This week, Bill is joined by veteran sales and marketing executive Ron Evans, currently with Rishaba Industries, to uncover what many manufacturers and B2B companies overlook: the critical role of trade marketing in sustainable growth and brand positioning. With 25+ years of experience across companies ranging from $25M startups to $17B global brands, Ron shares practical lessons from the trenches, covering everything from channel management and U.S. market entry to why even private label manufacturers need brand identity.

Ron’s global perspective and strategic lens make this episode a must-listen for manufacturers looking to scale, differentiate, and break into major retailers like Walmart, Target, and Costco.

Ron: And so all of a sudden we started getting into Walmart and Target and Costco and all these places. Oh God, we need a strategy. That's where they brought in trade marketing. It's like, okay, now we have this business. We need a strategy for how we're going to manage Walmart versus Costco versus Target versus all these customers because certainly those customers all want to be special. They all want to be special with a special product, special pricing, whatever it is. And you have to figure out how can I make all my retailers feel a little special by giving them different things? That's where trade marketing comes in. Marketing is great at telling consumers how to buy product. Trade marketing is the bridge between taking that great marketing to your consumers and actually putting it in a buyer's hand at a Walmart, a Target, a Costco.

Bumper

Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Today I have a very special guest with me, Ron Evans. Ron is a sales and marketing leader with over 25 years in the consumer goods industry. He's worked across a wide range of categories such as power tools, building materials, and consumables, has led teams at companies ranging from $25 million startups to $17 billion global brands. Ron brings a unique perspective from roles spanning trade marketing, product development, and national account leadership. Ryan, thank you for joining us today.

Ron: Thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and your guests.

Bill: Well, thank you. And so you're with Rishaba Industries currently, another major manufacturers that is making inroads into the US market. Maybe tell us a little bit about that opportunity and what you're working with. And then we're to jump into Ron Evans and what's happening in the market.

Ron: Yeah, when you talk about Rishaba, it's kind of like the story of what's old is new. Rishaba has been a manufacturer, the family has been manufacturing for over 55 years. They built one of the greatest well-known brands in India. And, you know, a few years ago, they decided to sell the company, you know, put it private and then they sold a lot of their stock because they had the vision that the, where the money is for an Indian manufacturer is really not in India and making products for Indian people. It's really Europe, North America. Those are where the markets are more lucrative. And so, you know, they built three state of the art manufacturing facilities to supply those markets.

Bill: Well and Ron, you're bringing a wealth of knowledge, a wealth of experience and a rich history in the market. And one of the things I'd like to talk about today is maybe let's just start with a little bit of your background and your professional experience that has led you to where you are today.

Ron: Yeah, I've had an interesting journey. I mean, I started with a really small manufacturer that made power tool accessories for Home Depot and ACE and all those places. And then it just, my first job in sales was actually, I sold Rainbow vacuums. I was 20 years old and I answered an ad and I said, Hey, yeah, I could probably sell a few of these. And the first day, first day I made $900. I'm like, maybe sales is something I'm good at. So yeah, I've worked through a huge different array of companies. So, you know, I first, you know, I live in Bentonville, Arkansas. So I first came down here for Walmart running a $280 million business. Since then, I've done, you know, private label out of a company out of Canada that did business with, you know, Walmart, Target, Costco, and a few others. But yeah, it's been an interesting journey. And, you know, I tell everybody like, if you want me to to help you sell something as long as it's not food and beverage. Yeah, I can probably sell it for you because I've sold everything from tents and hydration to Lysol disinfectant.

Bill: Love it. So I want to one of the things I like to speak to is young entrepreneurs and young people who are trying to get started. And one of the things I think that is missing from a lot of young people's repertoire or like that job before the job is door to door sales and certainly door to door sales isn’t all this but even over the phone sales or in person retail sales. How much did you learn from, and I've done it too, right? I did a lot of sales as a young man over the counter. How much did you learn from getting kicked in the teeth? Because there's no other way to describe it. Over and over again until you reach success, like what did you learn from that experience?

