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Get a Demo“I feel this is bigger than dot com.” How does a $450 million publicly traded jewelry brand build a live shopping empire that predates TikTok by nearly two decades? Sunil Agrawal (Founder, ShopLC & VGL Group) sits down with Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case and Lomi) and Katy Mimari (CEO, Caden Lane) to pull back the curtain on 46 years of building one of the most vertically integrated businesses in the world. He started as a gemstone lapidary and grew six retail brands without ever once considering an exit. Sunil runs a live shopping operation most DTC operators have never seen. He launches 100 new products every day. His top customers generate $20,000 in lifetime value. He fired his robots when the ROI math didn’t hold. He moved four brands to Shopify in five months because AI did most of the coding. And he still measures the business not in dollars but in meals delivered. Operators Titans is brought to you by AppLovin and Fulfil. Fulfil: The ERP built specifically for DTC and ecommerce brands, integrated with over 400 3PLs so your inventory, purchasing, and financials never fall out of sync. Ridge runs its entire operation on it. See why here: https://9ops.co/fulfil AppLovin: Get access to the Operators channel expansion playbook, online masterclass, and up to $5k in ad credits here: https://www.9operators.com/paid-growth. Or launch your ads today with our link: http://applovin.com/9operators. Chapters 00:00:00 $450 Million & Growing 00:04:20 Launching Home Shopping 00:14:08 The Toms Shoes Moment 00:19:26 Discovering Tanzanite 00:25:20 Moving To Shopify Fast 00:29:33 Why We Fired Our Robots 00:35:07 AI Bigger Than Dot Com 00:42:34 The Viral Bracelet Craze 00:47:33 The $20K Customer 00:55:45 Raising Founder Kids 00:59:44 How Sunil Runs His Team 01:07:34 Titan 10 Rapid-Fire Questions
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So Sunil, just introduce yourself. Tell us, tell us about the business. Where are we right now?
So we are at ShopLC & VGL Group, started this company 19 years ago, part of VGL Group, which I started 46 years ago.
Your company's older than me. It's my same age.
This is embarrassing.
I'm pretty sure, guys.
It's incredible.
The entire group of companies, you're publicly traded, so you can say, what is the total size of the business today?
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
So last year we did $460 million revenue, but I look at the business not in terms of dollars as much as pieces sold, meals delivered. So we have 57,000 meals per school day. My hope and aim is to take it to a million meals per school day by 2040. That would mean that we need to grow 20% or so something every year.
At $450 million, 20% is like $90 million that you have to add to the business. So you are, you're publicly traded too.
Yeah.
That is very rare in consumer. There, we've long talked about this on the show that like consumer companies typically don't go public. How long have you guys been public and where are you public?
Yeah, we went public in India 30 years ago.
What does it mean to be public then? So like, we're, neither one of us, we run private companies. Can you just unpack that for me?
So a lot of compliance, a lot of shareholder outreach, investor meetings, quarterly reserves, quarterly investor meetings. So a lot of compliance and engagement with investor community.
[Sponsor Content] Okay.
But in retrospect, we went public when we did. And when I look back, I probably may have delayed going public, but it was good for us because it gave us additional currency for awarding our good employees, for retaining them. And as a currency, if you want to acquire another company, it's additional currency.
Got it.
There's a lot of benefits to that.
And how many employees today?
ShopLC has about 325. Group-wide, about 3,500.
Okay.
In the group, what is the rest of the group? So ShopLC would be the online shopping, TV shopping. What's the rest of the group do?
Yeah. We are a vertical company. So ShopLC is the front retail company. We have supply chain that we own ourselves from gemstone manufacturing, jewelry design, jewelry manufacturing, logistics, all come through retail units. We also have similar business in UK and Germany. So we have total 6 brands within the group. They're retail brands.
Okay.
And supply chain in India, China, Thailand, and Bali.
It's incredible.
You basically do everything but mine the gold and the stones.
Yes. And that is something that I don't want to go in.
No, you just said you stopped at digging the hole. That was like, we're gonna go as vertical as we can, just like, but right there.
Somebody else digs it. He wants the pretty things out of it.
There's enough to do here.
So take, let's go right back to the beginning then. What was the first version of this business? Because as I understand it, there's been like, Lots of iterations as we go.
Yeah. I started 46 years ago as a lapidary, gemstone lapidary. We made those gemstones, supplied those gemstones to people who are making jewelry, and then supplying that jewelry largely to TV shopping companies.
Okay.
Which is your biggest competitor. Yeah.
Slowly over the years, we went from gemstone to jewelry manufacturing to To brick-and-mortar retail, and then to TV retail.
Do you still have brick-and-mortar retail?
No.
No.
So, we set that up in 2005.
[Sponsor Content] Okay.
We built it up to 19 high-end stores in Caribbean and Alaska. And, when global financial crisis hit, nobody was going on cruise ships, nobody wanted to buy jewelry. So, we sold that chain off. Penny on the dollar.
And when did the home shopping, like this sort of digital, like we're gonna walk around, you're gonna show us this, but like when did this version start? It was right after that?
We launched in 2006 in UK, then 2007 in Germany and US.
Can you talk to me about So you were selling to the existing TV people and then you, was it their model that inspired you to do this? Like what did you see from them that you were like, I want to do that?
So it was more a constraint for our growth. So we were already public company and investors expected us to grow revenues and profitability. We were OEM. when we were selling to TV shopping or retailers like Walmart or Macy's. And, we were competing with everybody else in the world. Thai companies, Chinese companies, other Indian companies, European companies. So, the profit got squeezed pretty hard.
Yeah.
So, we thought there's no other way for us to scale except to go into retail. And, that's when it happened.
Did you tell them that you were, did you tell them that you were going into it yourself or did you kind of ride, right? Like that.
That'd be awkward.
Well, I know, but what do you do? Like, I mean, did you, did you kind of slowly build it up and then eventually they had to have seen you on their radar?
This, this is something you can't keep secret.
Yeah. So you announced it to them.
You're on TV. You can't keep it secret.
Which is actually, I think the most interesting part of his story is Right? We all talk about being entrepreneurs and working 24/7, but Sunil, they don't lock the doors here.
What?
Yeah.
[Sponsor Content] It's—
You're on air 24 hours a day?
Yeah.
Yeah. It's so cool. Wait till you see this.
What's the longest workday you've ever done?
Well, in early parts of my business, I remember doing 72-hour stretch.
Sunil.
I remember that.
Elon, eat your heart out.
That's the old, like 72 hours work and your business. I mean, online, I guess we're all 24/7. But you're actually operating live TV 24 hours a day.
So those 72 hours were much prior to the TV. So that was when I was doing the gemstones.
Okay.
So I didn't know at that time how to delegate. I was doing, I was buying, I was sorting, I was supervising manufacturing, I was selling. So there was a time right before a major exhibition in Italy that we had to prepare and everything, and it needed all hands on the deck for 3 straight days.
