Robert Mason Company
How do you rebuild after you lose everything? We sit down with Robert Grimmett, the founder and CEO of Robert Mason Company, to discuss day-to-day operations, how Robert Mason got started, how it evolved, and how it was rebuilt after a shocking loss.
Big thank you to our sponsor this week, Best Bites: Tacos on Aug 18th. Tickets on sale now.
Read the transcript
Welcome to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focused on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. In this episode, I sit down with Robert Grimmett, the founder and CEO of Robert Mason Company. We have, frankly, a pretty casual conversation about the day-to-day operations of Robert Mason Company, how Robert Mason got started, how it evolved, and how it was rebuilt then after a shocking loss. Today's episode is sponsored by the event Best Bites Tacos on August 18th. That event gathers some of the best taco offerings in Columbus under one roof for one night only. Tickets are on sale. I am told they are selling out fast. More information on Best Bites Tacos at theconfluencecast.com. Enjoy the interview. How's it going? Good. Did you work this morning in the store? Yeah.
Are you guys open seven days a week? Mm-hmm. Seven days a week. Okay. Till 9:00.
9:00 PM. Yep. Sunday till 6:00. What time do you open? 11:00.
Okay. So you get your mornings to yourself. Mm-hmm. I get there at 7:30. To do ordering, inventory, all that stuff? Office stuff until, yeah, the store opens.
Do you have help with that? Not from the merchandising perspective. I'm still 100% that. Okay. But I do have e-com marketing and people for support there.
Okay. In the office. But no one in the office you do? Yeah, in the office I do.
Okay. So what about for, like, ordering stuff? Like when- It's me. So you have the- I'm still the curator, so I still do 100% of it.
Do you plan to continue that? I'm starting to see challenges that are new. Okay. Um, one of them is the demand planning side of things, uh, keeping on top of a level that we've never been at before.
Right. So that's something that I, I definitely am looking for possibly finding help with. Well, it's a good problem to have, right? It's a good problem to have.
So how much do things change up to the point where... So you can forecast a little bit, right? 'Cause you can do week by week, month by month how many, you know, small Moleskine notebooks you sell. But let, let's say you bring in a new pen or something like that. Can you forecast that, or is it just basically you try it out? Well, it's all guess right now 'cause we have no history. So we're going off of 45 days open, and, um, there's a lot of variables that were part of that grand opening, the Arnold Gallery Hops, um, and then forecasting for upcoming Gallery Hops, and then we're a very seasonal business adds some complexities. Um, and then also that we're shared with e-commerce, so our inventory has to meet both demands. Okay. Um, if e-commerce spikes for, you know, whatever reason, then it has to support it and the retail store is going to lose that inventory. If the retail store spikes, then e-commerce is going to lose that inventory.
Where's your storage? It's all in that same building. So we go all the way to Pearl Street. Oh, okay. Behind KittenAce.
So do you have much room back there to do, like- We have 1,000 square feet. Okay. It's a lot bigger than you'd think.
So you have enough room to do, like, staging for those mailings and- Yep ... stuff like that. Yep. We have-
But- We have offices. We have, um, warehouse for all of our private label. We... All of express is packaged and consorted there, and then, um, consolidated out to their DC. So it's, there's a lot of space there. Okay. So tell us how it got started. So it all started from just doing design work in my parents' basement, and that was, uh, when people didn't have computers. So it was, uh, the right place at the right time, I like to say. Uh, and that was, uh, doing mayoral campaigns and city council campaigns, but then that brought some business that became retail. So they were-
So hold on. So the website states that you, this all started when you were 12 years old. That's correct. Yep. So you were doing design work for mayoral campaigns when you were 12 years old? I was. Yep.
Okay. So going back again to there were not computers in pe- people's homes, uh, and they didn't have design skills. I always had this artistic or creative flair, and I wanted to create. Um, so when I got a computer, I got CorelDRAW, and that was, that's what I, that's what I was... That was the rest of my life I was gonna do that. So why not go into business right away with it? And so, uh, when I did these campaigns, people needed supplies too at the same time and, and generally they would come in and look over some of the work that I had done for them, and they would start buying stuff off of my shelf, which was not the plan at that time, but became the plan later. So what do you mean by supplies, though? I used to... Uh, I have a fetish clearly for office supplies. I mean, that's why I'm in the business. I guess you'd say that's the luckiest job in the world when you're surrounded by your favorite things. But I always got the cooler things. I would search out... It was not easy because commodities even, uh, back in, we're talking, what, '94, before that, '93, '92, were hard to find in colors. So it was still black, blue, red, you know, when it came to binders and ink pens and things like that. But I would find lime green and purple and magenta and orange and yellow and, um, those were my s- my supplies. That's what I wanted.
Right. And even, you know, higher quality leather bound things. Back then it was a little easier to find that because brands like Cambridge still made products like that and still made things in America. Uh, so they were buying my products, and that just, that exposed a retail opportunity that I said, "Why not?" So really at that point it was a modern day Kinko's kind of a concept. We did copy and fax service. We shipped USPS and FedEx, and then added retail. Now, again, this was 13 years old out of my parents' basement, so you can imagine the volume wasn't that heavy- Right ... so I could handle it with school. But then the city found out that I was doing a little bit more than, you know, a typical hobby would be and said to my parents, "You know, you need to reel this in just a little bit. We need to get this legitimized. We need to get a business permit issued." So they asked me to pitch the business plan, which I didn't have one-
Okay ... before city council, so I had to get- This is Columbus City Council? This... No, this was Ravenswood. This is down in West Virginia.
Okay. Three hours south of here. Okay. Now, it's a town of 4,000 people, so this was in no way a demonizing, you know, we're coming after you-
Right ... type of thing from city council. This was actually probably a good learning, a lesson being taught. And even when I was pitching it- Was that their motivation? That was their motivation.
Okay. I can tell you that just by the audience, the eyes that I had on me were all s- they were smiling. This was this 13-year-old, they think it's cute- Right ... type of deal. But it was a good lesson to learn because it really pulled the parts of the business plan together that I hadn't anticipated, 'cause that forced me to do that.
Mm-hmm. So I, I pitched it. They rezoned the street. They issued a business license, and, uh, Your parents' home. My parents' basement, yep.
Okay. So you can only imagine what that does to an entrepreneur because now you're legit. Um, and now I'm like, "Well, then I'm gonna advertise 'cause now I don't have to hide it anymore," you know? Right. "Come to, you know, xxx street, you know, today." And that's exactly what happened, was that I, I then got some people that were strangers, and my parents found strangers in their house, and that was my next problem. Was it was now not the city, it was my parents saying, "Okay, here's your ultimatum. Find us another place to do this or you can't do this in my, our basement."
So up to that point, were they, uh, v- were they encouraging and they were- Oh, for sure. Okay. 100%. I had always had this n- besides the creative flair, I had this business thing where I just loved, loved calculators and adding numbers and, and my dad used to be a sales rep, so he had a Telzon machine, so I would sit and play with it, and they had to make a desk for me. I didn't do kid things-
Right ... ever, ever. So they were encouraging, and th- little did they know it was, that I was gonna get them into since they are now part of the business. So when they found strangers in the, the basement and then we had the ultimatum, um, I went out and did something that's very similar to what I did here in Columbus. I went to a local business and pitched this idea that I had where I would do all their graphic design work, again, back in the day when people didn't have the computers, didn't have the abilities. Mm-hmm. In exchange, I wanted rent or just free rent and space.
You wanted space, right. I just wanted space, 'cause now I'm looking for how in the world am I gonna continue this business, um, especially with the retail need now. So I need a retail storefront. And so this was a Cellular One store in downtown Ravenswood, and they bit. They said sure. And so I had a space. I had a door that locked. Um, it was very little. It was just like the pop-up store at Sugar Daddies. And it was probably a six-month span before it couldn't... It was too... We were doing too much out of that little space. Really? That's how little it was. Yeah. And again, this is a kid that's in school. You would think that that would be enough.
Did you have employees at this point? No, but I did bring my mom in to help with bookkeeping. We got into- Okay. We got to the point where I am now trying to control a checkbook and, you know, again, still in school. And my mom had a fashion marketing degree, but she was not using it at that time. She was, you know, taking care of my grandfather that had, uh, had a stroke and was bedfast. So she was able to use her skills and pull it in, but again, little did she know she was then gonna never leave. That's, that was gonna become her role. And so within six months we had to find a new place for it, 'cause we were doing too much business, which is a great problem to have.
Right. So the local strip mall in Ravenswood sat behind McDonald's and Wendy's, you know, it's the cen- epicenter of town, had a vacancy and it was a space that had been abandoned for many years. But the strip mall had recently filled up, so it had RadioShack and GNC and Regis Hair Salon, and I was like, "Well, I'm gonna be the first independent in that little strip mall. I'm taking that space." So I negotiated with the developer of that plaza, but I was too young to be doing that. Right. So they didn't know, and this was before email and fax, so I was literally doing it through the phone, negotiating the space, and worked out a deal where we could fund the build-out off of rent. So a no-rent clause, you know, for X amount of months to pay for that.
Right. That did require that I go to the bank and get a loan, and this was, again, back in a day when that was still possible. You could walk into a bank. It was a small local bank, and- But could you- No, my parents had to come in-
Right ... at that point. Okay. We used the business plan that I had pitched to city council. It was forecasted with sales. So we started to see that I was gonna need some more help, you know, now that we're at the age of, like, 15 years old and, you know, still in, I'm in high school.
So what do your friends think about you? Like, is it, are you just, like, that weird kid? I'm that weird kid. Are you well-liked? I was quiet, so I just kinda disappeared off in the corner. I was a band geek, so I did the whole band thing during football season, and then disappeared again.
Okay. Because I was constantly doing this. This is, when I left school, this is what I wanted to do. When I woke up- So, like, did you have friends who were like, "Tell me more about what..." Because there's some attraction, I imagine, for people that, like, this kid's making money- Yeah
... and, like, doing, you know, not a crazy amount of business, but you're certainly making money doing what you're doing. And so did kids- They didn't see it that way. How did they- They just, they saw this as a hobby that was consuming. But-
Could you compare it... I, I just, I can't think of... I was a theater kid, but never did one show at my actual high school. I was always doing, like, community theater or semi-professional theater, and I think I was looked at a little, like, well, what is that kid, what is that guy doing? I mean, I'm trying to put myself in the frame of mind of those other high school students with you. What, what did they think of you? I think that they, they thought it was weird. Okay. I think, I, I don't think that they could figure it out until that store opened in the mall, where they actually came to then be customers.
Okay. And I think then it kinda made sense, and then they, they put the pieces together, but they didn't know why I wanted to do it. And I couldn't explain why I wanted to do it. It was just everything in me wanted to do that. I- And it's a business that you've followed, not, well, yeah, fallen into, basically. Fall, yep, and it was a lot of work. So, you know, why would I sign up for that when I was that young, you know? That, that was a lot of the things they were, that were going through their mind. And as, as we got older in high school, it was harder, you know, for... I couldn't go do this and I couldn't do that, and, but I didn't want to. It goes back to I had this appetite for this that was uncontrollable, and it always has been that way.
Okay. So that initial store was still copies, mailing- Exponentially bigger. Okay. We hit 2,000 square feet at this point, and my parents, or my dad joined. So he left his job. We're now seeing this as a opportunity for us all to, to do this.
You created the family business. I did. Okay. I did. And they're, again, still there, um, and they run that store, and that is the store that's still open.
Okay. That is the Ravensaplaza store. And that's still Robert Mason? It is.
Okay. Yep. And is it s- is it similar to... Why don't we get into describe what the, the current... Describe Robert Mason. So Robert Mason is probably the hardest elevator pitch in the entire world to explain, um, and that's usually how I describe it. Um, but we are a lifestyle brand, but we're not centered around apparel like people expect a lifestyle brand to be. We're centered around office products and office supplies and office gear. And our, in America especially, of, of any of the markets, office supplies have a very different feel because of the superstores and the commoditization of the marketplace. So Office Depot, Max, and Staples, um, and then the bigger players like Walmart and Amazon and Costco have come in and sold it as bulk.
Mm. And that's not traditional office supplies. So office supplies, the way we sell it or the way we see it, are still special. Individual writing instruments, higher quality papers, leather-bound notebooks and journals, different materials. Obviously, it's not 100% everything in our store leather, but we do do a great deal of business in leather. But it's a nod back to when products were sold in department stores. They're accessories. And so w- when we went into what is Robert Mason as a persona, we went vintage inspired because our products were timeless looking because they were l- they were that nod back in time when stationery was still a, an accessory to your outfit or, uh, you really were concerned with what you were carrying or the form and function of your padfolio or your notebook or your pen. And so that didn't happen at Robert Mason until 2009, and that was a big rebranding focus when I added my middle name. So that, that's what I was gonna ask. What... Is that... 2009 is when, like, the Ravenswood store sort of switched over to- It rebranded, yeah.
