The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Brent Weinmann, President of Vitakraft Sun Seed

Episode Date: September 10, 2022

Brent Weinmann, President of Vitakraft Sun Seed Vitakraftsunseed.com

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See the big LinkedIn newsletter, the big LinkedIn 122,000 member group over there as well. Today we have an amazing gentleman on the show with us today. He's going to be talking about his company, what he does, how he built it, and all that good stuff. Brent Weinman of Vitacraft Sunseed is on the show with us today, and he'll be talking to us about his amazing journey, life, and everything he's done. He was a finance major who tended to find friends in the arts, giving him a unique perspective

as he worked his way through college after graduating from Bowling Green State University. Wasn't there a massacre at Bullickry? I don't know. And his finance decree in 1985, Brent went to work for a company called Sunseed, which created food products for birds and small animals. He quickly rose to the ranks from production manager or production labor to national sales manager. Then in 2001, they bought Sunseeds and the company began working

with the German pet food company Vitacraft. In 2008, Brent sold Sunseeds to Vitacraft, resulting in a new company, Vitacraft Sunseeds, of which Brent is still president to this day. Welcome to the show, Brent. How are you? Great, yes. Thanks for having me.

Awesome, Sauce. It's great to have you as well. So give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, vitacraftsunseed.com or just go to vitacraft.com as well. There you go. There you go. So let's talk a little bit about your journey and what got you here. I imagine Vitacraft Sunseed is a pretty successful company.

What do you guys do in revenue? What do we successful company. What do you guys do in revenue? What do we do what? What do you guys do in revenue? Globally, we're about a 400 million euro company. Sauce. Domestically, we will be pushing volume in the next six years. Damn, that is nice. That is nice.

So tell us about your background story. How did you get into the Sunseed business? Yeah, well, I didn't grow up playing DL under one of the words. It just sort of happened. My girlfriend at the time, now my wife, we met 30 years, 35 years plus, worked on a horse farm. A horse farm owner also was starting a small pet industry called Sunseed Pockery. And he was a pet store owner, a backyard engineer. Well, he'd seen enough of the local harbor,

and they started a backstreet old farm. He'd been in with small cement, and they were blending it together. And about two years later, I joined them, and the production. And then as the company grew, he bought out his owner and made me a front. They also marked me.

That's pretty freaking awesome. That's awesome. So I guess, you know, you fall in love with the business you're in, right? Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it's been a great ride. It's been 36 years now. I love the people I work with. I love, you know, a lot of friends in the industry.

It's been a lot of fun. As you purchased Sunseed and then your guys were purchased by Vitacraft, you remained as president throughout that whole tenure. How'd that come about and how'd you make sure that happened

so you always stayed at the top there? Yeah, well, the purchase of Sunseed came up because of being, you know, sort of writing a man to the former owner. I knew he was entertaining some big fellow company. When the last one fell through, much said, if I put together, you know, a financing package,

would you be willing to sell it for me? I said, yeah, I'd be basically co-signing the loan. And away we went. Of course, that happened to be $1,001. All that happened back then was the economy sort of tanked about a month after. I signed on the bottom line with the highly levered buyout. Oh, wow. All of the struggle, we made it through.

But that's where we go. I'll promise you, we never ever lay anybody off. That's awesome. And at that time, we began doing some private label packaging for the Strammer Company of Light Exact. They came over, I think it was about 2007. I expected just a little regular plant tour and, you know, hey, let's put some business plans together for the coming year.

They said, hey, you know, what would you think if we bought your company? You know, at that time, I was still quite a bit in debt, and they came up with a pretty nice offer. They said, you know, part of the deal is you have to sign a five-year contract and you can run it. That was 2008, so I guess we're, you know, 14 years into a five-year program. Wow. That's pretty good. Well, then that means you're doing a good job evidently, right? Yeah. I think generally

they're pretty good. Sure, yeah. I mean, that's to be expected in business. It's not always straight up unless you're, I don't know, Amazon or Elon Musk or something. Even then, I think they've seen downtime. So, you know, Musk or something. Right. Even then, I think they've seen downtime. So, you know, so that's pretty freaking awesome. I mean, being able to, you know, never have to lay anyone off and everything else. So as you guys did the merger of Vitacraft and Sunseed,

how did that change the landscape of the business? And where are you guys at today? Yeah, pretty dramatic. We have more than triple the business since we've gone forces. Wow. You know, this is, for people who are, who are really interested in pets, it might be interesting, our, our company, Sunsneak was more making foods. We were like rabbit hollow, like that.

