This week, Bill sits down with Brian Morrell, COO of Stern Engineered Woven Substrates, to explore how the 137-year-old manufacturer has evolved its go-to-market strategy. From eliminating traditional sales rep layers to building direct relationships with customers, Brian shares how modern manufacturers must adapt to meet the demands of faster decision-making, technical buyers, and increasing expectations shaped by consumer experiences.

Brian also discusses how Stern is improving customer experience through simple but effective digital tools, the role of transparency in industrial supply chains, and how AI and data accessibility are reshaping how engineers source and specify products. With a career rooted in textile manufacturing and operations leadership, Brian brings a practical, ground-level perspective on what it takes to modernize without overcomplicating systems, and why people, process, and trust still drive success in manufacturing.

Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast, where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Today, I'm on location in New York with a very special guest from Stern Engineered Woven Substrates. Brian Morrow is an accomplished professional who is an operations COO at Stern. Brian, thank you for joining us today.

Brian: It's great to be here.

Bill: So, Brian, when we think about manufacturing, we're in the heart of New York. We're way far from the city. We're out in the middle of nowhere. It is very cold, a lot of snow. But, is it this kind of where manufacturing happens? It's not in the big cities. It's out in the, hinterland, as it were. Out in the outskirts. This is where American manufacturing happens.

Brian: Very much so, you know, this this where I, my whole career is in the outskirts.

Bill: For sure. So you've come up through textiles, so you have a, a storied career, working in a lot of textile manufacturing. And that had landed you here in New York in an environment where you're dealing with very, very niche industrial fabrics. Maybe just give us a little bit of background about what Stern Engineered Woven Substrates is all about.

Brian: Stern Engineered Woven Substrates is a manufacturer of technical woven fabrics. That means nothing to most people.

Bill: Right.

Brian: The I tell my friend and family, it's what makes things work. What we do makes planes, allow planes to fly, satellites to be launched, and various other industrial applications. So, we make technical fabrics that go into things that, that are machinery or industrial based.

Bill: Well and one of the things that amazed me about the, the product line you guys have and the breadth of it, I mean, you have products that are used in the aerospace industry that help us fly planes, launch rockets, go to space. And that's on kind of like one end. On the other end, you guys manufacture fabrics that can be used for wound care, for burn victims that are as light as a butterfly’s wing. That just shows the level of complexity and breadth of what you accomplish here in Cornell, New York.

Brian: Right. Yeah, it's we're a 137-year-old company that started in silks and then has, changed, developed over time, changed products and has got into some really interesting markets.

Bill: Excellent. So Brian, one of the things we like to talk about in the Missing Half podcast is maybe what's missing in our strategies or what we've learned that was missing. And I know you've recently gone through some changes in the way you're going to market. You had, when you, got into, business here, Stern Engineered Woven Substrates was, focused through a sales rep channel, and you guys have disassociated yourself from that channel and are going more with the direct to market approach. Maybe if you would talk us through how you got there. Well, you know why you would identify that maybe something was missing in your strategy and maybe why you are now approaching the market directly.

Brian: I, I when I came into the business, which was just three years ago. It's, again another 137-year-old company and not much change. And we were operating on the Dells, kinda, strategy. And I gave it some time. I don't, I, I don't like to go as a business, as a make huge change. But I wanted to analyze and see, you know, what works, what doesn't work. The the sales rep model I had experience with in previous business. More apparel-based business and sales and and, I've always questioned the value of how that works and, and whether it brings additional sales or is it just maintenance of, of the accounts that you have right. So, as far as Stern Engineered Woven Substrates goes, we had long standing sales reps. And, it was a looking at the numbers. It's, and looking at the data, it was it was kind of mark market maintenance, I guess, or account maintenance. And I've learned over the years that, it needs to be more. And also, from my experience as a buyer of industrial product, I, I, I don't want to pay for layers as a, as a consumer of the plies. We can buy yarn, we buy it, we buy the, the the raw materials. And you want the best price. Our customers want the best price? They want technical knowledge more so in this business than any other business I've worked in. And, our reps, were good guys. They they didn't have the technical knowledge to answer the questions. And so one of the key indicators was that we would get, a lot of meetings, with customers to answer the technical questions.

