The RTO Show "Let's talk Rent to Own"
Ever wondered how a $8.5 billion industry keeps millions of Americans lounging in style? Step into "The RTO Show Podcast" – where the mysterious world of Rent to Own furniture finally spills its secrets! Your host Pete Shau isn't just any industry veteran – he's spent 20 years in the trenches, collecting the kind of stories that'll make you laugh, gasp, and maybe even rethink everything you knew about that couch you're sitting on.
From wild customer tales to industry shake-ups that'll knock your rented socks off, Pete brings the seemingly mundane world of furniture financing to vibrant life. Warning: This isn't your typical business podcast – expect real talk, unexpected laughs, and "aha!" moments that'll have you looking at every lease agreement in a whole new light.
Whether you're an RTO pro who knows your depreciation schedules by heart, or you're just curious about how that fancy sectional ended up in your living room, Pete's got the inside scoop you never knew you needed. Tune in and discover why the furniture business is anything but boring!
The RTO Show "Let's talk Rent to Own"
The Evolution of Ashley Furniture in Rent-To-Own with Mike Kays
This episode offers a fascinating exploration into the workings of the rent-to-own sector, featuring a conversation with Michael Kays, the Vice President of Rental Operations at Ashley Furniture. As a leading name in the industry for over 75 years, Ashley has enabled countless families to turn houses into homes, emphasizing not just consumer transactions but building lasting relationships. Michael discusses the importance of gratitude and giving during the holiday season, illustrating that this ethos extends beyond mere transactions and is foundational to the company's culture.
Listeners will gain valuable insights into the innovative approaches Ashley employs to ensure superior quality and efficient logistics in their operations. Michael sheds light on how Ashley has successfully navigated challenges during economic fluctuations and changing consumer behaviors, highlighting their commitment to community engagement through sustainability initiatives and scholarships aimed at promoting STEM education. These efforts demonstrate that Ashley is diligent about not just making profit, but also making a positive impact on society.
Dive deeper into this episode to uncover the strategies that drive Ashley Furniture's success in the rent-to-own sector, while discovering how they continue to adapt and thrive in a competitive market. Whether you are a seasoned dealer, a consumer interested in furniture solutions, or simply curious about the industry's evolution, this episode equips you with knowledge and inspiration. Join us in celebrating the synergy between quality service, community support, and innovative strategies that contribute to an enriching customer experience. Don’t forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review!
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Hello and welcome to the RTO Show. I'm your host, pete Chow, and today we're going head-to-head with Michael Kays. He is the Vice President of Rental Operations for Ashley Furniture and let me tell you, guys, I've been waiting for this. There is so much information going on we're actually talking before all this and I can tell you there's a lot that you might not know. I'm sure there is a lot you do know.
Speaker 1:Ashley's been in the business for 80 years now 75 years 75 years and let me tell you, there is nothing that they can't do. They have 10,000 SKUs, $6.5 billion in revenues and, guys, they are only getting bigger, as you're going to find out. Right now, I want to introduce Mike, because he has his own story to tell, as he is before Rent to Own, during Rent to Own and where Ashley is going in now. So, mike, how are you?
Speaker 2:doing, Doing great, Doing great. It's fabulous. Fabulous weather here in Florida, fabulous weather in Texas and headed up to the Thanksgiving holidays, which is one of my favorite holidays Anytime we get a chance to show our gratitude and be around friends and family, it doesn't get any better than that.
Speaker 1:for me, it's the best time of the year for furniture. It's the best time of year for rent, to own. Not only that, it's like that giving season. It's not exactly a taking season. It's one of those things where what can I do for somebody else?
Speaker 2:A lot of people are in that mode and it's just, it's just feeling good all the way around, amen, and we all, we all should give Thanksgiving a little bit more time than we do. Typically it's Halloween Christmas and you have one day for Thanksgiving and more Christmas, but I think the Thanksgiving holiday really is, uh, it's overlooked, and it's an opportunity for us to to give back and to be, um, very grateful for all that, grateful for all that we've been given, and we shouldn't just blow it over and eat turkey and watch them football and fall asleep. It should be much more about that.
Speaker 1:Well, we want you to remember that you're probably going to see this in season five. Everything that you do this holiday season, whether it's now or whether it's next, we wish you the best holidays we always do but we always want you to remember that giving is always part of the holiday season, not receiving giving your heart, being a part of things that you can't really put a dollar amount on, part of your family, part of the community, and doing some of the things that Ashley is going to actually tell us about right now. So Mike's going to tell us about what's going on and how he even gotten to rent-owned. How did that happen? So you have a lot of history before you get here, and so you build on that and you bring that to Ashley. What did you bring in as far as your history and where have you been?
Speaker 2:Gosh. So I started out of college I worked for a couple of department stores in Texas, both in the buying office and out in the stores. I really did two tours of experiences out in the stores. I really enjoyed both tours. One was with a mid-level department store, one was with a very high end, and so I got to know customers on both sides of that and they are very different customers. But a customer is a customer and they all have wants and some of them think they have needs, but primarily they're all wants. And boy, it was just interesting to know those people understand who they are, deal with the problems because there's problems in everything that we have out there but really getting them, you get the energy going back and forth with them, and so I really enjoyed those two tours.
Speaker 2:From there I went and spent a little bit of time in catalog and that turned into e-commerce. So I learned about photography, learned about SEO, learned about all the ins and outs of e-commerce before it became what it is right now. And then from there I was working and the company I worked for kind of impaled on itself and an opportunity came available at Ashley, and I remember the day that we were talking about it and he goes what do you know about rent to own? And I said not really a whole lot, but I can learn anything. And so he said I'll never forget what he said. He said you know what the problem is is that if you get into rent to own, you're going to always be in rent to own, and I thought you mean like hotel California.
Speaker 2:He said he said, kind of like hotel California. But the good thing is is that it's a tight, tight knit group of people that if you work hard and you do the right thing, so always be a job for you.
Speaker 1:You know what year is this. This is 2011. So 2011 was a really good time to be. It was coming out of that era, the 2007, 2008 time, where we're just kind of we took a beating. We're finally starting to come out of it, then, so that's a great time. But Rentone does have a way of like I've done it. Starting my first year would have been 24 years, probably going on 25 and 2025 now, but I took a hiatus, right. And where did I end up? Right back here.
Speaker 1:Once you're in it, you're just in it and it's part of the cycle, it's part of life. Rentone has just a way of bringing you back because there's so many relationships. It's just a relationship business.
Speaker 1:It's a relationship to own, as opposed to rent-to-own, but it's one of those things where the people you know they're going through something or they're not going through something, but either way you are affecting their lives, and usually for the better. When we're in the furniture industry, they're getting rid of something that they don't need, or they're getting something that they do need, or they're making their home just a different place than it was before, from a house to a home. And rent to own has always been like that for me, Since the day I decided I was finally going to start selling and it finally came on to me and it was almost like a bug. Once I got it, it was just like I really enjoyed that part of it, and it's changed everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you learn to help people and you keep that perspective that people have wants and needs, and some of them. Sometimes you need a refrigerator, right, sometimes you want a new sofa, and being able to help those people is a little bit of a drug and I learned early on in my retail career. Me personally, I'm always trying to find things. What is that next big thing? What's the next big thing that people are going to want, at least in my furniture world?
