KORE Outdoors Podcast

00:01:32] Christian My first question is, is that a Jeremy Koresky print behind you?
[00:01:37] Wylie Yeah, it is. Good eye.
[00:01:39] Christian BC
[00:01:40] Wylie Um, yeah, I have the whole backstory with this print actually too. You, you a surfer
[00:01:45] Christian a, I'm a fan. Yeah. I mean, he's in Tofino right in BC, just like me. , so yeah, I just, I'm a fan of his artwork and, uh, got his coffee table book. I don't have a print yet, but yeah.
[00:01:54] Wylie Yeah. There's, there's a story, an interesting story behind this actually. This is probably in 2014 or 15, I was at a party that peak design was throwing in San Francisco. And it was basically like a photography gallery and I saw this print. And I was like, man, that thing is cool.
Like that would be such a cool print on a blanket. And we were just starting to like, figure out how to print on our material. And so I reached out to Jeremy and I was like, Hey man, I saw your print at this, at this opening. I would love to buy it or license it from you and see if we could put it on a blanket.
And this was like the first time we ever did any sort of artists collab or anything. And I was like, you know, I don't really know what to do as far as payment and like, you know, what's fair for you. I mean, we didn't commission this art. You already own it. And we'd just like to license it. And he was like, honestly, man, if you guys join 1 percent for the planet, you can use it. And I was like, wow. Okay, great. So at the time we, we just made this skew 1 percent for the planet, but that was my segue into 1%. the brand segue into 1%, which we, which we have since expanded to the full breadth of the company. And we've actually done three or four prints with Jeremy. This is, this was called old growth.
And then we did cold growth, which was this exact location covered in snow. And then we did gold growth, which was a Grove right next to it. That had like, you know, popping aspens in the middle of fall. And we did a three part
[00:03:15] Christian What was it that Jeremy was thinking about? Obviously he was involved in 1 percent or like, what was the, do you know what the impetus was for behind, behind that?
Just be like, Hey man, do this.
[00:03:23] Wylie He he's a 1 percent member himself. So he, he donates 1 percent of his photography revenue. To 1 percent for the planet. And it's just, it's a thing he cares about this particular Grove, I believe is protected by Raincoast conservation Alliance, I think is what it's called. , and so we, we donated proceeds from the sales , of this particular skew to that cause.
And he just cared a lot about, you know, conservation and, and, , thought this was a reasonable way to generate some money for the organization, which it was. And actually this, this print, we've re released a few times and it's, you know, it's a, it's a bestseller. It's been in our line for six years or seven years, something like that.
[00:04:03] Christian Way to go. Good man. Jeremy Koresky. That's very cool. Okay. So I feel like I have a lot of questions for you and, , I'll do my best to stay coherent here in this and keep it and keep it tight. I would like to start with kind of the strategy and tactics that you used in, in kind of building and growing rumble.
And then I'd like to move into what it's been like for you personally over the last 10 years of being the founder. But first, I want to talk mountain biking. How did you first get into mountain biking and what role does it play in your life now? Cause it seems like it's been an important thing in your life.
[00:04:33] Wylie Yeah. It's a super important thing. It's, I've, I've had a, I don't know, third, you know, somewhere between 30 year relationship with mountain biking. And when I say relationship, I mean like full on obsession. Um, it's, you know, it's been unwavering and it's like kind of the thing I like doing the most with my time.
Um, when I have it. And, uh, let's see, I first got into it probably in like fourth grade or so. , and it just with a bunch of friends and honestly the catalyst for it was, So we were, we were all into action sports. We grew up in California and we were into skateboarding and skiing and surfing and just, you know, in general action sports in the nineties were like really going off.
And there was this character in mountain biking that we, that we found named Sean Palmer. And he's like, you know, this action sport, multi sport guy that, uh, is just this bad ass dude. And he's like this total punk rock guy covered in tattoos and. Um, we just thought he was really cool. And honestly, that's pretty much what got us into
[00:05:36] Christian It wasn't, it wasn't as snowboarding.
[00:05:38] Wylie this and
[00:05:39] Christian It was the,
[00:05:40] Wylie no, it was his mountain biking. We saw like, we had seen mountain biking, but at the time it was all skin suits and like, you know, Lycra and, , it's just like sort of serious. And he came with this like motocross gear look. And we just thought it looked cool and he had this total like punk rock attitude and we thought it was really cool.
And so, you know, this is eight, nine year old kids just trying to emulate this, this cool guy. But, um, you know, since I've, I'm not obsessed with Sean Palmer anymore, obviously, but since I've, I've grown up, I just, I so appreciate mountain biking for, for a couple of things. But number one is it, it immediately puts me in a flow state.
And I am immediately focused exclusively on the moment right there. And, you know, being, one with my bike and that's really hard for me, at least to get into that, you know, some people are able to do it easily with meditation or yogurt, whatever their thing is. For me, it's mountain biking and it's like this perfect mental reset that, you know, I don't even know that I'm doing it, but when I finish a ride, I, I immediately have more clarity in my mind.
And it's just like a, it's a way of like kind of resetting my brain a little bit. , if it's scattered, you know, I go for a ride and it's, everything's just nice, nicely tucked into the compartments and I can come back and make clear decisions. And then I think another piece of it, and we'll probably touch on this, but, uh, mountain biking is, is as, as a by product of mountain biking.
You're just spending a lot of time in the outdoors. You're very often camping. You're just amongst nature. And I think that that. Is that was a key catalyst for me, just really connecting with the outdoors. And, , the actual act of mountain biking is one thing, but being out in these environments , and frankly, with mountain biking, you can get pretty far out there, you know, like with car camping or hiking or whatever it is, like, you're going to get a lot more distance out of a mountain bike.
And so you can really get out into some wild places and it just really fostered my love for the outdoors.
[00:07:45] Christian Yeah. And I know you've told the story of rumple and the kind of the origin story of rumple, so I'm not going to ask you to do that. And you have a really good about page on your website that, that does the hits and you had a really successful Kickstarter campaign, but So I'm going to, I'm going to skip over that because, um, there's other things that I think are really valuable to talk about.
Um, and prior to Rumpel, you were working for this really big, like international branding agency, which gave you the opportunity to, you know, work on some big campaigns, work alongside some real pros in that branding world. And I heard that there is a Taco Bell repackaging, , that never made the light of day, unfortunately.
So, um, I'm sure there's some, some good experience you had there, but what I'm interested in with Rumpel is that it seemed like Rumpel came out, uh, I think I saw you at the very first OR that you guys are at Rumble came about like fully baked as a strong brand. Like branding was front and center, like strong imagery, really good branding.
How did you develop Rumpel's branding from the beginning? And then what have you done along the way to keep it consistent? Yeah. And you
[00:08:43] Wylie so you're absolutely right. I, I was kind of developing Rumpel, at least the visual center for Rumpel basically in between client work at my day job at Landor Associates, big, big branding agency, the one you mentioned. I had the, you know, good fortune of being right next to sitting literally on either side of me, some super talented graphic designers, branding professionals, naming experts, um, strategists, And they, they all knew I was doing this, you know, like I think that the culture of Landor was very supportive of when you're not on client work, you're, if you're doing creative work, that's a good thing.
