Retail Recon Podcast
All things Adventure retail for both retailers and brands alike. We meet with great retailers and share what makes them tick, explore best practices, and have conversations focused on helping any and all who make a living in the outdoor industry.
Retail Recon Podcast
Retailer Spotlight: Thriving in Outdoor Retail: Insights from Steve Cross of Revy Outdoors
Ever wondered what it takes to thrive in the outdoor retail industry? Join us as we chat with Steve Cross from Revy Outdoors, who shares his incredible journey from working with major brands like Patagonia to owning a chain of shops in the 80s, and finally setting up shop in Revelstoke, Canada. Tune in to uncover his practical strategies for adapting to local markets and engaging customers in a user-focused environment. Steve’s extensive experience in specialty retail offers a treasure trove of insights into the complexities and challenges unique to this sector.
Steve also dives into the importance of building capacity in employees through personalized communication and thoughtful leadership. He shares a compelling example from his time at MEC, where handling community funding requests personally—even when saying no—led to positive outcomes. We also tackle the difficulties entrepreneurs face in accepting advice, with anecdotes on the significance of finding the right mentors. This episode is packed with valuable lessons for anyone interested in outdoor retail or entrepreneurial success. Don’t miss Steve’s seasoned expertise and actionable advice that could transform your approach to retail and leadership!
Welcome to the Adventure Retail Podcast, your go-to destination for all things outdoor retail. Join us as we embark on a journey through the captivating world of outdoor gear shops, exploring retail triumphs, challenges and everything in between, from product sourcing to customer engagement strategies. We're here to support and empower outdoor gear retailers every step of the way.
Dale:Steven, it is great to have you on the show today.
Steve:Well, thanks, Dale, nice to be here.
Dale:So everyone, today this is Steve Cross from Revy Outdoors in Revelstoke, Canada, and this is his latest venture and we're going to go through kind of his whole story and kind of what brought him here and his expertise in retail.
Steve:So if you could.
Dale:Most days it's an expertise. Well, it was really great to have our conversation before, just to understand the depth and breadth of experience working with brands like Patagonia, you know, being the first to bring them into Canada, your different consulting roles, working at MEC, having your own chain of shops. There's a lot of. There's a very holistic view of retail that I'm excited for everybody to be able to learn, to learn from.
Steve:Yeah, well, happy to share it's. In my case it's definitely the school of hard knocks, interspersed with some real education at times. So you get to a point where you you feel like you're putting it together pretty well. But you know, retail is not for the faint hearted. It's not easy. It's one of the more complicated things to do in today's world, especially as a specialty retailer, because there's so much out there that, for want of a better phraseology, is working against you.
Dale:Yeah, absolutely Well, and we are here today because of an email exchange we had. That wasn't the most warm and fuzzy thing in the world that I experienced on a Saturday evening, but I was really excited. You shared some very valid points on you know, as I was representing my brand, Grand Trunk, talking about things you're like, hey, I think you guys should do this differently and what are you doing with this, and whatever, and I'm really happy that we get to have this conversation. Um, and the thing that I most admired from your email and the subsequent back and forth that we had were it wasn't just a complaint, it was.
Dale:It was a complaint and noticing something, but then also saying um, you know, if you're here are multiple options, that if you're going to run your brand like this, then then go this way, or if you're going to do this, go the other way. And I just loved your way of thinking and that was a lot of my motivation for being able to have you share your perspective here on the podcast. So thank you for thank you for responding and initiating that dialogue, but then also being willing to have a good conversation.
Steve:Well, it ended up being a pleasure. I mean, it's, you know, a surreptitious route to get us here today. But you know, I mean that's what can happen when you stay in a conversation and you trade views and ideas right in a serious way, not a superficial way.
Dale:Yeah, absolutely, ideas right, in a serious way, not a superficial way. Yeah, absolutely so. If you could, if you could tell us how, maybe in two minutes, the timeline, your retail timeline, like right now you own an outdoor shop in Revelstoke, canada, and you know what, what brought you here?
