35 Years of Branding Knowledge & Secrets - Branding Case Studies | Marketing Misfits | MMP #09

35 Years of Branding Knowledge & Secrets - Branding Case Studies | Marketing Misfits | MMP #09 Kevin King: You know, in business, there's three things that can make you more money. It's either you get more customers, you buy for less money, or you sell for more. Unknown Speaker: You're watching The Marketing Misfits with Norm Farrar and Kevin King. How's it going Mr. Norm Farrar: King? Kevin King: Oh man, I'm alive and kicking as my buddy Mark would say. Everything is good. Everything's good in the hood. How about you? Norm Farrar: Good in the hood. Well, it's good in my little closet here. It's getting warmer outside, which is great. And today, this makes it great too, Kev. I got this incredible package of beard oil. I know you don't have a beard and you really don't care about it, but I know you care about packaging. And I got it from the Mammoth Beard Company. They don't even sell on Amazon, I don't think. I could never find them. I've got to order it from their Shopify site. But it's a company out of Alberta. I think they're in Calgary. And the packaging is incredible. The kids got it for me one year for Father's Day, and I've been going back to them ever since. And it's rugged, so it's all made out of wood. The packaging inside, great. You have your beard balm, your beard oil. There is a soap and there's one other thing I forget right now, but it's all packaged together. It's not cheap and they can get it like for just those four items or five items. Oh, yeah. Then you have the wax. It's $110. Wow. Yeah. Kevin King: Beard oil is like a little spray bottle or something, right? Or is it like a little thing you dab? Norm Farrar: Beard oil, yeah. So even that, so that beard oil bottle It's upgraded, so you've got different types. You have the type that you just pour out, you have the dabber, you put a couple of drops on and then you rub it together, or you have one that sprays out, not sprays out, but it comes out a spout, and that's the kind that they have. But just the look, the whole brand, it just oozes brand. Rugged beards, you know? And I guess they call it mammoth because of that. But the colors that they use, the packaging, everything also is recyclable. So they've got that side of it. But just being able to receive something that weighs a little bit. So I bought something. Kevin King: So if it's just a little three-ounce bottle, I mean, what do you... Norm Farrar: It's not even that. It's like a one-ounce bottle. Kevin King: I don't understand. Does the label just look cool or is the package- Yeah, the label looks cool. Norm Farrar: It's got a bloody mammoth on it. Kevin King: Yeah, but I mean, you said that you're blown away by this package or this thing that you're seeing now. Norm Farrar: The outer packaging, so you get it, it comes in an outer package. When you open it, it's a wooden box. So the wooden box is like a cedar. And I'm not sure if it is cedar, but it looks like a cedar, kind of smells like cedar. And it's got the brand, it's branded onto the box. Kevin King: Awesome. It's like a wooden box. So it's like this little bottle. Like one of those things that you could get through TSA or something, you know, if you had one of those little like spray bottle kind of things. It looks something like that, but it comes nestled inside like an actual wooden box. Norm Farrar: Right. Kevin King: And that's inside another box or they ship it in the wooden box. Norm Farrar: No, they have an outer package, which is just like a brown corrugate. Then you open it up and you've got the package that comes out. And I forget, I think it comes in a bag when you open it up. So you get the regular shipping container, you open it up, it's in a bag, you take it out. Kevin King: Like a velvet bag or like a plastic bag? Norm Farrar: I think it's more cotton. Kevin King: Oh, okay, okay. Like a nice jewelry bag or something like that. Norm Farrar: Yeah, but bigger. And then you take it out. You have to, how does it slide off? The lid pops off and no, it slides out, it slides out. And then what happens is the products unveil. And it's super cool because they have this packaging on top of the product. So you have to move the packaging or the packaging material over to see the product, but you use all your senses. Kevin King: Is there just one bottle in there or is there a bunch of bottles in there? Norm Farrar: No, there's four or five. Kevin King: Oh, okay. Norm Farrar: What I love about this, not only does it look appealing, but you feel it. So when you pick up each of the products, They feel awesome. And I'm talking about when you spray the beard oil into your hands, when you use the beard balm and it smells crisp, it's clean. The soap that they bring in is handmade cedarwood soap and has that cedar type smell to it. But a second that you open and unveil these products, you can smell them. And it's tempting. You almost want to eat them. Kevin King: Do you think someone's in there spraying? Is it the smell because of just the nature of the product? Or do you think they're actually, before they ship each one, they're like, all right, Johnny, your job is like spray the lid and then close it real quick so that there's a little bit of an odor. Norm Farrar: You can definitely do that. The bottles are sealed. So, you know, nothing leaks out. But I think the reason for that heavy smell is the aroma that you would get from the soap. So the soap has, it's a cold process soap and really unique kind of look to it. It's got a band around it. So it's open and it's exposed. So you could never sell that in retail because it's open, but the box is already closed. You can have that and the second that you open it up, the aroma of that cedar wood just fills the air. Beautiful. Kevin King: Yeah, I used to, it's interesting, you talk about this smell, a lot of people don't actually think about, they think about touch or feel or looks, but they don't think about, like you said, all the sensory stuff, the smell. I know I used to, you know, in one of my business, we get a lot of mail order stuff and we sell stuff for men. And sometimes when they would send in their check or money order in a physical envelope in the mail, this is some of the days before the internet was big, we'd open up the envelope and it would, this perfume smell would come just devour the room. And I think they thought there was like women opening up these things and they were like trying to like Make some sort of impression or they would spray their letter or their order form with a cologne, some manly cologne. And then I would get it and I would open it up and this nasty old spice smell would come wafering over me. I'm like, ah, dude, come on, man. I look at the name, ah, this is Johnny Smith. Oh, Johnny. Oh, Johnny, you're desperate. Only if you knew that this fat dude's reopen your letter. It's not some hot chick. Oh, the opening letter. So, but the sensory side of that, you know, Mark. My buddy in a one another business always said, Hey, if we can figure out how to do sensory stuff online, I think I'll scratch and sniff or something like that, or smell stuff online. And I think someone came out with that one time. There's like some sort of device, like a little USB stick, and it would have like a little, I don't know, an ounce of liquid or something somehow in it. Like one of those aromatic diffusers. Norm Farrar: So, smoke and cheap perfume. Kevin King: So, whenever you're visiting this site and something's going on, you would get this little puff or whatever of a smell. And I'm not saying there's always a pleasant smell. Some of it might smell like, I don't know, fish or something. I don't know. It was... The sensory stuff. But it's marketing, you know, it worked. It worked. People like it. But no, I get that sometimes too. There's other products that I get where there is a certain sound. You got to be careful because you can offend somebody, somebody can be allergic or whatever, but when it makes sense, when you open the product, it just feels real. It feels like this is something that is real. So on the sensory side, are they inside the box or are they just nestled in there, like in a little holder or they have some sort of like wood chips that they're like They're in or some sort of