Archer Knits Episode
This episode provides insights and tips for up-and-coming crafters, Etsy shops and aspiring business owners.
Archer Knits is a woman-owned, small business that started as a knitting hobby in Hillsborough, NC. Since the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020, Archer Knits has grown from part-time work for it’s owner-operators, to now employing one full-time and three part-time employees. The path that owner Cassy Becker finds herself on now, is decidedly *not* what she’d planned. Cassy and her husband, Chris, tell me about: the turn from knitting to custom laser engraving; the stresses of being a wife and husband business team; the struggles they face today; and the vision they have for what’s next.
Connect with Archer Knits
Etsy Shop
Website
Instagram
Facebook
Pinterest
Shout outs
Splat Space maker space; Durham, NC https://splatspace.org/
Thom Tillis LINK
Richard Burr LINK
Sources
Connect with Common Leaders
trevor@commonleaders.com
https://linktr.ee/commonleaders
Thank You for Listening!
Archer Knits Episode
This episode provides insights and tips for up-and-coming crafters, Etsy shops and aspiring business owners.
Archer Knits is a woman-owned, small business that started as a knitting hobby in Hillsborough, NC. Since the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020, Archer Knits has grown from part-time work for it’s owner-operators, to now employing one full-time and three part-time employees. The path that owner Cassy Becker finds herself on now, is decidedly *not* what she’d planned. Cassy and her husband, Chris, tell me about: the turn from knitting to custom laser engraving; the stresses of being a wife and husband business team; the struggles they face today; and the vision they have for what’s next.
Connect with Archer Knits
Etsy Shop
Website
Instagram
Facebook
Pinterest
Shout outs
Splat Space maker space; Durham, NC https://splatspace.org/
Thom Tillis LINK
Richard Burr LINK
Sources
Connect with Common Leaders
trevor@commonleaders.com
https://linktr.ee/commonleaders
Thank You for Listening!
this is common leaders with Archer knits, which is based in North Carolina. They do a variety of things which we're going to talk about today. But the most cool thing that they have done over the last several years is gone from having, two full-time jobs as engineers, and some cool hobbies outside of work that eventually turned into a whole business that they're now running. And successfully and recently hired their first employee, which was really awesome. I'm very excited for them. And I've also known Cassy and Chris of Archer Knits for going on 10, 11, 12. It's been a long time. Um, do you guys say, was it 2010?
Cassy:Well, we started dating in 2009, so I knew Laura starting in 2009,
Chris:It was your second year at Daemen, Trevor.
Common Leaders:Yeah. So it's been almost 12 years that we've known each other now. I've seen a lot of apartments. A lot of dogs enter your life a lot of moves. Oh yeah. They just keep adding. What I never saw coming was you sitting in a garage with fabric behind you and a booming business and having helped you start your, your, uh, your staff, your staffing sector, which has been super cool. I'm very excited for you to be here today. I'm really appreciative of your time and I would love it if maybe the two of you could talk a little bit about where you started. And where you are now in terms of what you're doing just to give a little context before we go too far into any rabbit holes. Cassy, Chris, take it away. Tell the, tell the people what y'all do.
Cassy:Well start off, thanks Trevor. You've been amazing in so many ways, you know, we wouldn't go very far without your friendship and we really appreciate being brought on here. So this is awesome. I guess I'll start. So I, started knitting actually back in before the pandemic started. That was February of 20, 20 ish. I was actually, it's a weird story. I am an engineer and I do air consulting for the environmental protection agency, the EPA. I met a couple of people from the EPA and one of their contractors out for dinner. And they, the two that I was with started talking about how, you know, this hat, this girl is wearing; she's like, did you make that? And the girl was like, yeah! It's this special kind of stitching called brioche. I'm listening to them, talk about it and they just loved it so much and they were my age. I think everyone thinks of knitting is for grandmas, right? Like your grandma probably knit or like I know I learned to knit very briefly when I was a kid from a next door neighbor who was, you know, older. And, um, you know, I, I thought it wasn't cool. So my, I saw these two girls that were my age and they had this awesome... they were talking about all this stuff they'd made and the girl was wearing this really cool hat that I still have yet to make it's on my list. And I thought like I got home from that conference and like, Chris, I'm going to learn how to knit. And he kind of looked at me like I was crazy. Yeah, and a little bit. No, I wasn't good. I'm, I'm the queen of like, I want to learn how to do something and then not following through. And like that week, I actually, we have a local yarn shop called the Hillsboro yarn shop and, um, they are wonderful. They're great people and they actually had classes is before coronavirus. So there was still in person classes and like they were going to start up like the week after I got back. So I quickly signed up for it. I'm like, I'm going to learn. And I went by myself, which I never do because I'm always nervous about people. Weirdly, cause I'm pretty extroverted. But, um, I usually don't convince myself to go to classes by myself and I showed up and I'm one of three people not including the instructor. One of which was significantly older than me. One was just a little older than me. So I was the youngest there. And, um, I got taught the basics of SIM pearls and. I got home and I didn't stop. And I need my first hat handed it over to Chris and said he had to wear it and look like crap. I handed out a hat to my mother for her birthday or around her birthday. So it must've been December. When I learned to knit, then. And, um, yeah, so knitting was a thing. And then I'm like, you know, I really think I'm going to knit too much and we're just going to keep knitting all this stuff. And I don't have enough people to hand this out too. I live in North Carolina. There's nobody wearing hats. There is. They wear them for very limited time. So I really only hand out like one hat per person. And I was like, okay. So, and then I started thinking, well, do I have any friends? Well, Trevor and Laura live in California, so they don't need a hat. I think actually sent one to Laura.
Common Leaders:I think so, too. Yeah.
Cassy:I like, I started to quickly exhaust. I sent one to my grandmother. I started to exhaust what I could do with it. So I was like, I'm going to see if I can make enough to do markets because there's local maker's markets that I could sell hats at. That would be cool. And that would be a little bit of extra income, Chris and I are still paying off student loans. Thank you, us government. I just wanted to make a little extra spending cash and I told Chris I'm like, okay, so if we're going to do this, cause he was going to help. He's going to go to these markets. And, yeah, no, he was not going to knit I might knit but he's going to go and support me because he's awesome. And at least helped me set up the shop because it was, those are a pain in the butt to go to. Um, so we go in and I'm like, I'm going to need some branding. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to sell, how am I sell lots of hats? And I want people to be able to be like, that's an Archer knits hat. Oh, by the way, we named her company, Archer Knits s for me to knit. Because of our dog, which you'll probably see pop up in this video. Cause he's around.
Common Leaders:Yeah, let's,
Cassy:can meet our Archer.
Common Leaders:meet the mascot.
Cassy:that's our mascot, that's Archer. So we named it Archer Knits cause now we do have three other dogs or two other dogs, three total. And uh, we're not paying favorites. He just had a really good name for it.
Common Leaders:Yeah. Archer's never been the favorite.
Cassy:Yeah.
Chris:Perfect. So
Common Leaders:Yeah."Oli knits"s would be terrible.
Cassy:Oliver knits. Well, we thought about it. But anyway, so I'm like, we need'branding. We need to get all this branding done. And now I'm like, well, I started Googling. I'm like, okay, most hats, including the hats you buy at Aeropostale. I'm thinking like this, the trendy, you know, hats, there's little patches or there's a little tag on the edge that says Aeropostale or
Common Leaders:Archer Knits I don't know. Yeah.
Cassy:Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what I mean? There's gotta
Common Leaders:was,
Cassy:trendy
Common Leaders:fashionable. Yeah.
Cassy:talking like Abercrombie and
Common Leaders:Now you're taking me back to middle school. I don't know if it's still cool, but anybody who's our age will get it. You can smell that store just by saying
Chris:it.. That's all. I mean,
Common Leaders:just by saying it.
Cassy:it's cologne, right? Technically
Chris:how has another one?
Common Leaders:America Eagle.
Cassy:American Eagle. That's another one. Those will still exist, I think
Chris:There's the big one that we haven't brought up yet. And I can't remember the name.