Steve:you here. I started in the outdoor industry quite young, at 20, and I'm a lot older now, so you know I've worked for chains, I've worked for big box specialty, I've worked for very large brands at times and then once in a while, I've had my own company. All of them successful in their own way, but some bad endings for lots of different reasons. So I've made a lot of money, not a lot of money. I've made decent money and I've also lost decent money at times.
Steve:We made the decision to move to Revelstoke 10 years ago because our family, we just realized we needed to live in the mountains instead of just traveling to the mountains six, seven times a year. And so Revy Outdoors is coming up to its 10th anniversary, this Saturday actually and it's great, we love it here because it takes me back to my roots, when I started a specialty store, way back, and it's nice, you know. I have to say it's it's. You know where your store is located really changes or dictates or gives you a field of play that you have to pay attention to. Whatever you want it to be, it has to be what people want in that area and it's really nice being in a what I would call a user market, but it's been very being in what I would call a user market, but it's been very challenging.
Dale:Without a doubt, opening Revy Outdoors and Rebel Soak was the biggest challenge I've had in my retail career, and you also had a chain of shops. For a while you had a chain of five shops In the 80s?
Steve:yeah, in the 80s you had a chain of shops.
Dale:For a while you had a chain of five shops In the 80s yeah, In the 80s you had a chain of five shops, and then you were at MEC for eight years, so you worked with a large retailer for eight years.
Steve:Yeah, for those who might not know, mec is basically like REI, the Canadian version. Yeah, my store in Toronto was 45,000 square feet, 200 staff, 10,000 people a week through the door Back then. Yeah, it was a different. You know it was a leadership role as opposed to a technical role. My job was coaching the team leaders and senior staff with dealing with their teams and delivering good service in a big box environment, big box specialty, which is interesting. So I did that and I've done freelance work in the not-for-profit sustainability sector. Yeah, we've always tried to help entrepreneurs and others. And, yeah, we've always tried to help entrepreneurs and others. The not-for-profit sector has always interested me because the mission is more complicated. You know, if you have a for-profit business, at the end of the day the goal of the business is to make money, whereas not-for-profit has very complicated missions. So that's been fun work too. Through my career Done a lot of things, reached that point where where, yeah, just done a lot of things in life.
Dale:yeah, happy to share what might be useful yeah, on our in our conversation earlier you were talking about. You know, I've got five shops and my employees are wanting more of a set policy manual. But I'm not really big on policy, I'm. You know. Your philosophy is use your best judgment. How did you reconcile that with eight years working at MEC, where clearly there's policy? How did how did that and what did you? Maybe, what did you maybe take from that perspective that that you would have taken back to your shop before? Would you have melded it? Or if you could talk a little bit about that, Sure Interesting topic.
Steve:Ultimately, it's about building capacity in your culture Capacity for grayness, for lack of clarity. So back in the 80s, when I had those five stores, my store managers were clamoring for policies and I didn't have any. And I brought them all into a big meeting and there was binders on the table and, long story short, I said, ok, here's your policy manual. And they opened it and there was a single uh the. The first page said at all times, use your best judgment. And all the other pages were blank. And then we spent a whole the rest of that day talking about what that meant, um, and how to do it. So when you do that as a leader or you build capacity in your culture, you have to be willing to suffer the consequences of learning right Like.
Steve:One of my best stories from the MBA program I did at Queens back in the late 90s was the story of Henry Ford Jr, and this is a true story. He had an engineer who made a serious mistake, cost Ford a lot of money. The engineer got called into a meeting with Henry Ford Jr, who he'd never met, and he goes into the meeting and, as the story goes, henry Ford Jr said to him do you know why you're here? And the young engineer says yes, I do, you're OK. Why are you here? Well, you're going to fire me because I made a huge mistake that cost the company millions of dollars. And Henry Ford Jr looked at him and said fire you. Why would I fire you? I just invested millions in your education and I love that story. What what you're here for is to tell me why it happened and why it's never going to happen again is to tell me why it happened and why it's never going to happen again. So you do the same thing when you build capacity.
