Episode #241: CAN LESS BECOME MORE?

We won't be that long, maybe 6, 7, 8 minutes, but really want to take our time and just comb through a couple things.

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And so it's , uh, it's all, you know, put together in a buttoned up fashion. So today , uh, we are gonna be talking about can less become more? And why am I even asking this question? Well, it's, it's interesting.

I'm , I'm , I work for , um, you know, I have a sales agency and I worked for a company that recently got , uh, sold and it , and it got purchased by someone who is adopting this narrow and deep , uh, product inventory philosophy and really looking at the offerings to the customer base and trying to streamline that offering so that we have more money and more capital to go into investing, into inventory, into

manufacturing. And we're, and you know, the idea is we're making the right things and we're not, you know, spending too much time on periphery type stuff that's on the outside of our core competencies. And we're really gonna go after this core nce . In fact, the the new owner said, we're gonna be an F-150 Ford truck kind of company.

You know, we're gonna get the job done, we're gonna haul this stuff, we're gonna do big loads, we're gonna do it quick, we're gonna do it good. And, you know, so I I I've, I feel the same way when I was an executive in this same business, in the military apparel business and in the , uh, commercial military and law enforcement apparel business. Uh, you know, I al always wrestle with that as well.

Like, why do we spend so much time on this peripheral inventory that we have low sales on? You know, but it's kind of sexy. It kind of gives us some added oomph. You know, we go out every year to major trade show and we have things to debut and new product to talk about, but when the sun sets it's chewing up money that could be used to going after our core products. So I call this the m and m analogy.

And when you look at, at m and ms , right, you look at when they started 1949 by the m and m Mars Company out in New Jersey, you look at how they've progressed and how they've, you know, morphed and everything. And today, when you look at a bag, a a standard sized bag of m and ms , there's six colors, there's 87 m and ms in there, and the breakdown is 16 blue, 16 brown, 16 green, 13 orange, 13 red, 13 brown.

That's the deal. So, you know, I look at this and I, I often just kind of look at it in amazement and say, why aren't companies putting those six color m and ms on their shelves to ship quick? I'll tell you a perfect example. I work for a company that makes four products, not six, but four, that I think these four, our m and m type products, they should be on the shelf in depth .

They should be able to pump out quick, they should be able to, you know , uh, replenish lty split . Basically, we should be shipping these things in one day. Now these four products, that's all it was, right? These four products, we would get orders and it would take us a month to fulfill it. Why? There was never a finished product on the shelf. So what would we have to do?

We'd have to, we'd have to requisition at the fulfillment center. We'd have to requisition the raw materials. So we get this sticker, we get this tag, we get this poly bag , we get this item, we get this swift tack , we get this , uh, UPC label, then we have to corral it all. We have to schedule with the , uh, packaging element of the department to to , to package it and get it ready.

And then we ship it out 26 days later, the customer gets it a month, you know, after they order it. And you know what, I went from 22 huge customers, $880,000 in business with this product line. I went down to $21,000 in business. Uh, and , and where I'm at today is about 13, $14,000 a year in that business category. And why? Because people abandoned ship. They cut us off.

They, they, they threw us to the, the curb. They said, you know what, we're not gonna keep looking at empty pegs. We're selling this stuff out in a couple days. And then we're looking at these empty pegs on a , on a, on a rack for, you know, 26 days. It's brutal.

And finally, a guy calls me from the, from the, you know, manufacturer from the brand, and he says, dude, I've been watching you struggle with, you know, these 30 day deliveries for five, six years. He goes, I tell you what, I'm gonna put these four products on the shelf and you're gonna ship out next day, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna build them.

So I'll, you know, I'll get all the raw materials, put 'em together, build them, and you'll be able to ship out in a day or two. And you know what, for the last three years I've been able to do that. Well, guess what? Nobody wants to go back to the wealth . The customers don't wanna go back to the, well , sorry, been there, done that. We don't trust it.

They really don't, they don't trust that I'm literally telling 'em the truth. And I got a couple customers hanging on and the stuff ships out the next day. So, you know , uh, unfortunately five years too late. And then that 880,000 thousand probably could have been, you know, 1.2 million, 2.8 million. Who knows? But the point is, those are the four m and ms of that company.