So you built a competitor business to the companies that you were selling to. You're public. You made this comment that shareholders are always looking for growth. Is that's, that's gotta still be true today. And is this sort of the through line? When I look at like all the iterations of your business over time, is that kind of like one of the through lines is like you just constantly have to reinvent yourself because of this public pressure?
So there are a lot of stakeholders in the business, not just shareholders. So we consider some biggest stakeholders, employees.
Yep.
Number customers, number 2, then shareholders and communities, vendor partners, governments, Mazarat. So all these stakeholders take their share in our decision-making. So the growth is crucial for pretty much all stakeholders.
Do you not find it hard to balance that? Like the community level versus a shareholder? Like a public market shareholder is a very different stakeholder than a local.
So over the time, it just balanced. It is not that you consciously have a balance sheet or the Excel sheet on that and make those analysis, but it just becomes natural to you over the time.
Did you know, I mean, it's so hard to answer this, but like, Did you know that you were going to be in business this long? Was that always the vision? Was like, I want to build something enduring and long-lasting? Or were you at one point like, I'm going public to get the exit and then I'm out of here?
I've never thought of exiting the business. It's just that I'm enjoying what I do. And a business takes care of so many stakeholders. We distribute 57,000 meals every school day. So the thousands of kids Every day? Every day, every school day. So those hundreds of schools and thousands of kids look forward to come to school for their meal. We have 3,500 employees, their families are taken care of. We have 140,000 shareholders, they're loyal to us and we wanna make sure that they're well taken care of.
I have to tell you, I've known Sunil for several years. And he's gonna be, he's very humble, but this man cares more about, and this is a lesson I think we all need to hear constantly with our companies. I think Sunil cares more about his family that is here, like his employees and what's giving back. And a thing that's always, I don't know, I guess impacted me that you talk about is that you feel like you have to constantly keep learning.
Yes. Sure. The learning is my personal mission. I enjoy learning and the business allows me that every day. But the point I was making to Nat's question is that the business continues to grow for the sake of all stakeholders, and it's not just shareholders alone.
What do you spend your time on now? Like where do you, 'cause when we run into each other at events, Like, walk me through a typical day, a typical week, because you're, you don't live in Austin, Texas full-time anymore. You're also back in India. So I'm just curious, like, what's a week in, what's a week in your life look like?
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Well, I get up at 5 o'clock every day. I work out or do yoga, and then my day starts at 7 o'clock. And I work about 10 hours a day, but I sleep 7 to 8 hours a night.
[Sponsor Content] Goals.
Yeah, I know, right?
But life is good. I stay positive through my breathworks and meditation. I stay healthy with the workouts and yoga.
Do you spend time on a particular area in the business today that you— and how has that changed, I guess, like over the last 46 years?
Initially, I was more into doing the stuff, but I learned pretty quickly that this is not sustainable. It won't grow. If I keep doing stuff, I had to learn to delegate. It was not easy. So from doing to directing to empowering to inspiring, that has been the journey. I'm not fully there yet. I'm still in some part in doing, some part in directing.
For sure, you're still in doing. I mean, you're in text groups with us where we talk about media buying.
Yeah.
Like, you're there, so you're definitely still in it.
Which has been your favorite stage of those 4 or 5?
Empowering.
Empowering. Why?
It allows me to see people grow and thrive and meet their life goals. That really makes me feel that I'm making an impact.
You are making an impact.
Well, no, you're feeding 57,000 meals a day, dude. That's impressive. Was that always part of it too?
No, it came about, I think, 12 years ago. We were at a conference. We heard an entrepreneur named Blake Mycoskie.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Tom Shoes.
Tom Shoes.
So, there were 3,000 people in the audience, and he got a standing ovation. And that day, we sat thinking, we were 8 of us from our Vijayl group there, and we sat thinking, what can we do? that can be so impactful for the world? And there we came up with the idea that every piece we sell, we give out a meal to a child in need. So we started with our UK operation there, and then we saw that the employees in UK had additional reason to come to work, not just paycheck. There was a mission. And they were connecting with that. The customers were connecting with that.
Mm-hmm.
So we expanded that to US and Germany. All 6 brands.
So you're very public with that as part of the brand and the mission.
With a goal. Your goal being?
Yeah, we have a BHAG mission of 1 million meals by 2040.
Like per day?
Per school day.
That means you have to sell a million things a day. Your employees are like, what?
It's per school day, so it'll be almost 600,000 pieces per school day. per day. So, 1 million pieces per school day.
But you're almost halfway there now.
No, we're at 57,000 meals per school day.
Wow.
So, you're long way to go.
You gotta go 10 times.
Well, then you can't quit anytime soon, Sunil.
I'm enjoying what I'm doing.
Yeah.
So, there's no reason to quit unless I meet— I hit a truck.
You hit— unless you get hit by a truck?
Yeah.
Well, okay.
That's a good reason to quit.
Yeah, that's a good reason to quit.
I guess, yeah, we could think of a couple others too.
If it's your truck, it's definitely a reason to quit. Uh, can you, did you have like, where does this, like some of this stuff come? Did you have like really good mentors when you were younger? Because you, this whole like, I'm on a mission to learn and continue to learn. And I, we see you in these groups, like where, where did you first get this sort of like not drive, but I guess like this characteristic, this quality?
Yeah. My grandfather has been my role model. So he was a freedom fighter when India was under Britishers. So he went to jail many times when Britishers sent him when he was protesting. And after India got free in 1947, he took upon himself on behalf of government to spread the cotton spinning and yarn building and all across North India. So he was managing 100,000 people for the government, and he was very ambitious for the country. So I learned a lot from him, how to manage the ambition, the values.
Did your father work with him too?
My father was a photographer, and he was a self-made man.
What is it with photographers and consumers?
We're brilliant.
You're everywhere.
Yeah, but you're very close with your parents.
Still.
Yeah. Yeah.
You are, uh, I'm still stuck on this. Like you've, you've had to change the business while being public. Is that, I mean, the communication of that must be not easy. Like I can just imagine you got 100-some thousand shareholders. Listen, we're gonna change the business direction. How do you do that?
How, when you, cuz right now you're leaning into digital, right?
Yeah.
It's always been TV and just what's come from that. How, how did you pitch to them that advertising on social media was gonna be the way of the future, right? How did—
So there is a going process right now.
Yeah.
So every quarter we communicate how far we've come on digital journey and we inform them to the board as well as the shareholders. And we've got a lot of support from the investor community for our transition journey from TV onto the e-com.
Has one of the business models over time been like much harder than the others?
Yeah, from B2B to go to B2C, we made multiple attempts to go there. The television was towards the end, but before that we did brick-and-mortar multiple times. Didn't go well, but we kept on trying and shareholders had support because our B2B supported that. We didn't initially, for initial attempts, we didn't raise any additional funding. But for this TV and brick-and-mortar retail chain that we set up in Caribbean, Alaska, we raised around $70 million as additional funding in our public company.