And so I was able to just bounce ideas off people and get feedback, , not in any sort of structured way, but just anecdotal feedback from some true experts in the field. So I think that that played a big role. I mean, you know, I think anybody that's, that's building a brand, they are bouncing their ideas off people, but they may not have the, , the skill level that I had access to in their friend circle or just peer network.
And so I was really, that was a big benefit to me in the, in the early days. And then as far as what we've done to nurture the brand, , it's always something that we hit on. I mean, it's always something that we, that we touch on anytime. we look at, you know, three year planning, or we just look at why we exist.
We look at what our mission is, and we, , make sure that our, our visual brand is tight, and, , really look at, like, sort of the identity that, that customers see about us, and how that relates to new products we might create, or new distribution channels we might go into. And so it's just always front of mind.
And I think that any company founder is going to have a big weight on the culture. And I happen to be from a branding background. And so I think branding is just front and center within Rumpel. If you're an engineer, it's going to be an engineering focused organization. If you're a, you know, product person, it's going to be a product focused organization.
And so I think that that's just a by product of me being a brand person.
[00:10:41] Christian were taking something that in some ways was a bit of a commodity outside of the outdoor industry. Right. And you're, and you're introducing it.
[00:10:48] Wylie Yeah. I, the way that we've always thought about Rumpel is that blankets are this really, really. Wide category that everyone participates in. , and we're looking at the category with a fresh set of eyes, with sort of a performance bend to how we think about materiality and then also a way more expressive lens than I think a lot of legacy blanket brands look.
, most of them, for the most part, blankets are historically have been used in the home, in indoor settings. And so you may not necessarily want like a really loud, vibrant color palette on your, on your blanket. It might, it might clash with your interior. And so for rumple, it was like taking some of the DNA of outdoor with high biz colors and stuff like that.
And of course the materiality and applying them to this everyday category, because let's be honest, people do use blankets outside. I mean, , they're designed for in the home, but very often people pull them out of the home and they sit on their patio or they, you know, sit in the tailgate of their car or something like that.
And they have a blanket wrapped around them. And so it's, for me, at least in the beginning, it was like this really obvious application for the materials. And then the, the bringing the aesthetics into the outdoor space was kind of following trend in the outdoors at that time.
[00:11:56] Christian Imagery is something that's been really strong for rumble. I mean, I specifically remember seeing your, it's funny cause I went back and revisited your Kickstarter page in preparation for this. And I remember watching that video when it went live and you have the opening thumbnail is this image that is burned into my mind because it's such a strong branding image.
It's the back of a, everybody who's listening should go check it out. It's the back of a Volkswagen van. And there's two feet, you can tell that there's two sets of feet coming out and like draped over by a blanket. And to me, that was like synonymous of like strong branding. Like you nailed it from, from out of the gate.
So, uh, congrats with that. It's still, it's still stuck in my brain. You were able to build rumple alongside the growth of the, you Imagery like Instagram and, and kind of just the, the sharing images widely. What are the, what have been the upsides and the downsides of being able to kind of ride that wave of an image based social media?
[00:12:57] Wylie That's a really good question. I mean, the, the, the upsides have been that, , we've leveraged the community to capture content. , especially in the early days when. When the platform was just kind of getting off the ground, we were able to reach out to aspiring photographers and say, Hey, we have this brand page with, I don't know, 5, 000 followers or something on it.
We'd like to share your imagery. We'll send you product and you can shoot our imagery and we'll share it and you can get exposure for it. And at the time it was like all sort of trade. conversations. We traded exposure in exchange for product. And, , that was like kind of the wild west of Instagram. And we were so fortunate that we were able to do that.
, so that, and we rode that trend. I mean, the Instagram photographer is, you know, a decades, one decade old, basically phenomenon. And we were able to participate in that from day one. Um, the downside of it is that because the creator economy has, has ballooned so much. And because I think people often think rumble is a bigger company than it is.
When we now reach out to people, we get the rate card for the North face. And so the downside is that your content engine had, you know, it really, , it's just changed a lot. It's become way more expensive for us. And you'll notice if you look at our Instagram now, it's way less sort of beautiful.
Aspirational imagery and it's way more like UGC and we do a bunch of stuff here in the office and it's lower fidelity You know candidly like as a as a sort of a I guess old school brand purist. I prefer the , really polished imagery. Um, I like coffee table books. I like printed stuff. I like all that.
I like stuff like what do you see behind me here? The Jeremy shot, but I know that that's not what people are paying attention to now. And people like the short form kind of low res content. And so we're responding to the market in that way. , you know, I used to be heavy handed in our Instagram and I used to, I used to post every day for the first, I don't know, five years or something.
, and now, I mean, I haven't touched that thing in a while. I actually complimented on Slack the other day, a post that, , someone, that, that our social team put up. And they were like, yeah, dude, we did that like five days ago. Like, you're, you're way off the bat. It's like, sorry, I just missed it, I guess.
But it's just a different world now. You know, it's like super rapid, super iterative. Short form, low res content that's shareable and kind of meme worthy. And that's just different than how it started. So , we've rode the ups of Instagram and social media, and also I think reasonably well rode the evolution of social
[00:15:33] Christian Do you think it plays as big of a role as it used to for the business from like, literally from the, kind of the bottom line part of it?
[00:15:39] Wylie I do. I I think that a lot of, I do, I find myself doing this where if I find a new brand. I will basically the two places I'll check out are their website and their social. , and it gives me a gauge for, you know, one how big they are. If they've got a, you know, 5, 000 person following versus a 5 million person following, that definitely gives me some indication of the size of the business.
, and then, you know, I think you can get a really good flavor for the brand and the personality. Of the company by looking at their social, how do they talk? What type of imagery do they use? So yeah, I think it, I it may even play a bigger role now, honestly, than it did 10 years ago.
[00:16:17] Christian I want to move more into the wholesale part of things, cause you came out, uh, out of the gates pretty quickly, moving straight into a wholesale sales channel. And I think now you're, I heard somewhere that you're over in over a thousand stores.
[00:16:29] Wylie Uh, doors, not stores, but, but doors, yeah. So I think, I think we're in, it's something like, I dunno, four or 500 accounts. I should know this number off the top of my head, but roughly a thousand locations
[00:16:40] Christian Yeah. So what were the biggest lessons that you learned kind of opening up that channel, like getting into it as a small company, and then how big of a role does it play now in the, in the business and, and how do you think about that wholesale channel now?
[00:16:53] Wylie Yeah. So, so as a percentage of business wholesale rep, US wholesale represents about 35% of the total revenue. Um, we actually, this is going to be a bit of a long winded story, but we actually didn't get into wholesale right away. , we attempted, well, we attempted probably two years in and actually extracted ourselves from that effort a year after trying.