like… Yeah, exactly. Or nestled in so they don't move or something. Norm Farrar: That's exactly what it is. So I think I probably, if it was up to me, I'd probably change it a little bit. But especially on the unveiling part, because you do have to push aside the packaging material. And so it's like a crinkled paper. And then they have it all wedged in there. But I think they could probably do a bit better job with that. And also if I were to do this, I'd probably have it where there'd be a piece of some sort of stylish paper introducing the products to you. I think that just that penny would make it that much more of a high perceived value, but it was good. Kevin King: And by the way- How much does this cost? How much does this box- $110. $110, okay. Norm Farrar: Yeah, so it's, sorry, that's $110 Canadian dollars. I'm in, by the way, I'm in Canada, if you guys haven't heard my abouts or A's, so that was $110 Canadian dollars. But even something, going back to your sensory thing, Do you remember, now this is before my time I believe, I think it was in the 50s that this came out, might have been in the 60s, but there was a type of movie that came out, there was only one movie that came out. And there was some famous actor. He invested in this. They had their premiere. The movie was pretty good, but they had to shoot the movie. So if they're walking past rose bushes, oh, you get rose bushes. If they walk past and you get the cigar smell. But the problem was the opening and the closing, because when they put all the scents together, it was like vomit. I mean, you know, because it never released. It was just there. Kevin King: Well, the sphere, you and I went when we were in Vegas for the big smoke, the sphere had just opened and it was you two at the time that was the resident. We didn't go actually see you two, but we went to actually I can't believe to this day you didn't even when I tell I told Norm we're going to Vegas. Hey, do you want to go to a message and you want to go to the sphere? He's like the what? What are you talking about? Dude, you don't know what this is. So he looked it up online. It's like, oh, oh, it's that thing. OK. Like, yeah, I guess we'll go. So I got some tickets. And when it's not a concert in there, you can go in and they have this special movie that they've made that's inside. It's just it's huge inside. And you sit in these these seats. Are you talking about sensory stuff? The movie is just like, it's the biggest screen you've ever seen. I mean, it's like wrap around, you know, round wrap around screen. But one of the things they do is they what they call it haptic motion or whatever they the chairs actually move. So if you're like watching the movie that's up on the screen and let's say you're in a jeep going through the Sahara, you know, little rickety jeep, your seat is kind of feels like you're sitting in that jeep bouncing on rocks or whatever. But the other thing I remember very clearly talking about the smell is there was one thing there where I think it was raining. We were going through a rainforest or something. And they sprayed something down from the ceiling or right from above us that smelled like mist or smelled like rain. And I think it was a little bit wet. You know, it's like a little smoky thing. You remember that? And so it was a total like sensory thing. And every seat has speakers in it. So you're not just listening to the big speakers. Like every seat, it's almost like earphones that aren't on you, right in the headrest behind the seat. But that's a total sensory experience. And it really does something. And people that can do that, like you said, with this, what's called mammoth, mammoth beard oil. Yeah, they You can really stand apart and really, you get people talking, you get people sharing that on social media, you get people, this is cool, I want to buy this again, or they're going to gift it to somebody. I mean, I can just imagine if I had a beard and you like sent me this as a gift, you'd be like, Kevin, did you get the package I sent? I'd be like, no, not yet. I'd say, well, let me know when you get it. And, or maybe I would just naturally get it and go, dude, that was, that was cool. When I opened this thing up, the smell and the, it was a really cool thing. And thanks for sending me, this must've cost $500 or something and not knowing that, you know, it's 110. I think that's something that a lot of people mess up on when it comes to packaging. So many people that we know that are in the e-commerce space especially, when you're on retail shelves, packaging, you could argue that packaging makes a bigger difference because you have to stand out in a sea of other stuff on the shelf. People are picking it up, looking at it, touching it, feeling it. You go into a liquor store, there's all these different tequilas that are in the shape of the bottles, in the shape of a guitar. Or it's in the shape of Texas, or the Texas flag, or it's the shape of a skull. And you might buy that just because of the packaging. You're like, this vodka might suck, but this is a cool gift. It's cool to put on my counter, even if I never drink it, or to give to my buddy. Who's a goth dude or something and you give them a skull vodka, it sells. But when you, I think a lot of people when they have a normal product, whether it's a commodity or even something different, they're just afraid to spend on the packaging. They're like, that's just going to cost more money and I got to charge more for it. But you can make a lot of money by just spending an extra buck or two. Sometimes even five bucks can add $50 or $100 to your sales price on packaging. I think you told me one time something about some knife or something you did. I forget what it was. $20 knife and y'all just made a change in the packaging and you sold it for like $100 or what was that? Norm Farrar: More than that. Kevin King: Tell them about that. That's a pretty cool story. Norm Farrar: And by the way, before I get into that, talking about competition and USP, check out Beard Oil. You'll either have them in a little tins, those are the bombs, or you'll have them in a bottle and they all look pretty much the same. There's no difference. And so setting themselves apart, like just by packaging a little bit different or creating a different bottle, like even an airless bottle, nobody's done that. Nobody's ever put a beard oil in an airless bottle. And just because you switch over to that airless bottle, you'll probably get $10, $15 more. Kevin King: Are these people, are these mammoth people, are they showing the packaging on their site? It's a nice site. Or is it a surprise when you get it? Does it just look like, here's the beard oil with some fancy leaves around it? Norm Farrar: No, I don't know if they do a great job. Kevin King: Are they sitting on a counter? Or do you actually see, or is the packaging more of a surprise? Because there's always something too surprising somebody. Absolutely. When they look, okay, everybody's got this beard oil in a And a bottle, like you said, and all right, I'm ordering it because I think it's good, looks good. I've heard good things, good reviews, whatever. And then when they get it, and it's in a package, like you said, that they totally did not see that on the website, they're totally not expecting it. It's like an extra gift. It's like an extra surprise. It's like a holy cow, I had no idea. And it's almost like reassuring to yourself, like I made the right decision. I'm proud of myself. I chose the right one out of all these. They look kind of similar. And then it starts that progress, that path of them becoming a regular customer and buying as gifts and referring to other people and stuff. Norm Farrar: Yeah, absolutely. So I got to remind, I don't have any Beard Oils. I don't sell any Beard Oils, but that's an idea. Put it into an airless bottle. Unknown Speaker: Yeah, there we go. Norm Farrar: You want to invest in something? Kevin King: What's airless bottle? What's that mean? What's airless bottle mean? Norm Farrar: It's a, it's a pump that there's no, uh, it's what it is, is, um, uh, you've, you've probably seen them, uh, with some higher end, uh, lotions, perfumes, colognes, uh, lotions, especially skin lotions, high end. Um, you just hit the top and a specific amount of lotion comes out. And there's no pumping. It's