SPI 827: Win Big with Your First Physical Product with Thiefaine Magre

SPI 827: Win Big with Your First Physical Product with Thiefaine Magre

Thiefaine Magre: We recommend people start selling with the prototype. It sounds so backwards but this is 2024. Elon Musk can sell cyber trucks before he has a factory to make them. Get the email, get them to commit early, get their address, get their credit card if possible. But too many times entrepreneurs, they wait too late to test the audience, to make sure they bite. And I feel like those that sell early, and sell with conviction, even before they have the product in hand, tend to be the most successful.

Pat Flynn: So back in 2017, Caleb and I were working a lot on videos and we discovered that there was a need for a product to serve the video community, we invented the SwitchPod together. It is the five year anniversary of the SwitchPod, which is really cool. If you’d like to check it out, you can go to SwitchPod.co. Pick one up for yourself. That’s a little plug.

But I’m not here to sell you on the SwitchPod today. I’m here to sell you on a person who is behind the SwitchPod. He is one of a few people who were vital in helping to get the SwitchPod created this invention off the ground, and he’s helped loads, I mean, hundreds of entrepreneurs build physical products.

And, you know, I think Caleb and I did it the hard way where we literally invented something and got it patented and all this stuff that we, we did it the hard way, which is why it took two years to finally launch it in 2019. And, you know, do pretty well with it. We launched to over $400,000 days when we launched that on Kickstarter, but again SwitchPod.co.

That’s going to be the last time I talk about it, although I think it’s brought up once in the interview, but who am I interviewing today? I’m interviewing Thiefaine. Thiefaine is such a wonderful person. He is behind a lot of physical products that entrepreneurs have launched. And I’m not just talking inventions.

I’m talking everything from merch, to collectibles, to little toy figurines and cars, to miniature homes, to pop up tents, whatever you can think of. If you have a brand and you’re thinking of creating some sort of physical product, Thiefaine is your guy. And he and his partner, Richie Norton, who you might have heard on the show before, have done so much for me and for SwitchPod and even for Deep Pocket Monster, they’re helping making little collectible coins at each milestone. When we hit a subscriber milestone, he’s helped with a lot of the products that get brought and sold at Card Party, my Pokemon event. It’s incredible what he can do. And so we’re going to have a discussion today with Thiefaine about what it might look like and all the ins and outs of what it might look like to Get a physical product under your brand.

And where might it make sense? What kinds of products would make sense? And again, I’m not just talking about t shirts as well, but something that can enhance the experience that your audience has with their brand and different ideas around that. This could be a game changing discussion for you. Prouduct is the name of the company that he and Richie work on.

Proud, like I’m proud of you, which I am and product products, Prouduct, Prouduct.com. But anyway, Let’s have this discussion. Listen in. This is super fun. This is Thiefaine from Prouduct.com. Let’s do this.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he advises over 12 startups that serve the creator economy, Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Thiefaine, welcome to SPI. Thanks for being here, man.

Thiefaine Magre: Thanks for having me. This is awesome. What a treat.

Pat Flynn: I’m so stoked that you’re here because you and I have been working together, scheming a lot on a lot of things, especially on the Deep Pocket Monster side with regards to physical products.

And you’ve helped me in more ways than one. Many of you listening might not know, but Thiefaine and his partner, Richie, are very, very much a part of the process of how Caleb and I built the SwitchPod. And I just want to know, how did you guys build Prouduct? Prouduct is your company. It’s proud and product put together.

Why is this important to you? Why are you here helping entrepreneurs like us with physical products specifically? Because physical products are not easy, my friend.

Thiefaine Magre: No, no, it’s not easy. That’s a good point. I mean, as you learned, you know, once you open a mold, you have sunk a lot of capital into one resource and you can’t pivot and change like you would in a course or another digital product.

We built Prouduct As a referral only business, which meant that we had to succeed. We were only successful and going to get more referrals and more introductions from existing customers. If we did a good job and delivered and they were successful. And that was intentional from the beginning where we only wanted to partner with businesses, creators, founders, companies that were looking to succeed and not just a little one off piece.

And that’s, what’s really allowed us to do this for the last 12 years or so to just focus on making sure that we are always results driven and not just padding the numbers and running up a clock, but really making sure that the products get done the way they need to be done. And whoever’s selling them is successful in doing that.

Pat Flynn: You know, in this digital world, I mean, you mentioned it’s so much easier. I mean, I know it’s easier, but there’s just something about a physical product that does something to the creator of that product and also the people who use it. If you were to try to convince somebody who was like, no way, like digital products are it, that’s all I want to do.

