you know, maybe they don't need any more. They have a closet full of stuff or they move or whatever, you know, I don't know. So if you're not getting new customers in that repeat customer rate, the number of repeat customers slowly drop. So we just need to do more to drive awareness. We're trying to do more on TikTok, trying to do more on Instagram and PR and things like that, just to get the word out.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, we have a big social component to it too. So over the last eight years, the original owner started it, we're continuing it. We donate money to dog rescues around the country, and specifically bully breeds. So the staffies that started it are part of the bully breed of dogs. Pit bulls, American staffies, English staffies, bulldogs. And so we're trying to change the narrative around that breed of, uh, those breeds of dogs.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so we primarily donate to pity rescues and, you know, bully breed rescues. But we're also now donating to the Colorado Puppy Rescue. Colorado, where I am now.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But today we've donated over a million dollars. The company has donated over $1 million to rescues around the world. So that's huge. It's component of what we're doing. We're going to continue to do. We do a big fundraiser every Christmas to, you know, from our customer base to even donate even more.

Speaker A: Totally.

Speaker B: So there's that big component to it.

Speaker A: And will you take on like partners or additional equity for this or are you guys just trying to make it work with the existing. Like it's a different model, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Which is kind of exciting, honestly. Like the way I'm thinking about it's like, all right, so you were in sort of like tech tech and then VC and now. Yeah, you're here and it's like, it's like it's a different problem. Kind of exciting.

Speaker B: We've thought about that. Like.

Speaker A: Yeah. Do we add that feel to it

Speaker B: or do you, do we go that route?

Speaker A: That's a part of your brain, that's how you're wired.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And you can get it.

Speaker B: If I could just get it in front of Taylor Swift or something, then we'd be set.

Speaker A: And then there's that.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: The influencer TikTok marketing of the virality. If that goes off, then it's like free essentially.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker B: Okay, we've made some progress there on the, I'll call them the non famous influencers, the um, micro influencers that have done a great job helping us out there. We have our DNP family that is a group of about a dozen people in Australia and the US that we gift new product to every collection and they do a great job of creating content for us. But yeah, we just need to do more of that and if we could get some celebrities to blow it up, then awesome. But we're still working on that angle.

Speaker A: That's so true.

Speaker B: So do we raise money? Maybe. Maybe if we go the target route of things. A little bit of a tricky play on that retail angle because we do this, our uh, value prop is really this matching stuff. And if you think about a target, the dog pet sections over here and the women's sections over here. So how do they showcase it? I think they could probably do something around a holiday, Christmas certainly. They could put something in the middle. I could see it now. Right. Like the mannequins. Yeah, the whole thing. But it's not a total natural fit. So do we.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: We could help them with that. We can put stuff in the dog section and have.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Packaging that says, oh, there's matching human or you know, I don't know. So yeah.

Speaker A: Where do you want to take it like you personally when you think about this business?

Speaker B: You know, it's, it's a lifestyle business for us. So uh, we want this to be a cash flow business that we run and eventually I'd like to pull out of some of the day to day operations and have a team that's more experienced than I am on, you know, deep in their particular expertise running different things.

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker B: I'm kind of like typical entrepreneur where I'M wear um, a lot of hats and know a lot of things, but pretty shallow across the board. I'd love to have somebody that's just doing our TikTok. Somebody we do now have somebody is helping us on the social media side or on the Instagram side.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, um, how do we do just influencer, just email and, and then have like a growth marketer come in. So that's where we want to take it. And what is. I think there's a lot of room to scale. Yeah, I think there's a lot for sure.

Speaker A: It seems like there was a tremendous amount of upside early days proven though, which is nice. That's kind of the nice part.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: What is your. What does your daughter think of this? Is she like. She must love it. I can only imagine. And so in some way, like she's going to business school with her parents right now.

Speaker B: Totally. And it seems like all of it, we pull her in and she's totally involved and I love that. Sometimes we do with the family pajamas, we'll do like kids pajamas too, like Christmas, Easter. So she loves to model, so she'll be the model for that stuff. But we try to get her involved as much as possible. We just did our first like pop up festival. Smart thing to see. That's the first ever, like event to see how that does.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So we dragged her out there in the hot Colorado sun for a weekend to help us with that and um, yeah, she likes it. We have a seven almost ah, eight month old puppy now.

