 What's up? What's up? What's up? I'm Brayman Sean and I'm Cory and we are back with another episode of No Labels Necessary podcast. You can catch us every Tuesday, every Thursday on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, whatever you stream your podcast here at the intersection of creativity and currency. This is No Labels Necessary and today we have an extremely special episode. We're going to do something that we've never done. Maybe somebody else have done it, but we want to do something special for y'all because we are launching merch. Now, why does that matter? Why is that important? Right? Like, bro, y'all think y'all launching merch is a big deal? Like y'all cool or something? Yeah. That is. That's what it is. But this is for real how we want to approach it. We want to learn this in real time, chronicle this in real time, show you guys our lessons. This isn't something that we're trying to sell a course on. We're not selling a course on merch. We're not doing any upsells or affiliates on merch. We are going to build our merch brand in real time because many of y'all have been requesting that we do this. So we're going to not requesting that we do what we're about to do this process, but requesting that we do some merch, right? Yeah. We've seen the comics, etc. But now that we got along with it, we always thought about like our community is about, you know, education, exchange of information. So how can we like provide value instead of just launching merch, throwing it out there out of nowhere and just dropping it? Why don't we let them see how our decisions came about? See how we learned about certain things that are accessible and which way we want to go about it. So I think this will be real cool because y'all will be able to see how we think about the economics. We're going to go do that in the episode where we're sourcing things, why we're sourcing things, and maybe y'all know more about us on some of this, right? I know a lot of times y'all come to us for shit, right? Maybe y'all put us on game. We are all open to it, but this is just going to be a great community builder where we can all exchange, build, drop info and game in real time. And hopefully, whether it's from shit we say here or some of the stuff that people drop in the comments, when we do this series, every time we do an update, y'all will be able to get some game for y'all to be able to apply to what you're doing. Let's get into it. So again, we're going to talk about our research this episode that we did to go about this process. We're going to give you our inspiration for our designs while we're doing things like what we're doing, what we learned about international versus domestic vendors and how we're approaching things, why we price things the way we price everything that we consider using our current business acumen and then some of the advice that from people that we got to talk to and even how to sell merch. Because by the way, we're not new to selling merch, right? We've helped artists sell merch, right? We've sold shirts before like as part of events and things, but they're exactly, exactly, right? But truly like building it as a full brand and looking at like, you know, sourcing and doing this at scale. It's a new process. It's a new process, right? Versus just asking your homie to go ahead and press up some shirts and, you know, selling them in a small portion, a small batch. And then at the end, we're going to talk about what we wish we knew. All right. Now, first, what's the inspiration behind building merch? We kind of already touched on this. For us, one, people have been asking for it too. We always talk to artists about this type of stuff, right? So let's practice on what we're preaching to, right? We have our own media brand because every piece of content we put out is media. Artists, every piece of content you all put out is media. This is yet another way to monetize and support the community and efforts that we want to put out there, right? And community is a huge part of it too because we want to be able to see who reps the same things that we rep, right? Yeah, yeah. I want to say hoodie on the wall. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just be walking outside and then you see somebody at the airport because we've met some of y'all out there in person, by the way. And some of y'all say, hey, I watched the channel where I support the videos. Now we'll know if you're lying or not, man. You got a hoodie though. You got a hat or whatever we end up selling. All right, so those are going to like those are some of those main decisions, right? The community, like, and how do we sustain our efforts so we can continue to provide the value that we provide without having to, I don't know, do some of this, like, just distillation stuff. Like our whole thing is we've been good at continuing to teach people shit that we already know because we have our agency and we're not just making stuff up where people are making things up. And how do you do that? And how do you continue to scale and stay honest and authentic? Well, you find something like this, this is a product, right? We don't have to make up some kind of marketing method or some kind of bullshit scam strategy or something, but just to make an extra dime or whatever, right? So also look at it like that, right? Like people have those decisions, what do they want to do? How do you want to make some more money for us? It's like, all right, let's make something off of something real. Yeah, we're going to do the Raycon ad. The Raycon ad? Take it back. No, what's the game? The Shadow Legends, whatever it is. One of all YouTubers have. Yeah, exactly. Because we definitely don't want to become dependent on running a whole bunch of ads for sure. We might have some, you know, like, but we also want to stay selective about what we provide for the community. So this is something that we can control, and it's not something that's misleading you into some kind of service or brand that we have no part in that we really don't are just taking like a quick bag or something, right? So there's that. Now on the other end, research for the merch. I'll let you, Corey, go deeper into it. But on the front end, we got to actually talk to some people that we know. Shout out to Erica Mason. I was about to ask if we mentioned her. Well, look, it's out there, you know what I mean? Erica, she's doing pretty decent, you know, with her merch. And she's an artist that we work with and help grow on. And she gave us a lot of free game. And that's the benefit of building a network. A network, man. Having some trade, man. Yeah. So, you know, we ain't want to start from ground zero. We don't have to. We almost did. We actually did. So this is a good, this is a teachable moment, right? All of us have this DIY mentality where we feel like, oh, I'm gonna get it out the mud, get it out the mud. But I really got this from my sister because she's like anti-mud, you know what I mean? You know, she's willing to work machine. She don't like this glorification of the grinding and mud type of shit, right? I feel it. You know? And I, you know, remind myself, after you build to a certain point, like, why would you go to ground zero if you don't have to? Just for the sake of it, for your ego to say, I got it out the mud? It was like, bro, but you could start here. Because the whole point is keep building from where you are. And there's layers and layers and layers. If I keep going to ground zero, how am I going to get to level like 1000? You know, I think it's only 100 levels, but once I get a level 100, I realize, oh shit, it's more levels, right? So, so I thought about that because not only that we almost are from ground zero on that, a quick aside, we were looking at doing ads on a platform that we hadn't really done heavily before in LinkedIn and started building out the whole process. And then as we got to the process, wasted some time, we thought about it was like, Hey, you know what? We know one person who's doing LinkedIn already and know what? There's some agencies and courses out there. Let us see instead of starting from ground zero. All right. It's the same type of mentality that we appreciate y'all. And boy, did we learn some shit. Hey, you know what? Instead of working hard on LinkedIn right now or right now, what we're doing is pausing on LinkedIn right now because of the stuff we learned. You know what I mean? So we could have wasted good 40, 50 hours bumping our head versus just, you know, in about what, maybe three hours max spent of conversation. Okay. Conversation. Yeah. I thought it meant like action. Yeah. Yeah. Not the action. Yeah. Yeah. I'm saying from the conversation, that led to us saying, Oh, no, we don't, we need not to do this right now and focus on other stuff. So yeah, again, the research process, like it's dope to be able to lean on people if you can and shortcut stuff. But like, get into your process for the research and some of the other things you looked at beyond like the conversation and the sites, maybe. Yeah. I mean, some of it was just looking back at all resources when I did Merch for Blue Summer. Like I'm realizing all this like, we already had like Google Docs and notes and stuff with a lot of the, like vendor