Storm Duds Interview with Meredith O’Brien

Listen to the Episode:

Links Mentioned:

StormDuds.com

Contact:

Michelle DeMayo
National Account Manager
(800) 325-4332 x119
michelle@stormduds.com

Transcript:

Marty Hartman:
Welcome to the Supplier Spotlight. We have Storm Duds with us today. I’ve got Meredith O’Brien VP of sales. Meredith, welcome to the interview.

Meredith O’Brien:
Thanks Marty. Hi everybody who’s listening. Thanks for having me today.

Marty Hartman:
So just in case somebody’s listening on their iPhone and they’re at 1% battery life, what’s the one thing that they need to know before their phone shuts down.

Meredith O’Brien:
Well, you know what Storm Duds, since as long as I’ve been here for over 15 years, it has always had a philosophy and that’s no matter how big we get, we will always operate like a mom and pop. So what that means for the distributors that are listening, whether you’re a big powerful distributor or just someone that does this part time, we’re going to treat you the same and we’re going to bend over backwards to make sure that we get you what you need and you’re not treated as a number. You’re treated as a partner with us. So that’s something that is very important to know about Storm Duds. We really appreciate our customers and we treat everybody the same.

Marty Hartman:
Okay, great. So Storm Duds, you’re all about rain gear and tell us a little bit more about how the company got started and why the rain gear niche.

Meredith O’Brien:
Well, it’s kind of a funny story and this might take a couple of minutes, but the owners, they were college roommates. And they’re very creative guys and they started out writing comic books and the comic books were called the screamer brothers. And in the early eighties, they started a product that corresponded with the comic book and it was called this screamer streamer. And what they were doing is they were screen printing on these long nylon banners. And they were like literally hot gluing them to these sticks. And somehow one of the collegiate universities got involved, I think it was either Ohio State or Penn State and they started ordering them up. So if you remember back in the eighties, the big bowl games on TVs, these people were whipping around these nylon banners and they call them the screamer streamers.

Meredith O’Brien:
And that’s right when licensing started to become a thing. And the owner said, you know what? We’re getting really good at screen printing on nylon. They started developing relationships with the nylon factories overseas and they said what’s another item that we can kind of add to the product line that’s nylon. And they were starting to work with the colleges. They picked up the Penn State license. They picked up Ohio State license. And they said, the owner walked into the bookstore and it just hit him. Like, it just hit him like a light bulb. And it said, what’s one thing that every kid needs when they go to college, that they never bring. And that’s an umbrella and it’s nylon. So we walked into a Barnes and Noble bookstore and he said, I have a new product category.

Meredith O’Brien:
You’re just selling these blank tan and navy umbrellas, you should have your college color and we’ll screen print the college logo right on there. And they laughed at him. He said, that’s the stupidest idea, go away. So he’s very persistent. He went back the next year and he said, no I’m telling you like, this is really… This has legs. So they gave him a small program, maybe like the PAC-10 schools and it really took off. They could not believe it was one of their fastest growing product categories. Now, if you fast forward 20, 30 years, we’re now the national licensee for collegiate retail. And we’re licensed with over 800 schools. We do sell direct to every college bookstore in the United States and Canada.

Meredith O’Brien:
And what’s great about that is that we have all your colorways. So that’s one of Storm Duds strengths is, our colorways, but that’s really how Storm Duds got started into the rain gear business. We were looking for another item that was made out of nylon that we could screen print on and it snowballed from there. I think it’s a pretty cool story. What do you think?

Marty Hartman:
That is a pretty cool story. Take a chance and start small and work the business up. I love that. So from there-

Meredith O’Brien:
Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you off, but I wanted to tell you, in addition to the ponchos, I mean to the umbrellas, rather, we do a lot of ponchos. So after a few years in the umbrella business, we thought, Hey, what’s another product within this weather category. Because in licensing, it’s kind of a tricky thing. There is a guy for t-shirts, there’s a guy for pens, there’s a guy for whatever, you’re following me. But our license fell under rain gear. So it was a great transition to move into ponchos. So we also have a really great poncho line that comes in all of those colorways as well. So I just wanted to mention that real quickly. And I’m sorry to cut you off.

Marty Hartman:
Oh, no. That’s that just answers my question. Why is it that you’re specializing in the rain gear? It started with the licensing, but you have quite a line of options for that niche. Tell us a little bit about who is buying that aside of course from the college bookstores. Who buys the rain gear?

Meredith O’Brien:
Anybody and anyone. Umbrellas it’s one of those items that everybody needs, but they rarely buy for themselves. And they don’t throw them away until they break. And if you get a good company or you buy a Storm Duds product it’s not going to break as fast. So in other industries, it’s endless. Realtors, what a nice gift for a homeowner to be given if they purchase a home through your realtor and what a great billboard for that agency or that realtor themselves. Every time they go out to the store, they’re going to grab that umbrella. And it’s a walking billboard, anybody and anyone who wants more brand awareness, especially now in COVID. I mean, how many times now do you go to a grocery store… Just happened to me last week, I got caught in a rainstorm.

