The RTO Show "Let's talk Rent to Own"
Welcome to "The RTO Show Podcast," your gateway into the fascinating world of the Rent to Own (RTO) furniture industry. Join host Pete Shau, who brings nearly two decades of experience to the table, as he dives into engaging interviews and thought-provoking discussions on the latest trends and innovations. With a blend of humor and realism, Pete explores the evolving landscape of Rent to Own, making complex topics accessible and enjoyable for everyone. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or simply curious about RTO, tune in for insights that will inform and entertain!
The RTO Show "Let's talk Rent to Own"
Where is Wondersign? The real story w/ Kaspar Fopp CEO
Join me as I sit down with Kaspar Fopp to uncover the inspiring comeback story of Wondersign. Discover how this innovative company, once celebrated as "the iPhone of digital signage" in Switzerland, faced daunting challenges when it expanded to the U.S. market. Kaspar takes us through the twists and turns of reviving a tech company on the brink of closure, highlighting pivotal moments that spurred Wondersign's resurgence in the rent-to-own industry. From unexpected encounters to strategic collaborations, Kaspar shares insights on the importance of adaptability and innovation in overcoming setbacks.
We also explore the integral role of relationships in boosting business success. Learn how a serendipitous meeting with Ashley Furniture's marketing VP turned the tide for Wondersign, paving the way for transformative technological advancements. Hear about the journey of digitizing Ashley's extensive product catalog, the complexities of kiosk branding, and the challenges of adapting European success to the U.S. market. Kaspar shares personal anecdotes of navigating visa processes and the demanding responsibilities that come with being an American citizen, offering a glimpse into the personal side of building a cross-continental enterprise.
As we look ahead, dive into the launch of Wondersign 2.0 and its potential to revolutionize inventory decisions in the rent-to-own sector. Uncover how embracing technology like 3D and AR features can enhance customer experiences and drive business growth. Listen in as Kaspar and I discuss the evolution of Wondersign's brand, the necessity of diversification, and the exciting future of the RTO industry. Don't miss this captivating episode, packed with knowledge and inspiration for anyone eager to understand the resilience needed to thrive in today’s competitive business landscape.
Hey, welcome to the RTO Show. I'm your host, pete Chow, and today we're going to do something a little different. Now you know that at the RTO Show, every time that we're on, I want to bring you something new, something compelling, always about the RTO industry. Well, today we're doing a head-to-head. I have probably the best comeback story I've heard in a long time, but I'm not going to be the one to tell you. Today. My guest is Casper Fopp. Now he works for Wondersign and Wondersign has been a part of the RTO industry for a few years. But if you haven't heard about it, there's a reason for that. I'm going to let him tell you about it, because they were everywhere and now they might be coming back to see you again. So, before I get into the whole story or anything, we're going to get his background, we're going to see what's going on and we're going to bring you our first RTO show Head to Head.
Speaker 2:How are you doing? Thank you so much, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:So we met very recently through a friend, adam Ball, who you've got to understand the scene, everybody. So we're working at the RTO World 2024. And Adam Ball, who is a friend of the show, comes up and he says listen, I have probably one of the best compelling stories that you've ever heard and you've got to hear it now. And so it was like you know, you never understand what that is. So you just get up, we get up and I met Casper there, which you start telling the story, and immediately I got kind of taken in, because Wondersign is something that I've known through the industry for years and actually it was something that was a staple in almost every single rental home store that I've ever worked in. And guys, I've worked in quite a few stores, and so the thought process was let's find out what's going on. So before we get started, right, you created Wondersign, is that right?
Speaker 2:With help, I mean. Yes, I'm not the technical person, right, so I didn't necessarily create it myself.
Speaker 1:But I definitely birthed the brainchild.
Speaker 2:There you go. So that's what I did. Yes, and it was actually. It was in vegas, um, so it it was. We were invited to vegas market, the furniture market in las vegas, um, and I have to take a couple steps back, can I?
Speaker 1:can? Oh, absolutely. You start from the beginning.
Speaker 2:All right, let's start from the beginning. So we, we were in this weird situation as a company where we said, okay, we're probably two or three months away from closing the door, from shutting the whole thing down because it just doesn't work. We came here. The company was founded in 2002 in Switzerland, in Europe that's where I'm from, hence the accent but we started over there. We got picked up by O2, which is Telefonica, which is the European equivalent to AT&T.
Speaker 1:One of the largest carriers.
Speaker 2:So what they did is they said okay, this is a great tool for our small and medium-sized businesses. They have a lot of bakeries that use them. They used our platform to basically distribute content onto little touchscreens in bakeries, for example, because they have a lot of like legislative requirements to show you know calories, ingredients, allergens, that kind of stuff, so they used it for that.
Speaker 2:So they were like this is amazing, this is good because it's easy to use, right? So one journalist over in Europe I still remember that he called us the iPhone of digital signage because it was so simple. That's a pretty, that's a pretty heavy monitor, right there. I mean I can't claim, I mean I can't take credit for that. But so he basically said, okay, the ease of use is what really compelled them, so you can drag and drop content into a playlist and then it shows up on a screen that is hundreds of miles away, right? So that's the premise of the platform, and we came over here all guns blazing. We were very ambitious and very optimistic and probably not very realistic when it comes to the American market, but we thought we can replicate the success we had in Europe here on a much larger scale.
Speaker 1:Is there a real big difference between the two markets, like when you're saying Europe and here, based on what happens, the way business is transacted, it's enough to say, wow, there's a huge difference between one and the next.
Speaker 2:It's very different because here in the US you have a somewhat homogenous market. You have 300 million people that speak one or, let's say, two languages. Right? With two languages, you can reach everybody.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Where I grew up. I drove 25 minutes and I was in Germany. Completely different country, different language different mentality, different approach to life. You have to approach them differently. You cannot use the same words because they might be offensive or they might be, you know, not fitting for the culture.
Speaker 2:So it's so fragmented and it's not this huge big pool of 300 million people and they're all potential consumers of what you, what you have to offer, absolutely. So you have to compartmentalize and then you have to shape it for each market individually and that's just it's. It's a lot of money that you have to spend in order to reach the same amount of people. So, long story short, came over here kind of blind to what the requirements are here in the US, and said, yeah, let's just do the same thing, let's just find whatever AT&T, verizon have them, basically push the SIM cards, because that was the play right. They wanted to push SIM cards and data plans and used us as a vehicle for this, and we failed miserably. Miserably because we didn't. Here's what we didn't understand we didn't understand that we need to target each vertical separately. You can't just go out and say, oh, it's for everybody, anybody can use this, right? Are you a retailer? You can use this, right? That doesn't resonate.
Speaker 2:So that was mistake number one. And then mistake number two was that we were focusing on some of the wrong target audience, the wrong customers. So we went to a trade show. We landed Kaiser Permanente. Kaiser Permanente is a big healthcare chain on the West Coast. They have hospitals in California and Colorado. They used us as their waiting room infotainment system. Did this connection happen in Vegas? That happened in. That was a market, that was before right, so that was. I'm still not even oh we're not even there yet.
Speaker 1:No, no, okay, we haven't even touched furniture. All right, do you have a few hours, as much time as you like.
Speaker 2:So we were at this trade show. We ended up with Casa Permanente, which is a big name. That's a good logo to have um and we ended up with a google partnership. So we started developing for the chrome operating system, which was then later used right for the furniture kiosks, right. So that was good, it was positive, it was a good, it was a good trade show.
Speaker 2:But the problem was we started getting pigeonholed into this um waiting room infotainment system and it was a very demanding client because it was a big corporation and they're used to just demanding things. So all our development effort basically went into this particular instance. And then there's a lot of technical problems that come with this. So we were stuck and we didn't get the growth that we were looking for. So we had a very honest and transparent conversation, because my visa at the time was dependent on the business. Oh, wow, right. So I had a year. It was a non-immigrant work visa through the company. I had one year After 12 months. It's goodbye, you have to go back to Europe if you're not succeeding. So for me, everything was on the line and a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of like anguish. What am I going to do? I need to do something. So we were, and I think in hindsight this was perfect. We were so desperate that we would do anything.
Speaker 1:And that's what happened. Is it necessities of mother of all invention? Right, I mean it without, without that stress of where do I come from and how do I tackle it. We don't come around and think of the extras that we need to pursue that perfection.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, and every time I think back to moments in my life that shaped me or helped me grow, it was always adversity. For example, I lost my dad very young. I was 19 when he died. That was in hindsight it sounds weird the best thing that could have happened. I was on the wrong path. I was basically becoming an alcoholic, I was working in bars and all this kind of stuff and really on the wrong path, very much on the wrong path. That ripped me out of that, forced me because my mom didn't have access to the bank accounts and it was a legal issue. And then I had to pay the mortgage. I ended up as a 19 year old paying her mortgage right Because she didn't have, there was no money.
Speaker 1:Well, first off, I'm sorry to hear that, thank you, but you know, it speaks volumes to the person that you are, because adversity can make or break people.
Speaker 2:It can't.
Speaker 1:And it almost, it almost sheds the outer shell and you find out okay, are we going to get this done or are we going to let it beat us out? Okay, are we going to get this done or are we going to let it beat us? And when you have that mindset kind of puts you in the position where you are right now to be the CEO of Wondersign, because you see the adversity and you tackle it. So you start taking care of of home Like it's, like it's your own.
Speaker 2:I had to.
Speaker 1:I was forced to.
Speaker 2:So at that point in time, yeah, to me again, that's in. Obviously, back then it was horrible, but in hindsight it was a huge, it's a huge opportunity. Every time I grew it was because of something negative that happened, and I don't want the negative to happen, but at the end of the day you have to embrace it and then you'll. It helps you grow. So the adversity here was crap. I don't want to go back, right, I want to be here, right, I mean I always. The first time I came to the us I was 21 and I came here through um, my, my job, I got into public relations and then one of our biggest customers was microsoft, their xbox division.
Speaker 2:okay, so they flew us to la, to e3, which is the biggest trade show gaming yes, beautiful moments right, it moments right. It was amazing. So they had us fly to E3 and then facilitate all those interviews and help with the launches, and we did like the Gears of War 3 launch and Halo.
Speaker 1:Get out of here. Listen, you're speaking to my history now. Okay, I'm going back a little bit, a little bit outside RTO, but I mean, that was our thing back then. Gears of War was like you know, that was the. Thing it was a huge launch and, and, and you know cliffy b and all the guys and we were all in tune into that.
Speaker 2:So so my, that's, that's a lot. My favorite memory of that gears of war 3 launch that was I wasn't 21 then. That was later, but that favorite moment there was the interview with ice tea, because ice tea is a voice actor in gears of war.
Speaker 1:Yes, right, yes, so the interview with ice tea, because ice tea is a voice actor gives a worthwhile, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, so the interview with ice tea, and then we ended up drinking at the bar and and having a good time wow uh, he's such a nice person. He's down to earth, he's such a good person I wish I knew him more, like you did.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, but I mean what I've seen and the things I've heard about him and he just seems very down to earth. He doesn't allow his successes to change how he treats people and how he interacts.
Speaker 2:And you will appreciate this as an interviewer he's interested in the person. It wasn't a transactional situation. He didn't care. He's like yeah, I know we're here for Gears of War and I know we're here for Microsoft and they pay the bill and you know, pick up the tab, I don't care. So he sat down and I I, before I get the first question out he's like so where do you come from? Like, what do you do? Like who are you.
Speaker 2:Wow, right. And then we started talking and they kind of kind of hit it off somehow and it was just it was such a good, such a good conversation. But anyway, I digress, I'm sorry, um, so we were in, in, um, in this predicament that we're saying, okay, what are we going to do? So we seriously had conversations Andy, the previous owner and CEO of Wondersign, and myself because it was just the two of us here in the US, here in Tampa, in a little shared office space, a REACHES office, you know those rental offices that you can have.