Okay.
It's called Pipe Investment.
Yeah. Would you go back into brick-and-mortar now, now that this company and the product catalog alone? Well, not just jewelry, they do everything.
I know they do everything. I mean, yeah, we haven't even gotten to like the SKU count yet, but I mean, jewelry as its own thing is like a great brick-and-mortar.
And it's kind of a cool story that It's like tanzanite, right? Can you, do you know this?
No, no, no. Tell me.
Yeah.
So there was a gemstone. I was in Japan and a customer said, Sunil, do you have this gemstone? It was blue color. And I said, what is this? He says, tanzanite. It comes from Tanzania. What's special about it? It's a really rare stone. If you can get it, I'll buy as much as you have. Next week I was gonna fly to Tanzania and I bought everything possible. And we became known for this stone because we started promoting in Caribbean, Alaska for cruise ship. We started promoting on television and became a big thing all over the world.
Do you not remember growing up? Well, no.
Look at me.
Okay, so I have to tell you, I remember traveling with my mom and my family as a young girl. And I remember, and I'm pretty sure we were on a cruise going to like, St. Thomas or the Bahamas. And they would educate the people about tanzanite and it was different colors. It could be blue or purple. And, and we all got to pick out pieces of tanzanite, like a necklace. But that was you?
I'm Michael and Bob.
Oh my God. That's so crazy.
When is this? This the '90s or the 2000s? Like when? Just give me timeline.
So, uh, we started early '90s.
Yeah. You were being born, Matt. You can't remember.
I'm an '80s baby.
I think it's pretty cool that that was you. I mean, who would've thought? So cool.
I got a super, like, very niche question for you because the jewelry thing fascinates me. How do you deal with the rising gold prices?
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
Like the last couple years.
What happens is when the gold price goes up, if revenues are going up, it's a good position to promote this as an product that people would want to keep, cherish when they can, and then pass on as a value.
[Sponsor Content] Like an investment.
We can't really present it as an investment because we are not investment advisors.
Right.
But we can present it as a way that they'll cherish while they can, but when they pass it on, it'll retain a lot of value. So people continue to build that collection. The challenge arises when the prices are kind of ups and down, up and down, but similar trajectory.
Yeah.
In that case, You have to talk about not just the gold, you talk about the gemstone or the diamond or the workmanship or the story around the place where it was made or the stone mine.
And they use that. So if you, have you ever watched on live TV his— you don't do your homework very well, do you, Steve?
I'm not, I don't watch TV.
It is so, well, so we're gonna go and show behind the scenes.
Yeah, I wanna see it. Yeah.
Because watching them sell, And then watching them run the system on the backend is— I, I just remember the first time I saw it here, I was like, this is incredible. And they have, they call it talent, right? The people that are the hosts, um, they basically tell these stories like Sunil's talking about to the customers watching at home. And then on the backend, they're adjusting the pricing and everything. It is in real time on TV and talking into the— it's so cool.
But you can do that legally?
I think Yeah, why not?
It's fine. You can like, you can adjust price real time, like based on how it's going.
So what we do is we have the falling down pricing. So we can keep the price there or keep it falling down depending on the demand.
It is, he invented tanzanite and FOMO all at the same time.
[Sponsor Content] That's awesome.
Yeah, it's so cool.
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[Sponsor Content] Back to the show.
Uh, just to back up though, like the last few years, gold's basically gone up by like 4 or 5 times. Does that make it harder to run the business or do you actually look at that like, no, no, we use that as an asset and that, that's the whole investment piece?
Yeah, that's a good, uh, opportunity to tell a better story.
Yeah.
Okay. So it didn't impact, it didn't really impact us.
That's awesome. 'Cause that just terrifies me.
And 'cause we're talking about growth and how do you lean into it, and I know that you have actually been starting to acquire companies? Is that part of your growth strategy?
Yeah.
So the first e-com company that we acquired, it was about 2 and a half years ago. There was more to learn e-com, and we learned a bunch. The second company we acquired, it just fell in our lap. It was a TV shopping company in UK that was running for 22 years, but went into bankruptcy, and we acquired at a good price. And it's a good brand. It's very profitable for us. It's growing very rapidly.
You know, one of the things I love about this is like direct-to-consumer. I've got like, you know, you, you said that you've tried DTC multiple times and it did not work. I like that direct-to-consumer for this is just not e-commerce. Like we're talking about like brick and mortar or television. Like you've done every form of like direct-to-consumer.
And in reverse order, because you know what they're working on right now is actually transitioning to Shopify.
What?
[Sponsor Content] Yes.
Wait, what?
So we were on Salesforce Commerce Cloud, which is enterprise level. Oh yeah.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah, yeah.
So we were there for last 8, 9 years, but we found that to be too rigid and not as agile for our today's e-com needs.
Yeah.
It served us very well when we were on television and e-com was supporting function. But if e-com has to become primary function, We need more agile platforms. And that's where we looked at many platforms and we decided Shopify Enterprise is the best suitable.
I'm gonna send this to Harley. I've known Harley and Tobi for like, I started working with them when they had 3,000 merchants on the platform, 3,000 or 4,000. They're good Canadian boys. We like hours away from me growing up.
Now there are hundreds of thousands.
Yeah, I know. Now it's millions of people on the platform.
But imagine he's got live shopping on the site. So they had to take something that was completely custom built for them. and now make it work. And with the help of AI, it's insane.
Yeah. So AI was really godsent. Yeah.
And perfect timing.
Why? When we made last transition from Arango platform to Salesforce, it took us almost 2 years and about $2 million. This time it took us 5 months and about half a million dollars, 4 brands, moved to Shopify and rather smoothly, much, much more smoothly.
And that's an AI thing?
All coding is done by AI, largely.
[Sponsor Content] Whoa.
Yeah.
But, Eva, we were just talking about this the other day. Had Sunil started this transition even last year, it would've been chaos.
Yeah, it's— I love that you brought this up.
Yeah.
I'm sure you follow this just because I also know your son is in— one of your sons is in tech, but— and we'll get to that. But The big narrative, one of the competing narratives in AI is that like there's just not a lot of value or like where is the value, right? Like the investment that everybody's making. And then here you are is like, no, no, no, this is like a legitimate—
Huge value.
Yeah.
Huge value.
Massive.
For us, the smooth transition within 5 months at such a low cost compared to what it would've been otherwise.
With the complexity of your business.
Yes.
That's insane.
Our site has 30 custom applications. 30. With that complexity.
[Sponsor Content] That's a lot.
are getting done for 5 months, within 5 months, and 4 brands in the company. That's insane.
How many total SKUs across the brands at this point?
About, so just ShopLC is about 28,000 SKUs.
Oh my God. Wait, 28,000?
And all 4 brands together must have been about 90,000.
Oh my God.
What are you, you're high SKU.