Cassy:Yeah, but they always have a little patches, right. This says like their store, because it's cool. Um, love your melon, think is another Hatmaker. And it says love your melon in huge square patch on the hat. And it's like, okay, that is a, love your melon hat. And it's like a branded cool thing. Like, okay, I want those. So it'd be cool. And. So Chris Hey, I'm going to order them from a different website, but I don't want her to do that. Let's go see if we can go to like Michael's and get the stuff to learn how to do that. We go to Michaels. We get crappy leather; faux leather and like these little punch things and a whole punch. And we're like, we're going to do this. We're going to
Common Leaders:Chris gets out is wood engraver.
Cassy:like tap them into the leather. So that didn't last very long. We actually have, I think we still have this stuff somewhere in the house. I might've returned it because that was,
Common Leaders:Frame it. The beginning.
Cassy:we didn't actually do it because when I started to Google it I'm like, Chris, this is not how they're doing. That is not the right way to do. Not real. And I want to put like an arrow on it because of Archer. And We don't sell arrows. How am I going to do this? Yeah. Not going to happen. So it's like, Hey Chris. knitting all the time. You're just sitting here watching TV. I'm a girl and I, this is my husband. I'm going to give him crap to do. I'm going to, I'm going to hand out tasks and I'm like, well, I've got this great hobby, you need a hobby. Why don't you learn how to do these these laser engraving. That's how you're supposed to do these tags. You should learn it. That sounds like something you could do while I'm knitting. And you know, then we can produce our own tags.
Common Leaders:he was, and he said,
Chris:And I was all about that. Like, I get the burn, I get the burn stuff, but yes, count me in
Cassy:like, honestly, it's pretty cool. Like you start to Google it and get into it. And you're like, okay. A laser is pretty awesome.
Chris:Yeah. But they're not cheap. So like we had to look around and figure out how we could, um, we can like go try it out and see if we liked it
Common Leaders:Oh, yeah, you, you did the maker-space for awhile, right? Oh,
Chris:yeah, exactly.
Common Leaders:was not even that long ago.
Chris:Yeah. Yeah, right
Cassy:before the pandemic, it was right before it, cause we were still able to go. We were going to the maker space and then the maker-space shut down for it. Well, no, they were open, but like Durham shut down for the pandemic and like Chris and I are like covertly, trying to get out.
Chris:During the times you can go get groceries, but you couldn't go anywhere else. then you could go to work at that point. We like, we had enough experience working with the lasers to know like, yeah, this was really cool. We want a lot to keep going with it. And that's when we first jumped in and bought our first laser.
Common Leaders:What's the name of your maker-space? You should shout them out because you know, it started out
Chris:gosh, that's
Cassy:Flat Space. Yep. In Durham, they're awesome people. Um, definitely good people and they have a very, they have a hobby laser there, so it was really good for us to kind of learn what, you know, what the, what the minimum lead was and learned that, that wasn't good.
Common Leaders:Right.
Cassy:um, yeah. And then one laser grew into, well, I guess I should say Chris made me some awesome tags. And, and I was super excited and I had a knitting Instagram because that's what you do when you're
Common Leaders:Isn't it an Knits-stagram and it's an Knits-stagram.
Cassy:Knits-stagram, that's actually something people say it's real. You're not, you're not the first one to come
Common Leaders:with that. And that like gained some traction pretty fast. Huh?
Cassy:Yes. And I'd already had a couple of followers. So what you do in knitting is like, if you're interested in knitting, you can post pictures of your hats, but then you volunteer to be a tester for people's patterns. I have met, I've met so many great friends, um, because I tested their patterns for them. They would put out a call like, Hey, I have this new pattern for this hat. You say, Hey, I can do this. This is something, you know, I it's well on my wheel house. Easy peasy. Um, and I have the yarn on hand and I can make it look pretty and then I can post a really pretty picture. So they typically will pick you if you got a nice picture and you've got you have, you know, some form of skill with a camera. So I did that a bunch of times. And, when I got my tags done, I was like, I posted and I'm like, Hey look, Hey, look at these cold times you made. And a couple of those friends that I made from doing the testing, we actually hit, it started like a knitting group that we checked in constantly. The quarantiners, it was, it was our thing. Um, and I'm not afraid to say that I like I'm clearly these please ladies are way more talented than I am. They're amazing people. Um, anyway, they, um, I was like, Hey, you know, look at my tags. And they're like, I want some, and I was like, these guys are my friends, Chris let's give some to these ladies. See if they like them; make sure we're doing it right before. And then we'll see, you know what that's like. That was right at the beginning of it, right when the pandemic hit. That's why we were driving to splat space of like during no drive time is like, we're trying to get these done from my friends. And I was like, trying to get it before we couldn't go back home. They got their tags. They really liked, and I think there were patches and they really liked them. They posted some pictures and I'm getting some traction from other knitters I didn't know, saying, yeah, these are really cool. We open an Etsy shop to, you know, kind of catch on that traffic. And, some of those wonderful ladies were buy, started buying tags from me, and then they started using them and posting them in their pictures. Cause they're all pattern testers. So they're constantly posting and, um. That one person led to the next people and Etsy, which with all of its pluses and minuses does bring it into your own traffic. So we started getting Etsy traffic because we were getting sales and all of a sudden, you know, one laser became needed. We now needed two lasers and now we needed three lasers and that we need a four. And, now we're rocking and rolling on a full-time job.
Common Leaders:And then four lasers turned into a lot of 18 hour days, uh, because Cassy you, well, you were both working after between work, not just after work before work, too. I think. And.
Chris:Yes. So we started engraving just as the COVID-19 shutdown. The first one, um,
Common Leaders:Ah yes, March 2020.
Chris:Happens.
Common Leaders:2020.
Chris:Yeah, it's March, 2020. So I was in automotive, the automotive industry and manufacturing, and I got sent home for what was supposed to be three weeks, um, and like unpaid, but, uh, um, as like a distraction, I just focused in. And learning that laser for those three weeks and then three weeks during the six weeks. So anyways, I was able to get a ton of experience, um, and put full-time effort into
Common Leaders:Right.
Chris:put full time, effort into it and really build our, our, um, process from it. So there a silver lining there.
Common Leaders:What, what, what was the moment you realized? That it was not going to be the knitting. That was necessarily going to be the core of your, your side, extra spending cash. That it was actually going to be the, the tags.
Chris:Probably in that shutdown in March, we were seeing you're actually getting. It wasn't a lot, a few orders a week turned into a couple of orders a day. Um, and then we realized, wow, we might actually be able to make a little bit of money.
Cassy:We go to markets. We, I, you know, we started markets last year because that was we'd already got, uh, volunteered at the time before we knew tags were going to be our thing. So I did markets and I, we still do it because it's awesome. It's fun. The people are cool. The so nice to get some outside time. And, you know, I make hundreds of hats every year, so they need to go somewhere. You
Common Leaders:still are making hundreds, huh?
Cassy:Sell it. And I really am. There's you, you used to be right behind us. We had a stack of two bins full of hats that are going out to markets this year.
Common Leaders:Just a better than a hobby that costs you money. It's
Cassy:Exactly. Like it makes you back to money that you put in, right? Like, that's fine. Like, that's all I wanted. A couple of my friends have talked about this with me and like, all we really want is to make it so we can buy more yarn.
Chris:Well, yeah, that was the thing like early on. Well, even up until summer, we were, you know, it was just still for fun.
Cassy:Yeah.
Chris:Really busy during a pandemic, which was nice
Cassy:because, I mean, I think we're all going a little stir crazy at that time. Right.
Common Leaders:Yeah.
Cassy:This was a busy time. And like, I remember we were just getting, like Chris said, I think we got maybe five orders for like a couple of weeks. And then like the next week we got like 10 orders for a week. And then it started to become you know, maybe five a day. And like all of a sudden it wasn't just like a gradual incline. It was like, you are hitting little bits a little bit. And then all of a sudden it shot up around August. Cause that's about when people are getting ready from markets. We're like oh crap. We're still working two full-time jobs. We got about four or five hours each night to put into this. What are we going to do?