And Vitagraph was more making treats. We're a little, the small animals and birds. Yeah. We are, we're the mix, you. The mix populated each other. By the time that the time was more into the big box retailers, we were going more into the independent, model pop type

stores. So it was just a really good mix. We pulled a lot of points for each other. And as we put this together, we were able to do more production for bite-a-crap hooves, which they were sort of limited on, although they were all from Infor, cost of Infor, and it's really opened up a lot of interesting avenues for us. The pet business is pretty interesting.

Years ago, when we had several companies, I told my, I started, I'd gotten two dogs, and I was like, holy crap. I mean, there's a lot of money in this business. I mean, you know, those plastic Kongs are like 10, 15 bucks a pop. And I'm like, injection molded plastic, 10 to 15 bucks. What the heck? And, and, you know, over the, over time I've seen the food portion of, of dog food and dog toys. And like, I, I used to joke with my friends. I'm like, I'm like, yeah, it's cheaper than owning kids. It's definitely a lot cheaper to feed them and everything else. But, you know, it has gotten more expensive.

I don't know what happened with the, what's that bone business? The bone shoes that I get for my dogs, the chewy, the chewy tendons. Those things are like gold evidently now. Right, exactly. And I don't know if you see the deer antlers that are out there. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if the bucks were off. antlers that are out there. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if the bucks were off. I'll talk to Antler about that.

Yeah, yeah. And I said to my business partner, I go, we need to get in that business because it seems like it's going places. And definitely, especially with what was a coronavirus, I think more people got pets during coronavirus than ever before. Yeah, it was amazing. Yeah. We get almost 70% of the U.S. population. Wow. With something like that, a little bearded dragon or a black lab.

Yeah. It's all been gross in the last few years. Yep. Bearded dragon is my other podcast that I do on the side. So give us a rundown. What products do you guys sell at Vitacraft U.S.? Yeah. Well, we have about 450 products in our lineup.

The brains, the Vitacraft brand. We also have a label called Well. But we used to say everything from parents to parents. And today we've expanded them to cats and dogs. Free-wheeled treats from our favorite company in Europe. Wow. So you guys delve into all that. That's some good branding to take and do.

And then can you share your passion for Vitacraft and how it, how it impacts the business? How, how does the president's, you know, passion for what you guys do? Yeah. I'm passionate about a few parts of the business. I have to say first and foremost, it's about connecting with the employees. I just really enjoy that part of the business. It can be frustrating. Don't get me wrong.

But, you know, I just enjoy the camaraderie. I'm also a team player in that sort of ho-ho-ho. Although, the other side, I've had dogs growing up, I've had hamsters and gerbils growing up, I've had a parrot, I've had dogs growing up hamsters and gerbils growing up I've had a parrot I've had three horses a dog, three cats chickens

I'll rejoin Walton as will my wife and child a lot of fun pets make the world go round I've had four dogs now I can't ever imagine living without dogs, although I'm pretty sure my Siberian Huskies can imagine living

without me. Yeah, they're escape artist dogs. They're constantly like, yeah, we don't want to be here anymore. We're going. We're out of here. And they go off and do their own thing, and then I just sit there and go, well, we've got to go find them. Sure. I want to handle a black male fur that don't be familiar with that oh yeah yeah and i love all those

pieces of property and she just runs and you know chases squirrels around all of william or six hours long for a while i wish I had that kind of energy at my age. I wish I had a temperance that old. Yeah. I always look at my Siberian Huskies because they go on those zoomies every day. They just start running around like they've had too much crack or meth or something.

And they're just like, zoom, zoom, zoom. And you're just sitting there just going, oh my God, just watching this makes me tired. Yeah. I wish I could stick a syringe in them and take out some of that adrenaline and stick it in me. That would be great.

But that's what the coffee is for in the vitamin B shots. So there you go, the 5-hour energy shots. So what's the newest products, especially for cats? It's a little animal dog. It's really exciting for us over the last couple of years. We entered the market with a full packed range of cat products and probably 10 items, all of which had some new at the time that was exploded both for us and for the competition with a liquid sack, with some

wool, a little sachet, a little tube that you will have a liquid sack that you can squeeze out either on top of the cat popular cats or most people use it just to hand-held free. Oh, wow. Cats can be kind of a loop, right? This is a great way for 30 seconds or a minute or hour-long. They will drag it out and it will be close and mild to their pets. That's awesome. Puppets are so highly palatable.