Speaker 1:Well, now you're in Kennedy, right? Yeah, just so everybody knows, we are actually in Tampa right now, off of Highway 60, or Adam O'Drive, however you want to call it. So he's actually in town next to us and I didn't even know that, which was crazy, because we met somewhere else. And then we come here and it's nice to know that we're all back in Tampa, back at home, absolutely, absolutely. So I just want to throw that out.
Speaker 2:so everybody knows Absolutely. So the conversation back then was okay. He told me he's like I looked into firehouse ups franchises, I looked into a couple other franchise models. That might be the saving grace. But then what that means is you have to go back right Because the visa is purpose bound.
Speaker 2:It's very directional, oh absolutely you come here and then you submit what are you going to do like? What is? What is the? The desired outcome? Why are you here? Right, and the the why are you here? That that rings in my in my ears? Because later, a couple years later, when I turned by, I switched the visa to an immigrant visa and then to apply for the green card you have to go back.
Speaker 2:You have to go back to the country where you came from and then there's a final interview with a visa officer over there oh, wow, so I went to the american embassy in switzerland and had the interview with him and and it was all very much uh, and right before this interview we talked about government and you know that kind of stuff it was very um, structured and and yeah, let's look at this form and that form. And then at some point he looks up and he looks me straight into my soul. I felt like, and he said Mr Faub, what are you going to do in the US?
Speaker 1:So this is getting serious. Now he's down to brass tacks.
Speaker 2:I was completely unprepared and I'm like, sir, I'm going to create 40 American jobs. I have no idea how, I have no idea when, but I will do that. And he's like, can I hold you to that? And I said, absolutely, sir, you can hold me to that. It took us a few years, but we got there.
Speaker 1:But that's taken care of.
Speaker 2:Good that's great, but I fulfilled the promise right. So I feel like, personally, I feel like I earned my stay.
Speaker 2:I'm allowed to stay here, I'm allowed to be here, besides paying taxes since day one, but that's a separate story. Death and taxes as an American citizen, one the most important question you need to ask yourself is do you want to be under the jurisdiction of the IRS for the remainder of your life? Because once you're an American citizen, no matter where you are on the planet that follows you, you're taxable. Yes, right, you have to pay taxes to the IRS and, as a you're as a Swiss, I'm a dual citizen. Now, I'm a Swiss and an American citizen. As a Swiss citizen, swiss government doesn't care. It's like you're not here, you're not using any of our services, goodbye, right, we don't charge you. So that's something that's unique, but anyway, so we're in this situation.
Speaker 2:We have prepaid for a marketing show and it was almost like a matchmaking, like a speed dating situation. So you pay a lot of money so that you, as a vendor, you can go and meet these big corporations, and we signed up for it. It was $25,000 a ticket. That was our last money, basically that we had, and we said well, we have to, because we're not getting a refund, we have to go. Might as well go with and make the best of it, and one of the companies that was on that roster was ashley furniture and it was the vp of marketing for ashley furniture there we go was at that was at that show and he met with andy, sat down with him.
Speaker 1:Each vendor gets 30 minutes with um, with that company, and then it's kind of like so you were literally speed dating, like so you're pitching, you're pitching brand and what's going on and what you have to offer, and then they go to the next person.
Speaker 2:Yes, and it's a double opt-in so you wouldn't be paired with somebody who says that's the dumbest thing on the planet, I don't need any of this. So they have some sort of interest. So Cole must have checked the box and said I want to hear what these Wondersign people have to offer and you give them a little elevator pitch. Same thing I did with you in Orlando. I said, hey, in 30 seconds, here's what's going on. So, yeah, he sat down with us and then, after those 30 minutes, cole gets up and he walks over to the organizers of the event and he's like my next meeting, cancel that and give me 30 minutes to sit back down with Andy. Oh, wow. He was so enamored with this idea Because from his perspective and that's something I never understood until later From his perspective, the most enticing aspect of what we had to offer was that he, as a brand, as a manufacturer, would be able to control content that goes onto those TV screens, in the vignettes, in the showrooms.
Speaker 2:Every showroom has and I mean I don't know, like 10, 15, 15 years ago it was those fake TVs, you know, the plastic TVs that are on the media center. Then they turn into real TVs because TVs became so cheap, right, you could just have go to Best Buy and get a couple TVs and put them in there. So that's exactly what happened. So then, at that point in time, our pitch was to say instead of having I don't know ESPN or Fox News on it, or use a flash drive with your own stuff, you can remotely control what goes on. So, if you have 50 locations, you can from Europe, I mean from the Bahamas. Basically, you can drag and drop, remember?
Speaker 2:the iPhone of digital signage Right. You can drag and drop your videos in there.
Speaker 1:That's cutting Well, I mean, we're talking about the time Seriously cutting edge, especially for a company that has so much to offer. There's a lot of product and there's a lot of product diversity, depending on what company you're talking about, whether it be rent to own, whether it be actually retail. Because you know, and the crazy thing is, I mean, ashley has their own sales floors and then they support quite a bit of rent to own as well. And I couldn't, I couldn't possibly tell you any rent to own dealer that I know of that doesn't or hasn't used Ashley furniture, right, and I've actually seen them almost within the same square mile. Oh, absolutely Right. So here, in being very close to Brandon, I mean, we have one right down the street on 75 and and highway 60. And then you have other buddies, locations, you have ranking locations, you have happy locations that are, and we all sell that furniture.
Speaker 1:But to be able to diverse what you put on those screens for whoever's using them, that's huge, especially when you're talking about dialing into the minute. You know, hey, this is something that we need to change and we can do it immediately for that particular company or whatever they're selling, whatever product that they're pushing, because with their lineup. It's so huge that you can almost have a selection and you can have a selection. They don't, they won't intertwine, right, that's great. I mean, that's you're, you're. You're talking about putting something at a time frame that wasn't even close to thought of.
Speaker 2:So that was in 2014 and and um, you just had the same reaction that cole had, because cole all kinds of lights I'm sorry, all kinds of lights went off right for him and he said wait a second, we could do this. We could do that.
Speaker 2:You, we can have assembly videos on it to, you know, take the edge away. People are, you know, anxious. Can I build this myself? Whatever else for RTA furniture, the small footprint stuff. He was very much ahead of his time and that really led to him basically saying at the end of this why don't you guys come to Vegas market? I'll invite you and I'll make you a vendor on our floor and we had no idea what that meant right, I mean you hadn't been to Vegas market before that?
Speaker 1:No, I had no idea about the furniture industry. So two years ago I went to the Vegas market. It blew my mind how big it was.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, uh, at the time, well, when I went, it was a three buildings and we were talking about 14, 18 floors of nothing but furniture. I mean, you're talking about showrooms that are huge, professional, well-built, and everybody's dying for a little bit of your attention, and it was amazing. I mean, lunchtime was probably the best time because you can go to any one of them and they all had something to attract you and you know free drinks and free food and come sit down, and as you're sitting there, you know free drinks and free food. And come sit down and as you're sitting there, you know they're talking on their tablets. Like what are you looking at? You know it was. It was like it was probably one of the most mind-blowing situations I've had in vegas. I've gone to vegas for other reasons, but that was amazing. So if you hadn't seen that, I can only imagine how it was to not only be there but be a part of it as well. I mean.
Speaker 2:To us it was completely exactly like you just described, right? Yeah came in from outside. We had no idea, we didn't really understand that the dynamic of ashley, you know, being the largest manufacturer, having this huge sales force, but also having ashley's retail arm, the home stores, and and how it all intertwined. And how did the marketing specialists they call the reps marketing specialists how they um, what role they play and it's more than just a rep you know, there's so much more that goes into this so yes to your point.
Speaker 2:We had no idea what we were getting into. And he's like bring as much stuff as you can, but also bring your catacord swiper, because you're going to probably walk away with hundreds of thousands of dollars in your in your pocketbook. Be sure to be ready to execute, because we can make or break companies and we have broken companies before. If we bring something and it's a good offer, but they can't execute, that's almost worse.
Speaker 1:Right, it's worse. So we have something that's great and everybody wants it, but we can't support that. You can't execute right.
Speaker 2:so that's, that's the worst. So we were nervous but excited and we're like, okay, this is the greatest thing on the planet. So we brought pretty much whatever we again we, we spent the last money we had, brought whatever we could, and nobody understood what the heck we were doing.
Speaker 1:So he was way ahead of his time. So he he was he was.
Speaker 2:He was thinking, forward thinking and everybody was still kind of way trying to figure it out. He was probably five or six years ahead of his time. So at that point in time I'm sitting there and in this mini booth and this table booth set up and everybody that comes by, there's a lot of traffic, there's a lot of people coming by, right then in the back thousands that was obviously.
Speaker 2:That was the probably the peak, or maybe a couple of years before the peak. Everybody you talk to nowadays says, yeah, that was kind of like that was right there.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, it was a great time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was an amazing time Sometimes you're like this on the showroom, you know you have no room to walk and you have. There's a line for the men's bathroom and that's usually an indicator there was a line on every elevator, every, and they had like six elevators.
Speaker 1:There was a line for the escalator that went up and then, at when I went, actually had three floors. So they had, like you know, case goods and then they had a furniture and then they had you know the difference ones, whether it was, uh, bled out because there was so much of it, or they had the outdoor furniture or whatever. So it was three separate floors and so some of the Ashley reps that I know, you know it was funny because I could see one on one floor and then I would see another one on another floor and then they had, you know, one area was complete bedding and you know the bedding section was huge, and so you know, to even be invited to that, I mean that's great. I mean he definitely saw what Wondersign can do for Ashley. But now you're getting me kind of worried because I know that I saw Wondersign everywhere and that sounds like it didn't happen just then. But you're on the cusp of it because Ashley is a huge company. I mean they are great to the rental industry.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and we're almost there. We're maybe a day away from it now at this point.
Speaker 1:So and we're almost there. We're maybe a day away from it now, at this point right.
Speaker 2:So we're getting close to the end of the market and I'm getting very nervous and I called andy and he came in later, or he was planning on coming in later, and then he's like well then I'm not even going, I'm not spending money to fly out there from tampa. Um, that makes no sense. If this is really another dot, this is again. We were kind of deflated a little bit, so one of those marketing specialists, one of the reps, walks up to us and is at the booth and he's playing around with we had a little ipad in an enclosure and we were showcasing the app and and that's I forgot to tell you, but that's part of what our program did. It turned anything that is interactive into a touch application on a touchscreen. Okay, so you could, even with very basic html knowledge, you know you could build something offline distributed to that touch application, to that touch device, and then it turns into a touch app so you can build your own app technically now in 2014, that's huge absolutely so.
Speaker 2:He's playing around on this device and then he comes up to me and he says does this mean that we can put the entire Ashley Furniture product catalog on a touchscreen like this? And I'm like opportunity.
Speaker 1:Opportunity, there you go.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, Of course. That's what that means.
Speaker 1:The thousands and thousands of SKUs that you have are now at the touch of a button. I had no idea about that.
Speaker 2:I had no idea about distribution control and how tight Ashley is on distribution control. So you could have a store and there's a store across the street. You have not the same SKU lineup, correct? The pricing is different because you might be part of a different buying group If you have special pricing through Trib. The other guy doesn't. I mean there's so many intricacies so long. The other guy doesn't. I mean correct, there's so many intricacies, so long.
Speaker 2:Story short, he's like let me talk to some people. So he left and then he came back with a group of people and one of the people in that group and back then I had no idea who that was was carrie liebensberger, back then the president of ashley, right? So carrie comes up and carrie's like so you're saying this can be your catalog. And I said yes, of Anything, whatever you want, just keep me in the country. Um, and then, and then at that point in time, um, he, he said okay, um, cole, um, I want him, I want him in the bullpens. And then Cole comes to me and he says okay, so tomorrow morning, seven, 30, you're going to be up on stage in front of the marketing specialist.
