Nottingham Spirk Co-Pres. on Business Innovation

the firm. He also serves on the boards of the Cleveland Clinic Board of Trustees, Case Western Reserve University's Tech Commercialization Board, and a lot more. He joins us on the phone from Cleveland, Ohio. John, first of all, welcome to Bloomberg. So nice to have you here. How are you and happy New Year? Well, happy to you, Carol, Thank you for having me. So tell me before we get into some of what you guys are doing, UM, is how the last twelve months have been for you?

Um and the past week because I think as a leader, we've just seen you know, and as an investor, one tough headline after another in the last twelve months and certainly this week. So I'm curious kind of how you see and how you process it and how you think about, you know, the work that you do. Well, you know, you look at the current events and you look at you look at the world at face value, and you say, look,

how does that affect me? How does it affect my my partners, clients and and UH co workers, and and you look at you look past the noise, and you look for for opportunity, and you know there is opportunity and disruption. So that's what we're focused on. Well, tell me in terms of the disruption you're seeing and where that has led you in terms of innovation and opportunities. Well, you know, we have the core of our firm here

is a product innovation firm. So we are vertically integrated to have you know, insights and design and engineers and prototypers all at one location in Cleveland, Ohio. And when we see an opportunity, we grab it. So give me. I'll give you an example. As soon as as soon as the pandemic hit, we said, okay, uh, where's the

where's the demand for product? We saw a hand sanitizer, Well, great hand sanitizer is great, but but one of the one of the problems is you have to touch it to dispense the product, so you know who's touched it before that. So what we did is we fast tracked a product into the marketplace that's hand sanitizer, but you don't have to touch it. It just dispenses it right in your hand. That's pretty amazing. How are we able to quickly do that? Well, we because we're vertically integrated.

We have all the we have all the engineers and designers and people, and we can just fast track it. We we grab a factory, we we get we get a launch partner, and we just launched it. So if you go into Lows right now as an example, we we we launched it Lows. They bought everything that we could we could uh produce and uh you know the stack to the ceiling at Lows and then we're going to roll it out the other retailers as soon as

we can. We can catch up with the band. But we've sold million we've made This didn't exist in March and we're making millions of product right today. Yeah, it's pretty fascinating because you know, we focus so much, you know, We've been talking a lot about e VS and a ton of his vehicles. Like it's innovation often leads you to very very high tech stuff, but sometimes it's just some very simple solutions like what you guys are working on. Oh,

it could be low tech. For instance, we work with a number of portfolio companies that have product and you know they have they have margin issues. Well, we could go in and take a look at that product, hear it apart and put it back together and uh delivered twice the margin they had before. Keep the price, but the margins multiplied. And so those are the kind of we have to react. We have to pivot, we have to be nimble, and we just have to react to the market as we see it to day dot not

dot as we saw it yesterday. Your customer today is different today, They're they're thinking different, they have different pain points, and if we can react to that before anybody else. We went John, you know, we're gonna take a break in a moment, but we've got about forty five seconds here. You know what has changed about the consumer in the last year that you think really stays with us longer term? Oh my goodness, I mean, yeah, we're I mean, first

of all, that we're everybody's at home, all right. Guess what? There is a boom in home products. I can tell you specifically after the break, but uh, there's a big boom in home products believing. All right, Well, we're going to continue the conversation. Sit tight for a second because I do have to do a little bit of news, but we're gonna come back with John Nottingham, he's co president at Nottinghamsburg on the phone from Cleveland. I also want to find out because they recently opened up a

big innovation hub in Cleveland specifically, which is where he is. Uh, and they're doing an alliance with Ernstein young E Y and that is opening the spring. So we'll get into that in just a moment. I want to get right back to John Nottingham, co president of Nottingham Spurk. It is a family office. It specializes in innovation. John still

with us on the phone from Cleveland, Ohio. It is really fascinating to read about kind of what you're doing, John, and I think, you know, we think about investing in so many different ways. You know, obviously directly through the market. You can go into a venture fund and angel fund, but you guys really are there, you know, in the thick of it, creating the innovation. How does it all work?