And I can explain the details of that. So we knew we wanted to get into wholesale. Our product is really tactile. And so we want people to be able to touch it and feel it. And then you kind of get it what the use case is. , and so we wanted to be available in person for people to touch and try. And we hired a friend of ours to be our sales manager.
, but did like nothing else. Like we did no backend support. We didn't do any kind of tech integrations. We didn't change our product development cycle to be on any kind of wholesale calendar and, , our friend, you know, he got us all repped out across the country. , But we, again, we had no systems or process in place.
And so reps were like sending us cell phone. Pictures of their order form with terms. We didn't agree to every account was kind of getting its own different deal. And we probably had 20 or 25 accounts at the time. And we were just completely swamped. Like every single order, it was its own nuance, special thing where we had to be super high touch and , it just completely buried us.
And we were probably five employees at the time, five or six employees at the time. And it was like the whole team was sort of hodgepodging together. The work needed to get orders out the door. , and we were, we were missing delivery dates. We were, you know, not doing credit checks. So we got burned a couple of times.
We, there was just all sorts of issues. And so we extracted ourselves out of wholesale, , All accounts with the exception of Huckberry and REI, they had both kind of just come on and we just focused on those two accounts for probably two years. And then in 2017, so this is, you know, now four years roughly after we started, we kind of rebooted our wholesale effort.
And with a lot more knowledge and insight about how to do this, we built the backend of the company up way more robustly to be able to service the demand and wholesale. , And you know, now , it's a really important part of our business. I, I still maintain that it's important for people to touch and feel our product.
And so we want to have as many touch points where people can, actually go in and feel it in real life as we can. Obviously we want to just work with accounts that are premium retailers and present the brand well and have a customer base that aligns with us and everything. , but it's important to be widely distributed
[00:19:26] Christian it's interesting that being able to touch and feel the product's important, yet it's still, , the smaller part of your sales compared to what you're doing online. , how do you take something that really deserves to be touched? And then sell it online when you don't get that opportunity. What is it that you're doing to help bridge that gap for a consumer?
[00:19:45] Wylie A lot of it is in content, you know, like showing the macro. detail of someone wrapped up and really seeing kind of the puffiness and the curvature of the product folding over their arm or something like that. And showing imagery that really looks and expresses being engulfed in this product.
, that's a really good way for people to kind of imagine themselves in it. And if they're familiar with sleeping bag materials and, you know, polyester and stuff, they'll kind of understand what it's going to feel like. But I think a lot of the time, We do get people that check it out in store, , and maybe make a purchase in store.
Then make a second or third purchase online once they kind of get what it is. Maybe they're purchasing just for, , aesthetic reasons. Once they, once they purchase online, like they've already bought the blue one at the store. So they understand, you know, what it feels like and how it behaves.
And then they buy the crazy wild print that they can look at online. It's easier to look at the, the full breadth of print online for sure. Cause you have the whole catalog in front of you. Whereas in store, it's stuffed in a stuff sack and it's usually sitting on a peg and you can't pull the whole thing out.
I guess you can, but it's sort of a pain to pull the whole thing out. , and so I think that the buying, uh, behavior is slightly different from in store to
[00:20:51] Christian Yeah, that makes sense. , this is kind of a tangent, but brought, you brought it up in my mind is from the production side of things. You've added components and we'll talk about that in a little bit about how you've kind of changed the product over time, but I'm curious what the challenges were for you early on from a production side, right?
Like you, you came from a branding side. You've got that nailed down, but how did you wade through the swamp of production and finding the right partners? And how many have you moved through throughout the years to get to where you are today?
[00:21:23] Wylie Yeah, well, so finding production and, , getting good at production, I would say, are two sort of slightly different stories. And I'll hit on both, especially the latter as it relates to wholesale, because that's actually a big learning curve that we went through. , but I'll first start with just finding production.
So in the beginning, I mean, we were doing like cold, cold email, Alibaba, you know, stuff where I was like, here's what we want to do. do you think you could do this? We actually got just a lot of no bids because the width we wanted to use, the The materials we wanted to use were challenging for, for, , for manufacturers because they're really slippery.
And so very often a needle will walk along the path that you don't intend it to , when you're moving it across that surface. And so what we actually landed is, , after probably two or three different early vendors, , or early suppliers, I should say, we, , we landed on, really a bedding company.
Like they make mattress pads and they have these big machines called robo quilters, which are 110 inches wide. And you literally can put a King size mattress in this thing. And then a CNC sewing needle head comes down and is able to do any kind of design work you want. And it's programmed in there. , and so that's what we need basically to do our big swooping stitch lines that are not repetitive.
, and so we've, we've worked with this one, , supplier for probably eight years now. And we just recently in the last 18 months have diversified to two more suppliers. , you know, for a bunch of reasons, I mean, cost reasons for sure. , definitely risk mitigation, you know, being sort of centralized in one supplier is heavily risky.
, but , we want to remain with our supply chain partners for long periods of time. That is super important. Onboarding a new supply chain is a
[00:23:02] Christian Yes. Agreed.
[00:23:03] Wylie And, they, over time, the supplier just gets better at the product. They find efficiencies, they find, you know, little ways to make the product better.
As an example, early on, , because the, again, because the, the shell material is so fine. A lot of time you can't do like a big knot on the end of a, of a stitch line. And so they basically just have to, to stitch back at the end of the stitch line and then cut it off. Well, because there's not a lot of friction to grip that thread, threads would often pull out in the beginning.
And so we had to develop, it's basically like a square bar tack kind of where the, or not a square, but a little shaped bar tack at the end of a stitch line that are, , that our factory just kind of figured out over time. And , these are just little sort of nuanced examples, but that for a while was the predominant reason people were returning products, the stitch lines would blow out.
And yeah, , just little things like that. You develop over time with partners, I would say that the additional big learning curve for us. , which also relates to the last question you had about wholesale is getting on a wholesale calendar. And it was really challenging because as you mentioned, we're a Kickstarter brand.
And so Kickstarter is like the exact opposite of a wholesale calendar where you actually take money in, then you go find a supply chain. At least we did. We didn't have a supply chain totally dialed in. Then you go find a supply chain and make your product and then deliver it with a wholesale calendar.
You need to have samples that you can show them, you know, a year before they actually need to be in store. You need to be really dialed in on like what your assortment looks like. And so to go from, you know, here's our one product, give us money. And then we'll kind of blow out the products and make them and get them delivered and all that stuff to you customer six to eight months later to, we have a perfect golden sample in hand.
This is production ready. We know that we can produce this thing a year before it needs to be in store. There's just like a lot of catch up. You have to do every season. You just try to shave months off of that production timeline. And move it further ahead into the calendar season over season. And there were definitely some hiccups there.
I mean, , we had plenty of times where we delivered product later, we had to air freight it or all sorts of things just to make sure we weren't getting charged backs or put in, in bad graces with the retailers that we cared about. So that was, I would say one of the biggest learning curves of rumble in its first five years,
[00:25:21] Christian And, , I said a second ago that you were kind of the first mover in that category in the outdoor. And I'm curious, cause, , inevitably the copycats come out and you've actually had some of your retailers. You know, some people you sell rumple to some retailers who actually have a competing product. , how have you dealt with, I don't even know that they're not copycats, but just, You know, the people kind of falling in your wake and I'm sure that Rumpel is still the market leader in it, but how have you dealt with, and probably early on, it was probably harder than it is now, but how did you deal with the copycats mentally and from a business perspective?