Mars has the six m and ms that make up the 87 that go in that bag. All of us out there have our core competency products. We have our core elements that we are good at. Now, if you're not a manufacturer, you don't inventory it, well, you've got a service related entity, but you've still got a core, you know, group of service sis that you provide.

And, you know, the question begs itself, why don't you spend more of your precious time, energy, financial resources, packaging, distribution? Why don't you spend more time marketing sales calls and, you know , uh, you know , executive oversight. Why don't you focus more on that core product? And, you know, I'm listening to this gentleman who just bought this company. He's saying the same thing I is . I I am.

You know, we can sell more with less. Bingo ching, ching ching. I, I mean, I've been saying that to myself for years. I've been scratching my own head. And you know what? It , it avoids all these cra , especially if you're a company that manufactures things . This mentality avoids having all these closeouts two years down the road where you're taking it on the chin.

You're , you know, your average cost for something's, you know, eight bucks and you're out there selling it for three, losing, writing off all these losses. I mean, it's, it's brutal. And, and why the success? You know, the , the Eminem Mars Company, the success hinges on those six , uh, m and m colors. They pump out 400 million of these a day. Yeah, 12,500 a minute. So, you know, you look at that and you go, wow.

I mean, that's incredible. But that's where their success lies. Now, they obviously have, you know, Valentine's colors and Christmas colors and different colors that they package and put out for holidays or certain seasonality, you know, certain things, but for the most part , um, you know it every day . And they're still shipping every day these six colors.

So , uh, here's what I really just want to kind of put on the table today for you to think about. You know, I really wanna , I wanna , you know, I want you to really be able to, to sit down and rub your chin over this stuff. Get in the boardroom, talk about it, get in the conference room , talk about it. But, but find our six core colors. What are our six core, you know, products?

Do these six colors really, really well? Bring in best practices, polish it, you know , um, get the tarnish off these things. Make it streamline. Reverse the workloads. Put the workloads on yourself and not the customer. Flip the centricity. You're not company centric. You're customer centric. Start really looking at these core products and do these things really fantastic.

You know, fill these , uh, fill these orders that you get for this core competency product quicker. You know , uh, maintain these narrow and deep core inventories. Deliver a higher percentage of the fulfillment rates. Spend your manufacturing dollars on things that are gonna turn, look at your capital turns . Look at your , uh, product turns . Make sure that you've, you know, you're governing this and you're watching this.

Why, why bog yourself down and be sluggish with these turns because you're making all this sexy product that very few people are buying, right? Um, stop chasing the periphery items. You know, okay, so what your catalog goes from, you know , 36 pages down to, you know, eight. So what if the sexy items disappear? So what if you don't showcase new items every January when you go to the major trade show?

Become really reliable in these core competency products and, and just always be capable of providing that core to somebody. You know, what if somebody , uh, normally buys 15 of these things and all of a sudden one day they call you up and they go, Hey, I want 1500. Wow. Lucky you. We've got 7,600 on the shelf. You got it. You know what I mean?

And, and stop saying , uh, you know, we only have, you know, 250 on the shelf. Why is that? Oh , because we have 1600 skews and, you know, 1400 of our skews are nonsense. You know, that's what really, that's what really happens a lot of the time out here in the business world.

So be a company that stocks the core , ships, it fast, ships everything that the customer order , imagine that shipping a hundred percent fulfillment or, you know, 99% fulfill. Imagine being in that kind of fulfillment rate on the core products. On the core products, right? So I say focus on the core, and you know what? Watch less become more, right? So yeah , that's the , uh, that's the podcast for today.

And today we're gonna leave you . I mean, summer's in the air, man. I , I am one of my favorite places in world. I'm wearing a T-shirt, Minocqua , Wisconsin. If you've never been there, you have to go summertime. It's in, it splendor the fall, it's in its splendor in the winter, it's in it splendor. It's this , this , this place is really , uh, special in all the seasons, I think. But , uh, summer's here, man.

Water activity. We just got back from a family vacation. Watched my 8-year-old grandson just digging the body surfing man. Uh , just, he was, you know, into it. The Gulf was teaming with waves. We were down outside the , uh, Destin. We were at Fort Walton Beach, just teaming with waves, and he was having a blast. We were having a blast. So , uh, we wanna leave you with the Beach Boys today, right?

So Surfing Safari 1962, the Beach Boys, enjoy it. And we will see you in 168 hours, seven times 24, baby. We'll see you then.