welcome back to another episode of passion two profession here on the stacking slabs network brought to you by my good friends at ebay it is that time of the week where we dig into the entrepreneurial journey of a business builder in this hobby and what they are up to i'm excited to be joined by eric brownell who's the ceo of bcw supplies we are talking about scaling a family business and a hobby that never stands still a lot of awesome stories a lot of awesome operational lessons in this one you will not wanna miss it shout out to ebay for sponsoring passionate profession i love these conversations i love understanding how builders in this space think and most importantly i love sharing it with all of you if you wanna show your support for the broader stacking slabs network hit the follow button tell a damn friend run on over to the patreon group it is eric bcw supplies coming at you we are back another episode of passion to profession brought to you by my good friends at ebay this is going to be a fun conversation today's episode i'm joined by eric brownell who is the ceo at bcw supplies i got a chance to visit their hq earlier in the year and was very impressed by everything that i saw and i know many of us probably have used their supplies on our cards before but you you don't really know how a business is humming until you step foot into it so i'm sure we'll dig into the structure and makeup and everything in between but without further ado eric welcome how are you i'm great yeah great to be here thanks for having me yes i'm excited to talk about the business and you know you can go anywhere any hobby shop and you can go to any show in america and you see the bcw logo but i think oftentimes what we try to do here is kinda tell stories about how these businesses were built and you know before you know i i stepped foot in kinda your neck of the woods try to get some understanding on like the structure and how long that bcw has been in existence and i learned that there there's some family ties to the business and just some acquisition along the way so maybe we start here for anyone who is unfamiliar maybe just a snapshot on bcw who you are what you do and then just how it's been tied into kinda you and your family yeah well i guess i'll go back a ways then because my family who's part of this business and has been part of this business for quite a while was not the founder the founder were the krugers which were local to anderson indiana and they it was a collector and his dad that formed this business back in nineteen eighty one primarily offering you know pages top loaders what are commonly called penny sleeves well so soft sleeves all those kinds of products and my dad entered the industry as a corrugated salesman he had this strange company called baseball card world which is what the bcw used to stand for back in the day when baseball cards were the only car out there and he he helped the kruger's develop what is their corrugated line of accessories and he was a salesman selling to these automotive plants and then this strange company that was reselling all these boxes to collectors around the country he had been doing that for a while and the krugers kept asking him if if he would come work for him and he always had the same response which is like hey i'm doing alright in this in this industry selling corrugated boxes to all these all these automotive companies and i don't i don't think you can afford me because i'm doing alright in this industry i i don't know a whole lot about baseball cards and after a while maybe like couple years they said well this is what we would like to to pay you to come work here and and help us run this company and he said okay yeah you can afford me so they were a neat five hundred company a couple years in a row at that point and so he came on board i think i was i was maybe a freshman in high school at that point and he he helped them i guess really expand their line into polypropylene pages a lot of corrugated boxes and and eventually the krugers wanted to get out of the business they were they had done very well for themselves and my dad was thinking well what am i gonna do you know i can go back and to the corrugated industry or i can i can try and purchase this business from from these guys so it took a couple years working with banks and working with the krugers on seller financing but he he was able to buy it and that was in nineteen ninety six i was in college at that time so when your dad bought the business in nineteen ninety six you're in college obviously trying to figure out what you're going to do with your life did you know once he bought the business that this is what this was going to be something that was going to be a family business this is something that you are going to pursue or did you kind of say that's cool i'm still gonna kinda chart my own path like maybe talk about your how you got involved in the business yeah no i i had no idea that i was going to be part of this business at all i i knew about it of course it's my dad it was a business he had been working for and i knew about him purchasing the business working towards that working with the krugers but i had never set foot in the business i was graduating in late ninety seven and i went to my dad and because i had a marketing degree graduating from from college that is and i said hey dad there's this new thing called the internet and you changed the business from baseball card world to bcw diversified to concentrate on other products like cd packaging and using the same the same machines that you use to make other products you're now making you know stadium cushions albums for other industries i think this this new thing called the internet you can sell the baseball card stuff on that because there's nobody doing it and i'd like to come work for you and help develop that because at the time he had really changed the business