Success Stories Ep 78 - "Success-on-demand with Jeff Seifert"

If you are in the print-on-demand game, today's guest will be someone you need to hear. Jed Siefert with stakes manufacturing in Eastlake, Ohio, joins us today to chat all about high-volume digital print-on-demand services. They have one of the largest print-on-demand shops in the United States so you are in for a real treat. 

But that's not all! They also are quite proud of their diversity and inclusion program with a large number of their employees having intellectual or developmental disabilities, including some of their top performers. 

We'll learn about those points and more on today's show. So buckle up and get ready for an amazing episode.

Transcript

Marshall Atkinson 
If you are in the print on demand game, today's guest will be someone you need to hear. Jeff Siefert with stakes manufacturing and Eastlake, Ohio, joins us today to chat all about high volume digital print on demand services. They have one of the largest print on demand shops in the United States. So you are in for a real treat. But that's not all. At stakes. They also are quite proud of their diversity and inclusion program, with a large number of their employees having intellectual or developmental disabilities, including some are their top performers. We'll learn about those points and more on today's show. So buckle up and get ready for an amazing episode. So Jeff, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

Jeff Seifert 
Hey, Marshall, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, and I think it's gonna be a great show. And very interesting on numerous points here. Because print-on-demand is certainly swell to be one of the biggest topics in the industry, also, with how we're handling our labor and stuff. So I think this is really going to be a remarkable episode. Thank you so much for taking the time out to chat today.

Jeff Seifert 
Well, I hope I live up to that hype.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, we'll see you're ready for the first question. Fire away. All right, so let's just kick the show off with how you got started in the industry with print on demand services. So tell that story.

Jeff Seifert 
I guess I got to take you way back almost 15 years at this point. My business partner was an a&r at Warner Music Group, my business partner is my best friend since I was five years old. And you know, he found a skin product so a vinyl skins for iPods, cell phones, laptops, and started a company called Music skins licensing images from everybody from the Beatles to SpongeBob to Muhammad Ali to Kim Kardashian to South Park. And I was selling enterprise software to Fortune 500 companies, you know, bit bored with life. And we decided to join forces and build this company together from scratch and, you know, emptied out the 401 K put everything into this our first business and you know as a true entrepreneur story and built that business up and then in, you know, in our entire model was print on demand, because we had 1000s of devices that only had a shelf life of a year when the next iPhone would come out. And then we also had hundreds of 1000s of pieces of artwork, so we couldn't carry inventory of anything. So we really, in the entire model was print on demand. We ended up selling that business at the peak of the industry in 2011. And we had a non compete the electronic space. But we were already kind of looking to transition out of that. So we, you know, we wanted to transition to print on demand model into the apparel space. We partnered with a screen printer at Cleveland to build out print on demand company. And the goal was to be an enterprise company to really just be b2b working with large aggregators, so not your typical print on demand company where you'd have an app that you can go download and Shopify marketplace but working with high level aggregators, from the sports leagues to record labels to TV to, you know, other print on demand companies that you might be think would be our competition. And we built out that business with them till about 2019 at and then there was an opportunity for us to acquire it from them, which we did. We recapitalized it and it just took off like a rocket ship and we've been running ever since.

Marshall Atkinson 
And it's always been based in Ohio.

Jeff Seifert 
Yeah, it's always been based in Ohio. We are in Eastlake, which is just outside of Cleveland. So we've got 110,000 square foot production facility to former Walmart. So just imagine a Walmart emptied out and filled in with a lot of DTG and a lot of DTF equipment and a lot of garments.

Marshall Atkinson 
Okay, and you're still doing licensing stuff, right?