stuff kind of mapped out. The only thing that killed it a little bit is that was, you know, 2018 to 2020 is 2023. So there were companies that were no longer around, like people in Atlanta, they weren't no longer around. Prices were different. You know what I'm saying? Like I've seen shit on this sheet where I was like, Oh, like this shirt is $8.99. That shirt is, you know, like $15 on the same site. So just, you know, inflation and time and things kind of and make stuff different. But it was a combination of just looking through old notes. The consultation that we did do with Erica and like all the games she gave us, and I personally just follow a bunch of different clothing brand people on Instagram and TikTok. That's a good point. So what we should do is maybe in the description, drop a whole bunch of like these brands or pages, or maybe we put it on like some kind of PDF or something, depending on like it is too much where we need to format it a little cleaner or whatever. But y'all look in the description when we drop this, we'll have some type of, you know, amalgamation of resources. We'll figure that out based on, you know, whatever these links that you found there are new. Yeah, they out there, right? And so it's like, I've always paid attention to these people as just kind of like a fan. Oh, this is interesting information. Maybe I will need it one day. But I always thought about it more so from like, like the client perspective, like I can now go to a client say, Hey, you should get that 100% cotton tea because that the radio one doesn't know whatever because I'll learn it from the mercy guys. It's not really thinking about Oh, one day it will affect like what we're doing. You know what I'm saying? So, so when it got to the research stage, and even like I said, once we had that conversation with Erica, it just started kind of like unlocking memories that like I picked up watching those videos and then doing the blue summer stuff like she she mentioned like, well, we're going to get into when she mentioned like the different types of vendors you could get international domestic, I was like, Oh, damn, I remember going through this exact situation with the blue summer stuff. And I remember watching this video from one guy talking about why he gets his stuff from whatever country he gets his stuff from. So it was just a lot of it like there were new things that I definitely learned from Erica, like, especially once on me, she seemed like a whole document in saying like maybe a day or two after we had that kind of she ever sent me like a whole list of shit. And so a lot of it was just reminding me of things and then giving me some breadcrumbs of like what direction to move in. The biggest thing that she did give us I think immensely helped us was the vendor list. You know what I'm saying? So I mean, yeah, I guess we'll get into it. We're going with this website called Ali Baba and like you've ever used Ali Baba. They have like thousands of different vendors on there. And so she gave us the three or four that she has worked with consistently that she trusts. You know what I'm saying? She's like these people have done good work. So even even that saves so much time because that's the thing about a big platform, right? A e-commerce platform, even something like Amazon, you see it like it starts to become less about will these people scam me and just more about like the overwhelming amount of choices you have. It's like, damn, okay, I'm not looking for the people that are going to scam me. So I'm going to look for all the people with a four and a half star rating or above and then you look in this 1200 different vendors with a four and a half star rating. So it's 1200 people doing a good job doing a good to decent job. Right? Like where do I kind of start? So I think that saves a bunch of time just being able to have somebody say like, no, you like use these people. You know what I'm saying? Like if you decide to go somewhere else long term, right? Or you find your own people you trust like cool. But like for now, just to get off the ground, like use these people. I've already vetted them. They already do a good job. They do all my shit. Like that, that part was the most helpful, most helpful part of all of it. You know, other stuff I think we would have got to eventually, but always trying to figure out like who would start off with always the hardest part. I mean, the word keyword, eventually that sounds like time, you know what I mean? So I still appreciate the time saved. But let's get into inspiration first before we go deeper into the technical stuff. So we're going to give you all a sense of where we're coming from our thought process with this brand, because that's an important part of doing it to me. A wasted moment in time for most artists or creatives, these people who create these merch brands is they will launch a brand with no thought or meaning behind it for them, right? Like what the meaning should be for you and your audience, like who knows, right? But if you put that in there, it's going to give it more sustainability over time. Of course, you could have some random things that just pop up that special to your audience. Yeah, the inside jokes, but long term, if you have any substance to your brand, inject that substance into your merch, right? Now for us, what does that look like? Well, you got to start with the idea of no labels necessary. No surprise. Everybody knows primarily we come from the music space. So no record labels, right? Are necessary. And that's huge on our like, first of all, we thought about that, putting it into the name of the podcast period, right? So what's important to understand about that for those y'all who don't even quite understand where we come from when we say no labels necessary. One, yeah, you can achieve whatever your goal is without a label in today's climate, right? It might take longer to get there, it might look different than what you wanted to when you were growing up, but you can achieve that vision. You can build your career without a label. But keyword necessary. You have the option to use a label and do it in a good way, right? It's just about when is it right for you, if it's ever right for you, because it's your particular deal. We know the industry as a whole may not be making the best deals, but your deal is still your deal. So necessary is really important for us because we always have been the people who are like, we want our audience to be thoughtful people, right? We want to give perspectives, ways that you can think about stuff. But then there's nobody at the table, but you and the person on the other side, we can't be with you at that table. So we're not about to be like, Oh, you should only be indie. And I'm like, Oh, I'm just only doing indie shit because Sean said do any or I'm only doing, I'm signing because Jacory said I got a sign. There'll be people who will tell you that one sided idea on each side. And anyone who's successful know that for moments of time, it could be important to have a label for a period of time or work with his trivia for a short period of time, right? And it could be only for six months and you could have all your ownership, whatever, whatever. So it's that necessary is really meaningful for us. But then you got to flip of it in general, just labels, the idea of labels, right? My naming labels, the naming labels, exactly. So beyond the record label, there's so many labels that people try to put on people these days, right? What are you? And there's so many agendas and other people trying to label you with things that you don't even know if you agree with or not. You know what I mean? Do I even want to be associated with that group? Because once you put yourself in a label, it could be good for a period of time. But next thing you know, the tide shifts in the culture and to everybody attacking, you're like, whoa, this is good when I was growing up. You know what I mean? People to label the truck, man. Sometimes you know the community, but with the label is in the community that you want to hang around. Exactly. Exactly. So the short net, right? No labels necessary in that vein comes like this, right? Labels are a tool, right? But they aren't your identity. So you can use this to say, hey, I'm an artist to communicate to people that you're an artist and market yourself so they know how to perceive you in that period of time. But you don't have to define yourself and box yourself in as what they perceive an artist to be. Because maybe they just perceive an artist to be someone who makes music in a specific way because everybody has their purest idea of what really an artist is or not. And maybe you want to be an actor, maybe you want to be a business person, etc, etc, etc. You can't let how people define that label box you in as your identity. So instead of leaning on these labels is just whatever the real you is, whatever your version of success is. Like that's what it comes down to. And I think it's a beautiful, you know, a beautiful term that summarizes everything that we stand for without, I don't know, without requiring so many words, right? Those people who get it, I get it. We're going to do all the necessary marketing and say it in even cleaner terms for people to get it