Success Stories Ep 98 - "Crafting the Perfect Headspace"

On today success stories podcast, we'll discuss the world of headwear with Ty Kain of Crafted MFG in Denver. 

Ty is an expert on headwear trends and decoration styles. So if this is your jam, you're going to want to perk up and tune in embroidery, PVC patches, DTF -- he's done it all since 2016 and we're going to talk sales, decoration techniques, and, of course, tons of other stuff.

Transcript

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Marshall Atkinson 
On today's Success Stories podcast. We'll discuss the world of headwear with Ty cane of crafted MFG in Denver. Ty is an expert on headwear trends and decoration styles. So if this is your jam, you're going to want to perk up and tune in embroidery, PVC patches. DTF, he's done it all since 2016 and we're going to talk sales, decoration techniques, and, of course, tons of other stuff. So Ty, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

Ty Kain 
Thank you for having me.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, I'm so excited. You know, I love hats. I'm a hat guy, you know, especially baseball hats. You know, not so much like Viking hats or cowboy hats, but just baseball hats, right? And I've got a bunch of hats, and they're band hats. They're my favorite team hats. They're just, you know, restaurants, I like, you know, the type of stuff. I'm a big hat guy, right? So this is going to be a lot of fun to talk today. And over the years, I've done a lot of hat orders too. So I think this is going to be right up my alley, too. So ready to get going?

Ty Kain 
Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it.

Marshall Atkinson 
So the first question, as usual, it's kind of the origin story, right? So, you know, so probably some folks out there don't know who you are or whatever, but usually this is how we introduce the guest, right? So how did you get started in the business? And, more specifically, how did you get hooked on doing headwear? Because that seems very hyper-specific.

Ty Kain 
Yeah, absolutely. So I am a teacher first. So I, you know, went to college to be a physical education teacher, and I did that for, you know, four or five years. And in 2016 the the craft beer boom really had started here in Denver. And you know, you go around the breweries, you have a beer, you want to support them. You know, you're looking at their their T shirts and their hats. And honestly, I wasn't really impressed with what I was seeing. And I really wanted to help. And, you know, being a teacher, you know, making 32,000 a year, or whatever it was, it was exciting to think about making an extra three or $400 a month. And so that's kind of where I started. And I just built the business year by year. It took me about four years to build it up, to have enough clients and cash flow, and, you know, all those things in order to quit teaching. And so let's fast forward to January 2020, no, I did not know what was to come in the months after that, I went into the principal, and I, you know, put in my two weeks notice. And we all know what happened from there. And so what specifically got me into headwear was it was really hard to find headwear. And some of the larger distributors, they cut off my account, and, you know, all those things. And so that really gets you going, right? As a business owner, you're like, Well, how can I help manage my own inventory a little bit better? And so that's how I got started in headwear. And to be honest with you, if you kind of ask around, you know, everybody knows a screen printer. Oh, yeah, I got a friend, he's a screen printer. Oh, I know someone's a screen printer, right? I mean, Marshall, you've seen that, yeah,

Marshall Atkinson 
I know I know a screen printer or found

Ty Kain 
Right? But it's like, how many at that time? Not a lot of people saying, Oh, I got, I got a hat guy, Hey, I know a hat guy. He's got high quality head wear. He's got high quality decoration. He does things the right way. Like, that's not a common thing at the time in the apparel world. And so we really honed in on that skill and we were okay losing customers on the screenprint and shirt side of things to have their head wear business.

Marshall Atkinson 
Okay? And have you always liked hats, or is that just kind of something you fell into?

Ty Kain 
Yeah, of course, kind of like how you describe yourself loving hats, right? I mean, I have way too many of them, and I'm always fascinated by the different decoration types and collecting them. And, you know, bringing hats out from, you know, when you used to wear them in the 90s or the 80s, and they're back in style again. Right? So, you know, you save them for 30 years, and you're on trend again, which is fantastic.
 
Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, I've got a hat that I love wearing, and it's no secret. I'm a Florida State Seminole graduate, and when I go to a football game, I'm only wearing one hat. That's the hat I wear to the game. And this thing has seen so much, uh, victory and pain and suffering and celebrations and tailgating and all kinds of stuff. It's the, it's my favorite hat by far.

Ty Kain 
Yeah, but at least it's

Marshall Atkinson 
The weight just in sweat.