What would you say to them to help open up their eyes to the world of what a physical product could do to their business and what kinds of businesses make sense for this.

Thiefaine Magre: The easy answer would say, well, try eating your digital products and tell me how, how long it takes before you get hungry, right? Try only wearing your digital products and tell me when you get cold, right?

Or what the police think when you go shopping without them, right? Physical products It’s the core of the economy. It’s, it’s the blue collar products that we depend on, whether it be as complex as an iPhone or a power transformer, or as simple as a t shirt or glasses or socks. We depend on these products.

They are the most basic necessities. Then after that, you have the digital products that complement these things. I see them as complimenting the physical and other businesses, the physical compliments, the digital, but not every digital product meets every potential consumer, but every consumer that buys a digital product needs a physical product.

And so it’s about finding what the right ying and yang to that is what matches what physical product goes with the digital offering that the consumers are buying. And there’s always a physical product. It’s about just identifying and executing to get it to them.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Just like Caleb and I, we identified a problem in the video space, video being a very digital space, and we found a solution or worked with you to engineer and build a solution.

Caleb and I didn’t know how to build it. You and your team helped to build it and kind of filled in all those gaps. Cool. Kind of it was our brainchild and we were able to sell many of them and it still continues to sell and it’s become a part of our story now, which is really amazing. We see it out there in the wild every once in a while.

And it just reminds me of like how fun this process was, but also how demanding it was to literally invent something from scratch and engineer it. And I know that that Is often a hurdle for a lot of people. What are some other ways products can be injected into businesses? I know there’s ways to a very popular way would be to do a lot of people are doing today, which is, you know, go to Alibaba, get a product and sort of white label it.

Is that a legit strategy and how might a business understand, okay, what physical product. Could I white label and inject into my brand and kind of slap my logo on?

Thiefaine Magre: Well, that’s absolutely a strategy you can do. Usually the products you are white labeling tend to be trendy, faddy meaning they’re following a fad.

That’s not really a long term play unless your business model is I’m going to be on top of the trends and I’m constantly going to be finding a new product, something else to slap a label on it, right? There’s no real equity in the product other than the brand that is on it. Because if you’re white labeling, that means that there’s lots of potential competitors in the space just with different brands.

So I like to look at sports teams. I think they’re fascinating because if you think of a soccer team, traditionally, the only way they would make money is by having a soccer game and filling the stadium, right? If we’re going the old fashion way of making money, well, now they have TV programs, they’re able to have more eyeballs on the game, but that’s really a percentage of the sales.

Soccer teams are now selling jerseys, socks, scarves, tableware, all these other items, and it’s wild. It’s to show off your fandom, to show that you’re a supporter. You know that when you buy the shot glass that says Real Madrid or Paris Saint Germain, You’re paying 50 times what it’s worth, but that has meaning to you, right?

That’s what we’re trying to do. When we bring products to the digital space, we want to have meaning. It doesn’t, you can’t white label and go on Alibaba or Ali Express or any of these other websites, global sources and create your own products, but you have to get to the ethos of the product. What are we solving with a SwitchPod?

You are solving the frustration, the broken cameras, the it’s not level. I just got the perfect shot, but it’s crooked. And now when I edit it, it’s going to look funky. These are all things you fix. You, you removed all of those feelings and those problems with one product, and then SwitchBot was able to build a brand off that versus just finding the competitor and throwing a SwitchBot brand, it wouldn’t have had the same value experience meaning to the consumer.

Pat Flynn: With the SwitchPod, it was interesting because it was a brand new brand. And although Caleb and I both had a little bit of crossover in our audience for this product, it wasn’t exactly. Like we had this business and we had fans and then we injected a product into it. It solved the real problem and that’s what brought people over.

There are many other businesses, I know of some that you’ve worked with, who have loyal fans and audiences and you kind of build a product with them in mind already. For example, I believe you worked with JLD, John Lee Dumas, on his Mastery Journal. That’s right. And so he had this audience wanted to provide a physical product, a journal for people to work through to help them master something.

What is that experience like for a brand who has an audience to work with a company like yours? What are the first steps? Because I think a lot of us go, yeah, physical product would be cool. Are there, is there testing involved? And then how do we get from idea to, you know, on the shelves or on Amazon?

Thiefaine Magre: Well, John’s an interesting example because he knew what he wanted the outcome to be. He knew already. Okay. He knew kind of what he wanted to do, but he didn’t know how to get there.