at scale. Y'all will see how we brand this and like how we tell the stories and things around it. But that's the inspiration in terms of one, no labels necessary how we named the podcast. And of course, that's going to be the umbrella for the brand itself. But then we get into the concept of how we drop things, right? So in EJ, you can slice this up as like a different section, right? How we're dropping, because we're going to have our staple, our staple merch, our basics, our basics, right? That we want everybody who wants to be a part of no labels to have access to, right? So just imagine you got your, your, your main tea or your main hoodie, and anybody who wants this, they can have access to it. We're going to make as many as people want them, right? But then we're also going to have capsules, so we'll have staples and capsules. So there'll be specials periods of time where if it's a season or reason, we're going to drop a special limited amount of merch. Whatever that looks like. Whatever that design looks like. We'll get into that in another episode where we talk about our inspirations and, and why they're going to be done the way they look like. So we'll, cause that'll sidetrack. That's a whole another can of worms to unpack. But we will have our staples again. And I think everybody should do a version of that if they, if they can, especially people who have like audiences digitally where there are inside jokes. So let's just imagine that everybody might not want the inside joke. Everybody loves when Corey says, I'm Corey, right? Hey, y'all say that y'all want to see that on a shirt. We're going to see how many of y'all really want to see that on a shirt. You know what I mean? Like, at least 50 sales. At least a hundred for real. For real. We, we not about to print a thousand of those bad boys and end up with a whole bunch of I'm Corey's in the closet or y'all, we end up having to give them away at Goodwill and y'all see niggas on the street walking around saying I'm Corey. No, Corey. No. Right. So that might be a 50 shirt drop or we like do a only a side pre-order for it to see how many people really want it. And then we, we offer that up. But then our staple, like the, the, the primary design and the primary colors we want to continue to push. Hey, whoever wanted, we already got it. Like you can get it. So, you know, it goes deeper than that. Again, the way we want to approach it and ideas and inspiration behind it, but that's the core concept of how we're going to approach it. And it scratches both of those kind of like main e-commerce itches, right? That on paper don't make sense. But when you kind of see it, it makes sense, right? The, you know, the two sizes sell the most of things that are either very inclusive to people and, you know, a lot of people can get them and there's a message tied or they're very exclusive and a lot of people can't get them. You know what I'm saying? That becomes an appeal to us. So it's like, we get to hit both of those in a, in a clean way, right? Like I said, we have the basics for people who might watch this video for the first time three years from there and want a t-shirt. You know what I'm saying? Wouldn't be fair to them. Not to get it, but they missed cow's collection number six. A-Bruh, get with the program man. You should have got here three years ago. You know what I'm saying? Sorry. You know what I'm saying? Person in 2026. You know what I'm saying? Washing this is what it is. You know what I'm saying? But we're able as, as the media brand, as the people putting this up to appeal to both of those people in a really clean way, which I think is, I think it's cool. You know, so I shouldn't say, man, some shit I've been asking for in the comments that once these, these links hit the internet, man, I better start, I better start seeing Stripe light up. You know what I'm saying? Y'all been lying. Y'all been lying. And that's something to navigate, right? And the way, again, the reason we're doing it, we just gave, but artists, right? We always talk about how do you know the difference between people just giving feedback and something you shouldn't actually do, right? Sometimes you can't just make a decision that you're not going to do it. Sometimes you just got to test it in a small way. You know what I mean? Maybe I'm Corey as a hit, like next level, like, you know, being a spin off brand, you know what I mean? Like who knows? We'll see. But you know, so we provide that to the audience for those who say they want it in a way that's low risk for us. And if it works, it works. If it don't, you know what I mean? It was a cool idea. It's a story to tell. You know what I mean? We're going to at least have a couple of them. You know, we like, at least got to get Jacory one of those shirts, you know what I'm saying? At least. Nah, I am going to leave that alone. But now let's move on to the next section. So what we learned about international versus domestic vendors. Jacory, I'm going to let you take that away. So this was the big one. We're about to start getting technical on y'all now. Yeah, this is, this is for me where shit got complex and complicated. So like I mentioned earlier, we're, we're using Alibaba, right? Alibaba, most of their vendors are in China somewhere, right? And so when we have that consultation with Erica, Erica, about the point of, hey, you can get really high quality vendors in America. It's like, maybe four good ones in Atlanta from what I've heard. If you remember letting you disagree, but I just heard it's like four good ones. But the American ones are more expensive. Typically, anywhere from the 1.5 to like four extra costs of what you might be getting from China, right? Great example. There was a hoodie that I was looking at for some of our hedges and I don't think it's the one we actually went with, but I was looking at it. That hoodie was like maybe $16 over there. And I saw it on the American vendor site and they had it for like 32, like 35 or something. It's like double the price, right? Yeah. So the rumors that you hear are true. Shit is cheaper in China, apparently. And cheaper when you leave the States. Now, the caveat to that is that shit takes forever to get here, right? So the times that we were given, sample pieces, a week to get made, a week or two to get made, maybe three weeks to get here. You've ordered stuff in batch anywhere from five to eight weeks for it to get here, versus if I bought that shit in Atlanta, once it's done, I could just drive up there, pick it up, bring it home, maybe take it to your house. And we'd be good, right? But that's kind of what we're going through right now. We decided to go with Alibaba, just the first lunch, right? You know what I'm saying? We're going to bump our heads. We want to see what costs look like. You know what I'm saying? See, like Sean's been saying, how many y'all are actually going to buy, you know what I'm saying? How many y'all are real about that? And then maybe we will at some point switch to a more domestic vendor to where we can get things made faster. But for now, like price of getting shit made was a big one for us. You know what I'm saying? Tell them, we're going to be transparent out here. Tell them how much we're paying for samples and yeah, all that. We paid I think 320 for two samples, so one hoodie. So basically three times 160 dollars a hoodie. And that should sound expensive as hell to me. Usually, as the people who are the owners of a brand, you get like that cheap cost. Like I remember I did a book on Amazon years ago, and you know, you can sell it for whatever you want. But if you just order it directly for yourself, you might pay like I don't know $3, right? But if you were selling on Amazon, it had to be no less than $10 or something like that. Right? So usually you get the discount to me. We're getting the more expensive version. Yeah. And I thought that the way that I've rationalized it for myself is maybe they're charging you so much in case you don't come back. You know what I'm saying? Like you're not just going to finesse me out of a cheap hoodie or a cheap tee or something like that, right? And I'll start costs to do your specific print for the first time. Maybe. Yeah, that too. Maybe. Because the way they kind of talk about it, it seems like they just ready to go. Color pick your hoodies and logo. Hey, man, we got it. You know what I'm saying? So I think it might have more to do with protection of their product or maybe it's something to keep people from just like making. I thought about maybe not them making like cheap versions of like high end clothing or something, right? Like I'm going to hit you to make me a Gucci tee, you know what I'm saying? Get the shit for $8. Or also, and then I think about thinking about like how we kind of price certain things. I think it's really just incentivize you just to get bulk orders, you know what I'm saying? Like, hey, you could come pay 160 for the tee, but if you buy a hundred of them, it's only $12. What you want to do, you know what I'm saying? It's like, damn, I don't know if I need a hundred. You know what I'm saying? Well, better think about it. You better figure it out. Yeah, I mean, I definitely know the the bulk is a part of it for sure. Yeah. So they wouldn't want