Speaker 1:It looks like, with 10,000 SKUs, we found something that they want right, we found everything that they want, so yes, so, being from Ashley, now that you're in the rent-to-own division, what does that mean? To be the vice president of rent-to-own operations or rental operations? Does that encompass the entirety of rent-to-own?
Speaker 2:Yes, I've got a number of associates that work for me and we've got a couple of house accounts that we drive, but beyond that we've got a sea of 450 sales reps. We call them marketing specialists within Ashley and they have their own relationships with the own rent to own dealers, and so I assist them with what it is, because, as a sales representative, going to a retail store is different than going rent to own. There's some things that you've got to talk about, there's things that are. They're just different, and so I try to help them and try to help them understand rent to own and try to maximize those sales that are out there.
Speaker 1:I can tell you right now I've known Kevin gone for years, I think. I've traveled and he's traveled with me right Cause he's in the rent to own sector, the Sauerbecks. I love to see that his son's involved in it. I love that. I'm talking about generational right. Ashley's got so many years and having a generational Larry Sampson, who's like, oh my God, yeah, he's the OG of everything. I think he's followed me since day one. You know going back and seeing these guys time and time again, regardless of where I've been, they've always been a part of that, and the great thing I think about that is when you're talking to the same person you've known. It's not somebody that's new right, it's not somebody that's been cycled out and gone over. They've got to be staying for a reason.
Speaker 1:I doubt that Kevin would be staying because he didn't want to, and I know Larry's been doing this since the flood. He has been solid on this and I can tell you what when he walks in, I knew not only was I going to buy a bedroom set, but he was going to take care of me and it was going to be a quick, fast transaction. He knew exactly what I needed to do. He knew exactly what to ask me. He walked in, he took care of me and he left and it was like I appreciate him coming in and taking care of me. He didn't take up a whole lot of my time. He knew exactly what I was looking for, what I needed to do. Boom, boom, boom Done. All right, guys, I'll see you next week. God, I loved him for that. I mean I still do. I don't buy from him the same way now because of the company, but I think that, god, it just shows a lot that Ashley has those people out there that really do form those relationships, pete, it's not difficult.
Speaker 2:It's the same relationship that the rent-to-own dealers have with their customers. The suppliers have to have with the dealers and it's no different If somebody's got a need out there. I was dealing with something this afternoon in the hotel room that I was at this afternoon with a customer out of Florida and they needed some help and I was there to try to help them with that. And that's the same thing we do with our rent to own customers every single day. They have a need, they have a problem. We want to solve those problems for them.
Speaker 2:You know, um actually does a lot of things really, really well, but, like any company, there's going to be some shortfallings, and so part of the things that I do is try to help with those shortfallings and then try to make sure that they don't happen again, right? So one of the things that we use it's a it's a core belief of ours at Ashley Furniture is continuous improvement. So it's OK to make a mistake, right. Mistakes happen, they're going to happen. We need to realize that, but it's. We need to learn from it and we need to put processes in so that that doesn't happen again, or at least it minimizes the fact that it happens again.
Speaker 1:Well, we chase perfection, but there's no way we're going to get there, right? I think Vince Lombardi said that right. And so you try to get there. There's always something that's going to happen. How many different things happen between the inception of a piece of furniture and it actually making it to the store, the hands, the traveling, the logistics of it. It finally gets there. There might be something wrong. It's really not the fact that something's never going to happen. It's what are we doing about it once we find it, Solving that problem, getting you the piece, getting it taken care of.
Speaker 1:And, honestly, one of the real reasons that I enjoyed I mean, there are a lot of SKUs okay, so there's a lot of models but one of the real reasons that I really enjoyed having Ashley over the years was the parts, Because I've had vendors that have some great looking stuff and you put it out there and it comes back and I need a zipper, I need a leg. It's just so hard to get. It spends two months in the back because they have to figure it out and I'm not naming anybody, I've been in this a long time. But to be able to go onto the Ashley website and be able to order, to be able to go on there and say this is a warranty piece and it gets taken care of within a week, 10 days. That's where the relationship comes from.
Speaker 1:Number one keeping the service of the customer. If they're paying on something, we have to keep that functional, useful and looking good until the end of that relationship. And we really wanted to go beyond because we want them to come back. But not only that. If it does come back and let's say the customer is fully done with it, they've moved, they've gone, they've hit the lotto and they've decided to go somewhere else, at least we can change the life around for that piece of furniture, no matter what it is, and make it right for somebody else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm glad you said that because Ashley has you know as fast as we have grown. We started trading with the rent-to-own industry back into the 1980s and we've always partnered up, whether it's been Renison or it's been Aarons, it's been Countryside, whoever it is, we've grown up together and we've listened to each other. Our big growth spurt in the in the nineties it's it was because the rent to own industry needed a somebody that could house the furniture and can deliver small pieces quickly, because the back rooms are so small, and during that we always would listen to the the, the good things and the bad things. And so if we found that um problems we're having with the sofas, you know we maybe added stress welts or we added zippers underneath the things. We try to listen to the dealers and the problems that they have and respond to that.
Speaker 2:Talking about parts and I'm glad you brought it up because it is challenging for a lot of our dealers because we're asking them to give me the serial number when they put through a part request or a warranty request but there's a very specific reason for that and it's because we want to continuously improve. With that serial number we can find out what truck it was on what DC it came from. We can find out where it was built, what time it was built, what team built it, and if there's continuous problems there, we can go fix those problems so that they don't happen again.
Speaker 1:I don't think a lot of rental dealers actually think about that, and not in a bad way. I just don't. You know, it's just one of those things. What do you need to get to the warranty department? What do you need to get that part? I need a serial number, I need a model number. This is what I got going on right Description. But to say that we're tracing it back to its origins to make sure that you know, maybe that pallet or maybe that sector, maybe that timeframe, maybe that staple gun, whatever the case is, had an issue, we can go after that, I don't think a lot of people really think about it. I didn't really think about it until you just said that.
Speaker 2:No, and that's why we always try to improve. That's why we've got some of the highest quality In mattresses. Our quality is. Our out-of-the-box quality is less than 0.3% quality problems that we have, and it's because when we do have a problem, we react very, very quickly to it. We do not want a problem to happen time and time.
Speaker 1:It shouldn't happen time and time again, right? Well, I tell you I'm glad you got there, because when I first started with Ashley, there was no betting. This is something that came on, and now, from what I understand, ashley is what?
Speaker 2:the third or fourth largest bedding manufacturer in the US, I believe right now we're fifth, fifth, okay, we've been the fastest growing and continue to be the fastest growing mattress company that's out there.