[00:25:56] Wylie mentally and actually are probably different things. , Actually, like actual, how have we dealt with them? So rumble doesn't have a ton of IP, you know, it's, it's a pretty simple product category. And the only IP we have is a design patent on our stitch lines. So you can't copy the stitch lines and make a product that looks exactly the same as rumble.
We can enforce that. But other than that, you can take, you know, two pieces of nylon or two pieces of polyester and sandwich some insulation in between it and make an outdoor blanket. That's totally fine for someone to do. It's fair competition. And there are a lot of those that have come out, especially on Amazon and direct from factory.
, the way we've, we've practically dealt with true copycats that are actually copying the stitch line, , is we use an enforcement service on particularly on Amazon that does takedowns. , but that's, that's less common than people just making, you know, a product that is similar, but looks different.
And there's really not a whole lot you can do on a, on the practical side there. I mean, you need to win on brand, you need to win on value proposition. , you need to, , win on quality, you need to win on durability, all these things that consumers ultimately care about. If you're a consumer that's just looking for the lowest price for, you know, near, near the same function.
Yeah. There's a bunch of options out there. , but you know, the same can be said for puffy jackets. I mean, if you want a really nice puffy jacket, you go to one of the top brands. If you want a really crappy one, you can probably get one right off Amazon. , and so it's just a choice consumers have to make.
I would say generally, you know, the category growing is good for rumple. , as you mentioned, we are the clear market leader. We have about 60 percent market share in the category. And so as the category grows, we typically experience the tailwinds of that. , your second question on the emotional level. I mean, it's a, it, it sucks, you know, like, I don't know how else to say it.
, I wouldn't say it, , I don't think about it too much, honestly. I look at it and I pay attention to it. And I. I see people doing exactly what we're doing and undercutting us on price. And, and in many cases, copying our graphics. And we actually had a thing the other day where we found this Amazon, , competitor that literally took our creative and like Photoshopped out our logo and put theirs in.
And so that's an obvious one. We can get that taken down, but it's just like. It's, it's a bummer that people behave that way, that humans behave that way, where they, they are just completely grabbing money and have no desire to be creative or innovative at all. , but that's human nature and consumers are allowed to buy those products, you know, no, no issue with that.
, but it's, it's a category now that's meaningful in size and rumple as the leader, I would say generally gets credit for inventing it. And, , we generally, I would say experienced tailwinds from the category growing.
[00:28:37] Christian That's great. So we touched on earlier about the Jeremy Koresky, , collaboration, and I'm just curious. It seems like, well, you go on your website and you have the rad program and lots of artists and designers that you work with photographers. So how did the first club is, was the I guess I'll back up was Jeremy, the first artist collaboration.
Okay.
[00:28:55] Wylie Jeremy was the first.
[00:28:56] Christian it sounded like that was just, Hey, we can print on blankets now. Let's try this one. So I guess it was more serendipity than growth strategy.
[00:29:07] Wylie Well, uh, I mean, it was definitely an intentional strategy that we wanted to bring print into our product line. I mean, one thing that we knew early on with rumple is that it's a huge canvas. , it's the largest canvas and outdoor really in any category. , and it's square. And so it's like this perfect application for art.
And, you know, we were talking about it a minute ago, but like bringing color and vibrancy into a category that candidly is not that exciting, in my opinion, , was a big early objective of Rumpel. And so being able to have high resolution print, , you know, photo, real graphics, et cetera, was, was a big part of the strategy. And I think meeting Jeremy and, you know, seeing this piece of art was the more serendipitous piece. We would have done it at some point with someone, but I just thought this was really nice. And I like, I like the symmetry of it for, for those listening. If you can't see, it's like this perfect overhead bird's eye view of a tree grove and they're kind of exploding out of the middle.
, as the perspective of the trees increases as you get out to the edges of the canvas. But it just, I thought it would be really cool to be on a blanket. And so I guess that was the serendipitous
[00:30:17] Christian Yeah. And I'll, I'll link to that image on Jeremy's website in the show notes or, or on Rumpel's website actually on, in the show notes so you can see the photo.
So on the collaboration, I would imagine you now have, you've reached the point where you probably have a lot of inbound interest in people wanting their artwork. You know, they want to collaborate and kind of ride the, the wave of rumple. Yeah. What does that look like? And what do you look, what are you looking for in collaborators and how do you kind of gatekeep that process?
And how do you make sure that you're working with the right people? Like what is the decision making process from your, from the design team to, to kind of partner with the right folks?
[00:30:51] Wylie Yeah. I mean, honestly, I wish there was like a really repeatable formal process that we have for this. But as you know, every artist, every brand is nuanced and unique, and you need to look at each one individually. , I mean, I think some sort of basics that I can share that we look for are, you know, does this expand Rumpel's audience?
, does it expand Rumpel's audience or does it reinforce Rumpel's current audience? , you know, partnering with a endemic outdoor artist, , reinforces our core audience versus, , potentially like a street artist that might, that might open up new eyeballs for us. So I would say there's an audience consideration and a reach consideration there.
, , there's a commercial consideration as well. , is it art that we think is going to be widely commercial, , that people are going to want to buy? Yeah. You know, there's a lot of art out there that's really interesting and unique in its own right. But does someone want to have that touching their skin and, you know, wrapping themselves in it?
So looking at that, I think is a big one. , and then a big one, too, is just like making sure that our consumer calendar is stacked up in the right way so that these these projects have breathing room. We've done too many before where we launched a different artist collaboration every week or every two weeks or something.
And you get to the end of that week long selling period and you haven't sold all through all of your inventory and immediately you got to move on to your next story. And then you have no time in the calendar to, to break, go back to that story , and remind consumers that it exists. And so you wind up with this inventory glut that becomes a real problem at the end of a season, because you really don't want to be putting your artists and special projects on discount.
, you want those things to go out right away. , And, , very often there's some sort of a margin split or royalty or something like that. And so it can get messy if you have to end of life, a product, , you know, intentionally without it selling out. And so all those things are kind of factored in when we think about them.
, but ultimately it's like, does, , partnering with this brand or artist Put us in good light. Do we like what this, what this other entity stands for? Do we want to be associated with that?
[00:32:57] Christian I mean, I guess it's all strategy and tactics in some way, but more of like how you've dealt with things personally and as the leader and, you know, you've grown the team, , significant, how many are on your team right now?
[00:33:09] Wylie We're actually smaller than we were at our peak. We're only
[00:33:11] Christian Okay. But you peaked at what, how many people did you,
[00:33:15] Wylie we peaked at
[00:33:16] Christian Okay. So regardless running a team of 25, it's Everything's relative.
