Now, on the goal setting and on the business growth and business building, I've always looked at short and long term goals and how they fit together. I remember staring down the mall hallway at the kiosk thinking, All right, here's my numbers with one store open, and I can see what that looks like at five stores. You know, add up that labor piece, see if it's still a good business at five locations, and it made sense to scale to that.
And then as, you know, that started to come to fruition, I looked at Well, then I had a storefront in front of me. All right, well, what would five stores instead of five kiosks look like? Build out that business plan and, you know, work your way towards that micro goal. And we've really never stopped doing that.
All right, welcome everybody to another Resolve Riffs. Today we've got a real entrepreneurial treat. What are we going to call this Rod? The Entrepreneur's Corner? Something along those lines. We've got Roger King joining us, who is the president at Supplement King, probably the owner of Supplement King largely as well, which is in the Halifax area. A supplement store that has opened its 100th store recently and Roger's got one hell of an entrepreneurial story.
So we thought we'd have him on and talk about his journey in starting a business from an idea all the way to 100 stores across Canada. And it's in an area that is a bit of fun. We like working out, we like taking supplements here. So it's a sort of an area near and dear to my heart and my daughter also works there. So for uh, you, you know, clear and concise conflict of interest declarations. There you have it.
Know, before you get into it, I was actually just taking a, protein shake and I was staring at this terrible plastic, you know, the classic plastic shaker bottles. After reading all this stuff about like, the, the plastic is bad for you and all this like plastic residue that you end up ingesting that you should avoid. And I was reminded of the bottle that your daughter showed us, Mike, which was, oh my God, it was like solid as a rock, you know, made out of metal.
right here,
this whole episode, by the way, Roger, is about me getting a free one when we get off here.
So, so Mike, is that your, your team? That's your, your,
the, yeah, that's the Hamilton Tiger cats. Yeah.
That's your former team.
Yeah. So you guys did a co sponsor, a sponsor deal with the CFL as well.
we did. We did a co brand collaboration where we created bottles for all the teams in the C CFL, so it's great. CFL is a great partner.
amazing. So we got, we got so much to dig into here. Cause I think there's, there's interesting topics that we would want to dig into you with, with how you've taken the firm, the marketing and the, you know, the Influencers and how you guys manage that sort of stuff.
But before we get into that stuff, because we are passionate about that side of the equation too, I'd love to hear your journey of what, you know, what sort of sparked your interest in the supplement game, your journey from, as I understand it, you know, in the dorm room, to, to a hundred stores. And by the way, you are legendary. I have someone every time I mentioned supplement king, and there's a lot of Canadians here.
if they're from the East Coast, they absolutely know who you are, what you do, and absolutely amazing. Our, our business partner from a while ago, JP Belanger, he's like, I know Supplement King, the woman cleaning my teeth from Halifax. So I know Roger, he was at school with me. So literally you are, you are, you're legendary. And you know, when you get that many cross pollinations, I'm like, we got to have this guy have a chat.
Anyway, can you, can you kind of take us through the, early journey?
amazing. Well, look, uh, you know, like many business ideas, necessity breeds that invention for me, coming out of high school, playing a little bit of high school sports, I was a weight trainer. I was enthusiastic about it. I was a little on the small side. So I remember being 16 ish years old and my parents took me into a supplement store. I think it was a GNC in St. John, New Brunswick.
And I picked up my first bucket of weight gain protein and it worked, you know, I realized very quickly that it was the consumption. It was what, what were you putting in your body coupled with that weight training regime that you needed? That was going to yield the results. And so for me, the light bulb went off and kind of a, a personal passion around that natural health products was born.
Then shortly after university, or shortly after high school, I came to Halifax, which was the big city when you're in New Brunswicker to go to school at St. Mary's and, uh, my budget not living at home. I was, uh, reduced down to about 75 bucks a week worth of spending money and, on student loans. And so I thought, how am I going to afford creatine? How am I going to afford protein powder? Well, I'm going to start pooling some campus orders together and become that guy in the dorm.
Where you can, you know, we're talking a little bit before the Ecom days, even if I'm going to date myself, you know, back in those days, if you weren't the Bay or Sears, you know, you weren't in Ecom, there was no Shopify. It was, it was only the big players. So I kind of became that local hookup, that plug for protein, creatine and all things supplements.
I love it. You're the plug. Was there, was there, or can you share a pivotal moment early on in those days that kind of set the stage for the success you had and, and, you know, the expansion that you incurred?
You know, I've quickly, I, I started to pay my bills at school and even have a little more than that 75 bucks a week. And so a light bulb went off in my head that, Hey, there could be something here. my established competition is very much, you know, like a bodybuilding large chain, uh, you know, Popeye's Supplements Canada, they've been around since 1989, they did a great job. They were the first group to go coast to coast.
Uh, went up against a corporate, publicly funded or publicly owned company GNC and did extremely well. Those were the, that was the competitive landscape. And I thought if I could be as economical with my little to no overhead, you know, match those prices, there was still some profit margin to be had. maybe I can make a door to door delivery business out of this thing. And so that's what I did.
I actually went to parking lots before, you know, the digital media days stuck flyers under windshield wipers. I would do it. I would do almost every gym in all of HRM every week and people would call me in class and I would show up like a pizza boy. For Whey Protein with a debit machine in hand. One of the very first debit machines that was portable. It almost looked like, you know, Zach's cell phone from Saved by the Bell. It was giant. And, uh, and you know what?
I would, I would transact that order and I would kind of build it on the back of relationships and people would just keep calling until eventually I took that semester off and never went back. So. Yeah.
lead to the first store then at some point when, when did you leap into the, the lease of a actual
Yeah. No, that was, that was a big step. And you know, I remember when I was considering the semester off, you know, my parents weren't paying for my education, so they didn't have loads of leverage over my decision making, but I still felt it's a bit of a traditional household. I still felt I got to have a plan if I'm going to stop attending university. And that plan was to rent kiosk space at Scotia Square Mall in downtown Halifax.
