Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - This $4M Blue Collar E-commerce Deserves High Visibility - Acquisitions Anonymous 294

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

In this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous, Michael, Bill, and Heather get a business deal involving a seven-year-old blue-collar workwear brand that's booming thanks to its new TikTok shop. They talk about how selling things on social media, like TikTok, can be really hit or miss and discuss intellectual property challenges and more.  Hope you have fun as we did.Today's listing is found on QuietlightQuiet Light is a business brokerage firm that helps entrepreneurs buy, value, and sell online businesses. Every Advisor on the team has built, bought, or sold their own online business and is committed to providing relentlessly honest advice and personalized recommendations to help owners succeed.Thanks to this week's sponsor:Have you ever wished your business’s software better fits your needs?IvyWorks can help. They specialize in building custom solutions for SMB’s complex processes.You forge the vision; they handle everything else: discovery, design, engineering, creation, and training. They only take a few client partners each year. You’ll be handled personally by founders Callan and Sam, with complete transparency and an open invitation to all development calls.Book a free discovery session, and we’ll make you an actionable project scope document that any software firm can execute. No strings attached. Visit Ivy.Works to learn more.Learn how to buy a business.If you are interested in buying a business but unsure how to start, you should check Michael's Buy a Business Course:You will learn:• Build a thesis for the type of business that's right for you‍• Learn how to stand out in a sea of buyers• Create a working, scalable Deal Engine getting you leads• Maximize your chances of finding great dealsSHOW NOTES:00:00 intro 02:38 Blue-collar e-commerce deal08:08 How TikTok Shop works09:52 Intellectual Property and Competition14:20 Relying on TikTok Algorithm & Trends17:42 Opportunities in Underserved Markets21:25 Platform dependency 27:09 The ideal buyer Connect with us:Subscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Thumbs up or thumbs down on construction hard hat stickers and high viz shirts? I think it's thumbs up only if it's a buyer with experience. You know, it's just, it's so dynamic, it's so complicated that I think it is really, really hard to like take a $5 million SBA swing on an e-commerce business if you don't already know a bit of what you're doing. Hey, Michael here. Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous, the internet's number one podcast about buying and selling and investing in small businesses. and today we had everybody there until Mills's microphone broke, and I think we all know what we're going to get him for his birthday coming up. So today we talked about a deal that was perfect for Mills because it involved beards and blue collar helmets and safety stuff,

and perfect for my buddy Bill because it involves stuff that was sold online, a perfect mind meld there, and then the internet let us down. But the episode turned out great anyway. We started with all four of us there and finished with three of us, So check it out and here you go. Today's episode is brought to you by Ivyworks, a Boston-based software engineering firm dedicated to crafting tailored solutions for SMBs. Are you tired of off-the-shelf software that doesn't quite fit your needs? IvyWorks understands.

Specializing on operations and client-facing software, they guide you from discovery to design, engineering, and beyond. With a track record including projects like AI power drones for roof scanning and mobile apps for managing large-scale operations, IvyWorks is not your average firm. led by founders Callan and Sam, they prioritize transparency and personal attention, involving you in every step of the process. Act now and receive a free discovery session complete with systems, architecture, design, and feasibility study. And even if you don't choose IvyWorks, you'll walk away with a comprehensive project scope. Don't settle for generic software solutions. Visit IvyWorks today and mention Acquisitions Anonymous for your free project discovery walkthrough.

Let's build the software your business truly deserves. How's everybody doing? Good. I'm trying to beat down copycatters on Twitter today. You got incarcerated? I have, it's not the first time it's happened, but of a sudden there's a couple,

and they're sending people crypto DMs, you know, from me. Right. Yeah. By the way, I am so thankful for the deal that you sent me. It's that crypto investment scheme that you're providing. Oh, yeah. You invested already? Yeah, I feel so rich because of you.