just you tap it and it just comes out. Kevin King: You have to have like power for that? You have to have like a little battery or something or USB? Norm Farrar: No, no, no, no. It's just a bottle. Usually you'll see them... Kevin King: It's using physics somehow to where you don't have to like press it down and it pops back up to spray something. You just touch it or something. Norm Farrar: Yeah, you just touch it a little bit of pressure. You'll normally see them. They're either acrylic or glass they have a top that's usually flat and then you just press down on it and then the The lotion will come out by itself. You're not sitting there going. Okay, you know for those that are listening on the podcast It's my fingers going up and down So this knife thing. Kevin King: Was this your product or was this a client you were doing? Norm Farrar: No, a client came to us and product wasn't selling that well. Kevin King: What kind of knife were we talking, like a kitchen knife or a pocket knife? Norm Farrar: No, it's a kitchen knife. It's a Damascus steel knife, high-end 67 layers steel knife, and they were selling it short. So if you go on to, and this is really important, whenever you're even going to price out something, Know where your competition is. And usually on Amazon, I'll see three different price points. The lowest, the competitors, it's all just product cannibalization. They're doing it for nickels and dimes. And a lot of new sellers will compete because they think that they have to be really low priced. And that's completely wrong. Then you have your secondary tier and then you have your top tier. So I'll give you a quick example, Kev. Dead Sea Mud, you can get it on Amazon for $7 to around, I think it's $14 is that first tier. Then there'll be a couple of other stragglers. You're going to see $24 to $44. And then there'll be some other stragglers. In the high end, you're going to be getting at $75 to $95. Now, not only is there a huge price break, But the size, most of the time you're going to have a plastic crappy just standard package 8 ounce to 16 ounce Dead Sea Mud container. But if you take a look at the ones that start to brand in the middle tier and the upper tier, Now they're completely different listings and you can see the perceived value. You wouldn't pay anything for the lowest tier and the highest traffic is going to be in the upper middle tier to the top tier, low top tier. So what I try to do when I'm looking at what I can get, and I did this with the knife, is I said, you're selling this short. First of all, your packaging sucks. He put this beautiful knife into a clamshell. So, you know, plastic with a cardboard backing. Kevin King: Something like you would see hanging on a rack at the dollar store or something. Norm Farrar: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just crap. And so I took it and I used it and it was a fantastic knife. And so the more he was telling me about it, I'm going, what are you doing? Kevin King: I didn't know you cooked. Norm Farrar: Not me, my wife. I just watched. I observed. And then I ate. I didn't get the size from… You're just a dude who likes to eat. Kevin King: I know, I know. Exactly. She cooks, I eat. Norm Farrar: You and me both. So, at the end of the day, the packaging sucked. So we recommended, look, let's just do a quick rebrand. Let's put this, let's change the name. Let's put the logo Acid Etch on the knife, looks nice. Not too big. Kevin King: We put in the logo or the text and make it look kind of Japanese or German or something. Norm Farrar: Yeah, exactly. Kevin King: For knives, those two places. Norm Farrar: Exactly what we did. So we made it more of a... Kevin King: Which one, Japanese or German? Norm Farrar: No, it was Japanese. Kevin King: Okay. Norm Farrar: So for this, it was a Japanese steel. And then even in the rivets in the knife, we put their logo. It's just a minor, it didn't even cost anything to do this, but we were able to put their symbol, their logo in the three of these, which was pretty cool. Nobody else was doing it. But for the packaging, all we wanted- Could you even see it? Kevin King: What's that? Could you even see the logo in those little rivets? Norm Farrar: Yeah. Kevin King: Oh yeah, okay. Norm Farrar: Came out perfect, beautiful. Kevin King: Okay. Norm Farrar: Yeah, so then we just, and it cost us a couple of bucks. It wasn't even that, it was like a buck 75. So more than what he was already being charged. So it was a outer the outer box was a corrugate. Okay, but it was like an iPhone box and it was white on the one on the one side that had a shadow, you know, it just silhouette and on the other side was a four color process picture of the knife looked really sharp high-end beautiful photography. And then on the inside, we went to a hard rigid packaging, a magnetic closure with a clasp. So you have to open it up. And then when you opened it, it had a message from them. Kevin King: Was it like on a rice paper, like the message from like on a little or the message on top of the box? It was like inside the top of the embossed inside the lid or something. Norm Farrar: Yeah, so when you opened it up on the hard rigid cardboard, there was the message. It looked nice. It was in gold. We even chose the colors. There was black, gold, and red was some of the colors we wanted to bring in for the Japanese influence. But the second part is we didn't want people to see the bloody knife. We wanted them to have that anticipation like the iPhone. So it's the packaging. Then the second packaging is click. Now they're looking at it. They're reading the message. There was an insert there and then they'd have to remove that. And then there was a covering like a rice paper and then they unfolded that and there was the knife. And the knife was there. If you're in any light, it glistens. It's beautiful. You can see the layers of steel and then you take it out of this. Oh, by the way, it was put into, it was embedded into EVA foam. So it was a perfect laser-cut EVA foam. Didn't cost much at all. So we ended up selling that. It sells right now. You can get it on Amazon 99 to 124 bucks. Kevin King: What was it before? $49. $49 was in a little plastic. Norm Farrar: Yeah, crappy little. Kevin King: Okay. Norm Farrar: So we spent, I think it was a buck 75 for everything. And so their cost of goods was $16. Plus call it two bucks now, just to round it up, make it easy. Kevin King: So now it's $18 with a new package. Norm Farrar: Yep. And so we, we got it out onto Amazon. It started to sell way better than before. No traffic was really lost. He was, he was, he was fighting with these crappy Chinese, for the most part, they were Chinese knives and they were selling between 19 and around 54 bucks. And you can see them all day long there. So I got them out of that pricing tier, put them in the second pricing tier, because there was a third pricing tier that was higher, and this is where this led. I went back to the manufacturer and I said, do you have anything else, like Damascus steel, but anything else, a high-end knife? And the manufacturer came back and said, yeah, we can hammer it. It's the same cost, 16 bucks. Kevin King: What's that mean? What's hammering it mean? Like make it like age looking or something? Norm Farrar: Yeah, if you've ever seen a knife that's got like little dents in it, right? It's from just the manufacturer hammering the steel. And it's got this whole different look. Beautiful, beautiful. And it's also a higher perceived value. So we put a different blade or a different handle on it. Kevin King: It looks like it's handcrafted by the guys sweating over a fire or something like that. Norm Farrar: Exactly. And the difference here was we decided to call this a premium knife. So this was the elite. Okay. Kevin King: No different than the one that's selling for 99. No. But just hammered. So it's the same knife. Okay. And then you're like, okay, this is the premium version. Norm Farrar: Yeah, exactly. Kevin King: Okay. Norm Farrar: And then we, instead of having the white with the silhouette, we went to a black with the silhouette. Kevin King: Cause black has higher perceived value, black and gold than white. Norm Farrar: Yep. That's exactly the colors, black, gold. And we had some red and yellow, just a bit for the logo, but it was the