At home, I'm running when I go to the cover. Oh, really? that's awesome couples are so highly palatable at home I'm running when I go to the cover oh really they hear the cover open off they go you know the that is the funny thing about cats they're so bloody aloof and they're just kind of like yeah we don't really

we don't have time for you right now it's like they hate you half the time and they like you the other half the time well I think for us what's really cool about the KuaFo is the treat products that we do, our parent company in Germany that's valuable to us, we're not 100% of cats. The minimal palatable in the arm of products is 85%. Cats have no taste. No cats, that and little places. Well, you know cats,

that's pretty outstanding. You know, it's just gives people a chance to bottle their pet in multiple ways. Whether it's the meat sticks, the purse sticks that we do, whether it's where we also do like a gel and snack.

It's just all different ways to help people bottle their pets, whether it's that dog or her. Yeah, my dogs are addicted to dog treats. Like every time I get up and go in the kitchen to, you know, refill water or coffee or, you know, eat something in the fridge, they come to me and they're like, hey, it's time to get some treats. In fact, when they wake up in the morning and I go to make them a coffee,

they know that the first reward is treats. So they start bugging me usually in the morning. They're like, hey, we want some treats. Get up, eh? And I'm like, no, I'm trying to sleep. But yeah, they know that anytime in the kitchen there's a chance of getting treats. So they always come in from outside

and they're just like waiting. They're like, you better have some treats. You better pay up, buddy, or else things are going to get ugly. We might shiv you or, you know, we only keep you around for the treats at this point. I think that's pretty much their attitude. You mentioned the hot dog.

I don't, no, I don't give them hot dog treats. Just whatever we buy off the counter at the thing. I was going to say, one of the things that we've seen over the last, oh, probably eight years or so, it's just the humanization of petting, right? And the plus driving, the development of treats, well, they're being flowered to it, right?

Pumpkin, you know, turkey, pumpkin, meat sticks, right? Orgers and Ophioli demons. Or if the flowers will eat just about anything, right? You can blow that. But you only have Ophioli humans first. Definitely, definitely. anything, right? You know that. But you only have to appeal to them. Appeal to them when you get a plate that's first. Definitely, definitely. Yeah, they're huskies. They'll eat just about anything, really.

So what's next for the company in ways of products and growth? What are you guys working on and what's your vision for? Yeah, well, the penance is to thrive on new product and product development. So despite the current economic environment, we are seeing, people are not spending so freely. So we're focused on creating products that get great value. Mm-hmm.

And so it's, you know, whether it's still has to be a high quality product. We're looking at ways, whether it's taking costs out of packaging, stable condition supply chain-wise, you can drive costs out more aggressively now. So developing new products that meet the needs of the consumers, but with a very clear lens focused across. There you go. I mean, you guys have around the world 2,000 employees and sell around 1.2 million high-quality Vitacraft products every single day? Every day.

Wow. Wow. We have about 15 divisions throughout our sales companies throughout the world. Three of them went for the wealth that's both manufacturing and sales. So we move a lot farther. Real fun to be part of an organization like this that was founded in 1837. Wow. What, every 178 years ago. You know, up until a few years ago, the family was out there.

Today, it's still called me on. And I meet with the owner a couple times a year. And it's amazing how passionate he is about being a factory. It's like, here, taste this, taste this. And it's like, oh, it's kind of, I have a mouthful of that. It actually tastes pretty good. There you go. That's pretty good.

Yeah. I mean, I like my dog's food that I get for him and their treats and stuff, but I'm not really that interested. So that's always good. Tell us about your role with the American Pet Products Association board that you've been on for 20 years. You serve as a trustee and president. Talk to us about that and the impact the pets in the classroom put on you. Yeah, I mean, there are actually two different organizations. The American Pet Products Association is a leading association for our industry.

About 1,200 member companies. We put on the largest freight show. We're an off the largest trade show. We were the last real trade show, West. And my involvement there, actually, I think I was the longest person ever for all the work. And, you know, we looked at anything that could potentially

benefit the industry or potentially harm it. Whether it's legislation, whether it's setting standard products or helping our members, you know, improve the quality or the state give their product better. I will on the board from late in the loan, still probably 2,000 loan dollars, trying to step down and press the loan in there. It's an exciting group.