Again, staying very consistent with my low overhead, low cost business model. Also, you know, being mindful of what I could afford, which was about a 4, 000 kiosk. That was the, that was the limit of the budget. I managed to sweet talk my way into a kiosk space outside of a Good Life Fitness in Scotia Square Mall. Shockingly, this hadn't been done in our space.
All of our competitors, including the two big guys that I mentioned earlier, were all located either in, you know, grade A shopping centers, which was GNC's model. And Popeyes had, chosen their real estate traditionally based on traffic metrics, you know, a high traffic thoroughfare, busy intersections, traditional retail metrics. Whereas I thought, well, doesn't it make sense to go where the customer goes?
You know, doesn't that just, and so we set up there and, my experience very quickly determined the future direction of the business in the sense that it was not who I expected that came and shopped with me. I thought I would see who I had been seeing based on my university delivery days, which were the athlete and the, you know, the bodybuilding crowd a little bit, but it was the, uh, the corporate employees up at the power company, Nova Scotia Power had an office tower above.
Amira, also an energy company had office towers up above. And these customers were not only receptive to recommendations, their price sensitivity was much lower than people. who are, you know, in that athlete and bodybuilding crowd who would shop around and shop around. So it just occurred to me in that mall where I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours over four or five years in a hallway of a mall that this is an underserviced opportunity.
that natural health products I bet on, we're going to become a very mainstream thing over the 5 to 10 years. And nobody's going after the big slice of pie here. So that's how
year was this, Roger?
was. Geez, put me, put me on the spot with the kiosk. I would say the kiosk was in 2013 off the top of my head. So we're going back just a little over a decade ago. And if you think about the increase in natural health product conduct consumption over the last 10 years, it has. Exponentially grown.
What a train to be thinking ahead of the game on. That's, that
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, I, I'd like to think I was really that, that bright. I think it was just, it was small goals and small discoveries and lots of mistakes, but none of them fatal is really the best way to describe it.
And can you tell us a bit about some of those stakes? Can you share a time when things didn't go as planned and, and how you handled it, how you navigated it?
Yeah, I distinctly remember biting off a, uh, a marketing program over the radio, which was probably a good marketing program for a business about four times my size. I overcommitted, as a new physical store operator, I was starting to get some drop ins from sales reps, you know, people looking to do business, whether it's in radio or TV or print, and that's all normal stuff and it's good stuff, but you need to learn how to buy that stuff.
You know, you need to learn what's a fit for you, what's a fit for your budget. Uh, you got to take all of these projections with a grain of salt. And, so I, I definitely took on a commitment that was too rich for the scope of my retail footprint and ended up costing me money for a few months until the contract kind of made its way. So I, I learned some quick lessons there.
Nice.
So when you were building out the, business through the kiosks. how did you evolve from kiosk, which I imagine you're also, you're not manufacturing your own supplements at this point, right? You're probably buying them from a larger distributor.
Correct. Yes. And that's the model we maintain today as well.
So what was the transition with kiosk and then, you know, retail locations close to those areas as well? Is
Yeah. So my plan, I had opened one and then I opened a second kiosk. And then in my mind, again, I had hundreds of hours at the, at this mall in the hallway, working my kiosk to think about what the business looks like at five kiosks, 10, 15, 20. In my mind, I thought this competitive advantage over the big established competitor, which at that time they were both in the hundred, hundred to 150 location count was going to be to keep my overhead low.
So that my net could kind of net out somewhere near because I didn't have the buying power. I didn't have had that kind of stuff. it wasn't until a competitor in Parklane mall, which was about a 15 minute walk away on Spring Garden road. Uh, an independent store was going to go dark and I reached out to see if there was an opportunity there. And it turned out he was happy for me to just assume their lease again next to Park Lane Good Life. So another Good Life co tenancy.
And uh, it was in that store, which was a couple of years after I'd begun the kiosk, kiosk businesses. It was in that store that I, Realized how much more revenue we could sell through a physical retail store versus in a kiosk environment. it was, you know, a solid two to three X and very quickly, you know, it came to the realization that that extra leasehold expense, that footprint that you would rent was well worth it. So we never looked back from that point on the kiosk front.
And bootstrapping this yourself, the whole way, the
Yeah. Yeah. I managed to, you know, pull the money together, get the stuff on the shelves. And, I don't think I was into any type of bank lending until well down the road. So,
is amazing.
so when do you go from retail locations to online? Like, was that, was that an always part of the plan? And like, how did that transition go?
yeah.
What's the distribution of online versus, retail
Well, you know, without getting, I guess, into the proprietary number, we still do significantly more business in store than we do online. we lead our marketing and all of our, everything that we do promotionally with, direction to the in store because Many of our customers, not all, but many of our customers still want to come in and discuss what their fitness goal may be, interact with some options.
There are still customers, you know, much like yourself who may be very informed and know exactly what they want to buy. And for you, it may be more convenient and it may be better for you to make your purchases online. You can click through our flyer and, and find what you need that way. but, but by far and large, we still see significantly more customers through the retail store than we do through the website.
I'm still kind of, kind of shocked that you're able to compete in this market. Cause like you said, like Popeye's is a, is a household name in Canada. At least, uh, you got GNC. What is it about? What you've done, like the angle that you took bootstrapping this business to be able to compete with the big boys. I got, I'm still kind of fuzzy as to what it was, what the magic is, aside from this concept of like keeping overhead low,
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you know what? The, here was the biggest opportunity, you know, going back to our, when I mentioned the corporate employees, the people who were not athletes and not bodybuilders, that was, I felt to be the biggest breakout opportunity and the largest slice of underserved market potential.
So when we had finally reached the opportunity to open stores, our first, Physical and designed store that we didn't just assume was in Larry Utech Bedford, which is, you know, a bit of a, it's just a strip center again, next to a good life fitness. we were very deliberate to go with a premium fixturing, a layout that was well lit, that was spacious, you know, we used a high end mill work. We did not treat, did not cheap out.