you to just, it's weird though. It seems like they would want you to get one sample and then say, all right, but yeah, you can only get a certain amount of sample versus going this route. But again, it's more expensive and hey, I might say there's a better route to do that. Let us know in the comments, man. We're curious. But yeah, we're paying that. This is again, international. We're going international first. We could do it. Ground up and start local. We know people who have done stuff in the past, but I mean, a lot of how we personally decide to pursue this, one, this isn't our primary revenue stream in the moment. It's just something we're doing, right? Having fun with it. Yeah, having fun with it, wanting to learn and get a sense of that process from the inside and pushing all the buttons ourselves. And we wanted to go with somebody that came from a trusted source, which was Erica in this case, and then get a feel for it. Because we don't, we know a little bit more of what it looks like on a local level doing stuff in small batches. We haven't done this. All right. So it was like, since we do have the ability and time on our hands for that to go that route and let's just go learn and see what it looks and feels like. You know what I mean? Because, and we're even going to straighten the quality because some, there's some local vendors that are lower quality and some brands that are lower quality. A lot of times people start with the cheapest and then work their way up into higher quality as they build. We started with the good stuff. We started with the good stuff. One, because how we want our brand to be perceived. All right, specifically, which I think you had that as a part, something we'll, yeah, so we'll go deeper into that. But like even beyond perception, it's, we're just in a space where we can go that route, right? And start there where many times, like how I talk about getting out the mud, like habit, habitually, I will start at the low and then work to the high, right? With the gilding team. Yeah. And we will, and we will recommend something similar. Gilding, I don't know if we'll go gilding bad. You know what I mean? What's up on Jersey? Right. All right. But a lot of times that's the, that's the better way to do it for, for many y'all, like go ahead and cut your teeth on something cheap and quick. And like, don't waste that time because you need quick feedback loops. We can deal with a longer feedback loop for now. You know what I mean? We'll see you, like when we get it and things turn out however they turn out, we might be like, oh, shit, bro, we should have just went to try the true route. But that's what, that's where we are with it. I hope we don't ever get that done. I'll be heard. If we have a black man, look, those numbers went right this month. You got to get gilded and stuff like that, man. But like you said, like that was the thing. We, we didn't really fight on it, but like we, we spent a lot of time discussing like at what point, what level do we want the quality come out? Right? We were like, do we want to start at a three and give ourselves room to grow? We want to start at like a six, you know what I'm saying? Give ourselves, you know, come out higher quality, but have a little less room to grow. I think we landed up around starting at like a seven, eight, you know what I'm saying? Like, so we don't have a crazy amount of room to grow in terms of the quality, but we could grow in terms of design and packaging and all the other things that'll make it cool. But you at least, like Sean said, be getting good quality products out the gate. You know what I'm saying? Like you're hoodie ain't gonna fall apart on you while you're hooping. You know what I'm saying? Exactly. And a huge part for me, by the way, was having my experience with merch like that I bought from other people. Yeah. All right. And I might love it. It might be dope, might look great, but then a couple of washes and it's like it's cracking and now I can't even wear it anymore. And I'm like, that person is losing out because I love this and I would wear this all the time and now I can't because it's starting to crack. So long term, I look at it as cheaper that way. It might be harder to get that conversion of the sale. But once you have that relationship, when you have somebody who knows it's going to last, so they appreciate it. So you might be more willing. Like I'm more willing to buy from you again. Like an extra $20 if I know that it's actually going to stay around versus and that last time I got something from you didn't last. I personally don't want people to go do that because I've been going through that recently like with pieces that I love. Call them out man. Nah. Not in, not in, not here, not now man. Better people know man. Not, not, not here, not now. No, but yeah, yeah, that's true. I could, I was about to name some of them, but they're mine. I do have like a. Remember, I love these people. I love these pieces. I'm not gonna, I'm gonna give them a call. You know what I mean? I can't put them on blast on the pot before I put, before I give them a call. Y'all don't hear from the people first. I like doing man. Let the people hit that DMs first. I'm like, damn, what they talking about? And I call them later and I'm like, oh man, the people probably don't told you about now what I said about you, but that hoodie was trashed. I wouldn't talk to you about it, man. Hey man, why, why have the audience if we can't use them? You know what I'm saying? Well, if we can't use them as messengers, you know what I'm saying? I doubt it. But yeah, I agree with that. Like, and that's even something that over the last week or so we've been talking about too, is just increasing the quality of the experience. Because I ain't gonna lie to y'all. We first had this idea, that's gonna get these shits in regular UPS boxes. Maybe some, some, some bubble wrap or some poly thing wrap or something in between, but it's gonna be shirt wrap box. And then the other day I was talking and showing the recipe and I was like, no, I really want to take that at least this first drop to see what we can do with the quality in terms of the packaging. So now we're, I'm looking at like bags and little insert cars and stuff that would like make it a more experiential feeling overall, you know what I'm saying? To where you don't feel like I just ripped the plastic bag open and pull the hoodie out, which like I said, I don't know if we would have got to that if we did this like weeks ago, like we wanted to. I think we would have just like rush there until it came with the UPS box. So in a way, the longer vendor time has forced us to think about things that if we could have just got this shit done in Atlanta, we probably would. I think I really feel like we would have just did it. In the week or so and then this episode about how that shit, you know what I'm saying? Y'all should have been bought this shit. You know what I'm saying? Like we've been pushing this shit off a week. So I am appreciative of the time that some of the stuff is, you know, giving us because it's forced us to sit back and think about other elements of the merch brand, you know what I'm saying? Instead of going like straight product, which I do think that that's what most people start right because you're so excited about the product. And then you spend all this time making this great t-shirt design, this great hoodie design. And then it's like, and then what, you know, like I said, you shipping your shout and cover bags and the UPS box because you didn't think about the full customer service funnel. And to the point you just made, which I never thought about, but yeah, you're right. So I could sell this person a $20 that last, let's say two months. Well, I can sell this person a $100 t-shirt last them two years. I got two years worth of marketing versus two months worth of marketing on this side. So that's already a better deal. Right. And then the retention of the customer is more likely a lot cheaper, right? Because now with this person, every time they look at your shit, they're more likely to buy. They remind you of how great the quality is so that they're retained within the brand a lot longer versus that $20 person might be like, oh, yeah, that design was cool. But like that shit fell apart on me. Like you said, like, that shit fell apart on me. So like now fast fashion, bro. Yeah. So now you have, but now you have to, which I don't think people think about, you have to win them back over. And sometimes it's more expensive to even win over a person that once thought good things about you than a completely new person, right? Because this person got stigmas in shit in his head now, right? Like they've seen the inside of the operation. You can't wow them with like the dream anymore. It's like, nah, not brought order to tea. Like this shit was a deal, you know what I'm saying? This shit cracked on my first watch. So I didn't even think about that. But it's something that we are thinking about now and that we're being super conscious of that. I would recommend to people like, if you're going to plan your merch funnel out, like, don't just stop at the product store, at least thinking about the experience of it. Like you said, but like, that matters, you