AMPM 465 Fraser Smeaton VIDEO

We're talking ghosts and goblins and witches and everything Halloween in this the 465th episode of the AM PM podcast. My guest this week on the podcast is Frasier Smeitten. Frasier is one of the co-founders of a $50 million per year costume business that does a lot of business this time of year. In fact, 15% of their business is done the 4 days before Halloween. We're going to talk about that and how to sell seasonal stuff and the challenges and how they built this company and to what it's doing today. This is going to be a really cool episode. Hope you enjoy it. Here we go. Welcome to the AM podcast. Welcome to the AM podcast where we explore opportunities in e-commerce. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, plus this is the podcast where money never sleeps. working around the clock in the A.M. and the P.M. Are you ready for today's episode? I said I said, are you you ready? Ready? Let's do this. Let's do this. Here's your host. Here's your host, Kevin King. Kevin King. You know, next month is Halloween and there's nobody better to have on the podcast right now than Mr. Fraser Smeen. How are you doing, man? I'm good. Thanks for having me on. Now, why would there be it be nobody better to have on the podcast if it's almost Halloween? Well, we run a Halloween costume business. Well, we sell costumes the whole year round, but Halloween is our big time. So, in the runup before Halloween, I think the four days before Halloween, we do 15% of our annual revenue. We've got over a thousand different designs. We sell them on nine Amazons. So, my whole year is focused on getting Halloween right. Now, Halloween is it's a big it's a big spending holiday, ain't it? What was it? Something uh man, I can't remember in the US alone was like 12 billion or something or some some crazy number like that was spent around Halloween. Or is it more than that? No, I think if you if you if you add up candy, costumes, decoration, and all the associated other spend, partying, it gets to about 12 billion. Costumes we think is 3 to four billion. So, it's a big holiday. Now, is it Now, you said you're in nine different uh areas. Is it as big in the other markets as in the U? I mean, obviously the US is bigger just because of its size, but is it I guess what I'm saying is Halloween dressing up for Halloween popular in other parts of the world as much as it is in the US. It is popular. It's not as popular as the US. So, you've got Canada where it's just as popular. I think the stat is that one in three Americans and Canadians dress up for Halloween. It's big in the UK, but that's a phenomenon the last 15 years or so where like if you'd grown up in England when I grew up um in the 80s, you wouldn't have celebrated Halloween. There was a bit in Scotland and Ireland and I think it's the Scottish and Irish immigrants that took it to Halloween, took it to the US back in the day, but there was wasn't anything there. But it is now pretty big in the UK. And now we see it growing fast around Europe as well. So it's catching really. It was it was a Scottish and Irish immigrants that took it to the that's the background of it. Was it was it a cult festival or something back then or was it always around just monsters and stuff or what? Do you know the history of I don't know the detail of the history. It was a pagan festival before uh yeah as you say a cult um that then got accepted into was certainly celebrated in line with the Christian religion as well but not through the churches but it was just a bit of fun and it had always been a big party and that went across to America when everyone immigrated back in the 1800s so that's why it then established more strongly there but you've always got big parties in Ireland so Dublin Derry places like that have historically had big Halloween parties and in Scotland where I grew up we always went izing, which is short for disguising. And you'd go around the little bit that was different to trick-or-treating. Now, you had to tell a joke or you had to sing a song or you didn't get. Yeah. And this is mostly kids or this is as adults? Oh, no. No. The adults go to the bar, but the kids the kids go around to people's houses with the same uh the same dressed up as you would for trick-or-treating, but that's that difference. You just had to do your little song or your little joke that you've got um before you got anything back. The other key difference, which was terrible, is you used a turnip instead of a instead of a pumpkin. And I don't know if you've ever tried to carve a turnip, but you need like a chainsaw to get through it. Now we've taken all we've taken all the good bits of what historically was in Scotland and Ireland, and we've brought the good bits of America back. So now we now we've got a great celebration. So why do you think in England then it's just recently in the last 15 years started to catch on just commercialization or did someone start pushing it or was there some movie that came out that just kind of sent it over the top or how do you think I actually know this through my through my original career so I started off working for Mars Confectionary so it was the confectionary companies that brought it across they're of course looking for another occasion another season where they can shift a lot of candy and they realized what do we do in America we sell a lot in October we don't do the same in the UK so let's build this up and start pushing it. So, they gave it the star and it's just grown over time and actually to the point that the kids the kids now look forward to it hugely. I think it's because we all try and keep our kids away from the sweets. They're so they're so in love with a holiday that is all about sweets and dressing up. Now, it's funny how a lot of holidays and a lot of things that we celebrate and we think they may come from religious things or come from some other long history is actually just commercialization. uh Valentine's Day. I mean all they're all all around they were started you know diamonds are perfect example actually the diamond you know 100 years ago you didn't buy a woman a diamond if you're going to get engaged or get married and then the beers changed that by with their the diamonds is a girl's best friend and it's just it's funny how uh commercialization and marketing um affects culture like that. Oh, I completely agree. That's why that's why I always want you to get into marketing because I think if you get marketing right, it is incredibly powerful. Whether it's powerful for commercializ commercial ideas or it's powerful for political ideas or whatever, being able to craft a message that gets people to respond in the right way is a incredible skill. Yeah, I I agree. So, on on the Halloween stuff, so you move uh I met you actually through uh one of the Cancun events or something like that. Um, and I think you were saying you do a pretty serious Are you uh okay to say what how much volume you guys do in the costume business? Yeah, no problem. So, yeah, we we do um we do $50 million a year. So, nearly 2 million costumes sold each year. And 3 million of that, you said 15% 3 million of that would be the four day in four days. Yep. So, you're doing almost million dollar. You probably have a million. One of those days is probably a million dollar day. Yeah. I think our biggest day is $1.6 million. So at that time we are selling multiple costumes a second where every time you go back to manage orders and you look at it there's another hundred gone 100 gone um every time you is absolutely incredible. Does that does that ever freak you out though? I mean like when I throw events there's always the last minute people that come you know if I'm throwing a big event and I'm like man I got I I'm almost at that point where I'm breaking even but I just need those last 20 or 30 or 50 people to to buy. inevitably the last week or two weeks everybody rushes and buys tickets that all all event people see this. A lot of people make last minute decisions. Are you the same way? Like that la last week, man, we're sitting on like $2 million of inventory here. Uh they better come. We better the listing the listing better not get shut down. Are you like on pins and needles? We are 100% on pins and needles. We we just have to be I mean it is such a big part of our year and you you can understand all the other associated costs like you have got that inventory in FBA. If it doesn't sell, you're going to have