Bill: To do the sales job.

Brian: Right. We would, every inquiry from the customers would be just forwarded on an email to us as a team internally. But as a buyer myself, I want to deal with someone that had the answers. I want it quicker. The world is moving faster than ever. We're an old legacy type company, but we need to be faster. And so, the people we deal with are the. This is this is a very, technical industry. People are smart. Engineers have very direct questions. They know what they want usually. They don't know exactly how to get it. So we're the solution size company to be to be to have the answers. They need to talk to someone that has the knowledge.

Bill: Certainly. And I think we're seeing that across industries. The rep groups were very valuable 30 or 40 years ago because connecting with people was hard, and those relationships were valuable because they could go out and find people. Have those relationships and grease the wheelset. In today's day and age, with computers, AI, the internet, etc., we are one click away from any supplier in the world. And that gives us the advantage of not needing those layers, as you called them, and certainly those cost layers that don’t add value.

Brian: Yeah, and don't get me wrong, people want the relationship. Right. And that's what I'm trying to build internally. And I want our customers to be able to call. Every, every one of my emails has my cell number on it. We deal with customers around the world, and I want them to call me and to be able to call a COO of a company that's making something that's very important to them has value. To be able to call, someone one of my team members that has the technical knowledge to answer the questions because I'm not the guy. I'm not necessarily the guy for that. And I admit to it. It's invaluable, I think. And that's. And as a consumer myself, I want to make one call, get an answer, and then have direction to move forward with whatever I'm working on.

Bill: Well and I think that's also an important aspect from the standpoint that you guys are not just a manufacturer, you guys are a solutions provider. Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of the folks that call you, it's not one click, that quick they're buying off the shelf. They have a, they're, these engineers are pushing the limits of what materials science and production capabilities. Right. They're innovating. And they want a partner who's also able to not just off the shelf send them this industrial fabric. It's like, could we achieve X if y? Right. And then your team is there to hypothesize and think through that solution. And that's where I think, isn't that where the relationship really occurs? Because when you're in the trenches with someone and you work hard to solve the problem, that's where the real relationship starts to develop. And the fact that you're there for them. You answer the questions they’re struggling with.

Brian: Right, absolutely. And, as, in a business, you always want to sell what you make. Right? And we do a lot of that. Right. But but a lot of that took years of development. OSHA and our intellectual property is, is locked up in fireproof safe of hundreds, we’re 100, like I said, 137 year old company. We have 130 years, formulas, recipes and, that's, generally everything's kind of already been made in our business, but maybe not dialed in exactly right.

Bill: Well, one of the things that, so, full disclosure, we're, you’re one of our clients. We've been doing work for you guys for a number of years, and one of the things that amazed me is we built an online configurator for Stern Engineered Woven Substrates that allows kind of ideation on the website to combine different materials and different assets and I'm sure that's like a very high funnel type of thing. Like, you know, when the engineers call your experts, they're going way, way, way deeper. However, that kind of gives everybody kind of like bookends of what you currently are offering. And it just amazed me how many variables there were in what you're able to do. So I'm sure while there's nothing new under the sun, as it were, the combination and tweaking of those different variables can probably predict tremendously different outputs.

Brian: That's right. And that, what you built for us is the most effective manufacturing marketing tool I've ever. And the most, and, and the most probably used website. And it's there's nothing fancy about it. We are tremendously private about what we do, and who we, what we do, who we do that for. And when I first came into the business, I was really surprised that all of our information is on that website. And it's an interesting strategy. And that came from our current owner. And it's, it it tells our competitors what we do. But it's also telling engineers what we do. And that's the key. And it has toggles. It's it's it it's not fancy. It has toggles for for what you're looking for. If it, if it's the, content, voracity, thickness. Right, material. It has all those parameters and gives you an answer. And it says this may be the fabric for you, and it becomes the foundation from which we can build from when and and a lot of times engineers, most of the time, if someone is working on a new project, they have been on our website doing the toggle and figuring out, hey, these guys might have something that works. And it's interesting because, I am, I am contracted to be super secret, but meanwhile everything is all there. I it was I was really kind of, torn by the, the, the, the messaging there, but, it didn't take a few weeks before I realized that there's, it’s very effective.