We really want to be, The premium supplement operator is the direction we decided to take. An environment that wasn't intimidating, it wasn't handmade cinder block counters, it wasn't biceps flexing in the
I was going to say, cause
was everything that they, we were going to be everything they
always a bodybuilder
Absolutely, absolutely.
it was embarrassing to go in there being like, I'm trying to do what you're doing, but I'm not clearly not having to do it. Just give me the drugs. Give me that
have terrific, we have a terrific following in the, in the athletic and bodybuilding community. We've got programs for people who, you know, consume a higher than average amount of supplement products and we reward them for that and they pay, you know, a special, special pricing structure and whatnot, but we wanted to be that store that was in the fitness goals business. Not in the supplement business.
We want people to come in, share their goals, find a path, talk about what's worked, what hasn't. And so we lead with open ended questions and we obsess over the training and the, and the experience in store. And that goes right down to the fixturing and the layout and the lighting and the shelf plan. It's all, you know, a lot of thought goes into all that.
It's, it's sort of,
sorry, Mike, let me just last question. So you train your sales team in a very particular, question based process as there's the specific.
we do. We have standards around greetings. We have standards around the approach. We have e learning on every aspect of this stuff. we have an app that gives you access, whether you're a frontline employee, of which we have a thousand of, whether you're a district manager, whether you're a franchisee, you know, we've got to account for a certain amount of attrition, especially in these frontline associate roles.
So we need a training program that could be replicated with, you know, relatively low amount of friction. and, a good franchisee. We spent all of our time training franchisees, how to train the rest of the organization under because franchisees don't turn over to the same level management and, and associates do.
That's so much better than the gap. When I worked for the gap, I, all I was taught was to how to fold properly and
Oh, man, it all starts. It all starts with the details.
if I was, in the front and wasn't smiling, it was game over, they were on me like white on rice. It's
You look like you could have worked at a gap. You're a handsome
Oh yeah, you know, I did okay, I did okay. I stole some jeans, you know
have bought a, I would have bought a knit
stole some v necks.
How deep was your V is what I
So it was like a dublevé, doublevé, for sure.
Excellent.
Oh my God. He wasn't quite hot enough to work at Abercrombie, but they
Oh, gotcha. The B team.
That's right. I was like, you know how to call it the Benetton would have been the next best thing.
It's amazing, Roger, the, uh, it, it sort of, that whole process makes me think of the, Moore book, Crossing the Chasm, you know, sort of taking that niche market thought of bodybuilding and the supplements required and then sort of crossing the chasm into mainstream. both it's happening while you are developing your stores, but at the same time, having the, the, foresight to bring that.
to sort of de intimidate that whole world in order to bring in the more general population who can benefit from easy digestible, whether it's whey protein or other supplements, you know, that most diets just don't have enough protein. When I'm asked regularly, and Rodrigo and I get asked regularly, what do you do or what's this? It's, it's like, you know, my first question is, well, how much protein are you actually getting?
And you know, most people just literally don't get enough protein to accomplish any kind of significant muscle growth. I mean, you can't really do that. If you're training, you have to have the fuel to repair the body, but,
And I think it's becoming more popular and mainstream now as we get all these fitness gurus that are dealing with Ma and Pa Kettle, right? All this longevity stuff where you're grabbing 70 year olds and saying, listen, you need to start feeding yourself.
I mean, I imagine that the interest has gone up across the board and across all demographics, but I'll let you kind of tell me when you, are you riding a wave or is this wave kind of inconsistent and you're just stealing some market share from the big boys?
Well, you know what? It's, it's interesting. You mentioned that because as we grew, you know, if I take myself back to the 30 ish to 50 ish location, We're, we're becoming, we're getting noticed by the suppliers that we deal with. Remember we deal with all of the same suppliers that all of our competitors deal with.
We had to, you know, and when I say we, we were a very small team at that point, myself, Jonathan Sharp, who's been with me since the kiosk days, who was actually one of the second in charge directors here. he's, he also left school and has made a great career with us. we had to manage these relationships. Delicately in the sense that we want you to support us at a, at a higher level than perhaps we necessarily warrant from a sales volume standpoint, because.
We're growing the pie and and their numbers would back that up. You know, we would open up town after town, after town in areas where GNC would operate, and they would tell us really haven't seen any pullback on their numbers. Suddenly we just have new numbers from you. And, I don't know if that's always the case to today.
You know, now that we're pretty much neck and neck in store count with Popeyes, they have, contracted from 140 to around 110 and we're, you know, going to be at 110 in about three months here. So we're, you know, we're pretty, pretty even at this point, but in the early days when it really mattered to us, when we could help to show them that we weren't just shuffling the dominoes from one side of the table to the other, that we actually had a model that could grow the pie in Canada.
That was a compelling case.
So, when we talk about bootstrap, you know, there's many ways of bootstrapping and deciding to open up another store and then another store. Were you always bootstrapping based on free cash flow or were you kind of taking advantage of some debt in order to expand? Like how, how did you, what was your model to decide whether it was time to expand into a new location?
So many businesses, you know, find, as did we, that a franchisee, franchisor model is a great way to expand without needing to go into, you know, deep capital situations where you have to, you know, take on plenty of debt to grow that store count. So that's, the model that I decided to head into. And this was back when we were eight or nine locations in size. we began selling as a license opportunity, a 10 year agreement.
also had the good fortune, maybe foresight, I'll probably say more good fortune, of opening a terrific store in Fort McMurray, Alberta back during the oil boom. So the beauty with Fort McMurray, Alberta, well, A, you're going to have a lot of younger people with a higher than average income, but B, you're going to have a ton of these people traveling in from all over Canada to work. at these oil sites, well, they would shop with us.