Jeff Seifert 
So, we don't actually license we just we're just the decorator, we're just the guy behind the guy. So you know, we're sports league approved Disney approval. CWA approved, but we're just the manufacturer. So our business is really broken up into two sides. One is direct to consumer ecommerce fulfillment. So you go to beatles.com, you buy a shirt, that order automatically comes to us via API, we print and ship it. Within a few days, we white labeled as if we're Sony Music Group and the Beatle shop and shipped to the end consumer. So to the end, consumer steaks doesn't exist, right. And the platform allows folks to sell product without actually having to carry inventory, and create net new revenue by launching products that they wouldn't sell because they wouldn't want to have buy them right. It also allows them to expand on sizes colorways with no upfront cost. The other half of our business is quick turn low minimum wholesale. So basically all the stuff that the screen printers don't want to touch 24 piece orders, orders that need to be turned in, you know, just a couple of days. So our business is about 5050, wholesale versus direct to consumer ecommerce fulfillment. And from a production standpoint, we're about 5050, DTG, and DTF. But we also don't do things the way everybody else does, we've got our own proprietary file prep process. For DTF. We've sourced our own film powder, and ink and consumables. And what that allows us to do is things that most folks can't do in digital printing. So, you know, digital printing with you know, the difference between RGB and CMYK. You can't, most printers can't digitally Pantone match, but because of our proprietary technology that we've been that we've built an iterated over the years, we're a little Pantone match, which is what enables us to, you know, work with everything from you know, these large corporations to, you know, to, like I said to sports teams and everything in between.

Marshall Atkinson 
So are you using, like extra chrome heads with just more colors than them?

Jeff Seifert 
Oh, I can't tell you all the secrets of how we do it. I mean, we have we have a fleet of, we have a fleet of over 20 coordinates, we've got the largest fleet of called Desi DTF equipment on the planet, right. And we even we put in our own hardware, we Frankenstein things quite a bit. So we don't necessarily use it the way everybody else does.

Marshall Atkinson 
So you got your you've got the brainiac team, getting all your ICC color profiles built so you can hit whatever color you need to hit and it's dialed in.
 
Jeff Seifert 
We    have an incredible team that comes from decades of experience in full color and screen printing and, and litho. And taking sort of all of that and color theory. But then also, you know, engineers and mechanics, I mean, we have eight full time, eight full time engineers on staff. We have four full time applications, people on staff, so we're constantly iterating to you know, make improvements. And you know, people come to us, because they're looking for retail quality. If you're printing a meme shirt, you don't care if it's the exact Pantone you don't care if the ink fades after 10 washes, but you buy, you know, an expensive t shirt for 35 bucks with you know, your favorite brand or your favorite band or whatever. You expect it to be perfect. And, you know, that's Yeah, and we are an extension of those brands as they're decorated. Right.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's great. And Could you have imagined, you know, when you got started? Excuse me, let me ask that again. Can you imagine when you got started where you would be now with it everything?

Jeff Seifert 
Yes. And no. You know, I think that nobody could have predicted COVID We were gonna buy this business six months before COVID hit. And nobody was going to predict that COVID was going to explode the market. Because, you know, ecommerce skyrocketed, because, you know, physical retail was shut down. So, you know, there was a lot of things kind of fell into place. But at the same time, you know, me and my business partner, our, and our entire staff are incredibly hard workers and incredibly talented. And so, you know, not being successful was never an option. I just don't know if we knew the magnitude of how quickly it would grow.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right, right. I love that. So what's the volume you pump out daily? You must have really high attention to detail in your processes. Can you talk about that? Because I know some of our listeners are very interested in processes and process development. So how are you doing that? How are you constantly tweaking them? What's your thoughts on that?