Bill: Well I think that there is a challenge and a balancing act that we're all trying to figure out, which is, information everywhere so that people can find it, whether it's through SEO, like the, the traditional search engines, or now making information available to AI because, you know, the the new way people are going to specify projects and products is, hey, AI, I need to get this. Where should I go? How do I buy it? And I'm sure the prompts every day are becoming much more granular and specific. So there's balancing making information available, but then also protecting IP. And that I mean, I don't think anybody has the answer. I think Stern I think the decisions that Peter Thornton made in the strategic direction he made, to build that application, I don't know if it was risky or not. I wasn't really involved that part of the conversation, but it's worked out, and it, so I, I believe that haven't violated or, distributed your intellectual property too much because we weren't asked to take it down a week later.

Brian: Yeah. And on our end it gives a solution, but it doesn't tell you how we get there.

Bill: Correct.

Brian: Right so it's it's very much the end product will look like this or do this. Yes they have the attributes but it's not telling you how we get there.

Bill: Yeah. It's more the art of the possible. This is possible. There's a, and let's be very clear. The the tool is, simple. It's direct, but it is not comprehensive. It defines what's possible. And then they're going to have to contact one of your people to get the next level or receive the RFP or whatever the, the item is for the spec. But I think that was a great application. And it's been fun to watch that. The volume of activity on that online application increase over the years. I think let's get back to this relationship topic, because I think it's very important. And recently, you guys have built, what I think is a relationship tool where you're trying to communicate with your clients in a more meaningful way and make sure that they understand where their order is. And you know, there's nothing, this is not high science. This is not like some. We didn't have to go to a conference together and figure this out. It was like, here's a problem. Our clients are not getting as much information as we would like them to have or that they might like to have about the status of their order. And we worked with, your team to build an application. It’s a relationship application. It’s communicating to them where the order is in process. Updates regularly kind of a progress spectrum so you can see how it progresses. Not in every stage of your production, but the ones that are important to them. Maybe talk about the genesis of the idea, why we did it and what you're seeing is an outcome of that, like basically improved the, you know, the goal to improve client relationships.

Brian: Very deliberate effort because we're all consumers. And if, it doesn't matter what industry you're in, but we're all now professional consumers. We always have been. Right. We've been spoiled by the Amazon and the Dominos and, this this with, it with me and the owner, talking, it was it was his idea originally, to bring something consumer-oriented into what we do, into industrial supply chain application. I, I've been somewhat fascinated that recently or within the last few years that you can buy a pizza and they will tell you when the dough is being made and when it's going into the oven. And so me and me and Mr. Thornton would have a conversation about, do we, does that matter? How does that make you feel? And we started talking around this idea of we should, why don't we bring that to what we do? No one else would, because it, we’re industrial and where we're not in consumer-oriented, but. But all of us are in consumers trained. Right. And we expect that. We want to know where our package is. And so multiple conversations, about how we, we both agreed this would be pretty awesome. It's a great way to, because what we do is, is so important to our end customer. They need to know, they need to know if the product is going to be delivered on time. Our product is minutely, the cost is, it's such a small portion of the cost of what they're making. Okay. And so but it can it can hold up millions of dollars of time on their end. If they're going to shoot a booster of satellites, a rocket of satellites, into the sky, and they're waiting on five yards of fabric, then I'm their problem, and I'm costing them millions of dollars a day. So we have, you know, our relationship is our buyers. And so we were trying to look for a way to give them assurances that we're on track, that they're, we have their order. It's moving forward. And you can relax and you can worry about your other stuff because we're the we should be the smallest problem. Or we shouldn't be a problem. We shouldn't be a problem. We shouldn't be a thought. We should we should be ahead of them. Right? So they bought a pizza from us. And let's say we called it the pizza app. Yeah. And and I'm good at naming things something really simple. But in that, it's a pizza app. And yeah, we'll probably get sued from Domino's.

Bill: Yeah. Or maybe get some type of affiliate partnership or deal. We'll, we'll split the, the fee.