How long does it take for you to create something that ultimately a P and G or you know another big company you know sees it and says, okay, we want to run with it. There's a product here for us. Um how does it work? Well, you know, it all starts with a customer. You know, you look at you look at the customer, and like we said, today's customers is thinking totally different than than than that customer was a year ago or six months ago, and you've got

to sort of tap in. So we've and customers into our innovation hub, into our center. We have a focus group. We watched them through a two way mirror today and we say, what what is their pain points? What are they thinking about? What? What do they want? And then and then we have our engineers and designers watching them, what seeing the twiggle in their eyes, seeing their their body language. And then we run downstairs and we build it.

We we you know, we design it, we build it, we put it together, we fast track it through a factory, and we get it in that customer's hands as quickly as possible. You've got to strike while that iron is hot and be the first one out there. I have to say. There's a listener who's hearing our conversation, said, you kind to ask him about polar Delight. Um, I mean this is another thing that you guys were involved in. Correct. Oh, yeah, so we've invented We've invented a new way to consume

premium ice cream. Okay, it's not out there yet. We're working on it. We're fast tracking it, and it is going to change the way people think about ice cream, the same way that your egg and espresso change changed the way people think about coffee. Just think about it. Is this something we'll have in our homes potentially? Uh, you know, probably it's gonna it's gonna it's gonna go out for two convenience stores first. But it's a technology.

It's a platform technology, and platform technologies you can just

grow and grow and grow. It's fascinating. Another listeners saying, Okay, so are you guys manufacturing in the United States, Like, how do you kind of get your hands around some of the discussions we've had this year, whether it's supply chains, whether it's a thinking about kind of developing industries here and you guys are obviously working on a global scale, but uh the need for sustainability, the impact on climate, like how does that affect some of your innovation that

you're doing. And obviously it sounds like, you know, you're looking at the consumer who now wants things like directly, maybe we want to cut out you know, e commerce just got kind of a kick in the pants over the last twelve months specifically, so how do you kind of work all of that in as well? Oh see

that See that's what excites us. I mean, it's all about opportunity, right and so, uh so what we do is, you know, we have this partnership with Ernston Young and we we've we've we've labeled our hub the e Y and uh not Engams for innovation Hub. We bring a company in the top managers of the company in for an intense day or two session and they just lay out their issues, they lay out the products, and then we at the end of the day we have a game plan to address these issues. And part of it

is factory for part no, it's automation. It's the next generation of manufacturing. We don't have to go offshore. We can do it here in the United States. It doesn't you know. And then sustainability. I look at it as an opportunity, not as a problem. It's a big opportunity. We have some technologies we're working right now that's going to to change landfills. You know, I think of these mountains of landfills for these products. You don't have to

design products like that. You can design a circular product that that you can control from cradle to great circular. You know. That's something that I feel like. I've talked with the CEO of Unilever, I've talked with the folks at Patagonia, I've talked with to Put, lots of different companies. They are thinking about this in a big way. Well, we're not thinking about we're doing it. Are actually in we are, We're hands on. We have a prototyping facility

better than anything I've seen in the world. So I am fast track it. So okay, So I'm thinking about our audience, smart investors. They're listening to this, So what are the things, what are the trends that they should be watching out for, specifically based on some of the work that you guys are doing. And I know, you can't tell us everything you've told us, which is really wonderful. But what are the what are the trends that maybe aren't getting a lot of attention that you think they

have to be paying attention to. And they might be high tech, they might might be low tech, but will nonetheless be disruptive exactly. I mean you know low tech is fine. I mean it's whatever whatever can can factor in that pain point. For instance, I talked about home before. One of our companies is Jacuzzi. So you can imagine which can be better? Can I just say it can be better? Oh yeah, Well about to see if there's a pain a pain point, so all of a sudden,

all right, So here's the opportunity. So people aren't going on vacation, but you can vacation in your backyard. So you look at hot tubs, which haven't been innovative since the Reagan administration? Am I right? Right exactly? And lots of pain points. I look at that as an opportunity to improve it, to make it better and make it what you what you believe you want to have. And that's what's going to happen. All right, don't judge me. This is going to maybe sound like kind of silly

and quirky. But I have to say, um, working from home, being at home in our bubble, um, we don't have I live in a city environment, have a small backyard and actually got an inflatable hot time that actually was a really sweet thing for us to have. Um. So it's just it's certainly kind of some of the things that you're talking about. John, we have to run, please please come back. I love this kind of stuff. Have a safe weekend, a good weekend, and I hope we

can talk real soon. Be well. John Nottingham he's co president of Nottinghamsburg on the phone from Cleveland. What a fun interview, Um, what a fun conversation.