Ron: It's doing those types of sales for somebody that's going to go on a career and be in that field is is really invaluable. You learn, you know, when you're doing you know something like Rainbow vacuums, which I actually sold Rainbow vacuums at one point when I was like 20 years old, what it learns is how to deal with people. How to talk to people, how to deal with people, understand body language and those things. I've taken a million body language courses because what you say and what you mean are two different things when I look at your body language versus what your words are. And so those things are really invaluable. It's no different than, you know, a Reckitt Benckiser, P&G that goes out and gets, you know, MBAs or master degree people. And the first thing they do is they make them go work in a store.

Bill: Sure.

Ron: They don't hire them to be analysts. They don't hire them to be managers. They hire them to say, okay, the first thing you're going to do is you're to spend a year in the stores and you're going to be stacking displays and making sure products are on the shelf. And that's the way you learn. It's a progression. All of this is a progression. And you know, I was lucky enough to have the right line of progressions to get to where I am today.

Bill: No, that's great. One of the things that you've brought to like the conversation here, which we have not spoken to anybody about, is that trade marketing hybrid role. And could you talk about that? And you know, I think that's more familiar in really large Fortune 500 or multi-billion dollar companies, and it is not prevalent or can't be afforded by mid-market companies. Could you talk a little bit about that role, please?

Ron: Yeah, it's an interesting role. It's, let's call it the conduit between marketing and what all the marketing folks want to do and what the sales folks can really actually accomplish. So you're a little bit marketing, you're a little bit sales, you're a little bit shopper marketing because certainly if you put tactics around it, makes it easier for the sales people to sell. But it is a job that I think that smaller companies really need to embrace. I worked for a recent company that I made the suggestion like, we've changed our strategy and the way we're going to, you know, hold marketing and brand verticals. We need trade marketing. We need that conduit in between. So I think there's a lot of mid to small companies that don't utilize that position because they don't understand it. You know, P&G, Clorox, Reckitt Benckiser, those guys understand it because they understand like hey, we've got these really affluent people over in marketing and somebody needs to kind of ground them and what can we sell? What can we it's great. It's great. You have all these ideas to talk to the consumer, but if I can't get into Walmart or Target or Costco or Sam's Club, it doesn't make any difference. So I do believe that that's a position that is you know underutilized and under understood by you know, kind of like let's call it the mid to lower volume manufacturers in the world. It's certainly, manufacturers outside of the US have no understanding of this concept at all.

Bill: Okay, that's interesting. So you know one of the things I think that may be missing for like the middle market, and let's say, let's assume that all of them don't have the budget to afford this position. That still doesn't mean they shouldn't like in an EOS model, create a seat for that position and make sure that someone's sitting in it and advocating like, and even if it's playing that role, right, in a meeting like, you know what, I'm gonna, I don't really have a dog in this fight today, but I'm gonna advocate as a trade marketing professional and try and be that conduit. Do you think there would be value in that or at least like getting a fractional trade marketing person or somebody to advocate for them?

Ron: I think there's always going to be value in that, that position because it is literally, I would call trade marketing the, the, the common sense of the organization, you know, because I mean, marketing people are great at marketing and they also market to upper management. What they want to do. And there has to be, there has to be somebody in the room that says, Hey, common sense wise, I understand what's going on in the sales perspective and what our customers are saying and what our salespeople are saying. And I understand what the marketing folks want to do. We have to find that path between those two things to execute what we want to do as an organization. So it is, it's invaluable. And I think that there's, a lot of organizations that kind of paint over that position or they don't have it at all. Cause they just don't understand what the need is. Hey, I got marketing, I got sales. Why do I need a conduit in between? It's an important thing. And the bigger you get as a corporation, the more important that position becomes.

Bill: Yeah, because you have bigger silos, you have bigger entrenchment, right? Ron, if you were going to give advice to a middle market manufacturer who doesn't have the bandwidth for this, but needed to do the research to make sure they understood the information that a good trade marketer would evaluate, I mean, is it voice of customer research? How would you tell them to go get that information so that they're providing that kind of sounding board for marketing and sales to bounce off of?

