Joshua Chin 12:28
That’s, that’s really interesting. Now, you, we were talking a little bit before we hit record, you recently tested in a 5,000 square foot warehouse, opposite your existing office. The logistics part of the business, by far, based on what I have seen as well, is probably the most complex. And I guess the word to use is risky, because there are just so many parts in that chain of producing that one product that can break and go wrong. Because everything is customizable. Everything is different. Every single order is made. Basically everything is made to order. How do you overcome that? The challenge of well, number one human error, what are some of the processes that you put in place? To overcome that?
Vince Wang 13:25
Yeah, so on the online side, we process digital files all day long. That’s like our biggest, I guess processing for borders, at least on the digital side. So, you know, we have to process what the customer sends us at a very efficient rate. Like that’s a turnaround. It’s almost like a software, we’ve tried to develop our own software, we’ve invested almost $50,000 into our own operating system, to be able to capture people’s, you know, uploads, directly to us and we’ll transfer it to a principle PDF file, so that our production team can then go ahead and process that file onto our product and then go proceed to hand assembly and finishing so um, yeah, it’s it’s, it’s really challenging. We have a team of like, 30 employees just processing orders on a day to day basis.
Joshua Chin 14:18
Wow.
Vince Wang 14:19
And yeah, I mean, honestly, the biggest reason why I feel like we’ve been able to do this, it’s that we’ve had a tremendous leader step up in our team. Her name is Anna. She’s ever going to be watching this. But yeah, she’s been great for our team, like, just, I think one of the things that I’ve read a couple books recently is like, delegate your tasks, but also elevate people who’ve done well. So we’ve done a good job in our team that we elevate people who’ve done well. So this particular individual has been with us for like two ish, almost three years here now. She’s been great and so just having good some people on your team has been tremendously, you know, I guess the biggest reason why we’ve been able to do such a customized product at a decently efficient rate without completely exploding the business. So yeah, that’s the only online side, and then we have our hand assembly here in the US. That’s very challenging as well. Very, very intensive not, not COVID – like very difficult with COVID. Like, it was extremely challenging through this last year, but we made it work. And yeah, bought the warehouse that we just just just acquired from us on Yeah, I mean, it’s just because we knew we had to expand, because we’re up like, 400% this year so far. from last year, and yeah, it’s just we knew with the growth that we’re experiencing right now, we definitely needed a new space, we were running out of space to store inventory, like just just a raw goods because we’re a manufacturer, right? So we just our raw goods alone is like pallets and pallets and pallets of like, material. So yeah, I mean, we’re going to separate our warehouses to hand assembly and storage so that it’s less risky to drive a forklift around. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s it’s been very challenging for most part, but yeah, it’s, uh, we do we do our best because we have good people on our team. And hopefully we get more good people on our team eventually.
Joshua Chin 16:31
Congrats, man, dude. Vince, I’ve been there since the start seeing you grow is incredible. It’s been amazing. But I have I have a question. So before you invested, tell me about money, you spent like probably three, 400 grand before even launching the first before even selling the first product? Did you – what was going through your mind? And in that process? Did you have already had some calculations mapped out that? Yeah, three, four grand, but we were gonna make that back in X amount of months, the payback period is this much. Is there at least some accounting or calculations then?