Steve:In the 80s, one of my store managers made a judgment call on a refund situation. Someone had bought a. As it happens, it was a Patagonia fleece or shell, I can't remember. It left it on the white leather seats of their convertible in a rainstorm and it bled dye red dye into the white leather seats, and so I didn't know about this, and one day I get a receipt from this manager in the office for $1,100. We're talking 1988 for having this leather problem dealt with, and so we ended up in a long conversation of well, you made the right call, but you know, maybe we, maybe there was more to it and stuff. So you have to be willing to suffer the consequences. But the but the main thing I'm trying to address is building capacity.
Steve:Is is time consuming and it's hard on leaders who, you know, want to have clarity. So you asked me how does that translate to a culture like MEC, where there would be set policies and so forth? Yep, so in that situation, you know, mec had a lot more latitude in its policies in those days than people might think, but but they still had pretty firm policies. So in that sense, the challenge for the leader or manager or owner is to have staff deliver those policies in a way which feels like they don't have policies. So the worst thing you can do in a business is say our policy is we don't, we're not going to do what you're asking us to do to the customer. Now you know why would you do that? I mean, it's easy to do. You shut down a complaint or you shut down an annoying customer. You shut down a good customer who just isn't within the policy framework. So the challenge for leaders and managers is to end staff. The biggest challenge is for staff who need to learn and adapt and grow so that they can handle a conversation and have that person walking away feeling great about the outcome.
Steve:Another example at MEC I had a bunch of admin assistants, cause I always. They always got promoted. So in eight years I think, I had three or four admin assistants and one of the jobs they had to do was deal with the plethora sometimes as many as 10 to 20 a week or more requests for community funding or community support. And I had this. One person got hired, very smart, and she came to me and said you know, why don't we do a form letter for this? She was like two weeks in the job and had all these requests she had to answer. Why don't we do a form letter? And I said no, can't do that. And she said why not? And I said because at the end of the day, no one cares how we say yes, including our children, but everybody cares deeply how we say no, yeah, including our children. But everybody cares deeply how we say no, yeah, yeah. And she said, well, I have no idea what you're talking about. And I said I'll show you. So I we spend an hour together talking about a letter and I said I'll write a few with you and then you. You know you can, you can run from there, right, you'll, you'll build the. And so she did that.
Steve:And about a month or two later, this fellow shows up at my door from an organization that we had said no to. I didn't know that at the time. He showed up at my office door and he said are you the manager? You know the general manager and yeah, he's, I just want to. You know, I was in the store shopping. I just wanted to drop by and tell you. You guys wrote me a letter telling me you wouldn't support what I was doing, and I said okay. And he goes that was the best no I've ever gotten in my life. I love you guys. I like you more because you, even though you said no, and he came over and shook my hand and said some other things and that was that. Yeah.
Dale:So the investment of I haven't heard it put that way before, but I like that a lot Building capacity, building capacity in your employees to so is that to make a lot of the decisions on their own and to just use good judgment, you're building those capabilities in them to be agents working on your behalf, instead of saying here's the policy book, do this, follow this, no questions asked. Just do my bidding.
Steve:Well, exactly, and you used to use the wording on my behalf, but I would kick it up a notch and say on behalf of the mission of the organization. Yeah, you know, I want people invested in the mission of the organization more than I want them invested to me.
Dale:Yeah Well, and that's what I and I guess I'm saying that coming from the other direction of we don't want it to just be just do what I say. It's you tap into the mission of the organization and use your best judgment to execute that. And you're saying that you know, long-term, you know that's going to be more valuable than someone who just give me the policy, tell me what you wanted me to do and I'll do it.