Ron: Yeah, to be honest, it has to be a human being that actually analyzes it because everything you just said, market research, consumer feedback, all those things play a part of that. So it literally needs to be a person. It's very difficult to do it. Now there are certain things you can do. So, you know, there's, there's, you know, there's different software out there that can, you know, you can go on blast, blast something out to the marketplace. Consumers will give you feedback and all those things. There's Basie's testing, which, you know, I send a bunch of products to consumers and all those things. But at the end of the day, it is literally, I have a good concept for the consumer. How do I package that to a retailer? And if you're asking your salespeople to do it versus a trade marketer, the problem with that is channel management. So I can have a great consumer story and I go, alright, I'm gonna send it to my Walmart guy, my Target guy, my Costco guy, my Sam's Club guy, and my Meyers guy, and all these different salespeople, and they go and sell the program. What's your price strategy? How are you gonna channel manage? What are the different product sizes you're gonna put in those different retailers to give them a little bit of exclusivity? How are you gonna tell Walmart that Target's price is the same as yours? You can't. All those things have to be managed by a person. They have to make those decisions and then take them back to management and say, here's how we're going to manage. When I was at Reckitt Benckiser and ran Walmart, I was in a power of one team, which is for Reckitt Benckiser, which is marketing and, and, and trade marketing. And they all get together once a month for 10, 12 hours. And they talk about the business. I was the first salesperson in the world for to be in that meeting. And the reason I was in that meeting was because they knew like, we're going to make a, we're going to make a plan that doesn't just work for Walmart, it's going to work for everybody. How do we, how do we grow Walmart, which is at the time, you know, certainly Reckitt’s largest customer in the world. It wasn't even close. How are we going to grow Walmart, but still grow Target and Kroger and Safeway and all these other customers? And we came up with a plan to be able to grow Walmart faster because they're important, but also keep growth in all of our other customer bases. And that is a trade marketing, that is a trade marketing function. I did that strategy because I was in trade marketing right before that job. Right before I took over $280 million at Reckitt, I was in trade marketing and I understood like the need to understand how to manage all the different channels and make sure that we're going to be successful in dollar and club and mass and grocery all at the same time. And that is something that marketers can't do, salespeople can't do. It's the trade marketing people that are in the mill that can have the vision to be able to do that.

Bill: If a company doesn't have that trade marketing role, do you end up with the tail wagging the dog because you have a product and a price and then you have salespeople and sales, the sales organization goes off and kind of creates a strategy on the fly with the buyers at these large organizations. And then, I mean, you can still move volume, right? You can still, but at the end of the day, it's, two years later, you've got pricing all over the board, packaging, distribution from like, it's chaos, which for a startup, that's probably where it is anyway, because they just need cash flow. But whenever you have established brands with major production lines and commitments, you would probably want to avoid that as much as possible.

Ron: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, I'll give, I'll give a great example of a startup that went from, you know, kind of clawing their way through things and trying to get business all the way to now they have to have to have this trademarking position. Shark Ninja. 20 years ago, Shark Ninja was nobody. They had some infomercials with a little bullet blender and that was it. Today they are now one of the five most recognized companies as far as innovation in all sorts of categories, cookware, small appliances. They've even got into beverage and hydration products. And that was a company that basically said, we have this cool little idea and we're going to get it manufactured somewhere over in China and we're going to be great at marketing. And then all of sudden they said, we're so great at marketing. Now we can actually get into the retailers. And so all of a sudden we started getting into Walmart and Target and Costco and all these places. Oh God, we need a strategy. That's where they brought in trade marketing. It's like, okay, now we have this business. We need a strategy for how we're going to manage Walmart versus Costco versus Target versus all these customers because certainly those customers all want to be special. They all want to be special with a special product, special pricing, whatever it is. And you have to figure out how can I make all my retailers feel a little special by giving them different things? That's where trade marketing comes in. Marketing is great at telling consumers how to buy product. Trade marketing is the bridge between taking that great marketing to your consumers and actually putting it in a buyer's hand at a Walmart, a Target, a Costco.

Bill: No, I love that. And I think that that's a neat perspective. And that's something that's been missing in our conversations here at the Missing Half is looking at that key role. I want to switch gears here a little bit. And you're bringing products into the U.S. So certainly there's a difference between domestically manufactured products and bringing stuff from overseas. What are some of the common challenges you see manufacturers facing when they're trying to distribute directly into the US where they don't have like a major US counterpart or they're not just components manufacturing or product manufacturing for an established brand?