Jeff Seifert 
Yeah, I mean, you said it mean well, you're pumping out 10s of 1000s of units a day. You better have very tight processes, you better have great technology and a Fortunately, there is no off the shelf solution that you can go by to do it. So, you know, we've built out all of our technology systems, from our order management platform, from our purchasing system with machine learning to our file prep process, I mean, pretty much everything we've, we've built out ourselves and customized and it's, and while we're a printer, by trade, we really consider ourselves more of a technology company. And if you come to our facility, that's exactly what you'll see. And it's impossible, you know, the printing actually might even be the easier part, it's fulfilling all those orders, it's properly purchasing and, and bringing in the garments, there's just so much to it, that if you don't have really tight technology, you're just gonna get things they're gonna get lost in the shuffle, it's going to impact your quality scores and your turnaround time. So, you know, we're constantly working on that we have a fantastic development team. And again, we've we've basically built a solution that just didn't exist. So it's, which is fun. But it also is an ongoing challenge, right? Because we're always iterating. And we're continuing to move forward, right, we were looking to do more automation and more machine learning and get, you know, leverage AI. So I think technology is the key to processes that in every aspect. It's the key to accountability, it's the key to having proper KPIs and, you know, business intelligence to analyze your business and see where the holes are, so that you can streamline things and create next level efficiencies. So yeah, we're really proud of it, we really think of ourselves as actually more of a technology company on sort of the process and operations and more of an r&d company on sort of the production side of things because of, you know, how we re engineer the equipment and all that doing different chemistry than folks.

Marshall Atkinson 
So are you measuring everything, you know, everything has to have a number, and it's all graphed and charted out and, you know, percentages. And, like, exactly, this is where we should be, or this tells us, we need to change something or, Hey, look at that, over there. What Let's investigate why we're not getting that result. Do you guys measure and have KPIs that you're constantly observing? Oh,

Jeff Seifert 
of course. Yeah. I mean, so every item in our facility gets a QR code that follows it through the entire process, that QR code is going to tell it, you know, what garment to go pick what lane to go stage it in what machine to go to. What KSF settings or printer settings, it needs to be, what dryer settings, there needs to be, where it's going to ship, what shipping method it's going to do. So if we ever have an error, we can track every single human being that's touched that item, we can track every single machine that's touched that item, we have our own internal KPIs on spoilage, and, and quality scores. But we also get feedback from our customers, right, and we take all of those things and use them to, you know, find solutions and resolve any potential issues throughout the process. You know, from a warehouse standpoint, you know, we're integrated with all of our suppliers. So we have automated purchasing, we have demand based algorithms that tell us what the on hand quantity of garments we need to have. And that adjusts, you know, we've got chaotic storage in the warehouse, very similar to like an Amazon does. So we take a lot of steps through both technology and you know, good old fashioned manual horsepower, to make sure that everything's streamlined and efficient throughout the process and very data driven organization, because we believe that that's the only way that you're going to improve yourself, your company, and your efficiency, but it's also the only way that you're going to help your employees improve by, you know, having accountability and quantifying and setting goals and all that good stuff.

Marshall Atkinson 
So for a listener who might be 1000 miles down the road from where they are, can you just drop a little nugget for them as to why this stuff really matters? And why you can it especially measuring and having KPIs and looking at stuff can help you make better business decisions. So just think about somebody who isn't as far as long as you are. Why should they be interested in that?

Jeff Seifert 
Well, it that's a pretty simple question to answer. If you if you do your math based off of the brochures from the machine manufacturers, then you're going to think that you're just printing money, but the reality is, it's not the truth. And I think all too often printers don't do math, and that can lead you to going out of business. really, really quick, you know, it's already a relatively thin margin business. So you got to do your own math to make sure that you're a profitable business and if you're bleeding anywhere that you can find it and also because if you're not keeping those KPIs, then you're not making the improvements on your quality scores, and addressing potential issues that are going to keep your customers from leaving and going to other providers.

Marshall Atkinson 
Like what you hear so far, be sure to subscribe so you can get the latest from Success Stories. And now here's Zach shortly with the SMS spotlight from creating

Marshall Atkinson 
We have all this fancy equipment, right, but we need employees to run it. So with employees, what do you think? Is your biggest challenge? Or any any company's biggest challenge? Is it hiring? Is it training? Is it motivation? What do you think that is? And what are you guys doing to resolve it?