just over a couple years to it was more more so like eighty percent this diversified product line and only twenty percent what we call bcw the baseball card world side of things and i i said i think i think you could sell this stuff online it took him some convincing he said to me you know what go get a real job and after like three or four years of working at this real job bring all that knowledge back to bcw and you can come work work for me then and i said dad i don't think you understand we need to do this now you don't wanna wait years for this internet thing i think i think you wanna do that now till i convinced him and in ninety eight is when i started so this is i love going back in time and you know right when the internet is taking off and just to like let the listeners know that there were real businesses building real companies at the dawn of the internet and i think that's certainly fascinating in a lot in in their businesses that are still standing like bcw at this point maybe in those early days working with your dad obviously trying to stand up ecom set selling products online what what was it like working kinda side by side with your father and did you feel like because you had the the domain knowledge on the internet that i i'm sensing he might not have did you did you kind of were you able to have a like good collaborative relationship where you felt in a way although this is he's the owner you felt like you're helping not only educate him on what's possible but kind of where this business might go in the next decade or a couple decades like talk about kind of that process of working side by side with your dad on your discipline and kinda getting the e com up to speed yeah he was instrumental in mentoring me of course he he was my mentor and he walked me through how how to help grow a business how to be a good steward of a business i mean i've sat in almost every seat because we were very small back then we were one twentieth the size that we are now had roughly i think it was about thirteen employees then now we're over a hundred it's it's changed quite a bit so going back we were working side by side he was mentoring me i'd i'd done an internship before i worked for the company helping to implement a new accounting package erp system and so i i had already somewhat proven myself to him that i could i could help him but i think really he helped me quite a bit in just teaching me about business how do you interact with customers how do you talk about your vendors you know how how do you just communicate as a whole although you know i'm i'm usually in the background i'm not usually out front in the public doing podcasts this is my the first podcast related to the industry i've been in it for nearly thirty years but it's it's yeah i i like i like being in the background it's pretty rare when when i'm up front talking we're we're getting a unique experience so i'm gonna make the most of it eric you work side by side with your dad but it reached a point where you were i mean you're ceo like you were taking over you are going to be in charge or fully responsible for not only the people the process the strategy the technology everything like there's a lot of responsibility running and being the ceo of a a hundred person business when when was that moment when did you take over and were you nervous were you scared or do you had you you felt like worked in a lot of the different functional areas that you kinda understood how everything worked that you were ready to take over talk about that experience well it was certainly gradual as i mentioned we were eighty percent the diversified part of the business and then twenty percent the bcw part of the business and over you know the next ten years that it completely flip flopped we were twenty percent diversified eighty percent bcw by the time he retired so he retired in twenty twelve and through succession planning both my brother who who works here now he's like the engineering mad scientist guy helping to invent new processes to make nine pocket pages and some other stuff and i've been running the business so it was gradual getting to that point switching the business around and hiring more people i'd sat in many seats and i would find somebody to help with that seat and hire them as we were growing yeah it it took a while can you recall maybe it it could be the hiring that you were just talking about but when you were you transitioned in you were fully responsible your your father's retired what maybe those first decisions that you had to make look like and how that might have shaped the trajectory of the business to where you are today being a hundred person company warehouse lot of different product lines maybe talk talk about those early decisions you made as as the ceo well i think the success of this business is is really ultimate for the people that i work side by side with i see my my position here as somebody that just is here to help of course i'm i'm the visionary trying to to see what's coming in the future however i'm here to help and i try and i think from day one was trying not to have specific responsibilities beyond being the visionary so i would have time to help people and just bring them along and and make sure that i hire the right people people that are smarter than me know this industry much better than me to make sure that we're headed in the right direction and providing me feedback to to maybe what i'm missing and and also where we should go the we've been talking a a lot about hiring on on this show and hiring in the industry and hiring based on this this balance of hiring based on domain expertise or product knowledge in the sports card industry versus hiring based on career experience whether it was outside the sports card industry and there's just this balance like what what is your philosophy when you're hiring or bringing new people on do you want them to have