Mike Wayte with Clinch Northwest. Clinch Northwest. Yeah. Thank you for coming in today. You've come a long way. We're in St. Louis and you've come in from the Seattle area or Seattle proper. Seattle proper. Clinch Northwest is right next to University of Washington. Okay. Well, what does Clinch Northwest do? Clinch Northwest is a manufacturer of sheet metal fasteners, precision sheet metal fasteners with our primary product being clinch engineering fasteners. And you ask, what is a clinch engineering fastener? We manufacture fasteners that clinch into sheet metal. And this is a commodity that's business to business. And it's used in light gauge metal, which is what you do. And it's one of those commodities that's everywhere and nowhere. It's surrounding your life with these products and they're, they clench into sheet metal and they typically hold electronics, so any electronic box. But we sell into transportation, trucking, computer, gaming, like companies, slot machines. Everywhere. It's everywhere, Everywhere and so we sell to primarily domestic manufacturers, but we are selling it to Mexico and into Canada And really just sort of the Americas in general right now. So how long have you guys been around? In our current form since 2016 clinch Northwest. Okay, we were born in 2016 We're ISO certified. So we have the certification of being you know uh, uh, procedural company. Yeah. Uh, and then our, our factories are TS16949 certified. So that is automotive certs and trucking. And so we really pride ourselves on quality. Okay. And as you know, that any product is quality price and delivery. And so once you have all three of those, you can rock the boat and which is what we do. Yeah. No, I I think that it's the constant interplay between those three things, time, cost, and quality. It's kind of like the example of if you needed to get a house today, you would probably pay more given a set of features that you need. But if you had a long time to go buy that house, you'd pay You know, so it's kind of like how much time do you have is gonna form how much you're gonna pay a premium for the quality or You know, it was gonna form the price. Yeah We're we're unique in that way in that as a manufacturer We sell consumer direct and a lot of our competitors have to run through distribution and what's funny is that? And I don't know if this is a pricing model that will use Forever because we are picking up so much distribution work Like that's one of our fastest growing markets and mostly because within the space of the self -clenching fastener. We're very vertically integrated I've got a thousand different call -outs in stock on our shelf Yeah, and the person who's gonna use that is the sheet metal fabricator and the person who's a job shop Who's doing product, you know day in day out doesn't know what projects coming in I need a thousand of these today and five thousand is something else the next day and you you know, so they're all over the map. And the distributors that buy from us, they are vertically, they're horizontally integrated in terms of, okay, we're helping somebody produce a product, and we're going to provide everything for them. So we were doing something for, I don't know if I could talk about companies, but let's say Peterbilt Trucks and Dynacraft, who's making products for their trucks. And so We've got a great, we were selling directly to them, which came in as a legacy product. And we just got picked up by one of their distribution companies who I think is also doing that. Now, they're going to pay more by going through this distribution rather than buying from us, but I don't know if it's because the buyer is so busy or whatever, but who knows, you know. As I've been told, I'll sell to anybody, I'll sell to the devil if he pays on time, but I mean, you know. I know what you mean. - I wouldn't do that, but I mean, it's, you know. - Well, right, I mean, I get what you're saying, which is, you know, look, if it's going out our door and, you know, people are paying on time and perhaps maybe it's not the devil, but pretty close, you much don't care. And so it's, and I was a buyer for a long time And there's something about, but there is something true about buying it all from one place and it's what I found when I was in projects, you're supplying to these major plants that are being built. It becomes less about over time about the price of the material and things like that. They want someone to actually run that project for them. I mean, I became their internal project manager over time. They'd be like, Okay, how much of this have we used? And when do we need to order more? Or I'd be proactively saying, Hey, you're about to use everything. Do you want me to get more of it for you? So they're really leaning on, I mean, these are very large scale, but really looking to you to help keep their shit straight. And that has high a lot of value to high value. I see that a lot, especially in the bigger companies. So that they actually have employees in house, helping them manage their, their flow. Yeah, it helps them a lot and that's when the world of change orders really gets sweet is because, you know, perhaps out of the gate, you've quoted something a little bit lean to get the deal, but they do have a dependency grows upon how while you're keeping something organized and when they have a change order, you know, they're just like, hey, if I don't have to think about it and it's here tomorrow, I really don't care. Right. It's kind of the reality of it. Companies like Fastenall will go in those super low bid these projects, and then there's change orders and oh, we're going to tack that on. Huge margin. Huge. And so that also needs to be managed. But it does need to be managed as well. But in that time and place is where we're going to talk about digital today. Price you know, pace that he wouldn't have mattered too much at that point because they it's more that they are going to view it as worth the added money because I know that this person still got me as far as I mean you know million we're talking millions and millions of dollars that are being sort of managed by this rep of a distribution company and they're like we're so far into this at this point and if if you walked away, you know, it's like your drummer bailing on tour. You just like, you can't do that. You can't do that. And so you were clear not, I mean, you didn't want to be abusive about it because you want to get their next project. So you're really more focused on let's get them through this as sort of we want them looking good on the other side. I've had people say that when I first got into business, like, "Mike, you can charge more." And I said, "You know, I charge a fair margin. I don't want to gouge anybody, but I also want to be the low -cost solution." And people know me as that. And I think I mentioned when we talked earlier that people call me their secret weapon. I have had buyers say, "I'm not telling anybody about you because you're my secret weapon." And so, you know, when you talk about... And this is the reason I started this company. You know, I was working for the big brother of the, you know, of the industry in this, and the margins were fantastic. And when they offshored a lot of their capacity, they raised the price. And so I said, and all these companies were closing, all these big production runs, and it was really kind of sad. And I saw a huge contraction of the manufacturing industry and one of the largest sheet metal shops in the Pacific Northwest, Doug Harvey said, "Hey, Mike, I can't even get the bill of materials for what we're getting finished product in a box out of China." And I said, "You know, all the automation in the world isn't going to help you if you can't start on a level playing field." And that's sort of what what I'm all about and is making sure that we can get products so America can make made in America again. Yeah. You know, really, I mean, you know, if you talk about and you talk about all the tariffs that are going on and, and, you know, we don't have the resources to get aluminum. Canada does. Why are you putting a big tax on that? You know, it's, it's crazy. Why? it's the same reason, but what about coffee? We cannot grow coffee in America. Why are we putting a tariff on that? So what are your thoughts on the tariffs? Well, I think they're terrible. Okay, well, it's free, you know, it's a free market. What we produce in America is intellectual capital, intellectual property, intellectual, you know, We've got to get the brightest minds in the world to create the greatest products in the world. And if we can manufacture them here outstanding through automation, yes, but we're going to need raw materials. We're going to need low intellectual property items. We're going to need products that are going to help us do that. And we can't do it alone. So free markets should be just that free markets. And if we have But the power behind all this, we should be able to do it. So we should be able to manufacture here, but it should be on equal footing with getting metal like from your company or getting fasteners from my company that are on the same level that you can get wherever else in China, in Taiwan, in Mexico, and the ability for us to do that, and there's automation. I sell automated solutions. And as a matter of fact, I'm working with a company right now in Seattle, they're called King Electric. They make all the baseboard heaters that you see. And they were like, we need an automated solution so we could rivet our assemblies together. And I happened to do that for a company that I'd distribute for called Ribbit King. And so they've got these, have you seen like a nail gun a spool where they could you can do that with rivets too. Okay. And so they are really excited about that. We're coming in, we're doing demonstration tack time, which is the amount of the time it takes to do an assembly to bring that in. And well, we could put it all together here and we could put it together with automation and we could get it out the door. And what does that do that takes down your time that you have to hold on to inventory or where it's on a ship and your lead times. By speed, yeah. Speed is so important, it informs much of what we do. But so tariffs, if you're crystal ball, which I know you don't have in front of you right now, but how does all this shake out in your opinion and maybe the next year, three years, five years? - Well, because of where we're at and so much uncertainty, I I think that it's going to be harmful until we get an idea of what's going to actually happen with this. A 90 day pause, that's great. I had stuff that I'm bringing over that I told customers, "Hey man, price is going up. Now the price is going down." Nobody knows what's going on at the high end of this tariff deal. So it's going to create volatility. It's also going to shake consumer confidence, and so I feel, which I'm not an expert, that's going to be harmful. And when all this went into play at the beginning, I said, my prices are going up because my costs are going up. And that's for manufacturing. And so the product is going up. It's all going Yes, that cost goes on to the consumer and I don't think that's what people understand about tariffs necessarily They think it's like this great thing, but it's not well I would say that There's a lot to be said for the way that something's done as well Meaning that I think a tariff in itself. Maybe it's not an inherently bad thing but I think maybe the prescription of tariff is is an important thing to consider, meaning shutting all down at once is going to have a different effect of then maybe a more surgical application of the concept. But like you just said, the amount of information I would say I'm privy to on this topic is really low, meaning that I can read anything anyone else can read, but what percentage of that is a true and be comprehensive. So it's, it's hard to say, but if you take it, it depends on where you fall. It's sort of like the also the emotional spectrum of this, which is if there really are these levels of imbalances that exists, and I can't firsthand verify any of this shit, because I don't have that level of clearance. But if these But if these truly exist, they'll exist for one way or another, either for diplomacy reasons or because bad deal reasons, I don't know why. But if they do exist, it does seem like looking into those imbalances is a worthwhile endeavor. Now the question is, to me, is if you're going to put together a concept to bring all this back into balance. There are a couple things that I think need to be done really well and I don't know if those are being done really well. One is the messaging of like this is we're thinking about this like the church like this is a long plan and this is not a one -term president plan this is like if this gets thrown into the trash at midterms, it just would have been pain for not, right? Like, so if you don't, if you can't finish this job, it will have just been pain. And secondly, how do you, it's so important, I brought this up before the idea behind, you know, FDR during World War II, it was so good at getting people to contribute, like Liberty Gardens, bring your medal down. Like everyone clearly understood, because there was something you could really point to, understood why this near -term sacrifice made sense. And I think that's something that's missing as well. And I think that ties back to maybe an overall sort of polarity that's occurring. But I don't know the answer. All I can say is, as a marketplace in the metals industry, we see these behavioral sort of ups and downs that are occurring driven by the economics. It is bringing industry back to the US. It is. And so there is that. But it's also-- and maybe that's what it took to extract some of that work back out of China. So we'll see, although a lot of people are already moving to Vietnam or moving to other places where the cost of labor is essentially nothing anyway. So yeah, it's not exactly the spirit of it, right? But you know, markets are smart and markets find a way. As they say, follow the money, right? Yeah, I think that's true and that's what you're going to find is some very good craftiness that is within the rules of the game that markets find a way. Yeah, they do. And the thing I think about when, okay, let's say these, let's fast forward in our heads a little bit, and, okay, fine, we don't have all of this stuff coming in from overseas is no longer economically viable to do it. Let's say that is truly something that becomes a constant. How do we get them, like we have a demand that's going to Think of you know our production capacity 100 % and so how do you how do we get ahead of filling that void of like? Okay, well, there's a demand here Are we all just supposed to like slow down and just not need that shit anymore? Like what do you do? Yeah, there's a couple ways to think about this as Americans do we over consume? Absolutely, this is a bit of a garbage culture in terms of like, we just burn through stuff fast. But on the other hand, we're advertising and marketing and looking for the next shiny new thing. Always have been. So is that the answer to happiness? Well, the commercials would like to tell you that. On the other hand, there's a lot of people that their livelihood depends on that. So it's sort of this-- It's not a simple thing. It's definitely not a simple simple thing. Because let's just go back to the idea of this void of manufacturing capacity that's going to occur in the event that enough of this sticks that, okay, you have certain products that just aren't coming in. And it's like, oh, what do we do? We just not have those in our society anymore? So what sort of regulations can be Basically stripped out so that doesn't take five years just to create the plan to get something built You know that can make these things or whatever it is. Yeah, and like I said, I don't speak to this but at a Highly informed level, you know, these are thoughts that I think are much like the people who are going experiencing this time together Which is you get these little nuggets along the way and it kind of tilts the thought that way And you hear something a week and it tilts the tilt the thought that way. And ultimately, I think what we're all doing is just soldiering on. We have to do the demand. It will always be there. It's coming. Because I sell to the manufacturing sector, when I first got the industry, it was big business, long -term contracts, steady. I'm using 100 ,000 of these every single month, like clockwork. Now, people say, I need this now, and I need this many, and I'll let you know when I need more. And it's smaller buys, and it's quicker turns, and this is what's right in front of me. I'll let you know when I need more. And it's-- - When did you see that start to occur? - Oh gosh. I mean, during the great offshoring in the early 2000s, which is 20 years ago. - And then amazing, yeah. - Yeah, well, yes, yes and no, but it was sort of the opening of China and we saw some big manufacturers move from Eastern Europe to Mexico to China. I mean, these are huge corporations within a pretty quick time making consumer goods like video games and whatnot. Just when China really opened up and we were doing to, uh, for manufacturing and automated screw machine, uh, stuff. And they said, well, basically you can, why don't you factor label it. 25 cents an hour, but really it's probably more like 10 cents an hour. Granted, this was 20 years ago, but that's basically free. So yeah, yeah. And it's, it's, that's something that if you can't beat them, join them at that point in time, which is like, you're not thinking about, Oh, what's good? It's like, all I know is right now, I can get those for basically nothing. And that's why I got into this business is, is, you know, I've always, well, you know, at a college, I went to work for a friend of my dad's good friend, and he had a distribution and rep company for the self clenching vassar. At the time, they were the biggest in the world, And he was doing really well and there was these big contracts that they were doing for all these big companies and so that's what I got into and and opened up an office for him in the Pacific Northwest and Got sales people under me had inside sales people under me had a nice warehouse now rolling We were very profitable. Yeah, and then he sold it and cashed out that in 2000 and Made a ton and you know good for him. He's the nicest guy in the world. I love him to death. I'm still keeping contact with him. Anyway, so, um, and then I went and repped a company and was repping basically the same thing that I was taking on other lines to open up an office for him, broaden sales people. But then the company owner's like, because I was a rep, I was straight commission. And I started to get some pretty good checks and he couldn't get around that. And so he tried to move my deal, move my deal, move my deal. - Oh, he's just like, this guy's killing it and-- - Yeah, and I'm like, I just don't wanna be paying that. - Right, I'm like, I am a function of sales. Like you're not paying my health benefits, you're not doing anything. I am merely a percentage on your margin. - Yeah. - That's it. You know, I am a percentage of your sales. So, which-- - With the tried and true - Exactly, yeah, I don't get it. And, you know, coming from that background, I have reps and I am all about writing them checks because I know that the more they sell, the more I sell. - Yeah. - So, you know. - You get over it. - Yeah, I'd love to write you a big check, you know? So, anyway, let me circle back around to that. And so, when the primary product that I sell, which is the South Clinching fastener, which was formally listed on the New York Stock Exchange and had the inventor and the family was the ownership group sold out to a private equity company and they shuttered a lot of capacity and moved it back over to China and raised the prices and that's when I really saw a collapse of the industry as for sheet metal fabrication. A lot of these big projects off the shore, and the monpah shops were like a house of cards. It was horrible. Because these are hard -working people, they're making stuff, it's great people, and honestly that's what's kept me in this industry, is the people. I really, really enjoy working with people who they're making stuff and creating. They're genuine. Yeah, they give a shit. Yeah, they really care about what goes out their door. Yeah. Yes. So, um, so then, uh, I've got a brother in law who's a chemical trader. He goes, by the way, I've got this database tells you who's making what and whatever and import records. And I said, huh, let me take a look at that. And so I started, that's when I started manufacturing. My company, so we started using in certain factories are good at certain things and I started to vertically integrate and we started branding clinch engineering fasteners which is the sheet metal fastener and the whole idea was to make American like I said make America made in America again because once we get the bill of materials on the equal level we can start making stuff again here so So I just lost my train of thought on that. - No, it's all right. And we can pull back there when you get there, but turning the conversation slightly towards, we were talking earlier, and just at a high level, and we'll backfill, which is we'll supply chains truly go digital regarding the discovery, meaning finding it, getting it priced, and just do everything over the computer or their phone or whatever, or ERP to ERP, server to server, however you want to think about it, will it truly just become digital and just kind of a yes or no? Yeah, we talked about this and the answer is yes. My wife said don't say this, don't say yes and no, because it's an answer I give her all the time, yes and no. In many ways, yes. And I see that going yes, and I'm excited about your product. - Yes. - Yes, because I see that as the future. - Yeah, well, thank you. We feel the same way. And it's an interesting thing. So I'll give you, since you asked, I'll give you my opinion on this, which is it's gonna be similar to how other verticals have shaken out, which is let's take online travel, buy an airline ticket. If I just need to fly to Houston, I'll probably just handle that myself, right? But if I'm going to be leaving the country, going to multiple countries, I'm probably going to get a travel agent just because I don't know what I don't know at that point. And I don't want to end up, you know, wherever I don't want to end up. And so I would bring in somebody who knows it, and I'd probably want to talk to them and be like, all right, is this person a dipshit or not, and book my travel that way, because they know a lot more. But I think in general, you know, let's say a trip from St. Louis to Houston is called out a commodity trip. That's an easy trip for me to book. And they're parallels, I think, There are differences, but parallels into supply chains, which is for a buyer of whatever their company is doing, there are items that fell, you know, the bell -curve of products that are kind of in the middle. And yeah, they know where to get them, but it's really not worth their time anymore to go out and source those in a traditional way, because where things are more common and more specced out is where online, digital or marketplaces are going to work best for you because you're going to have the most companies that have it. Now when you reach out to the end of the bell curve, it becomes more exotic. Really online trade is you can do it there, but in your vertical, everyone knows the three people that have that. Everyone knows the three people that have that, but everything in between. It's like there's a whole gaggle that have it. So why step into that and just let the platform can just sort that out for you? Like what takes three hours now takes a minute. Yes. So that's a bit of my soapbox, but stand on it. I did. I did. I stand on it and I can't I got a foot on it still in case I need to get back up. But having said that, which is a bit bit of a preamble to give you some of my thinking for you to react to as far as what your thoughts are on. Is there a partitioning of how digital trade will work or do you think it just ultimately at the highest level can all go digital? I think it depends on the end user In many cases, we talked about this earlier where you can get a guy in who helps these big companies source all their stuff, and that's his job. I sell to a lot of smaller fabricators, they still like to fax orders in. And so for them to embrace the digital age is a little tougher. And the company that I work for directly for or as a distributor for or as a factory rep for, um, they're trying to quash any competitors for intellectual property. So it's one of those things where they don't even want, well, they sued me. So I can't even produce a cross reference chart. I mean, they really, they're, they are, they're just going to throw the book at you and keep you down and keep the price up and that's what they do. So, So but I'm in a really really nichey -niche area. So yeah, I don't even know if I could say this We might have to delete this But you know, it's one of those things where I you know Sort of had to kowtow to them because I'm not gonna take on a billion dollar private equity company Who has an army of attorneys that are there to you know, yeah keep things in their favor to help you find the air of your way Yeah, you - Either you step in line, or we will, yeah. - Well, there's something to, you're touching on what I think is a larger topic, which is, there are, have been, I said just the other day, it's been sort of a generational thing of, one was the first B2B platform created for the metals industry, probably in 1996, or something like that. You know, you had e -metals that came from US steel, I think it was. So you had these early manifestations of these things. So you're looking at like a 30 year period that it's taken for a team to figure this out. Right. And we have figured out we've cracked this code of people using this completely autonomously and it's becoming their main mode of purchasing and selling. But What was the key to that is the question. Time is one of them, right? You had to have certain technologies develop and mature so that there was enough trust in them, like take FinTech, for instance, online payments, like you had to have that mature. You had, I think, consumer habits had to mature first before you would see a jump to business habits, meaning that people are more comfortable Risking their own money online than they are their company's money online because if they fuck that up They won't have no money, right? So they want to first get comfortable at this smaller personal level Before they're ever going to suggest at a company level you should try this so I think just the maturation or the evolution of e -commerce in a general sense had to occur in a B to C context before it would bleed over into B to B. So I think there's a time is something that is part of that. And so you can't discredit someone for trying because we've learned I've read all those postmortems. I'm a total student of this. And dissected every single one of those things. And But I think the biggest thing that we had COVID, which accelerated, has talked about expedited people's willingness to explore something else. Meaning it wasn't because they were at home. It was just because inventory was drying up quickly. We both did well because of COVID. Yeah, I think that it-- but not in the way that is generally discussed, meaning that a lot of people might tell you that their B2C platform started doing really well because people are home, they're bored or whatever they started using, things they wouldn't otherwise use. Ours was more about what happens to the commodities markets and things like that. I mean, oil goes negative in March, I think, that in 2020, I think it was negative. Yeah, you could buy oil for less than the cost of the barrel. Yeah, it was negative. And so there were just these things that were occurring and you had sellers that couldn't give metal away and all of a sudden they're like, Hey, what's the name of your platform? You know, trying to get on there. But I think that, you know, one of the key things that that paved the way was just the speed of it, which I don't think was ever really a focus. It's like, it's got to be, and I remember the moment of thinking, I remember I saw somebody text a PO to somebody one time and I said, wow, that was fast. We have to be faster. And that's like that, because if you have time cost and There's there's another one which is just like the speed of getting it done of all the things being equal So I think there's I don't know. There's a lot that makes it work. It is it's not straightforward Yeah, a lot of moving pieces there. It's so you guys have e -commerce We are based on an e -commerce platform, and it's actually a relatively common one but we molded it to what we need and It's And it's been working. We've got some tweaks now all of a sudden, but that's common within technology. But it's nice to be able to, for someone to just get onto our website, see what we have, see what inventory is, see what it costs. And there's always product in movement because I know that our value isn't having inventory. And so we have products on the move to us all the time. So one of the things that I tell our regular customers is if you don't see it in the store let me know because we have product on the way all the time. And so I don't put it on the store unless it's something I could ship that day. Right. You know I don't want to put anything on there like oh yeah well it's you know in the port or you know it's in route or No, it's we could ship it now. So then that's That's that's what we do on our platform. And so is your platform. There's something I've discovered or it's very obvious I get discovered is that a lot of E -commerce industrial businesses Are still sort of doing the same old game, which is they put their price out there. They know it's kind of high because they still ultimately want you to pick up the phone and call them. So are you truly trying to get someone to check out online? Or are you kind of saying, hey, we've got this stuff, but it'd be better if you called us so we kind of really understand what's going on here? Not really. You know, I'll get somebody who will buy what we have and say, "Do you have any more?" Or They will send an email and it's nice because we do have so many different skews in stock that I pull in new business all the time, you know, new people are like, oh my gosh, you have this I've been looking for this, but they didn't know about this and it was they took the meta words for them to find it So right and so what's so what's the loyalty like on the e -commerce site? I think when we get the customers It's pretty good. I mean if we have to certainly have that The barrier of entry is getting people to move away from their old supplier. So it's the incumbent It's the incumbent and and I think that a lot of people are And they're also big and for these are billion -dollar companies that are the incumbents now They've all sort of conglomerated down to a few big power players and these buyers can go in and say, give me everything. And so they can add a cost. And so I deal a lot with some of the shops that they still do decent volume, but they are also looking at their bottom line. And so this is a way for them to come in at a lower price and be more competitive because their number Two cost is going to be my commodity, number one being the raw material sheet stock itself. So we're sort of number two on that and when you talk about the overall cost of a fixture of what it takes to manufacture that, that will make them a winner if they're going after OEM business. Did you start quench Northwest as an e -commerce business or have you morphed in one? Did you have sales? It was always e -commerce. And it was, uh, it was actually a friend of mine who had an e -commerce platform who helped guide it. Now he sold that company. And so we moved over to another platform called WooCommerce. And right now we're having a little bit of a struggle because right now it maxes people out. Like, oh, we show you've got 300 ,000 in stock, but I can only put 9 ,990 in my shopping cart. I had that happen for a company that's now supplying Peter Bill trucks right now. And I'm like, oh, jeez, we got to get in there. We got to do some software development on that. So because it's a-- and I don't know exactly how WooCommerce works, but I think it's an open source type platform. So we can do some software tweaks on it. So I am going to be looking at getting some software guys in there to make it better for us, for our consumers. I mean, they put an upper women on the quantity that somebody can check out. - Yeah, and I don't know how that happened or why that happened, but suddenly, people are asking me like, oh, and I'm like, let me go back, let me audit it, we could get that product out to you. Because it shows we have it stock, it just won't let you put it into our shopping cart. So that's just a-- - That sounds like a good problem to have. I mean, amongst-- - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Amongst the possible options. - But it's still, you know what, you get a billion dollar corporation saying, what's up? How come I can do this? You don't want that to happen. I want it to be seamless all the way through. And so as a principal at a company or the owner or the founder, you want everything to be easy. You want somebody to come in and say, I love these guys. They make it easy. There's no problems. You want it to be as though they don't even know they did it. Right. You know, I always think of like a water slide. Once you're on it, you know, it's really fun going down it and you don't want to get off it so that's how we want our products to be which is just nice laminar flow really good experience and you know I don't know anyone that likes a slower water slide you know so we want to make it a good fast one that the people can't wait to get back up exactly they want to run to the top and do it again yeah you know we're working on that so it is So, back to this kind of overarching concept of digital, I think that, you know, if we brought 10 people in here and asked them, "Hey, do you think it's going to go digital?" How many do you think would say yes? All of them. I think all of them will. And, yeah, you can have some resistors, and it also depends on who you're bringing in I suppose I mean that the non -digital age is aging out so really are yeah and and it's funny because you go in a lot of shops there's not a lot of young people in there unless it's a really it depends on the industry but you know these people are starting to retire the younger people are coming in they're they've already are well versed in the digital age. And so moving that way is, is bringing, I mean, I would imagine there's young people are coming into some of these companies and saying, why are you even doing this, you know? I think that's, and that's a big part of our thinking, which is, you know, we, we brought in the same designers that, you know, do Samsung, Apple, like like the best designer's release we're about to do because I view it as a bit of a problem that companies and supply chains have trouble attracting talent and retaining talent just because their software systems are just not the latest and greatest let's say and kids not kids but people who are starting their careers want to be someplace where they feel like they're part of the action and they're using the best And the best things are available to them. And one of my goals has been like, I want people who thought they wanted to go into some of the industry, see what the shit that's coming out our door and be like, I want to be in the metals world. I agree. I agree. And I think that shift has to come more automation, more digitization, yeah, and that, that will come. Yeah. But we got to push it. We're the generation that has to do that. I think we are the generation that is doing that. I'd say it's here. I mean, what we're about to release, there won't be a better version. It is so well, like, it's going to be on par with the newest operating system on your phone. It's that well done. And I really look forward to hearing the comments of, you know, in my head, I'm hoping that they're good. Obviously, there are people who say, "I wish you'd done this, wish you'd done that," but in general, we love this, right? And people really feeling like now they're part of an industry that's cool, happening, advancing, and retaining the talent because they have the best systems. And I think kids, keep saying kids, and that maybe because I'm just getting old, but the workers, they seem to have less tolerance for things that are inefficient, right? So sitting there and, you know, kind of meticulously pushing something around your desk, it'd be done in one second. It's like, why am I doing this? I don't think the younger generation has the attention span for that. Well, the patients, they just want to move it on if it can be efficient at it, be efficient at it. Yeah, and I think that as this younger generation was coming into the workforce, we view that as they don't have an attention span. But now it's getting a point where it's like, you look at that and they're like, well, why should they for something that could be done something in one second? Like, maybe part of that's actually smart. That they're like, yeah, Yeah, if we can do something can do it better and faster gets the same result. Why would I not do that? Yeah. Yeah, you know I can give you philosophical reasons, but if like in the in the context of like, hey I'm just trying to get this done so that our company can get something out the door or whatever and there's no sacrifice to doing it You know, why would you not? Yeah, and there's programs out there that my competitor does where they can take a drawing and spit out a bill of materials and it goes directly to their companies because they are starting to vertically integrate that way. So at a big cost. I would think that AI will be able to figure that out and then give you the low cost, you know. I don't think AI is going to, well, from a pricing perspective, I don't think AI is going to be in a hurry to get into the B2B transactional world. Yeah, probably not. There's too much risk Like way too much, but I think there'll be everything around it Right, which is what is driven many of our decisions here, which is where is AI gonna be and where's it not gonna be? Right, and what do you want to focus on that you think you can find a seam? Where AI is not likely to want to involve itself. I I think AIs kind of want to involve itself in everything as long as you allow it to. So the evolution of that is to be determined, but it's touching our lives now and it will be touching our lives even more as we move forward. What are the top three stepping outside of the metals industry? What are the top three industries that you think are going to be the most affected by AI? I'll be back up. Do you use AI? You know, I really don't. You know, we just went through a thing. Unfortunately, I lost my mother, pancreatic cancer, and my sister who does, like, SVP communications for C -level And she spends, she's like, uh, we're going to do all this AI, like what are you even like putting the obituary through to, uh, put coming up with a timeline to, she ran everything through AI just to give it a quick pass. And of course she reviews it, but you know, it took the task time and the time that it took for, you know, it just takes it down in terms of her ability to create content, it takes the time, you know, it sort of eliminates that. So yeah, it doesn't take it down, it eliminates it. Yeah. Yeah. Sam Altman went to school about a half a mile from here. Oh, okay. The guy, yeah, the CEO of ChatGPT, and John Hamm, right there. Okay. Yeah, it's, they crank him out over there, same school. Okay. But anyway, so Top three industries that you think that are gonna be most affected and we won't quote you on this but I mean if the rate at which it's getting smarter is Staggering so who knows what it might feel right and I just know what I've read which is okay Lawyers, you know the legal the ability to a legal brief or understand it or you know put that together. I I guess I Don't know I'd be shitting breaks if I were an attorney. I Don't think so. Yeah, they gotta review it. You gotta review it. Everything's got to be you gotta have a good set of eyes on it I agree with that, but the drafting of Contracts which is what takes really the longest amount of time is Getting it drafted correctly And then reviewing it is sort of, yeah, looks good. And you can find the one or two things, but if you're creating a private placement memorandum or something like that, it's not the review that takes a long time. It's creating the content that goes into that that takes a long time. How do you properly articulate the risks, right? Or the opportunity or track records. Creating the the content, the populated document like that is what takes the month and a half of working on it and not the, okay, final review are all the sort of must -haves in here. You know, that part takes, you know, if you're working on a PPM for a month and a half, maybe a week of it would be that review. Correct. I could see that. Yes. You know, honestly, I don't, I'm not that close to That close to AI to know. Okay. I haven't really looked into it. I don't know. Did you tell me? What do you think? What do I think will happen? Yeah, well, I mean other than the legal industry. I think I Well, I think that a lot of industries along those lines It's not because legal is not good at what they attorneys are great at what they do But I think their their involvement is going to be in a to review capacity. Now, litigation is a different thing. Set that to the side. I mean, that's a whole different thing. But just corporate law, as far as creating contracts and agreements and writing memorandums and things like that, I think it's going to become very much a review basis. I think that you might maybe could say the same thing for accounting, you know, when you're pulling stuff together for that. I I clearly marketing there's huge implications in the marketing world. Correct. You know It's like how do you begin to discuss? how much just talk about the concept of content or You know creating images that what is what what is the impact going to be for like adobe stock photos or You know All these places have stock images. When you buy those images, you're typically settling for something that's sort of like what you want. But you can now suddenly make exactly what you want. Exactly what you want. And it's part of your monthly subscription. You're not paying anything for that image because you've already used, you know, that AI, whichever platform you used 5 ,000 times that month, and you're well probably ahead of like the value prop, right? You earned it And I think so I think in marketing. It's huge. I mean as far as Name an aspect of marketing, I think it's now what I don't think it'll be able to do is it won't be able to rally people The way like a good promoter can and promoting any different things, but like the personalities that it takes to get certain movements to occur or things like that, you know, kind of bucketed in marketing, but I think it's going to be promotions, a different ball wax. And I think you need the right person delivering whether maybe Chachi, Chachi, but he wrote that content, but the right person to live right is always, I think there would be a role for that, for that and who can do it? -Brisos! -Yeah. -Brisos. -Come on, man. Get your medal. -Yeah, get your medal on. -Yeah, and people think medals are just so boring. It's like, look around you. Anyone who's listening, look around the room you're in. And there's just-- -Metal. -Yeah, it's probably holding you up right now. You know, it's everywhere. -Keep your pants on. -It's keeping your pants on. And so anyway, I think that-- -Unless it Spanx. Unless it's Spanx. But maybe they've got, you know, maybe some copper tone like woven in top bracelets. Yeah, things woven into the fabric. I've no idea. But I think we're back to supply chains. I think the implications are that the utility of AI I think is is massive. Yeah. As far as design, you know, what is it going to do for people who sit there and pour over trying to draw something in CAD, and now you can say, "Hey, I just need this thing." And it comes out as a CAD drawing. That's true. And what's funny is that, you know, I spent a long time as a factory representative, and so I worked with a lot of engineering and design teams. And getting it into production, I talk also to the production people to who are making stuff out of metal. And they're like, this guy has no idea what our capacity is to make something and make it easy. And so I guess AI can close that gap. When you're doing a CAD drawing of like, this is what I want, and this is how I need to manufacture it, this is the most effective way to manufacture it. The most effective way, and you don't even to say, you can just explain the circumstance of like, hey, I need a piece made fabbed up that is going to be between this one and that one. And it'll say, oh, here, use this. Yeah. And you can export it. And, you know, here's your bill of material. And we priced it price is gonna suck. But we did price it. Right. And, you know, get you almost all the way there so that, you know, it's It's the implications and consequences, I'd say, are pretty far -reaching at a minimum. And I mean, not to say software development is going to get absolutely-- people who are just sitting there coding at consulting companies about coding software, I would say, are really-- their job is not going to be-- if knowing how to code, it's going to be do I know out a harness, chat GPT or Kroc or whatever these other ones are, to make sure that your software turnaround is fast and as accurate as humanly possible. So something that would have taken three months to develop should take less than a week. Yes. And it should be fully tested and finished. Yeah. I can see that. It's mind -boggling. Right. What it does and the rate at which It's getting better is I mean, it's I mean we use a I constantly You know and much of what we do is are you using it in your software development? In now and again. Yeah, I think we you know, I use it Really more is like my assistant Kind of which is if I'm thinking through something I'll bounce ideas Off of it and help me think through it. Okay, you know, can extrapolate thought very quickly And say well, what what is the logical conclusion based on these constraints of the circumstance? I wonder if I could get that to interface with what I'm doing where I could do something where you someone can send a print and say I want to make 10 ,000 of these 100 % what do I need on my bill of materials and where I could offer that to a customer through a AI of course. Yeah. Like I said, my opinion is that AI is not going to get into pricing. It may give a price, but I don't think they're going to want to get into B2B transactions anytime soon because the dollar amounts and the suits that could come from an error there are much different. Yeah. As soon as you have something physically moving in as a result of a piece of software is different. - Someone's got to touch it. - Yeah, someone's got to touch it and if things go wrong and that's come across an AI platform, which is really just supposed to be a large language model, is that really more than they want to bite off? - Right. - You know, and I think that a lot of distributors and others who are going to be protectionists and say, well, we're going to keep an eye on whatever that bullshit AI index is, and we'll just make sure that it's wrong so that the business still comes directly to us. Okay. I would think. I would think. You know, I don't think they're gonna hand it over quickly. Well you're, and your platform, someone obviously has to touch it. It's not all AI, but it's an online marketplace for metal and you put out there what you want and someone comes back and says this is what I'm able to do it or multiple people come back. Well yeah I mean you have it's a one to save a buyer who checks out and and they can do they can find what they want instantly it's priced and availability it's instant and And then So how do the sellers get their pricing on to that? They're like this is what we're selling. This is what we need or how they don't No, we tell them we this is what? This is the price Now the beautiful thing is what we've done That is helping this work the way that it's working is We've removed the largest threat, which is a race to the bottom. Got it. So one of the key elements is that sellers cannot undercut other sellers. Okay. Right. And that's a huge piece of the puzzle, is that if you have, that's just been the major gripe from a seller standpoint, and it's real, which is it's not our job to interfere with the seller's ability to capitalize on an inventory investment. That's not our job. Our job is to open a conduit through which transactions flow. And there's a huge difference. I mean, so it's more of a market making mechanism than a marketplace mechanism. But that's because that's kind of, It's not semantic. It's true, I mean, it's true, but it, um, it's something that people don't much give a shit about, you know, they're like, Oh, market maker marketplace, whatever, which is, it's where we go. So we don't really discuss it, but they're all these little, I mean, the whole thing is esoteric, right? But there are all these little dynamics that are there to address a syncretic nature of this vertical, right, which I believe exists in adjacent verticals. I mean, I think that as cool as we all think our verticals are, and they are cool, but they're not all that different than the ones next to them. Correct. Which is you have something that gets ordered. You have something that gets put on a truck. You have something that gets somewhere, it gets offloaded. somebody looks at it and says this is right or wrong if it's right and invoice gets paid you know that with that almost all commodities are like that everything well I mean anything that's being bought you know unless it's in the same room I guess you have to put it on a truck you know like if I'm buying a baseball ticket they're just gonna hand it to me through the window but in general, you just have something, it's like in up and out. And it's, it's, what it comes down to really is just sort of what jargons exist within certain verticals. How do they talk about things more than what's mechanically occurring? You know, net terms isn't something that's like specific to the metals industry. You know, so I think that, I don't know, I think, I don't know where I started on that thought, Mike. I detoured you right into that. I was asking you about that, so. Yeah, but anyway, I think that how you asked me how does it really work on the sell side is it's one of the key components of what we do is that we don't ask anybody for anything. Right. Right. We are the knowers of the market is the position we have chosen to take and I don't mean that from a we know more than you we've had to take that position because if we've got to lubricate this market and if if sellers don't want races to the bottom you know then that's an issue and if buyers want instant access to pricing and availability that's a problem So, it's like, how do you get these things, these two people to play together in a world where they may have otherwise not been friends and get that to happen digitally? Right. For the seller's perspective, that's what you're saying. Well, just buyers and sellers, it's the understanding that buyers and sellers are very different organisms, right? They're often thought of as the same thing, but just on different sides of the transactions, but their motivations are essentially the same, which is they're trying to get a transaction to occur. Okay, and that's true, but the way they want it to occur, meaning the courting process is very different on both sides of that, which is strange because ultimately they're choking through the transaction ringing together. Well, I used to always say it all flows downhill to us because nothing happens on either end of the company unless this buyer and seller transaction happens. Yes. This non -friendship needs to be contemplated. But really, you've got a buyer who's buying so many different things And nobody recognizes the fact that, you know, they, they might have placed a hundred purchase orders that day to get every single thing flowing throughout the entirety of this giant company or even small company. And it's only when the one thing goes bad or sideways that, you know, they suddenly get into a lot of trouble and recognize, wait a minute, what about the other 10 ,000 things that I did? And again, a lot of it was also coming back to what's going on on the production floor. Hey, we're down to our last one, and we need to get this job out this afternoon. - Yeah, we got a problem, and that shit happens. - All the time, and I tell companies that I work with that are manufacturing, I'm like, you know, the company down the street has the same problem, and if you change companies, you're just changing names of the people who are delivering those problems to you, because There seems to be something endemic about the ability to cap all those things. And I mean, if you look at Toyota, did the Pokey Oak, and there's the Kaizen, and all these things about efficiencies and making way to manufacture things, things are always kind of-- and it's usually human error. And maybe that's something that AI can fix. that you've all heard the saying, read the work order, right? When you're having to go through that process, which I hate all rear view mirror activity, but you gotta go back and you gotta find out, okay, what's the root cause analysis? All that bullshit that I hate doing, which is every second we're focusing on that. - Well, it's prevented, it's called a directed action for a reason. And that's part of our, like we were ISO certified for that very reason as they went through and it's like, okay, what are your processes? - Yeah. - And how are you gonna make that error -proofed? - Yeah, typically it comes down to what we found it was just kind of a moment of like, I just lost my attention for a second And what are we going to do? Like put shock collars on or shock things on their wrist to fucking keep them dialed in literally every second of their day. Yeah. And so it's my point being that it's, it's, I don't know. I just don't like looking back, you know, you don't want to look in the rear of your mirror. I don't mean that as like, hey, when we go forward. I mean, it's just not a good use of company time. So as you're constructing, and so the problem with like sort of business has been around for a while, when you go through and you are evaluating the operations and you say, "Well, why do we do it that way?" Well, you say, "Well, that's how we did it that one day when we did it, and we've done it ever since for the last 20 years." So if there's a greater mindfulness put towards the creation of these operational activities versus like, oh, it also happens in distribution where you want to be sort of this high repeat shop where every day-- one of those point where every day is the same. We just went in and monitored the system. And it all worked great in distribution. But there's always these customers that pull you into this custom world of like, oh, they like it exactly this way. So you have these different processes of operation being created on the fly as these different types of customers come in that need it done this way. And they get sort of just MacGyvered along the way and you turn around 10 years later and you have all of these air pockets inside of these operational processes. Yeah, right. It is interesting, especially from a job shop perspective where you are getting pulled in a bunch of different directions. So we do the same thing essentially every day. And so generally when the errors occur, it's because a guy's in a hurry. And he's not paying attention. and so we're like, okay, we have these processes in place. You know, if we don't get it out that day, I'd rather get it out right and get it out tomorrow. Because if you get it out wrong today, that's a huge hiccup. - Yeah. - I had a buddy who got a horse, really rare horse, and he wanted to get it trained up by this guy. He was like the cowboy horse whisperer. And he went, he's okay, what can I ride my horse, what can I do all this stuff? And he goes, it's gonna take as long as it takes. And it's not gonna, you know. - You know what I'm saying? - He had a saying for it, it takes as long as it takes and it's not gonna take any faster. In other words, if you rush the process, you're really gonna set yourself back. - Right. because that's when you got to hit every single hoop as you go through and do the process correctly to make it work. - Have you seen these unmanned warehouses before? Unmanned forklifts, unmanned everything. The whole thing is like a Roomba and it just goes around in picks orders. It's like out of the Jetsons, right? There are no people in there. - I've got, in there. There's a factory in China that I actually get some product from. They make rivets and I couldn't believe how automated it was. And it was a similar thing. They had all the lot codes and test stuff for their rivets, yet they had a guy trimming the bushes and the grass out front with the pair of scissors. Right. Well, they wanted to free up some budget for the bushes. Anyway, yeah, it's pretty remarkable. Well, it's sort of seems like a sign of things to come, which is these inventories are so nailed down and they're so accurate and so well coded. And you know, they're pushing up all this coding and so forth up to the manufacturing level. So when they even hit their warehouse, these things These things are already RFID, barcoded, whatever you want to use to recognize it. They already hit their shop that way, and these things, these forklifts can scan it on the way in and stock it, and it's like a giant vending machine. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I was seeing an engineering firm and they were making RFID tags for fish. Yeah. And it would go down a chute, Boom, get an RFID tag and send it out. If it didn't go through, fish came around to go get another tag. - Really? - Yeah, oh yeah. - Yeah, what other fish like that? - Probably salmon, I don't know. - They don't care. - They don't care, any fish. - I mean, the fish don't care. - No, I mean, my address, I actually share with a fish tag manufacturing company. - To you. Yeah, Floyd tag Floyd tag crustaceans sharks bill fish. They're they're involved in all fisheries all over the world Really? Yeah, and it is and there's a bunch of gals in there making tags all day long Things I don't think about right Somebody's got to make the fish tags. Somebody's got a tag They like I know the fishing game because of some buddies just came back from a fly fishing trip in Idaho and they caught one of the tags and it was from the Idaho fishing game and and they actually if you send it in you get a little gift certificate and some of them are worth money. Yeah put into a lottery I think is what it does so people report them. The duck hunters I always I shot a tag duck or something that was you know it's an extra layer of excitement when you get one that's tagged. - Tagged. - Yeah, exactly. And I guess that's exciting. - So are you a duck hunter? - Occasionally. - Okay, so I know that the fish in game, if you turn the tag in, you go in for a lottery. - Okay. - And that's the enticement for you to report the tag. You know, where you caught it, you know, what was the size of the fish or whatever. So, or maybe give the note and send it back with the fish in the water. I don't know exactly how that works. I didn't ask, but is there something like that for the duck? You know, I don't know. I've never had it. I've never shot a tag duck and I don't know. I don't know if there's a full loop like that or not because I don't know if they're RFIDs. I think they just put like a metal band kind of around the leg kind of right about, you know, at the ankle effectively. It's tagged And I think they probably want them to report that tag just for, you know, for ecology reasons. You know, this was, you know, this was shot here at this place at this date and so forth. So I understand migration, whatever they're interested in knowing, you know. So, yeah, I don't know how the full feedback works. So other things about digital that are on your mind as you're looking the either the president or the future I move we've got terrorists which I know we're all just sort of moving around and you know it's sort of rolling with the punches and that's an also being more proactive than that obviously but what other sort of digital topics kind of cross your mind as you go through your days It doesn't, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, we're so involved in just getting the day -to -day business done, whether it's incoming information, outgoing information, meeting a customer's needs. The digitization, we've got a platform, I've got somebody who helps, you know, figure that out. But I'm learning all the time and I think that our industry is very old school And so it's something where I look at something like what you're doing, and I'm like I need to embrace this Mm -hmm. I Was bartender in college And I bartended it was your best drink. You know what back then in Washington. It was just beer and wine Which made it really simple. And and the group of the guys who there was a group there was like 22 investors in this club, and they were all late 20s and They'd all put in a little handful of money. It was very popular all the teams went down there after yeah, you know the sound or sonics What's the local beer there? Oh Man, it was micro brew central. Okay, so it wasn't like the cheap beers It was that you know, it's only red red hook before they got bought by Anheuser -Busch, or it was, you know, Windermere, you know, Portland Breweries. Did Singlespeed come out of that area? Not that I know of. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. There's, we had 20 -something beers on tap, and of course, remember Zuma's? Was it Zima? Zima. Zima. Zima. That was, you know. I came out of your area. No, it didn't come out of it, but that was the era of, like, you know, Bartles and James. I would say that was immediately following Bartles and James. - Exactly, but it was like, right, right, right. It was just the beginning of that. But there was one of the guys there who was like, there's this online bookstore, they're looking for seed capital. - Yeah. - Nick Hanauer, who's sort of found all these, he's about multi -billionaire now, and then anybody who invested in this know, blowing up. Yeah. So, you know, I look at, yeah, I look at something like you're doing like, okay, this is a niche that this is one of those things. I think this is one of those things, you know, I think it, you know, it shares a lot of excitement in the ability to service the customer. So and it's, I think what we're doing well is, is being patient as far as like, we're from the industry, so we get what our proposition represents, you know, in trying to do it in a way that is not offensive, but accretive, meaning people look at it like, I can see how I can use this for my business versus being like, I'm just going to pretend I never saw that. Right. Yeah. You know, such as back to that concept of eliminating races to the bottom you know there's that's important it's everything because that has integrity and and making sure that somebody's just not coming in and dumping a truckload and getting out yeah and that's that they're just it's it's not based on merit it's it's like it's we've specialized in the transactional DFO versus like the project or contract and You know, there's not a ton of loyalty in the transactional day -to -day buys and sells Right, but what we do is we sort of give this some a little bit more reformality a little bit more structure and the sellers because they're And it's the whole idea has been of us if the seller is gonna fail on here on any given transaction They have to fail fast so they don't have any Sort of time lost in that because that's when That's when platforms get sort of run out of town is, hey, I invest all my time in uploading all of this. I invest my time making sure everything was ready for sale, and then nothing happened. And now I hate this place. So the concept is you have to make sure that buyer and seller, if it doesn't work, they can say to themselves, well, I didn't put anything into it. And so that's you're willing to come back because it then becomes all upside when it does work That's what you want ease. Yeah, and absolutely frictionless set it and forget it as one popei would say Is Ron still with us? I don't think he is we lost Ron from Ronco. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, remember it said it forget it set it forget it Game changer. I never used one I didn't either I think I might have had some Ronco products in the 70s like I think I had a form and I don't know if that's the same product but I don't think so recipe is George Foreman what isn't he still didn't he chose no way oh I don't know I'm not as in tune as I want to be we're just old and I as I want to be. Yeah. So back to the idea of like, you were up in Seattle bartender and I pulled you into. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So what was the rest of that you when you were in Seattle? You were bartending? No, no, no. Nick Hanauer was like telling all the other investors because he was an investor in our in our bar or the bar that I worked at to invest in Which was what the concept being an online bookseller that was that was in? 91 or 90. I mean this is at the this is when You know Jeff Bezos said, you know Left New York to go to Seattle and was working on doors as a matter of fact one of the guys in my office Sells doors to Amazon because they still use them as desks Really yes Yes, because in our in our warehouse. I run this big warehouse because I think I'd mentioned that and I've got some guys in the neighborhood one of them is a lumber broker and He sells doors to Amazon The door parts are going to Amazon and they do them for desks Really? Yeah, they just do it. I don't know. Well, I'm sure it's a lot nicer than that But I think it's sort of this whole symbolic thing about. Yeah. This is our beginnings and this is what we're going to do. Yeah. That's, I don't know. I guess that's good. I don't know. It's kind of like the Sam Walton story. They're kicking ass. I wish I had the money to invest there because we wouldn't be talking. No, that's right. Well, maybe you probably would have gotten bored by now. Probably. I'd probably be dead to be honest with you. - Yeah, they may have given you the support you needed to crush your life. - Glory, exactly. I had to get out of, that's how I got in the fastener business in the first place. I was like, I need to get out of Seattle and get behind a desk and just sort of like move on. And so I met a gal who had already sort of started her career and I'm like, okay, I need to step away. - Step off the fraternity porch exactly and maybe it's serious about doing some stuff and like I said found myself in the sheet metal fastener industry and enjoyed the people and the commodity and the and really the whole envelope of it so well tell me again because in closing for those who are listening how do they find you guys website and if they can welcome to go there and just buy as needed or has the house yeah well we're B2B so everything has got to be you know you know no retail no retail so it's clinchnorthwest .com or clinchnw .com and we do custom screw machine product but are specialized in and we also do custom cold forming but are specializing in self clinching sheet metal fasteners blind rivets and then we also do distribution of rivet nuts. And then we also work with tools for rivets and rivet nuts also. So upwards of, you know, robotic automation and sort of next generation type stuff. So. All you can handle. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Well, thank you for coming in today. It's been really fun talking with you. I think we scratched the surface of many things that maybe could lead on to other discussion. Yeah, it's nice to talk about what I do every day and how we sort of affect the world because we do. I mean, we've got, I've probably had products. You probably use my slot machines that I have widgets in or, you know, or, you know, are on a cell phone to product that I've put, you know, I sold to a company that put in the metal box or. - Is there any way someone would know if they're looking at some, is it all internal? - It's all internal, you would never know. And I think I sort of, a self -clenching sheet metal fastener is a hardened fastener with a rock wall hardness harder than the parent sheet metal material that gets pressed in there and it's joined onto that and it's in every single piece of electronic enclosure that you have because electronics have to be wrapped in metal for RFID to keep the radio frequency and so it's going to be all around the world. It's everywhere. So when I'm trying to disassemble something to fix it and I can't find a way to open it? You can open it, but the piece that's attached to the metal, the screw that goes attached to it, that, you know, it could go into my nut, or if you have a nut that's onto a stud that's attached to the metal. Okay. So, you know, one piece is undone. I mean, a rivet is something that joins it together, but mine can be undone. It can. Yeah. Okay. From one end. If they so choose to make it that way, or just in general. Just in general. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right. I understand. Yeah. Well, thanks again for coming in. Yeah, thank you, Shep. And And yeah, talk soon. - Yeah, cheers.