Vince Wang 17:14
Yeah, so my thought process was, there’s a company that does a similar product to us. Similar but not exact. And we really took a lot of time studying their business model. And what I knew was, if I could at least manage on the production side, and figure out how the production works, we could outsell them 10 to one unit, like for sure 10 times their size. It was because we look at what they were doing on marketing it and what they were doing to drive traffic, we really studied their business. And we realized that they suck at marketing, but yet they’re like a multi-eight figure company. So and they’re the only company in the entire world that sells this particular product. So we were just like, Okay, well, we just kind of modify it and make it better. We spent months and months and months of testing r&d hours like crazy. And yeah, I mean, as soon as we would sell that final product, you’re like, this is gonna work. Like we already knew, like, I had a gut feeling by this morning, we had a gut feeling. Yeah, I mean, when we saw it was just like, Alright, well, the only stuff is for now. And so we made the jump. It was extremely scary. And, you know, we just knew that, if we made the jump, and if everything worked out, then everything would be fine. But obviously, like we didn’t 100% know if we were going to do well, but we had a good feeling. So it wasn’t that difficult to kind of make everything work once and sell the product because I feel like you’re when you’re when you’re when you start, when you start a brand, really, it’s all about the product. It’s really about making sure that the customer really, really sees a different speaker product and their product. And so for us, it was like, Alright, we’re really, truly going out of the way to make this like our product. And I can say, with very good confidence, our product is way better than our competitor that we originally were trying to mimic. And our marketing is way better than theirs. So that’s kind of what our advantages are, and we went into it like hard. So yeah, I mean, we’re still trying to iron out a lot of things on our part, but we just knew that, you know, if we could do it better, we would win. And that’s kind of what we are right now.
Joshua Chin 19:33
That’s fascinating. And we spoke a little bit about rituals and routines. I would suppose and I’m assuming here but your lifestyle in the past that when you were 18 and what it is now, like even comparing against pre COVID is probably a little bit different.
Vince Wang 19:58
Yeah, for sure.
Joshua Chin 20:00
The business they’ve been building and you spoke about eating Chipotle pretty much every single day. What other quirks or routines do you have that most people be surprised about?
Vince Wang 20:19
Um, I’m honestly a really simple guy. Like, I have like 10 of these black shirts. Like literally that I just throw on every single day like my closet is still like dark t-shirts.
Joshua Chin 20:31
BYLT?
Vince Wang 20:32
Yeah the brand. Yeah. Just BYLT shirts. Funny thing is I actually went to their warehouse a couple of weeks ago to kind of find more shirts. But yeah, they’re running a crazy operations, props to them. They’re quick, they’re killing it. So, yeah, honestly, I wish our operations were that easy because then when I saw the inside of their warehouse, it was storage racking and pick and pack table. For us, it’s like, production equipment. Like everything like electrical, that’s crazy. And then like this hand assembly assembly lines like it’s ridiculous. So yeah, I really, I’m a simple guy. I yeah, wake up. Eat Chipotle, crank it out.
Joshua Chin 21:21
That’s your breakfast?
Vince Wang 21:23
Actually, I think I in the morning, it’s either a protein shake in the morning or a bowl of, that’s kind of my morning. And then yeah, just cranking through the day. But honestly, I think I have a lot to improve on my morning routine, I think I think there’s a lot of consistency issues with me. I like I’m more of like, I like to be a little bit spontaneous with myself. But then it’s challenging to be spontaneous when you’re growing a company you really need to be like, very dialed in on your team. And so that’s something I need to get a little bit better on. For sure. Yeah, I mean, overall, pretty simple, though. I don’t drink. I don’t party, I don’t go out. Like I just like, all I do is eat Bolo Baos and drink protein shakes, I work out twice a week. That’s pretty much it, honestly. And eat Chipotle.
Joshua Chin 22:23
What’s, uh, what’s next for you? In the next few years?