Ty Kain 
At least your team wins games. I'm, I'm a I'm a CU fan, and we've had a tough stretch, and I'm actually the opposite of you. I try to do a new Colorado hat every week, like a new related hat. I kind of, I challenge myself to not wear the same hat twice, just to games. So...

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, okay. Well, there you go. So anyway, that, you know, I think guys really like hats, right? We're hat people, right? And, you know, I think girls like hats, but only if they look cute in them. So, you know, my wife wears hats, but only when she's walking. That's it. That's the only time she'll wear a hat, is when she's walking right, doing her little power walk, right? I don't know what that or she's at the beach. That's it two, two places. So nice. So, so there's a lot of popular hat styles. You know, I'm real fond of trucker hats. That's usually what I like, the style I like. And I'm a big fan of the legacy hat because I like the mesh panel of that is real soft, and a lot of trucker hats are really super stiff, and that's the brand that I like the best. And it's funny that I'll find a hat in a store or whatever, like, Oh, look at this hat's really cool. And I'll play with a little bit. And then it's a legacy, right? And that's kind of the it just happens to always be that same one, right? But there's dad hats and five panel hats and athletic hats and rope hats and all types of different stuff, right? You know? And then the courses are new. The new craze in promo is that Mel and hat that's like that $70 baseball hat that everybody's going crazy about, right? How do you line up? What's the right hat for the customer, the application, or the decoration, or whatever. How do you what's the kind of the secret recipe here for finding what to use for the right customer and situation?

Ty Kain 
Sure, I think since we've launched our own performance head, where I feel like, you know, 90% of our inquiries are kind of asking for the performance water resistant hat. We call it the Boogie. And I think that, you know, that kind of already helps us out quite a bit. You know, we we go to set them up in a little wholesale account, and, you know, hey, what hats are you interested in? And they're like, they send photos. It's, it's the performance hats, it's the laser cut mesh in the back, right? So that helps us out quite a bit. But, you know, for us, we stock four or 5000 hats in inventory. That's a good and a bad thing. I can see your wheels turning a little bit.

Marshall Atkinson
That's a lot of cash.

Ty Kain 
It's a lot of it's a lot of cash flow. You know, half of those are our own. So the margins are, you know, much better than they are from the ones from the vendor. And, you know, as we sell out of the ones from the vendor, or, you know, we make our own to replace those, we're not going to ever compromise quality. But yeah, I think having that variety, and you know, anything with a rope right now for us, out sells the next hat, 10 to one, easily.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's just the trend right now, or what's, what's behind that?

Ty Kain 
Gosh. I mean, I like to say it's a trend, but it's, how long do trends last? I mean, it's been, it's been, like, seven or eight years at that rope hat, right? Has been selling well for us. So that's a five panel rope. And so, you know, we went on, went ahead and made, kind of our own structured version of that. That's the boat you have. And, gosh, it's just crazy. Sells so well, and it has got the water-resistant, we kind of have a little sweat-proof action in there, and the trucker hat still sells. Well, it's just different markets. Yeah, you know, we're mostly in the craft beer space, and you know, half of our breweries love that trucker hat, and the other half want the Melon like hat, right? Or the grandpa pinch hat. And so I think having the variety is nice. Customers can come in, they can shop, you know, see what they want, try things on. It's really nice that they can see it in person. Touch and feel it, as you know, as a consumer, when you get to do that, you're more likely to make a purchase in a store.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, and what about fitted hats? Or Is anybody buying those anymore? Or is that just it's really hard to stock because it's based on their head size more than anything. So that's a lot of SKUs to worry about. What do you think about that, that's like, yeah...

Ty Kain 
Yeah, I think I haven't seen a real, a true Pro Fit, kind of like a Zephyr hat back in the day. I haven't really seen anything like that New Era, really. The the stretch fit, obviously, is one, but you still gotta keep two or three sizes in that, right? But the stretch fit, adjustable hat, phenomenal, super comfortable that'll fit all head sizes. And so we see a little bit of that. But, gosh, maybe 100 a year in Flex, in a flex fit style that we sell. Yeah, you know, 15, 20,000 hats, maybe 100 are flex style. It's for the flex fit. It's great.