So, yes. Yeah, great work, Heather. Cool. All right. Well, we brought this deal from Quiet Light today. How do we get this? I mean, e-commerce deals from Firelighter are like my specialty, so I'm psyched about this one. Let's go. All right, I'll read this one, and then Bill can tell us why it's a terrific deal. All right. So from Quiet Light, let me share the deal. Am I showing the deal? Can you guys see it? Nope. I just see your beautiful face, Michael. Oh, thank you. I have been working on this beard for it. It looks like you trimmed your beard.

too. We didn't. Are you insulting my manhood again? Every single time. Your trip. It was definitely longer last time we've recorded. Yeah. I think that's the key. I get it like the six millimeter and I think it works well. What do you use? Like the 72 millimeter? Yeah. Just no tramp. I need to do that. All right. Okay. So this is an SBA pre-qualified seven-year-old blue collar workwear brand with 38% and that's margins and has growth opportunities. And it's currently under offer at Quietlight, but that doesn't mean we can't sneak in and get it. Revenue is $4 million, pretty much even.

Income is $1.5 million. So it's selling for a three times multiple. So they're asking $4.6 million plus inventory. So located in 2016, the sticker and apparel business sells products to the Amazon to the American blue collar worker demographic. Bill, do we know anybody who is real close with the blue collar workers that are out of the year?

People who use the 72 millimeter beer guard is what we're talking about here. Yes, that's what we're talking about. Sales primarily come through the shop of my store. However, the recent edition of a TikTok shop has proven to be a very strong new sales channel, accounting for 20% of sales, and that number is growing rapidly. The net margins are an impressive 30%. The seller receives an impressive 3.8 times return on ad spend, Roaz on Facebook and Instagram, and 5 to 6x on TikTok in today's difficult social media advertising landscape.

This business provides a buyer with multiple opportunities to scale the business and a large and easily targeted industry while control on the spy chain. The business first soared on green high-vis safety shirts. Over time, the seller realized that hard hat stickers were a great expansion opportunity. They have a catalog of hundreds of stickers and this category has performed extremely well in recent years. A small team handles all in-house production ensuring competitive pricing and a 4,000 square foot space. The seller and spouse primarily run the business alongside four employees, two full-time managing, production and fulfillment, and two part-time overseeing email ad campaigns and social media interactions. All part-time employees are open and transitioning with the sale.

This is a very good opportunity for the new owner to grow the business immediately, first on TikTok, a new owner who continues to add more products and allow the hundreds of TikTok affiliates to promote them would have an opportunity to dramatically expand this channel. The TikTok shop generated $1 million in sales on only two products in 180 days. Secondly, adding the entire catalog to Amazon is a turnkey way to expand rapidly. Third, expanding the website offering into several new high-volume products lines that fit this brand, grammatically impact sales. Finally, increasing the advertising budget will create more revenue.

And that's our deal, an SBA pre-qualified seven-year-old blue-collar workwear brand with 40% net margins. What do you guys think? Oh, boy. There's a lot to say here. Mills, how many stickers do you have on your hard hat is the first thing I want to know? I actually don't have many because whenever I showed to a job site, I'm going to hear just take mine and I'll get another one. But we have to provide them.

There are so many buzzwords that they're hitting on this because, Bill, didn't we just recently talk about one where we were talking about TikTok or like, yeah. Yeah, we didn't animate products one. 4A and a TikTok also. Yeah, TikTok shops is blown up. It's kind of the hot thing these days. I've been watching TikTok shops and they're hilarious for some of the ones that are ironic, ironically TikTok shops.

Like, for some reason, the TikTok algorithm keeps showing me this Chinese guy who barely speaks any English, but he keeps trying to sell used Chinese trucks around the world. And then that's one that I see over and over again. And then the other thing that's become a meme is like there's a glycerin provider somewhere in China that has put together a TikTok shop. And it's ironically hilarious. And I don't know how to describe it. But everybody understands and like has done these memes around the different, the different, types of glycerin out there and why this particular Chinese manufacturer is the absolute best. So people have done all these parodies. It's really fun. I don't know. I liked.