Jeff Seifert 
So I think that hiring and retention right now are challenges that crossover to every industry on the planet at this point. And I don't think that those are going to go away. Ever. At this point, I think sort of, it wasn't just sort of like a temporary COVID shift in the availability of employees, there's been a really just a cultural shift in the economy shift. And a mindset shift. And there's just it's very difficult to hire and retain quality employees. And not only is it difficult to do that, but the cost to do so continues to increase at a rate that we've never seen before. I mean, what we were paying pre COVID on an hourly basis to right now is more of a gain in an hourly wage, and probably happened in the quarter of a century prior to that. So it's just been, it's been incredible. And everybody's kind of going through those difficulties. So, you know, we navigate those challenges through a few different mechanisms. I mean, one is, I think, you know, we're a very culture driven business where, you know, we joke around that we're the anti Amazon, because you're not just a number when you come to work for us, we try to create a family like atmosphere, we try to create a very safe, open a diverse environment where people can come to work and feel comfortable and enjoy themselves, where people can come to work and actually feel like they're making an impact beyond just doing their their day to day job, but actually making a social impact to help the community. And, you know, and then we also do other stuff that brings, you know, the teams together through, you know, everything through parties or activities, or we do free lunch a couple of days a week to, to really just, we have a representation committee, just really just getting people involved. We try to empower our employees. So we do a lot of education and getting people certified and, you know, green belts and Six Sigma is and really empowering our middle level managers to learn, be empowered, take on more responsibilities and investing in them. And I think that that gets reciprocated. And then we also, as you mentioned early on, we are big champions of disability inclusion in the workplace. You know, my brother 23 years ago got a job working at the Securities and Exchange Commission in DC in the mailroom as a mail clerk. And it changed his life gave him the ability to move out of my parents house, create his own financial independence, pays our bills have worked friends purpose, you know, and he's a great worker, like all the things that everybody deserves, but most people take for granted. So when we acquired the business and started it, our first initiative was we wanted to provide other folks with disabilities that same opportunity that my brother did that, you know, truly changed his life truly changed my family's life. And, you know, to be clear, though, we're not talking about charity. Here. We're talking about meaningful employment. We're talking about mutually beneficial employment. We're talking Talking about some of our best employees in our business. You know we have right now I think we're just over 10% of our staff has intellectual or developmental disabilities. And they're some of our top performers. We have roughly 3540 People in our warehouse and our top warehouse employee every single month this year, based off of speed and accuracy KPIs alone. This is a 21 year old gentleman with autism who actually came to work for us because we also have a partnership with our local County school system where we have a school to work transition program, where we'll have a number of people with disabilities each semester that are juniors and seniors, they'll come work a couple hours a day, they'll get an on site, job mentor, they're gonna get high school credit for it. And they learn to be independent workers. And then you know, when they transition out of high school, if it's a good fit for them, and a good fit for us to get the opportunity for full time employment. So the gentleman I just referenced who is a graduate from that program, our top shipper, we've got about 3035 shippers, our top shippers, a gentleman with autism, who just saw that we hire people with all abilities in our hiring ads. So we applied and he's our second fastest shipper, our most accurate shipper and as a perfect attendance on the year, so combined makes them far and away our most reliable and best shipper. So again, this is where you get some of your best employees. And and we're not just stopping it, you know, our business, you know, what we're trying to do is use our business as a case study to really impact industry wide change in the print and print industry. Because the print industry, unfortunately, is a bit behind the times in diversity and inclusion. But it is also a perfect fit for people with disabilities. Because folks with disabilities, they learned from repetition. And they also feel at home with repetition. So a lot of the jobs in my facility, 90% of the things on the floor are doing the same thing every day, right, whether you're, you know, pulled shirts, or you're hanging tagging things, or your heat pressing shirts. And when you have a lot of repetition, typically folks without disabilities, those are gonna be the jobs that have the most turnover. Well, people with disabilities flourish in that and feel at home. So, you know, hiring people with disabilities is not just going to get you the best workers. But you know, people get concerned with oh, well, you know, maybe it takes me longer to train him. But if I got a job that is turning over every nine months, but I can hire this person and maybe take a day or two extra to train them, but then they're going to work for me for years to come. You know that that's pretty priceless. But it goes beyond that. I mean, it's it has a dramatic impact on company culture, you know, we have folks that don't leave us and could go make another dollar to an hour, because they liked the social impact. They liked it, they're coming to work and feel like they're changing people's lives and being a part of something bigger. So you know, and what we're also trying to do is educate people in the model, because what most people don't know is there's disability employment service providers, all over the country, and they're federally funded, and they will help find screen hire on board and train disabled employees as well as train your managers how to work with disabled employees at zero cost to the employer. So where else are you going to find, you know, a free hiring and training agency. And this huge untapped workforce mean 80% of people with developmental disabilities and intellectual disabilities are unemployed. And that's not because they don't want to work. It's just because there's all these preconceived notions and stigmas around them. And that's what we're really working hard to actively change. And it's working. You know, we've we've helped Chorney set up an inclusion program, we've helped rock set up an inclusion program. I just had a call earlier today with m&r, and we're helping them set up an inclusion program. So we've worked with a number of screen printers all over the country. You know, and I think that, you know, what you'll also see is, it creates a cultural shift in your business, it makes all of your employees more empathetic, makes all of your managers better training because the reality is we should be tailoring our training to all of our employees, not just our disabled employees, and it makes people work harder when you get your butts kicked in KPIs by somebody with disabilities, it's quite a motivating factor. And, you know, I can't say it's all disabled, but are in general, most of our disabled employees are some of the most upbeat, they're they show up on there. The some of the most reliable, you know, and it really brings a contagious positive attitude to the workplace. That's pretty priceless.