Vince Wang 22:31
So yeah, we’re starting the logistics division or company. What we realize as a gift company is we’re very seasonal. And we have so many employees are very good people, and bring it to a challenge right now that, you know, we have so many good talented people that work for us. But we are not busy, like very seasonal and non seasonal times, non giftable times, which is like eight months of the year. And we lack a lot of work to give to these people. So obviously, if you’re not working, then you get fired, but or you get laid off. But we go on and do that. So we’re opening over just our in our, in our company to help other companies to build products, because we were running our warehouse from one of the most difficult products ever. And I’m pretty sure we’re confident that we can run a at least a third party logistics company pretty easily for e-commerce brands. Yeah, I think it’ll really help us grow to the next level, especially since we have a lot of production inefficiencies and capabilities that we wish we could add, but we don’t have. Because we can’t grow that we don’t have a data space and employees. Honestly, I mean, I think it’d be that’s, that’d be the next thing for sure. And then once that’s all settled, we have our own brand. And then we have our logistic arm, then I would start with a brand. Like honestly, we start with just go hard on and again, like just really go hard on r&d and build the right team. And yeah, I think it’s pretty easy. Honestly, when I feel like once you’ve done it once, it’s pretty much a rinse and repeat kind of thing. Obviously not exactly the same. But I think most brands need to or people who want to open a brand, they really need to understand the upfront investment, like very clearly. Regardless of what you’re doing, I think investing money and time into building a truly different and good product is going to be the game changer. And yeah, I mean, that’s kind of we’re just going to talk about these brands create cool shit. And yeah, we’ll see how it goes. Because that’s kind of I think, yeah, at least the next three years we’ll have another brand for sure. Or a handful like two to three at least. If not five or more, that would be pretty cool. And then going on in acquiring other brands. Well, that’s, that’s also another thing I’ve been dabbling into. I have a lot of mentors of mine that are in the mergers and acquisition game, that they just like look for poorly run brands. And they kind of just go and acquire them for pennies on the dollar and turn around. So yeah, that’s kind of the game plan. I mean, ecom forever, like this is this is the industry that I chose. I’ll be doing ecom until the day I die, unless, you know, you know, I don’t know, like a car hits me tomorrow.
Joshua Chin 25:38
So what are some of the brands that you look up to? That you feel, yeah, they do a great job. Like as an example, BYLT t-shirts.
Vince Wang 25:51
Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of brands I look up to. In every industry, there’s always a couple of brands that I follow along closely. And I’m tempted to name a lot of my friends brands, but I don’t know if it’d be cool on me then. So because I honestly have seen the backend of what they’re doing and how hard they worked and the team that’s behind it. And I really want to say but like, I can’t, so I don’t think it would be fair to my founder friends. But um, yeah, I think, man, yeah, there’s a lot. And I’m just gonna, I’m gonna say, BYLT, for sure. As we’ve already previously mentioned, cuz I’m literally wearing their shirt right now. Like, you see their shirt, right? Yeah. Well, yeah. You know, oh, I guess we talked about Secretlab. We were just talking about Secretlab earlier.
Joshua Chin 26:46
Oh, yeah.
Vince Wang 26:48
For sure. I don’t know if they’re the most comfortable chair. There’s a lot of conspiracy about that. But they’ve definitely built a true following, their growth has been ridiculous, like, going from like, Singaporean base to like, basically worldwide, like every esport gaming like event is like running with Secretlab chairs like. Yeah, we have a b2b arm as well. We have a b2b, b2b. b2b. And b2c deals that through the door as well for our products. Yeah, but not at this level, like Secretlabs level. Yeah we have, yeah, we have been. Yeah, we’ve done a lot of big deals recently. In the last like six months. Yeah, we’re trying to expand that arm as well, for us on the b2b side. But yeah, that’s it.
Joshua Chin 27:41
Is that? Is that a department in your company that does that? Or are you running that?