Marshall Atkinson 
Who's buying that? What type of customer buys those? Like, the question of, like a shoe, like a shoe nerd, like, so there's like, a hat nerd that says, I gotta have my size hat, right?

Ty Kain 
You're putting me on the spot. I can't even, I can't even think about it, because it's such a small percentage. But right, yeah, it's just that's kind of faded out. But that was, that was hot back in the day, right? That style.

Marshall Atkinson 
So currently, right now, while we're recording this, what is the top-selling thing? Top Selling hat, style, color, whatever that, that you feel is just, it's just blowing the doors off. Everything else.

Ty Kain 
Can I just name a specific Sure? Yeah. Well, I'm a little bit biased with our our Bogey hat, but I think a five-panel structured hat with a rope sells very well. And I also think a five-panel, unstructured, with the mesh behind the crown, similar to like a Richardson, 256, right? Similar, similar to something like that. And so those two hats, by far. 90% of our sales come from those two hats.

Marshall Atkinson 
And is it really team color plus neutrals? Or is it like, like, I know you're wearing a flamingo hat right now, a bunch of flamingos all over it. Or do you see patterns and designs taking over what seems to be really popular?

Ty Kain 
The black. Black sells very well. The Black golf hat is the best-selling color for us. And then on the other side, it's just neutrals. It's, you know, like a mustard with a black rope, or army green with a yellow rope. It's kind of things that, uh, you know, our number one selling patch is black and white. So I feel like anything that kind of goes with those is working really well. I do think it's heading in the pattern direction. You know, you see Imperial do a little bit of that few other brands as well, but they've gone down the camo train. But it's like the loud hats are fun.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right? Yeah, so yeah, that hat I was talking about a while ago, you know, it's, it's a Digi camo hat, right? That's, like, my favorite hat. I wear it a lot, right? And so was Digi camo still a thing, or is it like the old fashioned, like the the Amoeba shape camo, right? What do you what do you see?

Ty Kain 
Yeah, I feel like the larger camo is more like the operational style, like what they wear in the army and right, different things like that, right? But, you know, the the military just went away from the Digi or, you know how long ago that was, but they're back to that bigger shaped camo now, but, yeah, I don't see too much of the Digi camo being sold these days.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. And I tell you, what I see a lot is what's called the ice camo, which is like white with little bit of gray in it. And I keep seeing that everywhere. What do you is that still, do you think that's a trend?

Ty Kain 
Yeah, I do. I think it is, you know, Melon, and just, I feel like they're spamming me every day, right? They they've got the snow, they've got the snow camo. You know, the black camo looks nice as well, but I think it's probably a trend I guess. It does look nice, though, with, you know, black and white patches. It's a great background.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right, right? So what, what is, what's your favorite style, regardless of what's selling. Do you have one that's like, this is what I really prefer to wear?

Ty Kain 
Well, I'm bias, but the hat I'm wearing, so it's a five-panel on. Structure. It's got the mesh on it. We call it the Pops. And then the bogey hat, you know, we we size all of our hats one size bigger. So a standard hat at five snaps, it's 58 centimeters, and we go 59 to 59 and a half. And I've got a huge head Marshall. And so, you know, I don't want to wear a standard hat on one snap or squeeze my head on on two snaps, and so I think I've worn my own hat for the last three years. I maybe one other style would be it's similar to the 256 but it's corduroy, right from Richardson, and that one's fantastic, super comfortable.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right, right, right. What about decoration now, right? So you know, embroidery, or, you know, patches or PVC or printing, or whatever, right? What do you like to get in? What do you recommend for folks or for your customers?

Ty Kain 
Yeah, we are in love with PVC. We've been doing that since 16 and that is our number one selling patch style. We typically go black and white, or white on black. We can go up to seven colors, but truly, just that little bit of dimension and the two dimensional, it can it can be three dimensional. We don't see that too often. Makes the patch pretty thick, a little bit harder to heat apply it. We offer sewing, but we'd rather heat apply if we can. But yeah, the two dimensional PVC patch is our best selling patch. You know, 90% or so.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right, and are you just doing it in the center? You know, the lower you know, the lower panel. I've seen a whole bunch of stuff. Of course, it's on the side or underneath the bill. That's like a new trend. I keep seeing underneath the bill. What are, what are you guys doing?