Brian: But yeah, but we wanted to get ahead of their questions and give them assurances that their product is actually on track for on-time delivery.

Bill: Well and I think there's a couple things I want to unpack in this conversation. Number one, I think it's very forward thinking. For a 137-year-old manufacturing company to recognize that industrial buyers are humans, too. And not only are they humans, I feel like everybody behaves more like a consumer no matter what level of education, expertise, age, whatever. We're all conditioned, so with our thumb and our voice, we should have access to everything we want. So I think that was an incredible like foresight or intuition that took buyer behavior. The second thing I think that's very important there is I think in the industrial community we get sucked into this ERP-level and investment for everything we need to do, because I've seen projects like this where it's like, oh, well, before we do that, we have to get a new ERP and we have to go back and oh, our data is terrible out like and it becomes a four year process and hundreds if not millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. And we did this, I would almost say, grassroots bootstrapped for a very modest budget. In a short time period and won.

Brian: But I was there with our systems won't support that. That was my initial answer to, this would be great, but our systems won’t support it. And, I will, you know, I like to be a problem solver. But I, it took me some weeks to try to figure out how do we change our systems? And I, I, you know, being a manufacturing guy, I went right into the systems. Like, there's got to be a way and and. You know, yeah, we could upgrade our systems and our systems and and we could, we could do that. I didn't I didn't want to do that. I, I, I give it to, to your team, and to continue the conversation of how is this possible? And simplifying it. And I'm all about trying to make difficult things simple to solve problems. And, but I was there and, and, we somehow have got moved out of there and, and it's this, it's such a simple system. I also did not want a system or an, I call it an app. I call it the pizza app, right. I didn't want an app that required more labor because we are we are thin. I mean, business…

Bill: A Morrell business is thin.

Brian: Small business is thin, right? And so I wanted something that was going to help our customer service but not create more work. So I didn't need that either. I did, you know, we we got enough of that with our the systems we got and the production systems and all the traceability that we have to have. And so it had to be simple enough with no labor. Right. And I didn't think we'd get there. But we got there, you know.

Bill: And it, it shocked me how, you know, I think in that early stage we had some of that problem definition and we had some of that infrastructure conversation that I was concerned as well that we were not going to get over that hurdle. However, I think we, this simplification conversation or topic that like label you're putting on it is going to be even more relevant in application of AI tools. Because now we had tools that have infinite horsepower. So the labor's kind of removed. But then we still had to vision what we want it to do and then have it work with our current tools, because the answer over the next five years for every manufacturing company is not going to be, oh, invest $1 million in a new ERP and $1 million in your data room or your data lake. Oh, and then we can start to realize AI and online application and app development that can improve our experience with our customers who are consumers. It has to be, we have to be able to simplify this and figure it out. The the folks who do that will win. The folks who simplify it and start moving it, as opposed to re-engineering this whole structure with, the SaaS guys won't like it as much because they want to sell… But and I think to be honest, not to get into that subject, but SaaS is in trouble because the half million dollar, 36-months implementation that only goes 50% well, those are going to be a thing of the past because customers just aren't going to accept it. They're going to push those companies to be more efficient. That's totally separate than…

Brian: That’s out of my world.

Bill: That’s out of my scope too, but I hear executives complain about those being so…

Brian: Yeah, I, I every company has systems. We have our systems. Right. But every company I've been in with systems is run by spreadsheets and Excel. And so you really have to ask yourself, and a lot of, some of the, some of my experience with the, the production management systems is that they're not honest.
They're not true. They're not true. You're, they're used for costing, they’re used for pricing and it's somewhat questionable data within them. Right?

Bill: Well and it feels like we, they’re great houses of data, then the questions are, is the data accurate? The way the reports usually come from those systems are not meaningful to the specific applications. So then you have to use something like a Crystal reports or some type of reporting tool that can go in and go into the database and extract and create custom reports. So and usually most organizations can’t afford to pay the ERP to develop the custom reports. So it's kind of more of a grassroots effort. I think we're going to see AI improve that dramatically. But that's that remains to be seen. We're we're not there. But no, I think I think the, to circle back to the pizza app. I think that was, there was tremendous foresight and strategic vision by your organization of where you wanted to go. And in a relatively short time period with a modest budget, we were able to get there. And, you know, we used our dev team, which we have a deep bench, that there were multiple people that we didn't have you guys interact with that were involved in that process. They did a great job. There was fine-tuning. There was a lot of, testing at the end and minor modifications, but I think there was something that we have customers of Stern Engineered Woven Substrates that feel more like a consumer and less like this hundred and 37 year old industrial complex relationship.