Speaker 1:I can tell you right now, every time I see the Sauerbecks, they have a bigger list in the front Every time I go there. At first it was just a few and then there was a lot. Now there's foam and there's introduction, and there's bedding, and there's coil and there's hybrids and there's I'm in the box. There's so much going on. Let's get to the start. Where is Ashley started? In Arcadia, wisconsin, correct? Yep? So there it goes. They start there.
Speaker 1:How does it transition from there to where you're the fifth fastest growing bedding manufacturer in the US? That's not easy. We're talking about ceiling, we're talking about Serta, we're talking about the S brands, because everybody has an S brand. So how do you get there? How does Ashley say we're going to go into bedding, and not only are we going to go into bedding, we're going to be a player. We're not just going to be something for the rental industry that you can throw out there and this is going to be a cost-effective, economic mattress that you can compete with. But you can say we've got 10-inch, 12-inch, 15-inch foam, we've got bedding, we've got stuff that you can put in a box. When it first came out, it wasn't. Now I don't think we receive any beds from anybody that's on the box anymore. It's pretty much the way it goes. It gives us a way to stack in the back room. The logistics are completely different, a lot cheaper. It changes the pricing on the mat. How do you get there?
Speaker 2:We've had a number of new introductions over the years. We started with occasional tables, then we got into bedrooms and the millennial piece that became the 1980s with the black shiny lacquer and everything. Then we get into stationary, then we get into motion, then we've gone into accessories and so forth and mattresses was an evolution out there. Mattresses is a big business out there and it's a very profitable business. That's why in a lot of large towns you'll find a mattress dealer almost on every corner. That's out there and it was a big miss for us not having it. It was a big opportunity because it just marries naturally onto the bedroom business that we have, one of the advantages that we have. People joke that Ashley is a logistics company that just happens to sell furniture.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And it could be. The epitome of that is our large trucks that are painted so beautifully in black with the Ashley logo on side of it, and any dealer can go on to Ashley Direct and they can build an order that has two bedrooms, one sofa and three mattresses on it and when they just don't need any mattresses they can just have a sofa and a bedroom. If all they need is mattresses, they can put three or four mattresses on it and it becomes super flexible for that dealer to just order what they need when they're able to need it. And you get out of. A typical mattress company may need a six-piece minimum in order to move a truck on there. You don't with Ashley, right. As long as you have the whole thing, put one mattress on it because that's all it needs, right? In addition, a lot of mattresses since we're talking about it can go FedEx right. I've got a dealer up north in the Midwest and he tells all of his stores if you just need one mattress, use the Asher Express thing, order it, asher Express will have it to you in probably 72 hours and then you have it for that customer. You don't have to worry about doing everything else. So all of that flexibility.
Speaker 2:So, going back to your original question about mattresses, one of the things that we do is, if we're going to do it, we're going to do it right and we're going to do it. We're going to do it right and we're going to build it so that it's got the most flexibility. So we made a decision If we're going to do it, we're going to spend the money on the machines that roll the mattresses and put them in a box, because it saves space in our warehouse and it saves space in your warehouse. Plus, it's easier for the delivery guy to put it up on one shoulder, walk it up three flights of stairs and set it up for them. We weren't going to go into anything that's full size.
Speaker 2:In addition to that, we wanted to roll our own coils. We wanted to be independent of having to buy from anybody else. We buy our own metal. We roll it into our own coils. Now we put we pour our own foam. After the um, I call it snowmageddon in Texas. Uh, back in Valentine's day 2021, we had the huge snowstorm and everything that froze all of the refineries. Everybody was at a loss of foam again. Continuous improvement. We weren't going to have that happen again, and so company went out, put the made the investments to go and build our own foam pouring plant in Verona, mississippi. So now we pour our own foam, we roll our own coils, we um, we still source our call them buckets or covers from overseas. Bring those in and we've got a dynamite product out there. That's the fastest growing.
Speaker 1:And I, you know, just just so you know this. So the last RTO show was done at the RTO World, right, and so I was out there and I was talking to the Sauerbecks and actually it kind of goes back a little bit to the night before. But they're telling me this process that we're getting the mattresses out there, we're building it, we're making a quality mattress here, shipping here and one of the things that I've got to say, because you mentioned it and I don't want to overstep that and not say it again there is always a shipping minimum To be able to get that low, to be able to say I need one or two or three things. That is such a game changer, because sometimes you really just don't have enough to make that order. And what the worst part of it is is with some of the showrooms, because right now in rent-to-own, what do we have? We have a decrease of the sales floor. It's because we're starting to find out that the stores of the 80s, 90s and the early 2000s we don't need 12,000 to 15,000 square foot showrooms. So they're coming down right. Then they start hitting the 8,000. Then they start hitting 6,000.
Speaker 1:Right now I'm hearing that 3,700 is probably the good point. Right, 3,750, maybe 42 is a larger showroom, right? Well, with the decrease of the showroom, you have a decrease of the backroom, and so you don't want to call somebody and say, hey, there's a $1,500 minimum. Even if you say, hey, it doesn't matter, you can order whatever but there's a $1,500 minimum. And then I've got to ship it through a carrier. I know I always tell my. It's always a funny thing, because anytime I see an Ashley truck by one of the stores, I'm like, hey, are, are you guys getting a delivery today? Because they do stand out, they do get delivered pretty quick and one of the things that I love about it that you, you know again, I don't want to overstate this too much, but I don't think it's ever enough. If you don't need it, you don't have to get it.
Speaker 1:And right now, I think dollars is where it's at. Right now our advertising dollars need to go further. Right now, our show dollars need to go further. Right now our showrooms need to go further and we're cutting down space. So how do we do that? We don't want to over stack in the back where I've got to order two or three pieces of product that I just don't need and I'm hoping to sell. Right, and I'm hoping to sell it. Maybe it's a great seller, maybe it's not, but either way I've best position, because getting it to a showroom is one thing, getting it to a home is another. Keeping it as a warehouse we're not warehouses, we're back rooms. Right, we need it to be functional for things that are coming back, things that need to be serviced and go back out. That is a huge advantage.
Speaker 1:But I have also heard that Ashley is a logistics company. Right, when you say that now you're carrying, you know, all of these products, including now a very successful line of mattresses, how does Ashley do it so well? Where does the whole logistics thing come from? Where do we say, okay, I've got three or four major players out there and they're not really paying for the logistics like we are. We're not paying for the same thing, right, so I can do a deal or I might be able to squeeze out a segment, but you do have to have a minimum because I've got to throw that on a carrier. And then Ashley says you know what we're going to do away with that. We're going to have a fleet constantly on the road. Not only that, I mean, you can honestly see it they're black trucks.
Speaker 2:You cannot miss beautiful too.
Speaker 1:And they do it consistently. How does Ashley do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it goes back to um. It goes back to our founding Um, ron Wannick, when he built the company. He's got a saying you build the barn before you build the house, and so when Ashley was started, all the money and all the investments went back into the manufacturing plant and went back into logistics. We've grown to 500 tractors and over 5,000 trailers. We have a fleet of drivers we call ambassadors. They're the best in the business. I'm sure I'm talking to people here who have had plenty of ambassadors drop off loads and these guys are phenomenal.