What is your algorithm like, Michael? I mean, I shudder to think what's going on in your TikTok. The worst one actually, and Heather, Heather, shut your ears. The worst one is my wife made me open up my Instagram the other day. And my feed on Instagram is just like normal stuff, like people's kid photos and all this kind of stuff. But whenever I click on the search button and it gives me suggested stuff, it's all female bodybuilders and bikinis. Like it just pops up all the things. I never see them on my feed, but it's all there in the search. My wife is like, what are you looking? I'm like, I don't know. It just thinks I want to see female bodybuilders in the bikini. No, you know what it is. You've been looking at beard content. I know. And beard content is highly correlated with female

Bikini Bodybuilders, I bet. So is it worth explaining how TikTok shop works for listeners and just kind of recapping? So what TikTok shops is is pretty brilliant. So kind of the old way of doing social media affiliate would be, you know, approach an influencer and you go, you have a lot of followers, you know, can we make a business deal, you know, but for you to post about our stuff. TikTok shops is so cool because it allows the influencers to come to you. you, you basically make available on TikTok.

You upload your products into TikTok and you say, just take our example. If you sell a dog supplement, we will give you a 30% commission. And then anybody on TikTok can make a piece of content. And they, you know, they're very clever people, right? So they'll make a piece of content selling dog supplements. And then for every dog supplement that they sell, they earn a commission. But you don't have to have any preexisting relationship with them at all. This can happen completely organically.

They can come find your TikTok shop and do. just start making content. And the attribution is perfect because the conversion actually takes place inside the TikTok app. So as you're scrolling through TikTok, you can buy things in your TikTok shop cart on various different brands and TikTok facilitates the payment of the commission out to the brand, payment of the commission of the creator and the payment of the rest of the money to the brand. So you get these brands that create these flywheels where creators on TikTok see other people making money selling beard growth supplements to guys in San Antonio. Texas, and they go, oh, like, I can make a funny video about that too and maybe make some money.

And you start to get this flyware wheeler, people, creators see other creators making money and they kind of hop on the train. And I bet that's what's going on here, especially if they've grown so quickly on TikTok, is they probably had a couple successful affiliates. And now a bunch of other people are on the train and the virtuous flywheel is spinning. But these are stickers that are going on hard hats. And we talked about this with some of the other kind of like t-shirt companies, what kinds of stickers would, would people buy on TikTok? Like, it feels like it might be, you know, their favorite character of some kind. Like, I guess I'm worried a little bit about copywriting.

Like, if there's, if they're doing something that, uh, they're creating stuff that is not, um, legal. Well, yeah, I mean, if they're, if they're the one other people's trying to follow. Go ahead. Oh, Mills. Mills has one he follows already. Mill's favorite brand of TikTok stickers. Yeah, Ellis.

And interesting is like you'll find hilarious accounts on Instagram like OSHA is this okay. And OSHA offender. So OSHA offender is a pretty big one. And they sell stickers. And you go to OSHA.com. They actually own the URL. They have T-Sender. But then they also have these stickers that are like, you know, cheers to T-Fee.

And it's like two beers or, you know, it's like this picture like Jesus. like out of a, you know, vacation Bible school ad. And it said, just do it. I got you. You know, things like that. I don't know that there's a lot of copyright detection around it. Yes. Yeah, it's probably humor.

All right. Okay. I feel better now. Hey, is Mills is audio cutting in and out for you guys? It's blushing pretty hard. Yeah. Mills is your microphone working or now? Or is the hamster running?