Speaker 1:Just in case you weren't aware, tomorrow you have a meeting. Yes.
Speaker 2:So, just in case. And then I'm like, oh okay, so what am I presenting? And he's like the digital product catalog for Ashley Furniture and I said, okay, cool. So called Andy on the way to the hotel and said I think we have a problem, it's good.
Speaker 1:Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 2:It's a great problem.
Speaker 1:Don't be alarmed.
Speaker 2:It's an amazing problem, but we need to execute now. So I went back, I put it together in PowerPoint. That's what I had right at that point in time. I'm not. I'm not a programmer.
Speaker 1:No, it makes sense. I mean it makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it makes sense. So I put it together in PowerPoint, I made it look good and later, much later, I heard from marketing specialists that then I befriended, we became friends, we talked more openly and they were like well, the really enticing pitch wasn't what you demonstrated on stage. That was kind of confusing. To be honest with you, people didn't really understand what you were doing right. To be honest with you, people didn't really understand what you were doing right. The pitch was beforehand because Carrie came to us and said do you like having boxes and boxes of paper catalog pages shipped to you every week and you have to load it into the trunk of your car?
Speaker 1:and drive to every single store that you go on. I forgot about that.
Speaker 2:And you have to exchange the pages.
Speaker 1:Yes, Now that you mention it, because you have to exchange the pages. Yes, I, for, now that you mentioned it, because you're bringing that back, because, yes, I forgot that that had preceded wonder sign. Yes, they would send us all these these lists and sometimes they would even get outdated because people just it would just took too long and it was so much, and every single page was like this nice wax page, it was like that, that it was great magazine type, but I mean, you're talking about we had three or four books that weighed 20 pounds because it was just that much. So our job, or your job, wonder sign, was to eliminate this, make it immediate and put it somewhere where somebody can access it right away and again, that's what I'm saying in hindsight.
Speaker 2:You always have these insights in hindsight. It's clear to me the target audience immediately was the marketing specialist. It wasn't the retailer. That didn't even hit the retailer. Yet the marketing specialist was the person to say oh my gosh, this is going to make my life so much easier, right, if I don't have to haul around catalog pages and they're obsolete the moment they roll off the printing press.
Speaker 2:They're basically outdated, like you said and then if it's something nice, then the consumers rip it out. It's just, it's not a good experience and you're not able to sell. And there's not price. There's no inventory information on it, we have it in real time and it can be fully priced with the dealer's refill.
Speaker 1:Well, the great thing about that, too, is if you have an immediate change in your lineup or you all of a sudden you want to cut that line out and you know you're putting it on a discount and you got six weeks of product left, you can immediately go in there and say, hey, this is now discounted 15, 20, I have this money in this particular warehouse. Order it or don't order it. But you know you can save right now because it will be gone on paper. We would be making phone calls and texts and emails and who do we know is going to know the answer to this question. And you know it saved a lot of problems with the customers, truth be told, because I want this and you're like oh, you know what I just found out it's discontinued. I can only get so many love seats, not enough. You know sofas, and so that was. I'm glad that you did that, because you did make it a lot easier for a lot of us.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. So that was the catalyst, that was really what put us on the map. And yeah, I mean Ashley put us on the map right. I had some conversations with other people where this came up and I'm the one to say I have absolutely no problem saying this Ashley put us on the map period right. I mean, it was such a blessing to have such a huge company see something in us and then give us the opportunity to go there present this. And, yes, then it took off. So it took our engineering team about a year to really build something that was functional, that worked. And again I was the one saying, yeah, no problem, you can do this right, I'm not just to be lynched by our IT team that actually the engineers have to build it. They ran into all kinds of issues. It was, I mean, in the beginning it was a cluster, it was a little bit.
Speaker 1:It was a difficult situation.
Speaker 2:Oh, very much. So what really helped us and I think that's something that the marketing specialist helped us too the moment we started visualizing their data, because their data back then wasn't that clean, it wasn't that great right, and that's no secret.
Speaker 1:Well, they're still printing it out on paper, so they didn't have a reason to go to that digital sense yet.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and on paper I mean. Anybody with a graphic design background knows you can make stuff look good on paper. It's nicely designed. Their catalog pages were very nicely designed, yes, but the information was lacking in a digital format. So we consumed what we had access to and it wasn't necessarily the greatest. So the moment we started visualizing this on a big 40, 50-inch screen in the middle of their showroom, we had a line First market. We had a line of marketing specialists at the kiosk with their notepads on giving us feedback saying this group is miscategorized.
Speaker 2:This group doesn't look this way. This picture is wrong. This shows a piece that is not even available. This data is wrong. So we took this list and we went back and for the first two years we probably had daily conversations with the data teams in order to make the feed.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean obviously it.
Speaker 2:It matters to be 100 correct on something that is going to be live all the time everywhere everywhere, everywhere, yes, and it's so visual and it's right there, so that's why I tell you advocate, it's not just live here it's live everywhere, so yeah, so I mean it, it's, it's compelling to hear, but this is, and I would be very daunting.
Speaker 1:But then cue the adversity right.
Speaker 2:That's how you get, that's how you you use that to to overcome yeah, I mean I, if we had let's say we had a a good business, a lot of stuff going on, we probably would have said, nah, we don't want to like invest all this money. I mean it was, it was like the whole thing, the whole. The whole expense was probably about $70,000 to go to Vegas, bring all the stuff. We had a crate built, a wooden crate. We had it shipped on a truck with all the equipment.
Speaker 2:I mean we brought equipment galore. We probably wouldn't have done that.
Speaker 2:We probably would have said oh it's another opportunity, but said, oh, it's another opportunity, but it's okay. We probably would have said no to that and again I'm so thankful. We were so desperate back then and needing to do this. So anyway, we're here, we're doing this and then as soon as we started placing this in the first locations because it was just Ashley Ashley felt a huge bump right. So the first few locations that rolled this out it was the first seven stores Ashley had a three to 500% sales lift.
Speaker 1:Wow, now, when you say the first seven stores, were they only Ashley stores?
Speaker 2:No, they were regular retailers that carried all the brands, but they also carried Ashley. Ashley was either, you know, a large portion of their floor or maybe just some portion, but the numbers were so outrageous because you have kiosk compared to no kiosk, right. And then people come in. You know it, you've seen it, consumers gravitate towards this. They're like, oh, this is cool, this is big and shiny, what is this? What can I do here?
Speaker 1:I mean, look, there's nothing like a screen to just pull somebody in, Whatever content it is. There's nothing like a screen to pull somebody in and go, what is this? And then they can play with it Absolutely. I mean, they love the player, no-transcript. And now everybody's interested in this. So Ashley's putting out the wonder sign as brand new content compared to other retailers. Well, the retailer, but the people who are selling against you. It could be coaster, it could be any type of furniture. They don't have this and so they're taking home the bacon on this.
Speaker 2:They're making huge, huge strides. Massive advantage, which is seven stores, massive advantage. So that was the moment when they invited us up to Arcadia, wisconsin.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Where Ashley was headquartered or is still headquartered. They have a big office in Tampa now, but back then it was all Arcadia and we were actually on stage in Arcadia in front of thousands of people, yes, and really demonstrating the future of catalogs and how this revolutionizes furniture buying and all that kind of stuff. So that was. It was explosive. And after that, if you look at the numbers, hockey stick growth right, that's what every SaaS company is looking for is the hockey stick, the hockey stick growth.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely when it takes off and it just. I mean we were, we had at some point 5,000 accounts using.
Speaker 1:Now, when you say accounts, are these separate locations under? No, that's the retailer.
Speaker 2:And when you say accounts, are these separate locations? No, that's the retailer. So it could be the name of the retailer.
Speaker 1:So 5,000 accounts could be 15,000 stores.
Speaker 2:I think it was like 15,000, 16,000 locations.
Speaker 1:Right. Wow, Huge, huge jump from like hey I don't know what's going on in Vegas to. I've got somebody who I'm literally 15,000, 16,000 different locations.
Speaker 2:Two guys somewhere in a rented office here, you know, in downtown to. We have to hire customer service. We have to build up a customer service department. We have to build a call center. Never done that, so we're building WonderSign from the ground up literally no it was just the two of us.
Speaker 1:So Ashley comes in and they literally figure out that this is probably the bread and butter that we need to move into. This is a great mindset. Where does Rent to Own pick up on that? Okay?
Speaker 2:So thank you for getting us back on track. It's, after all, called the RTO show, not the retail store show. So the first person to really help me out I got help from a vendor at the show because she felt like I was completely lost, I guess, and her name was-. Which show are we talking about? The Vegas Market.
Speaker 1:So we're going back to Vegas Market.
Speaker 2:I was there. Her name was Erica Sparrow, or still is. She's now the VP of marketing at Ashley. Back then she was with a vendor, a website company, but she felt bad for me. I was completely lost. I didn't know what to do. I had puppy eyes probably, and I don't know. She took me under her wing, help me, help me, so, um, that really, I mean, that was, that was very nice and she really, you know, showed me the ropes and what's going on.
Speaker 2:The other person there was, a second person that helped me, was gary jones and gary jones was the vp of rental accounts at ashley furniture, okay, and gary uh, gary was looking at me because I was. That was the saturday morning and I was scheduled to speak at 7 30 in front of those marketing specialists and I had no idea where to go. And he's like you look lost and and why are you here? It's like you look lost and why are you here.
Speaker 1:It's like who are you?
Speaker 2:It's 6.50 in the morning, why are you here? And I explained it to him and he said oh OK, all right, Let me show you where to go. And then we went to, like you said, those floors, Because we had one meeting was downstairs on the 14th, the other one was on the 15th Right. And as we were walking and I said thank you so much for doing this for me. I appreciate you, and I said so, what do you do at Ashton? He's like I'm the VP of RTO accounts. I said, oh cool.
Speaker 1:What is RTO? What are we talking about? What's RTO?
Speaker 2:What is that? And he explained it to me and I'm like that's a wild concept. Okay, but I get it because, coming from Europe, rto doesn't exist in Europe, right? Oh, really Not to this extent. I mean, now you have a lot of like dollar store equivalents that have overstocks or maybe damaged merchandise from fires or whatever else that is being pushed out for underprivileged people, but RTO as a system does not exist. That doesn't exist.
Speaker 1:Casper, are you saying that we need to go to europe? Are we in the wrong? Are we in the wrong country right now? Do we? Do we need to expand?
Speaker 2:listen, if you want to if you want to write off a europe trip as a, uh, as a, as a as a business as a as a business expense, because you're doing market research, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Um, no, I mean, the legislation is completely different. I mean the, the consumer protection laws are so much more strict. Yeah, right, so gdpr is a online consumer protection law that came from from europe. Um, I mean, you can't even. There's a lot of stuff that you can't do now. You have some buy now, pay later, schemes that are that are, um, obviously, with the economy not going so well, uh, the latest numbers from germany are a little alarming, right, so they are, yes, they're just dropped by two and a half percent.
Speaker 1:It's different reasons, but still that and if I drive 25 miles, I'm gonna end up in saint pete, not necessarily in another country so when we're talking about, I mean the size of florida, and not that Florida is huge, but I think it's the third or fourth or maybe the fourth or fifth excuse me largest state in the United States. That might encompass a few different countries, so it would very well be different in every area. So it might not be the idea that I would love to do.
Speaker 2:If you go from Tallahassee to Tampa, to Miami, you would be in Germany, Switzerland and Italy at the same time.
Speaker 1:Wow, yes, so that's the scale, that's the equivalent.