That's still, that's still a lot of people you've got to manage and, you know, bumping all the way up to 40. That's, that's, that's a lot of people too. , I'm just curious what you've learned about managing a team and bringing the right people in and what would have been the biggest lessons and challenges for you in, in growing that team?
[00:33:38] Wylie mean, biggest challenge for sure is, is hiring, , hiring the right people, you know, not, not the actual like act of getting someone interested in coming here and, and, you know, willing to leave their current job to come here. But. Hiring people that are going to gel well with the current team and add value and compliment others that are on the team.
In many ways, when you're in a big company and you have like a really clearly defined scope, narrow scope for each role, it's kind of easier. You can put in all sorts of different types of people and as long as they do that job, they're good at a small company like rumple, you know, you just get thrown into a lot of things and.
You need to flex out of what your core job is. And if you're not really. If you don't gel well with the other people around you, it's going to just create a lot of friction. , , before we got on this call, we were dealing with a tech issue here in the office, , our, , our internet was down and, you know, just kind of working with a few people to get figured out and like, that's something that you just, you want to be doing those little nuance micro things that, that happen all the time.
With people that you connect with and that you're able to communicate well with and, and all that. So I've definitely brought people into the company that, you know, good intentions, of course, , and they come in with great resume and they absolutely, can do the job that they're hired for on paper, but the, the job at Rumpl very often evolves and expands and just changes because of the nature of us being small, and so it's the person's ability to adapt to changes, And do it in a way that's graceful and, , supportive of the others around them.
That's really important. It's like, you're building a little band, you're building a team or something, and you all need to be able to play together. And it doesn't matter if you've got, you know, 10 all stars, if they can't play together, they're not going to be a good team. And so I would say that's just been the hardest thing over 10 years is to dial in the team.
I think we're in a really good spot right now. , but there've been some periods where it's been,
[00:35:36] Christian What's the process like in the sense of what are you doing to hire, to find those right people and make sure you get the right people now, you know, you've learned, okay, yeah, this is what it takes. You know, you went with, I'm sure you went through a phase of like, uh, making the best decisions you could at the time and realizing in hindsight, that wasn't the best decision.
And what does that hiring process look like? Like, how are you making sure that you're like, Hey, you know what? You can play on this all star team that you're in the band.
[00:36:00] Wylie Yeah. So the process looks like this before we, before we open up a role and publish it, we scope the role. So we put together what we call as a success profile. It's basically a job description, but it's like, what does success look like for this role? And we, we rank the amount of time we envision someone spending on X task versus Y task.
And then we write specifics underneath all of those tasks about like, what does that really mean? What does that look like at rumble? , then we, once we have that success profile dialed. We do a market comp assessment and figure out where we want to target comp for that role. We obviously flow that comp through our financial model, make sure that it works out and everything pencils.
And then we published the role. , and from there we go through a process where, I mean, Rumble is really fortunate in that it's a cool brand and we get a lot of inbound interest, you know, to work here. And so we'll get, you know, two, 300 resumes sometimes for, entry level roles , and senior roles. , but what we do is we parse through those.
And I would say that the first phase of parsing is really just like eliminating people that just threw their name in the hat, but actually have no experience doing this. , and then we look at, you know, a combination of, of experience, , prior companies they've worked for. That's really important.
, and we generally try to narrow down to probably like 10 or so phone screen candidates and we'll do usually like a 15 to 30 minute phone screen, , where it's, it's kind of more of like a vibe check. , is this person a good communicator? Do we feel like we're going to get along with them?
, do they really want to be here or are they just like on the job hunt and they'll take anything right now? From there, we try to narrow down to maybe four or five. Candidates for a panel phase, and we put together a hiring panel, , by the way, anyone who is making a hire for their department, they're generally the hiring manager.
We don't have a recruiting team or anything here. , and so, , the hiring manager will be responsible for organizing those people. , putting together the questions that we'll ask in a panel and building a grading tool. We just repeat the same grading tool every time. But, , the best practice for doing those panels is you've got really a script and you know, maybe you have two or three people on the panel and they are reading the same question in the same order for each candidate.
You really want to set candidates up apples to apples. Back in the day, I used to hire people like I'd go to coffee with this person and then I'd go grab beers with this person. And it's like, you get a very different experience depending on the environment you put them in. So we've learned over time that you really want to make that consistent from candidate to candidate.
And then from there, , we'd narrow it down to two. And in some cases for some roles, we, we like to see a project sometimes like , spend one hour on this and we want to see how your brain works. It's not work. We're going to co opt or anything like that, but we just want to see how you think.
Right. And, , in some cases we're able to make a decision just through discussion with that hiring team. But, , usually after that panel phase, it's like pretty quick to a discussion. And then we get an offer out and have an expiration date on the offer. And it's all just very dialed and streamlined from there.
So , it's not like a crazy unique hiring process, I would say. , but I think more now than in the past, I'm focused on really thinking about, is this person going to connect with the current team? There have been hires I've made where I have maybe a predisposition about how I want this person to behave.
Or how I want them to show up. And I think that, Oh, well, if they're this way, then our culture will kind of adapt around them and it'll bring this positive thing into the culture. And that just really doesn't work. , it's way better, I think, to bring someone in, that's going to be able to see the existing culture.
Is there bolt into it, adapt into it and, , potentially bring their flavor into the culture and evolve it in that way, but if you immediately recognize that someone's going to be. Point of friction in the culture. That's usually a red flag for me.
[00:39:49] Christian No, I think those are good. Those are good things for people to hear, right. As people are growing their own businesses. Cause it's the idea of going to coffee with these people and going for beers for that one that, that is a, in hindsight, a good thing.
[00:40:00] Wylie You hire the beers person.
[00:40:02] Christian And it, you know, it's one of those things that, you know, from the outset, like, yeah, that makes sense now that you say it, but it's what I guess.
It's a very honest mistake and I, and we're not a mistake. It's a , very honest way to go about doing things. And I couldn't see it. So it seems like, uh, but going back to the product for a second, you rumble has introduced, uh, kind of a new, , I guess it's not really, you're reshifted your categories a little bit and kind of restructure the, what you're calling products and how they're labeled.
And that seems like a pretty big undertaking I'd imagine. So I'm interested in knowing, first of all, like what was the need that drove, uh, to doing that. And then what does that look like internally thinking about, you know, You know, we talked about earlier, the wholesale cycle, and that, that must've been pretty massive lead time.
And then how do you roll that out? And what does that set the ground for going forward? Like, are there new things that are coming because of this restructure?
[00:40:52] Wylie So there's really been like three evolutions in the categories we're focused on and I'll, I'll kind of talk about all three of them. The first one, the Kickstarter that we launched rumble was really designed as an in home product. , it was designed as a replacement comforter. or replacement blanket for the comforter on your bed.
And my co founder and I happened to like outdoor materials and sleeping bags. And so we just wanted those materials touching our bodies in our bed. And even, you know, down to the sizing of the products, it was like twin queen King size. And, , so that was, that was sort of the origin of, of how it started.
And the original thesis behind the, behind the brand was homeware as a category is like this really dated category. , and Rumpel had this point of view where we could take performance materials and apply them to these everyday items that really haven't undergone any sort of update in like decades or hundreds of years.