Ron: Yeah, there's, to come to the US market. There's a lot of challenges. There's, you know, when you're when you're looking for employees, it's even creating something as far as like a shell company in the US to have US based employees is not easy. It is not an easy task. Technically, right now, despite the fact that I'm I'm an employee, technically in the United States, I'm a consultant. Because it was easier to start me as a consultant and then and then build an LLC and all those things. So, I mean that's that's one thing but I mean taxes are a nightmare. Trying to figure out US taxes. If I'm exporting this how much do I pay to India versus how much do I have to pay in the United States? How does that all work? That's a very challenging dish. But the biggest challenge is culture. If you're if you're manufacturer outside the United States trying to figure out the culture and the example is my my company, you know, they tried for a few years to break into the US market. And, you know, despite the fact that they broke in and got some customers, they weren't the right customers and they had to walk away from those businesses. And, you know, so it was it was a challenge for them. And it was it's really about finding somebody in that spot that can actually tell you what's going on. It's not about, you know, for my position, yeah, I sell every day and I'm talking to executives at Walmart and different places to make sure that we're getting sales done. But my biggest challenge, my biggest job is informing my counterparts over in India. Here's what's going on in the market. Here's what's happening. Here's the difference between when Walmart comes to our factory and Target comes to our factory. Here's the differences. And believe it or not, a factory audit from Walmart and Target are vastly different. And so having somebody in the US that understands that, that has the, you know, the, let's say the, the experience across all those retailers understand like, Hey, when you bring Walmart in, here's the questions they're going to ask. When you bring Target in, they're going to ask a whole different set of questions. That is important. And that's, and that's kind of the way forward, but I mean, really anybody, any manufacturer that has the right product, the right idea has an opportunity to break into this market because there's, you know, you know, I'm just one person. There's a lot of folks that can help you do that. I mean, I employ Marshall, which is one of the oldest rep agencies in the country. 50 years experience. They've got what? 150 different clients that they sell to. That was one thing that I brought immediately to the table because I knew I can't sell 50 different retailers personally. Now, I can be there for the Walmart and the Targets and the Costcos, but if you're talking about Fred Meyer or Meyer or some of these, like I can't be there all the time. So, you know, it's finding the right partners and if you're an overseas manufacturer, finding the right person to run it or the right partners to run it with you is paramount.

Bill: What role do you see marketing play in this process? Because like when you see, I mean, culturally, we've seen differences from offshore companies trying to break into the market and some of them just don't get it. And it feels off and it feels like, you know, even just like an example, if you're going to show transportation assets as part of your marketing, the lorries or trucks in Asia and in Europe are much, different than in the US and people don't relate. Oh that's weird, right? And now it's perfectly normal to them, but in the States, it's not a Ford, it's not a Dodge, whatever. And that's kind of a very hyperbolic example, but what role do you see marketing play in success or failure and how quickly they adapt to the US culture of communication?

Ron: So I will tell you this, the best companies that are overseas manufacturers that have their own brands here, their marketing is here. It's not overseas. You know, you know, my, one of my board of directors is a designer by trade. I mean, he has an MBA in design, right? So, so he, he loves to design products. And he was the first one to tell me, if we come in with our own brand in the United States, we're going to get US designers. I can't have Indian designers designing US product. We don't know what you want. We don't know the lines you want. We don't know the functionality you want. And so for anybody that's manufacturing overseas, whether it's a freelance person or it's you hire somebody on staff, get a US designer to help with those designs. Because at the end of the day, you can have the greatest design in the world. But if Americans look at it and go, I don't know what the hell that is, it doesn’t matter.

Bill: It's not gonna sell.