Okay. Yeah, and that was my goal. I had, and kind of in a, a backtrack, had a experience, um, and everything in my life has been an experience, like I wanna write a book. Um, but th- this chapter was when I had decided that I was gonna leave the Ravenswood store. I was almost 19 years old, and it was because I was off track of what my goals were. Um, I had s- I created the business. I had built what I loved and had left, you know, playing kickball for and done. Um, but now I was not at art school yet. I was not... That was, you know, back in, way back, that was what I wanted to do always. Okay. I wanted to go to Parsons, or I wanted to go to Savannah College of Art and Design, or I wanted to go to Art Institute of Chicago. Um, I had posters on my wall always from those schools. And so I had two art teachers that walked in, um, in elementary school and high school, and I will always credit them for this part. But they had walked into the store and they said, "You know, we love what you've done here. This is an amazing thing to bring to Ravenswood, West Virginia, that doesn't have stores like this. Um, and we shop here, so we patronize it. We, we encourage it. But we didn't see you behind the counter for the rest of your life in Ravenswood, West Virginia." And hearing them, because I looked up to them so greatly, say that kind of s- it, it resonated, and so I had to kind of review what I had done, what I had caused here, 'cause I was thinking about, "Ooh, I wanna open another store." Right? "Why, why don't we do a second version of this somewhere?" And so I, that weekend, applied to those schools that were on those posters on my wall and was accepted to Chicago. Of, of the different cities, I couldn't decide which city I wanted to live in, so I just let them accept me. Being accepted was like, "Oh, shit. Now I have to do something. I have to sell this business. I have to close this business. I have to... There's an exit strategy that has to be created."
Right. So I did all these thought processes and decided that my parents are involved in business. Why not let them run it while I'm gone? Keep it open. Go learn everything I need to learn, come back, and apply it. And so that really was, was my goal, but then I needed to live in another city to get there. So I, I had a city of transition where I moved to Charleston, West Virginia, which is about 50,000 people. It's the capital city. Um- You have the dome. Yep.
The big dome. The big dome. Biggest. Uh, so I was gonna go live there and try to learn some things before I went to Chicago, 'cause Chicago's 9 million people, and that was gonna be overwhelming for the small, you know, farm town boy that was- Did you make that decision independently? Mm-hmm. Yep.
Okay. Yep. So when I was accepted, I did not go right away. I guess I'm surprised that someone who jumped right in and started a business when you were 13 was like, "Mm, I should transition to a larger city." Well, I think I was scared to death-
Okay ... of the larger city thing. Was I gonna be able to handle this? And so far away. Yeah, so far away. I'd never worked for anybody in my life, so that was the next thing. I needed to go work for somebody and actually learn how to, to, to be an employee. Um, and then obviously return back to my roots as a student. So when I moved to Charleston, the biggest thing was traffic. I think I was the scaredest, the most scared of, of driving around in a big city. I went to Charleston Town Center, and I applied to every single store in the mall, and I said the first one that called me back was where I was gonna work. And of course, the first one that called me back was not one I wanted to work at. Um, but it was a pivotal time in my story, and it was Bath & Body Works. And so this is 1999. '98, '99. So this is back in Bath & Body Works gingham days. This was the farm store returning to the heartland, the Excelsior and the barrels and sun-ripened raspberry for days. But I accepted the job, and I was completely confused as to what this was. So I was from a small town. I wasn't in the mall all the time.
Confused why this store- Why, what- Why is there a store that just sells, like, five fragrances of lotion- Yep
... soap- Yep ... hand soap. Right. And the question that was going over and over in my head was, "Okay, they're selling s- a commodity product that you normally would've bought at Walgreens or CVS, a soap. Um, and they've, they've put it in this environment, and they've turned this music on, and they've made this barn look and feel. And then all of a sudden people are paying 10, $12 for the same product." And that's, you know, not comparing apples to apples, but it's, it's essentially what they did.
Right. They put an experience around it, they put a brand around it, and then people had an emotional response to that. And on weekends, we had lines out both sides of the gate. I mean, we just couldn't control the amount of traffic coming into that store. And I was like, "Whoa." So here is-- I have the same problem. I have a commodity product, and I would love to be able to charge, you know, a different dollar amount because in the commodity world, your margins are razor thin. You're like five, 10% on some of them, um, because you're competing against bulk selling, and that's what office supplies have become. So I, at that point, changed-- I didn't really change my major, but I updated it for school, which is why this was so pivotal for me, was I, I went into visual communication and graphic arts. I wanted to be able to, to rebrand eventually, but how do I build this brand around office supplies? What is it gonna be called? Is it Robert still? 'Cause that was the name now. Do-- Is it something else? And then I, uh, added a, a minor of architecture so that I could do the store design too. So that was not originally in my, my plan. And Bath & Body Works store design was a big part of that experience. It was a huge part of it. So, uh, when I went to school, that was my focus. Um, and I had decided for any of the jobs that I did part-time while going to school, it was gonna be all of my competitors that I saw as my competitors while building this brand. Um, and I'd work for them for a few months and quit. I just wanted to get that handbook and understand what the brand was about, their tips and tricks, maybe some things I shouldn't do 'cause they're doing them, and then leave. So I did that. I worked for Abercrombie, I worked for J.Crew, I worked in hardlines for The Bombay Company, and then I went into restaurants with Pizzeria Uno, and then I bartended. I just wanted to learn everything I could during this period of time. This-- And this was still in Charleston? Uh, no, this was when I moved to Chicago.
Okay. Sorry, I should have said that. So I, I spent that time at Bath & Body Works, and I went to school. I left and went to Chicago. So that was-- I had achieved that finally goal of getting there. Um, and I graduated from, uh, school in Chicago in 2005. At that time, I had moved into working for, uh, OfficeMax corporate, so I was still working for all of my competitors. They had recruited me out of The Bombay Company to do store design for OfficeMax, and that was exciting because I was actually able to use some of my Robert Mason thought process. And I didn't know at that point if I was going back to Robert Mason. I'd thought, "Okay, maybe my career is going this way. I just need to try it." 'Cause you weren't being disingenuous working for OfficeMax. Correct.
You were, you were, you know- I was genuinely doing my best to soften their image. Right. And they had a big change where they wanted to appeal better to the female customer because they, they see that that's 80% of the decision-making in the household, et cetera, et cetera. So I was recruited in, into that thought process, but it was in 2006. They wanted to change the warehouse store format. We did. We carpeted the floors. We put wooden fixtures in it. We hung pendant lights. We darkened the ceilings. We put theatrical lights in. We put a cafe in the front with coffee. We had TVs dropped so that people could sit and watch and be comfortable. But little did I know that obviously the operational side of the business is also a big part of that, and if they're not ready to change in that aspect, then store design's only gonna go so far before the operations can't handle that.
Right. So I had traveled to stores in Florida and a couple other markets where we had built these, and we were doing 180 stores a year, so it was a lot. Turning over 180 a year. Yeah.
Okay. We were doing 100 brand new and 80 remodels per year. So we were, we were going into those warehouses, gutting them, and starting over, but then building 100 per year. And so it was a big, big job, and it was exciting and rewarding, and I loved it. And again, I was applying some of my Robert Mason thought process. I walked into one store, and I'll never forget it 'cause I had my family with me, and they wanted to see what I was doing. And it was in, in Florida, and it was brand new, and the pendant lights above the registers were broken. The coffee bar had molded coffee filters 'cause nobody had changed the coffee filter. I realized the pendant lights were broken 'cause the rolling ladder had rolled through and hit all of them. The track lights hadn't been changed on the ceiling. Uh, their carpet was covered in toner 'cause somebody dropped a toner cartridge and didn't clean it up. So i-immediately, I was just impacted by... We, we changed the, the store design, but we didn't change the, the thinking and the operations. You were shoehorning something else in. Something.
Right. They weren't ready. They weren't able to handle it, es-essentially. They didn't build staffing around, you know, maintaining this kind of a store. Right. Um, and then, of course, your customer service levels, and that's big at Robert Mason, has to reflect there, too, if you don't have staff on the floor that's able to say, "Okay, we're, we're a different brand now." Um, so there was so many things that were out of my control at that point. Um, and I had worked for so many different chains at this point that I was, you know, learning and learning and learning and learning.
You were intelligent enough to know that it was the left hand not talking to the right. Correct. Right. Correct. And that was happening all over the brand. Um, we were doing $9.22 billion in sales at that point, and it was contract and retail. Um, and we had consolidated out of Shaker Heights. The Cleveland offices were all moved to Naperville. It was a big, big project. But I had, I had decided to leave OfficeMax, and I went agency side. And, uh, ironically, the agency then hired-- Or, uh, I'm sorry, OfficeMax hired the agency I went to. And I think that they listened to me more on the agency side 'cause they could see the dollars they were spending a little bit differently than a staff member.
Mm-hmm. And so it was, it was very interesting 'cause we won a lot of awards that year. We, we were able to really do some work, um, and change some of the culture there. Um, and then we all know that the economic issues started to happen in 2008, which was, uh, toward the end of that agency relationship. But then I was able to work for really cool brands. I worked for Macy's and worked on the Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus and worked for, um, Garrett Popcorn Stores and designed stores in other markets and other countries like Dubai. Went out of that into cosmetics retail, which was H2O+, and then went out of that into, uh, Sears Holdings with-- which was a huge challenge because of the Kmart business and the great indoors, as we all know, is gone. And then was recruited out of there into the Schottenstein family of brands into Columbus. And that was 2010, and that was not something I anticipated happening. I didn't know I was gonna live in Columbus, Ohio. Um, and when I moved here, I wanted to hate it, and I, I think I've mentioned that to you before. I, I said, "Okay, I'm gonna do my stint, I'm gonna do my time, and then I'm gonna get back to Chicago." Right. Um, but in that first year, I fell in love with it. Um, and it was towards the latter part 'cause I spent so much energy wanting to hate it. But I started to f- to find friends here, and I started to find things to do, and I just realized that I was able to do more because I had more time to do it. Uh, my commute at Sears was two and a half hours each way, so I was spending five hours in a car, and that was not a life by any means. 'Cause then, you know, if you add that to a corporate job where you're already working crazy hours, um, I was essentially just existing. Um, but here in Columbus, I was able to live, I was able to do things, um, and I, I really loved it. So my job with Value City, American Signature, and, uh, DSW, the Schottenstein brands, lasted through, uh, a rebranding of Value City, which was really big and fun. Again, I, I got into these brands and got to do the coolest things ever. It was so much fun. Um, but I realized that it was a now or never time in 2013-- t- sorry, '12, 2012, on my brand that I've now, you know, been working on in the background all this time. And I has-- I really had been building this new business plan in the background, what the brand was gonna look like, what it was gonna do differently than it had all those other years, based on what I had learned from all these other companies that I had worked for.
Right. So there's a little piece of everybody I've worked for inside Robert Mason. But in-- Is it fair to say that at that point it was still a little bit of a pet project? Oh, yeah.
It's something you had left in your youth, that it's still going. Yep. Okay. And the West Virginia store still operated as old, as original. Um-
Oh, okay ... however, in 2009, which was in the middle of my Chicago stints, um, I did rebrand it because we went through the economic crisis and saw an opportunity to how do we... We had s- kind of streamlined that year on sales. Like, how, how do we then lift that? You know, we're in Ravenswood, West Virginia. Marketing's not easy there 'cause there's no TV and there's not a lot of medias. Um, so I went in and used a lot of the skill that I had learned and a lot of the things that I had done for other companies, and I rebranded it, added my middle name, gave it a vintage persona. Um, we developed RM Radio, which was a big, big deal because it was an in-store experience addition to that store that didn't have it. Um, we partnered with a DJ out of Chicago who still does all of our, our radio station work today. Um, and then worked with- Do you sell that? I noticed it when I was in the store. Do you sell that? Do you develop that? We do de-develop it. We pay all the rights through BMI, through contracts-
Right ... so we get a month's supply of, of music that is curated by the DJ out of Chicago. And then do you sell that to other brands as well? We do not.
Will you- It's only- ... be selling that to other brands as well? No, it's, it's all licensing that is controlling where we play it. So the Ravenswood store and the Columbus store gets RM Radio, and that's it. There is no other pipes. Um, and then we're able to stream some online, but we have to pay every single label, every single artist, which we, we want to do. We just have to manage that.