Marshall Atkinson 
So that's fantastic and huge kudos to you guys for developing and getting that going. What are your other employees think about it I mean, is it? I mean, do you have to train them on how to work around or work with these people? Or, like, you know, you know, there must be some sort of thing that you have to do to get everybody to really be comfortable? Because maybe they have never experienced working or even talking with somebody with some of these challenges?

Jeff Seifert 
Yeah, it's a great question. I think, you know, for us, it starts with transparency, and over communication, before you even walk it before you ever even apply to work with us, you know, that we're hiring people with disabilities, just by looking at all of our marketing materials, all of our ads, you sit down an interview, you walk into our ability, you can already see the diversity and not just diversity with disabilities, I'm talking about race, religion, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, you name it, it is it is a wonderful mix of beautiful people at our facility. And we've been very transparent about the importance of what we were doing and hiring people with disabilities, and how important was to us as a company, and, and we've leveraged the resources and the disability employment service providers that we talked about, they train our managers, you know, they provide on site job coaches, and it's ongoing coaching, right. You know, I think a lot of people get worried about that, well, what, if this happens, I'm not going to know how to navigate the situation. Well, I might not know how to navigate the situation, either. And I've been, you know, had disabled brother Mo, like, he just pick up the phone, call the job coach, and they'll help you out. They'll do they'll get you situated. They'll also, you know, if need be, they might even get the parents involved, which I'm never going to call somebody's parents, right. But if that can help kind of impact change. So for example, you know, we had one employee that was, you know, just turning around signs during this break as like a nervous tic, what do you do just call job coach, and then, you know, it got resolved, or it could be down to, you know, all right, well, this perform this, this employees underperforming. So what we also had to train our employees on is, this is this is we're a for profit business. So we're hiring folks with disabilities, but we have the expectation that they're going to perform at the same level as our other employees, right? Granted, there might be some accommodations in the way that we train or set them up for success. But, you know, if an employee's only hitting 60% of their goal, we need to address it, and you can get the you know, and then the job coach will come back out and help, you know, fix it or, you know, it might not work out and you got to transition to a different employee, you know, a different new employee. We also work close with the state vocational rehabilitation office. So every state has a voc Voc Rehab office, and part of what they do is help people with disabilities, find employment and independent living and all that stuff. That's not just disabilities to help veterans, all types of folks. But they will provide free resources as well. So we had, you know, in the state of Ohio, we were with the vocational rehabilitation office. They have a department which is eau de, which is opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities, which is a division of the voc rehab office, and they'll provide all types of free resources, educational materials, just a few weeks ago, are there so yeah, we had them come out to our facility, and they did disability in the workplace, etiquette training, and basically, you know, because a lot of folks that worked for us, they may have never been exposed to somebody with disabilities in their, you know, immediate circles, you know, and to be quite frank, even myself, who's been exposed my whole life. I didn't know until I hired somebody that was deaf, that they didn't like being called hearing impaired, right. So, you know, you just don't know these things. So they came in, they did all types of training to you know, teach us like, hey, you know, if you're talking to somebody in a wheelchair, don't lean over and get in their face, just stand up like you would anybody else might be simple things like that. But also just breaking down stigma is like, one of the activities was they had a list of disabilities and a list of jobs and they go alright, which disabilities least likely to do which job in the unanimous in the entire six years summit attendees to this training session, said that you couldn't have a blind forklift driver. Then of course, the guy who brought the guy from the Eau de was like, well, actually, we've got a guy who has no peripheral vision whatsoever, you can only see a foot in front, you know, like, the foot wide in front of him. But they installed kind of like kind of like your rear view mirror in the in the car mirrors on the throughout the tilt the forklift, and he was able to get certified. And so you know, my team's just mind exploded, like, oh my god, we're putting all these people in boxes and setting these, you know, limits that don't really necessarily exist. We maybe just haven't yet figured Did out, and what a beautiful moment came out of it too. Because, you know, we had a couple of folks who've got families with, you know, with disabled children with