 I'm the Matsuki host of International Hawaii, showcasing Hawaii's import and export businesses to help others new to the industry, and also planning to grow. Today, my guest is Patrick Lau, founder and president of Saber Brands Local Package and Print House, also FTZ ex-tenant. Hi Patrick, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. Could you briefly let us know what Saber Brands is? Sure, Saber Brands, we're a local company. We've been in business for 18 years and we supply, I guess, packaging to many food manufacturers here locally and on the mainland and also internationally. Wow, so 18 years, how did you how did you get started in this business? We started basically, I guess in, I guess say early, was that 2001, moved back home to Hawaii from Hong Kong, was in the finance industry previously, but wanted to move back home and then actually got a job with a hedge fund here managing, I guess, some funds here, but it's a lot different managing funds in terms of what I used to do, which was basically index arbitrage, discovered that the middle of the Pacific isn't the best place to do these types of things because the latency on the, I guess, putting in the orders digitally, we're always going to be late compared to being right next to the exchange. So moved my cell phone back and essentially was not in position to make the types of trades that I wanted to do and then 9-11 hit, so everything kind of fell out of the bottom and was forced to figure out what we needed to do. We have a young family and we said, hey, you know what, packaging is something that I had family in China and decided to work with them and check things out and kind of stumbled on to it and it's pretty good in terms of helping businesses kind of package themselves and present themselves and to look better in the market. Definitely. Was that your goal in the beginning when you first started? The goal in the beginning is to actually just pay for health care. That's basically what we wanted, pay for health care, pay for the child's preschooling, you know, just kind of like baby steps. The expectations weren't very high, but it's all about kind of trying to make something and do a little bit every day and building. So when you were first starting, what were some of your biggest challenges and then do you think some of these challenges were unique to Hawaii? I don't think the challenges are unique to Hawaii when you're starting up. It's all about, you know, it gets kind of overused a lot, but it's about mental toughness. Essentially, I had a rolling desk just looking for places in the house that I could actually work, you know, with kids and things like that. I guess that you could say these are the types of challenges, but in retrospect, when you look back at it, it's all about believing in yourself, believing in, luckily, I had my wife, me was also a co-founder of the business and it's working things together. For me, I guess, because we both have each other, it's a lot easier because you can actually have someone be a sounding board or share ideas and that is actually a huge help. And I had read and you actually mentioned that you kind of started off and stumbled a little bit on as far as like what you were going to import and try and sell. Could you explain that whole process and how you pivoted? So learning about, I guess, logistics and supply chain, that is something where sometimes it's trial by fire. You think that something's a great idea, it's inexpensive and you think that everyone needs it, but I guess the devil in the details with respect to logistics and you probably right now supply chain is a very big deal because people are starting to get a better understanding of it. In terms of how much Amazon does or e-commerce and things like that. So in the very beginning when we kind of were, I guess, in going through the school of hard knocks would bring in items that were bulky. Although they were a common use items for every day, it just for a young entrepreneur just starting out. It was probably a little bit more than we could chew because when you bring in something bulky, the dollar value of that product is probably going to be not able to withstand the logistics costs. So automatically your costs of doing business in that product will go up. So that's kind of how we first started. We would bring in all sorts of different things. I guess the thing that sticks out the most was like bento boxes because you know it's a great product. People use it every day, but with respect to delivering, you can't deliver a thousand bento boxes. I mean, it takes up a huge amount of space. You've got cases that are like two feet by two feet by two feet. So it's kind of large, whereas if you did a thousand packages in terms of what we've been doing, you could essentially just kind of fit that in your trunk and not have any problems. So in the very beginning, you know, when you start something, you got to roll up your sleeves and and you're the you're the delivery guy, you're the, you're the you're the order, you're the customer service. So there's a lot of things that you're going to have to kind of roll up your sleeves and do, and you want to try and minimize self inflicted pain. So that's why thinking, thinking something that can actually from a logistics standpoint, ship very well. Wow. I mean, you already had an advantage too because you know your supplier, right? Right, right. So that was that was actually a huge help. That's practically half the, half the battle. But for those that don't know their suppliers, you know, nothing, nothing is better than just kind of hopping on the plane and visiting if you believe in what you're trying to do it. You need to actually do the research. You need to go learn about your suppliers. That's why there's there's a lot of horror stories about kind of buying stuff online and, and, you know, they pay their money and you don't get what you want to get. But you have no one else to blame except for yourself because you have to put in the work. You have to go visit the factories. You have to understand how they can help you and how you can actually work together. And that is, I guess, especially in China or in Asian countries that it's more than just visiting do you actually need to build a relationship where you're visiting. Yeah, so times or it is, it is more than visiting, I guess, in the first time when we, when we did work with with with plants there, you do set the email and you do actually go visit. When you visit, it's great. You see everything. And then you actually kind of have to trust what you've seen, meaning you have to go in and start doing business. And then after you do that, that what we what happened was a year afterwards, you go visit again. And you recap exactly everything that's happened, whether it be a lot of orders or one