Right. Um, and then sell the CDs on some of the select artists within the store too. So we do that today too. So the Ravenswood store got a brand experience update, a brand... a, a name update, and its sales lifted 20% through the economic crisis, which was like, whoa, okay, so there's a reaction in Ravenswood, West Virginia, 5,000 people. Um, we're on the right path here. You know, it's, it's vintage, it's off supplies. We had a customer in this weekend that had kind of... I, I try to write down when people describe the brand- Yeah ... 'cause I'm, I'm intrigued by what people say about it. And he said, "You know, I've-- I-- If I could buy this place, I would in a heartbeat, 'cause this is my place." He's like, "It's, it's men's stuff," which of course, you know, is a stigma that we kind of have. "It's men's stuff and off supplies, and that just makes me feel comfortable."
Well, it's a masculine- It's a very masculine- ... store. Yeah. Now, we do go into women's a lot, and our customers divide at 51/49. So we're doing 51% men, 49% women.
Mm-hmm. What we can't tell out of that 49% of the women is- Who are they buying for? ... are they buying for themselves or for men?
Right. Um, so- Well, you don't sell-- Do you sell women's watches? Uh, not timepieces, no. We, we do s- make women's bags, and we do sell women's bags, and we just went into handbags, which I had-
I'm sorry, is watch a derogatory term? No. Okay. It's just what we refer to them as.
I was just, I was just corrected. It's not a watch, it's a timepiece. Well, that's what I'm saying, is like when, you know, that endcap display or that, you know, doesn't have a female... You're not a female, so that's probably partly why. Right. Because you are probably better at identifying a male aesthetic. Is that why it's not... I don't think it's something... What, what did you refer to it as? It's the-- That's a challenge that you're-- uh, a perception that you're trying to overcome? We are actually trying to overcome it. Uh, we do see-
But I, I would argue it's not a perception. True. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that we see that as opportunity.
Right. Um, and you're absolutely right in that I am better at, uh, from our private label for sure, men's. Um, but then we're so unisex too, and something that happened here recently was very, very interesting that happened with this, uh, gender, uh, ap-applying it to our products, um, was when Express launched our products last fall, which was a huge, huge thing for us. We realized- A good get, if you will. It's a good get.
Right. It was, it was again pivotal. They were obviously gonna be putting us on express.com under men's, and so we knew at that point that we were going to be in the fashion world a little deeper than we ever had been before. Mm-hmm. Um, so we thought, "Okay, let's help that customer that's coming from express.com, and let's change our site to men's and women's and this and that and the other." Uh, no, it didn't work because our products, we had to essentially copy everything and put it in both categories, but allow for them to navigate that way.
Right. Which doesn't- So it doesn't work because a lot of people were just saying, "Well, it's the same stuff in both, so why, why do it?" And we were like, "We, we agree." We tried. We agree, because our timeless look and our, our materials are neutral, um, a lot of times un- unless we go into red leather and blue leather. But we also got a l- a lot of feedback that we shouldn't direct on which gender should carry which bag, and which gender should carry which journal, and what color leather applies to which gender. So it was a louder voice than I had heard in some of these things you hear, like at Target when they had taken a sign down or something like that. We had heard it as our products are, are gender neutral naturally-
Mm-hmm ... and don't force it. Right. And so we were like, "Uh, we agree." So we took it completely down in December of that, uh, of last year and, and didn't apply the sexes to it anymore. It was more of-
How long did that experiment last? Uh, just a couple months. Okay. They had launched in October, and we had it down by December.
So I guess in my head, the natural progression then would be to create another brand. It-- That, and that we, we feel there's another look. So vintage inspired is our look right now- Right ... that is so masculine, and that's because leather just becomes... it comes off that way. Um, but I think that we have a lot of opportunity in the bohemian, um, and g- to, to soften it, going back to what I had to do for other brands, soften it a little bit for the female customer that might think that that's more with what their, their wardrobe looks like.
Right. Well, it's the- 'Cause it, it goes back to we're an accessory. I just-- I think I coined something. It's the palette, not the product. Right.
Absolutely. I think I have a name for you. What's that? I think you should name it Piper Gail.
That's nice. Thank you. That's very nice. Where did you come up with that? It's my daughter and my mother.
Ah. See, names are so fun to work with. Yeah. In fact, all of our signature products are my, a, a lot of my family members' names. Yeah. That's quite an evolution.
Yeah. This... It's, it has evolved and evolved and evolved and evolved, and I would say the largest- So I'm sorry. Remind me how you stopped working for Schottenstein. So I finished my biggest milestone project with them, which was the store by the casino. Okay.
It's the, it's Value City rebranded, um, with its new look and feel, new logo, and I had decided that I had done what I needed to do there. Um, and I went and talked to the family members independently, 'cause I worked with Jonathan and Jay, and- Okay ... and respect all of them a great deal because I had such opportunity there. It was, again, so much fun. Um, but they knew that I had a family business, and, uh, that we had just established earlier was I had built a family business. It wasn't my brand that I had in the background. It was my family's brand at this point. Um, because here my parents have sat there and worked seven days a week for 15 years while this brand is, you know, brewing, you know, into what it was gonna become. But what did they think? Did they f- I imagine they thought of it much more of like, "Oh, yeah, Robert's family owns a mattress store out in, in Podunk." You know, mattress store is just an example of like, you know, tends to be independently owned, small, uh, and doesn't have a whole lot of influence outside the marketplace that it's in.
Well, so when I inter- I wanna-- My question is, is what was their perception of this family business, as you refer to it? Well, so when I interviewed with them- Mm-hmm
... I was very clear that I was going to go back into it. Okay. So I was able to connect that back- I see
... and say, "Okay, now is the time. I've, I've been here now three years. I've done this and that and this and that, and now is the time my family needs me." Yeah. Okay. And they respected that a great deal. They, they understood it. But you didn't go home.
That's correct. Again, the whole, the whole idea was to go back to Chicago with this and build it, and I had... when I was kicking and screaming when I moved here, had found a place in Chicago for it to go. I had the address, I had the floor plans, and 'cause I had the architectural background, I built it out, what it was gonna be like on paper, um, and then didn't do it there. So I decided, and, you know, obviously I loved Columbus so much at this point, I saw an opportunity here like no other. Downtown Columbus has nothing but opportunity in front of it. Um, and we are, we are rapidly grabbing it, onto it. And so I think that's exciting, and I wanted to be a part of that. So I had, uh, moved on to Gay and 3rd Street, so I was in the epicenter, the, the core, um, and where I felt the heartbeat of downtown truly is. And I'm right-- I was right by the Renaissance Hotel and Residence Inn, so it was, it was fun to see just the amount of people that come here, um, and the amount of traffic that that generates. Uh, and that reminds me of our being the 15th largest city in the country. You know, there's a lot of things that when you line it up, you're like, "Okay, this is opportunity, opportunity, opportunity." So I talked to all the business owners on Gay Street, 'cause I lived there, and my last meeting was with Mark Ballard and Sugar Daddies. And I was really just trying to get their opinion of downtown, and, you know, if... My biggest question for everyone was, "If you build a business in Columbus, Ohio, in 2000," at this time, "12, where do you go?" Because you've got German Village, and then you've got Short North, and you've got the, uh, Discovery District, which at that time I had my eyes on big time, 'cause CCAD was over there. Mm-hmm. Um, and Franklin and all the other schools' capital. And then, um, I'm, I was trying to figure out where people go to shop and to, to, uh, find, uh, in our category, office supplies. And Mark said, "You know, you're right in the middle of all of those areas right here on Gay Street." And he said, "And we do have some space left over that we don't use in our store." And I said, "Well, that's interesting," you know, and I was kinda just dismissing it. And he said, "Well, what-- after we talk here, why don't we go over and I'll show you, and you can see if this would be a good place for you to just do a preview. Just start out here. Just see what people... Get, get a read." And so when we went into the store, I looked over in the corner and I kinda laughed, and I was like, "That's funny." That's really small. And the more I thought about it, I thought, "This is the best design challenge I've ever had, ever." How would I take a little place where they had a piano and a, a sofa and turn that into a preview store that was a real store? And so everything was... I, I went through, you know, what I would do in a typical, uh, store design project for a bigger company. What kind of fixtures are we gonna use? What kind of wall units are we gonna do? What kind of lighting are we gonna do? How are we gonna make this space feel bigger? Um, and that was t- going vertical. So we used every inch of the vertical space in that store, and it was all shallow cabinetry, so everything was a- an illusion to feel bigger. We did fit a lot of product in that store, though. And so, uh, after I signed the lease and built it out, we opened on Valentine's Day 2013, and it was a great smashing success. Now, Columbus was also very vocal about what they wanted, and that was helpful for me because I o- I worked that store by myself from open to close for many, many, many, many months. And when I first started out, I thought, "Okay, let's put some of West Virginia's best sellers in here, and let's put some of West Virginia's this and some of West Virginia's that, and then I'm gonna add the fashion side," which I had been working on in the background that West Virginia didn't have. Well, Columbus said, "We want the fashion side. We don't want the rest of the stuff." Um, and I had to hear that loud and clear, and they did that with their dollars. So printer cartridges, we had $20,000 of printer cartridges on one wall. Didn't sell maybe one every few weeks at the most. Right.
Well, th- of course, that's a commodity product. Razor sh- you know, thin margins. You can get that anywhere. You can get that online. You can get the Staples. Um, so I just kept trying to build out what these products were that was Robert Mason brand, and that just took off in and of itself. And so we went a year and a month in that location before the devastating fire. Do you wanna talk about the fire at all? Well, we just passed the anniversary, so let's do it. Let's do it.
Let's do it. Uh, it was just two years ago on Friday at 6:09 PM. We are recording this on April 19th, the day after Tax Day 2016. Yes. And the day of the fire was Tax Day 2014. Th- uh, also the day the Titanic sank. Right.
So I always say there's a lot of bad things that happened on that day. I apologize to anybody that has a birthday on April 19th. It's all right. We're coming up on April 20th, so... So, uh, it was, it was a difficult time. So to go back and, and, and try to explain what happened, it was electrical fire underneath of Sugar Daddies in the basement level. Um, it was old, faulty wiring. We had suffered a extreme amount of break-ins in that space, um, so there was a lot of activity in the basement, and we don't know what could have caused any of the, uh, what resulted in, uh, an electrical fire. But, uh, since that is the, the story that we, you know, know happened, um, it destroyed all three businesses at once. So it's, from the outside, did not look like as bad as it was because it was a marble building and it held up well. Right.
Uh, inside it was, it was destroyed. So Sugar Daddies had collapsed into the basement. We ended up being the chimney for that 'cause we were on top of the vault, um, and the vault stood up through all of this. And so when they broke all the windows, the, the suction happened at Robert Mason. And so all of the heat and smoke went through us to get outside. It was a bad fire. Uh, it lasted for hours. Gay Street was closed. High Street was closed, um, for many, many hours. Seven firefighters were injured. Um, and I was not able to go back in until that next day to see what the aftermath was, and of course it was just what you would expect. It was a, it was just gone. So the... Immediately, when you go through something like that, and I've tried to explain this every time someone asks me what it- that's like, there's just no textbook for this. You wake up the next morning thinking, "That, that was a dream. That had to be a dream. That couldn't be real. That, I'm not dealing with that today. There's no way." And so then you, you're like, "Well, what do I do?" Because there really isn't anything to do next. You don't have stuff. It's all gone. Well, and I imagine you just wanna work, and you can't. You do. Well, you can't. I mean, you reach for something and you don't have it anymore. I mean, is it... What are the comparisons to make? Is it like a death of a family member? Is it like-
It is ... um, I almost wanna, like, compare it to terrorism to an extent- ... of, like, this, you know... 'Cause at least with the death of a family member, you have this support system. You know what I mean? And for you, you don't. And so because no one can possibly understand what that's like. Correct. Um, and it's...
You have to be very s- Your entire life is just thrown off- It's just gone. Yeah ... kilter, and you can't, you know-
Well, I had built the pop-up store out of... I had cashed everything in that I owned. So I had r- and retirement, anything I had, I'd built up from those companies I had worked for, you know, 401, everything went into that, so. So let me ask you a couple of question, financial questions, and you don't have to, like... Just give me general stuff. Like, were you able to support your lifestyle with just that pop-up shop? It was tough. Okay.
It was very tough. Um, I, I mean, literally jumped off the cliff is, is how people describe being an entrepreneur. Mm-hmm. And it was just that. Um, there were weeks there were, there were no groceries. There was, um, times where weathering the storm was very difficult. But it was all going back into the business, and essentially the business was gonna support me someday. Right. And so-
And that's the way I think about it ... so did you... Was it a choice that you made because you had the forethought to be like, "I'm at an age where I can do this now. I probably am not gonna be able or want to put myself in this position in 15 years"? I hadn't even really thought of it that way. Okay.