to pay to take it back out because it's you're not going to sell many witches in November, no matter how cheap you make them. So, you have to get that right. We've been doing this for 15 years now and we've been really focused on Amazon for coming up to 10. So, we have lots of data. So, we know that it should happen and we know the curves and you know that if you're on the curve, you stick to the curve and it's going to happen. But, of course, there's all those worries of things that could happen and get in the way um that can derail you. We haven't had any problems with Amazon, but the East Coast hurricane, the Franken storm, do you remember that? It was probably 11 12 years ago. So, back in September or some something like that. It was later in October, I think. Oh, October. Oh, that one. Okay. Yeah, I know which one you're talking about. Yeah. Not the one last year. No, no, the one because we had only one point of failure. We had a warehouse in Philadelphia and Philadelphia got hit pretty bad. Pretty bad. And um they shut down for five or six days. So, we had all these orders from our DTOC website and we just couldn't ship them. And of course, you've got people from Arizona who are like, "Where is my order? The weather is perfect. What are you talking about?" Um, we had to explain, "No, this is this has been shot for that." And we got we think we had to refund 50,000 orders. So, yeah, like until I think Yeah, it was it was very bad. So, Halloween until Halloween is done. Halloween is not done. And and that is the There's the good things about seasonal business. So you can be really focused on it, but there's bad things about it. And I think we play across both of them. And it's a lot of the stuff as well. We're we're more insured again or relates to our strategy. Well, yes. So there's good bits and bad bits. We're spread because we've got lots of different products. So we're we're less worried about listings getting shut down, but the hard bit is the fact that you you have so much volume going through in the few days before Halloween. So it's always a balance. Uh and we just have to we have to tread that tight rope and make sure we get it right. So the whole business is focused on doing that. So you started so you did not start doing this selling on Amazon. You said you started uh 15 years ago and only 10 years ago getting on Amazon. So it started out as a DTOC business or was it a wholesale business or how did it get how how did it get started after you left Mars? Um we it got started as a side hustle. So the three of us who founded it I found it with a brother and a good friend. We all had corporate jobs and we were dabbling with online businesses. First two were complete failures. I think we made €50 of revenue across the two of them. Um, but then we had this idea for an all-in-one spandex suit called a morph suit. So, it covered you from head to toe. And we've been on a boy's weekend in Dublin, and we just got this incredible reaction. So, 200 people who had been watching street theater turned around, stopped watching street theater and we're like, "What is that? Where do I buy that? That's amazing." And like people were taking the guy's photo all night. We were just We've worn a lot of costumes in our day and we've never seen a reaction like this. And then we wore it to other parties and bachelor parties across the next couple of years because that initial one was in 2006 and we always got the same reaction. So we were like instead of these side hustles that don't work, should we try selling these spandex suits? So we got a few from Al. Now you made this suit your This is one you just bought. It was one It was one we found on eBay at the time. It was a bit too thick to see out of. So we modified it a little bit um so that you could see out of it and uh we got 200 ordered on Alibaba and they turned up to my sort of my flat in London and filled half the bedroom and we built a little website on a platform called Usion back then and we made two good decisions that ensured looking back with hindsight ensured our success. One was we realized that if you've got lots of people looking at you coming up and asking you where you buy something most guys don't want to do that. So if you got 10 people doing it, there's probably 200 people who would like to know where you got it. So we wrote the URL on the backside of each one. So we wrote morphsuits.com on the backside of each one. So each one we sold that got that impact became a walking advert. So that helped craft the brand. And then the other one was we were I'd done some early Facebook advertising in my marketing job, my professional marketing job at that time. So I understood how that worked and it was super cheap in those days. So, we built this model where we recruited you as a fan and then we talked to you throughout the year until you had an occasion. So, we didn't know when that occasion would be, when your bachelor party would be, when whatever, whether you're going to celebrate Halloween, whether you're going to celebrate Christmas, whether you had a costume party, but we knew if we were top of mind, we'd get a percentage of those sales. So, we optimized against that and we built up a following of over 1 million Facebook fans that we could talk to to free for free to keep us top of mind. So that got the business going from that these beginning these 200 suits we sold them out in like 10 days. I had people finding my address from who is and turning up at the turning up cash. You know you know when you've got a good idea having two terrible having had two terrible ideas where you like you were pushing water uphill to sell anything. when you've got a good idea. What he's talking about there, just to to for those that don't know, who is.com is uh where you can actually reverse engineer like who owns an IP address or a website domain and it'll show you what the address is that's registered. And you probably didn't know that you can actually hide that or pay an extra fee and block that. But uh that's that's funny. I just want to explain that for the audience that might not know. I didn't might not have caught that. But it's kind of funny that I didn't know that at all. We were very much at the beginning of our journey. So I had people turning up turning up at my apartment trying to buy them and yeah if you you know if you've got a good idea because you have to deal dealing with the demand is the hardest part of it. So this went crazy. We sold those 200 in about 10 days. We put the rest of our life savings in and bought two another 2,000 and again the demand because each one was walking around with more suits.com on the backside and it was just getting bigger and bigger because they were all walking adverts. Um so this Halloween time or this was outside of Halloween time. So there's a there's a bit more of a year round dressing up culture in Europe and and this was in the UK. So there's other occasions that people would use. But this shows you how little I was thinking about Halloween. It was the third order we got in because we kept selling out as we then made more money, sent the money across to China to buy some more of them and they came in and um the third order came in in the sort of late part of October and this is when I knew it was going to be a success cuz we've got this tiny little website and uh we put them online and that evening we did £5,000 in that evening and the next day we did £35,000 in sales and we were just like this is insane. We didn't understand how much volume there could be out there. And then I looked at the dates and I was like, that's why they're buying it. It's Halloween. But those ones walking around at Halloween again, increased the awareness. Actually, sales stayed pretty high after that. So, we had this uh we kept we kept the sales going well. And then we thought, where are the more people who like to dress up? Okay, there's America. So, let's let's expand to America. Let's find a 3PL and just clone our business model to that. And it took off in America. We did the same in Australia. Um and then we did the same around Europe. And sales kept growing and growing as more morph suits were walking around and our Facebook model was churning along. And so we did a million pounds. That's in those days would be at 1.5 million in the first year while we still had jobs. So still as a side hustle and then our bosses realized we weren't doing any work and thought it'd probably be time for us to