Speaker 2:So at that point in time I didn't really have an understanding of what RTO meant and what that is. And then later that was a year and a probably later Gary Jones came back to me and he's like hey, this kiosk of yours, could we use this in rental? And I said, I don't know. You tell me. I mean, what do you need? And he said, well, we need weekly rates, bi-weekly rates, semi-monthly rates, monthly rates. And then we need to display total cost of ownership, but only in certain jurisdictions. And then we need to cost of lease services ownership, but only in certain jurisdictions. And then we need to cost of lease services, but only in certain jurisdictions. And then we have certain states that can only display this. And then you have the same as cash price, but in some cases we can't say same as cash. And I was writing down like a maniac and I'm like, well, okay, it sounds kind of complex, but I think we can do it.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say is this where catherine goes? I think we got, yeah, I think we got this. Of course we're back to that. We're back to 0.
Speaker 2:It's like oh yeah, no problem. No, I I learned my lesson. I wasn't like this negligent, but um, at this point I'm like I think this is doable because we have a pricing engine that we built into the platform. You can set the pricing, you can automate this to a degree. This is just an additional step of math right, you just need to divide it by the term, by the number of weeks, right? So if you have whatever 78 weeks, then you want to divide the number by that.
Speaker 2:So it took us, I think, about two months to build it into the platform and test it and make sure it QA and it works quality assurance and we went to him and it was Gary Ferryman I think Gary was the president of april at that time. He might have been.
Speaker 1:Yes, and gary was like I love gary. Gary, if you're watching, we're a big fan absolutely, and it's.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you, there's something and we'll get to that. We'll get. I don't want to take away from this, but the. There's something unique about the rto industry when it comes to those iconic figures.
Speaker 1:Yes, and Gary is one of them.
Speaker 2:He is Right, he is, so he's one of them. So he was the one, and it was at a I think it was at a primetime show. He was there. Gary Jones brought him in and said hey, gary, you need to come check this out. And then Gary was like well, let me see, young man, what you have here, what's going on? It takes a lot to impress Gary just so you know.
Speaker 2:He's like we are sometimes mandated to display the total cost of ownership. I said, click here. Sometimes the cost of lease services has to be broken out. Click here so, because Gary gave me all the information. We had it all built in. So at the end of the presentation gary sits there and he looks at me and he goes. You really thought of everything yeah and I said yeah, we have yeah and that kick-started our journey in rto.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean cue the entireness of wondersign being. And there was there was a time when I couldn't think of a rental owned dealer that didn't have a wondersign by their counter or in somewhere in their showroom where it would literally pull people to. And sometimes there was one of the stores that I was in we had to, like, put seating around it because they would stand there so long they would be like you got some, you know what, I'll get you your own seats. So we had seating around. They would just sit there and sit there and sit there and before you know it, they had a list of everything that they wanted. They already knew what it was going to cost. They kind of knew okay, this matches this and this is a good set with that. And you know what? I've tried it with these lamps. I've tried it with these lamps. I think this is going to work. This is what it looks.
Speaker 1:Not only that is that you know. You could tell right away can we get it quick? Can we get it? You know whatever? And the customer knew right away it was. There was no like long-term. Hey, I'm flipping these pages and wait a minute. I got this page, not that page, and hold on, this one's coming out because somebody's liked it so much that they pulled it out and it was great and it was everywhere. But the key word in that is was yes, and because you.
Speaker 2:This triggered a memory that one of the most powerful feedbacks that I've received from it, from a dealer, was a guy in the northeast, a territory where people hackle all the time, and he was on an rto operator. He was a retailer, but he said the crazy thing about your product is people stop hackling. And I said do you know what it is? And he's like no, I have no idea, I don't know why it is. And I said because the price is displayed on the system 100%. How many times have you called Jeff Bezos last week and negotiated a price on Amazon for something?
Speaker 1:Never, that does not happen.
Speaker 2:No, it doesn't happen, because you assume this is the best possible price, this is what it costs, this is what it costs, this is advertised this way and you say, okay, I'm making a decision to either buy or not buy.
Speaker 1:Right Simple.
Speaker 2:And I said so what was your process before the kiosk? And he said well, we had to go in the back room, do the calculation on the calculator, write it down on a piece of paper and come back out. And I said, if I was the consumer in your store, no offense, but I would think that's sketchy.
Speaker 1:I would think the same thing. Well, honestly, what do you think? You think that somebody goes in there and goes let's give them the bottom deal price, because they're going to accept that first, no question. And then they're going to leave and the thought process is no matter what you're selling or who you're selling it, you walk out into that situation and if somebody has that air about negotiation, guess what You're going to negotiate. Right, that's just the way it is.
Speaker 1:But when you put a dollar amount, like you said, almost on a screen, you're advertising this. You don't want to advertise a high price, because then what does somebody else do? Wow, they're getting some serious margins on that. I can undercut them by 5%, put it on my advertising and it looks great, right? So it's like, if you're going to put it out there and it's not going to be one of those haggle prices, then it's got to be a worthwhile price. It makes complete sense, honestly, and I think that's what made it such a great tool by the counter. And I'm telling you, we used to love it and it was almost that integrated silent salesman If I had somebody incoming taking a payment and somebody that was interested in something. Hey, let me show this to you. I'm going to take care of this situation real quick and I'll be right back.
Speaker 2:listen, this is what it does for you, and before I knew it, they would have an order ready by the time I get back I didn't have to do anything, it was just sold it's a great babysitter and and a good silent salesperson, absolutely, and yes, let's, let's get to the point right, because you did this the second time you had to ask me it was wise, it was we're getting to the climax. So just one step before that, yes, we, we got picked up. We were in back then. It was Renne Center, right Before it was upbound, aarons, lots of smaller regional operators. Now are we talking about 2016, 2017?
Speaker 1:Probably 2018. Because I want to say 2018 wasn't racked right around 3,000 stores.
Speaker 2:Same thing for Aarons somewhere around the 3,000, maybe 25, 27, somewhere in there. We weren't in all those stores, though, so I don't want to misrepresent.
Speaker 1:Even if you got 70%, you're talking thousands of stores.
Speaker 2:I mean, we had a large number of stores, more so on the Aaron side. But the kicker for us was really and let's get to the point, let's get to the point, let's get to the, let's get to the was. I had a meeting as soon as this took off and ashley started running like crazy. Carrie liebensberger sat down with me and he said listen, this is great and we'll support you and we'll put you on the map and my sales force of 655 people is going to run for you. You don't want to hire them yourself and it's taking years to do that, but Ashley is the only vendor on there. Do we have an understanding? And I shook his hand and I said Kerry, we'll keep it Ashley exclusive. And we kept it Ashley exclusive almost to a fault, right q 2017, 2018, maybe and, like I said before, there's these pivotal, iconic people in this industry, absolutely. And here's another one mike tis it oh, we, we did it.
Speaker 1:We mentioned the Tissot effect. It's on here, mike, we love you, but now we're going to bring you into the story.
Speaker 2:So Mike has a part in this. So Mike has. Obviously Mike has our kiosks because Ashley placed them there and helped us place them there and he's using them.
Speaker 1:Now we're talking about rent-to-own countryside rentals in Ohio.
Speaker 2:Correct Countryside had kiosks. Mike cancels his subscription and back then I didn't know how influential Mike was. I had no idea.
Speaker 1:When he did this, did you guys talk about it? Did he just, out of the blue, say I don't want this? He?
Speaker 2:canceled the subscription. I reached out to him and sent him a text message and he sent me a text message back and I appreciate the way he communicates. He's a straight shooter. He's very straight, very direct. I am, he's very straight, very direct maybe some sorry version of a couple others.
Speaker 1:Right, and I said so is that the caveat? Because it wasn't the service itself. It doesn't sound like it's more like the caveat was it's this, but more.
Speaker 2:It's only an Ashley kiosk, right, and the positioning as an Ashley kiosk was really what? Obviously, of course, driven by the marketing specialists. And, if we're being honest, if the marketing specialist goes into the store and sells the tool, then ashley sells the tool. Right, it's being viewed as an ashley tool, correct? Many people the first few years didn't even know who we were. They said what is this? Is this a scam? What, what is WonderSign? They were like we have an Ashley kiosk, but Ashley sold us that.
Speaker 1:You are so on point, because I didn't even know that WonderSign was a WonderSign name. We actually didn't know. One day we had a problem. It was something simple, it was an update or something like that. It wasn't connecting to online or whatever. And we went to reach out and they said, well, you got to call WonderSign. Who, what, who's that? So they tell us to look at the back and I'm like, oh, it does say that we never looked at it before. It was just no need, yeah. And so we called it.
Speaker 1:Of course, it got taken care of right away, but that was the first time that I even knew that the WonderSign was WonderSign, because you're absolutely correct, correct. When they came in it was like, hey, how's the kiosk working? Are you guys finding everything okay? Uh, or if they rolled out an update, hey, just do me a favor, take 5, 10, 15 minutes, whatever it takes, to just double check the math and make sure that we got it in right. You know, the weeks are right, the terms are right, whatever it is, and uh, so like, probably every two weeks we go in and kind of just check several spot, check a couple things and, you know, maybe find something. Okay, we get fixed in 10, 15 minutes, whatever. I had no idea either, so it's. It's one of those things like everybody uses your product and nobody knows your brain nobody knows your brand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so at that point in time, um, I replied, I said, look, mike, um I appreciate your honesty and candor. Um, I get it, I understand and I didn't even try to like fight for the business or anything like this, because there's nothing to be had at that point in time, because he made his decision that it was a done deal.
Speaker 1:Now, when he said that in your mindset, was it because you know that it was just Ashley directly, that it was hard to say?
Speaker 2:there's a reason why you should stay, because you kind of know that I can't counter that argument at that point in time at that point in time I'm like, well, yes, you're right, it's ashley only because I made this handshake, this gentleman's agreement with carrie, and said we're not allowing other vendors on the platform. There's a way, there's a workaround. You can add external websites, but that's not the same. Stuff isn't priced, it's not as fast. Right, you know, it's correct. That's the advantage of having it natively built into the application versus just popping up a website so, casper, is this the first time that you realized that there was that caveat?
Speaker 1:that might mean that much, or had you thought about it beforehand, but it just hadn't gotten there?
Speaker 2:we knew it before, but I think it wasn't really, it wasn't threatening us at that point in time the the way it did. The moment mike sent that text message, that to me, was the wake-up call to say crap, we need, we need to figure something out, we need to do something because this, this is the beginning well, because you mentioned mike, you, you mentioned mike tisson as as being those, one of those figures.
Speaker 1:Right, you got gary fairman, yeah, you've got mike tisson now, who is taking a look at this and going I like, like it. But there's, there is something else going on and I think I'm going to go in that direction. What, and not that it was good, bad or indifferent. But then how soon after Mike made this assumption and this idea, hey, I'm going to head in a different direction. How fast did the cards fall? Fast did the cards fall it's been a while, so I would say based on my memory maybe months.
Speaker 1:Really, it didn't take a year. No, that's no months, that's fast, it was fast.
Speaker 2:So I called gary jones over at ashley and he was. He was kind of get on the way out and then Mike Case took over. Michael Case- yes.
Speaker 1:Great, another Great we're actually trying to get Michael on, so I just want you to know. I love Mike. I love Mike to death.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Mike Case is a heck of a human. He's such a good person and, yeah, mike Case became the strong figure for Ashley, the strong figure for for Ashley and RTO. But Gary Gary Jones was was kind of on the way out and then Gary's Gary was honest with me and he said, yeah, you have a problem, man, you have a problem. You have somebody out there that is that is eating your lunch, actively eating your lunch, and that was Amtab right.
Speaker 1:You know, what's funny is that that is the exact term that we use when we have a store that's in trouble, Like somebody's out there eating your lunch. What are you going to do about that? Yes, so Mike makes a call. A couple months later we realize how drastic that hockey stick turned around, and Amtab is what the difference was between saying wonder sign is where we're at to now we're making this shift.
Speaker 2:So Amtab was Patrick Henley. He's smart, right, he's a smart guy.
Speaker 1:He is.