They do a lot of good things. We'll get a lot of pets as well. Awesome songs. So, then the other, the Pets in the Classroom program is actually a program of pet care trust. All the trustee and then the person that owns it. They basically give grants to teachers who are interested in putting a pet in their class oh wow well in a sense of conception though probably going back 10 years ago law given over 200,000 grants and believe that we probably impacted somewhere between 10 and 11 kids. Wow, that's amazing, man.

We may not have had the experience of a bond with a pet or the role of joy of having a pet. We had great stories from teachers that, you know, especially special needs kids, in the law officers, in the software world, that, you know, teachers are getting all whipped up. They lost their pet, they gave it to them for a that, you know, they're getting all worked up. They lost the pet they gave for a while. They'll come back and, yeah, you could use them for public policies or you have an aquarium

or buying water quality ecology lessons. It's a really, really great program. It's all funded primarily by the pet industry and the association. Well, that's really good. People develop more. I became a better human being. I was a horrible human being before I got dogs.

And you learn a lot about yourself and being empathetic and caring about others. And I don't know, they just taught me, especially with their unconditional love, they just taught me to be a better person because you know they they're just they're just they're just wonderful animals they they love me no matter what i do if i don't give them treats they still kind of love me although i think they resent me a little bit but but they know they get treats later and and you know they they come cuddle up with you dogs are pretty i

don't know about cats uh neural cats but dogs are pretty intuitive where you know, they come cuddle up with you. Dogs are pretty, I don't know about cats, neural cats, but dogs are pretty intuitive where, you know, if you're hurting, if you're upset about something, you're bothered, you know, they'll come up and be like, hey, how's it going? If you pet me, you'll feel better. Yeah, they put their head on your lap. Yeah, they definitely have a way of sensing stuff. And they just improve your life better. It's funny. I always talk to my dogs and they have like 50,000 names

I've probably created for them over time. I'm always making up some name. And it occurred to me, I think it was like 10 or 15 years into owning dogs, that my dogs had never talked back. That I was having an one-way conversation the whole time, which probably speaks to my lack of sanity. One day I was just like,

you know, I've been talking to these guys for 15 years, and they never reply back. In fact, I'm making up the replies. Yeah, something just bobbled over the pen. It would probably just keep saying, give me a treat, stupid. Give me a treat, stupid.

Shut up and give me a treat. stupid. Give me a treat, stupid. Why don't we shut up and give you a treat? Shut up and give me a treat. Leave me alone. You smell bad. Let's see. I understand that Across Sunseed is spearheading a shelter program that supports average shelter cats, making them more adoptable. Tell us about that.

Yeah. So, by happenstance, we met this woman named Molly DeVos, who works with shelters and the cat therapist, and has been using our treat, the liquid snacks in particular, to take perilous cats or cats that will possibly were destined to eat with Asia and making them adoptable. Oh, wow. Cats want it over everything else, right? and making them adoptable. Oh, wow. I think they're totally right. As far as cats, cats want to know where everything else, right?

So maybe a cat that's all skittish and hiding in the corner or hisses when anybody gets near her, you know, she's been able to work with them and use the streets to break down the barriers that we've got and put together a curriculum with us or for us. And we're going to break down those barriers that we've got and put together a curriculum with us or for us. And we're going to take it and hopefully introduce it to shelters throughout the country and also provide free treats with them.

So the shelters will make that adoptable. Probably we're going to be adoptable for. Yeah, that's awesome because, you know because there's a lot of animals that go through abuse. Cats, dogs, you know, they go through, they have horrible pre-owners and they get sheltered or raised. And I guess that helps, what you're doing

is helping them from being euthanized too as well? Yeah, that's the goal. You want to tell them about 12 shelters where they're not going to be utilized, but, you know, they will kind of make this with the powering in the back of your cage or habitat. We're pretty good about what we're able to do with this stuff.

So, Molly's a great partner of ours. We look forward to supporting her and supporting the shelters throughout the years to come. There you go. There you go. There you go. So you guys are doing some amazing things, and it's great that you guys are giving back to the community. What do you feel has made you successful in business, you personally?