Common Leaders:Yeah.
Cassy:don't have enough time for this. And we still, so what our process is, is basically. Um, we get the order. the orderer will provide like, you know, details on and we have specified exactly what details, but order it provides details what they want an approve. They approve said proof. Hopefully, sometimes there's a lot of and forth.
Common Leaders:And the proof is, is like the, is the copy, right? Like it's the, this is what we're thinking for your design.
Chris:Yeah, digital version of the final print.
Cassy:and it's just scale so they can see like, okay, you send us something like a logo that is teeny, and it's gonna look teeny and maybe you want it to actually read, you can read your name. Right. So that's a lot of the time. That's why you get back and forth a lot of the time. We were doing all of those, like several tasks and about five hours each night. And like Chris would come home exhausted from work. I was still working from home. Thank God. Thank you. From my amazing company who still lets me work from home because of the pandemic and it's terrifying out there. I had an, I have a lot of responsibility at my job. So a lot of times my days were like nine or 10 and really just like, oh crap, what are we going to do?
Common Leaders:Right. And
Cassy:So I think that leads into the point of like a number in October and we're getting. 20 orders a
Common Leaders:I know that like, as you enter the end of last year towards the holiday season, it was the first time that you referred to it as the holiday season. And that kind of way. And I, and I think I texted with, cause it's always during football season when it starts and that is typically, uh, go Bill's. We haven't got there yet. Uh, but that's typically the time we talk the most, if we haven't been talking for a while is football season, fantasy season, uh, fantasy football season specifically. And we didn't talk like whole lot. Cause I'd asked what you were up to ask. If you saw the game, you would say things like, I don't know, who's on the roster anymore. Who is that person? Who are we going to draft? And I'm thinking to myself, you used to be the king of that stuff. You knew way more about what was going on in Bill's that I did. Uh, and all of the sudden things got a little, a little cray, cray right at the end of last year.
Chris:Yeah, that's putting it lightly. Yeah, it was like, for me, it was around the clock. I was going to bed at like two. I'd get up at when Cassy would get up for work.
Cassy:Well, you jumped ahead too, because you got brought back in finally, the pandemic. Well, the company that Chris was working for allowed Chris to come back into the office. The job that he was doing was not something he could do from home. So they did bring him back in the office. And, we were very thankful for that. But I mean, it was several months that I, thank you pandemic. He was laid off and got brought back on,
Common Leaders:We're back. you catch a glitch just passed here. Uh, that is why we had a little bit of internet connectivity issue on me. I am sorry. I think Cassy was just about to say I'm made Chris quit his job, or Chris was going to say, I made Cassy, let me quit my job.
Chris:Okay. I will say like up until September of last year, I was like 100% confident. There's no way I will quit my job to do this, to take on the side business. And then October hit
Cassy:20 orders a day.
Chris:I was like, okay, maybe I will. Because, um, it got to the point where we have to choose between. the side business or, um, our full-time job. At the time I was at, I was at a plant, um, that didn't, that wasn't showing much promise; and so it was kind of a good chance, to try this out full time. And November 1st week of November, I officially quit my job as an engineer and started full-time with Cassy as my boss.
Common Leaders:Yeah, it's November 1st. So almost a year,
Cassy:Crazy. Right. Well, and it wasn't enough. Because I was still working and still am to this day. And it basically at that time, it was just the two of us. We'd get up at it would've been like 7:00 AM because we had to get ready. I would get to work at eight. Chris would wake up with me. He'd start the lasers. We had two at the time and he would start printing all day. I would be working. I get done with work at four or five o'clock and I would if we were lucky, we'd have some takeout dinner. If we were unlucky, we'd have grilled cheese and tomato soup. And then within like the hour that we got from downtime, while we ate our dinner. We would then come back upstairs. We were still located in our upstairs at that point. I would start with proofs. Uh, Chris would start with answering emails and Etsy messages. We'd work until all the lasers ran the whole time. We'd work until I go to bed around midnight ish, maybe one ish, because I had to be responsible and go to my job the next day. Chris would be printing until two or three in the morning. And come to bed. And then the whole thing would repeat. Um, sometimes he'd have to sleep in because right before I'd start work, I could start a laser and he could sleep until nine o'clock, nine o'clock or until that laser was done. But, um, yeah, it was, it was rough, but it,
Common Leaders:Wow.
Chris:Probably that reluctance to, to leave my full-time job probably hurt us. It definitely hurt us. We fell behind and that's why we had to work so many hours.
Common Leaders:Well, that's a, that's a big move. Your reluctance to quit a full-time job, and I get a part-time gig somewhere else was a pretty big leap of faith during a pretty uncertain time.
Cassy:You don't know if there's just, uh, we were getting those kinds of sales because it was the pandemic and people were supporting small business. You don't know if we were getting the sales because it was a pandemic and people were home knitting because they lost their jobs. We don't know if it's because people were picking up yard, knitting as a hobby and you know, that could easily go away the next year. Right. Because that makes her weird and everyone's home. It's just really strange. But we also knew that, you know, people that's makers weren't going to markets because markets had been shut down. So, like we knew that there was at least another one avenue, maybe we hadn't hit the way that we would have expected it to. So we weighed a lot of options on Chris leaving. That was scary and leaving an engineer salary and to be on a small business salary.
Chris:Yeah. Yeah. Well, and like, for the most part I liked being an engineer and still do, so we had to...
Cassy:he's good at it.
Chris:So it was tough.
Common Leaders:I don't think I've ever asked this. Are there any similarities, Chris, and what you were doing, probably not right at the very last plant, but are there any similarities between what you did primarily in your engineering time and what you're doing day-to-day now?
Chris:yes, that's, that's a good question. um, so. Like it's, it's really been an advantage coming from manufacturing, because like it's just hammered constantly be tweaking your, to, uh, improve productivity. and and So we kind of treat this business the same way. Um, we've got it all set up so that the workflow goes pretty,
Cassy:um, automatic,
Chris:automatic, or, you know, as automated as we can get consistent quality.
Cassy:Um, I think also safety where you're, you know, both of us were trained. I came from consulting and then industry and then federal consulting. so, I spent time in industry. Chris has been an industry he's at several of. Um, chemical plants. So safety's always been a huge thing, right? So we learn, well, it is totally like, we're very careful about everything we do. I mean, these are four industrial sized, well, three industrial sized lasers, you know, it's they're, they're, they, they have.
Common Leaders:Okay. So you put off clean. That's not so subtle transition to one of the questions I had. Which is what have, what have you retained through all of your time since the knitting started and all the way through the first prints, because so much of your life, your lives as a, as a couple, but also as individuals is so different than it was just a few years ago. And then you mentioned something about cleaning every day. And I would guess that for a lot of people, that would be one of the first things to go off the priority list. But what types of things do you think were cores of your work ethic or work self or approach to work that you've kept that has made you most successful or helped the most?
Cassy:Do you want to take that one?
Chris:I can talk
Common Leaders:It could be individual.
Chris:I was a reliability engineer and like you see a manufacturing, that's the first thing that happens when you get busy maintenance gets put on the back burner and cleaning gets put on the back burner. so it's actually funny that Cassy's the one who pushes it. More than I do. Um, but yeah, no keeping that going, even when we are busy and we can use every hour to keep the lasers running, we do need to stop and get them clean
Cassy:Yeah.
Chris:Yeah. We have less quality issues that way. That's important.
Cassy:I think, I mean, we're talking in our business. I, I am not going to sit here and pretend like we have a clean house right now. I was a, a cleaning freak. We had a Chris and I had a schedule on Saturday mornings. We cleaned the
Common Leaders:I remember.