deep domain expertise in the industry do you prefer that they have subject matter expertise outside the industry is it a meld of both like how do you think about bringing new people onto the team yeah it's certainly a meld of both it depends on the position we have category managers that have very deep expertise in the field and then we have people like our cfo that has doesn't didn't really know much about the industry know who you've met and it it just it really depends on the position but in general i don't think people have to have deep expertise like we have a full time videographer full time photographer we have somebody doing social media some like the social media has a deep understanding of the industry but the photographer doesn't the videographer doesn't and it just it it just depends on the position but we try we operate under eos i'm i'm not sure if you're familiar with eos oh yeah okay great or in many eos companies so very familiar yeah so eos is the entrepreneurial operating system and and it is just a way to to run your business we've been operating on it for about two years and it has made a world of difference for us holding people accountable for values having a ten year target a three year goal and what are called rocks that are measured over quarters this has just transformed our business just recently over the last couple years since we've been really operating on it a lot of owners and operators in this industry think about hiring and it is a problem emerges let's go bring someone on and hire as quickly as possible in some instances it's bringing on people because the business is scaling and maybe not necessarily knowing exactly what is needed but knowing that you need really smart people on the team right now the industry is just on fire right and there's more interests there's more individuals who want to leave their careers and go work for a business in the hobby how how do you try to think about bringing on new people in this space do you is it we have this projection where we anticipate something happening is it there's something immediately going wrong that we need to fix like what's your philosophy regarding bringing new members of the team into kind of the the recruitment funnel that eventually might lead to new team members at bcw yeah well we have a leadership team you know i five years ago i was doing making most of the decisions on my own and with with with eos and the process that we went through we put a leadership team in place and us as a leadership team there's six of us we we make most of the decisions key decisions for for bcw including who we should hire and making sure we get the right person in the right seat making sure they gwc it they get it they want it and they have the capacity to do the job and that just going through that process and making sure people fit in with our core values has been enormous for us if you can get people that get to want it and have the capacity to do the job and they fit within your culture your core values that's perfect if we can get eighty percent of the people in our company bought in we're way ahead of most companies and that's how we see it although of course we want a hundred people a hundred percent of the people to be completely bought in but of course there's going to be turnover there's going to be people that just don't fit within our core values and that's okay there's other places for these people to be that is more suited for them but that's where we're headed and that's what we're trying to get to you've referenced kind of your role as visionary i think it's really important in business to have core values so you can map your decisions back to what you believe and what you stand for i think there are a lot of established businesses in the industry but maybe not a lot of businesses operate as more along the lines of corporate businesses outside of the industry and i've always found working at companies having core values is really important because you whenever you have a question you can map back to you gotta make sure or you wanna work on something you gotta make sure that maps back to one of the core values of what your entire business is rallying around like how do you it can be pre or after eos but how how do you view core values obviously i think they're important to you and important to the business but why do you think they're essential well our core values aren't something that we just started with eos it's been who we have been for a long time it just was never on paper you might be able to see it behind me on this this framed poster on the wall it's just who we are we do the right thing we live by the golden rules we're treating others how we like to be treated we take ownership and accountability we're we just what i said was do the right thing also strive for excellence so those are our core four core values on the wall and you're right relating everything back to those core values now that they're down on paper is much easier when we're talking about anything tough decision that we're making about what we do with pricing because of tariffs right these are all things that that going through having it down on paper it's much easier the i you mentioned terror tariffs in you know bcw isn't just a hobby brand but you've got a manufacturing side there's logistics i stepped i got the tour of the warehouse and you just got stacks and stacks of product you've got a whole lot going on and you mentioned tariffs like there's a lot of stuff happening how do you how do you think about balancing kind of the demand from the collector with the realities of production and i would imagine something like tariffs makes you rethink or reset everything so how are you able to kind of on the manufacturing side making make sure that you manage that in a way that meets the expectations of your existing customers or stakeholders yeah making sure that we have the products