Speaker 2:So he came in and Patrick said well, here's the limitation that we're hearing from these customers. They say well, we love the system, we like this Absolutely, but we hate the fact that it's just one vendor and it's forcing us to just use one vendor and if we want to showcase something from another vendor we have to jump through hoops or it's not there or it's just complicated, correct, and that was by design. So Patrick goes in and his pitch immediately to all these RTO businesses was that he said all your vendors, right, no limitation, no exclusivity. And if I was him I would have exploited that too. That would have been my angle too. Absolutely, of course, if you have somebody else that's stupid enough to you know, limit themselves to just one vendor, of course.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, it just seems like a series of events, because before Ashley there was a lot of turmoil and not sure you know. You don't know the future or the destination of the boat. You get them on board and they create this ability to not only scale but scale in a huge way, and then that almost becomes the achilles heel, absolutely so. Yeah, so it was a liability right.
Speaker 2:So I went back to carry and it was in high point at another high point furniture market and I remember the conversation. Because I was dreading the conversation, I didn't like it and I sat down with carrie and I said, carrie, I have to be very honest with you, I were in trouble. Um, mike tis had pulled the plug and that kind of set, some sort of domino effect in in play, and the entire rto world now is suddenly switching.
Speaker 2:They're all jumping ship right and everybody I talk to says the same thing. They say it's not necessarily something that's inherently bad with your product. We love it, we like it, but it's just one vendor. It's, it's just one. So at that point in time I said, carrie, I, we cannot continue like this and it's not in your best interest if we go out of business, if we don't have the resources to further develop the platform. That doesn't make any sense, correct? I feel strongly that. I mean there's two possible ways to play this. Either you cut access to the product catalog for other vendors, like amp, and. But I said I don't want you to do that because that's the opposite. The free market capitalism. That's the opposite. The free market capitalism, that's the opposite of what we should be doing. Right, okay, but that would be an opportunity, that would be an option, but please don't do it. And the other option is please allow us to add other brands.
Speaker 2:And Kerry thought about it for a second and he looked at me and he said there's no benefit for me if you're gone.
Speaker 1:You need to do what's best for your business. So this, so you and I think it's a great idea that you had to talk with him, because you said it was based on this gentleman's agreement. So it wasn't really in writing. No, there was no contract. Okay, so it's not a writing and you have this ability, but you're going to bring it to them anyways.
Speaker 2:And, of course, because of all the great opportunities that they they've brought to the situation. We would be nowhere right in this industry if it wasn't for him and ashley right, right, so I owe them, of course. I owe them at least the decency to sit down and say, hey, I'm sorry, we need to make a change, right we?
Speaker 1:have we do version 2.0.
Speaker 2:We need a version 2.0 because right now we're going to die on the vine if we don't make these changes if we don't make these changes, because at the end of the day, yes, of course we can be a catalog for ashley, that's probably a nice little business, but that's not what the company wanted to do. The company needed to grow and at that point in time we cannot grow. You, you know you've reached the limits. At some point in time we cannot grow. You know you've reached the limits. At some point, the territories came back and these marketing specialists said hey, we placed enough of those units, there's nobody left. We have everybody that carries. Ashley has a kiosk.
Speaker 1:Right? Well, I mean just so that everybody understands everybody had a wonder sign. Every store that I went to and I'm not saying everybody in the sense that every single store, but you would see more of those wonder signs out than not, and everybody was an expert At least one person in the store can get to anything you wanted to on that sign in a quickness, and so sometimes we even reference them like hey, why don't you talk to Julie? Hey, why don't you talk to Bob? I mean, he knows that he'd get, just get in there. Boom, boom, boom. And here you go. So we have this rise, this historic rise, where we're nowhere near thought of to in development. To now you have one of the biggest furniture carriers in the country backing you and saying hey, we want to take care of our customers and you have the best way to do it. We show this instrumental growth and then the RTO sector jumps on and then they, almost as fundamentally, come off. So now we don't see as many or any. Honestly, I haven't seen any.
Speaker 2:No, I mean.
Speaker 1:Any wonder signs in the story, and so the reason I say that is because there's a reason why you're here. It's not just a story. I would imagine that this is not just the end of the wonder science story. And then we're, we're done, and you left.
Speaker 2:And that's it. This is the moment when you're deflated. You're sitting in that chair in the movie theater and you maybe go for a little round of popcorn. And you know, this is not over, right, we're going to come back.
Speaker 1:The Phoenix popcorn. And you know this is not over, right, we're gonna come back. The phoenix rises from the ashes. This is the intermission. We're going to the intermission.
Speaker 2:Right, it's so dramatic, there's no ashes here, but it's the phoenix analogy. Might, might not be good, but um, no, so for us. That was the. That was the moment that really did the wake-up call to say, okay, are we a business, is it a viable business idea for maybe this industry and other industries, or are we just an Ashley catalog? Right, and we want to stay that, and that's okay. I mean, there's legitimacy in that too. And at that moment we had the second handshake agreement. I shook his hand again and Kerry said you need to do what's best for your business. But that also meant that the day after I left, kerry was out there looking for a replacement.
Speaker 1:Because he's a good businessman, of course.
Speaker 2:Right, no, because he was. I mean you don't become the president of sales at Ashley Furniture, and I mean he was with Ashley for like 30 years, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Right and he he grew, he helped grow Ashley to the chuggernaut that that they are. He, to a degree, as I understand, coined the term marketing specialist. He was the one that said stop being a rep, Stop acting like a rep. You're more than that Be the marketing specialist Bringing in vendors, that whole concept of endorsing marketing vendors. He basically Kerry, to me is always the Michelin guide. Are you familiar with the story of the Michelin guide?
Speaker 1:and how that came about. So I do know it is one star, two star, three star and they go around, but I actually don't know the inaugural story.
Speaker 2:Michelin is a tire company out of France. Right, why would a tire company print a book that rates restaurants? I've always wondered, but I've never known, because it gets people to drive and there you go, there you go.
Speaker 1:I've always wondered, but I've never known, because it gets people to drive.
Speaker 2:But I, and there you go, there you go, your tire company.
Speaker 1:Because I mean and from what I understand, because I've known people who have discussed it, and it's not easy to get a star, Absolutely Two or three, I mean, you've got to be exquisite and they are few and far between Worth the drive Worth the drive.
Speaker 2:So you're a destination, you become a destination. So this whole concept is would you sit in the car? I'm a foodie. I would sit in my car, my vehicle, for three hours, just to drive to a restaurant, just to find some place good to go other people might think that's, that's lunacy and and it's not worth it for them.
Speaker 2:That's okay. For me it is so. For me, the guide michin or the Michelin guide would absolutely lead to me probably having to replace tires sooner. That whole idea I find it fascinating To me. That's such a fascinating story. Carrie is the same way. Carrie is the one that said don't go in and pitch hard. How many slots you want to get on the floor and how many placements you get. That's the end right. Pitch the way there. Make them more successful, help them with marketing. Bring the website agency to them. Be the one that helps them discover somebody like Esquire Advertising with the unmasked pixel right. Adam was on your show. He talked about this. That's one of those pivotal tools. It's such fascinating technology, that's something that if Ashley, as the vendor, brings that to you as the operator, you're always going back to the Ashley marketing specialist saying what else do you have for me?
Speaker 2:What else you got, like, can you help me with this? Can you help me with that? So you become an advisor to the business versus the rep from a different company that is just concerned about his paycheck and his commission and has commission breath and you smell it and it's like that's not pleasing.
Speaker 1:Well, it's almost like a partnership right absolutely this benefits me and it benefits you. Let's do this together, let's figure this out together.
Speaker 2:Let's market research this together so he's that kind of visionary. So he and again, I'm not mad at him for doing this, because that's what he needed to do he needed to find a replacement, so he, he enabled everybody and their mother to compete with us on the Ashley floor, which is okay. I embrace competition. I love it. I think it's great. It makes us better. Again, I'm a huge proponent of free market capitalism. I think capitalism is the greatest system on the planet.
Speaker 1:Like you said, when you have 300 people, 300 million people, who are a potential customer, it creates a good opportunity.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, and it forces you to be better. That's why I love capitalism. You vote with your dollar, right? So Mike Tissot voted with the dollar. He canceled his subscription. He said I'm not paying you anymore. That was the wake-up call that we needed, right? That's why it works so well. So long story short yes, we're. We still have presence in rto um, but I had a conversation with dennis shields, another, all right, iconic, pivotal you're mentioning a lot of names and if anybody doesn't know, dennis shields helps run a trip, so you're now on the trip board.
Speaker 2:So Danny had a conversation with me and he said listen, dude, you dropped off the face of the earth.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And I said, wow, yeah, I've never looked at it this way, but he's like from the RTO perspective. You need to understand RTO is a family.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's not an industry.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's so tight. Understand RTO is a family, it's not an industry. It's so tight-knit. We're a family. So if you don't show up to the family gathering, if you're not at the turkey dinner, thanksgiving, people at first might think, well, maybe something's wrong. Second, third year, if you're not showing up, they're forgetting about you.
Speaker 1:He's absolutely right, because that's the truth no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Then we went to rto world, um, as a sponsor and as we're a trip, uh, vendor sponsor as well. And then there was a good conversation. We had this banner on our booth that said first-time exhibitor Wondersign. First-time exhibitor. And somebody came up a customer of ours. She came up and she's like what does that mean? First-time exhibitor? Right, right, we have your kiosk since 2015. Right, no, 2016. And I said, well, it's the first time that we as a company are here, because in the past we piggybacked off of Ashley, we were part of the Ashley booth, we had kiosks, we brought kiosks, we set them up, we operated them, we manned them, but we were inside the Ashley realm, correct? So now this is the first time that we're actually there on our own. And she's like oh, that makes sense. Now, I get it, okay, but to me that was the takeaway from that conversation was like, oh crap, yeah, we kind of missed that opportunity. To really again to your point. It was known as the ashley kiosk nobody knew.
Speaker 1:It was wonders it was.
Speaker 2:So we really have to be there and and and make a name. So at that point in said, okay, let's decide now that we're going to be at every meeting of the minds, every trip, every, um, uh, rto world show, we're going to go to the Heartland show in Missouri and, uh, let's see what we can do in order to sponsor, to support, to just be present and show people. We're not gone, in fact, we're back. And we're back with a vengeance right All right.
Speaker 1:Here's a comeback story. Here's the comeback. Here's the comeback story.
Speaker 2:It's not going to be another hour. I'm not going to bore you to death, also because a lot of it is in the future, so I can't really talk too much about it. But what I can tell you is Mike Tissot has been influential in more than one way and he doesn't even know. I guess he knows now. I'm sure he listens.
Speaker 2:He will know now, he will know now Shout out to Mike what's absolutely fantastic about Mike. There's multiple things that are great about Mike Tissot, but what's great about Mike is that he is a stickler when it comes to KPIs and metrics. That is really what he focuses on.
Speaker 1:You know, what's funny is in an RTO world, it's. One of the things that he was talking about was the KPIs, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:And he forces operators to think about things like this. You know where operators sometimes maybe don't look at a KPI like this or a metric, or it's not that important to them or they didn't even think about it. And he says, no, you need to understand how can you improve something if you don't measure it right? You need to measure all these, all these things. So one of the aspects when it comes to data and measuring KPIs when it comes to our product is compared to what you're doing on a website. Everybody I guarantee you everybody in your audience has Google Analytics or uses some sort of analytics tool when it comes to the website traffic and you get signals from that. But you also get a lot of noise, a lot of white noise, a lot of noise. You have stores in, let's say, you have stores in Tampa. If you have people from maryland on your website, chances are they're never gonna sign an agreement with you. They never said not anytime soon.
Speaker 2:Not anytime soon unless they they get ahead of a move down here or something, but for the most part you have people. They cross shop you. Maybe they come in directly on a product page because they're cross shopping and a darcy sofa from Ashley, they end up on your website. They will never be customers, that's noise right, Right.