Speaker 1:They're like the Kevins and the Larrys. I've seen drivers. Of course they're not stuck to one rental company, so I've seen them cover the Tampa Bay area and I've seen guys kind of follow me in the sense that hey, you're over here. Hey, you're over here, You're watching this story, doing this. Guys have been here for 10, 15 years.
Speaker 2:They're phenomenal and we keep on investing in them.
Speaker 2:We keep investing in the ambassadors, we keep investing in the logistics, because that becomes our face to our dealers out there, right?
Speaker 2:So you interface with a sales guy like myself, or you interface with Ashley Direct online and order points, but ultimately, when that black truck comes up and pulls up behind your store, there's an ambassador that's talking to you and knows you, and, heck, half the time they know who your kids are and everything else, and they'd be able to deliver. And I'm not saying we don't ever use a third party. There are some cases we have to use a third party. We prefer not to, though, because we do such a good job on that, and it goes back again to we're building the barn, we're building the infrastructure before we try to go and do other things, and logistics was a big part of it. We did not want to be at the mercy of having to farm out that critical piece right to somebody else, and so we take it in-house, and we do that quite often. We take it in-house because we feel we can do it better than you know paying for that service from other people, and I think we do.
Speaker 1:Is that Ashley's golden goose getting it all in-house?
Speaker 2:I think so. I think so. We feel like we're going to put the money into it. We're going to invest it, depending on whether it's manufacturing or it's robots or it's logistics or whatever it is. We want to sit there and do it because we feel like we can do it better than if we pay for it and we can do it cheaper. If anybody's ever been up in Arcadia and toured our case goods plant up there, there's a great part of the tour where you talk about our tool shop and you go why am I going to go see a tool shop? And there's a guy in there that has been building drill bits for years and it goes back to we used to buy the drill bits from a drill bit sales guy and the drill bit sales buy would come in here and sell us a new drill. Think about all the holes we drill and all of this stuff.
Speaker 2:We're just plowing through drill bits. And a guy came back and says I bet if I had a couple of machines I could do our own drill bits and we don't have to pay Mike Kays that come in here and sell me $5 drill bits. I can make drill bits for $0.25. And so it's like oh all right, so we bought the machines and started doing our old drill bits and saved all that money and we can customize the drill bits to wherever we want to.
Speaker 1:So when you're talking about bringing it internal right, so we're creating new brands, we're creating this bedding sector and we're making sure that everything is delivered in-house. We're developing the foam, we're making our drill bits. So then the question comes in and it's always a big question. It's quality. I know that if I go to, let's say, one of the mattress companies on the corner, I go in there, the guy's going to know all about it, he's going to tell me, but he's not selling one brand, right, he's selling me three or four different major brands that have five different models. But I do know that over the years they've stacked up pretty well. So Ashley's now a new contender. They're at number five. But how does a quality and I know I'm asking an Ashley individual but how does a quality stack up? How does the warranties and what Ashley is doing in, let's say, something new like the bedding industry? How are they doing it? How does a warranty stack up and how is a quality versus some of the other guys?
Speaker 2:I would stack our quality up against anybody that's out there and you see people that are out there up against anybody that's out there and you see people that are out there. We're building everything in, you know pocketed coils, latex, memory foam, whatever the piece is. We're building all the quality that anybody else is doing. It's just we're doing it all in-house versus other people that may be having to buy this or buy all those types of things. We look at all the quality that goes out there. We try to compare ourselves with all those types of things and at the warranty. We stand behind that.
Speaker 2:We've got a 10-year limited warranty, just like everybody else does out there. We just feel like we do it better. We've got a better product. Is the Sierra Sleep product got the same name brand that Sealy or Serta does? Probably not, but we feel like it's got a lot more advantages to the dealer and to the customer that they don't need to spend extra money for. You know all the marketing that goes into Sealy or all the marketing dollars that goes into into Serta. You can get all of those with a Sierra sleep.
Speaker 1:Well, I, I know that I've, that I actually own a National Bed myself, so I'm not trying to tout it. Thank you very much. It's one of those things, like you always say back in the day Go cars. For instance, when Kia first came out, it was new on the market and it sold. But people found out very quickly that it wasn't the old Chevy that it used to be. It wasn't the old Ford, it wasn't the Nissan, it was just a car that got them from point A to point B.
Speaker 1:As the years have progressed, they've gotten better. They're actually, I think, the fourth, third or fourth largest car dealer right now Because of that. They've gotten better. Their quality control has gotten better, their longevity has gotten better, and so Ashley's been doing this now for 75 years. They've got warranty under control, they've got logistics under control. They're producing these new items that are vastly growing. How do you do your quality check in-house? Do you have people just dedicated to doing that? Because I've seen some things, but I wanted to get it from you. Does somebody walk? Do you have people that are just dedicated to hey, that's not wound tight enough. Hey, this you know you can't not wear gloves in this area. Like, how does that?
Speaker 2:work. So not only are we dedicated to it. When you go into one of our manufacturing plants, quality control is crawling all over the plant right, every single manufacturing line. There's quality people on that line making sure at the end that it's before it goes, you know, into the tube that's going to wrap a sofa. It's all quality checked right. We also, as people are putting it through, they're checking for quality right. So if it gets halfway down the line and somebody sees something wrong, they can stop the line, go back and fix it before everything else, and they're actually incentivized to do that right. They're incentivized to look for products, problems and everything else. We have gosh, I lose track of the number I think 350 robots that we have right now, and the robots are there not to take jobs from any Americans. Matter of fact, we hire. We've got 13,000 Americans that we employ right now in the United States.
Speaker 1:So with that type of investment there's got to be quality control.
Speaker 2:Yep, so the robots. The good thing about the robots is, if they're putting staples on the back of a sofa, they're putting staples on, you know, on a, let's say, a drawer. That's going together. Those staples are going to go at the exact same spot, at the exact same length, at exact same time. Every single time they're going to put glue at the same piece.
Speaker 2:So, again, if we have a problem comes back through a warranty claims or a bunch of warranty claims, we can go back to that robot. We can adjust how many staples, how much glue is being put on there, so that quality is always increased. If you hire people to do that, which we have in the past and still do on some lines they might be putting some guy may be putting six staples, some guy may be putting 10 staples. Some guy may be putting six staples, some guy may be putting 10 staples. Some guy may be putting the glue, uh, more heavy or less heavy, and the the robots help us control that right, and it all goes back to having a quality product that that our dealers and ultimately our customers can can count on. And so I don't know if that answers your question, but that's I mean it's all relative, and that's kind of what I'm understanding.
Speaker 1:Every time we see a problem, it sounds like Ashley is looking to find a way to correct it. So let's say that I'm a rental dealer, I have something that comes in and I'm a small guy. Right, I don't mean that the industry is small, but you know what?