elite. And then when they opened it up, we spent three bucks on a wooden, beautiful wooden case. And it was the same thing when you opened it up now it was etched the message and you had I don't know if it was a silk but it was wrapped in something really nice again you had to unveil it and then when you take it out it was just beautiful like everything about it just oozed quality. That one started at 225 224. Kevin King: for the same $16 knife just by so you went from 16 a $49 knife that was in a Plastic, whatever you call it with a clamshell, clamshell, yeah, clamshell with the paper behind it. Just spending two bucks on better packaging, sold the same damn knife for $99 and then you took it, beat it and put it in a wood case. They cost you another three bucks, so now we're talking like $5 on the packaging side or somewhere around in there, maybe a little bit more. I'm sure the hammering added a little bit, maybe added a buck. Norm Farrar: No. Kevin King: No, nothing to the cost. Okay. So now we're at $21, $22, something like that, Atlantic cost, and you sold that for 10X, like 220 bucks, you said. Norm Farrar: $224. Now, I have to... Kevin King: Which was the best seller out of... Did you keep selling the... Norm Farrar: The lower end. But the reason why I wanted to come up with that height... Kevin King: The $99 one or the $49 one? Norm Farrar: No, the 99 to 124 was the killer. It was great. Now, the other one, so the higher end one, the only reason why we came out with that is a lot of people would say, oh, that's too much, $124. Well, the market that we were targeting, well, these people love to cook. Unknown Speaker: They love to cook. Norm Farrar: Yeah, we, matter of fact, part of the marketing was we sent these to culinary schools and to chefs and we got them to do user-generated content. They sent us recipes. So I'm going to tell you about that in a second. But the reason why we went to the higher version is if you take a look on Amazon, amazon.com, you'll see that higher, much higher end knife from that $150 to right up to $300, $400. So right in between like the lower end of the higher tier and came out with $224. Now we didn't get as many sales. The other one didn't drop traffic at all. We continued to sell. It was doing great. And we decided that we'd come out with a cheaper knife. So this knife was just a carbon steel knife, and you see them all over the place. But these knives we put out at $49, where the other ones were selling like At the bottom end were $19 and we came out at a higher end and those were just like three or four bucks. So yeah, and those sold like hotcakes. And now there's a whole line of knives that we've brought out. Kevin King: Wow. Norm Farrar: Yeah. And by the way, so the other part to this marketing is getting the person to come over to the website. So we created a lifetime warranty. All right. So that's good. But what we did with the marketing of going out to all these chefs and the culinary schools is we got them to provide us with recipes. So these are all over the world. So they gave us enough recipes for the first cookbook, then the second cookbook. When you registered and gave us your email, get where I'm going, they ended up getting their cookbook. And this wasn't my idea. This is the brand. They said, why don't we do a meal plan and every week we'll send them their like week one, January 1st, and they continued to do 52 week meal plan and they get very detailed in it. They tell you how to lay everything you need, the recipe, what you need to buy exactly at the grocery store. So we also got the email and the email is gold for marketing. Kevin King: That's really smart, man. That's really smart. I had a similar story. I was, you might have heard this before, but I was doing, have you ever, has your dog ever eaten a penis of a cow? Norm Farrar: God, I could go so many places with this. Kevin King: I hope you haven't. And your dog, you know, the penis of a cow. Norm Farrar: I can't say. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe he has. I don't know. Maybe he does things when I'm not looking. Kevin King: Well, you might have given it to him and not actually realize it. A lot of people don't realize that one of the most popular treats out there for dogs, it's called a bully stick, B-U-L-L-Y, stick, is actually the penis of a cow. Did you know that? Norm Farrar: No, I did not. Kevin King: Then there's, Norm, there's six inches and there's 12 inches. And you can't tell by the hoof size of the cow which one you're going to get. And they always say, guys, look at their shoe size and you know the size of something else. But on the cow, you can't, you don't know, no, but seriously. So this is a market I had no idea either. I'd fed my dog when it was a puppy, some bully sticks. And I was like, okay, they love it. They chew on these for a long time. So when I was looking, I wanted to get in this pet space and I started a pet brand called Whack House. And I was doing dog bowls and doing I want to get in some treats. I want to get in something that was a continuity where people can, you know, you don't just sell it one time. You sell it over and over. And so I was like, what can I do? So I start looking at some different treats. And I was like, I need to differentiate because all business basically is about innovation and marketing. Those are the two most fundamental things that matter in any business, no matter where you're selling products or services or yourself or whatever it may be. Those two are what matter. And so I was like, how can I innovate something? And how can I out-market other people in the dog space? And so I started doing some research and this was Amazon, this is about 2015-ish, so almost 10 years ago. And I start looking, I see that this keyword, there wasn't a lot of tools back then like there are now. There's all kinds of really cool whiz-bang tools that you can figure out what's selling on Amazon, what's not and what you should go after. But there's a couple of tools and I pulled up one of these tools, doesn't even exist anymore. The way they rank things is they would, you would type in a keyword and go do some sort of analysis and then put these like big thumbs up, like a green thumbs up or a big red thumbs down. It gave me a list of stuff and one was bully sticks with a big green thumbs up. And it said that there was a tool called like MerchantWards or something. I don't know if it still exists. Their data was nowhere near correct, but it told me there's like 3 million searches a month for this. I'm like, you got to be kidding me. So I'm like, I'm going, I got a big green thumbs up. I'm going to look at bully sticks. So I started looking at all the competition selling bully sticks. On Amazon at the time, and pretty much everybody's doing the same thing. They've got a plastic bag, like a see-through plastic bag, and inside the plastic bag are like 25 or 30 bully sticks. So the idea is you give your dog one of these a day or something, it gives them something to go run away and jump on the couch or go crawl up in a corner and chew on and keeps them busy and they love it. Or they go bury it in the backyard and eat it later, whatever. I'm looking and it's like how do I differentiate this product? I mean, I don't want to just be another guy selling these things, these same old bully sticks. So I call around to several people that figure out who can make bully sticks in the US. I read the reviews. And people are complaining about a few primary things in the reviews of all the competition before I launched my product. They're saying, these things stink. When the dogs chew on them, the house smells. Well, you can imagine why. It's the penis of a cow, and some of them aren't cleaned so well, so it smells like piss. And I'm like, people are complaining about that. Another one is people are complaining like, where's this meat from? I don't trust this. Is this meat from China? Is this meat from South America? I want US meat. I'm like, okay, that's another big thing people are complaining about. Another thing people are complaining about was when the dog would jump up on the couch or something and start chewing it, it would stain the couch, a little bit of liquid or something either from the dog's drool that's tainted by the skin stuff on it. It would stay in the couch and people would