Speaker 2:That's noise that takes away from the signal. So you have to do a really good job online in finding out where do people come from, how do they come to me? Is it a search term? Do they come to the product? Do they come to the home page? And then figure this out. That's tough and there's again, there's a lot of noise that takes away from the signal and sometimes it can be misleading.
Speaker 2:What nobody does is finding out what people search for when they're in your store. Wouldn't it be great if you had a tool that captures searches from people while they're in your store? Wait, isn't there a tool that is in the store that does that? So we started doing this for some of the top 100 retailers in for in the on the retail side in furniture okay and mind-blowing.
Speaker 2:Suddenly the merchants say wait a second, I don't have to use gut feeling anymore in order to merchandise my floor what I think they want, because I think this is selling absolutely.
Speaker 1:You're going after what customers are walking in and saying this is really what I'm looking for. Yes, at some point I'm really looking for this, this. I might look at that and I might look at this, but my initial what brought me through those swinging doors was this.
Speaker 2:So every search, every product discovery, every additional option, variant, every attribute on a kiosk, on a salesperson's tablet, on a computer has to be captured, is captured and then is being presented as actionable data. So if you go and you look into a store in South Florida and it's all white furniture but the number one search term on the color attribute is dark brown, you mis-merchandise your floor.
Speaker 1:You probably should change what you have. Put some brown on the floor, right, right, and see how that sells which sectional shape is the most popular?
Speaker 2:is it l shape? Is it u shape? Is it with the chase? It's always the chase, it's the chase, but it's really let's be honest.
Speaker 1:But so how does this work? So we we have a kiosk from Wondersign. We no longer carry them, or there might be some older versions out there, whatever the case, but it's not the mainstream that it was. Amtab is something that it is a little bit different and correct me if I'm wrong, but Amtab is usually used by the actual companies themselves, the retailers, to purchase the product, the several different products. The difference is that it's not tied to one right.
Speaker 1:You're going to one platform for multiple different vendors, whether it be Ashley or Coaster or whatever the case is, and that's what made it relatable. So what you're saying is that's good and all so go ahead and find a place where you can do a lot of shopping, but what you're shopping for is what wonder sign is now bringing. If you, if you have a place to shop for it, that's great. In other words, if you have the amazon of ordering for the rto industry, great. But the hot sellers? I'm going to tell you what those are. I'm going to tell you what the great things to go after are. How do you do that?
Speaker 2:So I think you mentioned something that's important there's a place for both systems. If you need to submit POs, we don't do that. We have a direct ordering capability that is built into the platform, but there's intricacies when it comes to RTO. It's not as simple as retail where you just say okay, here's the price, it's $500. You want to pay it? Okay, here, apple pay done and you place the order right.
Speaker 2:Right. It's just not that simple. You have to make sure there's an agreement in place and they have to sign the agreement, and maybe you take a down payment or whatever it might be. There's a place for AMP. I'm not here to say, oh, get rid of AMP. Not at all. There's a place for AMP.
Speaker 1:Patrick, we're saying that there's a place for you.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't want to sound arrogant, but it's a good product. The thing is it's not consumer-facing right, and I think that's something that we also had to come to. The realization again is we're experts when it comes to consumer facing information, when it comes to displaying it in a way that it's so intuitive that somebody from the street can walk into a store no training whatsoever. They've never seen it right, they can walk up to it and within two seconds, that's the. That's basically the.
Speaker 1:You know the learning curve they have gone through the learning curve.
Speaker 2:They have to know what to do right it has to be that intuitive right and we spent a lot of time and money and effort and energy into making sure that that is the best possible experience and we keep inventing, reinventing this yes, the consumer facing the exposed interface.
Speaker 2:That is us Right, and that is as far as I understand. Patrick back then thought okay, that's an easy one, we already have the data there, they already use it for ordering and purchasing. That is as far as I understand. Patrick back then thought okay, that's an easy one, we already have the data there, they already use it for ordering and purchasing. Why don't we just expose it on a touchscreen? And I think that was the miscalculation, because it's not that simple. You can't just take data that is meant for the retailer or the operator and just expose it to the consumer and say, okay, here's a bloody mess.
Speaker 1:And navigate it, just learn and navigate. We have these guys. We pay 40 hour, 40 hours a week to learn it, but you learn it in five minutes and we're all good, it only has 40 different fields.
Speaker 2:No, it's. You can't do that. So it we're. Basically, what we're doing is and, and, again.
Speaker 2:I'm, I'm go, I'm speaking in the future a little bit to a degree, but we're developing for any screen, so the phone is becoming a carrier for the app yes the tablet is becoming a carrier, for the app already is, but we're making the tablet app much, much better and it's really about making it so intuitive and simple so that anybody can use it and people start using it, because that's the most important thing. You need sessions. You need to know what they're doing. What they're doing, what they're searching for, what they're looking for.
Speaker 1:It's funny you mentioned it that way because you know I went to the Wondersign website. Kind of look at it and it's pretty simple to get to where you want to go. It's pretty quick to understand something that you want to do and the layers aren't so deep that you're kind of going into multiple menus to get to where you want to do and the layers aren't so deep that you're kind of going into multiple menus to get to where you want to go. And was that the idea in creating the website as well? I'm going to show you how to get it done because it shows all the all the companies that you work with now, not just the rental home company, but of course, the retail companies of course Ashley's still on there and, uh, and it seems very quick, very easy to use. Was that always the idea when you're going forward and saying, hey, being in the customer's space and the fact that they might not understand anything of what's going on but they can digitally maneuver and find and resource whatever they're looking for within clicks?
Speaker 1:and kind of understand how it works, because I can tell you right now and nothing against AmpTime but I know that if I was a consumer directly going there that would create some issue.
Speaker 2:Well, because you're taking information that is not designed for you and you're exposing it to a target audience that shouldn't be exposed to it. That's what I'm saying. It absolutely has its place as an ordering tool and to do your purchase orders, your sales orders, that management or even see inventory from brands, that's okay, but it shouldn't be consumer facing. That information should not be consumer facing, correct. Well, there's a lot. So the number one thing that we're developing right now is something that is called semantic search. Semantic search is how people search today how you search with Amazon Alexa, how you search with your Siri on your phone. You have to use the exact term and then it searches only by title. That was the version one of the application Two. We can search by attributes, we can search by collections, we can search by categories and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Now, but we're still not where I want it to be. So we're saying the difference is SKU number versus black leather sofa with four chairs and nail heads.
Speaker 2:Yes, and now it's like I need something that seats eight people and is great for football Sundays, but I also have pets.
Speaker 1:Right, so dialed in. That was such an AI search right there. It's like, hey, just find this for me, absolutely.
Speaker 2:But it's also disconnected. It's kind of like, well, my mind goes everywhere and I'm like, oh crap, I also have. You know, woofie, you know and he shits a lot and all that kind of stuff. So you need performance fabrics. So the system needs to understand okay, we need performance fabrics.
Speaker 2:Probably maybe leather would be a good idea, so it's easier to clean instead of fabric and it sinks in. So how do you teach a machine to understand something like this? So that's where all our investments come into play over the last five years into data, and I think that's something that I don't want to make excuses. I hate making excuses and this is not an excuse, but part of the problem for the last maybe four years is that there's not a lot of visible change to what we did, because every dollar that we invested we invested on under the hood improvements, data model, normalization of data every single vendor catalog, over 100 vendor catalogs now on the platform every single vendor catalog is normalized. What does that mean? Stupid example Some manufacturer calls it mushroom, the color, another calls it coffee, another calls it espresso chocolate.
Speaker 2:You name it whatever. Whatever the marketing team comes up with, the system has no idea how to differentiate that. So you need to tell the system, by the way, this is dark brown. And then you also need to tell the system, by the way, if the recipient of that data is a website, it's actually called saddle brown, because that's the web three term that the website understands in order to render the correct swatch.
Speaker 2:Because if you tell the website this is dark brown. The swatch is empty because the website said I don't know what that means, right? So you have all these different languages that these different systems speak. So that's an improvement, I can tell you. And a podcast is a great format to have a conversation between two humans. How do you put this in marketing and say hey, operator, I know we suck because the application hasn't changed in the last six months, because we invested all our money and effort into making improvements under the hood so that we have a data model that is understandable by an AI system, so you can say X, y, z and the stuff comes up right. It's a tough sell, so we have to find the balance. And now I mean, I'm in this new job for what? Now? Four months, or something like this right, so I'm past the honeymoon phase.
Speaker 2:Well, crap hits the fan, but no, but it's. That is one of the number one things that I want to do is we need to find a balance between just making under the hood improvements that are not visible to people and tangible and also making sure we have a very solid development track for the application itself. So, very soon and I hate doing this it's oh, it's coming soon, you know, just wait.
Speaker 1:Coming soon to a store near you. Coming soon to a store near you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if it's. Oh, it's coming soon, you know, just wait. Coming soon to a store near you. Coming soon to a store near you? Um, yeah, if it's still there. Um, coming soon is the um. There's a facelift going on on the application side. There's features and improvements that are coming. We just implemented 3d and ar um, so that's something that's brand new. Um. You're probably still familiar with the texting off of the kiosk right the texting One of the most popular features that we've ever built.
Speaker 2:There's 350,000 text messages a month are being sent from those kiosks and the text message now turns into an AR model when you get it. So if somebody's in the store and the decision maker, the wife, is at home, always, always, always, he can text her and on her phone that turns into an AR model and she can see it in the room.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:Right there on her phone.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:So she can immediately say, yes, this fits, color looks good, size looks good, it fits in the room. You have measurements. Obviously, correctly, we have scale built in so you can see.
Speaker 1:So you've really kind of overhauled it. Oh, absolutely. So we've got this regular vehicle that came in. We've got a 2014 vehicle with a 2023, 2024 engine model inside of it, right?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Now it's streamlined. So when I say that, the reason I ask is because so it's still a wonder sign. So when somebody comes in now they have the wonder sign, they're doing their searches through the wonder sign and now all these are available through a wonder sign in the store.
Speaker 1:So you're capturing all the, all the data that's being searched for everything, all the AR modeling, all the texting, everything that happens multiple platforms of different carriers and different companies is all happening. So in these last couple of years I don't see them as often. Is there another reinvestment into the signs? We're going to put more signs in there. Do you have newer versions that are going to be going?
Speaker 2:out at the stores? Fantastic question, thank you, I was going there. But another big aspect is the hardware itself and one thing that we had to learn, and it was another painful learning people are okay with replacing an iPhone every year, every two years, and spending a thousand dollars. You don't feel it because it's like you know you make your payments, but they're okay with doing that, but after six years of using a commercial-grade touchscreen in a store and it has to be replaced, you get a lot of pushback.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a very intricate piece of inventory or equipment, I should say, because it's a big investment it is.
Speaker 2:I completely understand it. Psychologically speaking, it's like wait a second. I paid $3,000 for this damn thing and I have to replace it after six years. Six years is a long time for electronics. It is nowadays.
Speaker 1:It is, and that cycle is so fast and I'm waiting for the next iPhone to happen, like I'm waiting for them to do the iPhone and then go, hey, and this is when we're letting out the next iPhone, because it just happened so fast and and I, and I honestly believe that in the world of electronics, phones are actually they're, they're actually holding on to them longer, because you could probably have another version within eight months, right, so it's, it's, it's going so fast now and the cycle is so ridiculous on the on the phone side now that it's kind of like, well, okay, do we really need to do this right?