available to the customers when they need it is extremely important to us and it's very difficult to manage especially at the rate that we've been growing we've been growing leaps and bounds and and we've just recently put in a whole new forecasting system in a couple more months we'll be implementing reimplementing the latest and greatest microsoft erp system that will help us better forecast as well and and essentially run the business it's just immensely important that we're meeting the expectations of our customers we're constantly processing issues and trying to come up with solutions for that exact thing during the pandemic we had for top loaders a year and a half back order date because it was taking that long from the time of order to the product arriving at our docks and and have a year and a half long lead time start placing more orders so it was even going beyond a year and a half so we had to constantly put new systems into place to help solve the problems that we create with pretty significant growth you mentioned the pandemic that's a whole podcast episode you i just look at the i keep going back to the online sales number for the industry in march that card ladder reported just an online sales six hundred and five million dollars i mean the you you break down that number and you just think of all that is happening just on the trading card sales front and all the ripple effects of that and then i think about a business like yours and i just think about like the proliferation of breaking and like the products used and like those are products you supply you talk about forecasting like it's been a wild few years like how i i i know you you mentioned like we're we've got erp system in place new forecasting model you're you're building the systems in place but how with with a industry that's growing at the rate it's growing how do you make sure that you continue to stay in front of it and you have the right products for the right customers when they need it yeah it's difficult we we we've been smart about our finances you know there's i've started listening to a guy called dave ramsey decades ago he's a personal finance guy that wants to be wants everybody to be debt free and i implemented that for the business and we've been debt free as a company for it's probably around eight nine years now and that has allowed us to over purchase product move into new facilities and make sure that we have the inventory available when when people need it we have a hundred and twenty eight thousand facility here and we are close to maxed out on space we we actually are are renting some some space from the building that we used to own in anderson still in anderson we're in middletown indiana now but we over purchase knowing that our products these evergreen products will be needed eventually in the industry and by by the way that the company is set up reinvesting our profits back into the company we've been able to achieve this which isn't it it isn't easy but we're here guide for the industry to help all the retailers consumers even distributors who supply the retailers make sure that this industry stays in stock that the next pandemic the next run on products whether it's a top loader or a nine pocket page we're prepared and we're we're there and have enough product to satisfy the industry i think it's really important as you know you're someone who's behind the scenes typically but this is this is good information for individuals everyone who's listening has used your products before it's it's just it's undeniable but i i don't think we think about businesses like yours in terms of all the different channels and ways that you get your product to the end customer like who are all the stakeholders that you and your team are working through to make sure that they have what they need like maybe break down that ecosystem at bcw yeah so i mean we have over a hundred people here as i mentioned in the office there's about fifteen people and of of those a couple are are remote but almost everybody is on-site we have a purchasing department this is beyond the leadership team we have an ecommerce department marketing department all of these groups are working in concert to make sure that we're getting all the product available to the consumer as i mentioned and to give you to give you some scale on on our customers we offer free shipping at each level of customers we have the consumer and they they get free shipping at a hundred dollars anywhere in the united states so that's usually a parcel maybe two parcels at the retail level they get free shipping at the retailer level for one thousand dollars and that's usually a pallet could be more than one pallet depending on the product mix and then distributors get free shipping at forty thousand dollars that is usually a truckload sometimes it can be more than one truckload but we we pay for the first truckload of product at that level gives you some the the difference between each level and of course we're pricing this product accordingly to each level so they can each profit at that at at wherever they are that's it's that's interesting and then when the industry like right now i just think about all the places that use your product it can be you know breakers breaking the product it can be other manufacturers it can be hobby shops it can be sold at trade shows and right now we're in a period that's very very hot it's very very intense everyone wants to participate we're we have new people coming in there's this is very very different than probably the years for which when you started in twenty twelve it probably looks a lot different how do you think about just in your role as leader of the business the kind of changes in the market the ebbs and flows because just in your time leading the company there's been some ups some downs some really high highs some low lows like how do you make sure that the team and the