Steve:Well, exactly, and when you look at marketing costs and how much money your typical, even small companies like my business spends on marketing, what's the? You know it's funny. You'll make a mistake with an ad or do an ad or some media thing or some marketing thing that costs thousands and it doesn't work. And you have one reaction and one of your staff makes a mistake that costs you $100 and you have another reaction. Yeah, that typically those reactions are out of skew with the reality of the moment. And, more importantly, you know, if the hundred dollar mistake the staff person made was on the right side of capacity building and the right side of judgment, then really you just spend a hundred dollars to keep a customer acquired yeah which you would gladly spend to get a customer.
Dale:Yeah, yeah. I like that. I like that perspective and a lot of my as I had employees it. Yeah, keeping employees long-term. It's really hard to lose people and this I don't want to go from. But yeah, if you have, if you can keep that capacity, and then if that capacity can stay on your team long-term, that's so much more valuable than the, than the having someone. It's really expensive to have someone for a year and a half in certain.
Steve:in certain ways it's brutal. We, you know, in a resort community, we've, you know, in 10 years I've probably gone through 60 staff, 70 staff. We've grown the business. We have a current staff of 10, including myself, but and my store manager has been with me from pretty much day one 10 years. But other than that we have a heck of a time. People come to a mountain community like Revelstoke for a good time, not a long time typically.
Dale:Yeah.
Steve:And it's been a super big challenge, very big challenge, not only to train people technically, because we cover the full gamut from hiking and backpacking and camping to skiing, to touring, avalanche safety, climbing, you know, there's another category. It's just a lot for any one person to know and have technical expertise in and field experience in, because we want experience-based advice, given that people not you know there's book knowledge and there's real knowledge of use. So we try to achieve that too. So, yeah, it's been a huge challenge for us. We, like you know I spend a lot of time talking and teaching and training. Yeah, so do you is.
Dale:Is there a balance of a certain positions? When you know something, is you know someone's there for the season that you say, look, there's a lot more clarity given and less investment into capacity.
Steve:Absolutely.
Dale:So there's that scale. With your manager, you may have a very high capacity perspective around. Hey, you're here, you're the lifer here and we are building your capacity. And I'm going to let you wander in a really broad way where an employee that's there for the season you might say, oh, we're going to be a little more deliberate.
Steve:Yeah, we don't actually put it that way, but they kind of know it doesn't actually work in a command and control sense. I guess it goes back to how we hire. We search for certain kinds of personalities. When we hire, the biggest thing we look for is someone whose heart is in the right place and has a high mission of service ethos. The feeling from the business perspective is they're not going to do any damage. For many decades the research on customer behavior is showing most complaints about service are based are about perceived inattention, perceived slight.
Dale:Huh.
Steve:You know. So if you've got a cash line, that's too long a wait. The customer feels that they don't matter. We've all been there. I mean, there's no time longer than waiting to pay or waiting to get our money out of the bank in the old days when there was lineups, right like, one minute in a cash line is 10 minutes, mentally yeah um, so you have to understand that and and you try and build capacity around the people.
Steve:You want to hire people who get that part of it Okay. Interesting Someone that we hire would probably more likely default to knowing they're helping someone with the cash. They look up, there's two or three people waiting and they go. You know what? I'll be with you in just a minute. Sorry for the wait. Big difference, right? Yeah, so that that kind of person is important to hire and that kind of person is usually, in our experience, more coachable and more interested in the broader you know, the broader concept of service and human behavior and doing it excellent.
Steve:I mean, one of the things I've hated about the retail industry my chosen profession is it doesn't get any respect. People think retail is easy, people think retail isn't a real job and the fact that the way it's done in North America at least retailers can't or won't pay real good money although COVID changed that to some degree has helped license that. I think your average retail person in a technical outdoor shop doing a really good job has to have more skills than a lot of people in other jobs making three times as much money. Three and four times as much money. Yeah, and that's the truth of it.
Steve:Yeah, so in my business I pay as much as I can. Sadly, you know, we've just learned we can't open the vaults out of the gate because people leave so much that you know you're paying overpaying for a six-month stint or a one year stint. We actually don't hire seasonal anymore. I just refuse. I'll close the store a day a week if I have to, or I'll work seven days for a short period of time until we get a person coming along who's going to be with us at least a year.