leave and go full-time on this. So you like when you get those that when you turn that on and you got those 5,000 lb of orders uh the first night, were you guys literally in your apartment there shipping these things out or did you have a 3PL or someone doing that for you back then or was it you guys stuffing uh boxes or envelopes? Luckily by that order we had got a 3PL. Until then I was uh they were in my bedroom and we were writing the envelopes by hand and taking them to the post office and sending them out by hand. And at the time when I still had a job, there was only one there was only one um post office in the city of London. City of London is equivalent of Wall Street. It's the little bit of London where all the financial services are. There's only one post office there. So I was walking out of my day job with two massive holds. And my boss is like, "Where are you going? I'm going to the gym." [Music] The post office to ship these because it just it just got out of hand. So then we had to find a 3PL. Again, we never heard of a 3PL because this is so early in the e-commerce. um world that those kind of things weren't common knowledge. So we had to get on Google and find a partner for that. But luckily by that time we did have one and that that gave us the foundations of a business model that we could clone to take us out there. So we were web only because we thought that that there were only so many people who wanted to dress up in these costumes. So we'd better we better sell them all through our websites. We make the most margin. But we were completely wrong on that as well. And a friend's father who was in the toy industry said, "No, you need to look at wholesale." So we went to the big UK uh show which is called Spring Fair where you uh go and show your wares across all different categories in order to get retailers. And we had a great response from there. So we started selling to retailers and it grew from that. And then someone told us about the Halloween show in Houston. And so we turned up at the Halloween show in Houston and we'd sent an email. You know, you can send them to the people all the attendees at the show. and we sent an email and we got only five replies but three of them were from people from this chain called Party City which again for being from the UK we've never heard of and they said we'd like to have a meeting with you beforehand and we were like okay right we did some googling like they've got 800 stores like nobody in the UK has more than two costume stores so they've got 800 stores and so we turn up at the Ballpark Hotel in Houston and we're meeting by this entourage of people with this guy Jerry Rittenberg, who used to own Party City, uh, at the center of it. And we were like, "Oh, this is more important than we thought this was going to be." And he sat us down and he said, "I like what you're doing here. I would like you to be exclusive with us and I will give you a guaranteed order of 250,000 units in the first year and 350,000 units in the second year." And we were like, "Keep a straight face. Keep a straight face. We we have to negotiate here." But just blown away. And we're like, "Okay." But we because in our in our jobs, we dealt with big retailers in the past. We realized we didn't want to have all our eggs in one basket. So we managed to negotiate a deal where they were our exclusive wholesale partner um but we could keep the web business and we could keep any other online channels like Amazon. So we had a great couple of years with them. They actually sold more than they forecast and the costume uh became the most popular costume in the world during that period and that got us into the Halloween industry and also opened our eyes to the incredible volume that you could do. And at the same time, Amazon approached us and we were allowed to sell to Amazon. And we were just doing it through vendor um and also through smaller resellers. But again, we weren't really thinking about it because this is 2010 11. Amazon wasn't as big as you thought it was going to be. Then the story goes on. Party cities start to make their own version of it. So the sales start to go down. Morph suits has become almost saturated. Yeah. Loads of people. the demand was declining because the fad was the craze had was on its was on the way down. We had loads of competitors because we didn't know the rules of the game. Like we now understand the rules of the game. We know what margins retailers are looking for and we were asking for way too much. So we laid we left a gap that people could come into. So we started to get more competition and margin compression. So declining revenues, declining margins and we were you know pretty inexperienced business leaders. So we were just hiring too many people trying to save the business instead of diagnosing the problem ourselves. We thought if we hire expensive people they will solve this for us. So our costs are rising at the same time. So you get this perfect storm. So through that period of 2012 to 2015 we went from doing £11 million I get £15 million4 million profit. So 6 million um $6 million profit to 2015 we were only sort of $9 million revenue and we made a loss of $1.5 million. So we were in big trouble and it was only because we'd made so much profit in the past and we'd held on to that that we were able to survive. But we had to we had to grasp that nettle and make some serious changes and it was really tough. We had to make half the company redundant in order to get control of our costs. But the other big thing we realized which actually set us on the journey to where we are now is we looked at where our sales were going and we realized that if you add up Amazon vendor and we add up all these people who are reselling our products but don't actually even have a store, they're all it's all getting sold on Amazon. And we're letting them do this on wholesale margins of like a couple bucks a unit. But we had our own DTOC third party um or Amazon marketplace business as well, but we weren't really trying at it. But we were seeing we were making maybe eight or nine bucks a costume when we were selling them ourselves. So we said we don't need to sell to vendor. We don't need to sell to these resellers. If even if we don't sell an extra unit, if we can flip it from making $2 wholesale to $8 or $9 direct to consumer on marketplace, the the extra absolute profitability on that will save our business. So the cost cutting compared to that um kept us alive. And then we started on the journey of becoming really good at selling DTOC on Amazon, selling on the marketplace. And at the beginning and we were working out ourselves, how do how do we do it? And you know, just trial and error. And it was we kept we managed to grow successfully. But it was around 2019 when one person in my team came to me and went, I found this thing called Helium 10 and it lets you see what other people are selling. And I was like, no way. That cannot be possible. That would be amazing if we could do that. It can't be right. And so we he shows me it. I'm like, that is unbelievable. And then I was like, I still don't believe this. Let's cross check it. Let's how much does it say we're selling? And we're like, oh my god, this is right. So then suddenly we were able to work out what everyone else was selling and then follow the the process that obviously you've been teaching lots of other people have been teaching of once you know what the opportunities are how do you make a better product that better appeals to the consumer that's a better price that's a better image and that just transformed our business um and we found all the best practice that's available um through the the podcast that you do the podcast that Danny McMillan do etc. and we got into the community and the ecosystem and our business went from probably about $15 million then to $50 million now. So it was a wow it been an incredible journey. So for four years, you didn't know this whole world existed, this this other world of uh sellers online and software tools and all these this whole thing. You're just just plowing ahead, just thinking that we'll figure this out as we go, running our own tests, working things out as we go. And yeah, it's it's I mean, obviously we've got to a good place in the end. So I I don't want to be too doom and gloom, but it's definitely one of my biggest business regrets that we didn't know about that. And now every time we do something new, now we're looking