Ty Kain 
I think that I'm a little bit of a traditionalist. As far as if there is no center line, a five panel of any kind, I like to put the patch in the middle. I like to recommend that for people. Of course, people will tell you, if they don't want that, they will, you know, lower left panel. Or, you know, we're seeing, we're seeing a little bit of the PBC under the bill, you know, where people commonly grab the hat, right, so that they don't get it dirty. That's more of our full custom side of things a little bit more difficult to do really well domestically, but yeah, those are the two most popular. And then we're seeing a little bit of silicone transfers on the side of the hat, right? And then also on the back by the snap, we're seeing some silicone like foam or or silicone two-dimensional transfers.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right. So, are you guys doing embroidery, and, like, probably dimensional embroidery, and probably really everything, right?

Ty Kain 
We do, yeah. I mean, some of our favorite embroideries has always been puff, just that extra dimension looks so much. I uh, elevated, in my opinion. And I'll actually share another one with people. So the pearl stitch. And so you see a lot of the golf courses doing the pearl stitch that also has the puff in there. But then it's kind of hard to describe. Have you seen it before? Marshall, I got the golf courses.

Marshall Atkinson 
Describe it so everybody can know what you're talking about.

Ty Kain 
Oh, I'm trying. I'm trying to, I'm hitting a little bit of a block here, but it's basically like, I don't know, it's like little circles within the embroidery. Kind of the best way I can describe it with with the puff. You know, it can add a few more stitches, but it kind of just gives a that little bit more dimension. Besides, besides, you know, the puff is just a big, a big, rounded stitch over the puff. And this is like little ones in between, kind of a, the best way to describe it.

Marshall Atkinson 
Oh, well. So what happens with stuff like that is, of course, the light hits the thread. It has the little shimmery reflection, and that's how you tell it's embroidery, right? And so that just gives it a little more luster.

Ty Kain 
Yeah, absolutely right.

Marshall Atkinson 
And a cool thing that I've done and seen before, of course, with puff, is also using the variegated thread, you know, which is like the one piece of thread has a bunch of little different colors that it's all kind of random, and then there, like everything, if you did it, you know, if you did 100 hats, they'd all look different, but they all look the same at the same time. And that's always kind of a cool look, is. So let's just, anytime you do something this, I think a little unusual, right? It adds a lot of. Well, kind of fun to it a little bit, right? And, and especially for doing metallics and just any type of funky kind of threads, right? So that's kind of a neat thing. Are. So are you doing your own digitizing? Do you? Do you send that out?

Ty Kain 
Yeah, we, we like to use Vior digitizing.

Marshall Atkinson 
Oh, yeah, he's great.

Ty Kain 
 Yep, he's he's great in a few of the Facebook groups, and he actually does all of our pearl stitch digitizing.

Marshall Atkinson 
Okay, cool. When we're thinking about, you know, the combo between a hat and the decoration, right? Of course, a shop wants to make as much money as possible. Is there a sweet spot that you think is so somebody who's not really into hats, what they should really be looking for. So, you know, this is our bread and butter we want. This should really be our most profitable kind of thing, because we're doing it all the time. How do we like tune that up? So it's the most profitable thing that we could do, because you got the hat and the decoration is a combo. What are you what are your thoughts on that?