Cassy:know, we'd do. Well, we do that. I wiped down the countertops. My house has never been so dirty as it has been for the last two years of being an Archer Knits. I'm, I'm embarrassed. I will not bring people over to my house anymore because it's clearly we told you we weren't eating well. And I'm like, we still are not eating well because we don't have enough real time to sit down and make a lavish dinner anymore. It's tough. so personally I say a lot of things slipped and it sucks. But you know, in our business, I think we've been really good about maintaining really good habits. like Chris said, I pushed for the cleaning, but we are cleaning our, you know, we keep our, our lasers clean. That's very important. Um, I think it all kind of feeds into what I think is our best part of our Archer Knits's and rest part of our product is we are meticulous. We are so... we q. c. every product that goes out. We put our, if I had to pick two things that Archer Knits is good at, I would say customer service. And that's this guy right here. I am not the customer service person. That's all him. He's got patience. I don't, um, And I, I'm never going to pretend like he's always going to be the customer service person. Um, so good customer service and a very good product. Like we, the best example I can give lasers one, when you cut with a laser, I mean, remember a laser is a beam of light that is cutting through a product. So it inherently will leave soot. It leaves, it leaves soot. We make sure none of that soot to our clients. So it makes the product look clean. It makes the product look good. And like it's professionally made, which it is. we make sure that we double and triple check that all the orders that go out are the complete order. There's very rare instances where we've accidentally sent to the wrong person, or we've forgot part of that, an order like that happens. We're human, but like very rarely because we QC everything that goes out multiple times. Both of us put eyes on it.
Common Leaders:in addition to having a good reputation, but yeah, saves you money because I'm guessing that shipping is one of the, uh, most challenging variables when it comes to your, your profit margins? I, I heard that there was a whole backup of the last like month. Anyways. I had my I'm so spoiled living in a major city like San Diego, because there's a fair amount of products, including headphones that I now have on, but headphones that were supposed to be same day shipping. And they went four days without shipping. They canceled the order. I went to the exact same listing and I clicked the same day shipping for the exact same headphones. And they came that night. Which makes no sense because the same exact order link didn't work. So, um, I can't even imagine if, if Amazon prime, uh, no shout out needed is having trouble. That y'all are probably, is that true? Like your, your stuff is backed up.
Cassy:Well,
Chris:there's several variables here. So there's the, the supply chain breaking down just from the past year and a half. And, uh, there was a concerted effort by USPS to slow mail and increase the price of mail.
Cassy:That is a known fact. You can Google it. You can look at any of the news. NPR posted an article about it last night for the second or third time this week. They are trying to do this because they're trying to make up money, which apparently that service that we're all supposed to get from our federal government now has to be profitable. and we've, we've written to our congressmen last year when we were experiencing this extreme slowdown, the exact same extreme slowdown. We advised very angry customers who did not get their products on time to write to their congressmen because that's all we can do is try to affect change through our government. Because this is a government service and you can't sue the U S P S. You know, you can't go at the attorney's general or, but, um, but like you can't, we as our Archer Knits can't sue the USPS for the thousands of dollars of product they've lost on us or thousands of dollars of products we've had to reprint and resend because USPS just didn't ever delivered it. It sat for a month in the Greensboro hub of USPS and didn't move. We called, we sent service tickets. We've sent everything. Nothing happens and it's very frustrating. And then we get bad reviews and the reason we care so much, not just because we care about our customers, but we care also because the angrier customers will go on and leave a poor review because they didn't get product in time. And that's unfair to us
Common Leaders:I truly don't know the answer to this. We'll link that article, by the way. I'll, I'll ask you for that article. So, because I'm all about citations, um, we can share that news and maybe write your, your local people. Who's your local congressperson.
Chris:We we wrote to David Price. So he's our local, representative and then our senators are Richard Burr and Thom Tillis.
Cassy:And the only person to respond was Thom Tillis. No, Richard Burr, sorry. Yep. All right. I got the only person who responded to us.
Common Leaders:right.
Cassy:yeah, it looks like they kind of at least specialize that letter for us. You know, it wasn't just cookie cutter. but, it was a good try, and it was, you know, not really helpful, unfortunately, but. At least he put in some effort.
Common Leaders:Yeah. we'll shout them out for giving it at least a, a B effort maybe for a politician. Any effort is probably at least a B. Uh, did you try any other services or is postal service just typically the most cost efficient?
Chris:Well, yeah, that's. It's just not feasible. So if you do a private circuit shipping services, you're going to pay, or your customer's going to pay twice
Cassy:as much for it. And it's unfortunate, like ups and FedEx really can't compete. And that's why Amazon came up with their own fleet. Amazon and shippers, you know, they don't use USPS as much anymore, and they don't use FedEx or UPS as much as they used to. I think they still do somewhat. But I mean, I know I've gotten some FedEx or Amazon or one of those packages delivered from Amazon. But I'm like, they know because it's just not feasible under FedEx or ups for us to ship. we're talking about sometimes a 10 set of tags runs people, um, I don't know,$16 plus including tax. And the shipping costs about$8 for it through FedEx or ups. So would you really be willing to pay half the price of your product in shipping? It's already tough enough for them to pay$3 in shipping for you, USPS.
Common Leaders:That's that's, that is nothing I had on the agenda. But would you say I'm just going to skip to a totally different gear because one of the things I want to hear about, or I hope to hear about is the future of Archer Knits s. But if you think about the future of the Etsy, small shop type of industry shipping, as of course, prime. Because that's the one thing as you've talked about that you really can't control is the shipping. So when you think about the way the Amazon has completely flipped the market, where everybody has to do what Amazon does to meet the standard, which is now two day free shipping, how. And then the postal service, because it's subsidized can provide a cheaper shipping option. Is that going to be the biggest? Do you think that that could be one of the biggest hindrance. Of not just your marketplace, but the private small shop in general?
Chris:Yeah, no, I think it'll have a huge impact on every small, any small business that's e-commerce space. It'll be, it'll be a significant impact.
Cassy:Scary, cause. I mean, I want to be, wouldn't it be awesome if small businesses can meet a two day turnaround? And that's still expected of us. It's tough with competing with the Amazons of the world. Our guaranteed turnaround time is two weeks from purchase. Between two to four days, we'll send that proof that we talked about. Um, that proof has to be approved by the customer. So the customer usually takes a day or two to respond to us sometimes that right off the bat, and that's awesome. And that makes your product move quicker, but usually it takes them a day or two for them to check their member, to check their email. There's times when they don't give us a spam email because they, we use whatever Etsy has attached to that. And I get it. I would, I send all my, when I purchase things, I usually send it to a spam email to, um, so they don't know to check, or they didn't see that it came through. so anyway, that backs our timeline back up, and then, you know, what are, what we typically do is print and batch process. So we, you kind of have to wait for that color that they, you ordered to be on the lasers. So that takes us two days, usually. Realistically, we could, if nothing went wrong, we might be able to meet a one week turnaround. But because of those delays and the fact that, we've got too much chaos that could happen. And Chris and I also want to try to have a little bit of a life and not be printing 24 7
Common Leaders:right,
Cassy:Two week turnaround is really the best we can do. We get a lot of complaints that I can't believe it takes you that long, or, you know, can you give me the status of my order? Like we know why you're asking for the status of your order. It's because you want your product sooner. And I get that. I would too, but we're so restricted, and a lot of these people like approve within the seconds and they want their product right away and we try, but there's just a lot to out of our hands.
Common Leaders:Then once you get to the shipping process is completely out of your control, which is like, that's the thing I see getting really goofed up is let's say the postal service goes under, which has been talked about, I don't know, for the last 10 years of how there's just not sustainable to fund apparently. That would a huge wrench into things because you're either going to pick extended shipping because it costs less or you're going to pay the same in shipping as the cost of your product to get it there within the timeframes that have been set by the huge corporations of very fast. And also, you know, to your point about your process, everything is custom currently that you do. You don't do any boiler plate where you have like stock of which is where the big box and Amazon's really have made that possible because they stock my headphones in the local San Diego distribution center. They don't have to call anybody. They've already got it.