disabilities, you know, come out and talk about it and express it, we had some people that had never disclosed that they even had a disability say, hey, you know, I've never told an employer this before, I've never felt safe enough to do it, I always thought I would get treated different or lose my job. But I feel safe enough here and then sold a room of 60 people that they had a disability for the first time. So, you know, there's a lot of resources out there to help your managers and support your team, and really work closely with them and train them. And then there's also a lot of documentation out there and a lot of other resources and organizations. But really, it's all about leaning on your your individual, either local disability employment service provider, which is the job coaches and all that. Or your vocational rehabilitation office. Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
So I think that I can't I can't speak for everybody, of course, but I think a lot of reasons why people don't go this route, is because of fear. They're afraid they're afraid they're going to say something wrong or do something wrong, or it's going to cost them a bunch of money, or there's something in there. That's really scary, right? How can somebody just take one small little baby step and learn, right, maybe, maybe visit another company that could be in a different industry locally to see how they do it or something? Is there some sort of baby step thing that somebody could do to help assuage that fear and maybe get to a point where they might be interested in doing this with their own print facility?

Jeff Seifert 
Yeah, absolutely. You know, so a great organization to start with is CS AVR, said CS avr.org, it's the Council of State Administrators should start over there, I'll start over that it's a great organization to start is the CES, a VR, which is the Council of State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation, they have a division called the net, there, you can find them at CSAA vr.org. Or you can start there, they sort of are like the national body that deals with all the vocational rehabilitation offices across the country. And they can set you up with a local person in your area to to work with you. There's another great organization called absi, which is a p s e.org. They're the National Trade Organization for disability employment service providers. So they can also help direct you to a local provider. And I think that, you know, the way the process works, you don't have to understand anything, right, you don't no need to know a job that you're going to fill, you don't need to know how to do anything, you just reach out to these folks, right. So then what they're going to do is they're going to send somebody to your facility to meet you, they're going to do an audit of your facility, they're going to look at all of your entry level positions, and see where the good fits are. And they're going to work through what the process looks like, what the training looks like. And I always say start small start with you start with one individual write it and build on it from there, right. But what you're going to end up seeing is, for example, I had a screen printer that I helped set up with these guys. And you know, they thought they were just gonna hire somebody that was gonna be picking up boxes, you know, taking them off trucks, bringing them in bringing them into, you know, the receiving area, right. But after going through the process, it turned out that the position that they had opened, that was the best bid, especially for the candidates that were available, was they had a data entry position, which, you know, most people don't go, Oh, I got data entry, let me go get somebody with disabilities. But the reality is, all disabilities are different. And there's a huge spectrum of disabilities, right? So like people with autism or happen to be some of the most detail oriented people there are, right. So it's great for stuff like data entry and things like that. So these folks will really help support you through the process, you know, and it's also not one size fits all. So for example, there's some really archaic laws in this country that we're working currently at the federal level at the federal level to change. You know, it's just in just on Capitol Hill a few weeks ago, talking to congressmen and senators, and we're trying to get some bills and some legislation passed. Because right now, there's many people with disabilities to get certain medical benefits from The Federal Government through Medicaid, and if they make too much money or work too many hours, they lose those benefits. So you have a huge portion of disabled population that really can only even work part time. So if you've got part time positions, you can even start in that capacity. You know, and I think that also, if you reach out to the organizations I met before mentioned before, they could probably also refer you over to local organizations that already have inclusion programs like us. So if you actually wanted to go see it in person, you could do so. Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
So I think the challenge here is to not come at this with preconceived notions that it won't work. And I know so many people are so desperately trying to find staff for their, for their businesses, that this is an unexplored avenue that maybe is worth just some time to just to see what might happen, don't you think? Yeah, of course,