Speaker 2:so, on the kiosk side, so we actually haven't even talked about this, but we were purchased. The company was purchased in november of 2023, okay, by a company called giga cloud technology and, um, they're a big b2b marketplace, so they they connect sellers and buyers, um and and then, uh, facilitate end to like, end-to-end shipments. They do a lot of drop shipping, a lot of e-com business and part of their publicly traded company on nasdaq. So part of that also means that we have access, obviously now to bigger tools, um, more money. I mean, before it was, it was bootstrapped, right, it was just it was andy retirement. Basically, in the company. We never had outside investors, we never took a dollar, it was all just self-funded. And now we just have access to a bigger scale. And what that means on the hardware side is that we started sourcing hardware. We found a vendor for a 4K kiosk at a third of the cost of the previous one. Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:Yes, the kiosk was an Echo Elo, elo. Yeah, that's what it was, elo. And I remember that every store had an Elo somewhere in there, whether it be the small kiosk or the big one and we don't abandon Elo.
Speaker 2:I mean Elo Touch is, by the way, the inventor of the touchscreen. Right, they invented the touchscreen in the 1960s. So Elo is a phenomenal company and Elo is still absolutely a vendor of choice. It's just that we have different target audiences. Elo is basically Elo is the go-to McDonald's touchscreens. The self-ordering touchscreens are Elo screens. Target is using them, Walgreens is using them.
Speaker 1:I mean, I do see them a lot. I do see them a lot.
Speaker 2:It's state-of-the-art, that's pretty much what it is, but it also it's an American company. It's also expensive, right? So we have, obviously we have operators, and especially in RTO. I think that's something that it's funny. Adam said the same thing on your podcast when he said I had to understand first that RTO has less money to spend, right.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Because it's not a retail business and you're making $2,000 today.
Speaker 1:Up front Right. Correct it's over a period of time. It's over a period of time right.
Speaker 2:Over the lifetime of the customer. So you have to. That changes your mindset, that changes how you approach things and how you buy things. So we're working, especially on the rto side, we're working very hard to have something that is almost like it's almost like a zero percent interest program for the hardware to bake it into the cost of the subscription. So it's not like you know, I think.
Speaker 2:I think it's a great idea though I mean that's, that's how, to me, that's how rto does business right. It's kind of like you're gonna understand that more.
Speaker 1:Number one and number two you're not if you're not taking that expense up front, especially for smaller dealers.
Speaker 1:Because you do have the rena centers, you have the errands, you have the tis to have countryside rental, you do have, um, you know, maybe magic that you can do it, but you have some smaller guys too that you. That investment with three stores might be very difficult. But if you're going to input that, if it's going to be a part of this monthly plan that I'm on, and so as long as I have the plan for a year, two years, three years or whatever the case is, and then we just switch it out because it's part of the plan, that's a lot more eatable, you know. It's a lot more digestible when you're talking about cash flow and how I'm going to invoice this out and how I'm going to take care of this and how am I going to net 30 that, and then now we're adding another build to that. So how does that work? So it's, it's definitely integratable to the pnls. It's like a cell phone, it is right well, it is right, you know.
Speaker 2:So that that's where the the idea came from. But, uh, it has to be digestible, yeah, so I think. To sum it up, on the hardware side, we're going 4K, that's double the resolution of the old screens. We're drastically getting the cost of the hardware down to make it more palatable, and that's something you touched on as well, right, so there's a lot of screens out there. At some point they stopped working. There's technical issues and then it becomes hard to replace right, because it's again a big upfront investment.
Speaker 1:So we're trying to eliminate that or trying to minimize at least the impact. But I think sometimes too is when you put an investment in, the idea is how long is that investment going to last? And we recently spoke as how fast technology is moving and what direction it's going. So if I'm a vendor and I'm saying, okay, I'm going to spend $3,000, $3,500, whatever the case is, how long does that last me? How long can I guarantee that somebody's going to be walking up to this piece of merchandise and they're going to be using it for whatever this piece of equipment and using it for whatever they need to use it for? And am I going to get my investment out of that, as opposed to again on our phones? We have those investments but I haven't fully invested it yet. I'm investing in the month to month. So I know that I'm using it from month to month and when that investment changes I can either upgrade or I can save money by not doing so.
Speaker 1:And I'm that guy. My wife will kill me and she'll go. You have that phone for like two or three years. It still works, but my wife like you said, they make the decisions she's got every phone that comes out. It's like I want the difference, I want the extra clarity, I want the better battery life, I want the USB-C versus the lightning cable. I want to be able to see the moon when I zoom in. That makes her happy, and so you have the differences. But having flexibility is is huge in comparison to the way it was.
Speaker 2:It's key, so so kudos to that and that brings us to the software portion. That's the last portion to this and that that's. You just hit the nail on the head, you just said it. We need to do a better job of communicating all the improvements and all the stuff that, right, we can't have the situation where you know we're here and it's kind of I didn't even know. Well, then we suck, then we don't do a good job on the marketing side. Right, we have to be better. We have to communicate much, much more aggressively and say, look, this is all the stuff that we're doing, this is, these are all the investments that we're putting into the product to make it better, to make it so that it feels like you're talking to chat gpt, to make it feel like, hey, this is something anybody can use. Right, you just walk in and it's just, it's exciting.
Speaker 1:It was, I remember, the first time I had to wonder sign usage and it was so easy and intuitive to use. It actually shocked me because I asked somebody how to use it and, before they had made it to me, I probably figured out most of the things on my own, because it wasn't hard to find. It wasn't hidden in some sub menu. It wasn't an idea of like I've got to learn how to put this in here and put that in there and make sure that I use it and execute it. It was just very simple and that's one thing I did really appreciate about Wondersign. So we have an idea of how we are going to be different. When I say we, I'm talking about Wondersign. Wondersign is going to be different than it was before. It is not an amp tab, it is Wondersign 2.0. It comes at an easier cost. It gives you better dial in as to what you should be carrying, not alone just for what you want to, because of course sometimes you go into business going this is what I want to sell.
Speaker 1:I don't want to sell this particular thing and we get emotionally attached to that. You know, and and every store and rent-to-own is going to understand us Rent-to-own has. Every rent-to-own store has its own heartbeat, right Depending on the location and what state it's in and what county it's in. It has its own heartbeat and so we get, we get, as people who run this. I think we should have this and I think we should have that. And now we have this tool that's not only going to be affordable but intuitive enough to say you can carry that if you want to, but if you carried a little bit of this, you'd probably be doing a lot better. We're looking for the hockey stick, and so you have that ability. What we're talking about now is when does that come out? When does the prize unveil? When do we get to see the, the, the fruits of your labor for being able to yeah, do under the hood?
Speaker 2:and now this is the moment where I get into hot water, right. So the hardware is, the hardware is ready to go, the hardware is shipping right now. So I think, um, by it's, the first week of October 2024 is when the 4K kiosks officially are available in the country. That's number one. Number two on the software side, it comes out in stages, but the analytics platform is ready to go within a couple months, and then the app for cell phones is going to be in January of 2025. Yeah, so we're right around the corner.
Speaker 1:With the app on a cell phone. Okay, because to me that's going to be paramount. Everybody uses their phone, even when I'm checking the analytics of the show or whatever. Website visits are like 85% now and it's always peaking a little bit more, a little bit more on cell phones.
Speaker 2:I mean.
Speaker 1:I eventually probably have somebody that's in the office looking me up and saying, hey, this is the show and this is what they got. But I'm going to have to tailor the website to mobile. Right now it's in a multi-platform where you can use it for mobile and you can use it for this, but we're actually looking at making the website more to that, because that's where people are. They're on the phone. So when you say the app on the phone, how does that translate to the consumer using that when they're inside the store, as opposed to just going to Google, because I have like a Google.
Speaker 1:You know what does it call a widget? I have my Google widget and I go straight to that and that's what I use. How do you get a customer in the store using that app so that I can get the data that I need to carry the furniture that they?
Speaker 2:probably want. The idea is for the associate to use it on the phone.
Speaker 1:So it's not a consumer facing app Part of that.
Speaker 2:we looked into that too, because we had a lot of customers asking for this and say, why can't you guys develop an app for the consumer? And say, why can't you guys develop an app for the consumer? And the problem is there's a graveyard area on everybody's phone of apps that they never use. And now iOS does a pretty good job of basically saying hey, you never used this app, why don't you just delete?
Speaker 1:it. They do right. Yes, they do actually, because it just takes up space.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's even big brands struggle with this. Home depot had a big. There was a big uh controversy about their app usage and all this kind of stuff. Because it's everybody came out with their app and unless there's a, there's something transactional in it, like target, where you get the discount and you have to show that code. Or, uh, amazon, and if you shop at whole foods you have to show that, the qr, and if you shop at Whole Foods you have to show the QR code in order to get your discount. Unless there's a transactional component, nobody uses the app, right?
Speaker 1:So I'm glad that you've done all this, because every time that you mention something, it is so spot on. I'm looking at my life and the way I shop with my family, and that's absolutely true Because I have a Home. Absolutely true, because I have a Home Depot app. I have a Lowe's app, and unless I'm walking in the front door and literally looking for a tool that I can't find, and I can't find anybody around, that's probably the only time I use it. Do I cherish the app Absolutely, but do I use it? No, and I've had.
Speaker 1:It's funny you say it, because several times I've had my phone go. This is going to sleep in the background, and so it's like oh, I forgot, I even opened that. Whenever it was that I opened that, okay, so move on. So spot on with that for sure. So then now it goes to an associate who helps out the customer on the front end and say, hey, I'm looking for the sofa for the game with dog and I'm going to have this, and so the associate would take that time to put that in there, and all those relevant searches would then pile up to a, an amount of data that goes out as a monthly it's, it's available in in real time so you can go in and you can pull your reports and you can say, okay, I want to see across my 17 locations whichSA did which sales associate did well.
Speaker 2:And did financing come up in the conversation? Did we suggest that? Or you know, on the retail side, that's important For RTO, pretty much everything is financing. So the whole idea is to say, okay, as a business owner, I can go in and at any point in time I take the data out that I need. I can go in and at any point in time I take the data out that I need and I can search by attributes, like I said, you know, the sectional shape or whatever else, by price point, by manufacturer, by like anything that's in the data. So that was all the efforts over the past few years to normalize the data, to make the data uniform across all the different vendors so that the system understands it.
Speaker 1:So when we're talking about getting all this together, and now we have the face, we've got to get the information out there, because you said I got it all under the hood, it looks good, but nobody really knows it yet.
Speaker 2:We need to get it out there. So how are we doing that? So how are we doing that? So what we did is we also identified and said okay, we also need a person that is responsible for this industry. And that goes back to what we said before. Rto is a family Tight knit, you know it's hard to break into, but it's also it's easier to break into it if it's a human to human connection.
Speaker 1:Correct.
Speaker 2:So we identified this and we dedicated somebody. His name is Evan Lewis. Evan is on our team. Evan is basically the Adam Ball.
Speaker 1:Oh, here we go, right. So you guys got to understand. So Adam comes to me, he gets me over there and we talk about this, but he had such a fire behind us Like he really made me go and do that.
Speaker 2:I love talking with Adam because he's great, so you've got this Adam Ball-esque Evan who's going to take charge on this. So, evan Lewis, he comes from a retail background, so he was working in his brother's store. His brother has a furniture and mattress store. He was working in that store. He did everything. He was a delivery driver, he did the sales floor.
Speaker 1:He did the whole. Thing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. He knows he lives this right. He knows and it's close to him because it's his brother's business. His brother is using us and was so fascinated by what we do. Okay, that's when he told him he said you should apply for a job. Good, and we hired him because, I mean, he has that, evan has this. I don't even know how to describe this, but there's something in people where it's kind of like you just know they have the right mentality and hardworking. You know good, absolutely good structure to say whatever it is, I can learn it Right.
Speaker 2:He didn't have software experience. He didn't have any kind of technology experience, but that's all teachable.