at Tik Tok shop or something like that, we're looking for the community. We're looking for the masterminds. It's always a funny thing. I say in Britain there are very few masterminds. It's not a term we use. And I know you talk about them a lot. There are different ones for real estate or just general business. And I just think it is such a powerful thing that can help move everybody forward. So since we found them, we totally embrace them and like get involved as much as we can cuz you're it's I'm in one called Driven that's here in the States. Uh it's like 35 grand a year. Uh and it's not Amazon. It's it's about 100 people uh from all walks of life of marketing. You know, there's someone in there that sells certifications for uh uh heavy equipment drivers, you know, people that drive these forklifts and stuff like that and making gazillions of dollars. And then there's a few Amazon people and there's few marketing people. It's a it's a whole range. But that's where I get some of my best ideas and best networking. I mean, I get a lot from the Amazon stuff, too. You know, going to a Titan event or going to Helium 10 Elite event or going to my own BDSS events. But the the the the biggest value usually for me that moves the needle is is these outside events. And are you in any other like outside of uh the Amazon world um groups? Not specific. Do you go to any events? Not specific Halloween specific ones. So we're we're heavily into Halloween. My business partner is the chairman of the Halloween costume association. So we we always attend all the Halloween industry events so that we can network within that industry and share best practice. Um, outside of that, there's a few sort of local London or our business is also based in Edinburgh, so we have some local business events in that. But no, it's something I would like to get into because we've got to the point now where we're not all the way there, but the easy wins that were there four years ago if we didn't know anything about Amazon, we can improve in huge jumps each year. We've addressed most of the best practice gaps. So now we we need we've got the headsp space to be able to look at like what else can we be doing? We've got the foundations in place. What what are the next things we need to be looking at? Is it brand? Is it communications? Is it acquisitions? Etc. And that's where these coming at things from adjacent but similar industries that you can get from that mastermind like you mentioned is definitely something we need to get onto. Yeah. And at your level just one little thing can add nine figures uh easily. uh or or or more uh to to the bottom line. So, Party City has gone out of business in the United States for the most part, but now we still have Spirit Halloween. Uh do you sell into Spirit Halloween and are and if so, are they a big uh a big mover for you? Yep. So, we we've got in terms of our distribution strategy, we've got our own websites, direct to consumer, we've got Amazon and other marketplaces, and then what we we've got what we call incremental wholesale, which is where it is mutually beneficial that we sell to each other. So, they're not trying to sell our products on Amazon across what we're trying to do. Uh, and they're going to benefit from having our good products and being able to display them to their consumers. So, really that that adds up to being Spirit Halloween, Walmart, and Target. So, they're the main ones that we focus on in terms of wholesale. Now, are you doing your own line of costumes? Are you doing licensed stuff? Uh, licensed characters or you because you said earlier you have over a thousand SKUs. I'm assum I'm assuming some of those may be sizes and stuff, but um what what what is the what type of costumes I guess I'm asking are you doing? I know was in the beginning was the morph stuff, but now what is it? Yeah, so we started in spandex and then we moved across to inflatable costumes. Um and within each and and now we're across everything. So what what we would describe in the industry as cut and sew costumes. So they are your standard costumes that you would see in Spirit Halloween or in Walmart or what you would generally buy. Um we we within that you can also you can have generic which is a a witch or a zombie or some traditional character or you can have license in it. You can do that for spandex, you can do it for inflatables, you can do it for cut and so um we do do some licensing and we've had to learn that industry over time. So we like big franchises that are proven. So until recently we had the Spider-Man license for Spandex in Europe makes sense with the costume. We've got Power Rangers. We've got WWE um because they make sense and we know that it's going to be a mutually beneficial relationship that that can keep going over many years. I don't like doing the hitand- miss movies because for every Barbie that you pick that would be a massive success, you'll pick a load of other films that sink without trace and you've bought 10,000 units of inventory. You've signed up to a minimum guarantee um and it's very difficult to be profitable. So, yeah, we like long-term franchises for licensing. The other thing is I don't want too much of my business to be licensing because ultimately you're in someone you're under the control of someone else. They can put that business out for pitch every two or three years and you might have built it up and you might have become used to the X million of revenue that you're getting from that and if you then lose that license you've got to deal with that problem. So we like it but we don't want to be too exposed to it. In licenses, you got to get everything approved and go through all kinds of stuff and you you have a a a noose around your neck on a lot of stuff uh of what you can and can't do too, which uh just makes it a little bit more difficult. And uh you got a good marketing idea and they don't like it or or they're like, "No, some some corporate person has no idea what they're talking about, vetos it." You're like, "Gosh dang it. They went a million bucks out the door right there." Um, oh, so many times you you cannot believe or I think sounds like you can believe the number of surreal conversations that I've dealt with. Does that look exactly like Spider-Man would look in that situation? I think it does, but uh it's your opinion ultimately and but I'm paying the minimum guarantee until this gets signed off, so there's no rush. Yeah. So, your your your costumes are the ones that are like hanging on hangers or they ones that are in like the little plastic bags that are all all folded up. Uh are you are you on the higher end of the market, the men market or the lower end of the market or or a combination? We do a combination. We are trying to address consumer needs. So, if we looked at any category like a witch, we would have some higherend witches. We'll have some uh mass market witches and then you have some cheaper um bottom end of the market witches. You want you you want to be there for each consumer. And the key is then making sure you communicate what's the difference between those different products in your when you're talking about Amazon in all your listings and your imagery and your A+ content etc. So that you're you're making sure you're offering value for the consumer. Like we love a hack but hacks are not core to our business. We want to make sure and this is what we discuss internally. Will a rational consumer who's searched for our product and found five or six other products of which which ours is one. Will a rational consumer want to choose ours? And if you're not doing that, then you've got to adjust your product. And if you are doing that, you should do all right. So you got to do are these one sizefits-all or unisex or do you have to do a lot of uh SKUs on every single unit? No. when you said before it's a it's a thousand that probably includes sizing. No, unfortunately not. It's a thousand parent designs and it's getting to towards 4,000 when you include sizes. So, yeah, one of the main things we do and it links back to what I was talking about before of doing the hard stuff. We have to handle incredible complexity because you've got to get all these products across nine Amazons in time for this peak where you do all your sales in 4 days. And to get ready for that is really, really difficult. but it's what we've been working on and getting better and better at doing for 15 years. And that means we have