I'll just stop talking for you. Yeah, just worry about the recording's going to be bad because Mills's audio is bad. Yeah, Mills, you're pretty tough to hear. Pretty janky. So, Heather, your point about IT or about IP, though, I'm actually worried about it on the other side, which is how do you possibly protect this? You know, if you've come up with your own cute sayings or, you know, our own cute graphics, or let's say you're totally clear and it's all your own IP. It's a sticker, right? I mean, this is going to get ripped, and it's TikTok.

Like, this is going to get ripped off and remixed 10,000 times. You know, they say, oh, the huge opportunity here is Amazon. Well, yes, for about three weeks until all the Chinese sticker companies start ripping you off. And there's, and you have no recourse at all because they're in Asia and, you know, they just don't. And also, like, do you have, even if it is all your IP, do you have it all trademarked and, like, documented? So then, you know, like, every single time you make a sticker, are you filing a trademark for it? so you can actually enforce it. I have friends that run a T-shirt company.

I'll give them a shout-out called Boardwalk T's, B-O-R-E-D, Boardwalk T's. And they make really funny, you know, they cover their own art, you know, very talented people. But they spend six or seven figures a year enforcing IP. Like the primary, one of the primary functions of their company is to enforce their own IP and take-downs on Amazon, take-downs on social media, and they're just getting, mercilessly ripped off constantly just as table stakes in their business. So I would be really interested about this business as they went through, well, here's all the people that work here. They didn't mention like full-time take down filer, you know, IP enforcement. So I'd have a lot

of been questions about not just do we own our IP, have we documented our ownership of our own IP, and then can we actually successfully enforce it? I want to understand that entire function at this business, which I'm fearful does not exist for $4.5 million plus inventory. Yeah, and it seems like all the growth is very recent and it's TikTok oriented. And then that's probably means it's mostly stickers over apparel. So that's my next question is there's this plus inventory piece. How much of this is apparel and how much of this is stickers? I'm not so worried about the sticker inventory, but the apparel inventory can be kind of hard

to turn. You know, so sizes and whatnot. And I never like a price plus inventory. I want a price that includes the things that I need to run my business. And so, you know, the plus inventory leads me to a big question. What is this inventory? Yeah, I mean, it could be not a lot of money if it's stickers and, you know, high-vis shirts from China. You know, it might not just might not be a lot of dollar value here at all.

I would, but I, to your point, Heather, I'm very curious about the sticker high-vis shirt split and also the recent trends because TikTok shop is so new. And it says it's 20% of sales. So 20% of that sales is new within the last six months. I will just guarantee you because of TikTok shop. You know, can't really be much older than that. And the kind of the nature of TikTok shop also is it's volatile. Like it depends. The TikTok algorithm is so content hungry. You know, you're basically meaning. to go viral, like constantly on repeat. So I would worry a little bit, you know, is this repeatable, this kind of TikTok shop bump here? So I would be focused on diligence, and I'm not saying it's not. But what we focus on diligence is their process around generating and attracting new TikTok affiliates, their process around creating new stickers and, you know, how we get ideas for this, how do we push them all out to creators? How do we, How do we kind of put this virality cycle on repeat? And is that possible?

And there are businesses that are very, very good at that. Like, you can systematize that. Or you can just be getting lucky. And I would really want to understand which is at play in this business. Yeah, very good points. It seems like it would be better to be a creator on TikTok, one of those affiliates, than the company that's trying to sell the products, just to your point, because it is so volatile. And you just hop product to product, you know, whenever you can make something funny about.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, you look at some of the numbers I see and hear from people that are like beauty creators and they just go and they pick and they'll go record a video, you know, based around a particular eyeliner or lip liner or something like that. Or, I mean, Bill, I don't know if you followed the science of beauty in the past few years. and like just like the crazy permutations of like makeup products that are out there like spray cans and all this stuff that's just like over the top. The other thing TikTok loves to show me is there's this one creator who's a, I think she's a she technically. I don't know what she's her, what her gender is.