Speaker 1:You can learn that. I try to tell people all the time when you're hiring, you're not hiring for what you can teach them, you're hiring from what they bring to the table. And that fire, that personality, that drive you can't instill. Drive you can instill. This is how you do this. This is the task right. You put it here, you cross your T's, you dot your I's, you hit enter. Those are all teachable the drive to do it right, the gumption to say I think I can do that better. Or if I come up with this type of pitch, I think they're going to understand it more. I'm going to be able to relate more to these RTO companies because if we approach it this way, they will see the benefit of how much more they can get out of this, absolutely 100%. I'm actually kind of curious what he's like and I would like to meet him sometime soon?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely you will, you will. So he's going to be at Meeting of the Minds, he's going to be at the Heartland Show. He's going to be at RTO World. Yeah, evan Lewis, great, great work, ethic, and I think he is absolutely perfect. He fits right in into this industry with a lot of hardworking, honest people.
Speaker 1:Right, so Well. Industry where there's a lot of hardworking honest people right.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to the resurgence of where Wondersign comes from and we're going to give Wondersign an opportunity to see if it can come to fruition, like we think it does. And I'll be honest with you any type of information which I think, as it did before, wondersign fixes or solves an informational niche that it doesn't have to compete for. You know, and I think that helps, because when you're giving somebody something and you're not fighting three other people, it gives them 100% opportunity to say, okay, let's focus on this for what it is and not I've got three people doing the same thing. Who does it better? Let me, let me try all this one out. Let me try all this one out. Let me try all this one out. And I think, with the brand recognition that you have, now that you've been in the industry almost well, 2014 so it's 10 years, yeah, going in 10 years. You have the giga cloud backing now that we didn't have before, but now, now it's going in a different direction. Now you've got evan to be able to kind of go out there and be that face to say, hey, you guys really need to take a good look at this, um, and then you've created this backbone of the, the backside of. I have 100% gotten with our guys to really make this fruitful.
Speaker 1:Under the hood we have. We've really kind of made it so that it's really easy. You can get the information right away. You can utilize it on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly basis, you can have it in your quarterly meetings and you can see results as quick as let me get this order in through Amtab, maybe, I don't know and get the order in and get it sold, because that's really what this is about finding that information.
Speaker 1:I mean, right now the economy is going through so much that we need to find out what the customers are looking for and not what we think they're looking for, because it's so important now for their dollars to meet exactly what it needs to meet. I don't want to go through three iterations of this sofa before I realize this is not what I want. This is what I want. This is the need that it services and I'll be great to just walk in and get that. I don't want to do anything else because I can't afford it. And if we can streamline that, if rent to own can streamline that, that would be great. I think it's got legs. That's me.
Speaker 1:I'm saying that on the other side of it Of course you know I'm and I'm rooting for Wondersign because I know you guys have done a great job in the past, and I think that this is a great direction, because sometimes what people do, companies do, is they try to revive something and it's just. It's just a new look on the same thing. This is a completely different direction, so to speak.
Speaker 2:And that was the absolutely. I couldn't have said it better. It's. It's definitely not lipstick on a pig, it's right. It's overhauling basically the entire I would say the entire direction of the company. It's not about the kiosks. The kiosk is one endpoint and it absolutely is a valid endpoint and it has to be there. That's why we're investing in the hardware and bringing in cheaper hardware and we subsidize it. But the kiosk is only one endpoint. You know, there's the conversation, Right, there's the. Again, people are used to dictating the Siri and whatever else you want to be able to do that. That's why I said semantic search is such an important point where you can go in and say, hey, I'm looking for, I don't know something, grayish, brownish, dead seeds, whatever, Something that reclines it's crazy because everybody searches that way.
Speaker 1:Now, of course, you know and I hate showing my age all the time, but you know but I am a little bit different when it comes to searches. But if my daughter searched for something, she would not search the way I would search. She would literally hit the button and go this is what I'm looking for. Just give me my options and to understand that that's where the cycle's been, and to get back on the front of the bell curve instead of the back.
Speaker 1:It's so interesting to be able to see that, hey, we've done this, we did great, we've made mistakes, we're going to fix it. And we're not only going to do that, but we're going to again enter a niche that nobody understood that they needed and get in front of the RTO customer, which I think is, I think is a great idea. So the newness of it and I know it sounds new because it's not new, but you're doing this under Wondersign, you're not doing this under Ashley hashtag Wondersign, it is you directly. This is where we're going for it, and then the results will have a Wondersign name on it. It came from us, you know. The app came from us, the utilization came from us.
Speaker 2:The information came from us and I'm not really putting a different name on it which is which is, I think, going to be the betterment of it as well. Absolutely, and I think the most important thing is it some, sometimes we have to understand it's not either or, and it's not black or white. There's a lot of gray in between, yes, and we can make the move away and basically emancipate a little bit and say, okay, this is really, you know, our own app and our own product and our own platform, and this is, this is who we are, without saying, you know, basically without poo-pooing on on somebody else, right, I'm eternally grateful to ashley. We wouldn't be here without ashley. Period, right, right, they put us on the map. That's that's just what. That's the reality. We wouldn't be here. I, ashley, period, right, right, they put us on the map. That's, that's just what. That's the reality. We wouldn't be here I.
Speaker 1:When you say that cause, it resonates a lot. You know, it's funny that you mentioned the name Mike Tissot, because when, when we were going from season two to season three, uh, my partner had gone a different direction and we, you know, I kind of went solo and the ideas was you was how do I do this and where do I go? And Mike Tissot was the first person to be able to step up and say you know what? I'll go on the show and you talk about that pivotal person and that transactional point where I said you know what, this is where it should go. And it worked.
Speaker 1:And since then we've had some great people on, including yourself, to where we can see that all the different aspects and all the different stories and all the different things that happen at Rent to Own and I think that's great, that it was an instrumental part to say, hey, you know what we did this very well, but we need to step out of it and refine what we need to do and refine what's going on and then create something out of that, out of the ashes, and go I've got something for you that you didn't even know you need.
Speaker 1:And now that you can take a look at the possibilities now, we can see where we can go from there. So I hope that I I hope that I see wonder signs everywhere again and that we can make that work, especially when you're talking about integrating that, that price point, into whatever plan that they have, which I think is also a great idea. I'm just going to say that I think it's wonderful. So if I'm interested and we're talking about this now and I'm interested and I have my rent-to-own company, how do I get a hold of you? Where do I go? What information do I do to get a hold of Casper and say, hey, I heard that it looks good. How do we make that happen?
Speaker 2:I mean, the easiest is to go to our website, wondersigncom.
Speaker 1:Wondersigncom. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:And really just reach out to us the moment we see it's an RTO business, then at that point in time Evan will reach out, or myself. I mean I'm not gone. Just because we put Evan in place here, that doesn't mean that I'm out.
Speaker 2:He's just a shiny face. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I'm just. You know you're right. Um, the facade, no I. I do need to be present as well. That's the most important thing. So it's not just a lip service to basically say oh yeah, we're back. We just want to have your business right. We need to invest again. This is mike.
Speaker 2:Mike taught me you either are a tool for a manufacturer or you're a tool for the industry, but you need to make a choice. That's what mike taught me. Dennis taught me. You need to show up. You can't stay at home. You need to show up. You need to be part of this right. Gary taught us. You need to think of everything. It needs to be a complete solution for the industry, otherwise nobody will adopt it. And every single person that we encountered on this journey some somehow taught us something about this right, and you taught me now we're, we're coming to the close to you. You taught me that you have to be out there as a face and you have to speak about it and you have to make sure that people understand and know. And there's a lot going on. I mean RTO. The industry is in a transformational stage, at least from what I'm seeing. You're on the cusp of something much bigger.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, we've always rolled a few years behind retail. That's just the way it's always been Because, like you said, the transaction is different and you've noticed that it's just not 100% retail. There's a lot of ebbs and flows that happen with that, not only with the customer, but they're from different states. In any state, you can take $1, buy $1 worth of goods and walk out, but not in any state can you go rent the same way. That doesn't mean that some states don't gather the same as far as the laws, but there are some states out there that are different, so it creates a difference in the way you shop, and so when you have all this going on, it makes it. So it's such a great industry to be in, but it is different. It is different and when you're going in a certain direction, it just makes it. You've got this newness that's coming around the corner.
Speaker 1:Everybody so far has been mentioning AI. We have not integrated AI enough into rent to own. It's coming. This is going to be a form of it and, just so that everybody understands, there is an AI talk that's been going on for the last eight months to a year. They're just trying to figure out where the niches are when do we incorporate that?
Speaker 1:Because you still want the face-to-face transaction, you still want to have that relationship. You still want them to come and try it out, kick the tire, so to speak, sit on the sofa. Maybe you like the color, but you don't really know how it sits. So there's the traditional things that we still have. But then how do you find us? How do I know that I'm in the places that you wanna be? Now that increases your social media, google searches, you know, am I, like you said, am I getting the product that's really going to bring them in the door? Because nowadays the door swings are so few and far between that, if you come in and I don't capitalize on what it is that you really want, I might've lost you for a while, not just a little bit, for a while.
Speaker 1:And so all this comes into the front side of. We're rolling in. This tide is rolling in and it's going. There's a change coming, there's a newness, there's new ideas and new fronts that are coming. For I mean, if somebody would have told me 10 years ago Rentone's going to have a dedicated podcast, I probably myself probably would have been like really, that's, that's. I wouldn't expect that, but then and now we're talking on a dedicated podcast about things that are dedicated to the rent-to-own industry. For that particular thing, I know there's a retail side of it. I know you guys do something else, but because we're focusing on certain things that happen in rent-to-own, how do you bring AI into it? How do you look into certain information where the algorithms are really suited to help rent-to-own? Well, this is one of them and it's happening.
Speaker 2:It own. Well, this is one of them, and it's happening. It is happening and I think the the biggest takeaway for all the technology companies, not just us, has to be it's not about you and you're not the center of the universe. And just because you built it and of course it's your baby and you want to, you know it's very important to you that doesn't mean other people see it the same way, right? What we need to understand is we need to flow much more. It needs to be more fluid. We need to flow with how people are searching.
Speaker 2:We mentioned that the change in how people approach this and you can't just force them into something and say, well, this is our search tool, this is how you have to use it. Then people won't use it. You have no adoption, you have no sessions. If you have no sessions, you don't collect data. If you have no sessions, you don't collect data. If you have no data, you can't make decisions. That's the issue. So that's what I'm saying. It needs to be semantic search, it needs to be voice search, it needs to be on any device. It doesn't matter what device it is. We don't need to lock them into something and say you need to use this operating system. Who am I to tell them that consumer doesn't care consumers? I don't know. I'm just looking for, I don't know, like a dining table that seats like six people, because we have my wife's boss coming over for Thanksgiving and we need something, we need to look good.
Speaker 2:I mean we need to look good, but I also don't want to spend a whole lot. Okay, price point was mentioned, color was mentioned, seating options. That is what we need to do. We need to take the power of technology that we have and then transform that into something that works with the industry. So I think, to come to a close, the most important thing is to get out of this ivory tower and go into the stores and talk to people, talk to operators, talk to associates, be on the floor, understand what is the issue, what is the need, what is something that might be outside of your core business or core offering, but then you can find partners, you can bring them in, or maybe you can make a referral. Maybe it's not at the end of the day for you to you know, make it, make a deal or close the sale, but at least you can help. I think that's, that's what we need to do.
Speaker 1:Well, I think, I think that we're onto something, I think you're on to something and I wish you the best of luck. Listen, I will tell you, guys, as always, if you have any questions for the show or for Casper, you're well, well welcome to hit up the show at the RTOshowpodcastcom. You can email me directly at Pete at the RTOshowpodcastcom. Ask me questions. Anything that we need to forward on, we will forward. We'll answer it online or directly, if you want it directly, no problem with that. You can also follow me on Facebook, linkedin, instagram and, as always, guys, I always tell you, casper, I appreciate you being here. Make sure that you get your collections low to get your sales high. Have a great one.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