Brian: Right. And you know how I judge the effectiveness of it?

Bill: Is it how many pieces we have to give away for free? Is there like, no, I don't know. I don't.

Brian: Yeah I, I had no idea. But then I realized that a successful launch of this, would be, there was, my fear was that people were gonna hate it. They didn't want the, basically it sends an email. Right. To the buyer. So the thing sends an email to the buyer saying we have your order, it’s been through these processes and it's moving forward. And it’s like a, a train track or, progress bar. Right. And it shows where we are in the process. My fear was that our, our customer would say, I don't need the email, right. I got, my measure of success, knowing how what I know now was zero feedback. I got zero complaints. And then I did get, the feedback I got was, hey, can you add Mary to this on on the email chain? And we can mail to as you know, we can we can email multiple people within an organization. And so I got zero negative comments and I had clients and customers that wanted to be added to the chain. And to be added to an email chain in this world with our boxes, you know who they are, was, was, proven acceptance of what what we were trying to do.

Bill: No that's a great sampling of, okay, we have valuable information. It was valuable to that person. And it was also valuable to other people that they were able to accept more volume in the inbox. That is, that’s a compliment, right? Yeah.

Brian: Right. And I expected some negatives and I got zero negatives and we, we, it's fun because it’s semi manual and I can control, we can control the, the the the frequency of our updates somewhat. It's a weird combination, as you know, and I'm not going to get into the secret sauce. Right. Yeah. But it is, it is, automatic. But, I have some controls on it, and, and, today we might, we might have last night, I haven't checked. We might have sent out 100 update emails. And that's, 100 as as to explain it, to people. That's, that's touching our customer 100 times. And they want that. Which is amazing. Right? And so I wish I had checked before this, this recording of this podcast. Over the weekend, I checked, I think we did 125 emails on Friday, I think. And they're all separate orders and they're all separate. You know, they're all distinct orders for updates. And, so it's pretty amazing. But we're touching. We're touching our customer every day, and a lot of it has, it. It takes no effort for us to do that now.

Bill: No that's that's amazing. And I think when we look at the mid-market right, because you're a mid-market manufacturer, you're not a Fortune 500 company that has $1 billion IP. And so we're, it’s grassroot. It's it's gritty. We have to, you know, cobble things together. And that's most of the market. Right. Let's be honest. That's that's most of it. And I think the ingenuity and innovative approach is so forward. And and as we look forward to AI and its impact on what we're doing, I think and you and I had a little of this conversation pre-show is about, you know, there's people, there's process, and there's tools. And I think one of the things you just said about the feedback that's so important is we have a tool that’s well in the process, but we have not removed the people element from it. And I think that's something that's missing right now in a lot of conversations about AI. I hear a lot of companies are, we're even doing a ton of R&D in AI where how can we get something to automatically do this? An AI agent to be sentient and make decisions about this. Anyway, there may come a time where that futuristic dystopia is true. However, today all of the work we do with AI we mandate that our team absolutely has a filter.

Brian: Well, that's where we're at with this app, right? Is that, it's it's automatic, but we have control of it and that’s, I think where we are with it.

Bill: One hundred percent. It’s the same thing. They can move so quickly. It can.

Brian: And that was my fear. That was my biggest fear going in. What if this thing is giving out bad information? Right. What if it says something is on track and it’s not on track? And so I'm, I'm I'm incredibly honest. I'm very open. I like to be open and honest. Right. And the last thing I want to do is tell a customer something that's not real. And that was my fear. I was I was scared to to go forward unless I knew I had some control over the information.