, and the thought was, We could do blankets, obviously, but bedding sheets, towels, robes, slippers, like all sorts of home goods, soft goods, soft lines with a performance fabric bend. And that was the thesis. , very quickly, , we, became an outdoor brand, , with the way we were shooting content and how our brand was kind of positioned and the way people were using the product.
It was so clearly an outdoor use case. That we really focused on just an outdoor blanket business. And the thought there was that, you know, we can create varying degrees of technicality in these things. Some of them would be better suited for having a glass of wine on your patio and some would be better suited for.
You know, sleeping on a bivy ledge. , and so that was like the driving force behind the brand for probably seven years, very hyper focused on outdoor, , narrow product portfolio and really proliferating the category. You know, as I mentioned, I think Rumpel is very much synonymous with the category. And so if we're able to get this category out there and adopted, we're going to win as a business.
, and we've done that largely. I mean, like Rumpel is, is, you know, as you mentioned, sold in, you know, over a thousand doors and it's fairly well known in the outdoor industry. At this point, it's, it's got meaningful revenue. It's a meaningful business at REI, you know, biggest outdoor retailer. It's largely distributed in the U.
S., but I think there's still opportunity internationally for the category of outdoor blankets, but as it relates to the U. S. and our core business. , it became clear that, especially with a lot of competitors coming in at a pretty low barrier to entry that we needed to expand the brand a little bit further.
And so now, broadly speaking, the brand is focused on outdoor comfort, and that's kind of all I'll share at this point, I guess, but it's, it's going to be more items that help you stay comfortable and, , relaxed in the outdoors. , and I think that that's actually a really, , I wouldn't say novel, but it's an interesting position for an outdoor brand to take, you know, like the legacy outdoor brands have the steeped history in performance and pushing limits and, like really achieving in the outdoors.
And very often when people go outside, they're hanging out in a camp chair, you know, drinking a beer, talking to friends. Just having a good time outside. And so obviously those performance products work well for that use case, but that's not the core of the brand. And so Rumpl is putting a stake in the ground and saying that is the core of our brand is to just be comfortable outside.
And I think it gives us permission to be a lot more playful with our products. , a lot less serious with our products. , certainly a lot more colorful and aesthetic with our products. And so what you'll see from us is, , some silhouettes that have existed in the outdoor space before, but done in a way that I think is more playful and approachable for the consumer that's not necessarily as technical or
[00:44:40] Christian Cool. Well, how long is that process? I mean, that's, you've put a lot of thought, obviously, into essentially kind of , coming up with a new vision or a new tagline for the business in that sense. How long has that process been? Was it all done internally? Yeah. And what have been the challenges in, in kind of getting all the, , oars in the water pointing in the same direction.
[00:44:59] Wylie lot of challenges. , I mean, the, the, the transition from outdoor materials in the home to just outdoor was pretty, Pretty seamless. That was just responding to what we were seeing in the market and honestly, the limited resources we had and the need to focus. , the decision to expand into new product categories, , has probably taken two years and it's a combination of consumer insights, consumer research, , a lot of work with our internal leadership team and also our board.
And consultants that we bring in to just look and talk about product architecture. , there have been multiple iterations of it proliferating really broad, like us doing apparel and backpacks and all this stuff to kind of coming back to like, okay, well, what's the core of the brand it's it's insulation.
It's puffy. , generally as like an adjective, it's, uh, you know, stinuous stitch lines. It's color. And like, what products do we actually want to apply that treatment to? Do we want to have a backpack that looks like that? Maybe not. Do we want to get into hard lines? Maybe not. And so it's, it's just taken a lot of kind of like pressure testing and thought from the thought leaders at the business and the, and those that are around the business, i.
e. our board. , to build a future product road map that we're working towards right now. So it's, it's, it's been time consuming. And it's, , it's definitely, if it feels sometimes like progress is not being made, , especially when you expand your aperture for what you're going to do and then you contract it again.
It's like, , why do we even do that? But that is kind of the process of arriving at what's right, I think. In many cases, we'll be launching these things at very low quantity and testing them, , primarily on our website to make sure that consumers actually want them. We don't want to put product into retailers that isn't going to sell through.
And so we, , we want to be able to test in an environment we can control and then come to the retailers with the winners and say, these work, trust us. This is what we, what we think you should sell. These are the colors. These are the sizes, et
[00:47:00] Christian That's the, that's the beauty of having two channels like that. You can kind of test it, iterate and do your run your own, uh, crowdfunding in that, in that way. , so moving to more of the, kind of the personal you as the founder types of, learnings you've had along the way, I, I always say like entrepreneurship is like a rollercoaster.
You know, you're kinda like riding the ups and downs and the, and the ups can be really amazing and the downs can be really tough. I'm curious, uh, and I, I'm just gonna assume that you've, you've ridden that rollercoaster and you're sometimes in different phases of it. , what's been the most helpful thing for you during the process of kind of the ups and downs and where do you find your support along the way?
[00:47:37] Wylie I think the most important thing is just always remembering to take perspective of where you are. And I, I call very often on external people. I have a coach that I've been working with for many years. I speak to our board members a lot. , all of which have really amazing perspective and are able to zoom me out.
, so that I'm not like thinking about specific tactics or, , employees even that are, that are, you know, challenging at the time. And really, , think about the bigger picture and kind of where we are and what's been built. And that, , that just pulls me out of the weeds. So I think that zooming out is the most important thing that you can do to kind of reset.
, And then just talking to a lot of other company operators, you know, like you realize that your problems are not often unique. There are problems that everybody deals with. And, , that's reassuring as well. So I would say that's really important. And then there's a lot of things too, like right now the outdoor industry is pretty challenged.
You know, I could take one tact of like getting all upset about it and flurrying around and trying to, you know, throw spaghetti at the wall, but it's not really something I can control. And I generally try to think about, or, or worry about only the things I can control. , and, , focus primarily on like the amount of effort I put into things.
I mean, if, if you put in a good effort and you do your best and try, you can find. reassurance in that and, , and peace with that. You know, I think that if you put your best effort in and it just doesn't work, you can't be too upset about that. If you phone it in and it doesn't work, then yeah, you can totally be upset about
[00:49:15] Christian You also have the added challenge of being a father of some young kids and you're kind of growing your family alongside growing your business and growing a business is hard enough. And then raising kids being a dad is challenging to . The comedian, Jim Gaffigan, has a line about having a big family.
It's like Somebody asked what it's like having five or six kids and it's like, you're treading water and somebody throws you a baby. And I think that's sometimes what it is , when you're running a business, you're like treading water. And then somebody's like, here, raise these two kids at the same time.
What have been the challenges for you and like, how do you navigate the sometimes balances in the right word, but how do you navigate going between, you know, , wanting to be a very present and, and with it partner and, and father, and also being, you know, part of a growing your team and growing the business.