Speaker A: Okay, nice.

Speaker B: Um, that's an English staff new star of the show. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: How high end can these things get? Like, is, is there. Do, uh, you have a lot of competitors that are just price gouging, like what's, what is the landscape look like?

Speaker B: Well, how high end can it go? Louis Vuitton has dog collars that are $400. Right. So it can go there. Yeah, that's obviously a.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: A much smaller market. We're in the. Our dog robes, for instance, are $48 retail. Our women's robes are $78.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: That's kind of the high end. So we're right in that. I would say, you know, 40, 50, 60, 70 range.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So it's not, it's not definitely not super high end, but I would say it's premium compared to what you may find on the shelf at Walmart right now.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: For a dog shirt.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But again it's exclusive prints, it's higher quality fabrics, it's great packaging, very comfortable. Like the fabric. I wish. That's the hard part about directing a consumer is you can't feel it. I mean, we have thousands of reviews that talk about how awesome the fabric is. But, you know, something we noticed at the festival was people love Touch it, Touch it and feel it.

Speaker A: Yeah. Have you thought about doing like trunk shows? Like doing a bunch of those with some brands?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's. I like, I try to think about scale, like, totally. If I'm gonna spend $5,000 on a show or something, whatever to $1,000. Like, where else can I use that thousand dollars and can I can it, you know, Facebook ads. Are those gonna scale better than being at a trunk show?

Speaker A: What's scaling right now the most? Just the digital.

Speaker B: Yeah. Just on the social side. We're still trying to get the meta ads to work. Um, get the math to work.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And get more UGC user generated content to use that in the ads and make that work. But again, I need to bring on people that know how to make that work.

Speaker A: How big is the team now?

Speaker B: My wife and I. Okay. Yeah. That's so exciting. And Kayla, who I just brought on to do some social media stuff, but she's, you know, contract part time.

Speaker A: Where do you actually want to take this, like in your wildest of dreams?

Speaker B: I think it would be awesome. In a Target or a, uh, Nordstrom or something like that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Get it into stores and have a big D2C brand that people know and. Yeah, it'd be fun. I don't think we want to do our own stores. I don't think that makes sense.

Speaker A: No. Yeah, I don't see that.

Speaker B: But, um, being in other boutique pet stores, but also the big box and then just having a much bigger D2C business would be great.

Speaker A: I love it. Well, tell people where they can follow it or they can support all this stuff.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's just DarrenAndPhillip.com D A R R E N and P H I l l I p.com and it's Aron and Philip on all socials.

Speaker A: I'm so jealous of people with like dog content. It like crushes like food content and dog content. Crush on the socials.

Speaker B: It's food and any kind of like supplement. Okay, those are where the. I just went today.

Speaker A: You got to create a little food for the dog.

Speaker B: I was over in Santa Monica Day on 3rd Street Promenade. Have you seen the outlandish shop there? Have you heard of that?

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: Dude, you got to go check this out.

Speaker A: What is it?

Speaker B: They took a retail storefront on 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. And you walk in, I have a video I'll show you after. And there's these little maybe, maybe 10 foot wide, probably as wide as this table. So not even 10 foot wide booths with a, uh, branding on the back. So I saw like Mr. Beast Goalie, those like supplements, chocolate, uh, brand, a hairbrush brand. And there's a bunch of them. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And there's a bunch of talent doing TikTok live.

Speaker A: Mm.

Speaker B: It's like a. Imagine old school QVC or whatever. You know, like online shopping.

Speaker A: They're just selling.

Speaker B: This is an entire thing for TikTok live. TikTok shop, live selling. And so I talked to them for like a half hour about this. And the brands come in and they pay whatever it is per month in a contract. And this company does everything for them, including the talent. So they, they do the branding, they build the booth, they have these really awesome cameras that they developed or whatever. And then the talent also works for them. And so it's like Pitchman, you know, like the shamwow guy or whatever. They're there with their microphone and they're super animated and they're talking about the product. Uh, and it's just one after another all the way around this building. And it's just this like TikTok shop live factory. That's crazy with all these amazing brands in there. And then they have a big one in the back with a big screen and benches. So if you want to do a big one, they did IT1 for six days straight in the back. Uh, and they just cycle in new talent. But typically they do like a four hour TikTok live stream. Okay. And just sell through millions of dollars of stuff. It's amazing. It's so cool.