less people who want to copy us. So, it is a less competitive market than you would find in other markets because it's really hard and really difficult. And the rewards per product are not huge because, you know, our bestselling items probably do $250,000 to $400,000 a year spread across nine Amazons. So people are not Yeah, that's how we do it. We sell a little of a lot and we we work on I would I would think that every year there's one or two that just kind of stand out above the rest that that might hit hit a million bucks or something. Uh but that doesn't really happen. Not really. If you added up wholesale, um you might get to that on a couple of lines, but the vast majority of our business is spread out on adding up $50,000 a year, $100,000 a year products. And we those that motivates you after to add more SKs then I mean that's that's the way you've grown is by adding SKS um basically so when do people start ordering I mean when do you see like I'm in the calendar business so I'm in a seasonal business too and so calendars the most most of the sales happen between uh Thanksgiving in the US and and Christmas and they still go into January into mid to late January surprisingly um but they start people start buying around September for calendars uh for the next year. So like this year um you know people are buying right now uh here in September for for for next year and it's small you know it's like five a day or something like that but that'll just ramp up and so we position to try to get in stock right there and just kind of ride that wave all the way up and get positioned you know in our in our rankings and stuff and then just ride the wave. When do people start really start trickling in on the Halloween? When's the when does the season start in your mind? So in the US, and it still blows my mind that this is the case, but we start to get a steer in late July. We start to see how we're doing and the sales start creeping up, creeping up, creeping up each week as you go forward until here we are in September when you really know that statistically you are you are locked onto your curve as to whether this is going to be a good Halloween or a bad Halloween. Um, so there are there is a reasonable number of people who start planning Halloween in the middle of summer. Fantastic as I think a lot of people don't realize like I I don't know when the shows are, but I I would assume they're probably like January or something or maybe even December of the previous year for Halloween for the next year, right? Or is it's a it's like a 10 10 months or more in advance, right? For the next year. Yes, absolutely. So, the um the the the big box stores, they're doing their ordering 15 16 months in advance. Um for from when you start pitching Halloween 2026, you'll have done that in the early summer or the spring of 2025. You've already got orders for 2027 right now. You don't have the or you don't have the orders, but you've started the process 15 16 months ahead of selling. The orders come about 9 or 10 months. And then for independent mom and pops where you're not doing bespoke designs, yes, their order deadlines are January, February the latest. And so then, okay, so January, February, the latest. Now, I I at one point with Manny, the founder of Helium 10, I was in EW in 2018, and he was looking at getting into the Halloween business at the time. And I think it was he's looking at I think he actually sold some stuff cuz he still has his Amazon account as he was building 10. And he he did some wigs and a few other uh accessories and stuff. And then I remember going outside of EW and going with him uh some some factory owner came in a nice Mercedes and picked up picked us up and took us out outside of EW about an hour to his factory. And this was just like a Halloween factory. It's like costumes galore everywhere in in this place. And I almost dabbled in it. Uh I I I actually negotiated a few costumes and I was going like, "All right, I'm going to add this to my line." And then I backed off. Uh I don't remember what the reason was, but I ended up backing off. But there's places that year round are making Halloween. Uh or not just Halloween, but costumes. And like you said earlier, Halloween is the biggest time of year, but what are other a few other times like you said in the UK and in Europe, people like to dress up some other times. What are some other times that you see little bumps? I know they're not going to be Halloweens, but little like little uh bumps. What what would those be? Oh, so there's lots there's lots of other little festivals like that. As you say, they don't compare to Halloween, but they're still big. So Christmas would be the second one. You've got the Santa costumes and you got the nativity costumes like the wise men, etc. elves, all that kind of stuff. Then in Europe for Lent, whereas in the UK we make pancakes at the beginning of Lent, Europe has a 3-day uh drunken party in costumes. So that is a huge costume uh event across the Netherlands. Ven is where Venetian carnival comes from. Southern Germany and Cologne, there's hundreds of thousands of people on the street in costume. So that is actually our second biggest one overall. And then you've got schools and curriculum. So in the UK at the beginning of March, all the kids have to go to school dressed as a cat a character from their favorite book. So that gives a little season. Then you've got St. Patrick's Day. And behind all of this, you've just got all those little parties or kid parents buying for their kids as toys, you know, like ninja costumes, so they want to dress up for roleplaying, etc. Or the kids into dinosaurs and wants to dress up as a dinosaur. Or certainly in UK schools, and I think this is very much the same in the US as well. If you've just done a project, you know, a grade school on pirates, at the end of that project, you'll probably the kids will all come in dressed up as pirates. So there's all those little occasions that keep us with an underlying level of volume all year that pays the pays the bills and then on top of that we have the seasons which is when we make our profit. Interesting. So how do you actually determine what to sell? I mean, I using are you using tools like Helium 10 and looking at like past years data or how do you I mean, this is a game of uh let me guess what's going to work and what's not going to work. At least in your case, I'm assuming you're not dating the stuff. So, if you if you if you mis judge and misorder and you order uh 20,000 of something, only sell them 19 uh 7,000, those 13,000 you might be able to use them again next year. Uh versus me like in the calendar business, if I miss if I mess up, I it's it's done. Uh cuz I print in South Korea and so I can't go back and like, oh my gosh, this one's selling really good because it has a good cover. Uh I need another 5,000 or 10,000 units for Amazon. I can't do that. And vice versa, I get stuck with stuff sometimes uh that just I miscalculated. So how do you how do you do that in a seasonal business, in a Halloween business? So it is difficult but as you say it is better than being in the calendar business, the diary business or the fashion business where you can't sell it the next year because it's gone out of fashion. Most Halloween themes are generally evergreen. Certainly if you look over a 3 to 5 year period, there will be enough volume there to get you out of it the year after. But that said, it's expensive getting you out of it. You don't want to have to take it out of FBA and take it back to your 3PL and store it for a year and then ship it back to FBA before someone wants it again. So we use Helium 10 as a basis. So we know roughly what the volume of the category is. We look at our product proposition. Are we going to win across the picture, the product proposition, the pricing, etc. Okay, we think we can do well in this. Therefore, there's a total market of 10,000 units and then we will be very conservative. We might say we'll buy 2,000 or 2 and a half thousand even though we think we can probably sell 10. And we're also like you. There is no time to once we're proven wrong to get back into the market. But we're much better being conservative and under calling it and ultimately profitable and cash flow positive than we are going for the 10,000 actually being really successful and selling 7,000 but having all the costs associated with the 3,000 that you've got left over and the cash tied up. When