complain about that. It's like, all right, here's my three things that I got to solve. And so now there's AI tools that will lickety-slit tell you a lot of this kind of stuff, some really cool AI tools. But back then I had to spend like a week, like making little charts in Excel and like, okay, tick mark, tick mark, you know, reading through all this stuff. You can do it in a matter of minutes now. But it was, so I was like, how can I, how can I differentiate this? So I called up some manufacturer, I think they're in Utah or somewhere. And they said, yeah, we can do these things for you in a bag. I said, no, I want something different. What's the most unique thing you've ever saw at a show or seen out there? And they said, oh, you got to talk to, I'm sorry, I forget the guy's name. You got to talk to David. He's in the New England area. I'm like, all right, I'll talk to David. So I call up David. They gave me his number. And I said, hey, David, this is Kevin. Interested in doing bully sticks. He's like, oh, you can't afford me. I'm a specialty. I've got a little shop here. I got a little warehouse in the back. I'm a classically trained French chef. My sticks are all organic. I only use U.S. cows. It's expensive for the U.S. meat. You can get cheaper stuff somewhere else. You're going to be selling this online on Amazon. You can't afford me. I was like, well, send me some samples. Let me take a look. So he sends me these samples, and these are big, thick, honking sticks. These are like Every cow's wet dream for a bull. I mean, they're like big old sticks. And all the ones on Amazon are like little straws. And so I'm like, oh, this is pretty cool. He's like, yeah, it's an organic process. It's 15 steps that I go through to do this. There's no smell to them. I held it up to my nose. You know, and the smell, there's no smell to it at all. My dog chewed it. House was fine. There's no leakage. He says it was US cows. He had the certificates and everything for it. I was like, all right, look, all three pain points are solved. Now, how the heck am I going to sell this thing? How am I going to sell? I was like, what's the price on these things? And he told me, I forget the exact price, but three of the 12-inch sticks was something like $15 or $18. I'm like, wait, wait, three sticks is like $18? I can go buy 30 sticks on Amazon for $30. How the heck am I going to freaking market this thing? How am I going to sell this thing? And he's like, oh, that's your problem. I told you, you couldn't afford me. I'm a specialty type of retailer. I said, no, no, let me get back to you. So I started looking around. I was like, all right, here's how I do it. Most people, their pet is like their child. So there's people out there that for some, their dog is a farm animal. It stays outside. They don't care. Give it the scraps, whoever, whatever. But there's enough people out there that their dog is like their little kid. And they have money and their willingness to give their dog the best. So these are obviously the best bully sticks I've ever seen. How can I position these without people holding them in their hand, without them seeing that? How can I actually make these so that they will actually people will buy them on Amazon when there's way cheaper options there? Perceived value is much higher because you get 30 sticks. So I came up with the idea to put these in a cigar box, just like you're talking about that wooden box. So I went and found a manufacturer. This guy was in New England. I found a manufacturer that was in the Brooklyn area. So it's close by, didn't have a big shipping cost or anything that could actually make me these custom cigar boxes. And so it's like that right there will instantly say these are quality. We're talking about smoking cigars in one of the other podcasts. There's a perceived value, there's $100 sticks, there's $10 sticks. So that's my customer, the guy that can afford those $100 cigars, he's gonna spend some money for a treat for his dog. And so I came up with that. Then I was like, okay, the label that's gonna seal the box, it needs to have a texture on it. It can't just be like some white seal or clear see-through seal. So I found this company in Colorado that could do these really textured labels. So it almost feels like braille or something when you rub your finger over it. It has this texture, this high-end texture. So that's going to be the seal of the box and has a little emboss and stuff on it. And these labels, I think they cost me like 30 cents a piece or 40 cents a piece. And the boxes, the cigar boxes were a couple bucks a piece, two or three bucks a piece. I also did a six-inch version. So the six-inch version was five sticks and the 12-inch version was three sticks. And then when they got it, there was a little sheet of paper inside that like a little clear, like one of those, when you get a nice presentation for someone's resume and has that little velvety paper or whatever, it's kind of like frosty looking, you know, that covers up. So that was inside with the logo kind of faintly on it just to paint a picture. And then I put them up on Amazon. I priced them three sticks for $54.95. What was your total cost of goods? In there, about $21, $22. Back then, Amazon's fees weren't crazy like they are now. So Amazon was taking about $15 or so in fulfillment fees. And so, I had about $20 margin, $15, $20 margin, somewhere in that range. So, that would work. I could make those numbers work. And back then, PPC wasn't crazy. So, the math worked. Today, those margins wouldn't be enough, but then they work. And then the box of five was $49.95. And so then I said, well, nobody's going to buy my stuff. They're going to look at, here's all these products on Amazon that are 30 sticks for $30. And here's old Kevin selling his three sticks for $54.95. That dude must be out of his freaking mind. There's no way I'm going to spend that money for it. I don't care. That looks like it's in a cigar box. Whatever, dude, you're crazy. And I got a few comments like that and reviews like that. But what I did is on Amazon, Perry Belcher, actually, I think is the first person that says this, people don't buy, even online, it's not just Amazon, but especially Amazon, people don't buy products, they buy pictures. That's stuck in my head. I'd heard him say that. I was like, all right. So they can't touch it. They can't smell it. They can't feel it. They can't do anything. Their dog can't try it. They're not in the store to hold it to the dog's nose to see if he likes it or not. How can I convince them that they should spend $54.95 for three sticks? So I created a listing that was amazing. The listing had, I showed the differences between mine. So I had a classically trained French chef that was making these, remember? So I emphasized that these are handmade. by a classically trained chef. So I had the dogs in one of the picture wearing little chef's hats, you know, in the in the treat in front of them, the dog kind of smiling. I had I showed another picture of the split screens. So one of them was here's a machine. It looked like some nasty machine in a third world country spitting out little sticks. I was like them. And then the split screen and the other side of the screen was us. And I had a guy. You see a hand of a nice chef and you see just the top of the hat and he's carving it by hand. And so ours are handmade. Theirs are made on this machine. And then I showed, they stretch theirs. So theirs are hollow because they stretch to get more meat. They stretch them, stretch the meat. And so it makes them hollow when they cook them. And mine are not hollow. So I showed like the ends of the stick. This one, look, it looks like a straw. You could suck through it. Mine are full. And I showed another picture, a cross picture of How theirs would stay in the couch and smell, you know, someone holding their nose as their dog was like right in front of them eating it. And I showed another pleasant picture on the other side of mine. And then I had cartoons made. And so I had these, I found this guy on Upwork, a guy and a girl. I had two people do it because I wanted two different perspectives. I gave them the spec and they did cartoons for me. And the cartoons, I told them what one of the scenes I wanted. was I want a bunch of dogs in a car driving through