I... So you can ask any family member or friends. This just goes back to them thinking that I was the biggest geek in the world. I don't have that fear of Of the risk that was involved in this, and I would do it any time. I, there was never a, "I have to do it now because I'm gonna be older at some point or have a family at some point," or things like that. Were you aware of the risk? Oh, yeah. Okay.
100%, yeah. So what did you- But I'm 100% confident too, so my risk So it's like, "Yeah, of course there's a risk, but I'm not gonna fail."
I'm not gonna fail. Right. So there's risk, but I'm not gonna deal with that. "I know it's dangerous to drive this fast, but I'm not gonna get in an accident."
That's 100% the way I feel. So- Yeah ... what, what, how much did you lose?
Oh, it's, the numbers are astronomical, and the sad part is that w- that insurance is not paid out. So- And what's the deal with that? The, uh, there were four insurance companies involved in that fire. So you have the building owner, you have Sprint, you have Sugar Daddy's, and you have Robert Mason. And we are not... Because of the finger-pointing that went back and forth, it's enabled the insurance companies to delay, and delay, and delay, and delay, and delay. And by finger-pointing, you mean we don't know what caused that electrical fire?
Correct, or who's responsible for any of the negligence damages, things like that. Got it. So it's gone back and forth to where a normal business should spin backwards and go out, and that's what I think insurance companies expect to happen or that they want to happen. They look at their risk, they analys- they analyze that, and they say, "Okay, the exposure here is this, and they're gonna be gone before that." So, um, luckily, we had investors involved in that store that I had pulled in. Um, all of our investors had been customers that walked in, so it was a conversion of a customer to an investor, which I think is v- flattering. Yeah.
Usually flattering. Um, they were there for support through all of this, of course, and you know, they knew the risk involved for them too, that we had all lost everything. And then as we were- But they are insured as well. Correct. I mean, they're insured by the insurance for Robert Mason.
That's correct. So the delay of it being over two years now is even more crazy. Yeah. You know, that everybody's still waiting for that. I mean, it's a long time. Um- How do you think it will resolve?
I don't know. I don't know. I just know that it's, it's more of a legal thing, and, and that's one thing that I've learned a lot about in the last two years is- But the process is still ongoing. It's ongoing. It's not like the insurance company is just like, "Well, statute of limitations is up, so no."
Ongoing. Because it can't possibly be your fault. Correct. And Sugar Daddy's was a candy store, right?
Uh, brownies, yep. So it might be their fault. Do they have a bakery on site? Nope. So it's not their fault. It's probably not Sprint's fault. It's... Okay. All right. Um, and so-
See how easily we just solved this problem? Yeah. How fast we could solve the problem for them. Done. Done. So what did you do in the two year, well, year and a half interim between the fire and opening the new store?
So the support system that I had was the customer base, and I have a very, very, very aggressive customer that is very loyal, and they wouldn't let this, you know, take their store away, as they would say, um, which again, is flattery. So there was a lot of support. Um, there were some funding campaigns set up because I had staff members that lost their jobs. We, we couldn't pay someone possibly past the hour of the fire because, you know, we're so small. Right. Um, so they, they lost their jobs, and they knew it, you know, when they watched it burn. Um, and so the Indiegogo campaign and another one was set up for them, um, because we tried to convert jobs and, and tried to figure out how, how can we stay, keep the brand alive and pay people to keep it alive, you know? 'Cause we weren't just gonna give them money for not doing anything. We had to figure out how to, to change the, our ways- Right
... immediately. So, um, through the help of Capital Crossroads and a lot of talking with Cleve Ricksecker and everybody, we decided to rent office space at 175 On The Park and decide how we were gonna build the online store back. Immediately after the fire, we had to take everything down because we were accepting orders through the fire, and of course, the merchandise was gone. So, uh, I had to make some painful decisions at that point. Um, we didn't have the insurance money, as you know, so we... What do I bring back? Out of all of that assortment, I can't bring it all back. And I think that this was a right and wrong answer. I brought Robert Mason brand back, um, because that was another part of our channels. It's our vertical, and it was something that couldn't be bought anywhere else. So if that was, if that was dark until the new store opened, then you couldn't have purchased that product anywhere. So I brought Robert Mason brand back, but then what I didn't think about was that that's all leather goods. So you don't need that every day. So we didn't have frequency of shop at that point, and what makes the Robert Mason concept work so beautifully and the way the new store is laid out is that it's one half consumables and one half lifestyle and luxury. So the frequency of shop went down, and then, uh, we started to look at, okay, well, we need to sell the things that go inside the leather journals and the leather bags and things like that. So the next two years was how do we rebuild this brand knowing that the brands that they loved inside Robert Mason are gone? 'Cause again, a, a part of this brand is curation. And so I've always curated my favorite things, and that was what our, what we sell. We carry 175 brands right now, which is a lot of curation. Mm-hmm. Um, but I won't sell it if I don't like it. So there was just this, always this anticipation that we were gonna rebuild that store. And a lot of times- A brick and mortar
... a brick and mortar store, and, and the online store was gonna reflect and, and build up with it. But how, when, where? I had zero answers to the questions. So, I mean, what did you do during that year and a... I, I mean, you rented office space, and you built up the online brand. It, it was the, the online brand. So we did sell, and we did push all of our online products. There was a lot of marketing, a lot of scouring out, trying to figure out where the new store was going to be. So there was a lot of development on the side that was happening while the brand was still open. Um, we did get the online store open two weeks after the fire. Okay.
So that was pretty quick. Yeah. Um, and that was our vendors re- reacting as quickly as they possibly could. We had just launched spring, so all the patterns were pretty fresh for everybody. They just had to do it again. Right. So you were able to get the virtual-
Some momentum just a little bit back ... right? Yeah. And that was through... There was a lot of volunteer hours. There was a lot of people that helped make that happen out of that temporary office space because again, I- we didn't have anything. I had my backpack and my c- my laptop, so essentially that was my office now. So once you got... So now that you've got the new store open, and it's beautiful by the way-
Thank you ... what's next? So we have more investors involved now because the, the store's rebirth is a direct result of new investors. That was not a rebuild out of insurance by any means because it's still ongoing. And so there's expectations on those new investors of what our growth looks like. Mm-hmm.
A lot of that is because Columbus is our home, is that we will stay, uh, here as f- as our source for our makers, finding who's, who's making these leather bound products, who's making our canvas products, seamstresses, leather crafters. Uh, but tell the story out of this, this store, and then build a very big online presence. So our goal is to get that online business up to a level to where we can reach the global audience like we have tried to do in the past. Now, we had done some orders right before the fire, like BBC and a couple others that were really large, um, and got our brand into other countries, and that was because our products have our name ob- obviously on them. So we had worked really hard when we built the online store over those two years after the fire on making it ready to be prepared to ship to Germany and to ship to Australia and to ship to these other markets where we have vendors that, that service that area and that we could actually, uh, market to. So we see that as an opportunity, big opportunity. Um, office supplies and a lot of the categories we carry are s- very celebrated in these other countries, and that's what our job is here, and it's a huge job and it's awesome. Um, and that's to bring the love of these products to America where we had kind of forgotten about them, um, through that commoditization piece. Mm-hmm. Um, so we have a lot of people- Blackwing pencils.
Blackwing pencils is a great example. Right. A lot of people walk into the store and they say they feel like this is something from Europe or they've seen something similar to this in Asia. Um, and that's again flattering because- Right
... I think that we're on the right track when we hear that. So you, no immediate plans for another retail store? No immediate, but there are, it is in the thought process, is, is like, w- where and how do we do that? How do you staff that up? You know what I mean? Because you can't do it all yourself.
Well, yes, and I've had to learn that this year. We would be looking for a market that's similar to Columbus in the US that, uh, perhaps has better weather. So when this store endures hard winter times or things like that, that we can then depend on that store to pick up. Mm-hmm. There are a lot of great areas and there are a lot of customers because Columbus gets so many visitors that have been very vocal about, "My town is where you should be building your next store." Right.
"My town is where you need to come to." So we just continue to take all that feedback. I mean, we're gonna be digesting this store for a while. We're d- we're gonna work out any kinks that are involved in it before we would build another one. Um, but initially I had said that any expansion out of Columbus would be pop-ups, which was what we had done at Sugar Daddies. Right. Um, which is a low risk model. It's smaller in scale, but it allows for us to push traffic back to the website for any exponential business or any incremental that's in the assortment that's bigger than, you know, our pop-up assortment. But this store has been so successful so far that it uh, it's making us think about that again. Right. Is there an argument for doing another small kiosk or, uh, pop-up is how we should be referring to it- ... at like Polaris or, uh, Easton or something like that, or even Uptown Powell?
My answer initially is to n- say no to that. Okay. Um, I had, had looked at that when the pop-up store was downtown because we were looking at other options also for the bigger store. Right.
The whole time the pop-up store was open, that was my job, was to find where the bigger one was gonna go. Got it. We reviewed other areas, but we are an urban brand, so our heart and our soul is in that urban experience. Um, and not to say that there's anything wrong with regional malls, but it's just not our demographic scene. Um, we would like to pull those people to downtown to shop us or be a part of our, our demographic there. Um, but again, things change so rapidly it's hard to tell. Got it. Robert, thank you so much for your time today.
Yeah. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. Again, more information on Robert Mason Company and Robert Grimmett can be found at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, your family, your contacts, your coworkers. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a good week.
Transcript11,402 words
Tim Fulton Welcome to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focused on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. In this episode, I sit down with Robert Grimmett, the founder and CEO of Robert Mason Company. We have, frankly, a pretty casual conversation about the day-to-day operations of Robert Mason Company, how Robert Mason got started, how it evolved, and how it was rebuilt then after a shocking loss. Today's episode is sponsored by the event Best Bites Tacos on August 18th. That event gathers some of the best taco offerings in Columbus under one roof for one night only. Tickets are on sale. I am told they are selling out fast. More information on Best Bites Tacos at theconfluencecast.com. Enjoy the interview. How's it going?
Robert Grimmett Good.
Tim Fulton Did you work this morning in the store?
Robert Grimmett Yeah.
Tim Fulton Are you guys open seven days a week?
Robert Grimmett Mm-hmm. Seven days a week.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett Till 9:00.
Tim Fulton 9:00 PM.
Robert Grimmett Yep. Sunday till 6:00.
Tim Fulton What time do you open?
Robert Grimmett 11:00.
Tim Fulton Okay. So you get your mornings to yourself.
Robert Grimmett Mm-hmm. I get there at 7:30.
Tim Fulton To do ordering, inventory, all that stuff?
Robert Grimmett Office stuff until, yeah, the store opens.
Tim Fulton Do you have help with that?
Robert Grimmett Not from the merchandising perspective. I'm still 100% that.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett But I do have e-com marketing and people for support there.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett In the office.
Tim Fulton But no one in the office you do?
Robert Grimmett Yeah, in the office I do.
Tim Fulton Okay. So what about for, like, ordering stuff? Like when-
Robert Grimmett It's me.
Tim Fulton So you have the-
Robert Grimmett I'm still the curator, so I still do 100% of it.
Tim Fulton Do you plan to continue that?
Robert Grimmett I'm starting to see challenges that are new.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett Um, one of them is the demand planning side of things, uh, keeping on top of a level that we've never been at before.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett So that's something that I, I definitely am looking for possibly finding help with.
Tim Fulton Well, it's a good problem to have, right?
Robert Grimmett It's a good problem to have.
Tim Fulton So how much do things change up to the point where... So you can forecast a little bit, right? 'Cause you can do week by week, month by month how many, you know, small Moleskine notebooks you sell. But let, let's say you bring in a new pen or something like that. Can you forecast that, or is it just basically you try it out?
Robert Grimmett Well, it's all guess right now 'cause we have no history. So we're going off of 45 days open, and, um, there's a lot of variables that were part of that grand opening, the Arnold Gallery Hops, um, and then forecasting for upcoming Gallery Hops, and then we're a very seasonal business adds some complexities. Um, and then also that we're shared with e-commerce, so our inventory has to meet both demands.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett Um, if e-commerce spikes for, you know, whatever reason, then it has to support it and the retail store is going to lose that inventory. If the retail store spikes, then e-commerce is going to lose that inventory.
Tim Fulton Where's your storage?
Robert Grimmett It's all in that same building. So we go all the way to Pearl Street.
Tim Fulton Oh, okay.
Robert Grimmett Behind KittenAce.
Tim Fulton So do you have much room back there to do, like-
Robert Grimmett We have 1,000 square feet.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett It's a lot bigger than you'd think.