As I said earlier, I kind of said earlier, I love people. Well, there's customers, well, there's employees, even bankers, right? I mean, my personal welfare involves things are never as good as they seem and never as bad as they seem. It keeps me even feel and, you know, I step back. You know, I'm sure you're familiar with your roles, owning or managing. It's a problem. Unfortunately, 90% of the time, right? Yeah. You can't do that unless you're

model-style gear and you can think through problems, right? That's true. So that coupled with my enjoying being around people and always wanting to get out when we pray to those little customers. Yeah, with those aspects, it's really healthy, personal.

It's not the smartest guy, but we'll make those connections and that works in the future. There you go. I like that advice. Note to self, start liking people and stop hating people. Did I get that right people people watch your podcast for brilliant insights like that they do they do but no actually you know what i really like is is your mantra of things are never as bad as they seem and things are never as good as they seem did

you say yeah are they right i i need a shirt like that because i need that in the moments of darkness when it seems bad i need something that you know a little light that because I need that in the moments of darkness when it seems bad I need something that you know a little light that goes on that goes hey things are never as bad as they seem because they never are you usually overplay how bad it is and it seems you know and then when it's all over you look

back on it and you go well that wasn't you know we got through that yeah and then things are never as good as they seem. I suppose that's true. I really like it when things are good. Well, don't get me wrong. Yeah.

Well, he will go over the top and get overly excited about something. He will probably welcome that grit. I mean, he's a good three-year-old. But he probably overreacted. He definitely lost it. That's true. And there's probably,

you know, I've noticed whenever something is going really good and everything's great, sometimes there are cracks in the foundation of

something, you know, where you're like, we better make sure that this train's, you know, everything's going good, but make sure we do maintenance

to make sure that, you know, everything keeps going good. You know, honestly, you know, the last two years with the pet industry, 20 and 21, it was just crazy, right? You know, someone would die around thinking we're buying more pets, and now they're trying to figure out the supply chain and get product in.

And almost you go, oh, now it's buffering a little bit. Well, let me set a little bit of strides. We're learning opportunities. We're learning how to fight this blockchain. You know, we should have been more aggressive back

when times were really bad, right? Mm-hmm. Yep. It's funny how it works, you know, but you do what you do. But I do love that mantra. I wrote the mantra down so that I can remember that because, yeah, especially in bad times, man, it's, you know, things are never as bad as they seem.

Like there are times when it seems like it's the end of the world and, you know, you kind of have to step back a second and go, okay, let's get some perspective. And it makes it easier to manage if you can step back a second and go, okay, let's get some perspective. And it makes it easier to manage if you can step back a bit and get some perspective and go, okay, so where are we at really? I mean, like, the world's really not over, you know. So there you go. So anything more you want to touch on about the business?

And tell us where people can find the products. Yeah, we're all major retailers. At Cope, at Smart, at Flash Plus, at Secret Market, at Land. We also keep private labels for other mass retailers. Our mainly branded product we build on the shelf at Lollabard as well as

our cat treats. We're a wide industry. Of course, we have a lot of Chewy. People are interested in our product. They certainly will be a little proud of us. I love Chewy, man. Those guys deliver so freaking fast. It's amazing. And they're so good to work

with. I mean, Amazon's pretty good too on the fast, but sometimes the pricing is just better over there on Chewy. And then the delivery is like always, even if you order slow delivery, they get it to you faster. What's the personal cost? Well, they're all sort of a hybrid, to my perspective, a hybrid of, of pet specialty and a share online player, right?

And they, they, they invested a lot in their people, their household care people. And you know, if we put together, we put a product in there, you know, they're very in-depth, so they know all the ins and outs, the features and benefits of the products. So when they get a call questioning it, they can answer. If they can't, they have a line for it to us. We can answer them sooner. That's awesome.

That's awesome. Well, it's good to know, and it's been great to have you on the show. Thank you very much for coming on. We certainly appreciate it, Brent. Well, it's my pleasure, Adel. I hope your listeners found it interesting. Definitely. And since 75% of them, what was it, have pets now?

No, about 70%. 70% have pets. Definitely go order up your products. You can find them wherever great products are sold. Give us the.com so people can find it, Brent, on the interwebs. Yep. It's buyacraftsum.com. It's a website where you can see both the brands or you can go to

buyacraftsum.com. There you go. There you go. And everyone, thanks for tuning in. We really appreciate you being here. Go to youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss. See the big LinkedIn newsletter and the big LinkedIn group as well. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys

next time.