Bill: Well, and let's be honest, Brian, while you've compared it to a pizza app for a very simple, like label, the, if a pizza does not arrive on time, I think one of the pizza companies give you the pizza or something, right? So that’s the, the consequences of an eight dollar cost pizza. The consequence without getting into the names of your clients or the like, if you have a client that has an aerospace industry project, that is most likely in the billions, because nothing is cheap anymore, right. And you’re a components manufacturer and it does not arrive on time or there's challenges with their process calendar and production schedule. Those are huge. I mean, millions of dollars a day is not. That may even be an understatement. It might be ten, 20, 30 million right. So yeah, I think it's very important to like when we started this, we want to make sure that we had accurate information that we were communicating correctly. And making sure that, our clients felt good about the information they receive. And then we go back to that relationship aspect. We're talking to them. We're speaking to them truth that is valuable to them on a consistent basis. That's a relationship builder that should help you retain customers for maybe the next hundred and 30 some years. You and I won't be here, but that that's a different story, right? I'm going to switch gears a little bit. Brian, you have been involved in manufacturing for a long long time. Came up through your family business. I worked with your father. You've been on factory floors at very large companies. Half $1 billion of revenue. Smaller midsize manufacturers. Let's talk a little bit about, there's machinery, there's processes. But we still live in a people world. It's about getting people to move things forward. Can you maybe talk about that, and I think it’s especially important for our younger listeners to understand that… And I'll give you a quick key up for this. When I went to business school, the internet was going to change everything. We weren't going to meet in person. Everything was going to, like the internet was going to change it all. And it did. However, we still go to tradeshows. I'm still in New York today, like I'm not at home. I go in my home office or whatever, people are still doing business because of relationships and people. And people are getting things done in factories where, because of people. Maybe talk about how we need to understand that and balance it as we enter this AI revolution.

Brian: I mean, all I know is factory life. I mean, you can't make things without people. You can try. I've tried. I mean, I've done I've tried robotics sewing. And I made more off quality than you would ever imagine. And that was some years ago. And maybe it's better today. But at the end of the day, in factories and, and we recently have some new equipment come in, it’s electronic it's, it's, you know, we can tie it into the web. It does not run itself. And things happen. Things break. They do not fix themselves. But it you know, it can tell you lots of things. The machines don’t all fix themselves. They're easier. Yeah, one thing where we are in manufacturing, it maybe easier to train on. Maybe a screen tells you what's going on. You still need someone to to do something. You still need people to put hands on something and and use their fingers and eyes, and, and most important part is to think it through. Right. And and, there's some interesting stuff out there with AI. And I'm watching it. There's some, you know, training that is, you know, there's there's some virtual training available. It's interesting. But when it comes down day to day in a factory, it's still people. And that's that's kind of my M.O. It you you you're as good as your people. And and having smart people in the factory making good decisions is irreplaceable.

Bill: Well and as a COO, your role is to get people to ask the right questions. Maybe you ask the right questions yourself. Get them to ask the questions, because you're not going to know all the answers or have all your expertise.

Brian: I, I am the least knowledgeable person in my company. And I and that's how I approach my work, and that's how I approach it everywhere that I've worked. I don't I don't have the answer, but I'm, I'm supposed to. And we talked about this briefly. Right. But the, yeah, I don't, I don't I'm not the, I'm not the, I don't have but the I have the experience, of getting things made. But how we make that is, is is not I'm not the engineer so. And so what I would, I would I do. My my approach in manufacturing, is to ask a lot of questions. And I'm, that's my that's my trick. Right. So and, and, everybody comes to me, stuff breaks. This has not been a good week, but every week is, is there's something else. There’s always problems. There's always problems in manufacturing. Some are bigger than others. Everyone comes to me for an answer. And, I'm, I'm, I'm the least knowledgeable person. But the answer, I always view every problem as something that I can learn from, maybe we can prevent in the future. But the answer is within the people that that that are working on the floor and know how things work. And so I always approach every problem by asking a lot of questions of my team, of my people. And they have the answer, the answer’s within them. It's just trying to talk it through.

Bill: I love that, the answer’s within them. And I think early in my career, I always tried to have the answer and be that source of truth. And then I realized, number one, even if I didn't know the answer, it was better to get the team to figure it out so they would stop coming to me for that. Like, what do you think? It's like, come back and sort it out.