Vince Wang 27:48
Right now, personally, I’m personally running it. Okay, I’m looking, I’m looking to hire a sales director in our company for that. Yeah, we’re really going to go hard. Once we figure out our operational capacity, right now we’re at the cap, we cannot produce our products faster and in a more efficient way. Like as of right now, when we can handle additional volume, like we already can handle, we’ve been 1000s of 1000s of orders behind, but ever since October. So we really can’t handle any more orders. So what we’re doing right now is creating internal growth under our company, hiring more people, getting more warehouse space, buying more equipment, buying more shelving, stuff like that, we just really went hard on our internal operational growth. And then once we have that, then, yeah, we’ll go hire the best sales manager or sales director that we can find that money, money can buy, you know, and bring them on. And, yeah, I think that’s when I think that’s what we’ll hit like, we’re going to near eight figures this year. We’re in between seven, eight, seven to eight million this year, probably nearing eight, almost 10, 10 million this year. We’ll see how that goes. And then trying to with the b2b Division of our company opening up soon, and having a sales leader lead that department I think we’ll go from like, near eight figures to like mid mid 50 million, probably really quickly. It’s just gonna wholesale so easily, like, a one deal is like, six figures. So like, you know, it’s really like all the deals that we’ve done, like multiple deals in the last six months. One deal is like six figures. So I basically got five deals with half a million, you know, it’s pretty, pretty easy to get to the to doing millions and millions of dollars of b2b deals eventually So yeah, I mean, that’s kind of where we’re at right now. I think in the next upcoming years, we’re going to have it like we’re going to we’re kind of like our trajectory for our basically our companies but like up and it’s plateaued because operational costs Bassi. And then once we figure this it’s going to be like up again. Yeah, that’s that’s pretty much it. I don’t know. I kind of got sidetracked.
Joshua Chin 30:08
That’s good, man. That’s super exciting. Now, last question. What are some of the, you mentioned a couple of books right now. But what are some of the books that have been super impactful in your journey? In the past four, four years of building this brand?
Vince Wang 30:31
Oh man. I’ve had a lot of books. I’ve been really good. Principles by Ray Dalio, that’s probably been the best read my entire life. I think that’s honestly, the best book ever written that I’ve had had the opportunity to read. You see, my library is right back there. So I’m just gonna like peek over there. I will log it, E-Myth was really good. Yeah, E-Myth is really good. And Blue Ocean Strategy. Mastery by Robert Greene. Man, there’s a lot. The Power of Habit. Dude, honestly all most of the books on my shelf were like really legendarily good. Attraction, I’m reading right now.
Joshua Chin 31:18
Oh, yeah, Attraction.
Vince Wang 31:20
Yeah. How to Be A Great Boss? Like, like this? This is just like, to me, there are a lot of stuff. But yeah, I mean, books have been my life recently. I really like reading. I wish I had more time to read.
Joshua Chin 31:36
So you read every single day?
Vince Wang 31:38
No, I don’t. I wish. Probably once or twice a week, I spent, like, three to five. Like on weekends, like this weekend, I spent like four to six hours reading. Really going through it. And yeah, I mean, that’s been my routine. I always try to do just in time knowledge. So knowledge that I really need right now. So like, Yeah, right. I’m really trying to build a legendary team, like the best team in the world, like, you know, because what I’ve realized is, in order to run a great company, you have to have great people. And so I have been trying my best to educate myself on how to build the best team possible, and how to build operational structure for a team and how to keep people accountable. Stuff that’s like, never, ever had I really been focused on But recently, it’s been my biggest challenge, because we’ve hired people that were the wrong fit. We’ve hired people that I thought were good, great, and then failing miserably, wasted tens of 1000s of dollars wasted in actual costs of salary, and then hundreds of 1000s of dollars of opportunity, because they didn’t do their job, right. And then they built systems that I had no idea like they did and like they want to scrap all of it. Like, like, is because of my own incompetency for leading people in teams. So yeah, I’ve been really trying to get better at that. So yeah, just in time knowledge right now is team building and operational, I guess internal operation.
Joshua Chin 33:20
Gotcha. Awesome. Vince, if people listening are interested, connect with you. How should they reach out? How can they reach out?
Vince Wang 33:30
Um, I’m pretty like low key nowadays. I used to have like a, a social media account that I posted a post recently on like, like every day, but I haven’t posted on Instagram in like two years. I usually have a YouTube account, like I posted like they’re like not like three years longer than three years ago. But if anyone wants to contact me, just DM me on Instagram, I’m at Vince Wang. You can just find me there. That’s probably the best way. Yeah, that’s gonna be it.
Joshua Chin 34:04
Awesome. Vince, thank you so much for being on the show.
Vince Wang 34:06
No, thank you, man.
Outro 34:10
Thanks for listening to the eCommerce Profits Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get notified of future episodes.