organization stays level when everything around you is kinda going up and down over the course of a long period of time we've worked we've worked hard to make sure that those ebbs and flows don't affect us we've never had to lay off an employee because of one of those ebbs or flows we've only been hiring since day one i'd i'd like to say that we're lucky but it's our industry this this is a great industry to be in i mean and we're not just focused on sports cards we also do comic accessories trading card accessories so beyond just sports cards we're also into records so thirty three rpm music supplies so between those four main categories we we don't feel a lot of down periods i know there there have been some down periods in our in our industry however they've kind of evened out and and we're really lucky in that case because i know not all parts of our industry that just focusing in on the the sports card trading card vertical what is your position on like the current infrastructure across the industry it feels like to me that the industry has grown up quite a bit over the last five years in terms of types of companies people in this space content i would still say there's still so much more opportunity to strengthen the infrastructure but maybe over the course of like right before the pandemic to where we're at now like how would you evaluate as someone who's been running a business profitable debt free business in this space for a while how would you evaluate like the current state or the current infrastructure across the industry right now obviously fanatics coming in has has been a huge change i don't have an opinion one way or the other on whether that's a good thing or not i i i love that their goal is to ten x this industry i think they really want to to earn back the children from pokemon back into sports cards i i love that that they want that for the industry i'd i'd love to see that nothing against the trading card games whether it's pokemon or any any other trading card game i but kids being into sports cards is is awesome and and i would love to see that happen and if you're trying to secure and organize your cards that's what we're looking for whether it's a mom trying to organize her her son or daughter's collection or whether it's a high end collector trying to to make sure that what they value stays protected for the long term do you in terms of like marketing messaging making sure that that mom is who is you know spent know a hundred dollars two hundred dollars on trading cards for their kid's birthday like how do you make sure that they and their this is the first time they're buying cards how do you make sure that they know that you exist and they know that you have the supplies to help protect their investments like how have you thought about that maybe over the course of your run leading vcw well it's it's certainly changed over the years i mean mass market's a big player in trading cards of course our ideal customer profile is the trading card shop we really feel that that is the heart of our industry and making sure that our products are available there is really important to us so not being at mass market probably we're losing out on those moms a little bit but we're trying to really be there for the core collector and our focus has been that for really a long time going directly to the retailer however it's it's really been clearly defined just recently over the last year and a half we we had never done sales as a company we've had csrs you know that help service accounts but we were never going after new accounts people were hearing about us by word-of-mouth and we were growing simply that way and about about a year ago we started sales and that has been a huge engine for us reaching out to retailers making sure they're aware of us making sure that they they know they can purchase directly from us if if that's what they want we also want them to go through distributors but distributors are carrying other brands of product and most distributors are the other brands as a preference so making sure that our products are available to all these retailers directly has has really put our product more so on the map than in anything else that we could do what a fortunate position to be in growing and profitable without sales and then hey let's let's do sales and let's see what happens that's a a a good spot to be in maybe help us understand if your primary stakeholder let's say is the hobby shop owner which i couldn't agree more like central location hub for education and you know to introduce new product to their customers how do you think about maybe that relationship and that trust that's built you mentioned kind of this word-of-mouth which means that like obviously got a good product got a good reputation trust is in place but from a hobby shop owner's perspective you know i would imagine i know plenty they're getting hit up all the time by vendors that do all similar and adjacent things like how do you think about making sure that bcw is getting in front of the hobby shop owner and it's not just a sales pitch but it's you know a respectful conversation where you know eventually it ends it it leads to a strong partnership between your brand and their brand like as the as the individual who's kinda running the business like how do you think about that channel and and building trust with those hobby shop owners who have put their kind of entire reputation and their entire you know financial outlook into their business and most of the times it's because they're passionate about building community and selling cards to people locally like how do you think about that trust yeah well well trust is huge and we're we're not here to just sell them product we're here to guide them through everything you know and our free shipping allows them to to not have to calculate in cost of a monster a thirty two hundred count monster box for