Brian: And I, I, I drop everything, I will drop everything so that it, to solve the problem or help solve the problem. So I'm a facilitator, right. And, but I love the learning. I love that, that's what I love about my job is I am learning something new every day. And that's the challenge of life, right? Is is, that that’s what makes life, worth it? Right.

Bill: We have to be intellectually curious. And I think, you know, what, the new things always fascinate me. The change fascinates me. Sometimes it's difficult to contend with, especially the speed at, the rate of change is like, especially, it would be like what's happening with AI right now, right? Different revolutions. But, you have to realize that we’d be bored. Our minds would get soft. So it's good to contend with these challenges on a consistent basis. I know I've, I've tried to be a good leader, for our company and be the least knowledgeable in the room and least knowledgeable person in the room when our team gets together. And I think I'm doing the job because I think everybody in our organization now thinks I know nothing. So I.

Brian: That’s perfect.

Bill: Yeah, I’m winning, right. The minute, like, as a leader, I'm winning the battle. Right.

Brian: And I'll be the first to say, I don't know. But yeah, let's. Let's figure it out. And that's part of the fun, right?

Bill: So one of the next things we're, talking about and, you know, I've been wrestling with a little bit is, you know, how do we deal with AI in a very narrow definition with being online, being found online? Because now we're moving from that, maybe the configurator to we now have to have a configurator and information that LLMs will engage with and extract information because sophisticated buyers, and we're seeing this adoption, increase every day, are not going to surf the web. They're going to come up with a prompt and RFQ and put some parameters in based on what they're looking for and expect the LLMs to go out and contrast, compare, research. Is it ISO? Like all these different things? And if you're not communicating down a line to the OEMs through what they call multimodal touchpoints, you're going to be at a disadvantage to your client. So, we're all trying to figure that new thing out, right? Because that's kind of just, newer in the past 12 to 18 months, that conversation. But, yeah, that's I think something that's really important for us to grapple with next and understand. And what are you seeing in that, that space?

Brian: For us? I, I feel like, we're going to have to put more information in our website and our and our online presence. But I don't know. I'm, I'm curious to figure that out. And I and and we'll have to be careful about that. But, yeah, it's, it's going to be a challenge.

Bill: It is a challenge for niche manufacturers with a, with significant IP. There's no two ways about it. We have to give enough information to inform our buyers.We cannot give away our IP to competitors, to the market. And so it is a balancing act. And I think it's something that none of us have the answer to yet, but we're working through it, trying to figure it out together. So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out over the next several years and how we can continue to build relationships, delight buyers and, our customers, but also protect who we are and, our, our core information.

Brian: Yeah. And and the other thing, I just came out of a meeting with our, one of our largest raw material suppliers, and I, I ended the meeting telling him that we need to be closer as a team. His goal is to sell more raw material. And he gets judged by that. And and I believe that there has to be more coordination. He he's relying, he wants to know what he wants to know what my forecast is for 2026 and 2027. Right. And we have some visibility, but it is almost impossible. It’s a it's a bit at best. I've told him about our change in our sales strategy, in-house sales, technical in-house sales. Trying to get closer to our customers. And, I, I, I tell them we're better as a team, and if he wants to, we maybe, me and me and his company need to figure that out. And I think that's where AI is going to take it. Where our information is our information, but maybe connecting our information with our suppliers' information. I mean, we're all after kind of the same goal. We want to sell more and keep. My goal, my goal is always keep my workers working. So tthey can go buy groceries and pay rent. Yeah, whatever. They, you know, have a family. You know, I one of my first, one of my first, my first boss out of college, brought me into his office early in my my first few weeks of work out of college and and he taught me the best lesson probably I've ever heard, that that has stuck with me. Is that Brian, what you do affects the way I feed my family. And he's absolutely right. And I, I, I approach my work like that, and I want to make sure that that my work family is being fed.

Bill: Well and I'm sure as a young man, did you have a family at that point in time?

Brian: No.

Bill: Okay. So that, those words were probably very impactful. Then whenever you got married and had children.

Brian: I get it.

Bill: You get it. Right? Totally different ballgame.