Meredith O’Brien:
I was outside of Trader Joe’s and I had to wait 20 minutes outside in the rain. Think about how many people drove by, walked by, whatever umbrella I was holding is essentially an advertisement. So now more than ever and now people are wearing masks everywhere they go. If a mask becomes wet, it almost becomes unusable. It’s very hard to breathe through. So it’s almost an essential product now. If you have to wait outside in line, you better protect your mask. And it’s also a great way to social distance. If you get a great 62 inch golf umbrella, nobody’s coming within six feet of you.

Marty Hartman:
That’s right. Unless they’re trying to get under your umbrella to keep dry.

Meredith O’Brien:
Right. But think about this too, delivery drivers. How many people now are utilizing services such as Instacart or Door Dash or whatnot. How nice would it be if the delivery driver, when they’re coming up to your front door, you look through your ring or whatever, and you see, okay, this is legit. This is my Door Dash driver. How about the restaurants that have curbside pickup. What a great statement. Chili’s curbside pickup, Chili’s to go when that person walks out on a rainy day and has an awesome custom umbrella that says Chili’s curbside pickup on it. If I was a distributor, I’d be calling every corporate restaurant chain right now and selling them. It makes so much sense.

Marty Hartman:
And you mentioned that you’re going to have those impressions continuing for years throughout the life of the umbrella or the poncho.

Meredith O’Brien:
100%.

Marty Hartman:
Well tell us then, why Storm Duds? And I’m going to assume, because I know your product line, one of the reasons is you guys have really high quality materials. You make the best.

Meredith O’Brien:
Thank you. And you know what it is, it all starts really with the licensing because of all of our affiliations. And I know I mentioned the colleges, but Storm Duds is also the national licensee for major and minor league baseball and every branch of the military. So when you have these great affiliations, you better make sure that you have fully compliant factories. They have to be FLA approved and socially compliant and use really great components that don’t have lead in them. The industry is full of really great suppliers, and I’m not saying that they’re not great, but nobody’s regulating them.

Marty Hartman:
Sorry, you were talking about compliance and I was just saying Prop 65 compliance, I’m assuming that Storm Duds also complies with Prop-65.

Meredith O’Brien:
Yeah, that’s just one of them. But even the factories was socially compliance and FLA approved, you have to hit certain requirements in order to maintain your licensee status. So, that’s one of the things that we’re really proud of. And in addition to that you’re always going to be able to give your customer an appropriate value because all of our items that we sell out to the promotional products world has a retail comp. So you can be really confident when you’re selling an item that it’s at the appropriate price point. We don’t mark it up really crazy for promotional products.

Meredith O’Brien:
If your client walked into, let’s say Harvard university bookstore, they’re going to see that that umbrella is priced exactly the same that you sold that customer of yours with their company logo on it. So they’re going to feel really great about what you sold them. And let’s face it people are becoming much more brand aware. A kid does not want Gildan, they want Under Armour. They want Nike. So as corny as it sounds, we are the Nike, we are the Under Armor of umbrellas in this industry. We have that retail brand recognition and I think it’s becoming more and more important to the end user.

Marty Hartman:
I think you’re right. Brands are huge in the promotional product space. And from what I can see Storm Duds is a very recognized brand in this space. So tell us a little bit about product line, things that our members may not know that you carry. I mean, umbrellas they’re kind of aware of that, but what in the niches, what are you able to offer that’s a little bit different.

Meredith O’Brien:
It’s interesting that you mentioned niche. There are a few other of our competitors that offer a great range of products and we could do that as well, but we really want to specialize in what we do well. So we have a very large line and I think I mentioned the colorways. So we have eight or nine golf umbrellas in our line. And some of them come in over 42 colorways, which we inventory domestically here. We have vented umbrellas, non vented golf umbrellas, ones that you can customize. We have a great cookie cutter overseas custom program. So you could do a complete custom umbrella for your customer. We also have a great line of folding and fashion umbrellas. So just like the golf, they come in tons of colorways.

Meredith O’Brien:
We have print and plaids and hibiscus flowers. We have tons of different things. Because in retail, not only do they want their school colors, but sometimes they just want a pretty pattern. You know? So if you work with maybe a hair salon that once a funky pattern and they want to give out an umbrella for someone that just got their hair done and they don’t want to get it messed up when they get wet, give them a cool umbrella with your salon logo on it. There’s really so many opportunities, but our niche is rain gear. We don’t do much other than that. We do have a Beach Duds line, which is kind of a separate line that we sell a lot into our collegiate market, where we do beach towels and we have a beach umbrella in that line. There’s a lot of competition in the promotional product space. But we do have great towels. So that’s another thing that you might want to send people, look at our website, we do have towels.

Marty Hartman:
Well, speaking of your website, you’ve got a lot of information there where people can view the product line. And any type of marketing help that you can give folks, catalogs or things like that?