Ron: It doesn't matter. You can make the greatest looking frying pan in the world. If Americans go, I don't like it, then you can't sell it in the United States. So you know, having people. I mean, you you know, from my my standpoint, I spent a lot of time at shows like the Pantone book. What are the where are the trend colors? I spent time with PPG. Where are the trend colors? What is what are people talking about? I look at, you know, all this sort of different trends to try to figure out. 12 months from now, 18 months from now, what does my cookware color need to be? What is my hydration need to look like? What are the new things we need to do? And to be in order to actually take that from thought into design, you need a US designer. And so I would recommend to anybody this, I don't care if you're manufacturing in Vietnam or you're manufacturing in China or any place else. Get a US designer if you want to sell your own brand. And I would even recommend getting a US designer even if you just want to sell private label. Yeah, private label is easy. You think, I'll just take the current design. I'm going to price it out until this customer. It's five dollars and 40 cents for this pan. What what big retailers want today, even from private label manufacturers is give me some ideas. What's your ideas? Give me some designs. Give me something new. Give me some a different color, a different a different look of the product. What is what is what are the consumers going to gravitate towards? So, you know, 20 years ago, private label was just like, give me this and I need it at this price. Now, private label manufacturers, whether you're in the US, you're you're based in Vietnam, China, Taiwan or India, we all need to come to the table with ideas and how to move that business forward even if it's a retailer private label brand.

Bill: Yeah, it seems like 20 years ago, it was a knockoff game. Hey, can you build something that looks like this 40% cheaper? And that was the way we were sourcing overseas and that that was the game. Now, that's not good enough. You have to have uniqueness quickly because it, whether it's because of the internet and people are aware of trends more quickly or whatever. You can't just copy everything and have like a 24 to 36 month lag on those private labels coming in, because like you said, now like cookware and your you know your water bottles and everything they have to be stylish. It's not a utilitarian thing anymore it's got to look look sharp.

Ron: Yeah, it's no, it's it's especially when you talk about hydration that that is a fashion brand now. That's fashion. It's you know, you know, you can you can you can blame Stanley on making it fashion, right?

Bill: Yes, I predict that and it probably already exists. The AI will have like the runways where the new hydration units will like prance down the aisle like the models would with all of the new fashion because it's that much of a forward thinking design area.

Ron: Yeah. I would tell you this, private label manufacturer of hard goods need to look back 15 years and look at what the private label food industry did. Because the private label food industry innovated. Now we all know like the, you know, Starkist, the wrapper, you know, instead of the can that was created by a private label company for Walmart. That wasn't created by Starkist. That was created by a private label company at Walmart. So Walmart's own brand was the first one in those bags. And now every Bumblebee, Starkist, every brand that's in tuna has those bags. So there's ways to innovate in private label that can actually not only accelerate your business, but you can also decide, I've innovated so much, maybe I should start my own brand.

Bill: Got it.

Ron: And that's kind of a doorway every company has to try to figure out. Like, hey, I'm a private label manufacturer, but I'm string-holed in a lot of ways. So do I start my own brand? And innovation is a part of that. So if you're a private label manufacturer and all of sudden you got three innovations, hey, you should start your own brand. Because you're ready to do it. You have innovations. You have patents. You have these things. There's always opportunity for small, medium range manufacturers, new ideas. And I always say innovation, people think of it like, it's a new product. No, it's not a new product. It can be a new way to manufacture a product better. It can be a new way of selling that product, marking that product. Ninja, Ninja, I keep going back to it because I love the company. Ninja is not special. They're just really smart at marketing. They don't have any unique products. You know, their cookware sets are, there's 20 of them on the market that are exactly the same. Their appliances, there's 15 options that are exactly the same, but they market well and they've done a great job at it over the last 25 years. And now, you know, they're one of the fastest-growing companies in this industry.

Bill: I think that's a natural pivot to another topic, which is, it feels like there's a lot of haves and have nots when it comes to brand and positioning and good marketing. Could you maybe speak to that and maybe why it's dangerous for a company to launch just based on quality or price? Because those feel like tenuous pillars upon which to like foundations upon which to build.