Speaker 2:Ashley's showrooms are large in size right To say the least yes, I could probably put four or five rent-owned showrooms in there at least, right?
Speaker 1:So we're smaller dealers. Something comes in and, for whatever reason, it's not right. Whether it was logistics, whether somebody hit it, bumped it, whatever the case is, what do I do as a dealer to say, ok, something's, something's not right. How do I go about that? What's the right way to say? Let's get this fixed immediately, right out of the right out of the gate.
Speaker 2:So I think the answer to your question is it depends on how astute you are with Ashley Direct. We make Ashley Direct. We try to improve it every single year. We try our best to make it intuitive so that they can sit there and find clicks to be able to try to do that. Um, so if you need a part, you should be able to go on to Ashley direct, request a part, get the serial number you know, request what you need and usually within seven days seven to eight days you'll get a. You'll get most parts through a FedEx. That can solve your problem.
Speaker 2:If you need help with a warranty or something like that, again, we have essentially 450 marketing specialists across the country. You should be able to give them a call and sit there and say, hey, what do I do in this situation? That's what they're there for. They're not there for, and we don't call them sales reps because they're not there to just solve the sale and then go away. They've got to be there to service the products because everything's going to have a problem out there. So if you've got a problem, you need a part, you need a warranty. I would ask you first, try to go on ashleydirectcom. Second, try to sit there and talk to your marketing specialist. If you feel uncomfortable, they can always reach out to me and I'm happy to help them, guide them through that process and make it easy for them.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of people who have been in the industry for a while, but in different capacities. So sometimes you come in and you've been doing it for a while. Now I want to be a part of the deal. I want to be a part of the industry, not as a driver, not as a GM, not as an RM. I want to own my little piece of what's going on. So you get some people and I've seen people who have been working for the industry and I have seen people who own now part of the industry. Josh Sysek, he's one of them. He started out in the industry working and he said one day you know what? I think I can do this. How do you, how does somebody go to Ashley and say hey, mike, you're, you know, you're the vice president of rental. How do we start doing business together? Where would I go for that?
Speaker 2:Gosh it's. It's really easy. We and again you know we've built, we've built our company on I call it the backs of small dealers and especially small rent-to-own dealers, and so we're always looking for new people that want to get in the business. Because there's so many people that, hey, I started a business 20 years ago and my kid doesn't want it and I want to retire, and they end up selling it to somebody bigger and so on and so forth, and you lose that small town, feel that's out there.
Speaker 2:So if there's somebody out there that wants a piece and they want to open up their own business and put their own shingle out there, the easiest thing to do would be to contact myself and I'll give you my contact information and I can get you in touch with a marketing specialist in your area that can come by and give you a form to fill out. It's very simple. I think it's a one page form that we just need to get your information who you are, where you're going to be, so on and so forth A little bit of financial, business or financial numbers so that we can get you set up and we can start trading, probably within 30 days. Typically, part of it is. We just need an opening order to you know kind of get this thing going. Is there any?
Speaker 1:particular part of the country that's harder to get to. Does Ashley deliver everywhere, because I've spent all my RTO career in Florida? I know guys in mid States, I know guys in Northwest, but I don't know Midwest. I don't know. The excuse me, far West Like. Is there any place that Ashley doesn't get to in the United?
Speaker 2:States. We deliver to 95% of the United States every week. There are some rural areas up in the Northwest that there's just not the collection of dealers there that we can get a whole truck pulled together. But yeah, the number is 95% of the country we can hit in seven days, wow.
Speaker 1:Okay. So how does delivery in, like, let's say, places that are not so direct, like Puerto Rico? I know that there are store that rental dealers out there. I know Rent-A-Center does very well out there. I know a couple other ones are actually going out there. It's actually more of an introduction to rental than there's ever been, and I'm sure that they're using Ashley Ferenger, but that's not close. So how does that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Puerto Rico is actually an export for us. While they are a United States territory, it's still considered an export. So a lot of times what we'll do is we'll build containers and we'll ship those containers down to Puerto Rico. We have other retailers in Puerto Rico that will get much more consistent containers out of Vietnam and we can do that as well, and that brings us to the whole container business.
Speaker 2:So far our conversation has been dealing around our seven domestic DCs, but we also have strong warehouses overseas and we service a lot of our international partners out of Vietnam directly through the container business. So that's a new part of the business that we have not explored a lot with rent-to-own in the United States, but it's certainly a movement right now that there's a lot more rent-to-own dealers that have found containers and have found the savings associated with those. And just to let you know that Ashley does have a very vibrant container business. We feel we've got some advantages over our competition and we're happy to visit with any dealer on those and we're happy to visit with any dealer on those.
Speaker 1:So Ashley's probably been one of the biggest contributors to Rent-to-Own that I can think of. I mean there's others, but I mean Ashley's been around since day one for me and coming into the year 2000,. It was like there was Ashley and there were others, and I'm not saying that one has stayed and one hasn't. I've seen some brands come and go, not for any one particular reason. Jvc was one. They were a brand that was there all the time. Philips was another one. Philips Magnavox, that was another one. They're not there.
Speaker 1:Ashley's been here throughout, right. So you've seen the ups and downs. You've seen what's going on. Very recently we've seen some furniture companies actually go under that were pretty decent size, and when I say that I'm not saying the people who make it, I'm not talking about the Ashleys and stuff, but I am talking about Bad. Cox was here Years I mean over 100 years a solid company. Now they're not. Cons are really really big and fruitful thing for years and years and then now they're cutting back to almost nothing. Right now there's other companies that are kind of taking it on the chin. What does that say right now about the furniture industry? What does that say about what we're going through right now and in these times. And and how does Ashley maneuver that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. It's very sad and you know I hate it when anybody struggles and has to go under. The pandemic was horrific in a lot of different ways. It was very good to our rental customers because it put a lot of money and put a lot of pressure on the suppliers who were struggling to find workers at the time because, you know, just like people couldn't go to work, you know, in Tampa Florida, they couldn't go to work in Eckerd, mississippi, and so it was hard for us to keep up with the demand that was going on with the pandemic. But that pulled forward the pandemic, pulled so much business forward from 22 and 23 that it's putting the big strain and that's what happened is they pulled all this furniture business forward into the pandemic and then put us in a trough where people didn't need. I mean, how often do you need a new bedroom set? Right, and so we're seeing that On top of it, right, and so we're. We're seeing that on top of it.
Speaker 2:In this year, particularly, the inflation has just, has just killed it. You know, ubs put out a report, I guess last month, and it talked about the bottom 20 percent of income earners in the United States. Their dollars were 18 percent less than it was before, and it's because their dollars been eaten up with. Rent is eaten up with food, gasoline, other types of things, and so, whether that customer is a rent to own customer or not, I don't have any money to spend in the money they did. They did have. They already bought furniture and so that strain, that cons, bad cock, american freight they all lived off this lower end customer, right, they didn't have any money to spend and so their business dried up and they ended up driving up. I haven't seen it hurt rent to own that much because we have a different financing opportunity for these customers, but that low end customer has really been hit.