Pat Flynn: Cause he like, even I want a journal for my audience. Like, did he come to you?

Thiefaine Magre: He said, I know what I want to journal. Okay. And I want it to help them achieve their goals because that’s what most entrepreneurs lack. They lack the accountability, the goal setting, the milestones along the way. So his first journal is actually the Freedom Journal. And so he knew he needed that and so we gave him a framework that said, Hey, the first step is before we can print a book, we have to write the book. We have to know what we’re going to print. And so John went through that process writing and with an editor, editing, revising, formatting the book, kind of like with the SwitchPod, we had the idea. But then it took iterations with engineering and design to get it to what it needed to be.

Once John had the content of the book, it was about finding what the right feel for the book. When you look at books, and Pat, you’re an author, you know, There’s hundreds of options and ways to print the book, the materials, the cover, the ink, the finish, the glaze, the sleeve, it goes on and on and on. And so then we go through a process where we reduce the options to the ones that we like.

In John’s case, he actually found a religious book and he said, you know, goals are holy. They’re personal. They’re deeply spiritual to individuals. And so I want something that when you look at it, you never want to throw this book away because it’s sacred to you and the milestones you accomplished. And we use that as a benchmark product to say, what can we do that’s like this book?

So for any creators, it would be, Hey, this is the idea. This is what I want to create. I’m benchmarking this product over here. It has the right look, feel, grade, finish, price point that we want to hit. And then we went through the manufacturers in John’s case, printers to dial it in and make multiple iterations until we had the finished product ready for sale. The actual listing on Amazon, we could say is rather simple. It Amazon really walks you through it, helping you be successful. And that’s same with Amazon, Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, all the website, Etsy, the getting the product, the idea and making it, that’s the first step.

Then the magic happens on the sales end, right?

Pat Flynn: I remember John’s book cause it did, I never really even made that connection that it kind of does look a little religious in terms of it’s like, it’s like almost biblical in a way where the outer edges are gold foiled and the gold stamps on that. It’s definitely, it’s definitely a time piece.

So well done to John on coming up with that inspiration and to your team for manufacturing it. Speaking of the manufacturing process is something that most of us entrepreneurs who work in the digital realm know nothing about and this is where you come in, right? You have built these relationships with printers and factories and and plants if you will to create I mean, can you really create anything if you if we think of it?

Thiefaine Magre: Yeah in theory there are certain industries we choose to stay out of for example, we we choose to stay out of the chemical Pharmaceutical space. It’s it’s very unique. There’s high engineering tolerance levels, you know, lots of regulations. I’m sure lots of regulations. We we’ve done FDA devices, but we elect to not play in that space.

But other than that, we make everything from SwitchPods to signs, to books, to supplying bit mining operations around the world with power transformers and switch gear and school uniforms and furniture. You know, Prouduct is pretty broad in the scope of things we do. And to many, that sounds strange. And they say how, because most sourcing agencies focus on one product or one category and that’s it.

And we’ve chosen not to focus on one industry only, but to focus on the process. How do we create a successful product? And then finding the right partners from manufacturing to logistics to install. Those pieces fall into place if the product or the process is sound.

Pat Flynn: So let’s go through a little case study. Let’s pretend I am Kevin from Epic Gardening. And I have this idea for a really cool de weeder. I’ve been getting a lot of these tools recommended to me on TikTok, actually. And I bought one and it’s pretty cool. It’s called like. Grandpa’s weeder or something like that. I don’t know. It’s like you put in the ground, you twist it and you can pull it back up.

And all these things happen. Let’s say I have an idea that is similar to that, but it’s better, right? It has a rubber foot pad and it has this button so I can release the weed after. And it’s all this stuff. It’s similar to what exists out there. And I go, Thiefaine, I have an idea. I want to slap my logo on this.

And I want it to become like the premier de weeder. In my industry. And I have this built an audience. I want to promote it. What are the first steps that we have to go through? Is there any sort of legal thing before we go forward in terms of, okay, we want to make sure we’re not sort of stepping on anybody else’s patent, for example.

Thiefaine Magre: Yeah, I mean, there definitely can be. So the first step, we like to think the end first, right? Start with the end. So even if you have an audience, we like to say, how are you going to sell it? Literally think of the sales process. Where am I going to sell it? Is this an Amazon? Is this my own website? Am I going to sell through digital creators?