order or if they didn't do something to spec or if they did something really well. It's just communication helps to build that relationship and it doesn't take much it just takes picking up the phone talk into them or, you know, doing things like zoom nowadays. It helps. So that's that's all the little things they all and to build a relationship. Oh, I forgot to ask you one thing as we're rolling along. How did you come up with the name saver brand? That we were we know you want it we knew we wanted to go into food packaging. At the same time, we wanted to have the word represent us kind of helping the food products that we're protecting. So I think that's why we came up with the saver. All these different brands so that we can actually savor the, I guess, flavor or whatever was. Yeah. That's awesome. What is one of the worst things that you remember happening, like either the worst decision or the worst outcome that has happened during your business experience or actually, I can't say that there was a worst. But what what you have to kind of take everything in stride is that when you run a business or when you build a business it's I really truly believe this it's a series of buffooneries. And, and how you actually bounce back from mistakes. Sometimes they they cost a lot of money and they hurt. But the only way you can get over it is to kind of think about and see what you did wrong. And then, from there, you move forward right. It's when it's kind of small. When there's only like two or three people. It might be a lot easier to overcome. It gets harder when you have more and more people working with you. But then that what that comes along with that is of being able to trust. Right. And those are always the challenges but you know when you surround yourself with great people, then things just do get easier. So in the very beginning, it's just being able to overcome whatever catastrophic errors that you make, because in the in, I guess, in the big picture wise, as, as massive as that error may seem in the long run it's actually kind of you look back and you really do laugh about it. At the time you're like oh my gosh it's it's it's feels like the end of the world but it actually isn't. Can you give us one specific example. Yeah I guess I guess if you go back to the. I guess you can go back to like the bento boxes. I mean, we wound up actually sitting on a container of those types of packages for forever and we want just giving them away. Perfectly fine they were like awesome. But you know it was it was a great lesson in terms of knowing that from a logistics standpoint or from shipping, there's things that you can bring in that are probably be a lot better. Thankfully, we worked with that we're in the foreign trade zone and we still have product in the foreign trade zone so it wasn't. It wasn't in terms of managing inventory, I mean we don't have those types of issues, it made the pain a lot easier, but it's just things like that where you kind of think about and reflect being able to reflect is very important. In terms of what to do the next time or what not to bring in again. Wow. And then you're pretty I mean considering for white businesses you're pretty good size and from starting with just you and your wife, how many people are in your company now. We have around 30 people. Wow. Work with us and it's it's great. Now we have a great team. And that's how important surrounding yourself with good people is is because when you have everyone kind of you know they in the same canoe right you go places. And I know it might not be, you hope that it's faster but at the same time if everyone's in the same belief, you get there with greater certainty, right. Because with, I guess with business, starting out it's not about how quickly you grow or how, how much you can can do it's it's about the achieving consistency. And for most being able to help customers. Because as long as you can help customers, then everything else falls into place. But once you start putting your needs in front of customers, then we start making decisions that probably aren't in the best interest of the company and the customers as well. And so you have a large distribution like nationally. How did you know when your company was ready to grow and take that next step. That it's that's something where you put a lot of effort into everything that that you do and whether it's it's a if it's something that's kind of a small project or a big project, you're going to put the same type of effort into it so for us. We've got the factories to at a point where we thought okay good this is this is a very very high level that we're doing things that we have great processes and we have a great product. So, instead of limiting ourselves just to the Hawaii market. It's something where it was probably a good evolution to say like you know what we put all this work into it. Let's kind of grow it and expand it. And kind of understanding whether when you're ready to go embark on the challenge. I guess if it was just Hawaii we would have been just as just as happy and I think every person is a little bit different, where it's whether they want to go out and explore or they just stay home and just kind of figure out things from there. So it's it really is each person has their own different kind of journey and it's just whether or not they how much they want to kind of push themselves and challenge themselves. So for us it actually took like 12 years before we said okay let's do. So that's a long time. Wow. So you've been like distributing nationally for about six years. Right. Yeah. And how did you grow your market like how did you find your customers. Oh, it, you know, for us it's it's all about word of mouth, even locally in Hawaii. We know that we can take care of and it's just referrals. We're not really out there. Because I think our philosophy is a little bit different we just as long as we help someone, we know that someone else that they can refer us to someone else. Right and then at that pace that also gives us the ability to take care of those that work with us as best as we can. We don't have a timetable on growth. We just want to make sure that everything that we do is we do well. There's more organic growth. Yeah, it's a lot more organic growth. And what we found that worked well for us is that we only needed one salesperson on the mainland. But when you have only one salesperson, that's one voice, right. So long as they're a surrogate in terms of, and they believe the same things that Mia and I believe in, then it makes it a lot easier for everything else to kind of fall into place. So what we did was we had one salesperson and then we have a lot of customer service people that take care of customer service. And that really helps a lot so that each customer feels that they're being