And next thing we were getting opportunity to license applications from all over the country. They were coming in from Calgary, from Edmonton, from the prairies, from Ontario, from BC. And so we didn't traditionally expand as most franchise systems would, where you would regionally create a footprint and then grow outwardly from that. We actually started growing in Alberta. Like gangbuster at this point today, we have more locations in Alberta than we have anywhere else in the country.
I think we have 34 locations in Alberta. near saturation if the province would stop growing, but it's not. So every time they open up a new master plan community with a 30, 000 foot gym, we're right there. we've stayed true to that model, but yeah, it was, it was truly a, I guess, some good luck and I don't know, maybe some foresight that we happen to be there and do a good job executing in the store.
And so are you guys now actively, in terms of expansion, actively just looking for franchisees and marketing to them in order to do expansion? Like, what's more important here, to market the actual products for your business or to market to people that want to franchise? Because I imagine there's going to be competition of many, many opportunities to franchise, right? An entrepreneur that wants to open up a store. Could franchise McDonald's or Supplement King.
Like, what's your, what are your, what do your efforts to market to them look like?
Yeah, so, so we don't spend a whole lot of time or resources on marketing for franchisees. mostly because we now have contractual commitments in, in many areas, uh, in in which we would likely get an application That area's probably spoken for, how our growth works. Um. Every year we, we, and we pledged to add 24 locations. That's what we endeavor to do. That's what we will do this year. of those 24 locations, 18 will be internal.
And those internal locations we can count on because those groups, some of which are double digit in size now in store count, are development partners, they have a contract with us that's, both location and account based and chronological where they need to fulfill a certain number of stores in a, a prescribed area within a certain amount of time. Now we're, we're reasonable around that because we want to achieve those A plus locations.
If it takes just a little longer or a little less long, we can, we can work with that. but most of our growth comes from within. We are, however, diving headfirst into the Ontario market this year. And so we are looking for new operators in certain parts of Ontario, but we're being very careful to not start people so that they don't have a growth path of four to eight locations around them.
So every new partner that starts with us, we want them to have some geography because I don't want to wake up three years from now with 75 franchisees operating 120 stores. That's a nightmare. We can have fewer operators. proportionate to our total store count, fewer relationships to manage, yet they're still successful and operating at a high level and invested in the brand standards.
and then, so you're obviously that, training that we talked about, all of that layers and layers of infrastructure, running multiple locations, that's the expertise you bring to the game for these operators as they're building their. Franchise area.
That's right. So even to go from one to two stores, there's a module of training you need to go through with us to, to learn how to multi unit operate, because it's different from being an owner operator, in a store day in, day out, where you have your fingers on the pulse with everything. We have some operators in their early thirties, that own stores across multiple provinces. You know, 12, 13 locations.
They've got, big eight figure top line businesses and layers of management and financial managers and ordering and inventory experts and quite sophisticated franchisee businesses.
So
it really is. Go ahead.
so I just, what, what is it when I, when you think about the services that one signs up for as a franchisee, what's under their control and what is absolutely non negotiable in terms of the branding for your store? I've always been intrigued as to where, what that line looks like.
So, you know, part of our secret sauce when we were, when we were smaller, was that we were successful in getting all of our store operators to move in a single direction from a marketing and a listing and a, and a branding standpoint. And what I mean by that is by controlling access to our shelves, we were able to control the buying in a way that allowed us to In some cases, even though we were only 60 or 70 locations, buy bigger than our biggest competitor because we weren't fragmented.
And how we ran the business. So our marketing hinges to our flyer program. We're almost always on some sort of a promotional period, whether it's a month long flyer or a short weekend event or whatever the case may be. All of the buying is tied to that flyer program so that the buying is cycled that so that everything in the store has an opportunity to get on flyer to turn every three to four months. Doesn't hit stale date if you're training your staff how to sell through the flyer.
but most importantly, we're buying as a group, we're moving as a group, we're selling as a group. Therefore we can control that, process completely. The listings are critical because, well, it's advantageous to us to maintain a fairly consistent offering from coast to coast, A, from a marketing standpoint, B, from an e com standpoint, and we can talk a little bit about how our e com works.
but see, if everybody has their way with how they feel, the selling should happen on our shelves, we've lost, we've lost all control. And there's no hope of bringing it back. other competitors, as in all of the other competitors, they don't have that rigidness. They let their franchisees kind of have free reign around what they sell in their stores. And as a result, when it comes time to do a promotion or to try to move together with some buying activity, you can't get anybody on board. So
Right. That's
we've avoided those pitfalls.
Yeah. That makes sense.
So that's a big non-negotiable. you know, unfortunately with franchisor franchisee style arrangements, there's a lot of non-negotiables. but they're always data-driven. You know, we, we've always been able to maintain great relationships within our network because when we make a decision whether or not a franchisee agrees with it, we make it based on the national data, the insights that we have access to that really drive what works and what doesn't.
Based on what's happening at 103 other locations. They have their insight,
tell us a little bit about the art and science of that being, being a quantitative asset managers. We, we, we tend to defer to that. in our marketing would be the same sort of thing. Tell us more about how do you, do you have a, a dashboard or a panel? How do you get an inkling of those, early things or those directions that you should move in, if you will. Um,
Oh, man, Jonathan Sharpe, who I spoke about earlier, he could, he could give you a half an hour session on that. we every day receive a statement digitally, from every single location with their top line, their profit margin, tickets through the door, average ticket, all the metrics that the owner should be, you know, paying for. day to day basis.
Anomalies things that fall outside of our margin minimums or if a store's number appears off, we'll dig into or we'll make an ask just to see if there perhaps was a receiving error or if it's something that they need to look into a little closer on their end. We pay close attention for is our customer shopping with us? What's a typical life cycle of a customer? what's our drop off rate versus opt in rate with, our email marketing? Jonathan looks at everything.
we look at turn rates per category, per linear inch of store to determine how much, how much space is, is functional foods getting versus intra workout. And we make adjustments to the floor plan accordingly.
Per linear
love this stuff. You would love this stuff.