Am I selling it myself? Am I trying to get it into an IFA or home Depot? Like what is the sales plan? The reason that’s important is that will affect margins, shipping costs, logistics, where it has to be made, things like that. So our first question is, how are you going to sell this? If the answer is, I don’t know, then we usually recommend, Hey, you should start an affiliate sales program and see if you’re successful that way.

Are you able to make it work or at least drive traffic on an affiliate program? To somebody else’s product. Correct. Ah, so we’re testing. We’re testing. If no, you probably don’t want to sink. 25, 50, 1,000,000 into this product without being sure that you’re able to move it, right? So, we’re testing on the affiliate program.

Let’s say you choose not to do that or you feel confident you’ve been doing this before. Then it’s, Let’s do some research. What are the right products? So you have this deweyed or idea. Yeah, let’s make sure that we’re not going to infringe on anyone. Get sued, receive a cease and desist, et cetera. Right.

Number two, we’re going to design around the patent or just design our own thing because we’re not infringing on anyone else. Then we’ll make a prototype. We recommend people start selling with the prototype. It sounds so backwards because traditionally, you know, I have a store. If it’s not on my shelf, I can’t sell it.

Right, but this is 2024. Elon Musk can sell cyber trucks before he has a factory to make them Right. And we could sell SwitchPods before we had them too. Exactly. So John Lee Dumas, for example, with his journal, had the prototype and he did a Kickstarter and sold $430,000 worth in 30 days. You can do that.

So if you were to get your weeder and you had an audience, we would say, Hey, look at this new tool. It’s coming. Get on my email list now and for $10 I’ll make sure yours ships first or I’ll include my free ebook or whatever your digital offer that you can partner with. It is get the email, get them to commit early, get their address, get their credit card if possible.

Then as soon as it becomes available, You already know, Hey, I’m going to order $10,000 of these, but I already have $7,000 pre sold or committed. Then we can figure out the manufacturing, right? That magical portion of it. But too many times entrepreneurs, they wait too late to test the audience, to make sure they bite, right?

And I feel like those that sell early, and sell with conviction, even before they have the product in hand, tend to be the most successful.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. And with the prototype, you know, I could feature that on my channel. Here’s a 60 second tech talk showing you how it works and people are going to go, where is that? Where can I get that? You know, you want to build that excitement and you can drive them to like a wait list or like you said, a presale page, I think is the best way to do it.

That way you have some revenue coming in. Like you would, if you did a Kickstarter, Kickstarter is its own sort of story. Because yes, you can get a lot of sales, but. You share a lot of that revenue with Kickstarter and it’s a, it is a built in marketplace, but you have all these different pledge levels.

And so there’s pros and cons, but I and Caleb used Kickstarter as did John. Many other people who I see launching products now don’t do that, but they’re still pre selling on their own website and collecting those email addresses too. So either way, Seems to work. And then let’s say we get a good influx of revenue coming in from those presales.

We get a green light to move forward with this. We’ve done our checks to make sure we’re not infringing on anybody’s stuff. What typically happens next after that we get into the manufacturing process. But what does that mean? And I think another thing that we can discuss a little bit is timeline.

That’s something that surprised me with physical products. I knew that It would be longer than a digital product, but I didn’t know it would be, and maybe every case is different, but I mean, it took over a year to really get things going and get it into people’s hands. So thoughts on on all that.

Thiefaine Magre: Yeah, so making a prototype is usually a highly specialized engineer.

He has a master’s degree. He has really expensive machines or tools, and he is solely focused on making. the one, right? And it’s a really expensive process. It’s a different science to say, I can make one and now I need to make the same one over and over again. A thousand, five thousand, twenty thousand, a hundred thousand times.

And so we have to set up machines and tools and molds and jigs. These are all just technical terms for different parts of the process. Kind of like when you’re making concrete, right? Mixing concrete is one thing, but you have to have the forms correct, right? If the forms are wrong, You can have the best concrete in the world, but it’s not going to pour correctly.

Factories are generally set up to make a product in six to eight weeks. That is once they have set up and dialed in the process. So if a factory needs one week to set up, And in one week to test, then it’s going to take them a total of 8 to 10 weeks to actually make the product. Some products are much longer than that.

We recently made some power transformers where they needed 3 to 4 months. Because of all the testing that went into making sure that they were compliant. So generally when you’re making a product, it takes about six to eight weeks to make it. Then you’re looking at three to four weeks to ship it and get it to you.