Tim Fulton So you have enough room to do, like, staging for those mailings and-
Robert Grimmett Yep
Tim Fulton ... stuff like that.
Robert Grimmett Yep. We have-
Tim Fulton But-
Robert Grimmett We have offices. We have, um, warehouse for all of our private label. We... All of express is packaged and consorted there, and then, um, consolidated out to their DC. So it's, there's a lot of space there.
Tim Fulton Okay. So tell us how it got started.
Robert Grimmett So it all started from just doing design work in my parents' basement, and that was, uh, when people didn't have computers. So it was, uh, the right place at the right time, I like to say. Uh, and that was, uh, doing mayoral campaigns and city council campaigns, but then that brought some business that became retail. So they were-
Tim Fulton So hold on. So the website states that you, this all started when you were 12 years old.
Robert Grimmett That's correct. Yep.
Tim Fulton So you were doing design work for mayoral campaigns when you were 12 years old?
Robert Grimmett I was. Yep.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett So going back again to there were not computers in pe- people's homes, uh, and they didn't have design skills. I always had this artistic or creative flair, and I wanted to create. Um, so when I got a computer, I got CorelDRAW, and that was, that's what I, that's what I was... That was the rest of my life I was gonna do that. So why not go into business right away with it? And so, uh, when I did these campaigns, people needed supplies too at the same time and, and generally they would come in and look over some of the work that I had done for them, and they would start buying stuff off of my shelf, which was not the plan at that time, but became the plan later.
Tim Fulton So what do you mean by supplies, though?
Robert Grimmett I used to... Uh, I have a fetish clearly for office supplies. I mean, that's why I'm in the business. I guess you'd say that's the luckiest job in the world when you're surrounded by your favorite things. But I always got the cooler things. I would search out... It was not easy because commodities even, uh, back in, we're talking, what, '94, before that, '93, '92, were hard to find in colors. So it was still black, blue, red, you know, when it came to binders and ink pens and things like that. But I would find lime green and purple and magenta and orange and yellow and, um, those were my s- my supplies. That's what I wanted.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett And even, you know, higher quality leather bound things. Back then it was a little easier to find that because brands like Cambridge still made products like that and still made things in America. Uh, so they were buying my products, and that just, that exposed a retail opportunity that I said, "Why not?" So really at that point it was a modern day Kinko's kind of a concept. We did copy and fax service. We shipped USPS and FedEx, and then added retail. Now, again, this was 13 years old out of my parents' basement, so you can imagine the volume wasn't that heavy-
Tim Fulton Right
Robert Grimmett ... so I could handle it with school. But then the city found out that I was doing a little bit more than, you know, a typical hobby would be and said to my parents, "You know, you need to reel this in just a little bit. We need to get this legitimized. We need to get a business permit issued." So they asked me to pitch the business plan, which I didn't have one-
Tim Fulton Okay
Robert Grimmett ... before city council, so I had to get-
Tim Fulton This is Columbus City Council?
Robert Grimmett This... No, this was Ravenswood. This is down in West Virginia.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett Three hours south of here.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett Now, it's a town of 4,000 people, so this was in no way a demonizing, you know, we're coming after you-
Tim Fulton Right
Robert Grimmett ... type of thing from city council. This was actually probably a good learning, a lesson being taught. And even when I was pitching it-
Tim Fulton Was that their motivation?
Robert Grimmett That was their motivation.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett I can tell you that just by the audience, the eyes that I had on me were all s- they were smiling. This was this 13-year-old, they think it's cute-
Tim Fulton Right
Robert Grimmett ... type of deal. But it was a good lesson to learn because it really pulled the parts of the business plan together that I hadn't anticipated, 'cause that forced me to do that.
Tim Fulton Mm-hmm.
Robert Grimmett So I, I pitched it. They rezoned the street. They issued a business license, and, uh,
Tim Fulton Your parents' home.
Robert Grimmett My parents' basement, yep.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett So you can only imagine what that does to an entrepreneur because now you're legit. Um, and now I'm like, "Well, then I'm gonna advertise 'cause now I don't have to hide it anymore," you know?
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett "Come to, you know, xxx street, you know, today." And that's exactly what happened, was that I, I then got some people that were strangers, and my parents found strangers in their house, and that was my next problem. Was it was now not the city, it was my parents saying, "Okay, here's your ultimatum. Find us another place to do this or you can't do this in my, our basement."
Tim Fulton So up to that point, were they, uh, v- were they encouraging and they were-
Robert Grimmett Oh, for sure.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett 100%. I had always had this n- besides the creative flair, I had this business thing where I just loved, loved calculators and adding numbers and, and my dad used to be a sales rep, so he had a Telzon machine, so I would sit and play with it, and they had to make a desk for me. I didn't do kid things-
Tim Fulton Right
Robert Grimmett ... ever, ever. So they were encouraging, and th- little did they know it was, that I was gonna get them into since they are now part of the business. So when they found strangers in the, the basement and then we had the ultimatum, um, I went out and did something that's very similar to what I did here in Columbus. I went to a local business and pitched this idea that I had where I would do all their graphic design work, again, back in the day when people didn't have the computers, didn't have the abilities.
Tim Fulton Mm-hmm.
Robert Grimmett In exchange, I wanted rent or just free rent and space.
Tim Fulton You wanted space, right.
Robert Grimmett I just wanted space, 'cause now I'm looking for how in the world am I gonna continue this business, um, especially with the retail need now. So I need a retail storefront. And so this was a Cellular One store in downtown Ravenswood, and they bit. They said sure. And so I had a space. I had a door that locked. Um, it was very little. It was just like the pop-up store at Sugar Daddies. And it was probably a six-month span before it couldn't... It was too... We were doing too much out of that little space.
Tim Fulton Really?
Robert Grimmett That's how little it was. Yeah. And again, this is a kid that's in school. You would think that that would be enough.
Tim Fulton Did you have employees at this point?
Robert Grimmett No, but I did bring my mom in to help with bookkeeping. We got into-
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett We got to the point where I am now trying to control a checkbook and, you know, again, still in school. And my mom had a fashion marketing degree, but she was not using it at that time. She was, you know, taking care of my grandfather that had, uh, had a stroke and was bedfast. So she was able to use her skills and pull it in, but again, little did she know she was then gonna never leave. That's, that was gonna become her role. And so within six months we had to find a new place for it, 'cause we were doing too much business, which is a great problem to have.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett So the local strip mall in Ravenswood sat behind McDonald's and Wendy's, you know, it's the cen- epicenter of town, had a vacancy and it was a space that had been abandoned for many years. But the strip mall had recently filled up, so it had RadioShack and GNC and Regis Hair Salon, and I was like, "Well, I'm gonna be the first independent in that little strip mall. I'm taking that space." So I negotiated with the developer of that plaza, but I was too young to be doing that.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett So they didn't know, and this was before email and fax, so I was literally doing it through the phone, negotiating the space, and worked out a deal where we could fund the build-out off of rent. So a no-rent clause, you know, for X amount of months to pay for that.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett That did require that I go to the bank and get a loan, and this was, again, back in a day when that was still possible. You could walk into a bank. It was a small local bank, and-
Tim Fulton But could you-
Robert Grimmett No, my parents had to come in-
Tim Fulton Right
Robert Grimmett ... at that point.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett We used the business plan that I had pitched to city council. It was forecasted with sales. So we started to see that I was gonna need some more help, you know, now that we're at the age of, like, 15 years old and, you know, still in, I'm in high school.
Tim Fulton So what do your friends think about you? Like, is it, are you just, like, that weird kid?
Robert Grimmett I'm that weird kid.
Tim Fulton Are you well-liked?
Robert Grimmett I was quiet, so I just kinda disappeared off in the corner. I was a band geek, so I did the whole band thing during football season, and then disappeared again.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett Because I was constantly doing this. This is, when I left school, this is what I wanted to do. When I woke up-
Tim Fulton So, like, did you have friends who were like, "Tell me more about what..." Because there's some attraction, I imagine, for people that, like, this kid's making money-
Robert Grimmett Yeah
Tim Fulton ... and, like, doing, you know, not a crazy amount of business, but you're certainly making money doing what you're doing. And so did kids-
Robert Grimmett They didn't see it that way.
Tim Fulton How did they-
Robert Grimmett They just, they saw this as a hobby that was consuming. But-
Tim Fulton Could you compare it... I, I just, I can't think of... I was a theater kid, but never did one show at my actual high school. I was always doing, like, community theater or semi-professional theater, and I think I was looked at a little, like, well, what is that kid, what is that guy doing? I mean, I'm trying to put myself in the frame of mind of those other high school students with you. What, what did they think of you?
Robert Grimmett I think that they, they thought it was weird.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett I think, I, I don't think that they could figure it out until that store opened in the mall, where they actually came to then be customers.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett And I think then it kinda made sense, and then they, they put the pieces together, but they didn't know why I wanted to do it. And I couldn't explain why I wanted to do it. It was just everything in me wanted to do that. I-
Tim Fulton And it's a business that you've followed, not, well, yeah, fallen into, basically.
Robert Grimmett Fall, yep, and it was a lot of work. So, you know, why would I sign up for that when I was that young, you know? That, that was a lot of the things they were, that were going through their mind. And as, as we got older in high school, it was harder, you know, for... I couldn't go do this and I couldn't do that, and, but I didn't want to. It goes back to I had this appetite for this that was uncontrollable, and it always has been that way.
Tim Fulton Okay. So that initial store was still copies, mailing-
Robert Grimmett Exponentially bigger.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett We hit 2,000 square feet at this point, and my parents, or my dad joined. So he left his job. We're now seeing this as a opportunity for us all to, to do this.
Tim Fulton You created the family business.
Robert Grimmett I did.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett I did. And they're, again, still there, um, and they run that store, and that is the store that's still open.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett That is the Ravensaplaza store.
Tim Fulton And that's still Robert Mason?
Robert Grimmett It is.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett Yep.
Tim Fulton And is it s- is it similar to... Why don't we get into describe what the, the current... Describe Robert Mason.
Robert Grimmett So Robert Mason is probably the hardest elevator pitch in the entire world to explain, um, and that's usually how I describe it. Um, but we are a lifestyle brand, but we're not centered around apparel like people expect a lifestyle brand to be. We're centered around office products and office supplies and office gear. And our, in America especially, of, of any of the markets, office supplies have a very different feel because of the superstores and the commoditization of the marketplace. So Office Depot, Max, and Staples, um, and then the bigger players like Walmart and Amazon and Costco have come in and sold it as bulk.
Tim Fulton Mm.
Robert Grimmett And that's not traditional office supplies. So office supplies, the way we sell it or the way we see it, are still special. Individual writing instruments, higher quality papers, leather-bound notebooks and journals, different materials. Obviously, it's not 100% everything in our store leather, but we do do a great deal of business in leather. But it's a nod back to when products were sold in department stores. They're accessories. And so w- when we went into what is Robert Mason as a persona, we went vintage inspired because our products were timeless looking because they were l- they were that nod back in time when stationery was still a, an accessory to your outfit or, uh, you really were concerned with what you were carrying or the form and function of your padfolio or your notebook or your pen. And so that didn't happen at Robert Mason until 2009, and that was a big rebranding focus when I added my middle name.
Tim Fulton So that, that's what I was gonna ask. What... Is that... 2009 is when, like, the Ravenswood store sort of switched over to-
Robert Grimmett It rebranded, yeah.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett Yeah, and that was my goal. I had, and kind of in a, a backtrack, had a experience, um, and everything in my life has been an experience, like I wanna write a book. Um, but th- this chapter was when I had decided that I was gonna leave the Ravenswood store. I was almost 19 years old, and it was because I was off track of what my goals were. Um, I had s- I created the business. I had built what I loved and had left, you know, playing kickball for and done. Um, but now I was not at art school yet. I was not... That was, you know, back in, way back, that was what I wanted to do always.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett I wanted to go to Parsons, or I wanted to go to Savannah College of Art and Design, or I wanted to go to Art Institute of Chicago. Um, I had posters on my wall always from those schools. And so I had two art teachers that walked in, um, in elementary school and high school, and I will always credit them for this part. But they had walked into the store and they said, "You know, we love what you've done here. This is an amazing thing to bring to Ravenswood, West Virginia, that doesn't have stores like this. Um, and we shop here, so we patronize it. We, we encourage it. But we didn't see you behind the counter for the rest of your life in Ravenswood, West Virginia." And hearing them, because I looked up to them so greatly, say that kind of s- it, it resonated, and so I had to kind of review what I had done, what I had caused here, 'cause I was thinking about, "Ooh, I wanna open another store." Right? "Why, why don't we do a second version of this somewhere?" And so I, that weekend, applied to those schools that were on those posters on my wall and was accepted to Chicago. Of, of the different cities, I couldn't decide which city I wanted to live in, so I just let them accept me. Being accepted was like, "Oh, shit. Now I have to do something. I have to sell this business. I have to close this business. I have to... There's an exit strategy that has to be created."