Speaker 2:Now that's the downside really been hit. Now, that's the downside. The good side is, since we got through the month of October and we got through the election, things really have looked up. For fourth quarter. The consumer confidence at a University of Michigan hasn't been this high in a very, very long time. Ubs is projecting some very nice high single digit increases for 2025. I think most people are having a good fourth quarter right now and so there's starting to be a lot of enthusiasm for how 2025 is shaping up and I think that hopefully that's good for the dealers out there. It's certainly good for Ashley and hopefully our customers feel better.
Speaker 1:Well, I can tell you right now, as I was having these conversations at the RTO World. One of the bigger questions that I did have was how do you feel about an election year? We got some mixed results, but I think a lot of them were saying the same thing. It's usually a little bit more difficult in an election year where you don't know where it's going. So not necessarily every four years, but if you have a solid contender coming in off the presidency in their four years and they're going to, you know more than likely they'll win a second term. Sometimes you just don't. Sometimes there's a lot of turmoil for whatever reason, whether it be health or not health, whatever the case is and so now you have a different contendership where you're like it's going to change. We just don't know which direction it's going to change. So whether it's the eight-year roll where you have somebody has two terms and they're solid until the end, or you have a single four-year term where things just have to change, that election year becomes very difficult. Nobody knows how they're going to do the finances for that year. They don't know what's going to go up, what's going to go down, what the new laws are coming with, and then you have to wait.
Speaker 1:Election is in November, so what do you do? You have to spend the entire year hoping that you're going to make the right decisions for the right type of laws and legalities, and everything that comes along with it. If somebody wants to change it, and things are difficult to ship, ship in, ship out. Whether it's a possible or an impossible, or it's just a harder to do, you don't know until at least something happens right. And then you pray that your candidate is going to stick to whatever they decided to say.
Speaker 1:And so you know it's been a crazy year, but I have seen since the early part of November it does seem like it's getting a little bit. I think everybody's like okay, let's let our hair down, it's behind us, let's move forward. For whatever reason that might be, let's just move forward, get to the next year and figure out how we're going to do that. And it's made for a more blossoming November, hopefully an absolute great December, and be able to kick that off the way that we want to, in the sense that we want everybody out there to be happy, to be secure and, of course, their dollars to go further.
Speaker 2:Yeah, looking back on it, it makes perfect sense. Summer is always rough and rent to own, especially with a neglection year where you had no idea which way it was going to go. And then all of a sudden, you get into's up there and you know, and then boom, you got the election. You had the result. Everybody sits there and go. You know whether your side won or your side lost. At least you figured it out Right. And now you're excited about okay, now I can go forward. And so now people, there is some excitement, there is some going in, and I love what you said. Let's hope we have a dynamite December and then you go into a presence day and hopefully people feel good about that.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, well, you know. Talking about advertising dollars, I'm glad you said that you know over a billion dollars was spent this election system, right? I mean, there was a lot of people that they were trying to reach out to and it kind of sucks the air out of the advertising, right, I mean, it's hard to compete with a billion dollars, especially when it's one person.
Speaker 2:That's just on one side, that's just one side too.
Speaker 1:So now that that's all gone. Talking about advertising, I see Ashley on all of our things, right. I see Ashley at everything that Rent to Own does. I see Ashley when it comes to like RTO World and the Trib and I see all that. But what type of advertising does Ashley do outside of that? Is there any advertising that the rent-to-own sector part of Ashley does to get its advertising out, or is it just all internal?
Speaker 2:It's mostly internal. But advertising marketing, you got to have that now. I mean the days of again. I've been with rent-to-own 13 years. I joke around you, you, just you. The days of I, you know, again I, I've been with rent to own 13 years. I joke around with all my friends Like I'm still the baby of the group and, uh, cause, every time I ran my rent to own guys I've been here 25 years, 30, you know, Kent Clark will say he's 40 years.
Speaker 2:Okay, Great, Um, but you gotta have advertising dollars out there. Um, people aren't walking into the stores anymore, right? The pandemic has changed that. And so, as far as marketing, just like all of our dealer partners, they have to have a strong marketing thing. We, as Ashley, do as well, which is what most people see almost 1,100 Ashley Home Stores across the globe or internally, where we're trying to market to the rent-to-own dealers and supporting them and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, marketing is a big deal. Making sure that your name stands out, One of the things that we're very, very proud of and it doesn't come easy, it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of dedication to the right product and the right quality and so forth is we're the number one recognized furniture brand in the world right now. That's something that doesn't come easy and something that we work very hard to protect, because we don't want to. We want to make sure that we stay number one. We want to make sure that in people's eyes, when people talk about furniture, Ashley comes up first.
Speaker 1:Well, I see that Ashley's been is always forward thinking. Right, we've got to rent our own sector. We start building new brands or build new items. We're coming into the furniture. So then now the question's got to be what's coming up? You knocked it out of the park with the bedding. We've got that locked down. It is getting better and better and better, and the guys were telling me how we've got this foam thing and it's getting great. It's happening. I mean, we can make the mattresses quicker, better and ship faster, and so they're excited about that. They're all behind it. So what's next? How do you top that when you're at right now, ashley is sitting in a position where, as far as rent-to-own is concerned, you're almost everything we can go to as far as furniture. You've got the bedding, you've got the case goods, you've got living room sets.
Speaker 2:In March of this year, we um, we purchased a company resident home, and resident home is is most, uh, most people will know resident home from the brand Nectar and uh, nectar DreamCloud, and they have a couple of other, um, higher end brands and that's that is crazy exciting, because this is, this is someplace that we've never been before and you go. Well, mike, what do you mean? You've never been? We just talked about 30 minutes about mattresses.
Speaker 2:Well, the thing is that our brand is we build a great product and we sell to a lot of different people Typically, it's a little bit older person, right? Especially in our home stores and one of the things that we looked at is how do we get and how do we add freshness, how do we add newness, how do we add what's the next thing that we do? And um, our company spent, I mean, years researching resident home and who these people were and what their, what their secret sauce was to to making it work. And it's, it's an incredible product. It's an incredible um business, um, different way to do business, right? So instead of just throwing a mattress on the floor and putting a bolster and a head, a foot protector on it, they have an entire social media strategy built around social media Facebook, instagram, tiktok, all those different things and the algorithms that these people have created to understand that younger customer right.
Speaker 1:Mike, are you going to be doing TikToks?
Speaker 2:No, I am not going to be doing TikToks. I did go through a little bit of time where I was doing TikTok shots on the weekends, which was kind of fun. But that's behind me as well. But there is. It's incredible. I mean, we're talking about our kids. So I've got a 23 and a 26-year-old that are on Snapchat and Instagram and so forth.