You then have to clear customs, which will take anywhere between a day to a week and a half, and then get it to your warehouse and fulfill to customers, which will take another. Week to two weeks. So generally speaking, once you have approved money’s in, everyone knows what to do. We are going to make this and sell it.

It takes on the really aggressive side, two months, but on the more conservative side, three months to get it to a customer’s hands.

Pat Flynn: Part of that is, okay, am I receiving these from a shipping source, whether it’s, you know, a boat or a plane or whatever, where do they go? Do they go in my basement and then I have to sell them and ship them myself or what options do we have as entrepreneurs to, to help with that process?

Thiefaine Magre: You can 100 percent ship them yourself. Just remember that’s all your free time is now going to shipping them yourself. And so Pat knows a little something about that because he’s done it both ways. And I mean, what do you think? Do you prefer having someone ship your products out for you? Or what’s been your experience with that?

Pat Flynn: A 3PL or third party logistics company that you can partner with is worth its weight in gold. I will say.

Thiefaine Magre: Yeah. If you value your time, and I know everyone listening to the show does, find a shipping partner. They’re called 3PLs. There’s one in your town. I guarantee it. They’re everywhere. These third party logistics companies, they are experts in warehousing and what they call pick pack ship.

So they’ll take your product, put it in a box and put a label. And generally they ship cheaper than you would anyways. So it shouldn’t feel like this is a financial burden. We recommend 3PLs every time. There’s very few scenarios where you say you should ship it yourself. But for those that want to learn the process, yeah, you can receive it yourself and then get an account on Stamps.com or through Shopify and ship the product out again, highly recommend having someone that does this all day long do it for you.

Pat Flynn: One part of the process we overlooked before we shipped the product out is the packaging that the product comes in. I mean, if I order. I know 2000 of these weeders, and then I get them all shipped to my house or a 3PL.

They’re going to be probably individually wrapped or something like that in plastic or something. But tell me a little bit about the process of packaging. Does that happen at the source of where the product is made? Or does it happen somewhere else? Or like, how does that even work?

Thiefaine Magre: Well, it really depends on the product.

If you remember at the beginning, we said, well, let’s think with the end in mind. So let’s pretend I’m selling my weeder at Home Depot. Well, I probably don’t need a fancy box for the weeder, right? They just want a sticker on it and maybe a box like stand them up in.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Or like a folded cardboard thing at the handle area that has the branding and the barcode on it.

Thiefaine Magre: That’s right. Versus I’m selling this online. It just needs to come in a brown box. It doesn’t have to be any branding on it, right? It just has to have a UPC on the outside. Or are we going to sell these at trade shows where I’m just going to sling them myself one at a time? Or are we expecting to sell these as a kit?

So we’re going to get the weeders from one location and then we’re going to add Monsanto plant killer with it, right? And so now we’re building a box or a carton or a subscription program. So the packaging can be done at the factory level. It’s usually cheaper, more cost effective. They have the machines to do that for you.

So if you know how you’re going to sell it and you’re able to plan in advance, this is how we want to package it. Definitely do it with a factory. If for whatever reason, you’re unsure that can be done later, but understanding how and where you want to sell it is super important. We have some customers that they actually buy loose products of different brands.

And then they specialize in making packaging and then they’ll sell a subscription box where they kit all these things together, not their branded products, but their branded subscription or kit. And so really. They’re in charge of just curating different products or goods. So think if you had a book club, right?

Let’s just pretend you were part of a book reading community and you love book or coloring books, right? Coloring books might be an easy one. I’m going to go out if I have this coloring book community and every month I’m going to send you two new coloring books with pencils. Well, I don’t really want to be in the business of making pencils, and I don’t want to be designing new coloring books and making those every month.

So I’m going to go to distributors and buy their coloring books, and I’m going to go to Crayola and become a Crayola distributor. But I’m going to make a cool colorable box every month, right? And now I’m mailing you your coloring book, your coloring pencils in the colorable box that’s mine. And every month I make this box and I mail it to you and you get your coloring books, your pencils, and your colorable box.

So packaging can be super important and be something you really want to focus on or not. You know, Pat, you’re in the Pokemon space and, and you’re familiar with just in card games in general, Some companies really focus on packaging. The packaging is super important, whereas others, you know, like baseball and basketball cards, it’s kind of the same box, it’s been forever, right? It’s not as fancy as it’s been. So depending on your consumer, your price point and your distribution path strategy, packaging can be everything or it doesn’t matter. Just Brown box it.

Pat Flynn: The coloring book idea sounds amazing. Like, I don’t know if you just made that up. Let’s do it.