Ron: Yeah, I mean, quality and price can always be matched. Period. I used to work for one of largest cookware companies in the world and guess what? People match us on quality and price. The biggest thing that that company was lacking is I don't have a brand identity. That is the most important thing. If you're going to launch a brand, I don't care if it's in food, beverage, cookware, camping. I don't care what category it is. What is your brand message? Who do you want to represent? And you have to, it has to be very focused. So if you look at somebody like Red Bull, they've got the bull. They know what they're doing. They're talking about energy. The Red Bull makes you fly. They tell you exactly what they are as a company. And then certain people will gravitate towards that and certain people won't, but you're going to have an audience because certain people gravitate towards that messaging. So, you know, there's so many companies out there. I mean, you know, since I'm in cookware and I've been in cookware for the last few years, you know, I think about there's a dozen companies out there that have good products. I don't know what their brand stands for. No idea. They have no brand identity. I sit there and look at Ninja sitting next to them on the shelf and go Ninja has a brand identity. We know what Shark Ninja is. They're innovative. They're bold. They're do all these things. And it makes you want to gravitate towards that product. There's so many brands out there today that just don't have an identity. You know, Lysol and Clorox have an identity. We kill bacteria, germs. That's our job. So everybody knows if I buy one of those products, that's the job it's going to do. If you don't tell somebody this is what you're going to get and consistently give it to them, then your brand doesn't mean anything because there's another dozen out there that can do the same thing and there's no emotional connection from the consumer.

Bill: So whenever we look at that brand and we, so the successful companies are establishing that they're planting their flag, right? And we know who they are and what they stand for. How important is it though also for brands to evolve over time and like to really innovate? Because certainly, like you said in the shark example, who they were when they started, their first successes, then allowed them to innovate and pivot to expanded platforms, more merchandise, et cetera. How important is it for them to innovate? And I'm not talking about like a new manufacturing machine or whatever, but like really innovate the product line, the positioning, the brand over time.

Ron: It's always important to you have to find ways to re-invitalize a brand. And the older the brand is, the more you have to work on it. And I'll give a great example, Reckitt Benckiser Lysol. Lysol lost. It's, you know Lysol for like 30 years was the leader in cleaning. There was nobody even close to us. And then sometime around 2010 Clorox actually took over. And so everybody, everybody at Reckitt was like, what the hell just happened? And it was because we weren't innovating and it wasn't that we weren't innovating in new products as we weren't innovating in our old products. Lysol disinfectant spray has been around for a hundred years. We completely changed our whole marketing strategy for how we sold Lysol disinfectant spray. Why? We needed to. Because we had sold it one way for 50 years. And it was time to innovate the way we did. And within 36 months, we took back over chair leadership from Clorox nationally. And it was it was literally an innovation in the way we talked about the product, not the way we made it, not the way we manufactured it, not the way it looked, not the packaging, the way we talked about it in our media, social media and all of our different outlets where we talk to consumers. That was the key.

Brought to you by 50 Marketing

Bill: So one of the things I think that is important today for us to recognize and that a lot of our audience, which is more in the manufacturing, industrial and B2B space could take away from this conversation, is how important it is to test the messaging, to A/B test, really do like voice of customer, to really understand what's happening in the market. Because that has been a natural motion in consumer products, in direct to consumer distribution for a long time. But when we think about B2B, manufacturing, that is new. And part of the problem is they just don't have the sample size theoretically that you would in, you know, because every household needs Lysol. Right. But what have you seen when you think about the rise of like digital testing, like throwing stuff out on TikTok, Instagram, whatever, seeing what gets feedback, hooks, packaging, positioning, those type of things, and how's that impacting decision making?

Ron: No, I mean, it's a new world where you can do things like that very quickly, very cheaply and get feedback right from your audience. When I started 25 years ago, it was Basie's testing. So I take three boxes with three different types of products in it and I put it in front of like 25 consumers and I get their feedback. And then if you do that enough times, then you go, okay, this is the one that we should launch. Today you can do that almost in real time. With the digital media you can do it in real time and get feedback on of a wide variety of things. I would I would also caution every single manufacturer: When you find a concept on dot-com that you think works you still need to do something like a Basie’s test because you need to put it in the real world. Everything looks great on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok. It all looks fantastic. But give me a box that you want me to buy and put it on a shelf in a store and see if I want to buy it. But the digital realm can actually save hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, depending on the size of company you are, getting at least down to the right two or three concepts that you want to launch. And then you go to, you go to your more classic stuff. Before it was, all right, I throw three out of Basie’s. None of those worked. I throw three more out. I can throw a hundred different concepts out on Facebook today and go, Hey, these three seem to resonate. Let's test these three. And so I think it's, it's a combination of the old style, but use utilize the tools of today, which is, you know, social media and very cheap ways to get things in front of people and get their reaction and then figure out, okay, I've narrowed my focus down to this two or three products. Now let's go to let's go do a full Basie’s testing and see which one which one of those concepts we think is going to be successful.