know what I'm saying? Like, you wanted to mean something. Yeah, like, I like brands with like opening the package and it feels like an experience, you know what I'm saying? Or like you walk around with your bright yellow bag and like it looks cool, right? Like the bag itself is a cool thing. And so people think like, damn, it's a bag heart. Imagine what's in the bag. It's like when you see people go to like design and stores, they spend a lot of money on the bags because it shows something, right? Like the company was willing to put this amount of quality and effort into the fucking bag. Like I said, imagine what's in the bag. You know what I'm saying? What's in the bag could be some bullshit. Exactly. But you're not going to know because of the bag. Boy, it was fun opening this thing up. Exactly, exactly. Hey, and keep in mind, all this talk you're already talking, we could turn around and be like, hey, man, it's nice to have that nice packaging before it ain't worth it, bro. It's so much work, whatever. You know, like, who knows, right? We might come back that way. But that's why we want to do it in this format, right? Where we're not just saying, do this, do that. You know, being people who a part of No Labels Necessary is not just saying, we go this route. It's no find the route that's for you, which means you have to be thoughtful and understand different perspectives. We're not doing here's a checklist of what we did for Merch. We're showing you all the thoughts and that we've gone through and then we'll continue to show you all that as it evolves. Because then you can say, oh yeah, he didn't just do this. He did it because he did that. But then episode three about Merch, all right. He kind of flipped on it. But here's why he flipped on it, you know? But I mean, we know for a fact, packaging is important. Just like Jacory said, it's just then going to become the economics of our time, cost, and what that looks like. But again, I think this first drop is a great place to do it. Because where we are in just doing this as an experiment at the beginning is like a great place to go. Well, shoot, let's try everything. Let's try to make it as dope as possible, fulfill the vision, and bump our heads that way. Because now we can just use this one drop, especially since we got so much time and the turnaround ain't quick to then say, we know what a pre-order process looked like, which we'll get it to. We know what the high quality looks like. We know what the Merch car is like. We could get every single part of the process. Because otherwise we'd have to wait another X amount of months just to get the information, you know what I mean? So I think I like that as a first move just from that point along too. Yeah, we didn't really touch on it with the international domestic vendor thing. But that was something that you talked about. I was like, yo, that means that if we're going to keep using these international people, we have to damn it start playing the next drop halfway through the current drop. Gotta do it like seasons, like fashion companies, bro. Exactly, bro. Like, oh, that shit is a month from dropping. Great, let's start on the next one after that. It's going to have to be like that. If we continue to use international. Y'all get ready for the no labels necessary fashion show, bro. At every heart. Hey, season X coming near you. With that being said, I think it's a perfect time to get into the pricing. All right. Why we price things the way we did. We don't have a final price yet. I know. I think we land on $80 for the hoodie. A for the hoodie. Did we do a price for the hat? I don't think we did. I don't think we land on the price for the hat. So we don't have a price for the hat. Y'all will find out though. Shit might be $150, shit might be $25. Who knows, $20 to the next episode. We can't give you all logic for the hat just yet. But the hoodie, one, alludes to a lot of things we just talked about, right? Yep. So we got quality. Two, we got to pay people. Yeah, it ain't just us. Right? Just like y'all are going to have to pay people. So like, we want a certain level of quality, which means, all right, we can't make it. But so cheap because it's already more expensive to buy hoodies at that particular price. But then we don't want to run the operation like only us from ground zero in terms of like, we're handling every single part of it. So we do have to pay people. So that means there has to be a margin though, still left over after we pay people. So that has to be factoring to the price. All right, what happens at the end of the day, whenever we buy something, either the business is paying for it or the customer is paying for it. The government ups the taxes, all this stuff gets increased. You wonder why? Because, oh, well, the government said that these taxes are being in play. And now all of a sudden, that's going to be an extra seven cents. Seven cents, not a lot. But I multiply that by 100,000 or thousands of orders of French fries. Know what? These fries ain't a dollar no more. It's a dollar 19 cents. You know what I mean? So like that, right? So any of those costs that we are predicting to have to pay, we want to bake those in as well. But more importantly, we want to be able to continue to reinvest in this. Or we talk about wanting it to be a high quality in terms of the experience. Well, you can only make it high quality if you have the money to invest in it, all right? So the experience with the brand, we're going to have to put a lot of this money like just continuously back into the brand, whatever that looks like, whether that might be, I don't know, visuals, you know what I'm saying? That we create just for people to see before they buy or whether that might be the cars or the bags or the boxes or whatever we decide to put into it. Yeah. Or if we decide to give people free stuff as a part of it, right? Whatever that might look like, we need to have the margin there because we don't have an endless bankroll to just be able to create those experiences. Yeah. And some of the products we've expanded, like, man, it's down the line, but it's one product just to start going to be crazy. You know what I'm saying? So it's like just to even get, I mean, I know once we put it out there, people are going to be like, oh, that's hard, but it's like, mm, it's just expensive. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, like, it's like, we want to be able to just make sure it doesn't stop with where things are. And I look at that in terms of quality of product and quality of team. Like, you know, like right now, we damn their outsourced and everything. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? But at some point, I would love to just have my mother focus is focused on pressing up merch all that. Hey, but that's all you do, man. You're going to sit here in the warehouse for us or wherever you at and just knock out orders for us. I would love to have somebody ship out with shit for us because the first batch is probably going to be, you know what I'm saying? Touched by Kobe, touched by Sean. You know what I'm saying? Like, but I would love to have somebody that's just shipping this shit out so we can focus on creatives and reading the audience and figuring out what y'all want so we can get that done. But you know what I'm saying? We're in the mud right now, man. They don't work like that when you're in the mud. You know what I'm saying? You got to get out first. So yeah, you know, we're not starting where we're starting just for the sake of a fuck it. You know what I'm saying? It's just kind of like, we're looking at like, this is a price that will allow us to continue to invest in the company and the way that it will allow us to continue serving the audience in a really high quality way. Yep. No. You get what you pay for it. Speak on perceived value. On perceived value? Yeah. Damn. Hey, look, people say that. You get what you pay for, but you don't always get what you think you pay for. And that's the difference. And we want to take that paradigm though and hopefully do that on a positive side. So you got something that's greater than what you thought you paid for. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I'm trying to think of how to explain it. So I mean, all right, so we all know what actual value is right. At least when it comes to clothing. Actual value is typically like what's the merge. You're not in the what's the merge. The hard cost. The hard cost. Is it a cotton? 100% cotton. Is it a cotton railing blend or using some cheap materials? Right? So like actual quality when it comes to clothing is like what is it made of? You know what I'm saying? Like how long does the material last? Like what is the material good for and things like that? Perceived value is the value of it. I'm trying to explain it. Like kind of like intrinsic values that have nothing to do with quality. Right? So like we think about something like, let's say Gucci, right? Gucci and I don't know the name of Target's brand. But Target's brand could get their T's from the exact same factory, right? They both start off with the $15 blank and work their way up from there. Now, let's just say both of them put the same wear on the shirt, right? If I walk out in the Mosimo shirt, nobody really thinks anything of me other than like maybe he's a frugal guy because he's shopping clothes on the Target, right? If I walk out in the world with the Gucci shirt, people will start saying, oh, this guy probably has money. This guy probably has status. Maybe he's like a, I don't know, I got, I think he would be racist because he lost, man. Maybe he a rapper or something. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? Like there's a value that comes from what people think about what you're wearing, right? About what you're wearing and the messaging of the clothing brand as you put out, right? So I'm trying to think of an example of the messaging part, but let's say something like, who has a clothing brand with a message attached to it? Let's say like Tyler's like golfing, right? Like Tyler's golfing clothing brand. He's always put the message about, it's like, this is about, you know, being yourself and creativity and things like that. And so it's like, if you're someone that resonates with that message, then you wear the clothing brand to signify to other people that, hey, we have the same mindset. We have the same values and goals or at least in this world, you know what I'm saying? Like at least when it comes to this type of thing. So the perceived value I look at is like, what is the value that you get from other people looking at it in it, right? Like, do you get community because of it? Do you have the same benefits that come from it, right? Like there's, I mean, I've told the story about sweater, man, you know what I'm saying? Like that's sweater, bro, so much deeper than just, you know what I'm saying? Like the money I pay for that sweater's got me. Networking opportunities, that's what only got me. Phone numbers, you know what I'm saying? Professional and unprofessional, you know what I'm saying? So like there's a certain amount of like the value I get from the outside of just like the material that's made from, you know what I'm saying? So I think that's something that you think about with, or we're thinking about with clothing brands, like, all right. Like I said, we want the actual quality of it to be nice. Like we want the actual value of it to be nice. But then like we want that to be some type of perceived value from the community of people that wears it. So if you walk past another person and they have a no label that's necessarily merchandise, you know, like, hey, that guy's probably a DIY creative that, you know what I'm saying? That's getting his shit together or something, right? And then you guys, you guys, girls can connect around that. We were able to bring that value to each other. Y'all were able to find each other because of the thing that we put out into the world. You know what I'm saying? So like, I don't know if I explain perceived value, right? But that's how my brain interpolates it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, we could go like deeper into it in another direction. But I think the things that I heard you say, right, it touched on, again, the actual value, like what is the hard cost to create this, right? So there's that, or that's, no, that's the cost. That's the, that's just the hard cost. That's not even a value necessarily. Value is all basically perceived or subjective, right? So what is the cost of creating the shirt? And then the value is going to be dependent on the person and everything you just broke down is value, like value in terms of the packaging could say, this is more aspirational, or I'm just going to perceive that it's worth more because I got this out at Lake Square or Fifth Plaza, which are like high end malls in Atlanta versus I got this out the back of somebody's car, right? So I, yeah, exactly. So the placement, the packaging tells you if it's worth, or at least it leads you to believe and perceive something as more valuable or not, right? Then you got the other aspect which you touched on, which is more intrinsic, which is super subjective because if somebody doesn't resonate with the message, they're not going to care about it as much. So the value is not there for them. They might just buy it because, oh, this is in Linux and this is, this is a little lit, it just looks cool. Somebody else might buy it because they see somebody else wearing it and now this is just a trend. So I'm trying to be a part of it. Then you got other people, the target people, right? These are the people that you should be targeting are the people who see value in the message itself, whatever your message is for your particular brand. That's what I see. And then the, there's a couple of anecdotes I got. All right, so one is a research and one is a personal experience in terms of value. Okay. One, I learned about this toothbrush company and I think it was one of the bigger names everybody knows but I can't remember which one so I won't say. But there was this toothbrush for kids that was amazing. So this is a toothbrush that should have been like five, $10 in terms of quality. It was for the kids in there, but they had so much technological innovation in the process of making it that they were able to price it like low. Like let's just say it was $1.50 or something. All right, versus the high end brushes that were selling for like five and weren't as good and the low end brushes that just weren't up to par in quality. So they're like, yo, this is crazy. We have the best value. This is bar none, the best toothbrush for real, for real. And it's $1.50. All right, and then it didn't really sell like that. They were like, why is this not selling? They do a little focus group, bring all these moms together and they say, hey, this toothbrush has X, it has Y, it has Z, the bristles, like just tickle your teeth or whatever and give you a joyous feeling. Why are y'all not buying this for your kids? And then they say, oh, we thought it wasn't as good because it was so cheap. They just perceived it as worse for that alone. And when you think about toothbrushes, it's such a commodity. You don't really get much messaging because maybe if they were able to say this is really the best and through a commercial and spend that type of money, you can probably get people to see it and believe it. But that's not most people experience. You're not looking at toothbrush commercials. You're just looking at the racks and you make your decision from there. So you know what happened? They just up the price. And then the things started flying off the case. Crazy. It was crazy. I was like, bro, I tried to do good, but y'all don't want. It's the same argument when people say, oh, I got to flex just to get people to believe in me. I got to wear this watch. I got to ride in this limo. Otherwise, people are not going to pay attention to my education, my lessons. It's kind of a similar thing. It's like, man, we actually, we have documentation. We tried to sell this to y'all for less, but y'all wanted to pay more. I don't know what y'all want. Y'all don't know what y'all want, right? So that's perception right there. And then another case, I had a trip to Thailand. And I'm not going to go into details of how, like it was a long marketing phone or sales phone that I went through, but I ended up buying this Ruby. Because a lot of, no, not Ruby. It was a Sapphire, my bad. Yeah, Sapphire. Because I ended up in this jewelry store. I'm going to get this for my girl or whatever. Um, she was there with me. I don't know if I had any kind of influence from that. You know, sometimes you just be trying to, you know, be big boy. I don't know, you know what I mean? But I don't know if that influence was there. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. It probably was. You know, sometimes it's there and you don't even know it. Yeah, we all been there, man. We all get weak sometimes. Yeah, but you know, but there's sometimes when you're obviously on that and you know what you're trying to do. And sometimes, you know, you've been influencing by it, but don't even know it. You know, it's just underlying. So I get it, but the huge part of it, they gave me a hella story. They gave a hella perception. Like I can't even get into that. I'll do a whole episode for that. It's really like a long story, but they told me how most of the world Sapphire or a good amount of them are being made in Thailand. Like this is the place, the source, you know what I'm saying? And you can get them cheaper, generally speaking, in Thailand and anywhere else in the world. So a guy was like, he flipped them. Like he bought one there and then like sold it somewhere else. So my mind, I'm thinking like, either this is going to my girl or I'ma flip it one way or another. Hey, I'm in Thailand, baby. I'm about to take this back to the U.S. and then and flip that thing, right? So then I get back to the States and I got it appraised a couple of times. And I think this might have been around the time I was buying my girl a ring. No, it wasn't. But I'll try to figure out who told me this. It was around the Sapphire, not the ring. So I go to this one place. I get the thing appraised and then I didn't like the guy's appraisal. You know what I mean? It wasn't too low. It was too low. Okay. I think it was even less than what I bought it for technically USD. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I was like, oh, shoot, don't get it. I got this. Yeah, first break. You know what I mean? I can't run up on them. You know, I will have to fly, walk, run, bike and boat to get to them. That's not worth the cost. And then I got it appraised again because all of a sudden it's like, you know, I also just use this as a learning lesson. And the guy was like, the second guy, he really gave me a game. And he was just like, first of all, you know, diamonds, sapphire, all this stuff. Like people say it's an investment, but it's really not an investment. All right. And he said that he said, pretty much when you buy them, they all lose value. And people will tell you again, that it's some type of investment, but here's the reality. It's hard for most people to actually sell a diamond, sell a sapphire or something like this and flip it. Why is that? Because when you're trying to look for a sapphire, you're trying to look for a diamond, you don't have the education in most cases to really figure out if it's real. Yeah. All right. Like even me, I'd be like, Hey, I got this sapphire. You know, it's only for, I'm gonna give it to you for this much. Like, I don't know, man. Like, I don't really know about this sapphire. Am I really getting a good deal? You know what I mean? Like it's hard to feel comfortable about it. Right? You're trying to finesse me. All right. So that's what most people are dealing with. So what does that mean? He said, it's easier like to sell if you have an entire setup like me. And he like kind of pointed to the spread. This is my world. You see these diamonds. You see all the cases. You have a full store. Now people come and they trust you. And those are the people who really can sell. People who are doing one-offs. Like it's very hard to do like those one-off sales. You might find some websites and get into it deep and spend a lot of time and find a way to like, and make some money here and there. But the perception of it is different. So it's hard for you to sell it. He was like, when you think about a car, all right, in most cases, that's changing a little bit because of how people are buying online and things like that. But he was just like, it being on the car lot at a full dealership, there's a lot more trust that goes into that situation than where you're willing to purchase. All right, there's a lot more assumption of value, quality, real, et cetera, just because it's on a car lot versus when you buy something directly from just a one-on-one person. All right. So it was like one, generally speaking, they're not investments like people make them seem. But even if you were able to technically find it to be a higher marketplace value, it's so hard for most people on an individual basis to sell off a lot of these. Now, like when we're talking about gold, yeah, you can get up off a gold, right? That's a whole different thing, man. But yeah, that was, it all came down to the perception, right? It's no difference than any other type of social proof and things. People come to our agency because we've worked with so many people and done so many things. They've seen us educate people for free. We've gotten accolades, that's much easier from a marketer who just starts off and say, I want to charge X, Y, and Z, right? So that's the type of thing that goes back to packaging though. That store, my store, my jewelry store, or my car lot, what does your car lot look like? That when you get them back to the boxing, the pricing, whatever that full experience looks like, and then how do you continue to sell that story of that experience to people since you aren't going to have a physical story? You could, but how do you continue to sell that? And I think that's how we're going to look at creating the videos that we create around it with the photo shoots and everything. Yeah, I agree, I agree. That was good, that was good. I didn't know where you was going with it when you started with it. I went to Thailand, but I'm glad it went where it went. Hey, that was a great trip, man. I'm going to be in more details on that later. How to sell as the next topic. Talk about the pre-orders and pointing them to the line of age. All right, so look, first of all, we chose a pre-order or a process. We're going to tell you why. I think some of y'all might know why, and why it's pretty obvious. But let us entertain this. Let us walk you through our logic and we'll tell you how you can actually see what the design looks like and where we are in the process, too. But, Shikori, talk about why we chose the pre-order process. Yeah, I mean, long story short, it's going to take a long time to get here. Just being straightforward, transparent. And we thought about doing this. We talked about doing a really elaborate rollout where it's like, yo, let's wear the merchants, wear on the podcast and stuff. But the reality of what you guys are like, the samples ain't got here yet. The samples will be here another two or three weeks, which means that we will have to get the samples, fill them out, make sure the quality is right, and then put the orders in to wait another five to eight weeks for them to get here. No. So what I propose is like, hey, let's do a pre-order campaign. We'll end the pre-order campaign a little bit after we get the samples because then we'll know our quality is great. And I trust the quality because, like I said, from who we got it from, I trust it. But I want to be short. You know what I'm saying? Like I want to be short, just 100%. So we'll be able to run the pre-order. Like Sean mentioned, gauge interest around different products and different color ways and things and see how many we need to order. And then that way, I'm not ordering 150 Black hoodies and only 20 people bought it. And I ordered 100 Pink hoodies and 300 people bought it. So we want to make sure that like we said, this is our first time doing it to this type of scale. Like in for ourselves and we want to make sure that we're able to get things out right. And so a pre-order campaign just made the most sense. And now we can see how many y'all are really serious. And then we can also take your feedback and apply that to future drops. Right? Like we said, this first drop is going to be evergreen, essentially. So if Sean is fighting for the Blue hoodie and I'm fighting for the Red hoodie and then more y'all buy the Red hoodie. And that gives me the way to say, Hey Sean, I told you bro, now yes, we're getting 300 of these Red hoodies. You know what I'm saying? We're not splitting. We're only going to get 30 of the Blue ones because y'all are minority. You know what I'm saying? It is what it is. You know? So it just felt right logistically. You know? And like we said, if we ever move vendors to somewhat domestically or we build some type of in-house operation, maybe we'll stop doing this. And maybe the process would be a little more streamlined to what we don't have to have as much lead time to figure out what we need to figure out. But for now, you know what I'm saying? This current iteration, you know what I'm saying? As of today, 2023, the pre-order campaign makes most sense. Yes. Yeah. And if you guys want to see what the design looks like, go to nolabelsnecessary.com. You can see design design. And go ahead and pre-order. If you like one of the designs, if you want to be a part of this inaugural class, I'm going to tell you this inaugural class is going to be special, right? So we're going to mark these hoodies for those who are the OGs. There's going to be a special, you know, placement of the design. And just so people can know and improve, show improve. Oh, man, I got this little mark on my wrist or on the back of the hoodie or whatever. We haven't decided exactly what that's going to look like. We're working on that now. But there's going to be special placement on this hoodie to so people know that this is the first launch. And I got my hoodie from the first launch. I'm an OG. Now, why is that important? Again, go to nolabelsnecessary.com to actually see what it looks like. And, you know, go ahead and pre-order if you are interested in that. Or if you just want to see it again, just go look at it. But why do we need this mark for the beginning? So this is going to be our staple piece. Remember earlier, we talked about we're going to do capsules that are limited in availability. But we have our staple that is going to be available to whoever wants it. And it's just going to stay available, right? Whoever. Long term. That's a long term vision, right? For this. And there will probably be a couple of other staple pieces over time. But if this is our staple piece, how do we know that someone got it as an OG piece? You know what I mean? Or it's just a staple piece that they bought two years from now? Well, we know because those first batches are just going to have that small differentiation, that small little patch or whatever that might be, right? Whatever we haven't decided again what it is going to be. But that's our way of not having to change the design. You got the staple piece, but it's one little mark. So we know it's up, and then we're just going to remove it for the future prints. So there's that. And then on the other end, alluding to the pre-order process that you, Corey, talked