we look at a lot of businesses because people come in this because they see the volume on Helium 10 and then they find it much harder than they think it's going to be. And then we look at acquiring the assets of those businesses. You can quite often see businesses that are profitable, but all they've done is build up a mountain of inventory because the cash that's been tied up in the stuff that they didn't sell and then they can't finance the business going forward. Um, and you said you end up buying some of that sometimes. We we have bought a couple of acquisitions yet where they've got good products, but they haven't been able to manage the complexities of the Halloween business. And therefore we can take that and put it into our system that we've perfected over the 10 years we've been focusing on Amazon and get that part of it right. Um so yeah if there are good products out there we think that's a great way to be able to scale quickly rather than having to design them all ourselves and get all that process right because it takes a long time because we've got so many SKs. You can't expand quickly without having a huge team to do that. Now is there any IP on what you're doing if you design a witch? A witch is a witch, right? or can you actually get IP to protect it so someone can't knock off exactly what you're doing or maybe it's a process or the material or something like that. What do you guys do in those regards? We we look at it on the basis of experience and how unique it is. If a if it's a standard witch and a witch is a witch, you can't protect that. So you're competing on the sort of semi-subjective design of it and you're never going to be able to protect that and people can copy you. They obviously can't copy the nuance of an image. So getting a good image and having a good photography team is crucial in being able to do that. But in certain ones where we've come up with an entirely unique concept in a new category, we have um been able to protect that. And actually we've worked with someone you've had on the podcast, Stanley Ference, before and we've had a very successful lawsuit protecting um one of our products uh which had been knocked off hugely. So we managed to clear everyone off. We secured substantial damages and we've got a court order that we've been able to use to keep the category clear going forward. So where we can we do and where we can't we just have to compete based on the merits of the product. How is how did Timu and Shine Sheen or however you say it Sheen affect you last year with a cheap asset one time use throwaway crap um costumes. Well, it's difficult to get exact numbers, but last year is the year I really thought there was an impact. So, as you've we've talked about, we know our curves, we know our numbers and we know where we should be. Um, but we having traded really well for the first half of the year up to that end of July point where we start to see Halloween, we fell 15% behind. I was like, "This shouldn't have happened. Our inventory is here. We're in the right place. What is going on here that has got us behind?" and everything we tried, I could not I could not get that gap closed. And then I'm multiplying forward thinking if oh god if this stays we're in a bad year. We've got 15% too much inventory etc. And then on about the 8th of October cuz it seared on my brain we went from 15% down to 7% down to 5% up to 15% up. So I think that is the date when Sheen and Timu started to time out around the world because in the consumer's mind they takes them two to three weeks to deliver. So, you're not going to if your kids Halloween or your Halloween party depends on getting the costume there on time, you're not going to order from those guys when you're getting to the 15th or 20th of October. So, I think they were having a big impact in the early stages of Halloween and then that fell away as we got closer to the date. This year with the dimminimous change, we're not seeing that drop. That's awesome. Everything you do is in China, right? every all your manufacturing. All our manufacturing is currently in Chinese. That hasn't really affected you too badly for what you're taking to Europe and Canada and other places, but for the US that's a big that's a big hit. How have you handled that? Well, we've had a really tough year. The announcement at the beginning of April when the tariffs were going on because previously Halloween costumes are generally classed as seasonal novelties and have had 0% duty. So, they went Yeah, exactly. We had no we had no history of this and we had low expectations. The 25% thing that tariff that Trump put on uh his first term or Oh, okay. Awesome. No, so we were outside of that as well. We had the the initial fentinel tariff of 20%. So when the announcement for the uh liberation day we were at 20% at that point and then it went to 50%. And then as it fell out, we as the relationship with China deteriorated, it obviously went up to 145%. Yeah. And I remember thinking, we were trying to import 5 to 6 million of costumes. And I was thinking that is a $9 million bill that I need to pay in 5 to seven days if I want my inventory for this Halloween if this stays. Which obviously I don't have. um we're we're we manage our business prudently, but I don't have that business and I wouldn't have any confidence if if if of being able to increase prices enough to able to cover that cost if it remained. So, we had to handle it by thinking what's the future going to be. I was relatively confident it wasn't going to stay at 145% because mainly based on the stat that 75% of US toys are made in China and unless Trump wanted to cancel Christmas he was going to have to reduce that from 145%. So based on that and based on the fact we we have to ship by early July but we don't to make Halloween but we don't have to ship before that. I think we've had 3 to four months in that I was we kept our factories manufacturing and we said we would cover it if we have to hold the stock for another year before we can send it to the UK or whatever else. So we took that brave decision based on our understanding that we hoped it would come down to a manageable level and it did and that has allowed us to ship and got us in a decent place for this Halloween. But we've still got extra costs and we're only just getting into the season now and we're only as we get further into it going to know if we are going to be able to raise prices enough to be able to cover those increased costs or if we're going to have to swallow those increased costs. Now once you get past the tariff then you have the issue of of these all these new regulations on how much you can store in FBA now. So now and you you need to get positioned and get these things all over the country so they're in stock so they're showing up in the algorithm and you know little towns in uh Idaho or whatever. Um and Amazon's saying no uh you you can only ship in this much. You're like no we need to ship in this much. So how have you dealt with those challenges? Good inventory planning. I mean it was a shock this year. The limits fell hugely. We thought we were on a track with the algorithm that came in postco um with the IPI scores etc. I think we were probably on the second or third year of it and we thought we understood it and then when we got to June our um amount of space massively reduced to lower levels than we needed to ship but luckily the AW the AGL rule change where it doesn't count until it arrives allowed us to get the majority on boats and then we managed to negotiate with account managers etc because we've got good history of selling it. We put the bids in on capacity manager. We managed to get just enough to be able to ship it, but it was a lot closer this year than it has been before. And it's one of those things when you're dealing with Amazon, there's always something new that comes out of the blue. On the positive side of it, we're what we see as a seasonal business is as they've managed to get inventory closer to people and reduce the shipping from 3 days to two days to one day, we get more of those big days at the end of Halloween. So those massive million-doll plus days when the last minute people are piling in, we're getting more of them because of the way they've changed their logistics setup. So that is a positive. But if that's what has caused, and I think that's the best hypothesis of what's caused the massive reduction in space at the moment as they have more