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett So I did all these thought processes and decided that my parents are involved in business. Why not let them run it while I'm gone? Keep it open. Go learn everything I need to learn, come back, and apply it. And so that really was, was my goal, but then I needed to live in another city to get there. So I, I had a city of transition where I moved to Charleston, West Virginia, which is about 50,000 people. It's the capital city. Um-
Tim Fulton You have the dome.
Robert Grimmett Yep.
Tim Fulton The big dome.
Robert Grimmett The big dome. Biggest. Uh, so I was gonna go live there and try to learn some things before I went to Chicago, 'cause Chicago's 9 million people, and that was gonna be overwhelming for the small, you know, farm town boy that was-
Tim Fulton Did you make that decision independently?
Robert Grimmett Mm-hmm. Yep.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett Yep. So when I was accepted, I did not go right away.
Tim Fulton I guess I'm surprised that someone who jumped right in and started a business when you were 13 was like, "Mm, I should transition to a larger city."
Robert Grimmett Well, I think I was scared to death-
Tim Fulton Okay
Robert Grimmett ... of the larger city thing. Was I gonna be able to handle this?
Tim Fulton And so far away.
Robert Grimmett Yeah, so far away. I'd never worked for anybody in my life, so that was the next thing. I needed to go work for somebody and actually learn how to, to, to be an employee. Um, and then obviously return back to my roots as a student. So when I moved to Charleston, the biggest thing was traffic. I think I was the scaredest, the most scared of, of driving around in a big city. I went to Charleston Town Center, and I applied to every single store in the mall, and I said the first one that called me back was where I was gonna work. And of course, the first one that called me back was not one I wanted to work at. Um, but it was a pivotal time in my story, and it was Bath & Body Works. And so this is 1999. '98, '99. So this is back in Bath & Body Works gingham days. This was the farm store returning to the heartland, the Excelsior and the barrels and sun-ripened raspberry for days. But I accepted the job, and I was completely confused as to what this was. So I was from a small town. I wasn't in the mall all the time.
Tim Fulton Confused why this store-
Robert Grimmett Why, what-
Tim Fulton Why is there a store that just sells, like, five fragrances of lotion-
Robert Grimmett Yep
Tim Fulton ... soap-
Robert Grimmett Yep
Tim Fulton ... hand soap. Right.
Robert Grimmett And the question that was going over and over in my head was, "Okay, they're selling s- a commodity product that you normally would've bought at Walgreens or CVS, a soap. Um, and they've, they've put it in this environment, and they've turned this music on, and they've made this barn look and feel. And then all of a sudden people are paying 10, $12 for the same product." And that's, you know, not comparing apples to apples, but it's, it's essentially what they did.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett They put an experience around it, they put a brand around it, and then people had an emotional response to that. And on weekends, we had lines out both sides of the gate. I mean, we just couldn't control the amount of traffic coming into that store. And I was like, "Whoa." So here is-- I have the same problem. I have a commodity product, and I would love to be able to charge, you know, a different dollar amount because in the commodity world, your margins are razor thin. You're like five, 10% on some of them, um, because you're competing against bulk selling, and that's what office supplies have become. So I, at that point, changed-- I didn't really change my major, but I updated it for school, which is why this was so pivotal for me, was I, I went into visual communication and graphic arts. I wanted to be able to, to rebrand eventually, but how do I build this brand around office supplies? What is it gonna be called? Is it Robert still? 'Cause that was the name now. Do-- Is it something else? And then I, uh, added a, a minor of architecture so that I could do the store design too. So that was not originally in my, my plan. And Bath & Body Works store design was a big part of that experience. It was a huge part of it. So, uh, when I went to school, that was my focus. Um, and I had decided for any of the jobs that I did part-time while going to school, it was gonna be all of my competitors that I saw as my competitors while building this brand. Um, and I'd work for them for a few months and quit. I just wanted to get that handbook and understand what the brand was about, their tips and tricks, maybe some things I shouldn't do 'cause they're doing them, and then leave. So I did that. I worked for Abercrombie, I worked for J.Crew, I worked in hardlines for The Bombay Company, and then I went into restaurants with Pizzeria Uno, and then I bartended. I just wanted to learn everything I could during this period of time.
Tim Fulton This-- And this was still in Charleston?
Robert Grimmett Uh, no, this was when I moved to Chicago.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett Sorry, I should have said that. So I, I spent that time at Bath & Body Works, and I went to school. I left and went to Chicago. So that was-- I had achieved that finally goal of getting there. Um, and I graduated from, uh, school in Chicago in 2005. At that time, I had moved into working for, uh, OfficeMax corporate, so I was still working for all of my competitors. They had recruited me out of The Bombay Company to do store design for OfficeMax, and that was exciting because I was actually able to use some of my Robert Mason thought process. And I didn't know at that point if I was going back to Robert Mason. I'd thought, "Okay, maybe my career is going this way. I just need to try it."
Tim Fulton 'Cause you weren't being disingenuous working for OfficeMax.
Robert Grimmett Correct.
Tim Fulton You were, you were, you know-
Robert Grimmett I was genuinely doing my best to soften their image.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett And they had a big change where they wanted to appeal better to the female customer because they, they see that that's 80% of the decision-making in the household, et cetera, et cetera. So I was recruited in, into that thought process, but it was in 2006. They wanted to change the warehouse store format. We did. We carpeted the floors. We put wooden fixtures in it. We hung pendant lights. We darkened the ceilings. We put theatrical lights in. We put a cafe in the front with coffee. We had TVs dropped so that people could sit and watch and be comfortable. But little did I know that obviously the operational side of the business is also a big part of that, and if they're not ready to change in that aspect, then store design's only gonna go so far before the operations can't handle that.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett So I had traveled to stores in Florida and a couple other markets where we had built these, and we were doing 180 stores a year, so it was a lot.
Tim Fulton Turning over 180 a year.
Robert Grimmett Yeah.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett We were doing 100 brand new and 80 remodels per year. So we were, we were going into those warehouses, gutting them, and starting over, but then building 100 per year. And so it was a big, big job, and it was exciting and rewarding, and I loved it. And again, I was applying some of my Robert Mason thought process. I walked into one store, and I'll never forget it 'cause I had my family with me, and they wanted to see what I was doing. And it was in, in Florida, and it was brand new, and the pendant lights above the registers were broken. The coffee bar had molded coffee filters 'cause nobody had changed the coffee filter. I realized the pendant lights were broken 'cause the rolling ladder had rolled through and hit all of them. The track lights hadn't been changed on the ceiling. Uh, their carpet was covered in toner 'cause somebody dropped a toner cartridge and didn't clean it up. So i-immediately, I was just impacted by... We, we changed the, the store design, but we didn't change the, the thinking and the operations.
Tim Fulton You were shoehorning something else in.
Robert Grimmett Something.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett They weren't ready. They weren't able to handle it, es-essentially. They didn't build staffing around, you know, maintaining this kind of a store.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett Um, and then, of course, your customer service levels, and that's big at Robert Mason, has to reflect there, too, if you don't have staff on the floor that's able to say, "Okay, we're, we're a different brand now." Um, so there was so many things that were out of my control at that point. Um, and I had worked for so many different chains at this point that I was, you know, learning and learning and learning and learning.
Tim Fulton You were intelligent enough to know that it was the left hand not talking to the right.
Robert Grimmett Correct.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett Correct. And that was happening all over the brand. Um, we were doing $9.22 billion in sales at that point, and it was contract and retail. Um, and we had consolidated out of Shaker Heights. The Cleveland offices were all moved to Naperville. It was a big, big project. But I had, I had decided to leave OfficeMax, and I went agency side. And, uh, ironically, the agency then hired-- Or, uh, I'm sorry, OfficeMax hired the agency I went to. And I think that they listened to me more on the agency side 'cause they could see the dollars they were spending a little bit differently than a staff member.
Tim Fulton Mm-hmm.
Robert Grimmett And so it was, it was very interesting 'cause we won a lot of awards that year. We, we were able to really do some work, um, and change some of the culture there. Um, and then we all know that the economic issues started to happen in 2008, which was, uh, toward the end of that agency relationship. But then I was able to work for really cool brands. I worked for Macy's and worked on the Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus and worked for, um, Garrett Popcorn Stores and designed stores in other markets and other countries like Dubai. Went out of that into cosmetics retail, which was H2O+, and then went out of that into, uh, Sears Holdings with-- which was a huge challenge because of the Kmart business and the great indoors, as we all know, is gone. And then was recruited out of there into the Schottenstein family of brands into Columbus. And that was 2010, and that was not something I anticipated happening. I didn't know I was gonna live in Columbus, Ohio. Um, and when I moved here, I wanted to hate it, and I, I think I've mentioned that to you before. I, I said, "Okay, I'm gonna do my stint, I'm gonna do my time, and then I'm gonna get back to Chicago."
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett Um, but in that first year, I fell in love with it. Um, and it was towards the latter part 'cause I spent so much energy wanting to hate it. But I started to f- to find friends here, and I started to find things to do, and I just realized that I was able to do more because I had more time to do it. Uh, my commute at Sears was two and a half hours each way, so I was spending five hours in a car, and that was not a life by any means. 'Cause then, you know, if you add that to a corporate job where you're already working crazy hours, um, I was essentially just existing. Um, but here in Columbus, I was able to live, I was able to do things, um, and I, I really loved it. So my job with Value City, American Signature, and, uh, DSW, the Schottenstein brands, lasted through, uh, a rebranding of Value City, which was really big and fun. Again, I, I got into these brands and got to do the coolest things ever. It was so much fun. Um, but I realized that it was a now or never time in 2013-- t- sorry, '12, 2012, on my brand that I've now, you know, been working on in the background all this time. And I has-- I really had been building this new business plan in the background, what the brand was gonna look like, what it was gonna do differently than it had all those other years, based on what I had learned from all these other companies that I had worked for.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett So there's a little piece of everybody I've worked for inside Robert Mason.
Tim Fulton But in-- Is it fair to say that at that point it was still a little bit of a pet project?
Robert Grimmett Oh, yeah.
Tim Fulton It's something you had left in your youth, that it's still going.
Robert Grimmett Yep.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett And the West Virginia store still operated as old, as original. Um-
Tim Fulton Oh, okay
Robert Grimmett ... however, in 2009, which was in the middle of my Chicago stints, um, I did rebrand it because we went through the economic crisis and saw an opportunity to how do we... We had s- kind of streamlined that year on sales. Like, how, how do we then lift that? You know, we're in Ravenswood, West Virginia. Marketing's not easy there 'cause there's no TV and there's not a lot of medias. Um, so I went in and used a lot of the skill that I had learned and a lot of the things that I had done for other companies, and I rebranded it, added my middle name, gave it a vintage persona. Um, we developed RM Radio, which was a big, big deal because it was an in-store experience addition to that store that didn't have it. Um, we partnered with a DJ out of Chicago who still does all of our, our radio station work today. Um, and then worked with-
Tim Fulton Do you sell that? I noticed it when I was in the store. Do you sell that? Do you develop that?
Robert Grimmett We do de-develop it. We pay all the rights through BMI, through contracts-
Tim Fulton Right
Robert Grimmett ... so we get a month's supply of, of music that is curated by the DJ out of Chicago.
Tim Fulton And then do you sell that to other brands as well?
Robert Grimmett We do not.
Tim Fulton Will you-
Robert Grimmett It's only-
Tim Fulton ... be selling that to other brands as well?
Robert Grimmett No, it's, it's all licensing that is controlling where we play it. So the Ravenswood store and the Columbus store gets RM Radio, and that's it. There is no other pipes. Um, and then we're able to stream some online, but we have to pay every single label, every single artist, which we, we want to do. We just have to manage that.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett Um, and then sell the CDs on some of the select artists within the store too. So we do that today too. So the Ravenswood store got a brand experience update, a brand... a, a name update, and its sales lifted 20% through the economic crisis, which was like, whoa, okay, so there's a reaction in Ravenswood, West Virginia, 5,000 people. Um, we're on the right path here. You know, it's, it's vintage, it's off supplies. We had a customer in this weekend that had kind of... I, I try to write down when people describe the brand-
Tim Fulton Yeah
Robert Grimmett ... 'cause I'm, I'm intrigued by what people say about it. And he said, "You know, I've-- I-- If I could buy this place, I would in a heartbeat, 'cause this is my place." He's like, "It's, it's men's stuff," which of course, you know, is a stigma that we kind of have. "It's men's stuff and off supplies, and that just makes me feel comfortable."