Ty Kain 
Yeah, I think, you know, for the for the last seven or eight years, we've pushed a lot of customers into that PVC patch, but you know now that we are manufacturing our own headwear, I think that continuing on that patch space, you know, for us, we're wholesalers, so we don't really have a an in consumer, retail type customer. We have maybe five or 10 out of the whole book of business. But we kind of just keep the wholesale pricing the same, just to keep things easy. But for us, you know, a patch, we've got a 50% margin minimum a hat, we've got a 50 to 65% margin. So that's why, for us, the patch is so important and such a vital part of our success. I think ways that you can upsell that is, you know, adding silicone or a cup foam on the side of the hat. You know, we charge an extra three bucks for that, you know. And your cost is like 25 cents, 50 cents, you know, if you do it the right way, or you cut it in house, right, that's a nice 75% margin then on something like that, right? So, I think for us being wholesalers and keeping everything at a minimum of 50% margin, which is crazy of a gross margin, I think we do really well with that, keeping it simple. I think that's been the best success for us.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, I'll tell you. Another really great thing about using patches is when you let's say we're gonna embroider something, and let's just say it's going to be 10,000 stitches, right. And, and if we're running our embroidery machines at, you know, eight or 900 a minute, right? That thing is going to take about 1012 minutes to run per run, right? Depending on how many heads your embroidery machine is, you know, you can only get so many an hour, right, but with a heat press right? You know, it's 30 seconds or so, and then you're off to the next one, right? And so you could do way more hats per hour with the same labor, right? And so if you just look at how you're using your time, your time utilization, and and what you're doing, it's just a way to get more things decorated per day in the shop. And another really cool thing is a lot of people don't know, and probably will have come out by the time this airs, is that Stahls has a new thing called Flex embroidery, which is going to be a transfer that looks just like embroidery, which was designed primarily for doing like dry fit polos and stuff, because you know those pucker when you when you sell them, right? So now you could use an embroidered look, but it's a transfer, and I think that's probably. Going to be a big application in the hat world, because we could put that on like the side of the hat, or, you know, even on the mesh part, and it's still look like embroidery. But of course, it's not, because it's just a it's just a patch, you know. So that's kind of my thinking about patches, is, you know, it I think it's probably more profitable than doing embroidery, just because of the time savings, if you just think about it that way. And and what have you had thoughts on that? Or is that been your results? Have you seen kind of the same kind of thing?

Ty Kain 
Yeah. I mean, that's, that's why we are 95% patches. You know, one the margins on them are fantastic, but, you know, I think we're able to control the quality in house. And I do like that. I like that, you know, I if something's not straight, I can either, you know, scrap it and give the customer a credit or, you know, or just make another one. You know, we have all those hats in stock, right? So we can just reload. But I think quality control for us is, is one of our key standards. And I think that's, you know, what we love is we put the patch on, we make sure it's straight. We make sure that it stays on, you know, we keep all those patches, you know, in how in the warehouse for 24 to 48 hours before we even sell it to the customer. Make sure they cure properly all of that. You know, I think with embroidery, like you said, takes forever to run the for us, the profit margin is less and so that's why we don't do much beyond the pearl stitch or the, you know, even when we look into 3d 3d embroidery, we're likely doing us a Stahls 3d patch, 3d puff patch, right for us, it's $1 or two cheaper, and we can still, you know, double that price and make a Nice margin on it.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right. Right. Okay, so last question here, you know one thing that seems to be catching on like everywhere, is live activation events, right? So this is where guests or customers can take a patch or a transfer or something, and they've got a hat, and then they could decorate themselves, or maybe somebody does it for them, or whatever, and this is at a bar or an event or a game or somewhere, right? You know, well, the Fair of the state fair or whatever, right? So what do you think's behind this trend, right? And what do you know about making sure you can do this profitably.

Ty Kain 
Yeah, so, I mean, you know, these are called, you know, hat bars. It's kind of a main term that's been thrown around and a little bit on that I think customers love when they can make it their own, right. They, of course, will buy and support other businesses. And they will, if they like something, they'll, they'll, they'll still purchase it, right? But if they can go in and put five things that describe their personality on their hat, they're going to be all about it. And so I think that's the main reason that that trend has been blowing up so much on the hat bar space. You know, on the other side of things, we have a little bit more organized thing we call Pat event, or lids on tap. You know, build your own hat. We've called it different things, just to see kind of what catches on the most. And we've, done this with our customers. You know, they actually wanted a couple customers wanted mobile, live screen printing. And instead of running the risk of losing that customer to somebody who might be able to do that, because we couldn't, I said, hey, what if we made hats? And so I think doing a little organization, you know, developing two to three different patch styles, you know, maybe a leather and embroidered and a PVC different logos that they wouldn't normally be able to buy. And that's kind of how we've set up our own hat events. Come up to the table. Marshall's like, Hey, I like that PVC patch. Great. He tries on hats. He puts the patch in front of the hat. What looks best to him? Press on the hat. It looks great. We got mirrors, all that fun stuff, right? Hey, that's a $35 hat. You swipe your card. It's ready in a minute.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right. You know, custom to the person.

Ty Kain 
Custom to the person. So if you want a pink hat and the red patch, and the brewery or the customer may not bring that hat in, right? So you could have a one-of-one, and people love that. And you know, and that's one of our things that we tell people, hey, no one's picked that combination today, and that usually solidifies the sale, right? Oh, well, I have a one-of-one. Yeah, you do, oh my gosh, that's, that's amazing, right? So, so I think that's kind of the allure.