Don't, man, you make me feel bad about myself now.
No, no, but you're high SKU town too, like, 'cause you got a crazy amount of products.
Yeah, but Sunil just, now mine's gonna sound really, If I say mine, you gotta say yours, 'cause at least I'll feel better about myself after that. Yeah. I think, I mean, we're active products, probably 6,000 active SKUs.
But that's very unusual for e-com.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah, it is.
That's pretty unusual.
It's hard.
We just, yeah.
Yeah.
[Sponsor Content] It's not easy.
We are seeing it.
But it's an, I just, Sunil's story is one of my favorite stories and he's probably one of, I mean, you've made the biggest impression in my life. In e-commerce, hands down of anybody I've met.
Oh, thank you.
Well, it's a, it's, there's just variables here that I, you just don't see very often.
Yeah.
Like I, we started out at the public thing. The SKU count is insane. Mm-hmm. The fact that you're vertical with the SKU count, then you're multi-brand, you're multi-market. Like you're, it just, you're doing a lot. Like the, I would say the level of difficulty that you're operating at is unusual.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
In what she, what, what Katie's referring to, like just call it like D2C as an umbrella.
Right?
Like my business looks so simple that like we have 15 or 16,000 SKUs, but there's no inventory. Like we make it on demand cuz we own the factories. So it's not, it's, it's a lot simpler than what you guys do.
But it, wait till you see his operations and you'll understand why he is so successful. It's incredible that they have robots.
Not anymore.
You fired the robots?
Yeah, we fired the robots.
You can't fire robots.
You can't fire robots.
Because they were not working out.
No.
And he kept his robots in cages. It was the coolest thing.
[Sponsor Content] What?
What?
Yeah, I mean, it was pretty cool. Oh no.
You see all those fired lining, lined up?
Yeah.
So they were not working out.
And you're the reason.
So now there's people in cages? And you're the reason we fired them.
[Sponsor Content] What? [Sponsor Content] Why?
You're the reason we fired them.
I'm the reason you fired your robots?
Last time you visited us.
Yeah.
And you asked me, Sunil, what is your ROI of the robot? And that set me thinking, I don't know.
Yeah.
Because I had people and robot working side by side, and then I split up the cost of robots operation and the people. And I saw robots costing me more money than I would have with the people.
Yeah.
So, I fired the robots.
I love it.
Do you have a strong opinion on sort of like robotics? Because like you were, I guess, okay, so when did you first put robots in the operation?
About 6 years ago.
[Sponsor Content] Okay.
And when you, so you fired yours. I love that. If you look at like sort of state of technology today, Do you think that you at some point will bring— is it coming back?
Most definitely. Most definitely. We'll come back. There's no doubt because the world is going towards robotics and AI. So, we will go towards it. But, the system that we bought in UK and US was not working for us.
What's really cool about, and maybe it was a loss, right? Maybe you learned that having people in is just better operations and more efficient. But probably what you learn from having the robots, when we have better options come out, you're gonna be able to make much more educated, like there's not gonna be the shiny, you know, nickel syndrome. Like Sunil's gonna know, you know, there's gonna be some cool robot.
Like for sure.
Yes. And immediately on Twitter, they're all gonna talk about like, it's gonna change from incrementality to robots.
Yeah.
Whatever the buzzword is of the year.
Most definitely.
And Sunil's gonna be like, yeah, you guys have fun.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
Because you've seen that.
Yeah. So you're calling out and then us sending our people to your office.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
And comparing the costs.
Yeah.
Opened our eyes. I didn't know before.
I didn't know. I opened his eyes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What did you do for Sunil?
You're good. You don't know how good you are.
Oh, thank you, sir.
So you opened the eyes. We compared the costs, went a deep analysis into all line items. We tried to work it out. We tried to make it efficient, though we were hitting against something that we could not move. And we took a call for both US and UK just to fire them. It was a difficult decision, but happy.
He puts a lot of thought into decisions. I'll tell you that's something I've learned about this man is he's very thoughtful. I mean, you truly, you think about the entire picture and I think it's just, I always tell you, do you remember when I told you you had to meet Sunil? I'm like, he is the most wise person. I have ever met.
Yeah. He's the wise— And do you feel it? He's the wise e-com grandpa.
Yeah.
Oh, he's so—
he, you are. So Jason's not the grandpa.
I'm not e-com grandpa Jason.
No, that's Jason. Jason's e-com grandpa.
No, but we decided yesterday Jason is the great-grandpa of e-commerce. You're the grandpa. And you said you're the uncle.
I, I get called Unc on Twitter all the time.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
Yeah.
This is the new term that apparently kids use. I don't know. I don't actually know what it means.
I think it's so great. I mean, the, the events that we go to together, you really are invested in helping people learn through your experiences. which is such a gift.
Thank you. That's very kind of you.
How, uh, the robot thing, do you, because you have so many people and you've been in business so long, how are you thinking about AI robotics impact on organization? Like where, where do you sit in this like broader conversation around jobs and what are we doing? And—
Or just have you replaced jobs with AI or are you just incorporating it into your company?
So, so far our effort is to bring in AI for efficiency gains. We are doing it every level and trying to retain the talent, if not for that particular job, for something else.
Yeah.
We are trying to put in more in revenue-generating roles.
Yeah.
People who are in back support roles, for example, people who are into media buying or content creation, get them into owning the categories. We have so many different product SKUs and categories, so we don't have enough category owners. So, put them into different category owners for different platforms. We have e-com as a platform, we have marketplace as a platform, we have TV as a platform, we have OTT as a platform. So, there are multiple positions that we can put them in.
I feel like he's lighting up talking about it.
Well, it's such a great topic. I mean, it's so controversial, right? I tend to be with you. I think we're just gonna see more and more companies take this approach of like, let's just boil the ocean now. Like there, it's, you know, we used to not be able to put enough people on it because the cost of putting a person on something relative to the return wasn't worth it. But if the technology gets better, you can now put people on these things because the cost to the upside is totally worth it, which is the whole boil of the ocean. It's like, if I want to do 10,000 things, I couldn't before.
It's about efficiency. Yeah.
Yeah.
Optimizing for efficiency with these.
Yeah. AI is a once in a lifetime opportunity for us to learn and to leverage.
Did you feel the same with the mobile?
[Sponsor Content] Sure.
Remember the rise of mobile? And then like, you're, you know, I'm old enough too, but like the dot-com, when that first started, like, is it the same feeling that you get now having been in business so long?
So I feel this is better than, bigger than dot-com.
Really?
Yeah.
Well, how do you think it's gonna impact consumer behavior?
Still unknown. Because a lot of people are utilizing AI for research and for shopping. I still don't know how the consumers will change. It's still emerging technology, but this is technology which would impact humanity more than pretty much anything that we've done.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
Yeah. I think you're in a really good position for it. I think that the live shopping thing is going to get crazy. with AI. Yeah. Like, and I'll, hear me out.