Dale:You know, ostensibly Do you have an ideal and I know that there's different factors on different people's businesses, but on a previous call we talked about another owner and I talked about just the payroll as a percentage of sales. Do you track your business in a way to kind of keep that in a certain area?
Steve:We track everything. Keep that in a certain area.
Dale:Oh, we track everything you know I'm. I'm like for someone. If you could give a minute long uh finance lesson for like hey, you know, if you want to see the levers of your business from a high level, you know, look at these couple things and they're going to steer you. What would you say?
Steve:Well, the most important thing for an entrepreneur to track is cashflow. You know, very few, very, very few have a good sense of how to actually create a cashflow spreadsheet or use cashflow out of an accounting program. Even bookkeepers, who are trained, rarely train, rarely have that sense of cash flow. Um, you know, I have a cash flow that tracks every week. Um, so that's the number one thing. And then in terms of ratio management cause what you're really talking about is your key ratios- yeah.
Steve:Yeah, and you know rent should be. You know the accepted wisdom is rent and occupancy costs shouldn't exceed 10% of your gross sales. And the same thing with payroll. The old saw was 10%. Pretty tough in a specialty store to keep that to 10%.
Dale:Yeah.
Steve:You're probably running closer to 15%, if not a little higher, yeah.
Dale:When I was running my online business, we were 13 to 14.
Steve:Yeah, yeah, 15 is probably where it's mostly at these days, and then you also have ebbs and flows, so you know you'll have. We've often had a situation like right now. We're in a situation where we've grown so much we've had to expand full-time staffing, which drives up payroll, and we're paying more because we're capacity building. But you know, the sales aren't. They're still climbing, but they're not where they need to be for the sweet spot of that expense.
Intro:Yeah.
Steve:And that's where you're keeping your eye on your ratios and understanding why it's going, because if you're going to just look at it and go, oh it's too high, I got to cut. It's going because if you're going to just look at it and go, oh it's too high, I gotta cut. You know, I gotta pay people less or cut. Well, that's not the right attitude. Why is it high? And is this an investment in the future? If it is, well, then just make sure you're you know what's lining up with that investment in staff that's going to make the sales climb in a good way. Yeah, you can always buy sales with with advertising campaigns that are short lived, but you really, what you really want is what I call organic growth, real, solid growth. That'll be there next year as well.
Dale:Yeah.
Steve:Yeah.
Dale:Awesome, what? What is one thing that maybe 20 years ago or in your first, um uh, shop experience, you didn't believe about retail, retail. But you've come to change your mind. You know now that it's different. Is there anything that comes to mind of? I fought this for a long time and now I, you know?
Steve:well, that's a yeah. Let me think for a minute something I didn't believe or did believe, which is now the other way, untrue or or totally true.
Dale:And I'll let you think about that for a second. I want to go back, so think about it, hold it and, if something comes up, the we were talking about entrepreneurs inability. So for those shop owners out there that are maybe, you know, just very slanted towards that entrepreneurial side, you've talked about how you and your wife does coaches entrepreneurs and and provides resources to entrepreneurs. You guys have have made a practice of that and you mentioned before, before our call, a lot of entrepreneurs have a hard time taking advice, and that's the blessing and the curse is they see something so clearly ahead but then they'll also just miss everything. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Steve:Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think entrepreneurs good ones are, you know, so right, most of the time that when they're wrong it's massive, it's a huge consequence typically. And uh, you know what makes an entrepreneur someone who wants to put their own stamp on the world, someone who wants independence? Um, so they're not gonna. You know they're not prone to listening to advice. Uh, that not so much Right.
Steve:And when we've coached a lot of entrepreneurs, we've seen that where they're just so sure you know that this person they want to do a partnership with is the right person, or they're so sure that this expansion within their store is going to work, to work, and they're so sure of other things that you know, even in the face of advice experienced advice that says me I wouldn't recommend you do this. They go ahead anyway. And part of that is, you know, we spend our lives growing up in a world where you're getting advice from lots so-called advice from lots of people. You know our big banks are great at saying they give advice. They run ads saying, oh, trust us with your investments and stuff. But when you get in those meetings, quite frankly, from my perspective they're pretty vanilla and they're pretty germane and they're pretty uninteresting about investment. So you know, and that's like everything, and when you break down your life to get to be 20, 25, by then your entrepreneurial instincts are building and you go the world doesn't know, you know jack shit. So I got to do it my way. And the big successes in entrepreneurial world I mean look at Yvonne Schoenert with Patagonia right, he just refused to accept the world the way it was and kept making these decisions and changes and moving things forward in a very unique way. And I had the pleasure of spending time with Yvonne in the 80s when I was building my first company and learned from him and yeah, so we're kind of wired to not take advice.
Steve:So the challenge for advisors is to learn how to talk to entrepreneurs in a way that they can relate to and actually embrace. I kind of understood that early in my life because my first business that I created for myself in 86, when I went to incorporate it, I went to a law firm that I knew from a friend and I got a lawyer who was junior and a lovely person did the paperwork for the incorporation. But I went home not happy. So I made an effort a week later to get in touch with one of the main partners in that law firm and I said can I have a meeting with you? And he said what about? And I said, well, just give me 30 minutes.
Steve:So I paid for the meeting, which was a lot of money. And he said so what's up? And I said well, you know, your firm did my incorporation a week ago and I had a okay experience with that, because it's pretty mundane. But he but I said, I want you as my lawyer and he goes why? And I said well, because you're the senior partner and I know my propensity for getting in trouble and I want someone who's going to give me advice that I'm willing to listen to. He said well, do you have any problems right now? And I said, no, that's the point, I don't want to have him. Yeah, and that lawyer became a friend and, as it turned out, three or four years later I did have some big issues that I needed legal advice on and he was quite good. So you know, sometimes you got to know yourself too where you can get in trouble and be willing to listen struck a chord with me because I'm going through a deal that's not turning out as well as it should have.
Dale:And I look back and, as I do the postmortem, realizing all the different things I missed along the way and thinking. And even in a conversation last week, my brother said, oh, I'd pay a hundred grand to go back two years to have a conversation with ourselves. I'm like, oh, you know, yeah, I'm sure that we could probably pay a few hundred grand, you know, and most business owners unfortunately, any, any most businesses it would be a steal if they could go back five years for a hundred thousand dollars just to give themselves a little roadmap adjustment. You know.
Steve:Oh yeah.
Dale:Hey, with this employee you know that direction, or with this strategy or that acquisition, whatever, there's just so much money where. Why is it that? Yeah, I'm trying to develop my skill set around. Let me just pay 5K today. Let me just pay that. Not even the money, but just the attention towards some of that where a lot of us are so focused on plowing forward into the future. Well, I've.
Steve:I've done it. I've you know when. Yeah, I hate to say it, but the last time I didn't listen to someone who I should have listened to, and you know it costs me half a million dollars someone who I should have listened to, and you know it cost me half a million dollars. Yeah, yeah, and I look back on that moment and think you stupid, idiot, how could you do that? Yeah, and uh, yeah, yeah, it's painful. I still still have moments in the shower thinking about that moment and it hinged on a moment. Yeah, I just looked back on it, but at that time that person who I very much trusted just wasn't speaking in a way that I could understand or embrace.
Steve:Right, I've had many accounts. I come from a line of accountants, actually, and I have three years on the professional accounting trading. I never took my certification because I realized, working in my dad's practice for a while, I didn't want to do that One of the stops in my life and anyway. But I've had a lot of accountants work for me. But I've had a lot of accountants work for me, but I've rarely had one that I really completely and utterly respected. I have that now, which is you know, and is that because I'm at the point in life where I'm at, or is that because this person is truly exceptional? I happen to think it's the latter, because I've always been willing to listen to accounting people.
Steve:But it's like any profession. That's the 80-20 rule 20% of people doctors, I don't care who they are you get a shingle, you get a degree, that's fine. 20% of the people getting that are exceptional at what they do, 20% probably shouldn't have got the degree or the shingle and the other 60 are good at what they do, but not exceptional. I mean, I just think that's true in life period. Yeah, so as an entrepreneur, it really behooves you to find the exceptional advisors.
Steve:One or two of them really pay attention to numbers. Cash flow is king king in any small business any business really, but any small business in particular and looking after your you know building capacity and your staff don't short sell them. You know, one of the problems with a lot of younger people today is they are smart and they've grown up in a world where they learn faster and they know more than, say, I did at age 20 about a lot of things. That can lead them to believe they know more than they think they know. And then if you're an educator type like myself, you know how again I'm challenged with how do I speak to younger people in a way that they can understand, you know, and I'm not just the old shop owner who happens to have a particular way of doing things.
Dale:Yeah.
Steve:You know. So that's always a leadership challenge, I think most days, like I said at the top of the show, most days I seem to know what I'm doing, but the odd day I questioned that top of the show.
Dale:Most days I seem to know what I'm doing, but the odd day I question that. But yeah, I love it so by chance and and I'm really glad we took that direction. But is there anything else? Is there anything where you say you know a belief you had about retail that maybe you've swapped on?
Steve:you know my core. I was running that track because I knew you were going to circle back, as any good facilitator would. My core beliefs in retail haven't changed since I was 15, selling greeting cards door to door. I learned a lot that summer and my core beliefs haven't changed. Lot that summer and my core beliefs haven't changed. But what has changed?
Steve:I used to think when I was in business and I was doing a lot of business with a particular brand, that we would be, you know, friends, and it's not true. You can be friendly with people. Brands are never friends. Brands are an entity of business and you know, life moves along. Sales managers change, things change dramatically and a lot of brands we all do business with are owned by large entities and they're not necessarily.
Steve:You know, I started in a business in the 70s and 80s when companies all brands were startups. They were all owned by amazing individuals who were trying to do something special. Well, that's changed dramatically now. Now, and even brands like I mostly try to only do business with brands that are smaller, a little lesser known have have a unique story, because we've built our business based on uniqueness in many dimensions, one of which is the selection we offer and the curatorship we offer within those brands and and the service, and there's a long list of things that we strive for uniqueness in and we have, you know, in our strategic plan. We have ways we're doing that, but yeah, it's business. At the end of the day it is business. So you know, that changed from when I had my first business in the 80s, for sure, and it's a school of hard knocks because I'm a pretty loyal guy to a brand I don't believe in. You know, brands go through hard times too and there's no problem that's not solvable if there's dialogue and honest intentions.
Dale:Yeah, I love that. I've really appreciated your perspective on, well, just a lot of this building capacity and employees but I think that your view towards people is admirable and healthy and I think will get you better results. And if we had lots more time we're out of time now, but if we had more time, man, I'd love to. More time, man, I'd love to. I think the it's I. I would love to see your strategic plan at some point, or even a template, because I think that's where a lot of retailers maybe struggle, because a lot of people see strategy differently, like, hey, we need a strategic plan, you know, and that can mean a different thing to a lot of you know, that can mean different things to people.
Steve:Um, so oh, yeah, yeah, we'll have to have another conversation someday or, you know, if you're ever.
Dale:I'd actually love to see any sort of template. If you'd be willing to share that, I think long term and I can I think that'd be a cool thing to provide on our on the podcast website as well. Just some of those resources, because your, your experience would prepare you very well to create a strategic plan for what you're doing now, having seen all those paths.
Steve:I'll give that some thought.
Dale:Think about it, hey, stephen, thank you so much. It's been awesome to spend time with you.
Steve:It's been lovely, Dale. A rather nasty email I sent you Not nasty, stinging, hard-hitting Goes to show you Just lovely Thank you. So much, awesome Thank you.
Outro:Thank you for joining us on the Adventure Retail Podcast. Until next time, keep exploring, keep innovating and remember you're not alone on this retail journey. See you on the trail.