shipping they know that if they buy that for two dollars and fifty cents they can retail it at a keystone for five dollars and not have to worry about figuring out oh there's thirty cents of shipping so how how do i get to the msrp that has been huge for us we also offer a complete line of accessories like everything that you would need for your hobby shop you can get directly from us have pretty much everything and the and and when there are products that come out that that become staples you know we do try to react quick and and actually lead in that area many of our our bins our card bins that are are basically duplications of our cardboard storage boxes you know we're we're trying to lead and get out in front of the industry so just being a a trusted adviser treating people right i think is is really what creates that trust what would you say you maybe has been your greatest learning in taking over the business since twenty twelve when you think back at that entire tenure like what is the most important important thing that you have learned about running the business that was maybe that i don't know if it was a light bulb moment or just a a key moment in your growth as a leader for the business that really has been the hallmark of your run leading bcw yeah it's a great question say making sure that i have the right people around me people that are are much smarter than i am the people that really get this business and want to be here and just can do things you know hiring smart people has probably been the best decision that i've ever made it's really allowed us to to grow at the pace that we've been growing it's all good leaders rely be really good at hiring smart people and get out of the way let them do their thing what maybe what is something right now that you are focused on it could be expectedly or unexpectedly but just like what are you focusing your majority of your time like thinking about planning about working on is there something that when you get out of bed in the morning is like a key initiative for you right now just setting up for the future really i mean it's it's no different i i don't get overly excited about things but i also don't get down on on many things i'm i'm kind of a hard person to read probably think that the the employees teammates here would probably say that about me if we're just trying to continue the pace that we've been on which is difficult to do year after year but trying to set it up so everybody can continue to grow within this this business and just grow we're we're trying to grow growth is is so challenging everyone wants to do it i think for a business like yours you've established that you have the ability to grow and you've done it incrementally year over year just look at your you know your location and you saying you know we're running out of room that that's a signal for growth but i think we all wanna grow fast we all wanna grow right now but like what's your position on growth and is there good growth versus bad growth like how do you think about growth within your business absolutely there's good growth and and bad growth although we we really stay focused on what is our purpose and our purpose is to solve problems and the problems that we solve are are for the collector to help them you know secure organize and enjoy what they collect so it stays protected and valued for the long term and that's what we live by when we're looking at at areas to expand we run it through that lens and if if we're not going to be able to do that we're really careful in turning down business if it's going to really affect our customer base our icp our ideal customer profile which i've mentioned is the retailer you know we we do not want to hurt those customers that depend on us week in and week out to provide their customers with the products that they've come to depend on and that is really what our focus is is to not let any of those existing customers down while still growing makes sense it it it does it does very much so maybe as we're rounding up this chat eric there are a lot of individuals in the industry who work in the industry listening to this and there's people out there who are aspiring to you know work in the sports card industry whether it's for themselves or for a job maybe over the course of your time working in this space working on this business building this business building teams growing scaling like what is maybe the most important lesson outside of you've mentioned hiring smart people but like what would you leave people with listening to this conversation just based on your career experience like what's what's something valuable just based on something you've learned over the course of your journey that you'd leave people with i would say anybody that that is looking to either get into this industry or is already in it is to to just make sure that you're somewhere that that has the right culture that that fits who you are you know there's there's lots of different cultures out there and lots of different people and making sure that you work somewhere where you wanna be there every day is so important and finding that right fit so that that that is i guess what i would suggest anybody looking to get into this industry should be looking at tons of great insights good information i'm always rooting for businesses in this space but especially businesses that are right in my backyard eric i'm glad you came out of the shadows for a little bit and shared some of your experience and insights this was a lot a lot of fun and maybe we can do it again down the road absolutely thank you bren really appreciate it really fun conversation enjoyed eric's perspective from so many years building a company that is continuing to grow and scale at bcw supplies appreciate all your support shout out ebay for sponsoring passionate profession we'll be back with another one next week take care we'll talk to you soon