But let's say she, but she was born, you know, assigned a male chromosomes. And so she dresses her, she'll go through the whole process and dresses herself up to get totally done. And like the science of makeup of all the painting and everything she's doing to create her look is just unbelievable. Just all the different stuff that is out there. Sorry. Did I manage to just say all of that without canceling myself? No, you definitely got cancel. That was comical to why.

watch you try to dance between the raindrops. That was amazing. I was like, okay, I know what all the rules are. I just have to understand if I could keep them all of my brain at the same time while I'm explaining this particular topic. But like pens and spray cans and just like pasts and creams and like drizzles, like just like, wow. Yeah, it's, well, beauty is is like the slam-dunk category on TikTok right now. I mean, it just, it does so, so well because it's so visual. But one thing that I really love about this business, though, is that is the opposite of beauty. It is the blue collar, like, rural demo.

But here's why I love it so much because most of the people who start, run, operate, e-commerce brands are coastal people, right? They come from big cities and they have a huge blind spot when it comes to, you know, this massive population of kind of rural everyday guys that work on construction sites, they have no idea what those people want, how to relate to them, et cetera. And I have seen some really big businesses built going direct to that demographic. And I'm not talking about Make America Great Again hats. I'm talking about like legitimate things that these people need, advertising on Fox News

Radio, going direct to places where these people are and just build. building massive businesses. And the competition is lower because it seems distasteful to kind of the coastal, you know, ecom entrepreneur crowd. And also they don't have any empathy for that customer at all. They have just no idea that these people even exist or these markets even exist. Yeah.

It reminds me of our buddy Craig Fuller, Freight Waves, Craig Fuller. And I don't know if you've looked at their business. I don't know if you've seen it, Heather, but they have actually a podcast that is just optimized towards like, truck drivers. Like the independent truck drivers is a podcast just for them.

And it's kind of what you imagine. Bill, it does not look like you or I. And they're talking about like that kind of stuff, right? It's like it's, it's more in line with what, what that market is, which I am definitely not,

whatever the opposite of a truck driver is. I discovered them, I discovered them as a banker when I had a client in the freight brokerage business. And of course, that business is always volatile, but it was going through one of its volatile cycles. and I was trying to understand it better.

And Freight Wade's taught me everything, you know, a lot of what I needed to know at the time. They're very good. Yeah, because they understand this demographic that most people, I mean, so you're playing, the competition is just lower. You know, like this is true. We've done firearms businesses on the past in the pod where just the bar to succeed is lower because you're not competing often with the very, very best, you know, New York, you know, weaponized e-commerce guys who really get it.

So I love markets like this. Hard hat stickers. Perfect example. Boring products or whatever. That's sort of the same idea. Yeah. Boring, but I mean, I'm going to go far of the boring and say like explicitly rural American, Republican, but I'm not saying that the actual Republican stuff, but people who tend to

identify with that whole demographic. Yeah. A huge underserved market in so many ways. also seniors huge underserved market i just i met a entrepreneur last week who was doing a hundred million dollars a year on shopify to seniors with facebook ads of like massage like massagers that were specifically targeted to relieve pain from arthritis uh and most 32 year old ecom bro people are not going after that market uh and it's just it's a blue ocean compared to you know the 10,000 skin cream or dog supplement.

That's crazy. So let me ask you this. Is this business, is it yes or not yes? So yes or no, am I just doing TikTok and Facebook ads spend arbitrage here? Like, is that my big Achilles heel? I mean, yeah, your Achilles here is you were entirely dependent on the platforms, right? I mean, you've got, it's Facebook, TikTok, and then what's your growth opportunity, Amazon? Like, that is the Achilles heel of all.

e-commerce businesses, though. So it's sort of hard to knock them just for that. So there was an interesting, there was an interesting parallel. I think one of the, one of the actually intelligent and not bought anonymous accounts on Twitter brought this up that talked about like it used to be like, you know, in physical e-commerce or physical commerce, you had your landlord. Your physical landlord was the toll, the toll, right? Like you're in the mall, you're paying toll to simons or whatever, right? And the mall owner. and the reet that own that stuff. But since things have gone digital, we have new mall owners.