Bill: I think that's one of the things that's really been missing in B2B is that willingness to test. In the B2B and manufacturing market, we're so, I think we get wrapped up in this is our idea, this is our invention, and we want to take it to market. We fall in love with it and work really, really hard. And we invest hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in branding, marketing, the sales team, sales training, trade show booths, like the whole life cycle. And then we see if it works and it's accepted by the market as opposed to, why don't we step back and do some testing at least see if anybody gives a rip about this, who anybody's going to care. So I think that's something that's been missing in manufacturing and B2B and even in mid-market D2C and small market startups, challenger brands that don't have the budget. They get so excited about these ideas that they're not humble enough to accept the fact that it might fail or should fail because it's not going to work. What do you see about that?

Ron: Yeah, I mean, if you go back, if you you go back to, know, back to the early 2000s, that's how that's even big companies like a Reckitt or P&G. That's how they launched. We got this idea. We're going to launch it. And then we're going to put so much marketing behind it that somebody enough people buy it, we can make money that doesn't work anymore. It doesn't work. I mean, I mean, that that that day ended probably around 2015 that where you could still like just, hey, I'm just going to launch this and I'm going to spend $4 million in marketing and I'll make I'll still make money to make it make sense. You know, one of my biggest competitors, you know, back in my older days was S.C. Johnson. S.C. Johnson was great at that. They would they would launch a product, they would spend a ton of marketing, they would go into every retailer, tell them, here's all the marketing we're spending on this and the retailer’s like, well, we have to take it. And then 18 months later, it's off the shelves because it didn't work. But SCJ has still made money because all the retailers took it in enough people bought it even even with the $40 million in marketing they put against it, they made enough money to say it was a success. That is not the day anymore. There's too much data out there with social media, there's too much data with the internet, Google, Chrome, whatever you want to do, Edge. There's everything's out there. So you can't go to market with a product that consumers don't want and fool them into buying it anymore. You can't do it. You could. There was a long time you could fool people into buying a product at least the first time. You can't do that anymore. You can't do it anymore. So you have to have a solid basis of I believe this product is going to work because consumers told me it's going to work.

Bill: Well and I think that just shows us how marketing, the market has become so efficient that it doesn't allow brute force to overcome common sense or good products. And I think the next wave of that is right on top of us with AI, because AI is also going to sort out another layer of brute force or exuberant, know, irrationally exuberant effort from manufacturers and large multinationals where upstarts, challenger brands can penetrate those markets because they have a better mouse trap. They have something that's better, that's faster, smarter, cheaper, whatever. And I think it's interesting to see that pivot. And I think the B2B and industrial space is still lagging in that adoption. We still take products to market and we still launch them and put all kinds of money behind them and then wonder, is it going to work? Which we should invert it completely and model more after the D2C.

Ron: I'll do you one better. There's products that companies launch that they know aren't going to work. But they're launching them. They're going to launch them anyways. They're going to launch them anyways. You know, I hate to beat up my old company cause I love working there, but Reckitt Benckiser when they launched the Lysol kitchen gadget, which was basically a hand soap slash dish detergent. They put in your counter that you just go like this and it automatically dispensed. I told them from day one that will not work. This is not going to work in the American market. Nobody who, if you have a dishwasher, you're not using much dish detergent. If you don't have a dishwasher, you're doing what my mom did and you're squeezing a bunch of it into thing. You're making a bunch of suds. You put the dishes in, then you wash them. I was like, nobody's going to go underneath this thing for like one little squirt a hundred times to wash the dishes. It just doesn't work. But they launched it because we needed to launch something. So yeah, I mean, when it gets in the end of the day, it's, you know, certainly smaller companies, startups, mid-majors, they can't risk doing something like that. They can't risk that. Yeah. So it is better spent time figuring out what does the consumer want? Don't spend time at like, I have this great idea. OK, great. Does your ID come to the consumer in a way that the consumer goes, yeah, I would buy that. I would buy that. And so, yeah, you have to be more judicial. Certainly startups, smaller companies have to be more judicial the way you do things. So you have to do the consumer research, not just the not just social media, because social media gives you one answer. But when you put it in real life, it can give you another answer. Social media is great to narrow it down, narrow it down like, hey, I've got these three concepts. Now I'm going to narrow it down to these two concepts and we'll see what happens. But then put it into Basie’s testing or whatever your industry does because at the end of the day, you know, a small company can't miss on a Lysol hand soap gadget. You can't. It's millions of dollars worth of miss that you can't afford. So you have to find out does my product resonate with the consumer.