complexity on their end, uh it certainly comes at a cost of uh worry about being able to get the stuff you need shipped in time. Do you find that the day of the week that Halloween falls on in the United States affects sales? It it makes a big difference particularly on adults. So kids will mostly party and trick or treat whatever day of the week it is, but adults Thursday, Friday, Saturday are much bigger than the other days. Wednesday is generally the worst because people don't know which weekend it should be. Um, and Tuesday and Monday are not that great either. So this year we've got Friday. So we've got high hopes for this year and then Saturday the year after. So if everything else stays the same, we should be in a good place. So which day So Halloween's on a on a Friday. Is it the Thursday or the Wednesday before that's the biggest day? It's with because Amazon can ship in a in if it's in stock, they can have it there in a day or sometimes even the same day. They can um it will be it's it's usually the Monday or the Tuesday because you've got all these different size SKs. they're in different places and if one's in Idaho and it needs to be in Miami, their logistics is amazing but it's not perfect. So statistically if you look across the whole country you'll always be something is too far away once you get past that Monday. So demand versus availability tends to peak on that Monday or the Tuesday. Uh but you then you still get really big days Wednesday, Thursday as people are just getting whatever is near them because they're so attuned to online shopping then. So what's going to be the hottest uh thing this year do you think? What's what's uh what's trending to be to be uh uh everybody every kid or every adult wants to dress up as this? It's surprising the number. We used to try and pick hits. Picking hits is really hard. It's the witchies, the zombies, the skeletons, and getting a good one of them. That is always the best seller. Um but we've got some really exciting new stuff. Our inflatable alien that looks like you've been carried away by it is usually one of our very top sellers. So, I suspect that will be just as big or certainly looking like it will be as we are here in the middle of September. You know what I'm I'm sitting here thinking about when you're saying this inflatable costumes and uh in 2023. Yeah. Uh I threw uh with Amy Whis uh and uh Chelsea Cohen, I threw a big Christmas party for Amazon sellers here in Austin. And we had uh we partnered with the internet marketing party here in Austin. So, it was a mix of our audience and his audience. So, we had about 350 people at this party. Um, it was a big party. We rented out like a warehouse and uh we actually had a a crew come in and set up sets. It looked like a I mean, we completely built out this warehouse. Spent about $70,000 on this party uh decorating it and had like uh 30 interactive characters in costume walk around. But the the guy who uh for the Internet Market Party, David Gonzalez, who runs that, had a little costume and it was an inflatable Santa Claus thing. um that made him look uh it looked like it I don't know it kind of distorted the way he looked. I wonder if that now I'm wondering if that was one of your products. I think I think it sounds like one of ours. So there you go. Yeah, he's a short little guy but it made him uh it it was Yeah, it looked like a little Santa Claus was on his back or I can't I have to go back and look, but inflatable I know which one that is. Yes, exactly. It looks like you're being carried away by by uh Santa Claus. your your your legs are in the inflatables legs that look like Santa legs at the front. Yeah. So, the one I'm talking about, the alien that is our bestseller, that's exactly the same concept. So, an alien is carrying you away, but it's actually you carrying you away. Um, so there some of these con those kind of concepts where you've got something really new and different that and and it really resonates because aliens do carry you away. That one is a is a mega seller. But yeah, it's it's I mean our company motto is we make your best times better. And that's that sounds like that's exactly right. You know, you're you're running an awesome party, but you can just make it that little bit better if you have a cool costume and you're the center of attention. So, is it who's buying costumes? Is it mostly women and children or or dudes buying a lot of costumes too for themselves? We have three customer avatars. We've got men buying for men who are usually like 16 to 40 year old guys who want to make a party better, a bachelor party, a Halloween party, or they're hosting a frat party or whatever they're doing. Women buying for women, similar similar model. Uh, and then you've got parents buying for kids. Um, which is usually moms who are buying for kids. Obviously, it can be dads, but it's usually moms. So, we've got to tailor our product and messaging to each one of those avatars. What about people decorate uh dress up their pets now, too? They do. I mean, that's one of my favorite stats of the size of the US market versus the UK market. The US market sells more pet costumes than the UK market sells human costumes for Halloween. Um, really? Yep. Really? That is that's another one. It shows the room for growth we've got in this company because we don't do pet costumes at the moment, but that's something we need to get into. But it's just a whole new different avatar we need to understand. Pet owners are slightly different. What works for for a cat or a dog? how do you make it fit, etc., etc. But it's it's on our list. I mean, that's what we say. We've got over a thousand designs, but some of the biggest Halloween costume companies have over or have up to 10,000 different designs. So, we've got plenty of road to go on, of which pet costume is part of it. So, how how big is your your staff, your company? Uh, we've got 65 people. So, about 45 are UK based and 20 are international. So, so part of the year, I think a lot of people have this in their mind. So, you you set them straight. Part of they think that, okay, Halloween's the big time. So, these guys must be working overtime for the month leading up to halent Halloween, they're just they're in the office probably sleeping on a cot, but the rest of the year they work two-day work weeks and play golf and uh stay home because there's nothing to do. Um, so is is that the reality? Uh, that is not the reality. The the two questions I always get when I meet someone at a party or whatever and I tell them what my my job is is first of all is what do you really do? And uh the second one is what do you do for the rest of the year? And much as I would love and I am a keen golfer, but uh I mainly have to sneak out whenever I've got two seconds spare because you're always working. You've got to design new products. You've talked about the product lead times being um 9 to 10 months. So, as soon as we're finished Halloween, we're we're working out what's sold, what we think the the forecast for next year should be, how much we've got left over, and having to place those orders, and then you have to go out to the factories and place the orders. You know, what new innovation do we need? Actually, that's working on a longer than 10 month lead time, all the underlying stuff of how do you improve Amazon, and then if we've got Amazon nailed, which we don't, but we've got more to do, you know, there's always new things to learn as you you know better than anybody. And then what can we layer on top? Can we add new channels? Can we add our big focus for the coming years is investing in the brand. Um because we want to be more than just someone who wins on Amazon search. We want to be a genuine brand where we have people have an emotional association with our company and costumes and therefore they're going to search for us more and even if we don't get that far, they're going to choose us more when we when they find us on the search results or they find us in store in Walmart or Spirit Halloween. So yeah, there's always something new to be doing and it's just getting faster and faster with new channels, with AI. So yeah, my golf handicap is suffering, but the business is doing okay. So do you do when you do this branding, are you are you hoping to expand into other things under that brand like other accessories uh besides just the uh the costumes or other props or still all in the Halloween uh uh dress up? uh not necessarily it's