Let’s do it right now. What are some examples of different products that you’ve worked on that are interesting? I know there’s a wide range. I know you did tiny homes, in fact, which is maybe one of the more larger projects, but what are some other projects that you’ve done that were pretty interesting for certain brands out there?

Thiefaine Magre: Interesting is different because, you know, like, you know, we get to do, for example, we work with Matt’s off road recovery. Their, their logos behind me as well, but we get to do all sorts of collectible cars and like, they’re super precise. They have to be exact replicas. We’re making one right now that’s launching pretty soon, but like, it’s got hand spun rope in it to line it in and out of guides and it has to look exactly like the real vehicle and that’s just super fun. It’s really exciting. We get to work with cool books. We’ve done again, the Bitcoin industry with Bitcoin miners.

Pat Flynn: And didn’t you do a teepee once a teepee, like a, like a toy teepee. And that was one of the first products I saw that was so cool. Like what brand was that? And what was that about?

Thiefaine Magre: That was called Tnees Tpees and they were the first real brand to make cool children’s indoor teepees, super high end. We’ve done skateboards. We’ve done yoga apparel. We, we, some boring businesses, but that are really awesome that we work with. We do school uniforms and furniture.

We supply furniture to major tech companies like, I can’t name them, but so, so we get to do fun things like that.

Pat Flynn: That’s cool. Let’s talk about merch, you know, a lot of brands are building loyal fans out there and maybe it’s not a utility per se that a person is creating or trying to invent, but rather merch, something that puts the brand logo on it or some custom made thing for their audience to sell.

What is in your opinion, cause you’ve done this quite a bit. You’ve helped me with it on Deep Pocket Monster. What is the best route to go? Should I just slap a logo on a t shirt and say, Hey, here it is, or. what’s working really well, what are some creators do to be a little bit more creative with the merch that they’re selling that is working really well today?

Thiefaine Magre: There’s two approaches with merch. Number one, we’re going cheap, fast, loud. Our goal is just to make sure our shirt is everywhere, right? That’s our number one goal. You’ll see that with these companies that say, restaurants that say, hey, a burger is 8.99. But a burger and a shirt is 12.99 or 11.99. Their whole goal is we’re just trying to get the brand out there.

Some creators will do that, right? Hey, it’s 5.99 plus shipping for a shirt. They’re selling it for less than cost. But the whole goal is we are just trying to blast it out there. Okay, that’s one approach, right? And it usually doesn’t work for the entire store. It usually works for a t shirt or a headband or a keychain or something where it’s going to be your loss leader.

The other approach is we’re going to go with nice. We want things that are representative of our company, of our business. We want people to like the way they feel. So right now I’m wearing, you know, an Adam Bomb Squad shirt, right? It feels good. I like it. It was a little more expensive of a shirt, but I’m getting my use out of it.

I appreciate it. That tends to be the better approach, especially for first time buyers. You can’t make a second or a first impression twice. It’s the same with merch. If they’re buying your merch for the first time, it better be a good first impression, right? If they’re a return customer, And they’re that loyal super fan, they’re going to be okay with it, but if it’s a first impression, you better deliver on quality. So we always recommend if it’s a question of a few dollars, go with a better one. They’re just going to have a better experience with it, always.

Pat Flynn: And merch could be not just shirts, hats, and sunglasses. What other things are people using for, for merch and sort of brand loyalty and for their fans?

Thiefaine Magre: Socks is super popular right now. Is it really? Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, I wish I could show you. I’ve got, I’ve got socks for, a lot of different brands right now and they’re doing really nice socks and beautiful socks that are awesome. You know, Daryl from VidSummit every year, there’s a new sock and it’s awesome, right?

That’s true, actually, now that you say that. Were you there that first year where we made a sock of him pointing his finger and everyone thought it was him flipping everyone off? And so, but Daryl came back and he said, you know, that’s the best marketing I’ve ever received. People from all over the world were taking pictures of me flipping off the pyramids or the statue, but it wasn’t.

It was a picture of him pointing at a sign behind him. That’s funny. And since then it’s become great marketing. Keychains and stickers. Stickers are great because They don’t cost a lot. They’re easy to ship. You can hand them out. People use them, right? Challenge coins are coming back. You’ve been in the space for a little while, but people are learning to use challenge coins outside of the military and the armed forces, and they’re doing pretty well.