Meredith O’Brien:
Yes. So on our website, if you go to www.stormduds.com, in the upper right hand corner, it’ll say either log in or register. If you have not registered yet, I’d really encourage you to do that. Because once you do that, you’ll be able to view coated pricing on all of the items that we offer. And you’re also able to access some really great selling tools. There’s a whole section there with current spotlight flyers. And now if I can, I just want to segue into, because it kind of all ties in together. Some of the incentives that your members get with Storm Duds. So, you’ll receive EQP on the minimum order, which is usually 36 units. And then anything over 144 units, you get a 5% off EQP price, and then you always get your first color setup waived.

Meredith O’Brien:
So this is a huge program. This is a great program for you. And a lot of our spotlight flyers give that same program to an everyday distributor, but they also offer free freight up to a hundred dollars on your order. And so if you’re targeting… If you say, Hey, my customer wants an umbrella. They don’t really have a specific preference, log into our website, go to those spotlight flyers and try to sell off of those. Because even though you get the same price, that extra hundred back in shipping really can add to your margin. So I encourage everybody to do that. You can create your own virtuals on our website, there’s a lot of what you’ll be able to view YouTube channel, individual item little 30 second blurbs on the item. We don’t really talk pricing, but we kind of sell it for you.

Meredith O’Brien:
So I’ll just give you an example. Everybody loved that Invertabrella, that inside out umbrella, it was like all the rage a couple of years ago. But distributors, we understand you’re representing a million products. So you’re not going to understand how to explain that to your customer. Just go to our YouTube channel or go to our Storm Duds website, hit that style invertabrella and then right underneath there, there’s actually a video that you can copy and paste that hyperlink and send it right to your customer. Let me sell it for you. I don’t expect you to be an expert. Let me sell it for you. So, that’s another great tool that people should really use.

Marty Hartman:
Well, I’ve seen some of your videos where you’re demoing, like the vented golf umbrellas. I think you’re standing there in a storm where the wind is blowing.

Meredith O’Brien:
Oh you saw that. Yeah, we got hit by that hurricane a couple of weeks ago. And the power went out here and we said, well, you know what? We have nothing to do. We can’t log on our computers. Let’s get outside and show our products off. And they were gusting over 30 miles an hour. And you saw that video, Marty. It did not invert did it. That was our Big Top Golf Style 6500.

Marty Hartman:
That umbrella just worked like it was supposed to.

Meredith O’Brien:
I was blowing over. I was getting blown over, but the umbrella didn’t. So, that’s good.

Marty Hartman:
The things that you do for the company Meredith. We just really appreciate it.

Meredith O’Brien:
That’s true. Make sure you tell the boss that.

Marty Hartman:
Absolutely. Well, what else do we need to tell the listeners before we sign off? I mean, you’ve told us about the website. Anything else that they need to know?

Meredith O’Brien:
I was going to say, if you want to touch and feel our products, or if your customer is unsure and you want a sample, we have a great sample policy. All you do is just send me an email. My email is meredith@stormduds.com and it’s M-E-R-E-D-I-T-H. And as long as you provide a shipper number, UPS or FedEx number, I can send up to three samples at no cost. I can drop ship it blind to your customer. Yeah. So take advantage of that. If you have a showroom, pick and choose some really great core styles, if you need help with picking out a style that might be better for your customer base, give me a call. I’d love to talk about it. I can give you some suggestions, but that’s I think a great policy that we have.

Meredith O’Brien:
And then also our spec sample policy is as follows. If you want a spec umbrella, if your customers are unsure and they want their logo on it, we can do that for any item in our line for $50. So I know it’s not short money, but if you do want to do that, we can do a one off for you. And then if they place an order, we can reduce that… If they place an order based off of that spec sample is what I’m saying. What we’ll do is we will reduce the cost of this spec sample from the final invoice.

Marty Hartman:
Great. Yeah.

Meredith O’Brien:
Basically at the end, it’s a wash. If you can follow through and make that sale, but there is an initial investment upfront.

Marty Hartman:
Well, if nothing else, I think our members need to get on the phone with you and get some samples at least. Especially if you’ve got a showroom. If some of these umbrellas… Showing off the invertabrella, I think anybody who’s struggled with an umbrella while they’re getting into a car would absolutely love that. And get those samples, get the samples. There’s no reason not to. And like you said, an umbrella or a poncho, it’s something that nobody ever throws away, but they never think to buy it for themselves.

Meredith O’Brien:
That’s true. And another point, Marty, they don’t care what’s printed on it. I mean, right? It’s not like someone’s sitting around the house and saying, Oh, you know what? I really didn’t want that logo on that umbrella today. And it’s raining. So no, if you have your company logo on that umbrella and it’s raining, they are your advertisement folks. So sell umbrellas, especially now, especially in COVID, it’s more important than ever.

Marty Hartman:
That’s great. Meredith, thank you so much for your time, for the spotlight interview.

Meredith O’Brien:
Oh, you’re welcome. Anytime. Call me back soon.