like a McDonald's drive-thru. So you see this dog behind the wheel with his paws on the wheel, another dog in the passenger seat, they've got the window down there and it's like McDonald's drive-thru and you can see the menu there and it says like $1 stick, hollow sticks, cheap sticks, made in China, whatever. And they're ordering their sticks and then the cross screen of that, the split screen was a bunch of dogs sitting around a table in a really nice steak restaurant The paws on the table and another dog, it looked like a Mater D with a nice silver tray with all these like really nice sticks on it, giving it to them, serving them. And then I did some additional imagery as well. I showed the real weight. So I had a scale and I took a picture of it actually on the scale with it. I mean, you could have Photoshopped this, but it was real about just to show people these are what they weigh and what the other guys weigh. So you're getting value. And I put them out on the market. I started selling like crazy. Now on the big keywords like bully sticks, it's more of a generic keyword. It was hard for me to compete because people that just want bully stick, they just want cheap stuff. But there's other keywords and other ways people were searching like bully sticks made in USA, bully sticks no odor, bully sticks no mess, premium bully sticks. All those like more longer tail keywords, I could rank really well on Amazon and maintain the position. So that's what I went after was those keywords. And I was able to maintain the position and sell. I had subscribe and save, which is Amazon's automatic ship you every so often program. And I had one guy on there get like 74 orders. People raving about it. Comments like, oh, these are the best ever. My dog loves them. You get the occasional negative comment. What a ripoff. This is a scam. I only got three sticks. But there was so few of those that the good ones would push it down. And it became so Doing so well that the biggest manufacturer in the space, which was called, I think they're still the biggest, Best Bully Sticks. They're out of Virginia. One of their reps that was handling Amazon stuff saw what I'm doing. He's like, no way. How is this clown selling three for $54.95? We got our bag at $30 here, but the guy's selling them. It's not like it's a one-off thing and it disappeared from the rankings. He's selling them. So they call me up and they say, hey, We want to partner with you. We want to do a whole line of treats with you. We got duck feet. We got antlers. We got, you know, all this other type of stuff that we could sell. So we work out a deal. So if you give me terms, you know, cash flow, and I don't have a ton of cash, you know, be buying all this stuff and expanding it. No, don't worry. We'll work with you. So we worked out a deal and I was like, well, I didn't spend the money on the packaging. I said, I know I can't put them in a plastic bag like everybody else. So I found like a brown craft bag with a little window on it. It was definitely a step up and started marketing these treats, but I just couldn't market them the same way because I didn't have all those elements of the chef and the imagery and the quality and everything. They were just a little bit more of a commodity product, so it was a little bit harder to market them. And so those actually, most of them didn't work. But my one where I actually differentiated with premium packaging, premium messaging, premium marketing, actually, I was able to sell that for like two and a half years. I quit selling because the price of meat went up because around that time, China was buying a lot of US beef because they have issues in their country. And like 2017, 2018 range somewhere in there. And then also Amazon started increasing fees. And so that margin compressed a little bit. But I was able to have a good run with that, but that's just a lesson there similar to what you were saying and how packaging and positioning and marketing is critical. Whether you're selling this on Amazon, you're selling it to stores, you're selling it on your Shopify site, it doesn't matter. It's people perception is reality in marketing. It's what people perceive it to be versus what it is. And then if they perceive it to be one way and you deliver, actually, if you over deliver is even better. If you over, that's why I asked you earlier about the beard oil. Did they show the package and their photos on the website before you ordered? Or was it a surprise when you got it? And that's, I always remember that back in the day of video, I used to run a video production company and we had to buy, this is before digital, we had to buy those big Betamax tapes. You know, putting the video camera because we're shooting like television quality stuff and we would buy them from this company in Pennsylvania that had the cheapest deal. It's better than buying them locally. And these tapes, these beta tapes, I don't remember, they're 40, 50, 60 bucks each for like an hour tape or 30. They're expensive. Blank. But every time they would send something to me in the mail, as long as it wasn't summer, so as long as it wasn't like, I think from mid-May to about mid-September, they didn't do this, but the rest of the year, I would get two packages of M&Ms. So I'd have my shipment of here's 10, a case of 10 Betamax tapes that I just spent 600 bucks paying them for. And inside the box on top would be a little handwritten thank you note with a copy of the invoice for packing slip, little handwritten thank you note that would say, thanks for your order and enjoy your sweets. And it was two of these little like, they're like Halloween size. It's not like a big one you get at the local convenience store. They're like little Halloween size that you give to kids. But their M&M's one regular and one peanut. And I always remember that's the first thing I wanted. When I went and opened that box, someone in my office opened it, like, where are the M&M's? I always wanted those M&M's. They didn't ship them in the summer because they said they would melt. But that little thing was a surprise the first time and then I came to expect it. That didn't cost them squat to do that. But just that little act is marketing and it's thinking outside the box and doing things There's plenty more examples, but those are just a couple I wanted to share there that if you start thinking differently and start really crafting the right message and the right perception and then over deliver, surprise and delight, and you'll be surprised how far that goes. Norm Farrar: You know, I think of, and I know we talk about this a lot, but cigars. If you take a look at your typical or your average cigar, you know, $4 to $10, and the cases that they come in, and then you take a look at the cases, let's just... Kevin King: The year of the dragon comes in. Norm Farrar: Yeah, take a look at that case. Kevin King: I want to keep that case. Norm Farrar: Yeah, I mean, it's that cool. Kevin King: It's a display. The thing is empty. It's still in my house on the shelf. Norm Farrar: Yeah. I hope there's some cigars still in it. These are the ones that are, what are they, 100 plus for the year of dragons? Kevin King: Yeah, they're like 100. These were, this special edition ones, they're 125, 150 bucks or something like that per cigar. Yeah. I think there's 12 of them. Norm Farrar: And you get a nice box. There you go. Kevin King: Yeah, you better get a nice box for that. Another just quick example on packaging is that you look at, there's a lot of the big brands, the luxury brands do it, and you don't have to be a luxury brand to do this, but look at Tiffany's. What are they known for? The blue box. Norm Farrar: Blue box. Kevin King: With a little white ribbon. You look at Louis Vuitton, whether you go in there and just buy a tie, you're going to get a freaking nice box that this tie comes in, Louis Vuitton box, any of the big brands that do that. In fact, my ex-wife used to save all of her Louis Vuitton, Tiffany boxes, Gucci boxes, you know, Whoever, all these big brands, because they're nice boxes. And we had two Christmas trees in our house every Christmas. And it's just us. So there were a lot of gifts. But to decorate the Christmas tree under each tree, you might remember this when you were here in December, the tree that we used on