Cassy:I do all of ours by hand. And, we actually have employees this year, which was just, we actually hired our second one that last week. Yeah, yep. Another guy starting next week and he's awesome. And going to hopefully help so much. And our previous one, Kira fantastic. You know, shout out to Kira. She's actually a small business owner, herself. Hillsboro Honey, if anyone needs honey products. She's amazing. She made me some hand cream that I love. But she's a work horse she's amazing and has made this amazing, immediate impact. I can't help other than after five o'clock after I get out of work. So really it was just Chris kind of operating by himself for the last well, we slowed down we slowed down to a normal rate in April. So April through August, Chris was able to do it by himself. But after that it was nutso and August hit and we just, but
Common Leaders:And now you have two.
Cassy:Now two.
Common Leaders:That's so cool.
Cassy:he's saying why it's going to make a great, great impact for us. So I'm really excited. They've been A-plus.
Common Leaders:Oh man. I'm so excited. so excited for you.
Cassy:But my point saying is that. If we didn't have them, and we're lucky enough to be able to afford having them; having help. We, there's no way to heck we would ever be able to speed up our process. There's no way we could ever get all the stuff we needed it to be shipped out on time. There's already backup of shipping. That's another reason why we can't get products out quicker is we have a lot of products and I only know. Really one, maybe two people working on shipping each day. So like, man, it's just, if USPS were to ever go under, I do not think any other would be a lot of small businesses that would go out of business and there's a good chance. It would affect us very poorly. Scary.
Common Leaders:Yeah, yeah,
Cassy:point
Chris:we can offer, the alternative shipping methods and we do.
Cassy:Yeah.
Chris:Then again, like as a small business, you want to be productive. You want to, those are things you control any. It having to ship ups, FedEx and USPS. It's just an extra, um,
Cassy:an extra stop for Chris when he drops off packages and an extra set of shipping that we're going to have to figure out another, we watch the shipping. We're very, we told you we really like customers. So we like our customers. We want them to be taken care of. So we watch our tracking a lot of times to make sure things are moving along as they should, or like, we don't like to be, we don't like for people to reach out to us and be like, Hey, my shipping never moved. Well, we like to be the people to be like, oh crap. It's not moving. Let's see if we get submit a service ticket, which usually does zero. Thank you, USPS. But we try to be proactive, but like, imagine now us watching USPS, FedEx and UPS.
Common Leaders:So we, we had another technical glitch again. Thank you. Shout out to frontier here in Sarasota, Florida for sketching out on me and my Airbnb. Sorry about that. where, where are your heads at?
Cassy:Well, I think I, it felt really good to finally tell our story on the small business side for USPS. So I really appreciate that. I don't think I really don't think there's enough people complaining about. The United States Postal Services screwing up. So, and it's not fair because it's not the workers. It's not the amazing post man who one day picked up over 50 packages from our house one day and had to get in all 50 before he could leave our house. I felt really bad for that, that learn your lesson. Don't do USPS pickup, unless you have less than 10 packages. Um,
Common Leaders:Yeah,
Cassy:Amazing guy. He's like, it's not on them. It's not at that level. It's, the high level, the fact that you, the United States Postal Service has gotten politicized and sucks, but I congressmen. So everyone should.
Common Leaders:Was there something you wanted to add there? You look like you're trying to be punny. So
Chris:Maybe, maybe request an interview with them
Common Leaders:Okay.
Cassy:with the board of USPS, put Chris on the line, see what he says,
Common Leaders:I do want to do a rumble episode. I still have this vision of a rumble episode of. Uh, essentially, uh, Ben Shapiro or a Joe Rogan style interview, but basically that, those two on opposite sides. So maybe Chris, you could be rep I mean, just rock the outfit again, throw a dip in, represent America, and then you could have a USPS uh, post-service kind of fellow or lady in charge, and you could just throw down with them.
Cassy:I would love to hear what their excuses. I really wide, well, I know what their excuse is. It's going to be in the article that you're going to link here. If like, you know, it's, they, they have this excuse of needing to be profitable and it's just like, you're a service, you're a government service. Why do you need to be profitable? Like, sorry.
Common Leaders:So now we're talking about communism. Oh, oh boy. We're about to go off the rails now. Bernie. Uh, no, I, I agree. The postal service. If they have goofed up there, I guess their margins long enough to be that far in the hole and now pass it along? And somehow, oh, well this is about to take a hard left turn. Are you ready? The auto industry was not a government service and got bailed out. So maybe it's the government who put that person in place. And this pulling the purse strings in deciding that subsidies to private organizations rather than the subsidies for their own organizations are the wrong priorities. Is that where you wanted to go with it?
Chris:I would agree with you on that. You don't try to push my hot take. I told you no hot takes
Common Leaders:Okay. I'm just curious because, uh, on topic and off topic, a sports team without mentioning names is trying to have the state government pay for its entire stadium while the federal postal service doesn't have enough funds to maintain good service.
Cassy:I did not
Common Leaders:The request is that the city of Buffalo and the state pay for the entire new stadium that they, you know, they would like to provide zero pennies to that effort.
Chris:but they'll raise funds for it by selling seats to fans.
Common Leaders:Yes, they will raise their own funds. So raise their own funds to pay for whatever it is that anyways, we might have to cut a little bit of that one out, but thank you for at least giving us a football team in Buffalo.
Chris:In Buffalo. So I'll go back to it. Like we w competition is good. We like competition in the U S. The only way we're going to maintain competition was with an institution like USPS. We can't compete with Amazon. We don't have our own fleet. We need USPS.
Cassy:We need you as USPS. It's sucks.
Common Leaders:That's a great heartache. Well, they also have been a great employer of people for, for a long, long time. Like you, even as a kid. Somehow the postal service and it's not a knock on the other services, but if you were to line up, do like a lineup of a person in a suit from each different organization, like what the delivery people, wear. The postal service is up there in terms of. The image that they hold like there, these people and everybody knows that it's hard to get a job at the postal service. I remember that from like in high school and in college that it's tough to get a job there because there's all these different requirements. Um, so I'm guessing that they not only have a big workforce, but also a pretty quality workforce, the postal service. And to your point, it's not them that's goofing it up.
Cassy:Well, from my understanding, they're also cutting that workforce, which is really unfortunate for them.
Common Leaders:Well, that, that leads me to some thoughts about why nobody can hire right now. But, uh, so many ins. But, uh, yeah, but to your, to a thing you brought up that's related to also that is you now have two employees, the first of which you've already brought on for now two weeks, you've had, what's her name again? I cannot remember her name and say life Kiara, Kiara, Kiara. Um, and that's been going really well from what I hear. So your first hire in what is again, see previous episodes about one of the weirdest labor market. In a long time in the United States and your first hire, it sounds like so far has been a rockstar.
Cassy:God, we got lucky. Well, and it helps. There's a lot of, I think things that we did and thank God. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say this, but thank God for you, Trevor, for helping us do this. Cause we certainly did not have the expertise to make these hires without you. And I relied 100% on you to help me do this. So A-plus there. Um,
Common Leaders:Well, I brought out, I brought out what you already knew about what you needed. I don't know the answer to the type of skills and the personality you needed. I just forced you to think maybe a little bit longer about it. But it was really in, that goes to the quality part that you've talked about both before we jumped on the recording and during the recording, that's so key to what you've done so far and why I pushed you so hard during the hiring process to really think through it. Because at no point in any other part of this business endeavor, or even before it was a business, are you two the kind of people that look at your, your business or your product or your job, and look at it casually. You don't look at things casually. And so that I think helped during the hiring process to try to find the right person who is going to help you build quality or expand on quality. Um, and I'm curious, yeah.
Cassy:I was gonna say, well, that was like a huge part of what we took seriously during the hiring process. Was who can keep up the same level of product and service that Chris and I achieve every day. And I'm not trying to make it sound like we are these rock stars, but we have very high expectations for ourselves. And as I've already said that we have a process where with QCing, we have very high expectations of the product that goes out. So who could be that person? Right. So we interviewed a few people. We screened. It's amazing what happens when you actually offer people livable wage, you actually get applicants. Right. Crazy. Um, you know, that was a huge thing for Chris and I, we weren't going to offer the minimum wage in North Carolina is still like seven 50, right? Trevor it's actually right in front of me. I can cheat 7 25 is actually what the minimum wage in North Carolina. There are no rules.