And so as, that evolves, I imagine that there's. You got to move quicker than ever now with social media as things trend. And as a, I don't know, lifestyle guru becomes huge and says that, you know, taking a particular type of supplement is going to 10 X your gains that do do you follow that as a team, follow that in order to decide what you're going to start offering in the stores and real estate inside the stores as or are you kind of Immune to that right now. Is there not a lot of
Well, you know, we've seen so many things come and go over the years. I mean, if I can think of even over the past five to 10 years, carbs are bad. Now carbs are good. You know, you had the Atkins, Atkins days, you had the raspberry ketones. We're going to solve all your problems. there are all kinds of things. And you know, there was some merit to all of these things. But not, it wasn't your silver bullet. So there's no such thing as a silver bullet.
And then, you know, we're not going to redesign or, or restage a store on the basis of a fat, but you will see, you will see some uplift on an interesting, it's, if it's got a little bit of legs and has a little bit of a following, you'll see some uplift on that front.
Interesting. So let's, let's talk a little bit about the content marketing approach and how you guys, you mentioned a little bit about email and getting those metrics, but how do you guys work with social media these days? Crazy.
it's something that we've been working to evolve. We've been evolving our social media strategy over the past six months. And, so Megan, who's, working in the office here, works with Nikki, who would be her boss, our director. And together they're executing, I believe at a high level on an influencer strategy where they have a group of, they call them micro and macro influencers. So some are. You know, a much broader reach, much broader audience, perhaps, perhaps national in scope.
And then there are others that might be much more niche. maybe they're popular in Saskatoon and have a little bit of a following elsewhere in the prairies. But, you know, when I look at the posts that I see, that we're doing, which are traditional, you know, we send them our goods during a promotional cycle. They might wear our new limited drop products and talk about them. I feel that the authenticity that comes around that, influencer style marketing is the new way to market.
data wise, we have a 400 percent lift on click through activity from these types of posts than we do on a traditional ad slider, you know, like everybody's ad sliders now are just noise. Right? You know, and I, and I find it so interesting because I know people know they're being marketed to. There's, there's no way to hide it.
In fact, you even need to put hashtag sponsored or hashtag paid right in the post as a, formality, but people trust, they gain a trust, they gain an admiration or they gain a respect. And, you know, then they, they will digest that marketing. They will take it in and absorb it. So it's, it's really fascinating.
I think it's that function of, and maybe this all started with, you know, the guys like, Rogan and Tim, Tim Ferris, right? Like I only, I only talk about the things that I like and use and at an influencer level, it's, yeah, I'm being compensated, but I'm only doing the things that I like and use and feel. And if you're like me, you'll like these things. And I have to say, when you find someone who kind of has your same tastes or inclinations, you're like, you pick three or four of them.
And you're like, Oh yeah, I do like what this guy or gal likes. Like I actually have, you know, common tastes. And so you can really kind of micro down your, you know, where you're getting your referral from. It's almost like that hybrid of a word of mouth, but it's kind of paid word of mouth. And you're not, you're not going to hit on all of them. You'll get some stinkers from the people, but you're like, Oh, it's fine. The
And if you like the personality, even if they like, look, Mike is constantly saying, I like this, I like that. And I stupidly buy it and hate it, but I keep doing it because he's such a lovable personality, right? Like he's dead wrong on his product choices, but look at him. He's absolutely amazing. Right? So I think oftentimes it's just that, that ability to have a personality attached to these products. That to me is amazing.
And, you know, sadly in our business, it's just an impossible thing to do given regulatory guidelines, right? You have to, you'd have to make them have 20, 000 disclosures after they make a statement about your product, paying for them, but, I, I do envy the ability to kind of lever these new ways and these new social media outlets. And. I know that you may not know this, but I know that certain media outlets do a better job than others of maximizing your reach.
And I know that TikTok in particular has a pretty explosive algorithm. Have you guys, do you have a preference for influencer, influencer in which platform or do you not, have you not gotten there yet?
I know that, that, so I'm not on tikTok. I, I, you know, I'm on Instagram and Facebook almost begrudgingly. I'm just in that I'm 44 and I, I feel like I need to be tapped into what's going on with the stores. Cause each store has, has, has an Instagram account. And many of our stores have TikTok accounts. I just can't get there to have another social media. I feel like the time suck with Facebook and Instagram alone is, is too much.
But, Nikki and Megan have told me that the interaction with TikTok is explosive. It is where they are focusing a lot of their attention. And yes, they are choosing, uh, influencers that, that have followers, but most importantly, that have followers here in Canada. Uh, because you could be from Calgary and all of your followers or your viewership could be from Texas. And that isn't necessarily at this point in our business, beneficial to us.
that's not to say that the next three to four years that couldn't change, but, the agency that we used initially, and we still do use to some degree is what's called hashtag paid. They would vet the viewership or the followers. To determine the where and then you would be able to preview the post or the recording to make sure it was on brand, make sure it hit everything that you wanted to achieve.
Also to make sure that didn't hit on anything you don't want out there publicly, because there's a little bit of that risk with authenticity, right? Be a little too authentic or perhaps make a statement that, uh, that you don't necessarily want the brand standing behind. so so far, our venture into, into influencer marketing has been very positive so much. In fact, we have committed a percentage of top line revenue from each of the franchisees to fuel this program starting this year.
And we received no pushback because they, they know the stuff is working.
You see it working. And it, yeah, it's, what was really interesting to me as I learned about that was how, you know, you have to be targeted because you have stores in certain areas. You have a geographical boundary from a country perspective. You have some provincial, provincial boundaries I'm sure. So you've got to, you've got to think through these influencers and make sure they're going to connect and deliver sales to the stores. Which is kind of a very interesting and, painstaking process.