And then cards. Honestly, like we have people that are other they’re doing cards because they like it you making your business card look like A collectible basketball card or i’m going to a fan meetup. Let me give them some cards. They like it. It’s fun It’s different and that’s really what What your audience wants, they want to connect with you in a way that’s fun, unique, that resonates with you as an individual.

So if you’re selling a digital product, the key isn’t to say, everyone else is selling shirts. I also need to be selling shirts. Well, maybe not. Maybe you in fact should do neckties because like you’re always wearing a suit when you’re talking about day trading or something and that’s kind of your thing.

And so maybe you should sell that or cufflinks. Or maybe you’re in the coloring book space. And so people don’t want t shirts. They just want coloring things, right? Whatever it may be. So we take a different approach to merch. We say you don’t have to sell what everyone else is selling Sell what people want to buy Why are they visiting you?

Pat Flynn: To finish up here, can we talk about drops, like merch drops, limited campaigns, what’s the best way to run one, and do you have an example of a creator who perhaps recently ran one that did really well?

Thiefaine Magre: Yeah, we worked with a company called Lady Boss, and they did that, and their entire business model was, we’re selling out.

I guess not their entire, their merch business model. And so they would do limited run merch, They would do quantities of 500 to 1,500 or maybe a little more depending on the items. And they would say, every Friday, we are dropping one item and they would sell out in 15 to 20 minutes. And that was their goal.

They were going for, this is scarce, you can’t buy. Three, four years later, we’re still seeing people resell their items on eBay. Items that we produced three, four years ago, right? Or Poshmark or things like that. So that’s a fun way to do it depending on the merch. It could be as simple as, Hey, I’m going to start by a print on demand shirt.

It’s going to cost me 50 to 60 bucks. I’m going to sell it. If I get a hundred orders, then I’ll go print it. If I don’t, then it just wasn’t successful. So we’re all about testing. If you’re going to do a test today, if you’re on to do a limited run, we would say, let’s pretend it’s a t shirt, get the t shirt, run the sale from Tuesday to Thursday.

Okay. If you get above a certain threshold, if you like it, run it through Sunday and then on Monday place your shirt order plus 20 percent close it down that that is a good way to do a limited run.

Pat Flynn: I like that and people buy because it’s gonna run out and you know I know that in certain spaces those things become very valuable, especially if you’re loyal brands and fans. This is great.

My head is spinning already with more things that we could do a Deep Pocket Monster.

Thiefaine Magre: You’re doing one right now where it’s, Hey, we’re going to hit this milestone. You have to order it before the milestone because it’s gone. And so the audience knows, Oh my gosh, we’re at 900 and whatever thousand we’re getting really close.

If I don’t get it now, I’m going to miss it. So your limited run could be anything from a milestone you’re hitting a timeline, an event. A phrase that you say? Yeah, we spoke about that one on that creator who he’s cutting in phrases from his content and featuring them as a one week special among his evergreen products.

So evergreen products are products that are always for sale. So if you go into a retail store, they have their seasonal items and then they have their evergreen items. So you will always have 2 percent milk, right? But the pumpkin spice milk might only be seasonal. The evergreen would be the 2%. The seasonal will be the pumpkin spice.

Pat Flynn: The limited drops are really interesting. I want to do more of them for sure. Especially after we hit a million, we have this t shirt that says subscribed before 1 million with the deep pocket monster logo on it and people are buying it and they also get like a coin to go with it and some sleeves or an autograph or something like that.

And. I’ve already seen a few in the wild. I mean, the wild being like at my event or at a card convention or something like that. But it’s still cool to see. It’s like, wow, this person, I know when in the timeline they subscribed. It was before I hit a million. And so down the road, when I’m at two, five, 10 million subscribers, I can know that this fan was there since the beginning.

And that’s a really cool thing. And I’m sure special for that person, too. So it’s creating these memories and moments for people with the merch. And to kind of mark these moments in time, I think, is a really fun way to think about it, too. And I, you know, I have you to thank for helping me think through that.

That was really cool.

Thiefaine Magre: You have another extreme, and thank you, by the way, that’s very kind. You have another extreme example of that with your coins. Remember people started reselling ’em on eBay.

Pat Flynn: They did. I saw some of them go for like hundreds of dollars on eBay because there was a limited quantity that we, every time we hit a big milestone, we did it for 50 k, 100 K, 250, 500, 750, and we have a coin coming out for 1 million, which we are in the process of designing right now, and it’ll be super special and people get them if they win on my giveaway live streams on Monday, or if they order something that includes a coin.