Brian: Right, right. You know, I had screwed. I had screwed up. I mean he was right. Right. And his and he had his career to look after, and I was. But he was right. And so, but I think I think back to AI, I think there's something into expanding your team and sharing and sharing more information or trying to coordinate your information with your supply chain.

Bill: We are seeing companies that have identified similar ideas and are trying, you know, speed to market, better information is more complete information so that we can, whatever the the value chain is, right or whatever the supply chain is, if you can align yourself with your raw materials suppliers and then they can align with their raw materials suppliers, and we can communicate the best value, our unique value proposition, our niche, the features and benefits, those type of things. Because I can even see, just like doing my thinking here, if an engineer contacts you with an opportunity, they've toggled on the website and they're like, okay, here's what we're trying to do, your team might not have all the answers. You might have to have your experts talk to experts at a raw material supplier, plus a maybe, chemical supplier, plus, all these team members to develop that answer. And if we can do that at a higher speed. So there's little cost layers that we talked about before. There's absolutely value to that.

Brian: And and our product, the product we make, we're probably 2 or 3 levels removed from the end customer. Our product gets impregnated with rubbers or leathers. Yeah. Different applications, things that are fit on it or cut to a certain size and inserted into whatever devices you know, it. It's it's we're several layers removed, but I think that the entire, the entire chain, the challenge is getting the trust up the trust of the of of those companies on either side, in our instance on either side that are willing to share information and work together. And of course Stern Engineered Woven Substrates may be the most secretive company of them all. But if we're a COO, if we're willing, we're going to have to look at, coordinating some information and making it as detailed and valuable as possible to whoever the end user is.

Bill: And I think you just hit the nail on the head as far as what is the, what is the evaluation tool. If we're providing more value to the, our end user. So like you're not making fabrics that make my shirt like these are components that go into very complex industrial, hogs of industry. But if you're providing value to that engineer and you increase your value to them, you will win more business. I think that's the, the hypothesis. And I think we're going to prove that more and more because AI is going to strip layers of data and demand speed to market. If you can't get the answer to that engineer quickly, they won’t want it. Even if it's not as good of an answer, it is faster. Right?

Brian: We are, back to consumers. Our patience is to this droid, right. And it's great. Great.

Bill: Yeah. It's not the best to wait the way we used to for certain things. And there are certain things we probably need to learn more patience for, but, in other ways, it's good to get things quickly and get them quickly. Well, Brian, this has been a fantastic conversation and we really appreciate you taking the time. We know as you and I talked yesterday, you know, is there ever a good time in manufacturing to take an hour or two and have a conversation? The answer is no. Because yesterday I'm on the phone with you, and you're, a big machine just broke in half, and I have to deal with this. And we were as we were walking into the studio today…

Brian: The the tool to fix the machine just broke, right?

Bill: Yeah. Another day in the life, right?

Brian: It is. It's another day in life. But that's the joy of it, too.

Bill: Yeah, it's good to figure these things out, to be presented with these challenges. But we appreciate, one we appreciate the, great testimonial earlier. Full disclosure, I did not pay Brian for that testimonial earlier in the conversation. And the. But no, we we've enjoyed the relationship with Stern Engineered Woven Substrates. You and Peter Thornton have been a complete gentleman to work with, and we appreciate it. We appreciate working with manufacturers of really technical products. We feel we bring something to that conversation and add value. At least that's measured, I think, for us by, we have clients for nine, ten years. I think one of the 6 or 7 is you guys. And so those things are rewarding for us to see us as your organization develops and as our organization develops alongside of you.

Brian: No I appreciate 50 Marketing and that you have the the knowledge behind, behind at the manufacturing, it’s something different. But it’s been a really good relationship. Thank you.

Bill: Well, Brian, thanks again for coming out today. And, we really appreciate your insights on manufacturing, AI, consumer behavior. And I think most importantly, the way we need to consume pizza and how we want to deal with, pizza ordering and, fulfillment.

Brian: Right. Hey, let’s go have a pizza.

Bill: Yeah, let's go. Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast, where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing, B2B marketing, AI, and today pizza. Like. Share. Subscribe. Have a great day.