Marshall Atkinson 
So, do you think if you're doing this type of thing, it's good to have an assortment of decoration, things, you know, patches or whatever, an assortment of colors and styles, because you need that crazy mix up, right? Instead of just trying to go with a few, do you think it's more successful to have more variety?

Ty Kain 
Gosh, I feel like I'm still trying to figure that out. Because, as you know, you know more than like, three options, and people can't make decisions or whatever that stat is, right? Three or four things, right? People have a really hard time. And I think I do see that, but, you know, it's like we have a floral section, and we have a women's running hat section, and we have a rope hat section, and, you know, we bring six or eight hats per style, and we probably bring 200 hats. And honestly, we probably bring too many. Yeah, but I'm being honest.

Marshall Atkinson 
The other thing you could do probably is have, like, here's, here's, like, four or five recommendations that most people do, but you can do whatever you want, right? And so we've got a, b, c and d, right? And if you don't like those, build your own, you know, kind of a thing, right? And because some people aren't imaginative at others, and other people just want, hey, what can I do? It's my chance to do something crazy.

Ty Kain 
Yeah, well, and if, you know, we have a thing where it's like, you know, the hat might be 30 bucks. It's like, you want to add another patch. It's five or 10 bucks, you know. So they might try and test the waters and put two to three patches, you know, all around the hat. Hey, can you put it here? My answer to them is, always, I will try anything for you, right? I'll, I'll throw it on the side, but you know, if it comes off at some point, if I'm here, I'll help you, but if I'm not, you're on your own, right? So...

Marshall Atkinson 
right, yeah. So your recommendations? We recommend this placement, right?

Ty Kain 
Absolutely. Yeah, okay, just also to kind of keep the the brand that hired you to come out, to kind of have a little bit of brand identity, you know, so it's not too crazy, you know. upside-down logos and stuff.

Marshall Atkinson 
20 minutes with one person. You want to keep people moving through so, you know.

Ty Kain
Absolutely.

Marshall Atkinson
Um, so, you know, I I've talked a lot about live activation events, and one of the things that I've always kind of counsel people on is you're selling that experience, not necessarily the result of decorating hats. You're selling the experience of building the hats, and a lot of the money is based on that. You're like the inner you're more of the entertainment than than the swag, right? And so you should really think about that. And and because of that, it's kind of like you're that's how you should be thinking, right? Do you? What do you think about that? Is that ring true to you?

Ty Kain 
Yeah, just like the profitability part of it, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, we, we do it a little differently. We, we charge to be there, you know, we are an activation. We are an extension of, you know, in my opinion, that breweries marketing team that day. You know, they spent all this time and money to make these patches and and so kind of how we structure is, you know, it's kind of on the cheaper side, but, you know, 50 bucks an hour to go out and really just to pay for staff's help. We run the POS through us, and then we we give back, you know, 50% of gross sales back to the brewery. You know, these are our customers as well. So, you know, we're not, we're not trying to get anybody or anything like that, right. But the POS is through us that deposits in our account couple days later. We've already got that, let's say, 200 bucks to help pay for our staff to be there on the owner, so I'm not taking any money in that instance. And then we have the tips, you know, and you know, we're actually doing something. So I don't feel bad asking for a tip, but we also just, you know, we know our average tip is 8% so we we have an 8% button, a 10% button, and like a 12, we just keep it very modest, in my opinion, and so we share that. And so I think that's that models worked out well for us. And then we just, we have 100 hat minimum.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, that's good. So they, they have to buy 100 hats, yeah, so if you only sell 40, they're still buying up the 100?

Ty Kain 
They'll buy up the remaining 60, and they, I will either make them for them there to leave them with them, or they order them on the, you know, the next business day, and they still get those at a wholesale price, you know, right? Because they're, they're our customer, right? So there's just not an opportunity to. Like, make a tip or make an impression, an impression on a consumer. You know.

Marshall Atkinson 
 Right. Now, do you have because I've seen some pretty impressive mobile setups where they have carts and wheels and bins with everything, with pictures and every there's checklists and everything is Uber organized, and they've got, I've been to places where they have several teams and they all have identical stuff, so they can go into different trucks, and everybody has all their stuff. Are you at that level of craziness, or are you just, we're just winging it? Where are you on that kind of story?