And the mall owner is named Amazon or Shopify or TikTok or Facebook. And you have to pick which one of those malls you're going to be in and pay the troll toll to those guys. Like, do you buy that parallel bill? Or do you think that's not the right way to think about it? No, I mean, absolutely. But you're just trying to, like any retailer, right, you're in malls long enough to hopefully get big enough to open your own store. front. But I think there is very much the toll to the big platforms because they have a strangle on the consumer. And honestly, it's one of the things I don't like about e-commerce as a business model

is it is just so, so platform-dependent. And you can't get away from it. It's you think that your Shopify store, oh, we're going to direct consumer, but how are they going to find your website? Right? It's meta and Google. And then you run from them and you end up with Amazon. And, you know, then e-commerce sellers run to TikTok. Have, have, have, have you? Have, Have you guys ever read this viral blog post? It's called the enshittification of platforms. It's fascinating. But I'll summarize it less eloquently than the author does. It's written by somebody who spent their whole career in social media. And they basically go, like, this is how it works. Like, this is the playbook. First, you create a platform and you need to make it extremely lucrative

for brands. Like, you make the ads almost free. You make the reach incredibly easy. Right. And so then here come the brands. And then gradually you just make it worse and worse and worse and and pull more and more chips to your side of the table. You monetize the reach and you just slowly, slowly, slowly replace the crack pipe with the toll. And before you know it, the brands are paying a huge portion of their margin to reach the customers. And it's on purpose. Like all the incentives are this way and everybody who's building platforms is doing this extremely intentionally. And so when I see all these brands running TikTok and I raise my hand included, like people run to these new platforms because they know that the traffic is temporarily underpriced, right? And it's

underpriced until the platform starts to get saturated and then it will get worse and worse and worse. And then there'll be some new platform that all the brands will run to. And I think that's why people are so interested in TikTok shop right now. Interesting. So it is in the crack pipe stage. TikTok shop is. Yeah, TikTok generally. Free drugs. Yeah. Yes. Free demand, which is the best drug in the world for a business, right? Free demand. So, I mean, I am interested in this business. So, like, some of the things that would make this good would be if they had a really tight IP pipeline, they were coming up with their own IP, they were making hard hat stickers and shirts and, you know, high-vis vests with their own IP on it, you know, and they actually really understood their target

demo. And this was like, let's just say it's all, you know, construction workers. And they're able to make on repeat content that's funny that attracts construction workers and they can sell more and more things to construction workers. I would really like that. What I would not like would be if this is relatively generic IP that is not protected or if 60% of the business is high Viz shirts imported from Alibaba and they just got a couple Facebook ads that do really well. I want to see this more like a custom products business rather than an Alibaba. arbitrage business. And so this could be great or it could be not great and it's kind of hard to tell from the

listing. Right. It doesn't tell you. Which makes me think it's probably not their own IP, but that's my cynical lender view. If I had to guess, it is probably a blend. As with everything in life, it's probably pretty gray. So what you're going to be doing here is teasing apart which parts of the business are valuable and you think you can grow and which parts of the business.

you're not going to value very highly because they're probably going to collapse. What I worry about, though, is there to some degree elements of risk in both sides of this business. On one hand, you have the side of the business that's just the, let's call it, the olive arbitrage, high-vis shirts, right? There's reasons that's not great. And that over time, you're going to get, your margins are going to get competed away. Like, there's not really a lot of moat there. But then on the TikTok side, the unique IP, TikTok is so inherently viral, you just, it can't