Okay.
Here's my theory, right? This is why I think you're gonna—
Here it comes, Sunil. Get your notepad out.
No, no, this is my theory. This is why I think that your business is gonna crush. Uh, I think it's like any, and technology tends to commoditize and lower the cost of things. So you're gonna get stuff like if I buy toilet paper or deodorant, I'll have machines just do this for me all the time. Like those are, those are probably products I don't care too much about, whereas you operate in sort of like entertainment and like the actual shopping, right? It's not just transacting. And I think that the whole, like, it's much more human. And my, I, one of my strong theories is I think that anything that feels more human is going to get even more valuable. And anything that is like the opposite of that is where AI is going to sort of like commoditize and take it away.
I agree with you. And to that point, I learned from one of the ECF members, Bubbles, there's so much of value of people doing things by hand and this going to become bigger and bigger. So we launched our own DIY jewelry kits business, and that's doing really well. It'll, as we go more towards automation, and I believe this AI will also create more loneliness in the people.
Yeah, of course.
So this kind of business will become more valued.
Not to mention Sunil invented live shopping online before TikTok.
Yeah, I know. Well, that's what I mean by that is now going to be a thing.
Yeah.
Like all, like live shopping in America is, is not as big yet as it might be.
Do you think it's because people want to feel, they want to actually believe that they're talking to the real person or?
I, I just think that shopping, I think there's just, we, uh, D2C is largely dominated by like 25-year-old men.
Yeah.
Who don't like to shop. And I think that they forget there's a lot of people in the world where like shopping is an experience. It isn't a utility. It's not, I'm not just like turning the taps on. It's like, no, no, no. You go, I mean, they called for the death of the mall. The shopping mall was e-commerce. Like, I remember that. I remember in the early 2000s, it's like shopping malls are gonna go away because this e-commerce thing is here and it's so much better and it's faster and whatever. And meanwhile, you go to a shopping mall today and it's packed and the kids are in there 'cause it's a social experience. It's just a real thing.
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. So that's where the experiential things will come in handy. I do not know how the intelligent shopping or online shopping, which can be bots generated and bots purchased, will fare. I do not know how it'll pan out.
Yeah, that's hard to predict.
But I do believe that the product that we sell, which really people like to touch and feel, will be there for a long time.
Yeah, it's a, I think, I love this topic because I, if you look through history, especially recent history, I think there's like a law in the universe that, um, I think actually might be a physics thing where like for every, you know, equal, there's an equal and opposing force. Uh, I think what is the same culturally, I think, um, like a good example would be, I used to bug my wife about this, that I'm like, the vegan movement was so big and so loud, so fast that I'm like, something's following it. And then some years later it's like, now all people do is eat meat. You know, like it was an opposing movement.
Yeah.
You know, or like the CrossFitters, like anytime you get like this big, this is a big force, there's another opposing force. And I think that's what we're gonna see with AI is like, it's so obvious that it's a polarizing thing. We're already there. And I think that while it makes, like you'll see a rise in people being lonely, I actually think it's gonna be, and that's why I'm so bullish on like in-person and small intimate events and anything that is like human-to-human connection.
That's why, again, think it becomes more valuable.
Yeah.
I think it gets more valuable as an opposing force to the thing that's pushing it.
Yeah, I agree with that.
Yeah. Um, can you, uh, I want to go back to sort of like the, the birth of this business today. The, you started off with like TV, live TV, the e-commerce thing. At what point did you guys realize like we need to get We gotta go beyond TV as a channel and lean hard into other forms of acquisition.
Yeah. So we saw in TV the growth was moderating. Initial years we were growing 20, 30% a year, and then we had— we still have some room to grow in terms of our TV distribution, but it was moderating.
Is it because they were leaning into streaming TV and the viewership was just—
So cord cutting is happening.
Yeah.
Although OTT is growing, even over-the-air antenna is growing.
Oh, really?
But not at the speed of the loss of the cable.
Oh, okay.
So then there is a growth challenge. So we had to go towards e-com. That's where I became member of MDS and ECF. And I met you guys and learned tons from you.
Yeah.
You've been great teacher.
Is there not a world where you can go from like a Linear TV to transition into streaming?
Like, so streaming as an advertising mechanism for D2C is good.
Yeah.
But streaming as a, for live TV is still not mature.
Oh, do you think it will become?
Yes.
Why?
It's difficult to grow further because to get distribution into those networks as a live TV, is it live shopping TV? It's not easy because they prefer sports content or home content or entertainment content rather than shopping content.
Do you think it's a demographics problem? So like their streaming is like a younger audience and your business might be positioned or like serving older?
Although I think the demographic, older demographics also gone into OTT, but the platform owner's mindset is still there to your point. That they're still into younger demographic. They want sports, they want entertainment, younger demographic programming, which we don't. So slowly it'll come. I know it'll come. And we are into some platforms already, but till the time that the market matures for TV shopping, we have to find other avenues of growth. And that we believe is e-com. That's where I'm at ECF and having here.
Yeah.
Yeah. Like the more, like the, what we call it, like traditional e-com. You know, so like you're buying traffic, digital ad, like all the ad auction-based ad platforms.
Yeah.
[Sponsor Content] Hmm.
So you've got a huge amount of products. The business started in sort of like gemstones, jewelry. Can you give us an idea of like, what are the other major categories that you're in just for people watching?
Yeah, about 65% of sales is jewelry. 35% is non-jewelry. And the idea of non-jewelry was Our customers are loyal to us, they trust us, and if we offer them good value and good quality of other products, they'll buy from us.
The definition of product expansion.
Yeah, I was gonna say, Sean's gonna watch this and be so happy.
Yeah, he is.
More products.
He'll feel justified.
All he ever says is more products.
It's a different ballgame than D2C e-com.
But 30, you said 35% is all these other product categories.
Other products are beauty, home, kitchen, accessories, And all under the ShopLC banner, or? All under ShopLC banner. For US and UK is DJC, Germany ShopLC as well.
What is the weirdest product you sell?
I remember one time.
I want to know.
One of our homebuyers got these dinosaur replicas. A dinosaur replica? He bought tons of them. It filled the warehouse and it was difficult to ship. It was pretty cheap. What have you got?
Why? It was like a buyer gone rogue. He's like, I think this dinosaur will sell.
So like, how do you actually, how, how does buying work with this many SKUs? This is a great point. 'Cause like you've got all these employees, how do you put guardrails in place to not have that happen? Yeah.
So each of them had their own OTBE systems in place, and each of them are rewarded based on their performance, how much inventory they have, what is the profit they got per minute. And we break it down each vertical for P&L.
Honestly, everybody watching should go immediately to Facebook Ad Library just to see his product search history.
I've done that and I'm very confused.
[Sponsor Content] It's crazy.
I'll be honest.
Was there ever a product that just went like viral that surprised you?