Ty Kain 
I wouldn't say we're winging it. We've done like 10 or 12 in the last 24 months, I feel like that's decent for someone who just kind of added this on, you know, right? This just stem from not wanting to lose a customer to mobile screen printer, right? So, yeah, I mean, we've we're organized, we've got signage, we've got pricing, we've got the hats displayed nice on a table. And, you know, different levels of the table to kind of add a little extra. We got some mirrors. We got a nice POS. We have a nice branded tent that, you know, our table cloth in the front literally says, Pick a patch, pick a hat, ready in one minute. I mean, I feel like that's, that's great. Yes, it's right there. It's right there for them to see. It.

Marshall Atkinson 
Good, good. Well, great. So is, let me ask you last question. Is there anything out there? So somebody listening that needs to know more about doing anything with hats, right? What should they be learning? What should they be thinking about? Because we've got a lot of we've got a lot of ways you can educate yourself. You can go to a trade show. You can go talk to suppliers like SMS. You could talk to your local decorator, whatever you know, you maybe, or whatever. Where should we go to learn about this stuff so we can find out more about how we should be selling hats or decredding hats or whatever. What's your advice to that?

Ty Kain 
I mean, it's a couple different, couple different ways, I think a couple of good, you know, Facebook groups out there. I am, you know, I do the, the screenprint marketing one and the heat press for profit from Stahls. There's just, there's just a plethora of information in there. I think that, for the most part, everybody really wants to help in those groups. People love to show off what they're doing as well, of course, but like you can send you can ask questions, and within seconds, you've got answers. I would say, though, do your own research. You know, don't always just rely on someone to just give you the answer. Because Marshall, as you know, like, yeah, we, we've, we've, we've fine tuned our skill over time, but we didn't start out with everyone just telling us what to do and how to do it. Right? I think people still, still need to do their own thing. What what works best for you? Hey, here's what I do. But hey, you should do what works best for you. And then also, I think, I think that people need to really think about, you know, at the trade shows, we see this all the time, right? People come up and they, well, I'll just do it myself. Oh, well, I have to be able to make patches in house. You're like, No, you don't. Why do you want to? Why do you want to spend your time over an embroidery machine or a toxic PVC machine or, you know, whatever it is, making something when you could be out selling, or you could be out doing something more effective, right? And so I think that's kind of the other thing that I love to share with people is like, you don't have to do everything to be successful, especially at the beginning. Do your proof of concept, you know, let someone else make the patches for you. There's money to be made, no matter how you want to do it, right? You don't have to do everything. Don't spread yourself thin.

Marshall Atkinson 
Absolutely true. It's, it's who, not how, right? Who can help me? It's not how. You know, how do I do it? So, who can help me? Like, so, like, you need a web page. Like, don't build it yourself. Hire a web guy, right? And you don't need to learn embroidery. You can hire, you can hire somebody who's got an embroidery team and just contract the stuff out right. The The hard part is selling the order, not doing the decoration, and you're absolutely right with that. So...

Ty Kain 
Oh, and I do think that's part of our success, is that we we did the contract to start right, and then we eventually brought headwear in-house, and so we have someone else do our embroidery, we have someone else do our screenprint. We do direct-to-film in-house, on shirts, and then we do 99% of our headwear in-house. And even then, even now, I'm like, I need help with production. I. Right? I personally have done, you know, six or 7000 hats this year already, and I'm like, this is nice, but I want to be out talking to people. I want to be selling, I want to be sending invoices, right? So you got to figure out a good balance.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's true. All right. So thanks so much for sharing your story of success with us today. Ty, what's the best way to contact you if someone wants to learn more about what you do or how you can help them?

Ty Kain 
Yeah, I would say visit crafted MFG.com, happy to if you fill out a contact us form, get straight to our email. And then also, we have a great portfolio of our work on Instagram, and that is @crafted. MFG,

Marshall Atkinson 
Awesome, awesome. Well, thanks so much. Ty. It's been great. And I guess we'll probably see you with the next trade show hanging out in the stall booth, right?

Ty Kain 
Yeah, I'll be there. I'll be in in Fort Worth.

Marshall Atkinson
All right, dude, hey, we'll take care see ya.

Ty Kain
Thank you.