about, you talk about staple piece and the colors and things like that, we'll be able to know which ones can stay available in mass in the long term, right? Because oh, shoot. All right. We don't need to make the cream and brown a staple, even though we love that, that might be limited launches or whatever, because they don't like that combination. Oh, but yeah, there's enough people buying this black version of the hoodie, so we can always make sure the black is available. And we might have some things that are key to the process that we're always printing ourselves, and then we might have some things that we out continue to outsource, or it might be vice versa, whatever that looks like. But this type of information is going to inform us. How do we present the pieces in terms of availability? And how do we communicate? That to the audience. Yeah, which is such a different process of life. Yeah. That's the next step. I'll be thinking about that. That's the next step, man. The nuances of the post lunch. Yeah. That's going to be an interesting video. That's what that's a fact. So again, go to knowlabelsnecessary.com. We'll put a link to it under here too. I don't think we're going to have a backslash or anything weird, but knowlabelsnecessary.com to be able to view what it looks like, and then also pre-order it. Now, last topic that we want to get to is just the Wish I Knews. All right. I wish I knew. What, Jacqui? I wish I knew that China has a file that eight weeks leave time. Yeah, I for sure wish you knew that. I was like, damn, it takes that long, man. The boat ride is that. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. What else did you wish you knew, Jacqui? I wish I knew the samples were so expensive, bro. I was looking at like, man, 160 for a hoodie. I don't know what else I could have got with that, but I feel like I could have got a lot of things. You know what I'm saying? That's a fact. At least, I ain't trying to be cheap, but that's at least like three Zara hoodies. You know what I'm saying? Like, at least, you know. I don't know. Is there a designer hoodie out there in the game that you would have paid $200 for? Yeah, I have. All right. Well, so respect your own brand, man. But it's the sample, man. It's not the point. It's the sample. The most I've ever paid for a hoodie is like $600. Damn, I know. I bought that hoodie in 2017. I still have it today. That's great. You better have it. That's crazy, bro. I ain't spent that much on a hoodie before. It get wild, man. Like, people don't know, man, I come in here and just t-shirts and shit, man, but I got some pieces in my closet, man. I ain't sitting on proud of it, but they far. Oh, yeah, man. I bet your son gonna be wearing that hoodie, bro. You got to pass that bad boy down. The messaging is still relevant. And I'll wear it one day, see if people can tell. Actually, I think I have a word on the part I got the word. Man, I think about it. And then I think about it, yeah, but, you know. Amen, man. Definitely, man. As long as you feel good. My kid's cute. The other thing I wish that I knew, you know what I'm saying, is that, like, I wish I knew that the vendors don't ship it out for you. What you mean? By you still, you have to be shipped the product, and then you have to ship it to them. Oh, because it's not drop shipping. Yeah, exactly. I don't know why. Maybe it's probably me being ignorant. I just assumed like the drop shipping model had taken over everything. So, like, when the lady I was talking to was like, you know, I'm like, yo, is that extra fee for shipping? Is that an extra fee to ship it to you? I'm like, nah, but what about, like, what about everybody else? Like, can I just give you designer, you making y'all shipping? And she was like, nah, we don't do that. I was like, damn, nah, even for me? What if I had a little extra money or not? No, you got to ship it. So I'm sure there are companies that do it, but I do wish that I knew that going into it, that every company don't. That is not as prevalent as you would believe from all these drop shipping courses out here on mine. Exactly, bro. Yeah, exactly, bro. I'm like, man, so they have it. Like, there are companies on Alibaba that do do it, but like, the ones that we got recommended don't do it. You haven't talked about a China-Mexico thing at all there out here. So, yeah, what's the wish I knew around that? Well, so, that's funny, Zach put this on here. But nah, because we had a conversation where I was like, you know, China is for whatever reason, the most popular place when it comes to like clothing vendors and international clothing vendors. It seems from what I've known, what I've seen. And the reason Mexico is on here is I was wondering if it would have been cheaper and gotten here faster if we got vendors from like different countries. So Mexico's on there because Zach was like, yo, maybe like Mexico has like clothing vendors. I was like, maybe I need to look it up. I haven't looked it up yet as of this episode. But that makes me wonder like, hey, would it maybe have taken two weeks to get here from Mexico instead of five to eight weeks coming from China? You know what I'm saying? So like, this is more of like a note to myself. It was supposed to be a note to myself, not a note in this, you know what I'm saying? But I do, maybe there's something I wish I knew. I wish I knew that there were other countries that could get this shit made just as cheap and get it here just as fast. So if y'all know about any, yeah, Canada, bro, y'all making merch, bro. But see, Canada, man, Canada boogey like us, bro. I know, man. You know what I'm saying? It was everything. What are his goals, Jamaica? Mexico, probably boogeys like us too, but I don't know, I think about it, man. I don't know. I got, so I got one of the artists that we've helped grow when we were doing our TikTok boot camp. Shout out to, I ain't even throw your name out here just yet, you know what I mean? We're gonna have a conversation though. He's very willing to help us. But artists we took from basically like 3K to, I don't know, he probably had 760K. He's making a lot of money and all that stuff. I don't know you're talking one now. Yeah, he gets his stuff from Mexico or whatever. He got the, he got the plug. So I'm gonna ask him, like what those numbers look like. But until then, we should all have to get it on episode. We're just gonna run with this China play and see how it goes. Well, we're gonna, I'll just say, I figure we let this one run go. And then now we have at least something to compare it to. And then we got more education to put out in the marketplace. We'll just let y'all know how that goes on the episode. But again, no labels necessary.com to pre-order. If y'all are interested in this, this pre-order process is going to end on June 19th. June 19th. June 19th, baby. 2023. Show us some love, you know what I mean? That's the day of any days to help us out. Throw us a bone. Throw us a bone on Juneteenth. So this will end there. So we're gonna drop this like what, two weeks before? Well, like what, Thursday? Yeah. A couple of days from now or whatever. And if y'all even question the hoodie and the value and the pricing, I think we've broken down why we've done that just being transparent. And if anything, y'all like, yo, $80. Remember, we pay 160 for these hoes, bro. So we willing to put our money where our mouth is. We paid double the price just to get these damn samples. Hopefully, you know, just to make sure we get to touch the quality. And that's the biggest thing. I want to mention that as the last thing, which, you know, people might have trailed off by now, but we maybe could talk about another episode. For me personally, which kind of gives me like some anxiety, like, damn, bro, it's like all these different options, like you said. And then you have different countries that you can't order from. But it's like, but what is the quality? I can't be in the store and touch and feel it. So it's like, all right, yeah, okay, what if we could get cheaper hoodies from Mexico? But what if it's not the same type of hoodie that we want? Like in terms of the same quality? Or even if it's a different, like, high quality texture, what if it's not the same cut? You know what I'm saying? And we like the cut a little bit better. The colors, man. Some of them don't have certain colors. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it's crazy. You know, but hey, we'll see. We'll see. As we scale one day, we might end up like some of these brands who, you know, some of these products from this country, some of these products from that country, you know, you just, whoever was available at the time. Whoever could make it the closest to the space we want. Exactly, exactly. But that is yet. Oh, well, one, let us know. Because hey, if y'all don't really appreciate this merch episode, you know, and y'all don't want to see us do a series, then we ain't going to keep doing it. But if y'all appreciate this, y'all find value in this and y'all want to continue to see our process and us putting it out here like that. And well, yeah, yeah, let's drop in the comments. Let us know. This is yet another episode of No Labels, Necessary High Cards. I'm Brand Man, Sean. And I'm Cory. And we out. Peace.