Common Leaders:That's what it was in New York state when we were like 16 years. Which was a long time ago.
Cassy:But that is unfair that North Carolina is still stuck in that. But anyway, 7 25 is not a livable wage. I think that is very. So we provided a livable wage and it's amazing the amount of people that will apply for a job when you offer a livable wage. Even people who are crying to commute an hour to us would still apply. And I'm just like, you must be that's, it's just horrible that you would be willing to drive an hour, which is going to kill your guests. That money that you're taking in is going to decrease because of the gas that you're putting in and your time, like that's a lot.
Common Leaders:So you were talking about the quality and how bizarre it's been to try to find help, but also how it seems like rewarding. It's been to try to do it in a way that sticks with your values and how you felt maybe when you were an entry-level jobs, both from a wage perspective and from providing breaks perspective. And I'll let you take it from there.
Cassy:I think Kira only interviewed her, one of the main things that stood out to us was her experience. She, she was at, um, she did copy editing, so she like, clearly if you're catching errors and in people's writing, you can catch errors that would come out. Like sometimes the lasers will skip a line or something and they're usually minor defect. But, like I said, we have very high standards and we don't send out that. So we knew that that was already an A+ on her end, but she's a small business owner. She is, she's like clearly knows what it takes to run your own small business. And that means that she knew that, we, we held the high standards that we held she already is doing that on her own small business. So it made me feel a little bit more comfortable. Made Chris and I feel a lot more comfortable that if she was able to maintain her own small business, then she would treat ours with respect, which is huge for us. We actually got, she came in two weeks ago?
Chris:Yeah.
Cassy:And she's amazing. We got lucky. She, she comes right in, she works, takes her break and you know that she worked some more. No errors. Knock on wood. Everything she's done has been great. So, wow. We're really lucky.
Chris:I do think it helps, like you were saying that we. Where you worked part-time jobs before, um, in high school, in college and in college. So we got to see like what a terrible part-time job is like, and we don't want that here. So yeah. We do what we can to make sure like we get worked done, but it's also enjoyable.
Cassy:I should say, I'm experiencing this all through secondhand. Like Chris is with her the whole day. I get to check in right before I go to work in the morning. And I say hi, because I like her and we're friends. But It takes not to set makes Chris sound difficult, but it takes a lot to impress Chris and Chris has been impressed. I'm, I'm happy we've been lucky that they get along really well. Kiara is great. She's friendly. We like the same music. Thank goodness. Some people do not like Chris's music.
Chris:She might be being nice.
Common Leaders:the, the hiring was, was a really fun topic. I'm really proud of both of you for how you handled it. And I'm extremely, extremely proud of how. Opened it up to in terms of making it a fun place to be and trying to make it a place that you might want to work. I think that's super awesome in short because we've all had those kinds of crap jobs before. You don't have to be a crap job if you're also an entry-level, starting a small shop kind of place. And my hope, my hope is with how it started so far is they will set the standard for everybody you hire in the future by being awesome, because you'll never accept anything less. That's the type of stuff that will forever put you in good shape and hopefully build a trustable product, even if you're not there to blow off the soot.
Cassy:Well, hopefully we keep hiring. We just need to keep our, keep the business as long as the business keeps coming and we'll keep hiring.
Common Leaders:And you know, that, that a common leaders slash Trevor will be there to push and prod you every step of the way to make sure that happens. As long as it's what you want. If at any point you decide, you want to quit, Chris just got to tell me and asked, I'll start giving you crap tips.
Chris:To the next question. I think.
Common Leaders:Yeah. Yeah, not me. This is such a stereotypical. Anybody that's ever interviewed with me for a job knows that this is the kind of question I ask. What would you tell yourself three years ago? Three, four years ago, prior to the business starting, and it becoming real, what kind of advice might you whisper in your ear that you think would help you now? And I will suggest to you that it doesn't have to be super business specific because, uh, you are a whole unit in whole humans and that's, what's made it work well. So any advice under the sun that you would tell yourself that you think would make you more whole or more successful now?
Cassy:Do you wanna take this one?
Chris:Or were you just going to give it a.
Common Leaders:Yeah, go
Cassy:Awkward,
Common Leaders:or save the best for last.
Cassy:I like that better.
Chris:Plus, if you say the opposite as me, I have time to re-think it. I feel like I'm stealing probably what you're going to say.
Common Leaders:That would be great.
Cassy:It's a couple of things. I mean, I think there's business related things, right. There's stuff that we could tell ourselves business wise, but, you know, I guess I would say there's two. I have two responses. One's business related, one's personal related. Business related. Don't be afraid to invest in new products. Um, Chris and I would consistently get what we felt like was overwhelmed with the one or two products that we offered and, um, feel like we were so busy that we. Get into another product. And I'm not saying selling tags and then selling, I dunno, skirts, I'm saying we can offer variations of our tags, you know, that kind of stuff.
Common Leaders:Don't self limit.
Cassy:Yeah. we were self-limiting ourselves because we were, we felt like we couldn't handle any more traffic when really what was happening was we were putting all of this effort into these new products and we were ready to rock and roll. We were just holding back because we were so like scared. We were just going to get overwhelmed with business that. Our competitors beat us to the punch on a couple of things. And that that was killer, you know, and now it looks like we're copying them and we're, that's not what we were doing. We had this product first. They just, or maybe at the same time as them, who knows, they just weren't sitting on it like we did. it was tough. A lot of times that happened. Um,
Common Leaders:Like the sticky note analogy, like people always wish that they were the ones that had invented the sticky notes. And there's people that have talked about that they were doing that way ahead of the sticky note person. And now they're yeah. Yeah. Launch, launch, launch some of the better advice I've ever got.
Cassy:Yeah, it's tough. Especially when you're successful on one product. Now our standard sized tags, our number one best seller. We have no problem keeping up. Well, that's not true. We do have problems keeping up with the demand on those. And it's tough for us to say, okay, well, we need to, we need to add more, right?
Common Leaders:Mm.
Beckers:It's we, when we do it, we look back on it and say, why didn't we do this earlier?
Common Leaders:Oh, yeah, that, that, that is real. That is, as soon as we realize we've made a mistake or that we should be doing something differently, you immediately throw so much self hate towards your past self and you want the change and the fix and the improvement to be done not on a reasonable timeline, but now. Or as quickly as possible because, uh, yeah, you can. Unfortunately, you can only know what you know at the time. But it's, it's so killer because you can just see all the things that would have saved you or improved on. Uh, so don't be afraid to launch. Don't be afraid to try new things.
Cassy:Yeah. And I would also on the personal side. Work-life balance is real. And this is probably I have a feeling, this is what Chris is going to transition into. So I have a feeling, I know what his response is, but, um, it's really tough to be. I mean, we are husband and wife first. We are a business partner second. And, I, I feel like sometimes it's hard to prioritize having that life. And I know I've already said it. We're not keeping up with having dinners. And that's something that I've always treasured is sitting down together. That is your time together to sit down and talk about your day at dinner. You don't blow it off. And for the last year and a half, there's been a lot of times where we blown that off and that's put strain on. I think that would put strain on the best relationship is not making time yourselves.
Common Leaders:including as business partners, to your point.
Cassy:Well, and I'm not there for eight hours out of the day. When we do have that time, we ended up talking about the business for that hour and catching up. And it's not what should be doing. Let's be fair. We know what a good relationship is. I think we do have a great relationship. I'm lucky enough to be married to a guy for, six years today!
Common Leaders:Happy anniversary. Just a hard transition into that six years being married.
Cassy:All right. We've been, we've been lucky enough to be married for six years then together for six before that. So God, I hope there's another, much more than six after that, then we're done.