stage. It's all these like Louis Vuitton, Tiffany's, Gucci, all these like Valentino, all these like boxes that are actually the presents under the tree. Norm Farrar: Yeah, you pissed me off a little bit during the Secret Santa. You gave me this Louis Vuitton box and I really felt bad because I really just gave you a bar of soap and I opened it up and there was nothing in it. Thank you for that. Kevin King: You're welcome. That's packaging. I have a tub in my storage room, my garage is just full of actual boxes because they're so cool that they've been kept and used as props under a Christmas tree to fill it out and make it look pretty cool. But that's just packaging. Sometimes people just throw that stuff away, but I know my mom used to get boxes and she'd keep them. It was a nice box and it became where she kept all her sewing stuff or she kept her letters or something in. So packaging is critical and I think it's something that a lot of people Just don't spend enough time on or they're not willing to spend the money to actually differentiate and we're not talking you got to go crazy. And you got to test it. Maybe if you spend that extra couple bucks, people aren't willing to pay $50 more. Or $30 more, but I bet you can make, even if you squeak out another buck or two, if it's cost you two or three more dollars and you can charge $6 more and doesn't add too much to your weight or to your dimensions or anything, it's not going to affect something else, that even $2 or $3 times, you know, if you're selling enough of this stuff, that adds up. Norm Farrar: I can give you another, just a quick example. I think everybody's getting it, but with packaging. So, I sent my dad some non-alcoholic bottles, okay, four different competitors. So I said, here's one. I didn't tell him who it was. So I said, I'm just going to send you four bottles. I want you to tell me which one is the 24 and which one is the $40 bottle. So he gets them and he's looking at them. All the bottles are attractive, but three of the bottles are in Amazon bubble wrap and just bubble wrap. Okay, and they can easily be broken. The other one comes in this gorgeous box and you Whenever you're boxing a bottle, you got to be careful. You know, if you drop it, well, if it's not packaged properly, of course it's going to break. And that's why they use this bubble wrap, but they also use the bubble wrap around the box. Well, okay, dad, you know, what is what? Which is which? And he said, well, the, you know, obviously the carton, the beautiful carton is the $40 one. And then we just went down and he didn't really get any of them right. But the interesting part to this is the $24 bottle was the one that was in the box. And they could have easily got a lot more for it. So it's just crazy what people or how people think about the value of the products that they're buying. And that box, I know I priced it out for the company I was representing, and it was nothing. It was $1.45. Kevin King: Yeah, I mean, even if you go sometimes even if you go like I've been to a liquor store where they had one of these like, I don't know, one is 1942 or something, you know, one is really high end tequilas or And the store has one that's in the box and one that's out of the box. And even though I'm not really going to keep the box necessarily or I don't really care about the box, I just want to drink the damn good tequila with my buddies. Unfortunately, not you because you don't drink alcohol, but with other buddies. I always take the one in the box, even if it's a few bucks more, just because in psychology, you think that one is actually, it's the authentic one, it's the real one, it's the official one or whatever. Now, some people, they're just for a deal and they don't care. They'll take the one that's not in the box. But for a lot of people, the packaging matters because when they take that home and they put that out, bring that out, They want their friends to see what a cool box it is because they then have this perception or this, oh wow, we're in for a treat here. And you think on selling online, it doesn't matter because people have already bought your product. What's it matter? In a store, like we said earlier, They're touching it. They're feeling it. Maybe it is more important, but online, say, who cares? Just put in some cheap cardboard from China. You know, you get that cheap cardboard from China. Sometimes it's like stinks. You know, it's flimsy ass stuff. They just put it in that to cut your costs. And I'm like, you can do that, but What about the perceived value on the other side? And when people want to be reassured, they just spent the right money. You might not do this for a $3 item or something, but for something that's worth 50 bucks plus, or really more like 30 bucks plus, packaging can make, spending a little extra on the packaging can actually add a lot to the bottom line. Norm Farrar: Yeah, and even on the cheap products, so let's say it could be a bar of soap, you could get a cheap gauge, like it's just a cardstock, and I'm just talking about the tuck box, so nothing more than that. You can get in some really cool stuff with soap, but just a very simple tuck box. Well, the perceived value could just be Just one thickness more on the cardstock than the, it might be a couple of gauges higher, but the perceived value is so much higher when you're buying this soap, especially if it's like a handmade cold process soap, something that's a little bit different, artisan soaps. But I do want to tell you the, you remember I told you the story about Mammoth, right? Great stuff. Well, there's the other side to it, Kev. I was on a podcast and I was talking and a package came in from me. So I open up this package and it's beard oil that I ordered and I'm on the podcast doing this and I go, oh, I can't wait. I came in this little burlap sack and I guarantee you this was put together in a barn because it just smelled like crap. And you could smell it, like it smelled like crap. It was a brown burlap bag, which immediately, you know how you preserve yours? Kevin King: Maybe it's the other part from my bull. Norm Farrar: Maybe it was. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But it got tossed immediately. So first of all, cheap product. I'll never buy it again. Just, okay, let's, well, maybe, you know, rash decision, let's try the beard oil. So I tried the beard oil, or it was the beard balm, I put it on, and it had an okay scent, but over a very, like, an hour-long podcast, I think it was 45 minutes, my wife came down, the podcast is over, and she goes, oh my God, that stinks. It smells like rancid fish. And I went, it does. Like when I first put it on, I could smell a hint of cedar, but it just, it was rancid. And so I went through and this is just an important point. If you're bringing product in, make sure you inspect it, but don't put it in Shitty boxes and expect to get a premium price because it doesn't work and i'll never buy that brand again just just because of the way it came in smell like crap and then the product was crap. Kevin King: Yeah it was yeah complete opposite you gotta be careful on your packaging i mean i had a similar thing happened to the pandemic we. We were doing a hand sanitizer and we were making this in Vietnam and China, but then we actually wanted to make wipes as well. And we couldn't find anybody that could make the wipes over there quick enough. Everybody's backed up on a huge backlog and called you because you have some connections in that space. Yeah, good luck. We can get you on the production line in 21 months. Or something like that. I'm like, I'll screw you too, Norm. So I was like, I was like, I'm just kidding there. But it's like, no, Norm, I love you. Thanks for trying. So we ended up finding this one of the partners was in the flooring business. And he had a buddy that was in Wisconsin and had a chemical company that made chemicals for staining floors and stuff. And he had to lay off Like 35 people during the pandemic hit and he's like, wait a second, I can, I can gear this back up and make, make wipes. So we found a material that we could, that we could do it in, but we couldn't get, we couldn't get buckets and there's just no supply and it's going to take forever to get them from China. So we had to go to a cardboard box. Now these weren't wipes