Yeah, there was one time a bracelet we bought called Shambhala. So it was a kind of macrame knitted bracelet with some crystals and we didn't know it was so crazy. We sold millions of them. Over a few months, we sold millions of those bracelets.
Wow.
It just went crazy. We did this one—
Was this like cultural phenomenon at the time?
It was cultural phenomenon. It was trending on social. It was started by somebody about Shambhala bracelet. And one of our buyer picks picked it up and it just went crazy. That was about 10 years ago.
How do you decide? 'Cause I know that you've shown me before that a lot of your live shopping, the message is very much, there's only 100 left. There's only 50 left.
Yeah.
Like real scarcity and real FOMO.
Oh, you just wait till you watch it. It is incredible.
Am I buying something today? Is that what's gonna happen?
Yeah.
You're like, oh shit, I'm gonna totally take that.
Canes. They sell canes. You can—
There we go.
So how do you decide what stays as inventory on your site? Maybe these bracelets. And then what do you do if you buy something and it doesn't sell? How do you, how do you liquidate that?
So we bring in smaller quantities when we bring in. So we bring about 100 new products every day, and then we bring them in small quantities, something like $20,000 sales or $15,000 sales or something like that.
So you have a testing, you really test it.
Testing mechanism with the 100 new products coming every day. And whichever does well, we bring in higher quantity. And if it sells again, bring higher quantities. And most is jewelry, so it's very quick to bring a turnaround. We manufacture ourselves.
Yeah.
So we can turn around the things within 4 weeks.
I love it. And there's probably times where you've sold out of it and you're like, God, we should have ordered more, right?
That's the ultimate.
[Sponsor Content] But the point of the business business is the treasure hunting.
So, we have a lot of sellouts every day and there's FOMO for the people and that's a good thing.
That's gotta be hard though in like auction-based ads in D2C because they reward momentum, right? So, like, and scale. So, if you get into something, like I'm just thinking of Meta and you start spending against it, you don't wanna stop. Like, it's like Amazon. Like, the minute you stop, it's like, damn it, now I gotta restart this thing.
Yeah, or how do you monitor that? Because it's driving traffic probably to a PDP or maybe it's A collection, but if it's sold out, are you, what do you, how do you think about that? Yeah.
So that's a good point. So if you land people to PDP or a landing page of an individual product, it's very hard.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. But you could land them on a collection page. Collection.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
Yeah. Where you refresh that collection every time. For example, the jewelry DIY kits. Our plan is to launch those kits every day, new ones, and retire the old ones every day.
Yeah.
Sell out, don't bring them again. So the people would come back for those new ones, new kits every day. So Zara does that very well.
[Sponsor Content] Oh yeah.
So Zara has refresh of inventory every week.
Yeah.
And we deeply learned that from them to create that FOMO, bring the limited quantities and let people come in again. So our average TV customers buys from us 15 times a year.
[Sponsor Content] Whoa.
Oh my God.
Okay. Do you have a customer that has spent a weird amount of money with you? Like, you must have them. So, like, an average of 15 tells me that there's somebody who buys, like, 100 times a year, and then there's somebody who buys once.
More than that.
More than 100 times a year.
There are people who buy every day.
Okay, so I remember you telling me, Matt's gonna like this. We talked about LTV one time. Uh, tell him what, what, uh, your most valuable customer, where do they start shopping? Do they start shopping online? Do they start shopping on TV, on your website? Who's your most valuable customer?
So the most valuable entry point for us is television, but we have multiple platforms. We have television, we have website catalog, we have rising auction on website, we have web TV as well, we have OTT. So the customer who buys from just TV, our lifetime value for that is about $800. The customer who buys only on the website, the lifetime value is about $100.
Whoa.
Yeah. The customer who buys on both, the lifetime value is about $1,500. And the customer who buys from 5 platforms, the lifetime value is $20,000.
What? Okay, I quit.
Sorry. Unpack that last one. I wanna know how to do this.
Customer whom we can successfully transition from one to other, to other, to other, at least 5 platforms. We have about 7 platforms in the company. the customer can interact with.
What's a platform to you?
Like TV.
[Sponsor Content] Yep.
Then we have on our website catalog, we have website clearance, we have website $1 auction, we have live TV, we have OTT platforms. So total 7 platforms. We have marketplaces too. So we're total 7 platforms. A customer who can buy from 5 platforms of lifetime value is $20,000.
Do you know what percentage of your total customers falls into that category?
Very few, but our top 2% customers gives us 50% of revenue.
Whoa. Oh my God. That's insane.
Yeah.
Okay.
So then you must have people that are just working on moving people around in platforms. Like, how do you actually get, how do you like ascend these people up?
We have flows in place to move people.
So cool.
Do you do phone sales as well? That's a huge number.
So we have about 180 people call center in India, our own. And we land a lot of people on— we try to put people into IVR as much as we can. So about 75% of our inbound traffic lands on IVR and 25% lands on people, on the live agent. And that is handled by 180 agents, 24 hours. That handles about 4 different TV channels. So 2 UK, 1 Germany, and 1 US.
Um, your, how far out are you guys looking for new product categories? Because you mentioned you have, uh, OTB. So OTB being open to buy. Every sort of category manager has that. Strategically then, how are you directing like where you want people to go explore? Like what, how do you figure out what's next? What's the new—
I don't do that. So what we have is every product category has their own way to get their OTB increased. So they must make their spot. So if the productivity of the category is high, they get more airtime.
So they can pick a new category if they think that they can hit the number?
Yeah, within their section. For example, home can pick, they have a right to pick, the freedom to pick new category within home.
Do you have a design team here also that, like the buyer saying in home, we think these pillows are gonna be very— then does it shift to a design team that's creating the product? Is it all in-house like that?
For jewelry, we have full design team, merchandising, and trend spotting. But for other products, we don't have design team. We have trend spotters, a few of them, but mostly we depend on vendors. We don't manufacture other than jewelry.
So you go to the vendors and say, what's your best-selling?
Or we have seen this trend, do you have something like this?
Okay.
So we have transporters, we don't have designers, we don't have those technical technicians in place, which like apparel manufacturers have.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
We don't have them, but we have transporters who go along with merchants to the vendors.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
And then discuss those, what their collection is, what we would like to see, and then they have a program with them.
I wanna be a trend spotter here.
Okay.
That, and that must, that has got to have changed over the years, like how to figure out where to go as a product.
Yeah.
Like it's just so, you can, there's so much data now that we just never had before, like 46 years ago.
Even before online, you probably sent people to market.
Yeah. Yeah.
I went to stores all the time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And just took, took pictures on your camera, not your phone.
Yeah.
[Sponsor Content] Right.
And then you faxed it to yourself.
I bought your product.
Yeah.
Yes. And send the pictures, nice pictures, and send over to the factories. We did a lot of that. Now it's pretty much online. The transporting sites, we're using AI and it's much easier now.
Are there categories, when you look at the company, are there categories that you're like, that you wish you guys were in as a brand?
Don't say baby and phone cases.
That'll get weird real fast. That's fine.
It won't work on TV anyway. Okay.
[Sponsor Content] Okay.
Okay. Yeah. So, since our team has such a freedom, I don't think that there's any category that I think we should be and we are not. I don't believe there's any.
I think when you walk his warehouse, you're going to realize that there is not a product category. There's a warehouse. There's a warehouse.
We literally sell everything.
It's insane.
Yeah. I remember the, I think that at ECF this year in our small group, you gave us the range of price Prices in your catalog and it's like as low as $20.
$10 to $20,000.
It's just crazy.
It's insane. I have so many product questions. Can this be like a 6-hour talk?
Yeah, let's talk product. Okay, one more.
And then I really want to ask Sunil questions about his family too, because I know how important it is to him. But when you talk about selling out of products and I, do you know what your return Not return customer rate is, but like what is the percentage of returns that just gets sent back?
Depends on the product. So we know what product category returns would be.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
So we'll assess a product based on expected return rate and then what would be the net revenue. The TV typically is very high return rate because people buy on impulse and then they get it home.
Yeah.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
Very emotionally charged buy.
Yeah. On impulse, they bought a $4,000 diamond ring.
Yeah.
Yeah. And then when she talked to her husband, she said, Husband says, oh, honey, maybe you shouldn't have done that.
That husband doesn't know what he's talking about.
Yeah. And they don't know how much value she's getting.
She's getting so much value.
But— Spoken like the business owners.
Yeah. So return rate is approximately 18% in the US.
What do you do though if they return a ring that's sold out? What do you do with that ring?
So if the ring is unused, then we would put it back for resale. And if it is, say, apparel or a beauty product which is used, then we just discard it.
Is there like a closet here I can go through and—
No, you don't need to.
A souvenir from my ShopLC tour.
The entire group of companies, you're publicly traded, so you can say, what is the total size of the business today?
Yeah, so last year we did $450 million revenue. But, I look at the business not in terms of dollars as much as pieces sold, meals delivered. So, we have 57,000 meals per school day. My hope and aim is to take it to 1 million meals per school day by 2040. That would mean that we need to grow 20% or so something every year.
Up until 2040?
2040. Okay.
And, do you imagine you're going to be the CEO that— do you hope you're going to be the CEO that long?
I'll enjoy. I'll do as long as I enjoy and I'm able to. And, if I'm not, I hope I create a successor who takes this forward as I'm passionate about.
Could it be one of your boys?
I doubt it because my older one is successful tech entrepreneur and the younger one wants to follow his older brother.
Of course, he does.
I know.
Yeah. Okay.
So, Go a little deeper on this. Did your kids work in the business at any point?
Very early on when they were interning, they did. They were finding out those gemstones around the warehouse, and every gemstone they found, they would get 25 cents.
That's so cool. The ultimate treasure hunt, right?
That's how they made their pocket money. My sons never got pocket money ever. They had to make their money. And, but since the tech industry was more enticing for them.
Sure.
And they're both into that area quite deep.
[Sponsor Content] Go ahead.
You've told me one time, so we've had a lot of personal conversations about how you raise your children, right? When they have kind of, I mean, they live in this world where you're very successful and you told me how you think about it and you know, is this something that you're gonna gift your sons or, and you, I don't know if you wanna share it or not, but you've said that you set goals for your sons and they have to hit a certain goal for you to be able to give. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah. So starting from how we brought them up, it was never really bring expensive stuff for them. They had to buy their phones, they had to buy their own laptops. They had to buy their own tech equipment. We would only provide their education, best education, their living and boarding and lodging. Rest they have to manage themselves. We would give them opportunities to earn, and then they did a good job at it. And other thing we bought in our family was not to say no to them. So that means not to reprimand them. And if they're doing something which is not good for them, just tell them the consequences of what they're doing.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
decision of what they want to do.
And so, so your kids are probably very high agency then. Like they'll just go and do whatever.
That's why they don't wanna come in my business.
No. Yeah, of course. Yeah. That's exactly why.
Yeah.
It's like, stay outta the family business.
It's incredible. I, I just, the listening to him and how he's raised his family and his life.
Well, we've been talking about this on the way over here. Like how, how do you actually raise entrepreneurial kids?
Yeah.
Like, can you? Or are they just like, are you just born a certain way? How much of it is nature versus nurture? I was reflecting, Akhadi, if I look back at all of my friends that I grew up with, I'm like, why are some of them entrepreneurs and some of them aren't when we were all raised so similarly?
Yeah. So the nurture counts because my sons saw me talking about business all the time and they were in the business earlier when they were in So they saw the business as well. So they must have got those thoughts of how to run a business, and how to have relationships with people, employees, and outside world. So that must have helped them.
Mm-hmm.
But everybody has to have their own ambition, own purpose in life. And they found their own purpose. And for that, they found their own path to serve their purpose.
If you—
I'm curious to see how you answer this, but if Shopwell, if this company was to disappear tomorrow, would you start another one as you are right now with everything you know?
Probably.
Yeah?
Yeah, because I'm really enjoying what I do. I learn quite a bit every day and biggest joy I get is to see people thrive within the organization. And meet their goals, life goals, and really progress well in life. So, that gives me a lot of pleasure.
You must have, like, you talk a lot about people. Could you give me a sense for what the, like, who are the people that you work with every day? Do you have like a leadership team that you spend most of your time with? Like, how are things structured and how do you actually run a company this size?
Yeah. So, I have 12 people report to me. And I talk to them once a week only.
Okay.
And I have once a month review for each business. So I have geographical heads, US, UK, Germany, Asia, they're geographical leads. And then I have branding, innovation, and gemstones lead. So these are the 7 leads, vertical leads. And then I have CFO, CHRO, and CTO. They report to me, and then I have EA. So we have 12 people report to me, pretty much once a week conversation with them. I review the reports sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, and once a month business review that I do along with my CFO and other seniors.
I would call Sunil a leader that stays in the weeds.
Yeah. Oh yeah, clearly.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
He's not a sit back and watch and just— I mean, you dive in where needed.
Yeah.
And you enjoy it.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
I dive in when needed because I have my fingers on the pulse, but I am not— I don't want to be in the way of people managing the business. So, I intervene only when I need to. Otherwise, I let people run the business. Even if they make small mistakes, I let them learn from the mistakes.
He's like the ultimate father. Can I send my children to you? I have a few. You'll spoil them? No.
He'll spoil somebody else's kids. His kids, though, they're disciplined.
They're disciplined. Yeah.
He'll send yours back to you.
He'll send mine back worse than I got them.
What if I live with them? Would you be okay with that?
No, you can't grandpa them. I need you to father them.
Yeah, there's a difference between the two.
[Sponsor Content] There's a difference.
Yeah.
Okay, I'm gonna ask, I think this might be a dumb question, so bear with me. I'm back to the TV thing. How do you get people to watch the channel? How do you market the channel?