Speaker 2:Nectar is built for them because they'll you know, nectar will pick up on their use of Instagram and where they're going on TikTok and all these different places and then find the right people that are going to be in the market for a mattress and they have these, almost these custom videos that they're putting in front of them and all of a sudden, they're going to want to spend money on a Nectar brand versus a Sierra Sleep or a Sealy or a SIRT or something else, because we've built that brand up in there and it is extraordinarily exciting for a company like us to grab on to another company like that. And it's a big company. I mean it's a large company. We had to double the size of our mattress facilities in Saltillo just to be able to take on the production facilities.
Speaker 1:Help me out. When you say double, what's double the size? I mean I could say double the size of this room and be okay.
Speaker 2:I'm going to get the square footages wrong on this but literally our facilities in Saltillo. We had to cross the railroad tracks and buy the empty furniture factory behind us and use that facility to start building Nectar. We had to double our size just to be able to try to do this and it's a very, very exciting time for us. So if there's any partners out there that haven't heard of Nectar, haven't heard of Resident Home, I'd encourage anybody to call your marketing specialist or call me and we'll walk you through those opportunities, because it's a different way to get a new customer into your stores.
Speaker 2:You may be in a situation where you're looking for that new customer and, rather than paying, trying to get new customer acquisitions is so expensive. This is a way that you put three mattresses on your floor, you can get on the dealer locator and the system, the algorithm will work and it'll drive new customers to your store New, younger customers, right? So you drive one of my kids at 23 or 26. Think about the lifetime value of that customer if they come in and they rent a Nectar mattress from you and then they get to the payment at the end and you hit them up and they want to do it again because it was such a great experience. And rent to own is a fabulous experience because you've got all the flexibility without any of the commitment out there.
Speaker 1:You know, when we did our first RTO show live and I had Charles Smitherman, the CEO of April, there we were talking. One of our guests was Joe Luxick from Magic Rentals and he was describing the differences. And I specifically want to do him because I mean, he's a director of sales, he knows what he's doing, I mean, he knows his business and one of the things that he was talking about.
Speaker 1:The thing he was talking about was the difference between the buying habits of what we have now compared to people of maybe our generation and older are so different and so, when he was talking about it, there's a lot of things that go into it and being available to where they are, which is social media, which is podcasts, which is connected to their hip, versus the legacy media that we might've been grown up used to, where it's on the screen and we watch it for a couple hours right there. Well, they're watching it on the go, they're watching it in snippets, they're watching it in small bites, what they like, who they like, and they're going to stick with those people. And if you don't resonate, it is just as easy. You can't change a cable company, but I can certainly swipe left or right or go to the next video, and you know what? I'm okay with that person now. So I'm going to stick there and getting to those, those brand new customers, getting to the people who need it in the way that they consume. That is absolutely important. I mean, it's so important.
Speaker 1:Now, talking about that, I mean talking about the little guy, talking about, you know, the hometown person that's going to buy from Ashley. Every time that I turn around, I see Ashley on a board for something that goes on a rental. There's something you guys have done an amazing job of being part of the rental industry. One of the things I wanted to ask, though, was being such a big part of the rental owned industry and being part of of what we do in those relationships like we've talked about, how does Ashley go through, and is there a community type of involvement that Ashley has when we're talking about how involved in the relationships that you have with the Rantone community? We are community driven. We love to be a part of the community.
Speaker 1:Is that something that Ashley does.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I think it doesn't get enough. We don't spend enough time talking about it. So I really do appreciate your question. The amount of effort that we put into our local communities is, I think is, tremendous, and we give back to the rent-to-own industry because they've supported us for all those years. And again, we consider our dealer partners family almost is because you want to be able to help them with their charities and so forth. So, yeah, we have, we it's. It's incredible. I'm going to get these numbers wrong, but you know, we, we plant trees for Arbor Day. We and forgive me, I may be reading some of the stuff here, but we recycle over 78,000 tons of wood. We recycle 12,000 tons of cardboard, 792 tons of plastic. We plant 6,000 trees through our employees every Arbor Day. Looking back to sustainability, we've got a very, very aggressive solar panel projects across our manufacturing that generate over 25 million kilowatt hours of electricity Wow. So we're very sensitive to that. We support local apprenticeships and internships. We've provided $3.5 million in scholarships to high school seniors. Wait, wait, wait.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that. I had no idea that Ashley actually gave scholarships.
Speaker 2:Absolutely no kidding. Yeah, a lot of times there's a big miss in the United States for high school seniors getting into STEM sciences, and so we encourage that because, again, if you think about the manufacturing capacity of us, we're the largest manufacturer in the United States of furniture, whether that's upholstery in Ecru case, goods up in Arcadia. And we need engineers to continually design and engineer stuff and re-engineer it, because once you're done, it's not until you're done. You've got to always improve upon it. We had the situation last year with the tip over. We had to get our engineers and say, okay, how are we going to engineer this stuff? So it passes tip over with you know, and more than passes tip over pieces. So, yeah, so $3.5 million in scholarships to STEM high school seniors, we spent $3 million on a mobile skills lab that goes from school to school, uh, getting people excited about this. You know we um, we sponsor local robotic um classes throughout the united states as well.
Speaker 2:Um, one of our yearly um things that we do every august is we sponsor sponsor Ashley for the arts. Last year we gave over $750,000 to over 70 nonprofit organizations Wow, and if anybody ever has a chance to be in in Arcadia, wisconsin, in August this coming year, please come by. It's absolutely fabulous, coming from Texas in August when it's 105 degrees, to be able to go up to Wisconsin and have 72-degree days and 60-degree nights and listen to a bunch of great bands and we sell a lot of beer for people to raise money for all this stuff and it's a great time.
Speaker 1:Well, you're going to need to let me know about that, because I think the show might actually show up in August next year.
Speaker 2:Well, we'd love to have you up there. That would be great. That, because I think the show might actually show up in August next year. Well, we'd love to have you up there, that would be great. The last thing I do want to mention is we've talked a lot in the show about mattresses. We've given over 170,000 mattresses through our Hope to Dream to children that needed since 2010. 170,000 mattresses to kids that are in need, and we regularly give like I think we gave 1,000 mattresses to people in North Carolina after Helene ripped through them and so it's a big part of our company. It's a big part that doesn't get the notoriety that it should get Because, again, you've got to be able to give back.
Speaker 1:You know, 170,000 is an awesome number and it's a disheartening number. It's awesome that Ashley Furniture can say we have done this, we've been a part of it, and this is how many people, how many homes and sometimes even more than that, because you have a husband or a wife or other people that share you know partners that share a mattress but then to say there's 170,000 needs out, there is. You know, it's just difficult to say, wow, we have, we even scratched the surface. We haven't even scratched the surface.
Speaker 2:There's so many in, in our, our dealer partners. They see it every single day. They see it every single day and that's, and that's why, you know, rent to own has gotten so close to my heart is because, you know, gosh, when I joined 13 years ago it was, you know, it was a dirty window business. Well, it's anything but a dirty window business. Right, it may not be in the nicest part of town, but it's helping the people that need to be helped most.