Speaker A: Outlandish. I'll have to check that out.

Speaker B: Outlandish. Yeah. And so I think this is the only location in the U.S. but they said, I think they just opened Japan, Mexico, Brazil, uk. And it started by this apparently this young guy who was in kind of backpacking digital nomad kind of dude that was in China, where, uh, in China there's a massive, you know, live shopping culture. For a while it's been like that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And he saw that and, and he started building a YouTube following there. And then I guess TikTok reached out and wanted his help getting more people like shopping online and everything. So yeah, he started this thing and it's.

Speaker A: That's crazy.

Speaker B: Phenomenal. And um, so it got me thinking like, oh, maybe we. I wonder if this would make sense for my brand, you know, to bring. Put stuff in there and get that going. But it's. I think there's this combination of. You need to have a little bit of a following to make that work. Otherwise, they're kind of just doing this to five people that are looking at you.

Speaker A: And yeah, we had this guy, Guru Nanda, come on here who had, like, toothpaste products, like oral hygiene products. And he does that on TikTok Live, just like QVC. And it's like him. And then he has staff doing it. And so he was here doing the pod, and then he was showing us on his phone like his team is doing it. And he was like, watch, I'm gonna say hi. And they say hi. And then they go like, hey, you know. Oh, our Guru Nanda is joining from wherever. He was. He was here.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And, uh, was like, holy shit. And then afterwards, I was like, does that work for you? Like, is it profitable in some way? He's like, not yet. It's not. You know, he's not making money. But it does introduce people to the brand. And as long as you get. You can get, like, interns. Like, he was just hiring interns to talk about it. He. It seemingly in his head was, it's only a matter of time before it flips. And then he starts making money.

Speaker B: Yeah. And kind of what the guy was saying to. That I was talking to at this place, he was like, you know, then it's not. Not quite like a loss leader, but with the TikTok, uh, commissions that they take, and then you're paying for this and everything.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Sometimes you don't always make a huge profit or any profit on this, but for one of the brand. I forgot which brand. He was saying one of the brands, it blew up their business so much that they were able to get into Walmart with it and Target because their brand itself got so much exposure.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So it leads to more direct sales, more wholesale sales, like a bigger brand.

Speaker A: And would you ever go on Shark Tank with your wife and daughter? That'd be kind of fun.

Speaker B: I think there's been another pet apparel brand on Shark Tank.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: I don't know if Shark Tank has the luster that used to have. What are they on season 15? Mark's out now.

Speaker A: Mark's out. Yeah. He just. I think he has. I mean, he realized that people will just go on it to, uh, get the pr.

Speaker B: Totally. Yeah.

Speaker A: He doesn't feel like it's deal friendly anymore.

Speaker B: I agree with that.

Speaker A: Which I. Yeah.

Speaker B: They'll call them out on that. Sometimes people come in with ridiculous asks and, uh, why are you here?

Speaker A: The exposure is still pretty real.

Speaker B: Totally.

Speaker A: That's the other thing. Yeah. Brian, thanks for coming on.

Speaker B: This is awesome. I'm glad to be back.

Speaker A: And by the way, this is like our last week in this pod studio, which is so sad and so.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: We're gonna move again.

Speaker B: That's, uh. Right. Keep moving. Keep going.

Speaker A: You'll be. You'll be back to the next location

Speaker B: at the pawn shop. How long is it? When was the last time you said so? 20. Yeah, 20. 19 or crazy.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Wow. Dang. Well, let's not wait six years.

Speaker A: We won't. We definitely won't.

Speaker B: This is awesome. Thanks, Diego.

Speaker C: Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, share with your friends, your family, or anyone you might think might benefit from the conversation we've had today. And if you haven't already, please take a moment to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. We'd greatly appreciate it. Your feedback helps us improve and reach more people who can benefit from our discussions. The best way to stay connected with us and get the latest updates on future episodes is through our social media channels. You can find us artupstorefront. We'll be back next Tuesday with another great episode. See you then.