Bill: So Ron, this has been a fascinating conversation. I think we've learned a lot about what's missing that we can apply from the DTC channels when we're looking at bringing products directly from manufacturers overseas into the US and this trade marketing role. Could you share, we're all about shameless plugs, could you share where people can get in contact with you and this will be in all the footers and all of the things when we post it as you're launching Rishaba Industries new products into the market where they can find you and connect with you?

Ron: Yeah. So I'm based in Bentonville, Arkansas. I can throw a stone and hit a Walmart building, which is sometimes a good thing. Sometimes a bad thing, but, you know, um, you know, my email's really easy. [email protected]. Not dot com. Dot I N. And I'm more than happy to, you know, you know, talk to your guests about business in general. Certainly would love to if we had opportunities that came through that. But yeah, you know, I'm readily available. I work a weird day because India is 10 and a half hours ahead of me. So I'm usually working by 6:30 and still working at 12:30 and take a nap in the middle of the day. So I have an interesting day. So I'm pretty much a 24 hour guy. But no, know, it Rishaba is, I would put them in the innovation category. They didn't innovate product. They don't have any innovative product that's different than anything you can buy today. They innovated in manufacturing. They did the manufacturing better. So more robotics, more automation, less labor, better prices. So I would tell all of your guests, there's a thousand ways to innovate in the United States. Ninja didn't do anything special, but they're great marketing. Rishaba didn't make any new products, but we're winning because of great manufacturing and innovations and manufacturing the way we do it. And then also you can come up with a new product. So there's a lot of ways to innovate and be a part of this industry. And it doesn't matter if you're a hundred year old company like like Reckitt Benckiser are trying to revitalize what Lysol or you're a new startup that just figured out a way to make tuna fish in a little packet. All of them have place and they all always will, I believe. I always will believe that in the United States, but it really North America in total as well as South America, you're always going to, if you can come up with the idea, there's always going to be a market. It doesn't need to be a product. It could be a way to manufacture, way to distribute it away to a way to market it. There's always going to be room for somebody has the best idea.

Bill: No, love that Ron. And I think that's an encouragement because we're also part of our follower group or audience is certainly young entrepreneurs that are establishing startups that are creating challenger brands who are looking for that next edge to break into the market. And I think we're going to continue to see some giants fall to upstarts, the creator economy, the speed of the Internet, AI. There's going to be a lot of disruption and recognizing that there's more than one way to win is so very important.

Ron: I mean, you can look at that through the last, I believe the last 12 years, there's been 260 startups in food alone that had been bought by Tyson, by all the big food brands, like Kraft. There's really only like six or seven food brands in this country. They all own everything. But there's been like 120 or 130 startups that those big companies bought because they said, oh my God, we need to get into this. They found a way in, they made money, and let's face it, they probably cashed out with a lot of money too when, you know, Kraft or Pepsi or somebody else bought them.

Bill: Well, I think that's the name of the game in a lot of startups, especially in food and beverage is they lose money forever, but they prove a concept. They get volume and then a major platform buys them that has all the distribution, has the economies of scales in manufacturing and can get placement, right? Can deal with the slottage and all of those other challenges that occur in the market. Now, Ron, this has been a fascinating conversation. I've really enjoyed it. And I just want to thank you for sharing your experience here on the Missing Half.

Ron: No, thank you very much. appreciate the time. And like I said, any any of your listeners are more than welcome to reach out to me at any time for questions. You know, I one of the things I love to do most is, you know, kind of teach people about this industry and give my perspective and how you can be successful as an individual in this industry.

Bill: Love it. Well, Ron, thank you so much and we'll talk again soon.

Ron: Alright, take care. Thanks.

Bill: So thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Like, share, subscribe. Have a great day.