Common Leaders:That would mean that you made it six years married, six years dating in six years as business partners. So after that, you know, like what is there,
Cassy:Yeah, I don't think there's none there. Oh God. Anyway.
Common Leaders:Are archers burning of knits.
Beckers:Yup.
Common Leaders:Uh, so, so work-life balance
Cassy:Work life balance.
Common Leaders:and, and don't south limit try new things. How about you, Mr. Mr. Dr. Becker?
Chris:Cassy's right. She did kind of stealing my first one. Like I'll echo that again, because like
Cassy:And I think you have a different spin on it.
Chris:I do. Like growing up, you always hear that hard, hard work makes you successful. Hardwork an ingredient, but it's not the full picture. You do have to be willing. You're going to be willing to try a product. A lot of them will fail. And you just keep trying until one sticks.
Common Leaders:Wow.
Chris:So it's still a little spin off of what Cassy said already. Um, I guess the other thing I would talk about is in it ties into work life balance is.... Um, go get help when you need it. I wish we had reached out to you sooner. Like really, we couldn't have done the hiring process without you.
Common Leaders:Well, recognizing you needed, it was a big step to recognizing you needed it and you were ready. You knew you needed a help. You didn't know when it was the right time and that's fair.
Cassy:But we've already described their horrible hours. We were working last year. That shouldn't happen.
Chris:Luckily, last year we didn't. Cassy's Mom came in.
Cassy:My mom also got laid off during the pandemic A-plus pandemic style, but we were able to
Chris:Thank God your Mom got laid off(haha).
Cassy:Made me sound horrible. Uh, mom, if you're listening, I'm so sorry. But really
Common Leaders:Shout out to Diane. Thank you, Diane. For so many things.
Cassy:well, she, she did save our butts multiple times with 50 orders to ship out. Chris had to print off another 50 orders and couldn't do that shipping. You know, mom to the rescue.
Common Leaders:Yeah.
Cassy:And she wouldn't have had time if she, if the pandemic hadn't happened.
Common Leaders:Okay. So what would you tell yourself before you ever picked up knitting.
Cassy:Ooh, that's a hard
Common Leaders:That you think would now help you? You can think before the time of knitting let's call it. BK. So Chris and Cassy BK times.
Cassy:That's a tough one. I mean, that's more of like a, because we weren't really. I don't think Chris and I had any, any plans to open our own business. We were never, those people. We were always going to be salaried workers in engineering.
Chris:I'm a stereotypical engineer. I like stability. Consistent work. get that with a small businesses.
Common Leaders:You've changed so much.
Cassy:And I am the weirdest engineer because, but I want to be in staff management. I want to be in project management. So that's another reason I haven't left. My job is I love my job. My job is great.
Common Leaders:Sure.
Cassy:I'm getting there. Like, I think there's a career path for me there, so I don't really want to leave.
Common Leaders:Yeah. You like being there.
Chris:I guess that's what I would tell myself. Like it's going to be a rollercoaster and just like calm down.
Common Leaders:Are you telling that to your business partner or to yourself?
Chris:to myself.
Common Leaders:Yeah, really?
Cassy:I'm chill. Chris is, Chris is the panic, right? I understand that he's always been the person pushing for stability. He's always been the person watching, the money and watching the counts and making sure bills are paid. And, he's the responsible one of the two of us, for sure. So I just, I roll with the punches a little bit easier, I think. But, it's because I'm probably less responsible than him, so. Yeah, we have different, different work strategies, but
Common Leaders:Sure.
Cassy:yeah, I actually really think that we got lucky that, I mean, you don't know, and I will always say this I'm transitioning off of the questioning. So I still don't know if I have a good answer on that
Common Leaders:Yeah, that's fine.
Cassy:but I will always say this. Whoever tells you that working with your spouse is a walk in the park is lying to you or is sugarcoating.
Chris:Especially if I'm your spouse.
Common Leaders:Well, Let me ask you the converse because a lot of people say, don't, don't, uh, eat where you Pooh or something like that. The essence of it is don't work with your spouse. What would you tell people about the flip side of it? There's this image and people have had it because I work with Laura and people immediately assume that it must be so awful. Do you think in the same way that it's not a walk in the park that it's also so awful?
Cassy:Oh, no, no. I love working with my husband.
Common Leaders:That's how I've heard it from you. And I, and there's no tongue in cheek and asking that question because at no point during this endeavor, have I ever heard either of you less close on the next call than you were the previous one. Like you're always, it seems like it's been really, really good for you overall. Would you agree?
Cassy:That's interesting.
Chris:No, it definitely is. I mean, there's some challenges with it. Um,
Cassy:I mean, it's, it's silly things. Like I wiped down tags a different way than Chris does. Like when we cleaning I do it a different and Chris does, and it drives him nuts. Um, he seals boxes for shipping in a different way than I do. And it drives me nuts. I mean, really, if you don't want to dig into it, I'm sure there's reasons behind, like I'm a control freak. He's a control freak. One of us is a control
Common Leaders:You're both trained engineers.
Cassy:But, honestly, it's so nice to be able to like, come, come downstairs when I'm, I need a five minute breather from working my day job and see my husband at home. Complain to him for five minutes and let him complain to me and give each other a hug and head back upstairs.
Common Leaders:Yeah. Yeah.
Cassy:It's it's the weirdest stuff that you don't realize how amazing working with your spouse can be. And I think you married somebody who's at least. Either either you're perfect opposite or close enough to you that you're not clashing. I think we're probably the latter of that. We're, we're pretty similar in certain ways, but we have little things that we clash on. But like we don't, we work closely enough that we don't clash enough to make it uncomfortable.
Chris:So we went to school together. Working side by side. And then we took out a house that needed updates. We were still needs updates, but we did projects for like three years together. So it wasn't full-time but, we knew we were,
Cassy:we raised 3 amazing dogs. Well, um, we, we work well together and I, I really think that's part of life planning. And you don't marry somebody you don't get along with. Or Hey, let's like, that should be the number one reason to marry someone is because you actually liked them. And we actually like each other, he makes me laugh. Hopefully I make laugh, or at least he laughs at me. One of the two.
Common Leaders:Nah, nah, that's not true. Uh, mostly. So would you say that if you go into business with somebody, you should also marry them?
Cassy:Yeah, go for it. Yeah. If you have multiple business partners, might as well get all, all of them done at the same time.
Common Leaders:I think we might be starting a new branch of things right here. Uh, how about you, Chris? Any, any advice to some young couple that's considering starting a business together?
Chris:Yeah, I guess, well, Cassy already mentioned it, but make sure you put time away for yourselves. We like to take a walk with Lily and in the mornings.
Cassy:Can you see her by the way in the camera?
Common Leaders:No, she did. She did a lumpy, did make an appearance, but I can't see her at the moment. No, I can't see it right now.
Chris:So, yeah, that's kind of break from everything. We typically take Lily for like a 45 minute walk. It's really easy to get out of that habit when we're, it starts to add up
Common Leaders:Oh I'll bet.
Chris:and I guess just sticking, sticking to those. And then work around those things instead of planning those around the work.
Cassy:And I think there's things we can improve upon, right? That's why we got help from our two employees. So that Chris and I can have that dinner again, because sit down and have dinner at night and we can maybe have a date night once in a while. I don't think anyone's ever going to tell you that starting your own business, in the first two years is easy. We're well aware that that was expected. Like we were going be busy. We were going to need to put effort in. That we were going to lose a lot of our private time, like, yeah, that was known. It's just, we're got to get to the point where I think at that level, in our business where it's time to transition to, accepting help, getting employees so that we can get having a real life.
Chris:Don't let 16 hour days is be your norm.
Cassy:Yeah,
Common Leaders:Forever at least.
Chris:get none, but it's going to happen because you need to figure out where you're, where you're at with what sales and in your workload. But then once you, once you know where you're at, just making sure you reach out and get some help, so you can get back to a normal life.
Common Leaders:You guys are so cute.
Cassy:It's our anniversary. We're just extra, extra lovey-dovey.