[00:50:01] Wylie It really is balanced, actually. I think that's a pretty good word. I mean, it's, it's, , allowing yourself to care about both things. , and, , it's hard to do. It's, it takes a lot of juggling. And, , you know, in my case, I have a, I have a great partner that's able to help. , and she's also got a very full time job.
, but we just work together and, you know, we have a shared goal of making sure that we're there for the kids as much as we can. And you just need to be really diligent about, you know, it's kid time. It's dad time right now. I can't be looking at my phone. I can't be doing work emails, whatever. And then when you're at work, you know, you plug in and that's what you're focused on.
Obviously the kids always take priority. If, if my kid is sick or something like that, like I'm not going to try to work, I need to take care of my kid. , but it's really just trying to balance those two things and And, , I don't think I have any like secret answer to this. I mean, I'm, I'm definitely learning.
My kids are three and five, so I'm, I'm very new to this. , so I don't necessarily want to come off as like giving advice or anything here, cause I'm certainly not the person to be giving advice on parenting, but it's really just a balance. It's a new major responsibility that intersects your life and you just need to run with it.
[00:51:15] Christian I think it's an important topic that doesn't get talked about enough on, uh, in business conversations is, you know, we will talk about personal growth or, , things like that, but don't necessarily talk about parenting a lot and obviously parenting doesn't apply to everybody. I understand that.
Uh, But I think it's a, it's an important one. Right. And so, you know, to, to talk about it and to have some strategies and get some help with it is, is always helpful. So no, thanks for, thanks for sharing that. I appreciate it. , in a previous conversation, you, you and I had, um, in lead up to this con into this recording, you mentioned this idea of, , building a kingdom that that's hard to escape.
And, I stopped you with that. I was like, don't say anymore. Let's hold that. That's a good thought. , I'm really curious about what you meant by that and what the feelings that come up when you say that,
[00:52:00] Wylie yeah, it was in relation to when I talked to a lot of people that think that entrepreneurship and being a company founder is like this big unlock to freedom. You know, like you can control your day and you can control your time and all this stuff. And Yes, that is true to some extent. I mean, if I want to go to a dentist's appointment or go work out or something like that, I can do that.
I don't need to get approval from anybody. But the analogy I was giving when we spoke is that when you're a company founder or a CEO, you let's, let's say your business is like a house and you walk in the house every day. , and you as the founder and CEO can go into any room in the house and do whatever you want in the house for the most part.
If you're, , somebody that is an individual contributor, you might only be able to be in one room of that house. But at the end of the day, you get to leave that house and you get to go home to your other house. But as the founder, you kind of can't leave the house. Like, if I wanted to, Just do a career shift right now.
If I wanted to go live somewhere abroad with my young family, because now's a great time to do it. , you can't do it until you don't have that freedom. So you get these little micro pockets of freedom where you can control the hours of your day. But if you want to make big life changes, if you want to, if you want to move somewhere, if you want to travel for a year, if you want to completely change the trajectory of your, of your career, it's very, very difficult to do that.
If you've started a company that has other people that, you know, depend on you and work for the company. So I think it's a little bit of a fallacy that being an entrepreneur unlocks this freedom in you, , in the true sense of the
[00:53:37] Christian yeah, on that note, , by the time that this podcast will be released. , you've brought somebody in to help you, , hopefully, , get chances to escape the house or the kingdom every once in a while. So talk to me about what led to, I can, I can only imagine, but I'd like to hear from you, what led to that decision of, yeah, I need to find somebody to kind of come alongside me and help lead this business.
What was the decision making process like to get to that point? And then what did you go through to find that person? Cause I'd imagine that is probably the most important hire you will, or you have ever made and maybe will ever make.
[00:54:12] Wylie Yeah. So I hired a GM general manager. , he started two weeks ago. His name is Josh Simpson. , prior to coming to rumble, he served as general manager at C to summit. , for, I don't know, three, three or four years or so. , and then prior to that, he was head of sales at C to summit for about a decade.
He's also, service general manager of snow peaks, campfield facility that they have out here in Washington. , he's two weeks in, but so far it's going great. And, and, , I can tell that he orients towards action, which I do as well, which is really important to me.
, like he gets shit done. , he gets his hands. in the weeds of the business. He's, you know, meeting with everybody top to bottom at the organization and really wants to know what they do and how he can be helpful to them and unlock new potential in them and in the brand. , he's also got really deep category expertise in some of the adjacent categories that we're going to be going into through that C2 Summit experience.
And so I think it's a really good fit. , I can talk about the process to finding Josh and landing on him as, as the person I wanted to make the offer to. But going back to the question about, like, why I wanted to do this, I mean, it's been 11 years, you know, since I founded the company, , very related to the point I just made about, you know, being kind of in this track where, like, this is how you get to spend your time every day, , 11 years of doing that is a long time and, , for full transparency here over the last four years, you know, starting in 2020, Obviously we had COVID, we had, , just all sorts of social, political changes in our lives.
, and navigating through all that as the business leader, super hard, it's really taxing. On top of that, I had two kids. And , I think that a part of me, , just wants a little relief, has wanted a little relief and a thought partner to help thinking about how to navigate the business. Through those challenging times and expand its potential, you know, with these new product categories, potentially distribution channels.
, and so bringing someone in that that had that ability to, , have decision authority across all of the departments at the company versus just talking to my thought partners that are department leaders. was what I thought would be the best way to unlock, , you know, both some flexibility and, , and also just like , some mental space in me that like, there's someone else that's thinking about the business holistically in addition to me.
So I'm really happy with it. Again, we're two weeks in, but I talked to a ton of, Founders that did this move. What I did find is it was super polarizing. It was either the best thing they ever did or the worst thing they ever did. , and I knew that going in, you know, if it doesn't go well, it's a big, big mistake, , for the culture, for you personally, all this.
So. You really got to make the hire correctly and methodically. , I took 11 months to make this hire, , and, , work with my board. I would, I made them very aware of it. I made the leadership team here at Rumpel very aware that I was doing this. And as a part of that, you know, I got referrals and ideas about what I should think about.
And obviously I had to take all those ideas and interpret them myself and make a final decision. But I probably talked to over a hundred people, meaningful conversations, not just like phone screens, but meaningful, you know, 90 minute to two hour conversations with them on the phone or over a video call and got a sense for their personality and got a sense for their background.
And. , and also I, it was important to me that this person is based here in the Northwest so that they can come into our office and be in person with the team. So that was like a big criteria is, were they willing to move, or were they already located here? , and from there , it was just having a lot of conversations.
, the top candidates I would go out to dinners with, I would spend real physical time with them , and make sure that this was going to be a good dynamic. I think the most important part of bringing this person in is the dynamic that I have with them, you know, and , what I really did not want to do, , is create like a mom and dad situation for the team where, Oh, you know, GM said this, but Wiley said this, what, what, what do we do?
, and so really clearly defining who has decision over decision authority over certain aspects of the business was really important as well. And then also like telling Josh on day one, you know, the most important thing for me is preserving the good culture at Rumpel. We have a really good culture right now.