You can't. We tried so many times to market us on different channels.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
But people don't leave what they're watching to come and watch a shopping channel. It doesn't happen. So you have to depend on people surfing on channels and come across you. or word of mouth.
Do you have control, this is gonna be super tactical, do you have control over what shows up when somebody's like clicking through the channel guide?
No. No, it's live.
No.
It's live, 24/7 live. So it's same programming.
So they have to— So they have to discover you.
You discover you and your programming has to be engaging enough with enough movement on the screen and enough interest that they stick to you.
So, for like the app, to the direct response, like your D2C advertisers that are gonna listen to this or watch this, your livestream is basically a forever hook.
Yes. And think about it, it's just like scrolling on TikTok or Instagram. That's freaking wild. But they, you, we used to scroll channels and so you'd have to stop and pause on a channel.
Yeah, I remember like flipping through.
Yeah.
Right? Like it was like the old, like as a kid, like you're clicking through channels.
Television, that's pretty much it. For online, you know, the whole book, right?
Was having this background in like live shopping, has that actually helped in the transition to online direct, like direct-to-consumer, like Facebook, Google, like these, these like modern-day ad platforms? Like, has that been an easy transition or has it been a completely different game?
So, you know the story about all the airlines in the world tried to become Southwest. None of them could.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
It's hard. So for me to become kind of Southwest, I had to become ECF member. We tried before without being in the weeds. I could not. So I had to really immerse myself into e-com to become an e-com player. And we are seeing that working out now.
Do you think that If you look at like this big hairy audacious goal that you have, your BHAG being a million meals a day, do you think that it's e-commerce that takes you there or do you see other channels and other things that you're gonna have to do?
So e-com is the right next step for us. I do not know how the world will evolve in the next 15 years. There may come other channels as well. And e-com may not be enough to get us there. I do not know the answer to that.
So you don't really know the roadmap, you're just keeping yourself open to opportunity.
Yes. Yes.
I love that.
Do you, uh, so you said 20% per year, is that, do you just see that as like, this is just the appropriate growth rate? We, we've talked a lot about, uh, sort of growth rate on lots of episodes of the show and like, where is the sweet spot in a consumer business? 'Cause there's like, you know, financing inventory and there's a lot of working capital. In your business? Is 20 the number that you're like, this is just the number that works really well for us?
So it'll be more, it's 20% plus. It's not 20. So it's quite high number, but this is what we need. And sometimes we may have the spurt of growth by acquisition. Sometimes we may have spurt of growth by finding some great product, great channel, great time. So we do not know. I don't have full roadmap to get to a million. So we are going with a BHAG, But with the idea, we are open to any possibility of the platform, the product, or the strategy. I don't know fully.
You know, what's nuts, I don't know if people do the public math. I hate public math, but I'm gonna do it anyway. At $450 million, 20% is like $90 million that you have to add to the business.
Yeah. And it grows up every year.
Every year it goes up. That feels like a lot of either, and most companies like this, it's either products, markets, or channels. Do you, feels like you're gonna have to go into more markets at some point?
Could be.
Yeah.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
So for us, we are considering India as the next market. Japan is a possible market for us because the TV shopping is still pretty robust in Japan. So Japan and India are target markets now. How important is profitability as you grow up to a million We look at the business from ROIC point of view, return on invested capital.
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And we constantly have a benchmark for any venture that we do. We look at that as a gold standard for us. So minimum ROIC we need for any venture, it's 20%. And if a business would give that return, we'd go into it.
So you're managing growth, but also keeping an eye on the bottom line.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
I think you kind of have to as a public company.
As a public company, you got to have it.
Is there something about this business that if you look back over time that you would've thought like, this is impossible, but today you're like, I can't believe we actually do this?
Yeah.
So people thought that the jewelry business, you just can't delegate. Coming from India, very traditional-minded, every jeweler manages himself, closes the safe, vault every night, opens the vault, pulls out the jewelry, and then let other people manage. So that was a difficult thing for people to absorb, accept that you can delegate gemstone business and a jewelry business. But it worked.
No kidding, it worked. Okay, so one of the things we like to do, because we're going to go, we're going to tour next, but before we do that, But we like to finish on this segment we call the Titan 10. So I just have a bunch of questions I want to ask you.
[Sponsor Content] Sure, sure.
And I'm so curious your answers, given everything we've talked about, public company, how many divisions, how many markets, all the things. So I'm going to start. You ready?
Sure.
And as gut feel as you can.
Okay, go ahead.
So the first one is you get to a desert island, right? You have to manage the business from a desert island, but you only get to look at 3 numbers every week. What are those three numbers?
Revenue growth, customer growth, ROIC.
I love the ROIC thing, by the way. You don't hear that very often in consumer. You also get to take a book, but it can't be about business. Which book are you bringing?
I'm reading a book by Vietnamese Buddhist monk. His name is Thích Nhất Hạnh. And the book is This Is Your Home.
You're taking that.
I love it.
Are you a big reader just in general?
Yeah.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
It sounds like it. That's an obscure-sounding book. Can't promise I'm going to read that, Sunil. I'm going to be honest.
Go with me on the island and we'll just talk business.
Yeah.
[Sponsor Content] Then we go.
What is a belief about business that you feel you might have that is like contrarian that other people might not agree with you on?
Doing good is good for business.
Actually, I think it's a great one. I, 'cause I think most people would actually disagree with you on that. They think they, you just, you do good in business, then you go do good personally. They never mix. I like that. What is the single most important word in leadership?
Listening skills.
What's the single most important word in business?
Empowerment.
Best meal of the day and why?
Breakfast. I'm putting— I'm trying to put on some weight, so a lot of protein.
After my workout, there's a problem.
I literally, Sunil, I wish somebody would just say, I need you to gain weight. I'd be like, I've been training for this my whole life.
Dude, I'm a pro.
I got you.
Watch and learn. You look great, Sunil.
Thank you. Right now, you know, you've been in ECF, you're in sort of like all of our network. What do you see? Like, what is something that you see happening that you just think is really overrated? Maybe it's a growth tactic. It's something that people are doing.
Media buying.
I love that you said that so much. Thank you. Uh, what's the most underrated thing?
Team building.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
Love it. Do you wanna know why I think you're right on the media buying? Can I give you— I think media— I think Facebook ads made us all really bad marketers.
Yeah, yeah, initially you've had so much of manual process in Facebook, now it's so much automated. So, going after the top media buyer may not be the right thing. Going after the top product, top angle story is more valuable.
That's it. It's that we've forgotten how to be good product people and great storytellers.
Storytelling.
And I think Facebook just trained us how to be good Facebook advertisers.
Yes.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
And we've like got 20 or, you know, whatever, 15 years of this now. where it's like we just forgot the other parts.
[Sponsor Content] Yeah.
So thank you. I think that— I think we're a wrap.