Tim Fulton Well, it's a masculine-
Robert Grimmett It's a very masculine-
Tim Fulton ... store.
Robert Grimmett Yeah. Now, we do go into women's a lot, and our customers divide at 51/49. So we're doing 51% men, 49% women.
Tim Fulton Mm-hmm.
Robert Grimmett What we can't tell out of that 49% of the women is-
Tim Fulton Who are they buying for?
Robert Grimmett ... are they buying for themselves or for men?
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett Um, so-
Tim Fulton Well, you don't sell-- Do you sell women's watches?
Robert Grimmett Uh, not timepieces, no. We, we do s- make women's bags, and we do sell women's bags, and we just went into handbags, which I had-
Tim Fulton I'm sorry, is watch a derogatory term?
Robert Grimmett No.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett It's just what we refer to them as.
Tim Fulton I was just, I was just corrected. It's not a watch, it's a timepiece. Well, that's what I'm saying, is like when, you know, that endcap display or that, you know, doesn't have a female... You're not a female, so that's probably partly why.
Robert Grimmett Right.
Tim Fulton Because you are probably better at identifying a male aesthetic. Is that why it's not... I don't think it's something... What, what did you refer to it as? It's the-- That's a challenge that you're-- uh, a perception that you're trying to overcome?
Robert Grimmett We are actually trying to overcome it. Uh, we do see-
Tim Fulton But I, I would argue it's not a perception.
Robert Grimmett True.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that we see that as opportunity.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett Um, and you're absolutely right in that I am better at, uh, from our private label for sure, men's. Um, but then we're so unisex too, and something that happened here recently was very, very interesting that happened with this, uh, gender, uh, ap-applying it to our products, um, was when Express launched our products last fall, which was a huge, huge thing for us. We realized-
Tim Fulton A good get, if you will.
Robert Grimmett It's a good get.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett It was, it was again pivotal. They were obviously gonna be putting us on express.com under men's, and so we knew at that point that we were going to be in the fashion world a little deeper than we ever had been before.
Tim Fulton Mm-hmm.
Robert Grimmett Um, so we thought, "Okay, let's help that customer that's coming from express.com, and let's change our site to men's and women's and this and that and the other." Uh, no, it didn't work because our products, we had to essentially copy everything and put it in both categories, but allow for them to navigate that way.
Tim Fulton Right. Which doesn't-
Robert Grimmett So it doesn't work because a lot of people were just saying, "Well, it's the same stuff in both, so why, why do it?" And we were like, "We, we agree."
Tim Fulton We tried.
Robert Grimmett We agree, because our timeless look and our, our materials are neutral, um, a lot of times un- unless we go into red leather and blue leather. But we also got a l- a lot of feedback that we shouldn't direct on which gender should carry which bag, and which gender should carry which journal, and what color leather applies to which gender. So it was a louder voice than I had heard in some of these things you hear, like at Target when they had taken a sign down or something like that. We had heard it as our products are, are gender neutral naturally-
Tim Fulton Mm-hmm
Robert Grimmett ... and don't force it.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett And so we were like, "Uh, we agree." So we took it completely down in December of that, uh, of last year and, and didn't apply the sexes to it anymore. It was more of-
Tim Fulton How long did that experiment last?
Robert Grimmett Uh, just a couple months.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett They had launched in October, and we had it down by December.
Tim Fulton So I guess in my head, the natural progression then would be to create another brand.
Robert Grimmett It-- That, and that we, we feel there's another look. So vintage inspired is our look right now-
Tim Fulton Right
Robert Grimmett ... that is so masculine, and that's because leather just becomes... it comes off that way. Um, but I think that we have a lot of opportunity in the bohemian, um, and g- to, to soften it, going back to what I had to do for other brands, soften it a little bit for the female customer that might think that that's more with what their, their wardrobe looks like.
Tim Fulton Right. Well, it's the-
Robert Grimmett 'Cause it, it goes back to we're an accessory.
Tim Fulton I just-- I think I coined something. It's the palette, not the product.
Robert Grimmett Right.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett Absolutely.
Tim Fulton I think I have a name for you.
Robert Grimmett What's that?
Tim Fulton I think you should name it Piper Gail.
Robert Grimmett That's nice.
Tim Fulton Thank you.
Robert Grimmett That's very nice. Where did you come up with that?
Tim Fulton It's my daughter and my mother.
Robert Grimmett Ah. See, names are so fun to work with.
Tim Fulton Yeah.
Robert Grimmett In fact, all of our signature products are my, a, a lot of my family members' names.
Tim Fulton Yeah. That's quite an evolution.
Robert Grimmett Yeah. This... It's, it has evolved and evolved and evolved and evolved, and I would say the largest-
Tim Fulton So I'm sorry. Remind me how you stopped working for Schottenstein.
Robert Grimmett So I finished my biggest milestone project with them, which was the store by the casino.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett It's the, it's Value City rebranded, um, with its new look and feel, new logo, and I had decided that I had done what I needed to do there. Um, and I went and talked to the family members independently, 'cause I worked with Jonathan and Jay, and-
Tim Fulton Okay
Robert Grimmett ... and respect all of them a great deal because I had such opportunity there. It was, again, so much fun. Um, but they knew that I had a family business, and, uh, that we had just established earlier was I had built a family business. It wasn't my brand that I had in the background. It was my family's brand at this point. Um, because here my parents have sat there and worked seven days a week for 15 years while this brand is, you know, brewing, you know, into what it was gonna become.
Tim Fulton But what did they think? Did they f- I imagine they thought of it much more of like, "Oh, yeah, Robert's family owns a mattress store out in, in Podunk." You know, mattress store is just an example of like, you know, tends to be independently owned, small, uh, and doesn't have a whole lot of influence outside the marketplace that it's in.
Robert Grimmett Well, so when I inter-
Tim Fulton I wanna-- My question is, is what was their perception of this family business, as you refer to it?
Robert Grimmett Well, so when I interviewed with them-
Tim Fulton Mm-hmm
Robert Grimmett ... I was very clear that I was going to go back into it.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett So I was able to connect that back-
Tim Fulton I see
Robert Grimmett ... and say, "Okay, now is the time. I've, I've been here now three years. I've done this and that and this and that, and now is the time my family needs me."
Tim Fulton Yeah. Okay.
Robert Grimmett And they respected that a great deal. They, they understood it.
Tim Fulton But you didn't go home.
Robert Grimmett That's correct. Again, the whole, the whole idea was to go back to Chicago with this and build it, and I had... when I was kicking and screaming when I moved here, had found a place in Chicago for it to go. I had the address, I had the floor plans, and 'cause I had the architectural background, I built it out, what it was gonna be like on paper, um, and then didn't do it there. So I decided, and, you know, obviously I loved Columbus so much at this point, I saw an opportunity here like no other. Downtown Columbus has nothing but opportunity in front of it. Um, and we are, we are rapidly grabbing it, onto it. And so I think that's exciting, and I wanted to be a part of that. So I had, uh, moved on to Gay and 3rd Street, so I was in the epicenter, the, the core, um, and where I felt the heartbeat of downtown truly is. And I'm right-- I was right by the Renaissance Hotel and Residence Inn, so it was, it was fun to see just the amount of people that come here, um, and the amount of traffic that that generates. Uh, and that reminds me of our being the 15th largest city in the country. You know, there's a lot of things that when you line it up, you're like, "Okay, this is opportunity, opportunity, opportunity." So I talked to all the business owners on Gay Street, 'cause I lived there, and my last meeting was with Mark Ballard and Sugar Daddies. And I was really just trying to get their opinion of downtown, and, you know, if... My biggest question for everyone was, "If you build a business in Columbus, Ohio, in 2000," at this time, "12, where do you go?" Because you've got German Village, and then you've got Short North, and you've got the, uh, Discovery District, which at that time I had my eyes on big time, 'cause CCAD was over there.
Tim Fulton Mm-hmm.
Robert Grimmett Um, and Franklin and all the other schools' capital. And then, um, I'm, I was trying to figure out where people go to shop and to, to, uh, find, uh, in our category, office supplies. And Mark said, "You know, you're right in the middle of all of those areas right here on Gay Street." And he said, "And we do have some space left over that we don't use in our store." And I said, "Well, that's interesting," you know, and I was kinda just dismissing it. And he said, "Well, what-- after we talk here, why don't we go over and I'll show you, and you can see if this would be a good place for you to just do a preview. Just start out here. Just see what people... Get, get a read." And so when we went into the store, I looked over in the corner and I kinda laughed, and I was like, "That's funny." That's really small. And the more I thought about it, I thought, "This is the best design challenge I've ever had, ever." How would I take a little place where they had a piano and a, a sofa and turn that into a preview store that was a real store? And so everything was... I, I went through, you know, what I would do in a typical, uh, store design project for a bigger company. What kind of fixtures are we gonna use? What kind of wall units are we gonna do? What kind of lighting are we gonna do? How are we gonna make this space feel bigger? Um, and that was t- going vertical. So we used every inch of the vertical space in that store, and it was all shallow cabinetry, so everything was a- an illusion to feel bigger. We did fit a lot of product in that store, though. And so, uh, after I signed the lease and built it out, we opened on Valentine's Day 2013, and it was a great smashing success. Now, Columbus was also very vocal about what they wanted, and that was helpful for me because I o- I worked that store by myself from open to close for many, many, many, many months. And when I first started out, I thought, "Okay, let's put some of West Virginia's best sellers in here, and let's put some of West Virginia's this and some of West Virginia's that, and then I'm gonna add the fashion side," which I had been working on in the background that West Virginia didn't have. Well, Columbus said, "We want the fashion side. We don't want the rest of the stuff." Um, and I had to hear that loud and clear, and they did that with their dollars. So printer cartridges, we had $20,000 of printer cartridges on one wall. Didn't sell maybe one every few weeks at the most.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett Well, th- of course, that's a commodity product. Razor sh- you know, thin margins. You can get that anywhere. You can get that online. You can get the Staples. Um, so I just kept trying to build out what these products were that was Robert Mason brand, and that just took off in and of itself. And so we went a year and a month in that location before the devastating fire.
Tim Fulton Do you wanna talk about the fire at all?
Robert Grimmett Well, we just passed the anniversary, so let's do it.
Tim Fulton Let's do it.
Robert Grimmett Let's do it. Uh, it was just two years ago on Friday at 6:09 PM.
Tim Fulton We are recording this on April 19th, the day after Tax Day 2016.
Robert Grimmett Yes. And the day of the fire was Tax Day 2014. Th- uh, also the day the Titanic sank.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett So I always say there's a lot of bad things that happened on that day. I apologize to anybody that has a birthday on April 19th.
Tim Fulton It's all right. We're coming up on April 20th, so...
Robert Grimmett So, uh, it was, it was a difficult time. So to go back and, and, and try to explain what happened, it was electrical fire underneath of Sugar Daddies in the basement level. Um, it was old, faulty wiring. We had suffered a extreme amount of break-ins in that space, um, so there was a lot of activity in the basement, and we don't know what could have caused any of the, uh, what resulted in, uh, an electrical fire. But, uh, since that is the, the story that we, you know, know happened, um, it destroyed all three businesses at once. So it's, from the outside, did not look like as bad as it was because it was a marble building and it held up well.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett Uh, inside it was, it was destroyed. So Sugar Daddies had collapsed into the basement. We ended up being the chimney for that 'cause we were on top of the vault, um, and the vault stood up through all of this. And so when they broke all the windows, the, the suction happened at Robert Mason. And so all of the heat and smoke went through us to get outside. It was a bad fire. Uh, it lasted for hours. Gay Street was closed. High Street was closed, um, for many, many hours. Seven firefighters were injured. Um, and I was not able to go back in until that next day to see what the aftermath was, and of course it was just what you would expect. It was a, it was just gone. So the... Immediately, when you go through something like that, and I've tried to explain this every time someone asks me what it- that's like, there's just no textbook for this. You wake up the next morning thinking, "That, that was a dream. That had to be a dream. That couldn't be real. That, I'm not dealing with that today. There's no way." And so then you, you're like, "Well, what do I do?" Because there really isn't anything to do next. You don't have stuff. It's all gone.
Tim Fulton Well, and I imagine you just wanna work, and you can't.
Robert Grimmett You do. Well, you can't. I mean, you reach for something and you don't have it anymore.