that were like for home use. They're in a little small container. These are, the only thing we could do was find these rolls of like the white paper that are like It's gigantic, like industrial-size wipes. And then we found this guy on the East Coast that said he had the packaging for it. We need to put the liquid in a bag inside and protect it. And he said, oh, these bags are puncture-proof. You can take them, throw them like a football. They're not going to break. Don't worry about it. We got some samples in. We tested them. Everything was okay, so we went into production, we produced the first, we were producing truckloads of this stuff, like 53 foot trailer loads of this stuff. And these guys worked through the night, we produced it, put it up on Amazon, they start selling like gangbusters, you know, millions of dollars in sales. Pretty, pretty quickly. And then we start shipping them out. And we thought we had this really nicely designed box. We had this perfect inner packaging, especially considering the pandemic. And it was a cardboard heavy duty box. Then we started getting reports of people complaining online or sending us messages through Amazon at the time. Or a Shopify site. Here's a picture of the way I arrived. The box is like arrived and the liquid had leaked. And so the whole right side of the box is like stained brown. It's all that crimply. We're like, you got to be kidding me. We just had this $90 product and we did all this testing on. We had this guy's assurances. And they're freaking leaking in transit and arriving to the customer looking like this. So we would immediately replace them with a new box and just pray that it got there okay. And then I remember one time the National Parks in Arizona, they sent back 23 of their 25 boxes. Because they arrive damaged. And then another time a customer goes, they post a review on our website. And it's like, I don't know what these guys, these crazy clowns at Germshark are doing, but I just got my package, and they packaged it in a black bag. And I'm like, what? What is it? So I was able to, I forget how I reached out to the person, I think they complained through Customer service too, but they also wrote a bad review. So I reached back out to them. Well, I'm sorry, we don't ship in black plastic bags. We ship in a box and it's inside another box for protection. No, I ordered three of these. UPS brought them today and they stuck on my porch and they were in a black garbage bag. And I had to open the garbage bag and inside are your things. They had leaked. So UPS, instead of just throwing them away or filing a claim, whoever the UPS driver was or UPS warehouse, they just dumped them in a black garbage bag and still delivered them. And it was just it was a freaking mess. So that was a challenge that we thought we had the best packaging and the best everything. And it blew up in our face. We ended up finding buckets, metal, not metal, plastic buckets. And we ended up switching. We're scrounging everywhere. So we had to ship in these just because it's pandemic. But we ended up changing the bag manufacturer to one that actually did not leak. Or leaked, maybe 1% of the time, you know, they're playing football with these boxes or something at UPS. But, and then we ended up switching to plastic instead of the cardboard and that pretty much solved the problem. But we couldn't get it, supply chain, we couldn't get it when we needed it. Originally, but that's an example there of how packaging can go wrong too. No matter how hard you're trying or how good it looks, it can be a mess. So, you know, it's just like when people got that black plastic garbage bag, the wipes inside still worked. They're still fine. You know, they were able to use them. They said it, you know, we're able to use them, but why are you shipping like this? But it's that when they get it looking like that, they're like, it's expectations and I just waste these are 90 bucks a box. I just spent $270 for a garbage bag full of wipes. You know, it's not good. It's not a good thing. So it can Packaging is vital and that first customer experience, especially it's the first time with your brand, it's so crucial. Even if you don't want to do this all the time for everything, maybe on first orders, you should at least dazzle them on first order. And you set expectations and maybe you can cut it back a little bit on the second order. But I think in my opinion, It's a major marketing differentiator, a major marketing thing that more people should be looking at to do and how can I make my product stand out? How can I reassure them they made the right decision? And how can I surprise and delight? Norm Farrar: Well, in retail, it's a pattern interrupt, right? You've got to stop them in their tracks. And you can do it through scent, you know, smell if you're in the soap business, or packaging, the color of the packaging, something has got to grab their eye. You know, just think about it. You go into a retail store, go into, let's say in the lotion, skin lotion department, There's a ton of them there. They're all fighting for shelf space. And how do you get them to stop? It's going to be packaging. And the beautiful part about the packaging is the higher end packaging gets a higher end dollar. Now, I don't know. I mean, there's lots of packages out there that, you know, wow, I, you know, this is a beautiful package that this skin cream came in or whatever the product is. And you just think, wow, I got a great deal. This was worth every penny. But you could bring it up to that next level, too. So that that company may not have thought about trying to increase their price. They might be stuck at a level, like I've got all sorts of stories that I can talk about where people have told me, you can't go over this price and why not? Why not? And you know, there'll be like $10, you can't go over $10. Well, why don't we try bringing it up to $14? And I'm not going to get too much into this story, but There was a brand that we were working with. $9.99 was their cap. Changed the packaging around. Going back to packaging, we ended up at $24.99. That's a story for another podcast. And I'm just thinking, Kev, we're over an hour now. It's been very informative. I love some of the stories you talked about. Never knew about dog penis or dog penis, bull penis before. Don't know if I'm going to ever feed that to my dog. Kevin King: Yeah, I don't feed them to my dog. After I learned what they were, my dog doesn't get them anymore either, even though I had a premium one. My dog, after the testing round, I figured out what this is. I'm like, I'm not so, no, let's switch to something else. But like you said, you know, in business, there's three things that can make you more money. It's either you get more customers, you buy for less money, or you sell for more. Those are the only three things that you can do, really, to actually make more money. You sell more, to more customers or you sell more to the same customer, you find some reason to raise the price while keeping the cost fairly similar or you have to lower the cost and sell at the same price. Those are the only three ways to really make more money in business and packaging is a crucial part of that that I think a lot more people should be thinking about. Hopefully, today we've given you a little bit of inspiration and shared a few real stories from our history that will get you thinking and you have some good luck on redesigning what you're doing out there. If you do that, let us know. Go into the comments, go to marketingmisfits.co and send us pictures. If you redo your packaging after listening to this, we'd love to hear from you. Or if you've done it in the past, maybe you already did this, send us a before and after. This is what we did before and this is after. This is what we sold it for before and this is what we're selling it for now. We would love to hear those stories from you guys that are out there. Norm Farrar: All right, so that's it for today's podcast and just want to mention that if you know a misfit that should be on this show that would fit in with The Marketing Misfits, please reach out to us and we'll reach out to them and try to get them on the podcast. But as for now, Kevin, what do you got to say? Anything? Kevin King: Ciao. We're up. Ouch. Norm Farrar: See you later, guys.