I think people really enjoy working here and being here. And, you can have a business that's performing well financially, but it's miserable for people to be at. And that's not what I want. I mean, I want a place that people enjoy working at and we're doing well financially. , and so this long winded answer here, but yeah, it's the biggest hire I've ever made.
And I spent a lot of time thinking about it and got my board and shareholders, you know, invested in the idea and on board with it. So that's, that's where we're going right now. And I'm really optimistic about what
[00:58:56] Christian That's awesome. Well, congratulations. , that's the transition I'm sure will be interesting , letting go of some things in your own way and, and bringing Josh into it. So congrats on, on the big move. That's very cool. On that note, where do you want rumble to be as a company in the next five years?
[00:59:15] Wylie It's a really good question. I mean, I want Rumpel to maintain its authenticity, , above all else. And I know that that's a word that's just thrown out there, but because our category, at least blankets, is so broad, I mean, everybody uses a blanket. Everybody spends some time outside. They might not be outdoorsy, but they spend some time outside.
There's application for our product. In a whole ton of different communities and, and, , people. And I just, I want to make sure that the brand is true to its roots and, looks and feels like it's core consumers expect it to what we make, it's, we're going to, we're going to launch a lot of new products over the next three to five years.
And some of them will work and some of them probably won't work. So I hope that the, that the product portfolio expands. I hope that we unlock some new distribution and new consumer segments through some of these new products. And ultimately I'd like to see the business scale out of its kind of tweener size that it's been in for three or four years now, where, you know, it's, it's, uh, our, our margins are thin at the moment.
I mean, to, to have a 25 person team at a, you know, roughly a 25 million run rate, like you're, there's not a lot of profit baked in there.
And so I hope that we get to a place where we're able to have more cash in the business to experiment and innovate and try new things. And, , I think that that, that can really only happen when you kind of scale out of this tweener stage, as I, as I mentioned, and it's really hard to do. And that's another reason why I think bringing in a GM with that experience was really important for me.
, to just kind of help me navigate the next three to five years. And so big picture, I hope the business is larger from a financial standpoint. I hope we've reached new consumers. I hope we've successfully launched new product categories and we're maintaining the core authenticity of what we stand for today.
[01:01:03] Christian How do you want to grow and change as the CEO in the next five years?
[01:01:09] Wylie That's a really good question. , I would like to, to be able to get a little bit more outside of the business. , I'm very much behind the business in the day to day. I'd like to visit more of our customers. I'd like to be in market more. I'd like to, , give back to the community more, you know, I'd like to potentially serve on some boards.
I'd like to. Participate in the outdoor industry more broadly than just solely within the rumble context. , and I think if I can do that, then, then that's going to be a big win for integrating Josh into the business. Also.
[01:01:40] Christian Cool. , there are going to be lots of opportunities, I'm sure, for you to, , be able to participate in the outdoor industry, the greater whole as you gain time, you've got a lot, a lot to offer. So it's very cool. And, and I hope that, I hope that for you, if you could go back and give yourself advice, kind of day one advice, um, what would you say to yourself starting over
[01:01:59] Wylie , I would listen a lot more closely to my instincts. I had like imposter syndrome for many, many years early on with Rumpel, where, you know, this Kickstarter kind of was like this overnight success. And the business was off to the races and we got an all doors REI, you know, within our first year.
And it was just like, it was going really well. And There is a part of me, a big part of me that was like, I have no idea what I'm doing here. Like, I can't believe this is happening and I need to bring people in or seek counsel from people that have done it before. And as I look back on that, you know, obviously I, I talked to many people that were very helpful and gave great advice, but I think a lot of where we started the business was directionally right.
And I think listening to and paying much more close attention to my instincts, you know, , and, and not having that kind of imposter syndrome or, , feeling like I don't know what I'm doing, that would be advice I would want to hear more and more and more
[01:02:59] Christian I'm curious, and I'm sure it was an emergent, , Event where multiple things happen to help you get it. But I'm curious, can you put your finger on what allowed you to get over the imposter syndrome? Cause that's a very, yeah, that's a, not a unique problem to just you. That's something I've struggled with.
I know it's something that other entrepreneurs have struggled with. What can you put your finger on? What the things were that allowed you to kind of get over that?
[01:03:21] Wylie I mean, I think first and foremost, you know, the coach I work with is really helpful. , just reaffirming that. You know, I am the founder of this idea and, you know, this came out of me. And so there's something there. Um, there's obviously a lot that I don't know, but, , there's something there that I should always pay attention to and listen to.
And then I think when you have more reps behind you, you realize that maybe a lot of your original thinking was, was directionally right. And we brought some people, I brought some people into the business that, that had a really strong point of view about how things should be or. Or pivots we would need to make that ended up being very wrong.
And , I guess it's a combination of, of being reassured in my own previous decisions and thinking about it and also realizing that not every, that sometimes experienced people actually don't know what's right. And, you know, seeing a couple of times where the person that I thought knew everything maybe didn't necessarily know everything or didn't have the right answer.
And. , maybe taking some of the shine off of some of the people that I previously would have viewed as being like big, big helps or unlocks for some new insight to the business.
[01:04:32] Christian The coach thing is very helpful. I can, I can definitely agree with
[01:04:35] Wylie Yeah, I'm a, I'm a big supporter of coaching, um, at any level. Like it's definitely early on and all the way up to fortune 500 CEO. You should always have a coach.
[01:04:44] Christian The question I always end with is how do you define success for yourself?
[01:04:48] Wylie Yeah. I think, I think success for me is being able to focus on the areas of the business that I really love focusing on, which is product, creative marketing, commercialization of our ideas, making stuff that our consumers really , being an integral part of the outdoor industry and, and the community that we serve.
, and largely extracting myself from the things that I don't enjoy. , and some of those things would include IP enforcement and IP strategy. , HR and people operations, , you know, it and tech, like I'm not in that stuff often, but I do get pulled into it from time to time. And, and if that is just operating seamlessly without me, I think that's success for me.
I like working in this business. I like doing the work that. That inspires me a lot. , and so if I can have more of my time focused on that, , that's a big win for
[01:05:42] Christian Great. I wish that for you. And hopefully you're on the path of Josh alongside of you. So you can do those things more and more.
[01:05:49] Wylie Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's already, it's already evolved a lot from where it was even five years ago. And so we've got great people that work here that, that handle a lot of the things that I'm not an expert in, nor do I really love. And, , I, I trust them. And so that really like frees up a lot of headspace for me and a lot of stress.
[01:06:07] Christian no, it's good. I appreciate it. It's been good to learn from you, Wiley and, , for being transparent and open and honest. And , it's been great to learn from you.
[01:06:15] Wylie Thanks so much for having me and really good format too. Like I've told the founder story 35 times and I appreciate that you didn't have me do that and just really got to the meat of like what it's like here and what I care about and all that. So thank you for having me. Thanks so much for listening all the way to the end of this podcast. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend who you think may enjoy it too. You could also take a few seconds to subscribe to the podcast , anything you do to help share the love here.
[01:06:43] AT2020USB+-6: We'd appreciate it. , thanks so much falling along and we'll see you next time.