Common Leaders:I know I on that note. Is there something about the dynamics that you have as a business or as business partners now or something just about the business at large? When you think about like those habits where you walk Lily and you want to get into the dinners, what do you hope is better a year from now? If we sit down and have a conversation exactly a year from now, you hope to say that I have checked this box. A macro level or even a micro. What do you hope is the most improved in the next year?
Cassy:Oh man. My mind went to something that I can't say on the,
Chris:Mine did too... wait, maybe I'm going to say it anyways.
Common Leaders:Uh, yeah. Okay. Go for it.
Chris:Okay. So our guilty pleasure is playing Fortnite
Common Leaders:Okay.
Chris:right around the same page. Here we play with my brother.
Cassy:It's a shooting video game that is mainly dominated by 12 year old children.
Chris:Okay, but this is important. So that's kind of what we do to calm down to like, besides walk Lily. Yeah, last night we had all of the advantage. Like we were going to win. It was us three, me, Cassy, and my brother all on a team. And there's just one person left.
Cassy:One person out of a trio. So there should have been three and three. It was us three against one.
Chris:And we were up, we were, we had the high ground. There was no reason for us to lose this match and we lost. I'm going to blame it on our work fatigue. So year, when that happens, we need to come out with a w
Common Leaders:So, firstly, you're not going to disappoint your big brother, Steve Steven. He goes by Steven.
Chris:I won't point fingers, but it wasn't mine or Cassy's fault.
Common Leaders:You just got through saying it's it's Archer Knits' fault.
Cassy:I might've fallen down the hill first, which then alerted the enemy to where we were and they might've shot me while I was falling down the hill. But I was saying to everybody, as I was falling down the hill guys, he's right there. Don't fall down this hill. And then Steven fell down the hill. So really it's stephen.
Common Leaders:see.
Cassy:I don't know why we tried three times. Yeah.
Common Leaders:So, so next year, this time that's the backers of North Carolina and the backer of Syracuse will have really improved your team gaming ability.
Cassy:Yeah. Yeah. Clearly that's where we're going with that clearly.
Chris:But on a serious note, like we're growing, we realize that we need to try to be one step ahead instead of one step behind, especially with getting home so that we can have work-life. Hopefully next year we will still be growing, but we'll be in better shape to work some normal hours. That makes sense. Yeah.
Common Leaders:Yeah, or just be starting your goofy hours now. I mean, in fairness, like your, your holiday season may always be, always be a little bit extra, but, but, um, all right. So what's the, as we fast forward to next, what is it? It's October before October, September. So your August ish, August ish is when it picks up. And maybe next year, I'm just throwing around ideas. Maybe next year you have an August celebration and it's like the end of business sanity for about five months. What's going to be the meal of choice, because you talked about having some sort of more routine dinner. Maybe this is a really fancy dinner and where are you going to go? Or what are you going make?
Cassy:Um, I'm going to have sushi.
Chris:Mmm. Sushi sounds good. I'll go with sushi too, yeah.
Common Leaders:Okay. Sushi. Sushi. Okay. We're going to talk in three years. So three years from now, it's 20, 24, 20, 25, somewhere floating in that range. I don't want you to think if everything. Goes as it's gone, but based on what you see now and the people you just hired, this is such a foggy time for your company, because the people you hired haven't had any sort of growth impact yet. And I, I think they will. But if everything is at your back and pushing you forward, imagine yourself as a sailboat and the wind is just right, where will Archer knits be? In three four years? When you walk into the shop, what's it like, maybe that's a good place to start. You don't have to get into any industry details.
Cassy:we're still in the shop. I'd imagine we're offering significantly more product. Chris and I have debated for awhile getting into other industries where like side hustles hustles. And this is like our side hustle, right. This is a side hustle for a side hustle. But it's not a side hustle anywhere. Um,
Common Leaders:it's just the hustle.
Cassy:yeah, it's just the hustle. So we, we talked about doing, you know, investing in other side projects. I think there's a possibility for that. But I think in, in my mind, I think three years from now, cause. It's very hard to tell because our we're still in the pandemic. We still not know if the success that we're experiencing is pandemic related because people have lost their jobs.
Common Leaders:let's assume it is
Cassy:let's assume it is, but let's hope, as we continue to do as well as we do. I think. It's a little bit tough for us, Chris and I have had this debate a million times. We like being home together. We don't really want to leave our house. We like being, having their shop out of our house, but I do, I imagine, like right now our employees are seasonal. So I would like to, our business continues to grow as it looks like it is. I would imagine keeping our employees on full-time or not full-time, but full year.
Common Leaders:yeah, yeah. Year round.
Cassy:I think that's important. So I think. Investing in new revenues or a new products and investing in full-time or longer-term employees are important. Yeah. All right.
Chris:Let me jump in?
Cassy:Yeah,
Chris:I, I agree. 100%. We want, we want to expand our product offerings, but we also want to try out some new technologies to, so hopefully in three years we'll be at that point.
Cassy:Not just, not just even the technologies we have, like it would be, I've gotten, I have a million ideas of knitting related products that we could offer. And we can do that with the laser engravers we have, I just haven't had time to develop them yet. And I would really want to get into that. And that's like a great avenue for us.
Chris:We keep talking about the equipment side of things. Um,, the other half of what we do is like the design aspect. In three years, I hope we could have a, hopefully we keep growing and we can have a full-time designer.
Common Leaders:Yeah,
Cassy:I mean, I think we do okay for ourselves on designs. We're not trained graphic designers, we're trained engineers. So that's why our manufacturing is excellent. But I'm, I would never tell him, go in and say, we are the best designers. There is definitely room for improvement there. So, being able to hire good help and good experience would be just paramount right there. That would be huge higher for us. And it might be that, I mean, we do have one of our new employees has graphic design experience. Maybe he'll make an immediate impact. We don't know where that is going to take us, but I, I agree, expanding our graphic design abilities and expanding our products through graphic design is huge.
Common Leaders:I had like about 45 visions as you're talking, which is super cool. Cause you described it really, really well. Between the two of you. You put together a really good. What it could be in the future. So props for that, because I think it's the first time I've heard it cohesively. Do you envision yourselves continuing to be in the day to day? In this version of the world, it's hard for me to see where, where you are on the shop floor. For instance, it seems more or less. Business development and more of continuing to build the structure of the business and pulling in the right people to make that vision come true. But maybe I'm misinterpreting where you see yourselves in it.
Cassy:Well, I have zero intention of leaving me job. So my
Common Leaders:Right.
Cassy:job will always be my priority. Um, so really the question is on Chris,
Common Leaders:Well, but still even now though, you do a lot of manual, like you're pretty hands-on with what's going on outside of your normal work routine too, which couldn't possibly continue in a world where you're developing new products all the time.
Cassy:Yeah. Now I think finding the right help is just key and it's always going to be key.
Chris:I would, yeah, in three years I would like to have like a higher level role, I guess. Um. I come from, again, I I've said this like 10 times, but going from manufacturing, it's really frustrating when you have, um, someone in leadership who doesn't even know how to, to run their own plant. So I still want to, I still want the hands-on approach, but then I'd also like to be able to back off a little bit and, work on some of the bigger initiatives. Like new equipment, new product. So you were seeing where we can expand.
Cassy:And I think there's a lot of stuff we haven't done. Gosh, if you sat me down and made me make a list of all the things we could do, not just new product wise, but we could spend time in looking into ways to make our current product better. We order our materials from certain people in certain places. I'd love to spend some time doing research on like, oh, we need to order from this place instead they have way better product. Like when we never had time to sit down and like request samples from multiple different places so that we could see which one we like better. There's so much stuff we could do.
Chris:Yeah. There's a lot more, we can, we can automate if we have the time to do it. And there's, there's a lot more. We can improve the website to make it easier for customers to order.
Cassy:I still want to do that.
Chris:Yes.
Common Leaders:I'm so, so excited for you and Archer knits. Cause sometimes you talk about it like, I don't know where it's going to go. And all those like tentative feelings are totally valid. