#403 – Building A Family E-commerce Empire: The Rhino USA Journey with Ted Repic
Ever wondered how a family passion project can morph into a global e-commerce giant? Meet Ted Repic, the visionary behind Rhino USA, who, along with his sons Cameron and Dylan, took their love for the outdoors and turned it into a multiple eight-figure business. This episode unpacks their thrilling journey, from the early days of Gorilla Moto Gear to the strategic rebranding that catapulted them to success. Listen as Ted reveals the powerful combination of skills and strategies that have made Rhino USA a household name in the outdoor market.
Get ready for an inside look at the complexities and triumphs of running a family business. Ted dives deep into how each family member’s unique strengths—Cameron’s artistic flair and Dylan’s competitive drive—fueled their growth. We’ll discuss the challenges of inventory management, especially with the unpredictable nature of viral social media impacts and the stringent requirements of big-box retailers like Walmart. Ted also shares the balancing act of navigating Amazon’s shifting landscape and the decision-making process behind choosing between FBA and FBM fulfillment methods.
But it doesn’t stop there. Hear Ted’s insights on building a strong brand identity, from investing in high-quality packaging to creating memorable unboxing experiences. Learn about the importance of authenticity in marketing, leveraging influencers, and the ever-growing impact of platforms like TikTok. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, this episode offers invaluable lessons on branding, market expansion, and the art of customer engagement, all from the lens of a successful family-run business.
In episode 403 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Ted discuss:
- 00:00 – Building An Empire In The Outdoor Space
- 00:06 – Building A Global Brand Strategy
- 08:55 – Growth And Success Of The Family Business
- 10:04 – Division of Roles in Family Business
- 13:28 – Starting Over
- 19:04 – Customer Feedback and New Product Development
- 20:57 – Challenges of Forecasting and Inventory Management
- 28:48 – Lifetime Warranty and Customer Engagement
- 30:08 – Navigating Customer Service and Market Expansion
- 33:18 – Global Market for Outdoor Motorcycle Parts
- 37:03 – Creating a Strong Brand Identity
- 38:31 – Personalized Customer Service and Lifetime Warranty
- 44:10 – Customer Engagement and Brand Identity
- 45:05 – Workplace Understanding Through Hands-on Experience
- 49:51 – Identity-Based Marketing Discussion
- 49:55 – Kevin King’s Words Of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 403 of the AM/PM Podcast. My guest this week is Ted Repic. Ted and his two sons have built a multiple eight-figure empire in the outdoor space. They started on Amazon about 10 years ago and have built this into a true brand and they’re selling everywhere now, all over the world, into big box retail on their own site. We talk about that whole process and what it’s been like to actually build this brand with his sons and what are some of the key things that they’ve done to actually differentiate and why do they raise their price. When a competitor comes in, they actually raise their price. They don’t even worry about them. Some really fascinating stuff, some really good stuff that you’re going to learn a lot about branding and empire building. Enjoy this episode with Ted. What’s up everybody. Welcome to the next awesome episode of the AM/PM Podcast. Look who I have here. I have Mr. Ted Repic. How you doing, Ted?
Ted:
Hey, good, Kevin, how about you bud?
Kevin King:
All right, man, we’ve had a few good dinners me, you and Steve Simonson and we’ve enjoyed life a little bit in the last year or so together, haven’t we?
Ted:
Always Absolutely had some fun in Vegas and Austin. Yeah, looking forward to some more of those good times.
Kevin King:
I know, and it’s good, and you’re right here down the street. I mean, you’re in Austin as well, right, or in the Austin area.
Ted:
I am in the Austin area yeah, west of town, not downtown, not the beautiful views like you’ve got, but I do love Austin.
Kevin King:
Yeah, Austin’s good. For a lot of people that don’t know. Obviously, if you’re watching this on the video right now, you see the Rhino USA shirt that Ted’s wearing there. What the heck is Rhino USA?
Ted:
Well, Rhino USA is our passion project. Our family passion project Started, wow, back in 2015. Started by my two sons, actually, when they were 19 and 17 years old.
Kevin King:
So, and there’s an interesting story, I think, behind that I think you were saying that a little bit at dinner one time where you had a successful business and you’re doing well and you had a nice house, and they were just two typical teenagers, just kind of doing what teenagers do and up to no good and just running around, and you kind of, at one point, laid the law down. Can you tell me that little story about how that happened?
Ted:
Sure, sure. Yeah, it is an interesting story. So, I’m a serial entrepreneur by trade. I have to say. I’ve had multiple businesses. I’ve never really worked for anyone and you know my kids were raised in an entrepreneurial household running multiple businesses, real estate investments. So, they’re you know, dinner talk is all about business and entrepreneurship and things like that. So, they were raised that way. 2000, let’s call it 2011. I jumped into real estate investing by 2014. I’m out of money, looking for a new venture to raise some money to do more real estate. And I ran into Matt Clark and Jason Katzenbach and joined in the amazing selling machine three, I think back then. So, I did the training, and my boys are at home. You know, I think it was summertime. I showed them the training. I’m like this Amazon stuff’s pretty exciting. Check this out Again. They’re 19. And well, at that point they were 17 and 15. So they do some of the training. They’re excited about it, but they go ride their motorcycles like normal teenagers. They’re not worried about making money. Dad’s got their back on that Around 2015, my older son, Cameron, 19 years old, gets into a little trouble. He’s had a girlfriend in high school for a while and finds out his girlfriend’s pregnant and you know something that could be kind of a scary situation for a 19-year-old. He comes home and tells his dad and expects his dad to bail him out and wasn’t really my way of doing things. So, I told him to go get a job, figure out how he’s going to support his family, and Cameron bounced around and founded Rhino USA then, I mean, after doing some of the amazing selling machine training.
Kevin King:
So his back was against the wall. He’s like what do I got to do? Well, dad had me watch this stuff. Maybe there’s something actually there. Let me actually take action on it. So what? How did he determine what to sell? Was it just using the amazing com process and just found an item?
Ted:
Exactly Using the process, using the training, and you know as well as I do, Kevin, I mean as an entrepreneur, when you get your back against the wall and you start feeling that pain and pressure, that’s when that’s when diamonds are created, right. So I mean you put a 19-year-old kid in the fire and he’s got to figure out how to make something work. And the beauty of that process is he was so you know what would be the right word. I mean the kid’s obviously scared, but you know he knows he’s got to figure it out for himself and he’s desperate. And so he pulled out all the stops and he made it work. He founded a small product. It was called like Soft Loops, small poly webbing product. You know, $10 product, something lightweight to ship, got a few, you know a couple of couple grand in inventory, sold through it. His little, his brother at that point, 17 years old, Dylan, he jumps in with his bigger brother, just graduated high school, joins in, throws another couple grand in the mix and they launch another product. I forgot another motorcycle product. You know, at the time these kids are riding dirt bikes around the neighborhood, you know, out in the dirt, so they’re off road. They’ve been raised camping and boating and jet skis and motorcycles. Shoot, I’m even a pilot. My kids have been flying in airplanes since they’ve been little kids, so they’re all about power sports and adventure stuff. So that’s the niche they went into and yeah, yeah, it started working out great.
Kevin King:
So they did what they knew. Basically, they found something they knew, so they knew how to sell it or market it. So when they first started, did you give them that little seed money, that couple grand, or did they take that from their allowance, or did they go sell most of them yards to get that, or how did they get that seed money?
Ted:
Yeah, nothing for me, nothing. I’m a tough love kind of person, so I believe that the kid’s got to feel that pressure to take the action. If dad’s going to give them money and bail them out of every problem they get into, they’re never going to learn. So no, I didn’t give him anything. Cameron was working at the time as a diesel engine mechanic. He was learning that trade, so he had a job, was making some money, Dylan, actually got into a car accident. He had a little turbo Subaru. He jumped it off a cliff, got like 7,500 bucks in an insurance settlement and instead of buying another car he invested 5,000, spent 2,500, bought himself a little motorcycle to get himself around town. So he invested his insurance money with Cameron. That gave him enough money to do another. Launch another SKU, get some more inventory.
Kevin King:
So this was around 2015, 2016. So when did you actually? So walk me through what happened next? So they launched a couple of SKUs. I guess these SKUs, they both take off.
Ted:
Yeah, they both took off pretty good. They were doing well. At the time I had my own.
Kevin King:
How’d they cashflow that?
Ted:
The one thing that they learned from me right up front is you can never build a business if you’re living off the profits. So, they were reinvesting every penny. Every penny was going back into the business. They kept adding, they added, they got to three SKUs before I jumped in with them in 2017. So, all along, while this is happening 2015, 16, I’m running four other businesses, including an Amazon brand. At the time that that brand that I had on Amazon was called Block it and I was early in the mix of RFID protection sleeves, credit card sleeves, passport sleeves. It’s been played out now, but back then it was fairly new and I have a security background. I’m actually a private investigator by trade. So I own a business still to this day that I founded in 1992, an investigation and security business that I still have that is still up and running today.
Kevin King:
So what got you in 2017? Did they come to you and say, hey, dad, we need your help or we need your money, or were you like you kids are doing well, I want a piece of this. My little RFD protecting things are just so-so, let’s combine forces, or how did that work? How did that come about?
Ted:
I suppose a mixture of all of those you know. Obviously, proud dad kicked in and I’m like you know look at the kids did it. I’m especially proud at this point. Now my son, Cameron has a child, so he’s got himself his own place to live. He’s still working the diesel mechanic work, working the Rhino, work at night and weekends because he’s not living off the profits. He’s got to have a job. My son, Dylan, actually at the time was running a Minecraft server and he was making a couple grand a month on the side. So they were reinvesting everything in the business. I was proud of what they were doing and you know, I think it’s every dad’s, every dad who has a son. I think it’s. And you’re an entrepreneur, you would love to have the opportunity to work with your kids and have a family business, and so I think that’s what kicked in for me that I wanted to jump in and work with them. It was exciting, and then that was my opportunity to download all of my entrepreneurial experience to them, and so working with them every day probably was something I had dreamed of, you know, forever, and this was an opportunity. So I dropped my Block it brand. I just walked away from it didn’t sell it, didn’t do anything, just stopped working on it, jumped in with them and started going hard January 2017.
Kevin King:
So how did y’all delineate the roles? Here’s dad, who’s been this authority figure, coming in and calling all the shots, and now you have the son, who started the company, and his brother, who’s. I don’t know if he’s co-founder or if he was like vice president, but how did you divide those roles? And what was that like? Possibly having to take orders from your son instead?
Ted:
Well, I think they deferred authority to me because they knew I had more experience, right. So, and plus I was bringing some money, so I and I had to buy my way in as a third 33 and a third partner. I mean, they documented everything on that, and they agreed that I think the number was like 15 grand or 12 grand. But I had to bring the money and buy in and we signed some agreements. I took over at that point as CEO and my son, Cameron, who founded the business, is a graphic designer. He’s a creative, he’s an artist, he’s always been drawing and painting and I mean he’s always been very, very good at art and so he was immediately. He designed the logo, all the graphics. You know he’s very, you know the bright green and if you look at our, you know all the stuff that we do. It’s all of our branding is designed by Cameron. It pops, it’s very, very it’s very good stuff, it’s exciting stuff Jeep and off-road and outdoor. Whereas Dylan is what we call our conquesting specialist. He does not like to lose, he demands to win everything he does, and if somebody’s beating him, he likes to go after him. So, Amazon’s a competitive game. Back in the day it was. You know, find a niche, jump in, take market share, do it better, differentiate, and so we did all those. So, Dylan was picking the products, Cameron was designing the listings and the packaging and I was creating marketing strategy.
Kevin King:
Where’s the word Rhino come from?
Ted:
Well, that’s a whole story into itself. So you know, the original name of the company in 2015 was Epic Moto Gear. That’s what Cameron called it. Then Dylan came in. They changed the name 2016 to Gorilla Moto Gear and they got the third product they launched was a tire gauge around Christmas of 2016. They had spent all the money they had to get this new product up and running and they got a trademark infringement lockdown on Amazon, which anybody listening to this that’s been on Amazon for a while knows that happens. Well, it happened December 4th 2016, right when they put all their money into their Christmas. You, know there Q4 inventory. Brand new product launches, they get locked down. The company that they infringed on was named Gorilla. They came in and said shut down your business, you can’t sell under this name. They worked out we worked out a licensing deal with Gorilla, so we sold off the remaining inventory 10% and then the business was dead in the water January 2017. We went the three of us took a little weekend to go out and have some time to think about this and I said what are you guys going to do? Go get jobs. And they’re like hell, no, we don’t work for other people, we want to work for ourselves. I’m like what do you want to do? And they said let’s start over. So, we started over and we picked the name Rhino.
Kevin King:
What about those other two SKUs? Did you bring those over or did you start completely over?
Ted:
Yeah, we brought them over. We brought them over and converted them and we still have those. Those SKUs still sell very well to this day. So, I mean, we still have the original two SKUs now rebranded under Rhino USA.
Kevin King:
So is this a seven-figure, or eight-figure your business?
Ted:
Now it is an eight-figure business.
Kevin King:
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Are you all working from home, or is there, like now, an office and a big warehouse somewhere and like a whole bunch of staff, or what’s the structure like these days?
Ted:
Yeah, we’ve grown quite a bit. It’s actually really exciting. So we started out in Southern California. We had a building there, then we added another building, then we added a third building. So, we had about, you know, close to 3 offices, these buildings, these are R&D flex buildings, so we have office and warehouse Okay, about 20,000 square feet of warehouse total. We outgrew that space and around 2018, my brother, who was a CIO for a big company out of Atlanta, decided he would love to join our family company as we were growing so big. So my brother quit his big job at his big employer he’s been with that company for 30 years came to join our small family business and we fired up an office in Atlanta and then, over the course of a year, things got so big. We fired up a warehouse in Atlanta and then around 2021. The boys and I decided to relocate to Austin and we fired up buildings here, so we have facilities in Austin, Southern California and Atlanta.
Kevin King:
We say partnership, what does that mean? So you didn’t sell to an aggregator, but you
Ted:
We did a joint venture. Joint venture.
Kevin King:
Okay. So you started as a separate company of some sort.
Ted:
We did a 50-50 joint venture with an aggregator, so we maintained control of the company. Thank goodness that’s worked out well for us. But yeah, we have a joint venture partnership. Eventually we will end up selling off the rest of the company to the aggregator at some point down the road.
Kevin King:
So, instead of the aggregator coming in and buying you out, they expressed some interest and you said oh, we’re not ready to sell, but we’ll join up with you, yeah.
Ted:
You know, at the time we were, you know we were being. You know everybody remembers the craze of 21, 22, with the aggregators. Everybody was buying everything and things were going crazy and we had multiple people wanting to buy the company. I actually sat down with our good buddy, Steve Simonson, in Vegas at one of those big events and told him you know, all these people want to buy our company. What should we do? And he said you guys are not ready to sell. I mean, you’re wearing the shirts and we do. I mean we love the brand, we really do. It’s not a marketing thing. Everything our personal vehicles are wrapped in Rhino. We love the brand, we love what we built. It’s our baby and we love nurturing it and growing it. And Steve said do not sell the company. You’re not. You guys love this thing. You’re not going to be happy. And I thank God every day that I had that call with Steve or I had that sit down with Steve because we might’ve sold the company and these ideas of earnouts. We know that that’s gone south. That hasn’t really worked out for too many people, so luckily we did the right thing. We partnered, we’ve kept control and we’ve been growing at 50 to 70% year over year ever since.
Kevin King:
Is that growth all on Amazon, or are you doing stuff off Amazon as well?
Ted:
We’re completely omni-channel. We’re everywhere. We have our own website. We’re blowing up TikTok. We’ve had some massive jumps in TikTok recently. Walmart, eBay. We’re in Europe, we’re in Mexico, we’re in Canada and we’re in brick and mortar. We’re actually we’re in low stores. We’ve got six SKUs going live nationwide in Walmart next month. We’re having some good times over here buddy.
Kevin King:
It sounds like it man, you’re like everybody’s dream. You built a true brand and you’re actually getting that. What do you think were the keys to actually building this out? I mean, was it right place, right time, right product? It just started the momentum, or was it something that you guys did? Or was it a combination? Like the branding with the green shirts and the, the living and breathing it 24 7, what? What was it that actually built this into like a massive brand? Now, I mean you, this could be a case study for people of like how to actually because everybody thinks they’re a brand on amazon, but 99 of them aren’t and a logo, but you guys are a true brand. What is it? If you’re advising somebody, what should they be doing? That’s really worked for you guys.
Ted:
You know there’s this has been a big. We’ve had this question asked multiple times. You know you guys have built a real brand. How did you do it? And it’s not. It’s not one thing. You know that. I mean it’s a series of things that we’ve done, but it started with our conscious decision to only launch products that fit within our niche, not to be we always use the words in our business. From the beginning we didn’t want to be a Joe’s warehouse deals and that’s just a word. We made up a phrase, but you know, back in the training that we learned in Amazing Selling Machine, there was tons of opportunity to just go launch products and make money.
Kevin King:
And you could launch a baby thing and a dog thing and a bike thing and a whatever and you could make money.
Ted:
That’s a Joe’s Warehouse deals. We gave our company a motto Superior Power Sports Accessories and every time we would talk about new products we would say that’s a great product, there’s tons of opportunity.
Kevin King:
But is it a superior power sport accessory and if the answer was no, even if we could make good money at it we would pass because it wouldn’t fit in a proper portfolio for a company like ours.
Ted:
So that was number one picking the right products that were niche specific, that we could build a full catalog of products in our niche. The second thing that we did that was totally different was going to live events. Going to trade shows, getting in front of our customers and actually talking to them, bringing new product prototypes to live events and letting customers touch them and talk about them and say I love this, if it was 15 feet long, I’d buy it, I love this, if it was 10,000 pound break strength, I would buy it. So we got a bunch of feedback live from humans and that’s kind of a weird thing. These days most people think they just go do their Helium 10 research on Amazon, pick a product, launch it and you get rich. We know by now that doesn’t work.
Kevin King:
Is that how new products are ideated now? Is it from the, from the audience? Or is your son still using you know tools and Helium 10 and data from internally to say, oh, we need to launch this. Or is it? Where is it at now with the new ideas and how do you? I understand it’s got to meet the superior quality, but where does the original concept come from for adding a new SKU?
Ted:
So still to this day. I’ll be honest with you. My son, Dylan, is our we call him our NPD growth specialist. So new product development, that’s what he does like. Right before this call he texts me. He’s developed a new idea for a bracket to custom in the back of a truck that can hold one of our products and he wants to file a patent on it. He thinks it’s going to be huge. This thing kind of happens with Dylan. Four or five times a year He’ll pop up with some great idea. We launch it and it just blows doors and works. So I have to give some credit to the kids. These guys are still doing it. They’re still the ones making this happen every day.
Kevin King:
So what’s been the biggest challenge? You said you’re growing 50 to 75% every year. What’s the biggest challenge? Is it hiring good people? Is it cash flow? Is it getting stuff out of China or wherever you’re manufacturing? What’s the biggest challenge right now, as you’re scaling up as rapidly as you guys are?
Ted:
Well, I would say all of the above, but you know what I’ll tell you? Our number one biggest problem is running out of inventory. So I’ve talked to every expert in the world about forecasting. We’ve looked at software spreadsheets. I mean we currently have got a new software that we’re using but there just is no way well, I shouldn’t say that. It’s very, extremely difficult to forecast, especially on new products or when you involve influencers, or you involve TikTok or social platforms. If you have a couple of videos or you have a video that goes viral, you could sell through 4 or 5 months of inventory in a week, and I have not met anybody that has solved that problem yet. I mean we’re even trying to warehouse ready goods overseas so that you know lead time can get cut to less than 30 days. We are overordering on inventory, keeping things live in the States to kind of plan for influencer and viral incidences. Forecasting and inventory is still one of our Achilles heels in the business.
Kevin King:
How are all the recent changes on Amazon with the inventory, placement fees and the storage fees and low inventory and all that kind of stuff? How are those affecting you guys? Has that become a challenge or is it cutting into margins pretty good?
Ted:
It’s going to cut into margins, no doubt. But you know, luckily you know, by the way, we just read the article in your newsletter and had to talk about that yesterday, as a matter of fact, about the fees and about how we think the next 12 months is going to roll out. We’re watching things very closely. Some of the fees actually are not going to hit us as hard as we thought, but we have the ability to pivot to FBM. We have multiple 3PLs that we use. We have our own in-house. We have over 40,000 square feet of warehouse on both coasts, so we’re in a pretty good position to be able to fulfill products ourselves. We don’t have to rely on FBA 100% Merchant fulfilled prime. We have a bunch of different programs that we run to kind of offset some of those fees. But certainly the fees are not going to be great for anybody.
Kevin King:
Most of your things smaller and lightweight. Are they more heavy metal? Longer, like you said, something like 15 feet a minute ago. Are they bigger items or is it a mix of stuff?
Ted:
No, most of our stuff is heavy, heavy metals. We do some metal hitch products, we do a drop hitch and that product can be I think that’s almost 20 pounds per unit. So I mean you’re not fitting many units on a pallet or a container. It’s heavy, it’s bulky expensive.
Kevin King:
What do you think what’s the biggest risk to your business right now, at the level that you’re at? Once you get to this eight figure level, what would you say is geopolitical? Is it people? Is it, like you said, constantly running out of stock and just killing you on rankings and stuff like that on Amazon? Or what’s the biggest risk right now if you had to, if I was doing risk analysis?
Ted:
The biggest risk for us right now, I think, would be dealing with big box retailers. You know your work very hard, takes years to get in with a retailer like Walmart and you know it’s very difficult to work with them. You know they want everything, so you’re running your margins pretty thin. They want inventory restocks. You know the SLAs are very tight. They’re not giving you exact numbers on POs, they’re kind of guesstimating needs per store and you don’t really know the sell-through until it happens. And if you drop the ball on one of those replenishment requests, most likely they’re not going to add additional SKUs to the program. They’re not going to keep working with you. So we’re really juggling the inventory piece between retail. You know how we fulfill the replenishments for our retail partners, how we balance keeping inventory available on Amazon to keep the algorithm happy, as you diversify Omnichannel especially into big box, the inventory management, forecasting and then cashflow. So, you know Walmart the terms they give you are not very great for us. We’ve got to carry millions of dollars in inventory until we get paid, so we’ve got to order that stuff on good faith. We got to get it here. Get it to them, and then they’ll decide to pay us at some point. So cashflow inventory, those are all big concerns for us.
Kevin King:
What’s Amazon typically now 60 days, 90 days?
Ted:
I think we have a 90 after delivery. So after we get it to them, then they’ve got 90 to get us paid
Kevin King:
And they rarely pay on time unless you have an incentive in there of some sort for a discount.
Ted:
I’m 100% sure they’ll call us and say, hey, we can pay you on time if you want to knock off 2%. I don’t give a game, I’m sure.
Kevin King:
Oh yeah, and the problem with retail too. Retail can be huge, but retail you’re at their mercy of it, actually, at least when you send to Amazon. Yeah, there could be a delay in Amazon processing, but at least it’s going to be quote, unquote on the floor, it’s going to be available for sale. But with retail store by store, some of that stuff might sit on a pallet in the back and not actually go out on the floor and then it gets returned to you and you’re dealing with that, or disposed or whatever. There’s a shared markdowns or what co-advertising fees and all this other, that tax on one. They want to rate, they want, they want to make sure their price is in line or better than what’s on Amazon. Are you having to create different SKUs and different UPCs? Like slightly change it. Okay, it’s on Amazon, it’s three inches on, on Walmart it’s 3.2, or there’s seven in a packet on Walmart and there’s five in a packet on Amazon, or stuff like that. Are you having to do that those kinds of things?
Ted:
Of course you’re a savvy businessman, you know we have to do those things. So yeah, even though right this morning I’m on a call so we created different SKUs, but the products are. We have similar products. So now we’re being told hey, if you want to drive foot traffic into the Walmart stores, you better take down those SKUs that are similar, because if you offer those for sale on other platforms, people can buy them. They won’t buy in store. If you don’t get proper sell-through, you’re not going to get replenishment orders. Business is going to die. So now, once you know, the hurdle of getting them on shelf is the first hurdle. Now you’ve got to drive marketing campaigns to drive foot traffic into those stores to ensure sell-through. So, I mean, it’s a major lift. As you know, it’s stressful.
Kevin King:
So you’re going to do something with like your list or with like your TikTok guys and say, hey, go check your local Walmart store, now available at Walmart. It’s almost like you’re riding this dual edge where I want to do that to drive the sales and get more orders, but at the same time, I also want them coming to me and buying an Amazon to keep my rankings there. So how do you balance that? Yeah, that’s the challenge for sure.
Ted:
Well, you know, we actually we’re finally in a position today, right now, where we feel like nationwide mass media buying is probably appropriate for our brand. So we’ve got enough of a, enough of brand awareness out there where people know who we are, and we’re going nationwide and 3,900 Walmart stores. So we’re actually working on TV commercials now. So that’s the next level. And what we’re doing on marketing is we’re going to go to TV, maybe Amazon Prime, we’re talking to a few different companies about where we’ll distribute that messaging. But the messaging is you know, I really, as a marketer, I dislike the words brand awareness marketing, because you know that usually tends to mean you can’t measure it and something like this. We’re really working hard to figure out how to measure results of a marketing campaign. When you’re trying to drive foot traffic into a retail store, it’s very difficult and it’s very expensive. To run TV ads without any way to measure results is scary. So I think we’ve decided we’re going to do no marketing initially. Let the product sit on shelf, see what the organic sell-through is. Organic sell-through is for about 30, 60 days. Then we’ll kick in our marketing and try to measure the Delta between them and see if that’s how we can measure results from our TV campaigns.
Kevin King:
Couldn’t you do something on the TV stuff? Or you put a special QR code or something on the package or on the insert that says scan this to get I don’t know a discount, or join the club, or join the motorcycle club or watch our videos or whatever, I don’t know some sort of motivation thing. And then when they do that, there’s a one line that says what’s your name, what’s your email, and the second one’s like where did you buy this or something? And then you can say, oh, I bought it at Walmart or how’d you hear about us. And you could ask it’s not scientific, but it’ll get you close at least.
Ted:
Yeah, we have had. So one of the unique things about our brand is we offer a lifetime warranty on every single one of our products, and that is unique. There’s very few brands that do that. On every single product, we sell unlimited lifetime warranty and in each package there’s a warranty registration card and when you go to that website to register your warranty, it asks you your name, your order information, where you bought from. We do have a special insert on the Walmart retail SKUs that will send them to a separate landing page. So, regardless, we know exactly it’s only from Walmart purchases. But you know that’s not an exact science and only about three to four percent of the people actually register the warranty anyway. So it’s not really going to give us all the info we’d like to get, but it will give us something. You’re right.
Kevin King:
People are always asking well, if I offer a lifetime warranty, man, that’s just going to cost me a lot of money. I’m wondering man, that’s just going to cost me a lot of money. I’m going to be. What would you say? It’s probably a pretty low uptake on that, and when it is all you’re doing is making a customer happy, keeping them in your brand even longer.
Ted:
In the world of digital. You know social media everybody that listens to this podcast knows you have to treat your customers right. They can ruin your business. You know, by being vocal about deficiencies. Customers right. They can ruin your business, you know by being vocal about deficiencies. So we made a decision right up front, from day one, that we would prove to our customers that we believed in the quality of our products, to the point that we would back them with a lifetime warranty. Do we get claims on the warranty? Absolutely. You know. We’ve sold millions of products now they’re out in circulation and every day we get warranty claims and we’re happy to honor that warranty. Every time we get a warranty claim we ask for images, we consult with the person placing the claim. What happened? How did the product break? What did it go through? Then we go back and make improvements to the product to make sure that we have very little warranty claims going forward. So the uptake on the warranty claims is very low on most products. But as we launch new products we experience new deficiencies. We go back v2, v3, fix those and the warranty claims go down. So there is some risk, but I think it’s very low.
Kevin King:
What mix are you right now percentage-wise on? Like Amazon is X percent, others e-com is X percent and wholesale is X percent. What would you say that the mix is in your portfolio?
Ted:
You know, I know that Amazon has been traditionally about 85 percent and that number now is down to 78 percent, and that’s just a recent number I saw a week or two ago. It is our goal to drive that number down a little bit so we’re not so heavily dependent on Amazon. You know, just like this, the fee issues that are going on now. It’s too risky to have your business so dependent on Amazon without the other channels. Well, like you know, you get a trademark infringement issue and your entire business is shut down. On Amazon and anywhere else there’s due process where you can prove your claim. So we’ve diversified. I don’t want to say diversify away. Amazon is still the primary revenue generating platform for us, but we like to diversify. So, Amazon US is currently about 78%. Our Shopify, our own in-house website, is really picking up most of the slack to the hundred. And then we’ve got some loose, you know, a couple percent on eBay, a couple percent on Walmart. We’ve got Europe, Mexico, Mercado Libre down in Mexico. You’re just all one 2% here and there. TikTok is the new, as everybody’s talking. It’s a big platform. TikTok is the new big one we’re working on and actually made up, like in just November and December of last year. It came real fast and made up almost 4% of total revenue for 23 for us.
Kevin King:
So TikTok is massive opportunity when you said Europe and other places, is that Amazon over in Europe?
Ted:
You’re dabbling a little bit over there Amazon, Amazon Europe and our own website, our own Shopify site in Europe as well.
Kevin King:
Is there certain areas where the culture, like a lot of it’s motorcycle and outdoor parts is that a bigger business in the US? Are more people into that, percentage wise, I guess, in the US than they are in Europe or other places in the world? Or is it Australia in the US where everybody’s into the outdoor stuff, or do you find anything like to be the case like that?
Ted:
Sure, I mean I think in Europe. You know Germany has proven to be a pretty big, pretty good sized market for outdoor. A lot of motorcycle activity in Germany. I don’t think you know a lot of off-roading, the camping like camping vehicles. Everything’s a lot smaller in Europe. As you know you’ve been there many times. In the US everybody’s about big and strong and that’s kind of all of our products are bigger and stronger and badder than everything else. So it is. We are still testing in Europe. We’re seeing some very good results and things are going very well. But of course the market’s not as big in Europe for our products as it is in the US. We find big demand for off-road outdoor motorcycle stuff in Latin America Massive demand. We have big dealers. We have government agencies calling us for products through Brazil and Mexico. We do a lot of business in Mexico. Australia is on the list as a place we want to expand to. We haven’t gotten there yet, but we do have dealers in the UAE. So in the Middle East there’s a big off-road community. Dakar runs a big off-road event. We have a lot of interest in several dealers in the Middle East that are picking up our products too.
Kevin King:
Do you sponsor any teams or racing teams or events in the space or get togethers or anything like that, or is that?
Ted:
we’re doing some of that, not not not quite to the level that, like you know, monster energy has. You know, a whole team of sponsored athletes. We do sponsor. We have a couple of sponsored Baja race cars. Polaris racing. We sponsor a Polaris race car. On all of our marketing videos we feature a Polaris race car, a factory sponsored race car driver, and he’s a guy. He’s the guy we sponsor, so he does a lot of content, shoots for us with our products, using his car out in the field at the races and Baja stuff like that.
Kevin King:
Is there anybody in the space that you admire? Is there, like someone that you’re chasing, like, hey, we want to be the Yeti of motorcycle parts, or we want to be or is there someone out there, who? Where do you get your inspiration, whether in your space or some other space? Who’s a model of inspiration for what you guys are doing and building this brand and building this out?
Ted:
Yeah, Yeti is absolutely. You hit it right on the head. They’ve done such a great job, yet you know the leader, you know our company’s a little weird and sometimes I say we have an identity crisis because we are not a pure off-road. A lot of people think we’re an off-road company but really a majority of our revenue comes through cargo control products like ratchet straps. We do a lot of trailering. We have a lot of trailering products, towing products, so it’s not all off-road related. We do camping In the off-road space. Camping is called overlanding, that’s camping out of your vehicle, and so we do a lot of overlanding, camping, trailering, cargo control stuff like that.
Kevin King:
How are you dealing with copycats? You guys put out a product. I’m sure Are you manufacturing in China primarily.
Ted:
We have multiple manufacturers but yes, we do manufacture some of our products in China.
Kevin King:
So how are you dealing with? You guys are like leading the market and you probably have all these gnats that are constantly on your butt. What do you guys do to police that, to control that, to swat at them, or do you just let it go?
Ted:
We just let it go. We don’t play defense, we just go and launch better products. We do better marketing. We’re lucky to the point that we’ve built a real brand and so, honestly, when competitors come out and try to undercut our price I’m not joking when I say this most times we will raise our prices to give some space between us. And the reason we do that is because perceived value is something that we play heavily in. We’ve modeled our packaging, and you asked about who do we admire. The two companies that we’ve done a lot of modeling after are Apple and Yeti, and so our packaging. We invest a lot of money in our packaging. The product itself we invest heavily in on quality, obviously, but the packaging when you open, when anybody opens an iPhone or a MacBook or an iPad, it’s an experience I mean we want when people open our products. We want them to have that experience. They open it. The feel of the insert, the feel of the box, the look of the graphics. It just makes you, it reaffirms your purchasing decision from Rhino was a good one. So yeah, I mean, we put a lot. We put a lot into that.
Kevin King:
So a lot of people think Amazon’s just a race to the bottom. But you would disagree on price. You would disagree with that.
Ted:
Well, if you’re selling tomatoes, it’s a race to the bottom right, of course. So, we don’t sell tomatoes. We sell unique, patentable, high quality, lifetime warranty products. It’s different. The other thing is people can’t compete with what we do, so there’s some other aspects to our business that are a little different than everybody else. We have full-time, 9-5, Monday through Friday, live customer service. In the US, our customer service team is four strong. We have customer service people on both coasts. We answer the phone when our customers call. So, if you’re on our website, you’re looking at products you’re not sure if you want to buy, it pops up and says give us a call, chat with an agent now and learn more about the product. I mean, most companies in our space are hiding behind websites and email addresses. We post our physical addresses all over our packaging, our website, our marketing. Our customers can walk right into our facilities in Georgia, Austin or California. Meet our team, look at our products, talk to us, buy what they want, return products. That type of human interaction is what’s going away in the digital age and we’re going backwards. We’re doing things old school. We mail out thank you cards to good customers when we have multiple purchases. We write handwritten notes on a lot of things we ship from our warehouse. We write handwritten notes on a lot of things we ship from our warehouse. Those type of personal touches are differentiators, along with our lifetime warranty. So, no Chinese competitor can offer those things. They can’t offer the customer support they can’t offer the US-based company. They can’t offer the lifetime warranty. We just provide more value than everybody else.
Kevin King:
That’s important. I mean, that’s the thing that a lot of people they’re not willing to go that extra mile do that extra thing to really differentiate themselves, and that does matter. I mean, it’s a long-term play. Too many people on Amazon are all about yeah, I need to make money quickly and they’re not in for it. The long-term, you guys, they see some video or they see something that I want to quit my job and I want to build this massive company and sell it in a year or two and they don’t understand this. This takes a while. I mean, things are different now. When you guys started when your son started in 2015, it was a heck of a lot easier. You know, you could just find something and stick your logo on it and actually start doing. Okay for sure. The key here is you guys made the transition from probably starting to do that’s where you probably started to actually building a true brand and a true identity, whereas most people they just become the Joe’s warehouse or whatever you called it and they just kind of coast on their laurels. And those are the guys that some of them sold out for a lot of money to aggregators a few years ago. But when they go and try to do it again. They can’t because they don’t. They’re clueless, the vast majority of them. What, what is it that? What do you guys do to stay on top of what’s happening in the space? Do you go to a lot of? I mean, I’ve met you at a few events, I’ve met you with Steve. Do you go to a lot of events or have a team members go to events, or do you guys monitor certain websites or go on different trainings, or you’re like we don’t need that stuff anymore. We got our way, we got our systems, we’re good yeah.
Ted:
You know it comes to a point where you’re just it’s just the shiny object syndrome. Right, you’re chasing the next thing. We’ve got systems in place. The things that we do are not hacks. These are, these are tried and true, real long-term business plays that you know. These are things that work. This isn’t a let’s hurry up and try to make a bunch of money this week kind of thing. That doesn’t work. So you’re right, definitely the market has changed. The industry has changed. What are we doing? You know we I have to say, like, of all the newsletters and things, I only read yours, everybody are and that’s not. There’s no BS there, Kevin, your newsletter, your events, your stuff is like next level. It’s for successful sellers who are actually doing it at a high level and going to the next level and want to grow. So as far as educational events and readings, newsletters, things like that, podcasts, we tend to gravitate towards our stuff. But really, my advice to other people, the things that we do to stay in touch with our customers is what’s most important, and going to the live events where our customers are. You know, we, our company, we do a lot in hardware, cargo control, off-road stuff like that. So any events, trade shows, consumer events that are those kind of people, that demographic, we go there. I mean we have event trailers, we have event teams. We go and do SEMA in Las Vegas. I mean we do every event we can to get in front of our customers. I personally, as the CEO of Rhino to this day we’re a multi-eight-figure brand I go to these consumer events. I go to the Jeep Beach in Florida, I go to Sancho in Murrieta, overland Expo in Flagstaff I mean we’re at six, seven, eight events a year myself personally to just meet the customers, talk to them about our products, ask what they love, what they don’t like, what we can do to be better, and we take that advice and we actually implement it. We fix our products, we change what they’re asking for. We’ve had a lot of women at events come up to us and say why does Rhino hate women? And I’m like, hey, we love women. What are you talking about? Well, you don’t have any products for women. You don’t have any pink straps, any pink straps, any pink shirts. And I said, you know what? You’re absolutely right. You know that’s a miss on our part. And now we are launching sticker packs and pink straps and pink shirts and all kinds of stuff to satisfy the women who actually we didn’t realize. We thought our business was primarily men and now we know it’s 30% women that buy from us and now, we’ve pivoted everything marketing messaging, we’re recruiting female influencers in the space and you really got to listen to your customers. We would have never known that had we not been live at the event, face to face with the customers.
Kevin King:
That’s a very good point. I hope everybody listening is listening to what Ted is saying. There is you need to get out among your customers, not just by email, not just in a forum, but actually face-to-face. There’s something about being face-to-face or being even if you go to a trade show, not so much that you’re hoping to make new contacts, but you’re basically getting market research and you can have a dialogue back and forth. They can touch it, they can hold it, they can turn it over and you can watch their expression on their face. You can watch their expression on their face, you can judge their mannerisms of what they’re really saying and you can send somebody to do that. And a lot of companies they have, you know they send out a salesperson but those people don’t really give a and they’re going to pick a cherry, pick, pick it. They might not even be as familiar as a product and they’re going to come back and say, yeah, everybody said it’s great, but Ted’s going to go and he’s going to talk to someone. No, this woman said this thing and it’s going to resonate because you care and you’re one of the founders and that’s part of your job. There’s a big difference there and so I think a lot of. I don’t do those things, but you look at what is it? Who is it FedEx or one of these big companies? They actually make their office people once a month. They have to go drive trucks or something like that. You know, deliver packages, yeah, and you’ve got to be down in there. If you’re not down in the weeds, at least partially or some, you’re out of touch.
Ted:
A hundred percent. We actually make it a requirement. Every new employee, regardless of your title and role, whatever you do, you’re required to go to at least one Rhino event per year. That gives them the context they need to understand the job. You can’t just sit at your house working remote behind a computer and think that you understand your demographic and what they need and what they want. You’ve got to get face to face Been one of the biggest advantages that we’ve had over our competitors.
Kevin King:
Just real quick before we wrap up what would you say are the biggest differences now in starting a brand whether it’s an e-commerce brand or whether you’re going direct to consumer or you’re trying to get into Walmart versus when you guys started almost 10 years ago to now? If I’m listening to this podcast, I’m just getting going and I’m listening to what Ted’s saying. This sounds all good. This sounds great. What would your advice be to someone if this was your sons? Again, right now, and you’re laying down the law saying you’re going to have a baby go take care of your damn self figure it out.
Ted:
What would you tell them to do? What would I tell them to do? I get a lot of young people that ask me about investing. I got five grand, what should I invest in? And I always tell them the same thing you should invest in yourself. Take the five grand and invest in yourself. You’ve got to learn more about marketing and about the world itself how to generate revenue and about the world itself how to generate revenue AI you really better be diving into AI and understanding the value of AI. I probably if somebody was I wouldn’t recommend anybody jump into the Amazon space at this point today, right now, wouldn’t be my recommendation. But if you were looking to get into e-com, my recommendation would be to really and this is not new, this is something that you’ve probably heard literally thousands of times and it’s still true today, as it was true in 2014, when I started doing ASM it is to really find something that you’re passionate about, something that you love, like if I’m going to sell women’s makeup, I don’t love it, I don’t know it, I’m not passionate about it. When I wake up in the morning, I’m not excited to get to work because those aren’t products that I love and that I know. I’m faking it just to try to make money, and I think in this day and age of business, the consumers are much more savvy to the marketing and the messaging that we’re putting out. And if you’re not authentic and real and if you don’t have passion around your product, I can assure you that somebody else does and they’ll beat your ass in the market. So, you really have to be passionate. You have to love what you’re doing, and the next thing would be you love what you do and then how you’re going to market it. So, I would recommend that people look to market through influencers platforms like TikTok. I think that’s the wave of the future Creating content, finding unique uses. I’m always amazed at how many times these companies can recreate water or Red Bull like energy drink the size of the can. That is the differentiator. Liquid Death has done such a great job with their brand. I mean, it’s freaking water, it’s water. I just bought a 12-pack of water for $15. It’s ridiculous, but people buy it. I love it. It’s a great concept in marketing. So you’ve got to be different. You can’t just go change a logo and think you’re going to win, because you’re not going to.
Kevin King:
Ted, this has been awesome. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing today. If people want to learn more about Rhino USA or get in touch with you for some reason, what would be the best way to do that?
Ted:
Well, our website’s out there rhinousainc.com and you could hit contact there and contacts could come through to me right through the website.
Kevin King:
Awesome, Ted, appreciate this man. Looking forward to having another nice dinner and drinks with you at some point in the future.
Ted:
Cigars at the penthouse buddy, I’m ready.
Kevin King:
Let’s do it, it’s on, it’s on. Thanks, ted, appreciate it, man.
Ted:
Looking forward to it. Good chat with you, Kevin. Take care bud.
Kevin King:
That was Ted’s first time to ever be on a podcast and that was really good stuff from someone that’s really doing well and is truly. He and his sons have built an amazing brand Rhino USA. That was awesome. We’ll be back again next week with another killer episode. So make sure you hit that subscribe button and subscribe to the AMPM podcast. The newsletter that he was talking about, billiondollarsellers.com it’s totally free. Every Monday and Thursday, a new edition comes out, so check that out. Every Monday and Thursday, go to BillionDollarSellers.com to actually get that. Before I leave you today, I’ve got some words of wisdom for you. It kind of goes into what Ted was talking about. He didn’t say these exact words, but it’s basically. What he’s saying is people don’t buy products, they buy identities, and that’s what Rhino USA has done. That’s how they differentiate. Remember what he says I don’t care about your competitors, we just raise the price when a competitor comes in. That’s an identity of his customers. So keep that in mind. That’s a valuable lesson when it comes to marketing and when it comes to business. We’ll see you again next week. Bye.
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