taken care of and they're not a number. And your customer service team are they in Hawaii or the Oh, yeah. It's Hawaii's home. So we're, we're never going to move. And we just figure out how to do things here. It's a lot more difficult. It takes a lot longer. But it does get easier. That's the great part. And now with technology, that's what we were proponent, the user of technology and that helps kind of bridge everywhere and makes the work smaller for us. Wow, so one salesperson, so that one salesperson, like that word of mouth is just as effective as well. And then like once you have like one or two customers. That's, that's really that's great. That's all you, that's all you really need if, and then we also participated in shows. But I think in the, the, I guess the digital age. We just really did it old school and we canvassed the US by visiting people. So we would take sections of the country and he would just drive and visit. And bring product samples and yeah, so that's Paul. That's his name. He used to just, he just get in the car and drive and visit a lot of coffee. We visit cafes and because we do, I mean, we do a lot of majority on our mainland. We just always focus on his coffee, coffee packaging and things like that. So that's another thing too is focusing on one thing, a niche. As an entrepreneur, it's very easy to kind of get sidetracked. There are many different things and it winds up kind of taking you away from your focus. Right. So as long as you can kind of do something really, really well, that's essentially, you know, all you need. And you focus on that. Yeah. What did you, what was the biggest challenge and when you started to scale logistics or but we figured that out pretty good, pretty well. It's communication making sure that we don't slip up in tending to customers needs. That that is always the most difficult portion part of scaling is being able to understand the needs of the customers and because this it's it's exponential right so you get more and more referrals the more referrals you need more people to kind of respond and do things like that so that's that's always going to be the biggest challenge. Anything that you would do differently. Oh, would you know now. No, not, you know what, not, not really because I think that trusting the process. I mean, we hear that all the time. So as long as you believe in something and you trust the process and if you're patient with it then it normally as long as you put your head down and you work hard. It does, it does work out. But you have to have that conviction and that belief. And sometimes it takes longer I mean sometimes it takes it's, it's, it's quicker. I mean, for us it took us 12 years to decide to go make that leap so that's a long time, but it's, but that was the process for us. Yeah, and you mentioned like I wanted to ask you how this whole pandemic in this environment has affected saver brands. Yeah, so from, I guess the Hawaii standpoint it's real tough. The companies we work with locally, some have went under some basically aren't doing any business. But what we try to do is we try to support as best as we can, in terms of, you know, just, just finding out and calling and talking to them and trying to figure out what they, what they need. But thankfully everything is going to just be temporary, although I'll be it, it'll take longer to recover, but it is temporary and the new normal is something that we just all have to adapt to. So the only thing we can do to change it other than just kind of working every day and, and, and kind of help in whomever we need to help that time, understanding what people the needs of our customers are on the mainland for the coffee packaging, it's a little different because we find that customers can't really go or our customers customer can't really go to their cafes to go hang out and drink coffee so what they want to do is they brew coffee at home. So as a result of that, they're going to need coffee packaging. And that that's been kind of keeping us busy and on the flow during these crazy times. But it's still we still got to go long way more. But slowly but surely, as long as we just kind of take one day at a time, things will always work out for all of us and it's that's just to stay positive. That's so important. I think right now for everyone. I mean, it was a good decision for you to go nationally, since it's helping you survive. Yeah, it helped. It helps it. There's a lot of cardiac that that goes into it. But as long as your patient, then it'll, it'll, it'll sort itself out. Yeah. Yeah, I remember when we were talking you had said, you don't fail until you quit, which is I think it's awesome. Yeah, yeah. Entrepreneurs need to hear that. Yeah, as soon as you throw in the towel, then all that work that you put in is evaporated. Right. So, and if you believed in something in the very beginning to start with then you either pushing all where you keep on pushing it right or, but evolution innovation continuously learning is that's that's always going to be key. Yeah, so in on the know what's next for your saver brands. For us, there's I guess there's a there's a few things. One is, you know, from a packaging standpoint, we've been working on an industrial composable product. Bill 40. So we have a barrier product that actually can help manufacturers food manufacturers with the environment. So single use plastics bill 40, we're ready for that. So in terms of kind of helping our customers. Just to be a little bit more earth friendly. What we do as well as we are developing a reprocess and repurpose type of program where it's it's called our plus our so we set up, I guess receptacles and boxes to be able to collect the packaging that we make, and basically upcycle it. That's something that's that that we've been working on it's been a lot of fun. Done a lot of fun. Awesome so it's constantly innovating and. Yeah, to coming. Right, right, right, right. We have to. Yeah. One last. This is our random question of the day. What is your favorite movie. Favorite movie. That's that's kind of hard. I guess you could say the favorite series or whatever we've been watching a lot of Marvel so I guess Avengers would have to be there. Yeah, all of them. Yeah, they're all good. Yeah. Very cool. Thank you I think all of this advices and just hearing your story is going to be good for people that want to start their businesses and start importing and figuring out what what they should be bringing in and how. So, thank you. Thanks for joining me in for sharing your story. So this, this has been international Hawaii and your host Cindy Matsuki and my guest today is Patrick Lau founder and president of saver brands they're an awesome packaging company packaging and print house. Thank you and we'll see you next time on international work on think tank.