Tim Fulton I mean, is it... What are the comparisons to make? Is it like a death of a family member? Is it like-
Robert Grimmett It is
Tim Fulton ... um, I almost wanna, like, compare it to terrorism to an extent- ... of, like, this, you know... 'Cause at least with the death of a family member, you have this support system. You know what I mean? And for you, you don't. And so because no one can possibly understand what that's like.
Robert Grimmett Correct.
Tim Fulton Um, and it's...
Robert Grimmett You have to be very s-
Tim Fulton Your entire life is just thrown off-
Robert Grimmett It's just gone. Yeah
Tim Fulton ... kilter, and you can't, you know-
Robert Grimmett Well, I had built the pop-up store out of... I had cashed everything in that I owned. So I had r- and retirement, anything I had, I'd built up from those companies I had worked for, you know, 401, everything went into that, so.
Tim Fulton So let me ask you a couple of question, financial questions, and you don't have to, like... Just give me general stuff. Like, were you able to support your lifestyle with just that pop-up shop?
Robert Grimmett It was tough.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett It was very tough. Um, I, I mean, literally jumped off the cliff is, is how people describe being an entrepreneur.
Tim Fulton Mm-hmm.
Robert Grimmett And it was just that. Um, there were weeks there were, there were no groceries. There was, um, times where weathering the storm was very difficult. But it was all going back into the business, and essentially the business was gonna support me someday.
Tim Fulton Right. And so-
Robert Grimmett And that's the way I think about it
Tim Fulton ... so did you... Was it a choice that you made because you had the forethought to be like, "I'm at an age where I can do this now. I probably am not gonna be able or want to put myself in this position in 15 years"?
Robert Grimmett I hadn't even really thought of it that way.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett I... So you can ask any family member or friends. This just goes back to them thinking that I was the biggest geek in the world. I don't have that fear of Of the risk that was involved in this, and I would do it any time. I, there was never a, "I have to do it now because I'm gonna be older at some point or have a family at some point," or things like that.
Tim Fulton Were you aware of the risk?
Robert Grimmett Oh, yeah.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett 100%, yeah.
Tim Fulton So what did you-
Robert Grimmett But I'm 100% confident too, so my risk
Tim Fulton So it's like, "Yeah, of course there's a risk, but I'm not gonna fail."
Robert Grimmett I'm not gonna fail.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett So there's risk, but I'm not gonna deal with that.
Tim Fulton "I know it's dangerous to drive this fast, but I'm not gonna get in an accident."
Robert Grimmett That's 100% the way I feel.
Tim Fulton So-
Robert Grimmett Yeah
Tim Fulton ... what, what, how much did you lose?
Robert Grimmett Oh, it's, the numbers are astronomical, and the sad part is that w- that insurance is not paid out. So-
Tim Fulton And what's the deal with that?
Robert Grimmett The, uh, there were four insurance companies involved in that fire. So you have the building owner, you have Sprint, you have Sugar Daddy's, and you have Robert Mason. And we are not... Because of the finger-pointing that went back and forth, it's enabled the insurance companies to delay, and delay, and delay, and delay, and delay.
Tim Fulton And by finger-pointing, you mean we don't know what caused that electrical fire?
Robert Grimmett Correct, or who's responsible for any of the negligence damages, things like that.
Tim Fulton Got it.
Robert Grimmett So it's gone back and forth to where a normal business should spin backwards and go out, and that's what I think insurance companies expect to happen or that they want to happen. They look at their risk, they analys- they analyze that, and they say, "Okay, the exposure here is this, and they're gonna be gone before that." So, um, luckily, we had investors involved in that store that I had pulled in. Um, all of our investors had been customers that walked in, so it was a conversion of a customer to an investor, which I think is v- flattering.
Tim Fulton Yeah.
Robert Grimmett Usually flattering. Um, they were there for support through all of this, of course, and you know, they knew the risk involved for them too, that we had all lost everything. And then as we were-
Tim Fulton But they are insured as well.
Robert Grimmett Correct.
Tim Fulton I mean, they're insured by the insurance for Robert Mason.
Robert Grimmett That's correct. So the delay of it being over two years now is even more crazy.
Tim Fulton Yeah.
Robert Grimmett You know, that everybody's still waiting for that. I mean, it's a long time. Um-
Tim Fulton How do you think it will resolve?
Robert Grimmett I don't know. I don't know. I just know that it's, it's more of a legal thing, and, and that's one thing that I've learned a lot about in the last two years is-
Tim Fulton But the process is still ongoing.
Robert Grimmett It's ongoing.
Tim Fulton It's not like the insurance company is just like, "Well, statute of limitations is up, so no."
Robert Grimmett Ongoing.
Tim Fulton Because it can't possibly be your fault.
Robert Grimmett Correct.
Tim Fulton And Sugar Daddy's was a candy store, right?
Robert Grimmett Uh, brownies, yep.
Tim Fulton So it might be their fault. Do they have a bakery on site?
Robert Grimmett Nope.
Tim Fulton So it's not their fault. It's probably not Sprint's fault. It's... Okay. All right. Um, and so-
Robert Grimmett See how easily we just solved this problem?
Tim Fulton Yeah.
Robert Grimmett How fast we could solve the problem for them.
Tim Fulton Done. Done. So what did you do in the two year, well, year and a half interim between the fire and opening the new store?
Robert Grimmett So the support system that I had was the customer base, and I have a very, very, very aggressive customer that is very loyal, and they wouldn't let this, you know, take their store away, as they would say, um, which again, is flattery. So there was a lot of support. Um, there were some funding campaigns set up because I had staff members that lost their jobs. We, we couldn't pay someone possibly past the hour of the fire because, you know, we're so small.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett Um, so they, they lost their jobs, and they knew it, you know, when they watched it burn. Um, and so the Indiegogo campaign and another one was set up for them, um, because we tried to convert jobs and, and tried to figure out how, how can we stay, keep the brand alive and pay people to keep it alive, you know? 'Cause we weren't just gonna give them money for not doing anything. We had to figure out how to, to change the, our ways-
Tim Fulton Right
Robert Grimmett ... immediately. So, um, through the help of Capital Crossroads and a lot of talking with Cleve Ricksecker and everybody, we decided to rent office space at 175 On The Park and decide how we were gonna build the online store back. Immediately after the fire, we had to take everything down because we were accepting orders through the fire, and of course, the merchandise was gone. So, uh, I had to make some painful decisions at that point. Um, we didn't have the insurance money, as you know, so we... What do I bring back? Out of all of that assortment, I can't bring it all back. And I think that this was a right and wrong answer. I brought Robert Mason brand back, um, because that was another part of our channels. It's our vertical, and it was something that couldn't be bought anywhere else. So if that was, if that was dark until the new store opened, then you couldn't have purchased that product anywhere. So I brought Robert Mason brand back, but then what I didn't think about was that that's all leather goods. So you don't need that every day. So we didn't have frequency of shop at that point, and what makes the Robert Mason concept work so beautifully and the way the new store is laid out is that it's one half consumables and one half lifestyle and luxury. So the frequency of shop went down, and then, uh, we started to look at, okay, well, we need to sell the things that go inside the leather journals and the leather bags and things like that. So the next two years was how do we rebuild this brand knowing that the brands that they loved inside Robert Mason are gone? 'Cause again, a, a part of this brand is curation. And so I've always curated my favorite things, and that was what our, what we sell. We carry 175 brands right now, which is a lot of curation.
Tim Fulton Mm-hmm.
Robert Grimmett Um, but I won't sell it if I don't like it. So there was just this, always this anticipation that we were gonna rebuild that store. And a lot of times-
Tim Fulton A brick and mortar
Robert Grimmett ... a brick and mortar store, and, and the online store was gonna reflect and, and build up with it. But how, when, where? I had zero answers to the questions.
Tim Fulton So, I mean, what did you do during that year and a... I, I mean, you rented office space, and you built up the online brand.
Robert Grimmett It, it was the, the online brand. So we did sell, and we did push all of our online products. There was a lot of marketing, a lot of scouring out, trying to figure out where the new store was going to be. So there was a lot of development on the side that was happening while the brand was still open. Um, we did get the online store open two weeks after the fire.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett So that was pretty quick.
Tim Fulton Yeah.
Robert Grimmett Um, and that was our vendors re- reacting as quickly as they possibly could. We had just launched spring, so all the patterns were pretty fresh for everybody. They just had to do it again.
Tim Fulton Right. So you were able to get the virtual-
Robert Grimmett Some momentum just a little bit back
Tim Fulton ... right?
Robert Grimmett Yeah. And that was through... There was a lot of volunteer hours. There was a lot of people that helped make that happen out of that temporary office space because again, I- we didn't have anything. I had my backpack and my c- my laptop, so essentially that was my office now.
Tim Fulton So once you got... So now that you've got the new store open, and it's beautiful by the way-
Robert Grimmett Thank you
Tim Fulton ... what's next?
Robert Grimmett So we have more investors involved now because the, the store's rebirth is a direct result of new investors. That was not a rebuild out of insurance by any means because it's still ongoing. And so there's expectations on those new investors of what our growth looks like.
Tim Fulton Mm-hmm.
Robert Grimmett A lot of that is because Columbus is our home, is that we will stay, uh, here as f- as our source for our makers, finding who's, who's making these leather bound products, who's making our canvas products, seamstresses, leather crafters. Uh, but tell the story out of this, this store, and then build a very big online presence. So our goal is to get that online business up to a level to where we can reach the global audience like we have tried to do in the past. Now, we had done some orders right before the fire, like BBC and a couple others that were really large, um, and got our brand into other countries, and that was because our products have our name ob- obviously on them. So we had worked really hard when we built the online store over those two years after the fire on making it ready to be prepared to ship to Germany and to ship to Australia and to ship to these other markets where we have vendors that, that service that area and that we could actually, uh, market to. So we see that as an opportunity, big opportunity. Um, office supplies and a lot of the categories we carry are s- very celebrated in these other countries, and that's what our job is here, and it's a huge job and it's awesome. Um, and that's to bring the love of these products to America where we had kind of forgotten about them, um, through that commoditization piece.
Tim Fulton Mm-hmm.
Robert Grimmett Um, so we have a lot of people-
Tim Fulton Blackwing pencils.
Robert Grimmett Blackwing pencils is a great example.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett A lot of people walk into the store and they say they feel like this is something from Europe or they've seen something similar to this in Asia. Um, and that's again flattering because-
Tim Fulton Right
Robert Grimmett ... I think that we're on the right track when we hear that.
Tim Fulton So you, no immediate plans for another retail store?
Robert Grimmett No immediate, but there are, it is in the thought process, is, is like, w- where and how do we do that?
Tim Fulton How do you staff that up? You know what I mean? Because you can't do it all yourself.
Robert Grimmett Well, yes, and I've had to learn that this year. We would be looking for a market that's similar to Columbus in the US that, uh, perhaps has better weather. So when this store endures hard winter times or things like that, that we can then depend on that store to pick up.
Tim Fulton Mm-hmm.
Robert Grimmett There are a lot of great areas and there are a lot of customers because Columbus gets so many visitors that have been very vocal about, "My town is where you should be building your next store."
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett "My town is where you need to come to." So we just continue to take all that feedback. I mean, we're gonna be digesting this store for a while. We're d- we're gonna work out any kinks that are involved in it before we would build another one. Um, but initially I had said that any expansion out of Columbus would be pop-ups, which was what we had done at Sugar Daddies.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett Um, which is a low risk model. It's smaller in scale, but it allows for us to push traffic back to the website for any exponential business or any incremental that's in the assortment that's bigger than, you know, our pop-up assortment. But this store has been so successful so far that it uh, it's making us think about that again.
Tim Fulton Right. Is there an argument for doing another small kiosk or, uh, pop-up is how we should be referring to it- ... at like Polaris or, uh, Easton or something like that, or even Uptown Powell?
Robert Grimmett My answer initially is to n- say no to that.
Tim Fulton Okay.
Robert Grimmett Um, I had, had looked at that when the pop-up store was downtown because we were looking at other options also for the bigger store.
Tim Fulton Right.
Robert Grimmett The whole time the pop-up store was open, that was my job, was to find where the bigger one was gonna go.
Tim Fulton Got it.
Robert Grimmett We reviewed other areas, but we are an urban brand, so our heart and our soul is in that urban experience. Um, and not to say that there's anything wrong with regional malls, but it's just not our demographic scene. Um, we would like to pull those people to downtown to shop us or be a part of our, our demographic there. Um, but again, things change so rapidly it's hard to tell.
Tim Fulton Got it. Robert, thank you so much for your time today.
Robert Grimmett Yeah. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
Tim Fulton Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. Again, more information on Robert Mason Company and Robert Grimmett can be found at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, your family, your contacts, your coworkers. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a good week.