But then you think about how this, this art of marketing is going micro, right, rather than macro. It's, it's going very micro, very, boots on the ground level. and to adapt to that, these influencers, you're going to have influencers at all levels. And it's kind of being on the leading edge of that. so is that, do you find your competition is doing a bit of that, or is that a, a definite advantage for you as you're trying to continue to stay ahead of the wave in the marketing of,
You know, I haven't seen them do anything with, uh, with any degree of organization. I'm not, that's not to say that they aren't using influencers or, or people to, you know, to be spokespeople online for them. I do see that, but I don't see consistency and I don't see formality. Consistency is probably the most important thing with any marketing program. You need to be out there with your message and you need to be out there with your message a lot.
People don't react the first time they hear a message. Once they've heard it a few times over and over again, that trust, it just builds, you know, as a, in a natural way. but the influencers it's, very interesting.
Some are successful because they're just so entertaining to watch and to listen to, uh, whether it's a guy or a girl, they deliver the message with so much enthusiasm that even though they don't have any, I guess, accreditation or, or, you know, um, Unlike we go to the other end of the spectrum, we have Ellie Black, who's a, you know, an Olympic gymnast. And she's one of our, our influencers. And she brings with her all that, comes with her high degree of athleticism and, her successes. Right.
So, but everybody has a niche and it's, it's neat to see it all pieced together and be a success as a whole.
So one of the things that would be, Interesting on the supplement side because I don't know where it would fit in in terms of sensitivity to the economic cycle I know it's been maybe you've just been on I feel like since 2013 we've been on a boom So you may not know or have been through a big cycle But do you find that there's a lot of sensitivity to profit based on what's going on in the economy?
we COVID too. So maybe you can think through that as a, as a way to think through
Yeah, it's a great question. You know, we, we've been looking at year over year results, and we can definitely, so there's a few things that have, have come up. hit our numbers. During, coming out of the pandemic, whey protein and creatine prices were at kind of an all time high for recent history. as a result, they drove retail pricing, you know, in a five pound bucket of isolate whey in Canada to 120 dollars a tub, which previously 80 to 90 had been the norm, uh, pre pandemic.
Now with the low interest rates at that time, and with all of the government incentive money out there in the economy, there was no friction to that purchase price. It was happening day in, day out. And I believe that everybody got a little punch drunk on that. because now in order for us to actually capture a year over year performance snapshot, uh, A, we have to back off those price increases because they've come back down to normal levels.
And, you know, we've really, we're really looking closely at. How often are customers coming in? what other, what other things do we need to normalize in the business? Definitely. Although average ticket has gone down a little bit, it hasn't gone down dramatically. We've seen some slowdown and how quickly customers come back in to see us.
I think that there's a real impact in people, you know, who are homeowners out there renewing their mortgages and they're no longer at 1. 8 percent or 1. 9 percent, suddenly they have 1, 500 dollars less a month of disposable income. I feel like that, that the economy and the general feeling of optimism that was out there a year ago has, at least in Canada has dissipated. so people are being more careful about their financial decisions.
Now on the good news side, for many people, It seems to be that natural health products or protein, protein powders are almost like a grocery or an essential item. So for us staying mindful of value and always ensuring we have an offering that's, there for people who are, changing their budget or changing their spending habits. We want to still have something that is of high quality and available to them. So we've been able to maintain that customer traffic.
It's like coffee. Nobody's gonna give up on their coffee coffee in a
just,
The downgrade
We'll just stop buying it for 6 a cup
to go to the, go to the, come from the isolate to the concentrate.
that's, that's right. There's, that's right. That's right.
I wonder if, uh, if we shift gears a little bit and just talk about, cause we've talked about the stores and some of the philosophy, but you're, you know, maybe your personal philosophy on some leadership. And principles that have guided you through business decisions and growth.
Like we've talked about it, but what were some of the guiding, you know, sort of northern stars that you were always coming back to as you were making business decisions, growing the team, managing the team, you know, good employees, bad employees, partners, all that sort of stuff.
It, you know, I get asked this once in a while and it's, it's not really an easy thing to define, but I do always come back to remembering. Now I worked almost a decade in my storefronts, you know, I learned the business from the ground up. Uh, I had lots of good employees.
I had some not so good employees, uh, being very quick to move on from people when you get that feeling that things aren't going well, or they're not going to be an organizational fit is something that I kind of live and die by. Now, fortunately, at our office here at our corporate office, we have a very small team. and engagement is extremely high because the work is, is challenging, but it's rewarding. It's exciting. It's a fun kind of a fast place, youthful energy place to work.
I'm a little long on the tooth here at 44, truth be told. so, you know, you just have to ask your daughter. the energy and the, and the ethic and the, and the pride in what they do is very high. We've actually never had any turnover here. Which is, which is great. Now, on the goal setting and on the business growth and business building, I've always looked at short and long term goals and how they fit together.
I remember staring down the mall hallway at the kiosk thinking, All right, here's my numbers with one store open, and I can see what that looks like at five stores. You know, add up that labor piece, see if it's still a good business at five locations, and it made sense to scale to that. And then as, you know, that started to come to fruition, I looked at Well, then I had a storefront in front of me. All right, well, what would five stores instead of five kiosks look like?
Build out that business plan and, you know, work your way towards that micro goal. And we've really never stopped doing that. We look at, you know, what is this year with 20 to 24 new stores on the calendar look like depending on when they come on board and how does that tie back to our financials? in a franchise or franchisee business, you need to just focus almost all of your energy on the success of the franchisee. If they don't win, there is no business.
So we obsess over the franchisee business plan when there's a price change in the market or anything that, that impacts their business plan. We're making sure it continues to fit so that it yields that net income that they need to continue to grow with us and to be successful. So those are the things now that the, business has changed over the years that we, we really kind of hone in on.
And is it just those micro goals where you're keeping your eye on the horizon to see what, like we talked about, You know, different marketing approaches, different supplements that might come in. So you just got an eye on the horizon as you're doing the one to five, five to 50 and so on,
Yeah. On the product side, we decided a few years ago, we were going to focus all of our efforts on being the best retailer we could be instead of being a brand building retailer. So there are a lot of brands that approach us. They might be new to the market, might be a very interesting product or something that we think could have some legs.
But now that we have buying power of all the brands that just sell off our shelves organically, we have to inform them that, you know, you need to go back to the market. You need to bring us big direct to consumer numbers. You need to show us That you can sell off our shelves before we take time to invest in a listing with you. whereas traditionally we might've said, all right, well, here's a strong margin opportunity that we think our customers would enjoy.
Let's educate all of our staff around building this brand in our store. As time went on and with scale, we realized that that model is very challenging and not as easily replicable. So our approach to products and our approach to listings definitely has changed. You know,
that creating, creating customers or trying to create a conversion in the store is so much harder than just, you know, people are going to come in for stuff and they want to buy it and make sure you have it and they're
That's right. That's right. So, so we encourage brands that are interested in listing with us to focus all of their energy on building that to direct to consumer business. That way, if it leads to a listing with us, we throw it in our flyer with a good value proposition, they're going to run in the door and it's, it's worked time and time again. Yeah.
We're still learning it.
Yeah. We're still learning.
still say it and talk about it. And yet we can't stop trying to convert. It's
That's awesome. What about future, the future innovations, looking ahead, just on the supplement industry? Are there any products or technologies that you see that you're excited about? That's kind of, you know, thinking beyond the next sort of little piece, but a larger piece. Is there, what, what's on the, what's on the, being a futurist, I'm going to make you the futurist at a supplement King.
Oh, wow. That's a tough place to tough place to be. So not being on the brand side, and not being the in house expert on the brand side I'm a little bit impaired at making that kind of a judgment call. you know, we have our main categories in the store, which would be pre workout, protein powders, intra workout hydration, functional foods, weight gain and creatine. Those are the, you know, the most products that we carry live within those categories.
Over the years, the odd product comes along that wants to redefine a new category. And sometimes it does. Most often it doesn't. it's the reason they're the reason those categories exist is the ingredients that make up those formulations have been proven to work for people over time, you know, will there be advancements and will there be new things that work in different ways or work better?
Sure. there will over, you know, there will be the odd product over time, but you know, supplements just by the nature of what they are ways to nutritionally check some blocks, off that you could get from diet, but it's going to be easier or more efficient to get from a natural health product. So, you know, protein powder, creatine, BCAAs, intra workout.
I think that there will be improved versions of those as time goes on, but that's where, where the bulk of the, uh, the focus and innovation is going to be.
You need to find a way to to be allowed to put some GLP 1 inhibitors on your shelf space there some
Well, Canada is not the landscape for that, my friend. We, uh, you know, we, We We certainly suffer from a fairly strong regulatory environment. again, not in the brand side. So for us as retailers, we just simply maintain the, uh, the bar of every product on our shelves has to have a natural product number. The NPN is the Health Canada, seal of approval.
so we, we maintain that bar, but we hear a lot of, challenge and frustration coming from our brand partners that want to innovate and want to try new things, but they are a 10 month wait to get an NPN review.
Have you have you guys I mean, maybe this wouldn't be part of your business But like peptides that are becoming really popular right now Are those is that is that kind of dying now given the regulatory changes in the US or is it? Something that you guys would look at
so in Canada, that would be kind of a gray market product. not something that we could legally sell also, perhaps not something that would be illegal. but for us, we would see that as a brand risk. if it doesn't have an NPN, if it's not clearly meeting the regulatory requirements here in Canada, we just can't have that become a headline for us. So, so unfortunately, you know, we are, we are certainly, at the mercy of, of regulatory agencies.
And I think that you could probably empathize with that in one way or another.
well You can Yes, regulatory, the regulators not allowing us to be innovative is definitely a thing in our industry. Um, but I guess having the, that level of focus, you know, you, you basically end up with beaten potatoes, right? You have to deliver whey protein into workout, hydration, as you said, and then, and then the rest is just about optimizing for eyeballs and people coming into your store. I guess it could be kind of seen as a blessing in disguise.
Rather than having 150 products that you don't know much about. And
No, very, very true. And a home brand is also something that, you know, at this scale, we could certainly execute on. GNC had a home brand. I'm sure you guys are well aware. In my opinion, it was part of their demise in Canada because You know, their, their associates were also paid a commission, very heavily weighted on that home brand. as a result, a lot of their sales became very vertical and their numbers with the national brands, which is what people truly want, dropped off.
Uh, and you know, when you're in a franchisee, franchisor kind of system, franchisees will sell what's best for their business. Nobody can blame them for that. If we offered a five point advantage home brand with protein powders and creatines, and well, I mean, our sales would get very vertical as well.
And then when we try to do that flyer to attract people into the store and call up our biggest national brand partners, they would say, well, we're, we're tired of being bait and switched, and I think we're going to take our support elsewhere. So that's a big risk, right?
switch. I was wondering what the issue was for those national partners. I also remember like from, I remember going in to GNC and being like, there's a zero chance your brand is better than whatever name the next, I don't even know the other brands. I just felt like they couldn't be as good. There was just something about it. You know,
You know, a good salesperson can talk you into it, but there's always that feeling after the sale where you went in for the national brand and you left with the home brand and then you get home and a week or two later you say, you know what? I really wanted the national brand and I got sold and I don't ever want somebody leaving one of my stores and saying, or our stores and saying, I felt sold.
love it. On a, uh, on a more personal note, because we're, we're getting close to an hour and, appreciate the time you've spent with us thus far. and I just want to know about, you know, maybe some of your personal interests, like outside of being a very successful entrepreneur in the fitness and supplement game, what other passions does, uh, does Roger King have?
Uh, geez. Well, I'm a very, very mediocre golfer. Um, but I enjoy it.
passion to become a mediocre golfer, to be
lots of passion. Uh, I like the, I like the walk. I like everything about it. I like that I, I didn't learn how to play golf growing up. And so it's something that I've really dove into as a, as an adult. I've got two daughters, six and nine, and, they're, they dance competitively, which is having not had sisters growing up. The whole world of dance is new to me. And this is theiceless AAA hockey. Like it is. It is.
My daughters are watching a show about that on Netflix right
Ah, it's intense. It's
And they are obsessed with it.
Yeah, look, you know,
it is, it
I appreciate when something's, now they love it. So that's what drives this whole thing. And that's what, you know, gives Lindsay and I the ability to give up dozens of hours each week to drive them and spend time of practices and whatnot. So they really, truly do enjoy it. But I like seeing them do hard things. And I also like seeing them not succeed every time. I love when they, you know, it's great when they win. They've won a few times at competitions.
There's only Three competitions that you spend your whole year preparing for. So it's, you know, there's a pressure situation. There's a moment of success or failure. There's management of the feelings around them. And I know they're only six and nine, but I love all that stuff because I think those are real life lessons. And you know, sometimes it's a little bit difficult to teach your six and nine year old what struggle in the face of adversity is all about.
you have to do everything possible to manufacture pain for your
Oh, and you got to get my wife on board with that because she
Oh no,
solutions to all their problems.
my daughter, my daughter started, I put her into Jiu Jitsu because I, I have a martial arts background and there is no better sport to learn about the pain of losing than on a daily basis in Jiu Jitsu. And so I figured that'll create some sort of pain threshold. And it was about. Giving as much pain to my children as possible without having it be traumatized for the rest of their lives. So that's kind of my goal in life with my children, just constant pain all the time.
And I remember going to the first competition. We walk in, she was expecting a smaller venue, but we walk into this massive gymnasium, doors wide open, and my daughter starts bawling and my wife grabs her and says, we're turning around right now and leaving. And as my daughter's crying, like she's crying because she's there, turns around to my wife's like, I'm no, I've been training for five months. I'm going, she was nine at the time, probably even younger.
I'm going to, and then she cried her way through it, but won a gold, won her gold medal. But every single competition we've gone to, my wife has done the same thing. Whenever you want to leave, you just let me know. So I've had zero success in trying to get my wife on board this pain train. But I think it's absolutely crucial, right? Cause they live such a privileged life that you really, the only way you can do it is through sport.
Without a little bit of struggle, how do you build resilience without resilience? How, how do you achieve any success? And you know, all of these things that I think, I think we live a very similar life, although how old is she now? Is she
She's now 12 and she just came back. We did her first rugby tournament. We went to Miami and she was faced with, you know, American grown girls. They were.
right.
They were large and in charge. It was like our Canadian girls. And then these American look like women just, just destroyed them. Okay. Like the under 18s one, they won both of their games and it was the first time that came in girls at one. This is a brand new program. My girls in under 14, I coached, they just got through their first year of training, so it was kind of expected, but listen, you know, they all, Half of them came out momentarily injured. They got plowed through.
They were, they were tears, but they were getting up with tears in their eyes and getting back and pushing hard. So. And then when they were done, they had the best time of their lives. Rotary. It was just, it was great. So yeah, we, we've been able to, at 12, transition her. She's still doing jiu jitsu, but she's now doing rugby. And it's, um, you know, I mean, Mike, you, you, your daughter played rugby through college too, right? So you know how tough
Yeah. Yeah. I my daughters have, I'm sure many stories about how much of an asshole I am on that stuff. Throw away your participation trophy before we leave the field. Throw away your second place trophy because it disrespects the champions trophy.
I feel like there's a whole other podcast to be had here. So
are the speeches I gave. Three guys with daughters. This is the new podcast. Three guys with two daughters.
I love it, but you know what, though? We only just want the best for them. And that's,
You got it.
As for hobbies, I have time for a little bit of golf. I do a whole lot of dance practice. Um, you know, I, I like to get out on the boat a little bit. We live on, on, on a lake and Nova Scotia is beautiful in the summer. We've got a whole six weeks of summer to enjoy the lake. Uh, so, you know,
was going to say, do you have an icebreaker? Is that an icebreaker, bro?
yeah,
Well, it's saltwater.
Yeah, that's fair enough.
I'm kidding. Oh, that's awesome. I got one last little fun question for you. And, uh, it's if you could have a superpower to help you run your business, what would it be and why? Given what you know now of what you've run, what you're going to be building.
Do I get a job at Google if I get it right?
Yeah,
So yeah,
maybe, I don't know if they're
I think that any entrepreneur would quickly jump to clairvoyance or the ability to see the future. it's like any space. I think it's fast changing. It's fast pace. Your customer is consuming marketing in a different way every couple of years. You know, what worked a couple of years ago doesn't necessarily work today. so if I could see the future and be ahead of that, Of that curve on, you know, what people are looking for and how they're looking to, consume marketing.
I feel like we would be better for our franchisees and we can improve their business plans that much more. So
Clairvoyance is not about, that's a pretty good one, actually.
Yeah.
want that
I think Clairvoyance is pretty good. Yeah. First of all, I would vote for the same.
Yes, I agree.
Well, thank you, Roger, for taking the time, spend an hour with us. Great entrepreneurial story. Really loved it. where can people find you? You're, I mean, obviously supplementking. com. CA.
Yeah, dot ca or dot com. is where we are. We don't ship outside of Canada currently, but when we begin expansion into the USA within about three years time, that's going to change. We're going to look at a new supply chain and a new way to move products, but, to all those Canadians, and I do know a few of them living down in Cayman, a big hello, and I can't wait to come and visit the island again. I had my first visit last year. Uh, over the March, this kid's school break.
well, I admit I didn't leave the hotel grounds. It was one of those vacations, not a traveling trip. Uh, we had a hell of a time and seven mile beach was among the best I've ever been.
Yeah. And then, and then you personally, do you have a, Twitter handle or Instagram handle that you share or not? That's not really
Yeah, sure. I I'm, I am supplement King is, uh, is what Nikki and marketing thought would be a cool Instagram for me. So that's, that's who I am.
love it.
Beautiful. Thank you roger. Very insightful.
it was a real pleasure. Thank you.