Or if I happen to be at an event and hand them out to people, that’s kind of the only way you can get them. And we’ve been seeing them being resold. So people do, you know, I have people who have one of each so far, and they’re like, I will do everything in my power to get that last one. Because especially in the space of collectors, they’re completionists, which is really funny and smart for us as a business, but also not just because we’re generating revenue, but because we’re helping people become more connected to the brand more than they would if we didn’t have these things. So I think merch is something that I used to be kind of against. I was like, I don’t want to sell a T shirt just because I can. Like, I felt like it was just squeezing more money out of the audience versus really understanding that merch is for them and everybody can win. So I, I’m seeing it in that light now, which is really cool. So can brands that aren’t entertainment brands still have a merge? Could I email service provider have merch, for example, any thoughts on that as we finish up here?

Thiefaine Magre: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t see why not. For example, when I was at the four seasons.

Everything was for sale. I don’t know if people know that if you walk into a four seasons, the sheets, the slippers, everything’s for sale. Right. And I think if you’re a business, if you have a brand, there are things that you can sell. Let’s say you’re an email service. And maybe you’re going to send them, Hey, here’s a backup external hard drive that you need that we’re giving out to new customers.

So it’s a 200 hard drive. We’re buying it for 50 bucks, but when you join our program and you subscribe, we’re going to send this two terabyte hard drive for you. That way. You’ve got everything you need, or maybe it’s a charging cable or whatever it may be, whatever your customers could potentially see value in is important.

We stay away from gold plating. We focus on value driven products.

Pat Flynn: Stay away from gold plating, meaning we’re not just making it look fancy to be fancy. We actually want things that are meaningful and useful to you, to the audience. That’s right. I think it’s a perfect way to finish this off. I mean, we could talk about this for hours and you and I, We’ll talk for hours.

I’m sure regarding deep pocket monster and some of the other things we got going on SwitchPods, future, et cetera, but where can people go to follow up with you and with Richie. Richie I know has been on the show before too. I’m so grateful that you came on today to talk shop today. It’s been really fun.

And I think a lot of people listening are going to be inspired to at least begin to explore what it might look like to have a physical product of some kind in their brand for their audience one way or another. If that is true, where can they go to follow up with you?

Thiefaine Magre: Prouduct.com is an easy way. We have a free supplier audit on there.

So if you have current supply and you need a quote, or if you’re new, fill it out. We’ll get back to you right away. Or follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn. I know I’m a LinkedIn guy, kind of weird, but just my name.

Pat Flynn: Awesome. And I know that you don’t have unlimited amount of spots for like who to work with.

And I don’t know if it’s an application process or not, but at least reach out and see what might be available. And if anything, I know that you also are happy to point people to the right direction or show examples that people can still get value from in case like. You can’t work with them directly, but you’ve helped me and Caleb and are helping Deep Pocket Monster so much.

I owe a lot of gratitude to you and to Richie and the entire product team. Thank you so much, Thiefaine. I appreciate you.

Thiefaine Magre: Thanks for having me.

Pat Flynn: All right. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Thiefaine. I always love chatting with Thiefaine because we get so many ideas. I mean, we got to build that Crayola box, you know, coloring box with the coloring books thing now because, again, that’s possible.

You can have a brand where it collates and sort of brings different products together. You can have a brand that invents something like me and Caleb’s product. Or something in between. You could white label, you can adjust something a little bit. Part of the story we didn’t tell you was with the SwitchPod we wanted additional products, some accessories. So Caleb, when he was in China, checking out all the stuff that was coming off the line, he saw a ball head attachment that just needed a little bit of adjustment that we can then put our logo on and he and Thiefaine were able to make it happen. And that has continued to sell not just in a package, but even by itself.

In COVID times, when the pandemic hit, Had bought hundreds of them, not to use for videography, but to put a little heat map sensor on for COVID screening. Like somebody bought our ball head for that reason. It’s like hundreds of them. It was just such a fascinating thing, but it wouldn’t have been possible without Prouduct and his team over there.

He knows the people who can help you get your thing done. Prouduct.Com. Go and check them out. Thank you, Thiefaine. Thank you to Richie as well. And thank you for listening all the way through. I hope you enjoyed this episode. We have another great one coming up next week. Very soon for you. So make sure you hit subscribe.

If you haven’t already, this is session 827. So if you’d like to get all the links and show notes and resources and everything, SmartPassiveIncome.com/session827. Thank you so much. Peace. I’ll see you in the next one.

Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Sound editing by Duncan Brown, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!