not always Halloween but the the dressing up uh type of stuff or expand it beyond on that into something else. I think you can stretch a you can stretch a brand within a category as far as your consumers think is reasonable. So I think definitely into adjacent categories of accessories like makeup or um you know prop weapons and toys and hats and glasses all the accessories that come to that. I think you can get it into decor as well. You can definitely get it into pet costumes. So, but beyond that, I think that you would be diluting the impact to your brand and we have got we talked about how big the market is. We're a reasonable size company, but we've got so much headroom to grow within that that I wouldn't want to stretch it beyond that. We can add more products within that category and we can be really laser focused on being the company that makes your best times better for wherever you need costumes. Mainly Halloween, but also Christmas, Book Day in the UK, and all those other things. What we need to get good at is finding the emotional messaging that really gets us into people's minds and associates us positively with as the company they should choose and that's what we're working on. So we're doing all sorts of new courses, joining new masterminds that are all focused around that kind of stuff. Are you selling in Japan? We are not selling in Japan. We tried selling in Japan. Um we do actually we have a golf clothing business, small golf clothing business as well. Runs on the same model. It's like outrageous golf stuff and golf is popular in Japan. We tried that a few years ago, but we didn't get any traction. Culturally very different. Um, and we didn't understand the culture well enough to be able to communicate what was special about our product, but I know it's a big market. So, I would think it would do the Japanese dress up costume culture is huge. Yeah. I I mean, I don't know. I don't Halloween's you they celebrate some of the western stuff that you know you if you're over there at Christmas or you you'll see a little Christmas stuff and it's commercialized you so so they have some of that they and there's some people that celebrate Halloween it's not a it's not huge like you know the US but the every day Hiroshuku uh in Tokyo is an area where every Sunday people come all dressed up uh and and they almost like roleplay in the middle of the street in the square you know one of them might be a nurse uh with a needle and she's running around you to strangers and like sticking them with this needle and it it and then you there's cafes and stuff where they dress up as all kinds of different things that I would think that there might be like but like you said you got to understand the culture but I I would think there might be really good opportunity over in in Japan for costume stuff. I I don't know. I'm just off the top of my head I I've been to Japan five or six times myself and I see it a lot there. Uh and um I I would think that could be a really good market if you could figure out how to crack it. Yeah, I think it's we've one we've we've had similar conversations in the company like that. We know there's we know there's that dress up culture, but it's different to our ones and we just as you know it's prioritizing in a business. It's like what what's the next thing we can do and yeah but we we could solve it. I guess AI would make it easier as well to now get into the be able to get the answers on what the culture is etc. So it probably is worth a try. We'll we'll take that one. What What do you see the next big one right now? What's on your road map? So it was it's US, Canada, you said Australia, and then the UK is coming on. Um what what's what's next? What do you see as next is is kind of on the way up. In terms of Halloween, you you can see European growth is really fast at the moment. So places like Germany, um the Netherlands, which have always had a dress up culture, but not Halloween culture. So, it's a smaller step for them to add a Halloween culture. So, there's lots of fast growth there. So, that would be the biggest one for Halloween. Geographically, there's not that many more markets that you can expand to easily. Obviously, you've got where Amazon is going and where Amazon is is is the major platform. It's easier because we understand Amazon well, but we have been expanding to countries where Amazon's not the lead platform like the Netherlands. We've got we've got ball.com. So that is very similar. So we found that easier places like I don't know what the the Halloween culture is like in Brazil or Argentina and those large uh those large countries. The some of the problems are the duties and tariffs for China made inventory are very high in those countries. So it's harder to get into them. We have seen good growth in Mexico. Um certainly as Amazon becomes more accessible and more people in Mexico get credit cards. We've seen fast growth but it's still very small compared to the the US. So geographically for the costume business, we think we've got most of the countries covered. It's about doing more costumes, making sure we've got all the channels covered in those uh countries and then getting the the brand communication on top is our big focus. Yeah, I think in Brazil carnival is probably one of their bigger ones where they would be dressing up. And then in Mexico, it coincides with uh Halloween, but Dia de los Muertes uh Day of the Dead um is is pretty big uh for some costume and and stuff around that. Well, this is this is cool, man. Well, I I hope uh this season uh uh the next uh month or so here is is going to be very fruitful for you. And I'll be thinking about you on the 28th, 29th, and 30th like, "Man, I know someone making I'll probably I'll probably tell a buddy of mine say, "You know what? I know someone that just made two $2 million on Amazon today." And they'll be like, "No way. You can't you can make this like, yeah, I know I know a dude. Uh just go listen to the podcast that came out uh in September and uh you'll hear the story." Uh so this has been really cool. Uh Frzer, I appreciate you coming on and and sharing. If people want to uh learn more about you or buy a costume or something, uh how would they best do that? Uh if they want to buy a costume, they could search Morph Costumes on Amazon or they could go to morphsuits.com for our website. And if they'd like to talk to me, I'm on LinkedIn quite a bit uh under my name, Fraser Smeen. Now, is that morph M O R PH or M O RF? Just for the spelling of people to make sure they get it right. Good question. M O R PH. Awesome. Well, thanks again for coming on, man. Thank you for having me. That's been great. Maybe we'll see you in a mastermind, one of these big masterminds uh down the road here. Definitely. Seasonal businesses can be pretty awesome, but they can also be quite the challenge as you can see. I've been doing it for 25 years in the calendar space. Little bit different, but quite a lot of similarities to what Fraser is doing. Uh, so if you're taking a look at that now, tools like Helium 10 actually can go back in time and actually show you what was what was happening in previous holidays or previous times. You can do that for any product or any type of thing, which uh just makes it even more powerful. And with AI, you can project out and and uh and do a lot of cool stuff. So uh I hope you enjoyed this episode with uh Fraser. Uh I did. Um, and I hope uh you have a great rest of your week as you're getting ready for Halloween next month. That's right. Um, or maybe you don't celebrate Halloween and you're just looking for a costume to uh dress up in. Uh, either way, uh, check out his company, Morph uh, Costumes, and be sure to use Helium 10 for everything that you're doing when it comes to selling on Amazon. just like him, you know, he said the first four years he didn't even know it existed until someone said, "Oh, you can figure out what other people are selling." Um, how cool would that be? Pretty cool, I think, is what uh Bradley and Manny would say. Anyway, we'll be back again next week with another episode of the AMM podcast. We'll be talking about getting into retail. That's right. Uh just like uh Fraser said that a lot of his stuff is done done in retail and some of the big chains, we'll be talking exactly about that in next week's episode. So until then, have a great rest of your week and we'll talk to you soon. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]