stay cool forever. So, like, there's risk that that could decay for entirely separate reasons, but you may end up with decay on both sides of the business. So I would be really, really focused on how on either side of the business, where's the moat? And if there is no moat, and some businesses don't have a moat as like an intrinsic mode, but what they do have is process to refill the moat, like very quickly with new products and they have a kind of template to do viral content. And it's more of like a product mill. And those can be great businesses too, but you need really good process around how to do that. So I would be looking for is there a moat? And if not, do they have the ability to kind of refill their remote with process? So what's interesting is that this is

the listing says it's under contract. Someone's, someone's under LOI right now. And that would say that someone's going through an SBA loan process right now, you know, trying to get their loan underwritten. Should this be bought by someone who does not have e-commerce experience, Bill? That's a question that comes up. Oh, no. I mean, I generally think that, to be honest, about most e-commerce businesses. Like, I did not think that in the past. I think in 2024, e-commerce is extremely hard. There are a lot of moving pieces. It is wickedly competitive. and just because, like, if you buy a business in e-commerce, not even just this one, you buy an e-commerce business, by the time you finish coming up the curve to be sharp on everything the business must

currently do to survive, the game has changed and the business must be doing something totally different in order to survive. Like, you got to hop to a different platform or, you know, some Chinese competitor comes in and undercuts your primary hero product by 30% and you've got to reintroduce a new product or you've got your Amazon falls apart for, because they change the rules. or your Facebook ad is no longer approved because you can't show knives in the ad anymore. You know, it's just, it's so dynamic, so complicated, and so platform-dependent, that I think it is really, really hard to like take a $5 million SBA swing on an e-commerce

business if you don't already know a bit of what you're doing. I agree. That'd be a tough one for someone who doesn't have the experience. And I think a lot of what you just said is way more than a bank is going to ask somebody about this business or really be able to understand. So it's very possible that someone could get a loan approved for this without the bank really understanding those risks. And that's, I guess, what can be a little scary. Don't rely on your lender to keep you safe just because they might think it's an okay loan. They're looking at some pretty rudimentary metrics sometimes

and not really looking at sort of the inherent business model and, you know, kind of where the industry is. If you're relying on your lender to do your diligence, you've got a problem. So you should never do that. Some people do, though. Mm-hmm. So I think we start with you, Michael, since pioneered the concept here. Your idea. Thumbs up or thumbs down on construction hard hat stickers and high-vis shirts?

I think it's thumbs up to go double check, double click on this one and see what there is here. I think, you know, I'm really, really concerned about the durability of this business based on what we know here. is it generic stuff. You know, I understand the game where I'm going to have to jump from platform to platform to keep building top of funnel and bringing customers. But like, I want to understand, like, am I going to be in a race to the bottom with the Chinese coming in and copying everything I'm doing verbatim and trying to sell it for a nickel cheaper?

So I'm a cautious thumbs up worth double clicking on if this was a space I knew and wanted to be in. Yep. I'll give a thumbs up as well. I'm in to sign the NDA and figure out if there's something here. I mean, it's been around for a while, which I like, that, yeah, 20% of the revenue is TikTok shops, but 80% of the revenue is not. You know, so there's, that's interesting. I'd like to understand how that works. I like to understand their product portfolio.

As I said earlier in the episode, this could be really attractive or it could be glorified drop ship. But I'm thumbs up. I'm getting the book. I don't know how to do my thumb here because I'm thumbs up only if it's a by. with experience or a strategic buyer, they've got some other e-commerce products and this kind of makes sense with them. I have thumbs down as it is and at the price that it is because it's even, you know, the price is even higher if it's the plus inventory. So I'm, it depends, I guess, as a lender would say. It depends. It always depends. It always depends. Thumbs down by default,

says the lender. Always default thumbs down. If I ever give you a thumbs up, it will be a very exciting day. We'll need to see a full financial model in the teaser before Heather gives the thumbs up. Citing. All right. That was a good one. I think a lot of people are interested in TikTok shops. Oh, yeah, I should say also this is thumbs up because I love the market. I love the kind of the rural world rural America market.

All right, all right. Well, cool. We'll see everybody next week.