Speaker 1:It's closest to where they live, right. We don't need them to go to the next mall where everything's nice and shiny and you're not where you really belong right. Everybody needs to shop there. That you know the people who have needs, who can't go out there and spend $1,000, $2,000 right off the bat, who can get what they need immediately and not shipped from two states away. I can get it from 22nd Street right down the way. That's really what matters.
Speaker 1:And then, talking about that, because I love the idea of being as green as possible, when you can say that you're the largest manufacturer, there's also a lot of room to say other things. Right, we also have a lot of waste. We also have a lot of trucks on the road. We also have a lot of things that are on the other side of that, and to be conscious of trying to take care of that is huge. Beginning, as this all happens and you're getting these, you're implementing new ideas, we're starting off new products. We're making sure they're making it there, they're getting to the stores, we're working with rent to own, on the shipping and making sure that you don't carry what you don't need.
Speaker 1:Did that all come from Todd Winnick? Did that come from Ron how did that does that come into? Where they go into and they say, hey, I need to get a guy like Michael Case to come in here and talk to me. How do we get this done? Because it's generational right. I mean they're a family-owned business and I don't know if a lot of people know that. I mean it started with Ron, right, and then now Todd kind of runs the company. Is that right? Is it his son or his brother that also works?
Speaker 2:So Ron started the company 75 years ago. Todd took over the president and CEO. I think it was in 2002 and it's just, it's rifled, it's just gone. It's grown exponentially. It's still a private company. It's a very, very large private company and I think it'll always stay a private company, because being private gives us the ability to do things that public companies can't.
Speaker 2:We're not at the mercy every quarter to come up with a certain amount of sales or a certain amount of gross margin. We can put money where it needs to be. And you're right, he's got his son, his nephew, his niece. All have strong, strong positions. And plus he's got other relatives that work for the company and they all are. They still all have the same passion for the business and doing what's right for the customer. And the customer has always rewarded us, and so we're always going to give back to that customer and that's whether it's a dealer or whether it's that end customer, we always and we're dedicated to it and I don't think it. You know, did Ron start the spark and Todd started the spark for all this type of stuff? Yeah, but he's also hired so many people around him that have that same.
Speaker 2:Again, I'm from out of the company, but I'm, I'm, I'm an Ashley loyalist. I totally have have. I appreciate being part of the company and part of the movement that he's got, because he's always doing the right thing, whether it's for the environment, for this, for the customer, whether it's for his employees. You know, I mean it's incredible. Many of our dealer partners watching I'm sure have taken some tours in Arcadia or whatever it is and it never. I have so much pride when people walk through it because they'll they'll meet a lot of our workers in these factories and these workers will say, hi, I'm, you know, barb, and I've been on this line for 30 years and I've got 25 years and I've got 13 years, right, and these people have they, they, they, it's you know they built a living around it and they throw their love into all this stuff and you know it never ceases.
Speaker 2:I mean people will sit there and say, man, the one thing that blew me away was just the pride of ownership of these factory workers and and hopefully I I show the pride of of ownership of Ashley too, because it's it's been great for me for 13 years and I hope I have another 13 years ahead of me.
Speaker 1:Well, I think Ashley's doing a great job. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you here, because I wanted to pull back the veil. I think a lot of people know ofher, but they don't really know what's in it. I agree, they don't understand how much goes into being the number one industry for their RTO dealers. What it takes to come up with the idea is to get it to your door without having these shipping minimums, making sure that the warranties work, making sure that it's innovative from the beginning to the end. And the question is how do we get better? Well, you've said it, Do the services through the warranties, through the calls, through the serial numbers, making sure that it's in town, making sure that we have something going on in the US and something outside of the US, having shipping being a part of a family business that only isn't part of the family 75 years, but giving back to the communities that you're in.
Speaker 2:I think it's great, yeah, and don't forget about the product too. I mean, the product is what drives everything, and we've got to stay in front of where the customer well, the Wayne Gretzky quote, you know, right, we're skating to where the puck is going and product is always. You know, we call product the oxygen of our company. Right, great product will give you more oxygen, bad product will give you bad oxygen, you know. And so you know, we're very excited that we've got some exciting things in our lineup right now. We've got some super exciting things coming for 2025 that we're excited to show people, um, either in Las Vegas or in Atlanta, the trip show and um, you know it's, it's one of the things that that we love, and hopefully, when we get a chance to show you guys, we show you with the amount of love that we really have for the product. And it's a very exciting time right now.
Speaker 1:You know something you said I wanted to mention before we close it up. You had mentioned something because I don't think we talk about the laws enough. You had mentioned the tip over. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that Because I remember it and I remember going. You know, I remember seeing it, I remember a lot of conversation was about it, but the tip over was for furniture to not be a tip over hazard.
Speaker 2:And how did? How did Ashley tackle that? So we tackled it head on right. So we worked closely with the government, we worked with the agency that was enacting that, and we made sure that not only, you know, we had our say in what the tip over law turned out to be, but we also reacted to it, and it was not easy, right it it? We had to change a lot of our manufacturing, both in States and overseas, in order to react to that.
Speaker 2:But, like like most people, you had to add weight to a chest or to a dresser that was over. I think it was 29 inches tall. Anything over has specific pieces, and so you had to go back and re-engineer. You had to re-engineer the drawers, you had to re-engineer the back, you had to re-engineer the whole thing while keeping it, keeping the quality, and we think that we not only did we exceed the expectations of the law out there, but we also made each case much more sturdy, right. So you know, racking is something that a inexpensive chest used to have. There's no racking anymore because you've got a much more stable back that you have on there.
Speaker 1:Was APRO part of that when you were going to do the legislation? Did APRO play a part in that with you?
Speaker 2:Absolutely they did, absolutely did, and they've always been terrific partners for us and um, which is why we like, you know, we like having a close relationship with a pro and close relationships with trip, because, um, they support our rent to own dealers and, you know, without the rent to own dealers, you know we would be without a a big chunk of our business and we're very appreciative of it.
Speaker 1:Well, we're appreciative of Ashley. Ashley has done amazing things with the rental industry, as they always have for years and years. Now, 75 years going on and above, michael Kay's here as the vice president of rental operations, right, and so, as he's part of the rental operations, he seems to know exactly what he's talking about, right? And if anybody starts out, like we discussed before, how would they reach out to you and get started?
Speaker 2:They can always reach out to me. My email address is very easy. It's mkays at ashleyfurniturecom. Anybody's welcome to call me on my cell phone, which is 972-489-4345. I don't have anything to hide. All I want to do is have people have great experiences with Ashley and with their customers.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that that's what they're up for. I love it. Guys, I want to tell you, as always, you know we always talk about rent to own and everything that we do is how to further that business. It's always something good to see when you're able to cut back and turn back the veil of what's going on in Ashley Industries and find out they're green, they're lean and they're mean. To get it to you guys, we do appreciate it. Listen. You can find us, as always, on facebook, instagram, linkedin. You can always find us on youtube, where you can clip and subscribe. Mike k is our guest. We do appreciate it. And I want to tell you guys, as always get your collections low to keep your sales high. Have a great one.