Jeff Seifert 
I mean, it's a huge talent pool, and if that wants to go to work, that's going to be excited to go to work that's going to show up every day. You know, it's, and I think, again, it's gonna it'll have incredible ROI, and cultural impact on your business. And let's be frank, I think that it's also will help you grow your business, because people want to work, you know, people want to work with people that are making a social impact these days, especially the younger generation. Yeah, gone are the days where people don't care about that, you know, they really they want to, they want to do business with people that they feel are giving back to the community. And this is a great way to do it. It's really a win win, win all around.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's good. All right. So let's wrap up the show. And is there something that's going on in the industry right now? That just that steaks is really interested in, you know, whether it's AI or mid journey, or just chat GPT? Or whatever? What are you guys interested in about the future? What do you guys thinking about?

Jeff Seifert 
I think that, you know, AI, robotics and automation are at the top of our lists. And and I believe if you're not looking into those three things, as a business right now, then you've been asleep for a while, like you, even if you can't wrap your head around how it's going to impact your business today, you have to start digging in on that, because there's so much opportunity to kind of grow and streamline and create efficiencies and kind of change the face of the way that we do business. And then from a production standpoint, you know, we're really excited, you know, about the improvements that we've made in the DTF world to really create a product that's softer than your traditional DTF. And transfer, that we can also adhere to surfaces that your traditional transfers can't do. So for example, like hats, you see DTF they're really just doing five penile trucker hats, but you know, with with our proprietary consumables, we can go over seams, and I see DTF is you know, is cannibalizing some of embroidery. It's it cannibalizing some of DTG. But, you know, for us, we use, we just use all the best mousetraps that they are right now. And it just depends on the garment and the design the substrate, whatever it is, to determine what's gonna be that best mousetrap. So I think the digital printing space is, is moving like a rocket ship right now. It's not like, you know, screen printing and embroidery that haven't changed much in decades. So, you know, we're excited to see, you know, how the equipment continues to evolve how we continue to create more efficiencies and get faster, you know, more cost effective production methods, and really focus on staying in the forefront of that so that we're the first people that are out there, you know, taking on those technologies and building on it so that we can be a leader, a leader in the pack. So I think all things with technology are really what would keep us excited and happy and motivated to continue to try to be better at what we do.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's fantastic. So all right. So thanks, Jed, thank you so much for sharing the story of success with us today. What's the best way someone can contact you if they want to learn more about what you do? Or maybe how you can help them?

Jeff Seifert 
Sure. Yeah, I mean, you can find me on LinkedIn. It's Jed Siefert sei fer T at and then obviously the company has stakes manufacturing. And I am more than happy to help you in your journey for inclusion as well. So you want an introduction You got a question? You know, it's my passion to spend my time that I'm not working or not with my family, helping individuals with disabilities and companies that are looking to do the same.

Marshall Atkinson 
Awesome. Well, thanks, Jeff. Appreciate you, buddy.

Jeff Seifert 
Thank you, man. It's been a pleasure being on the show.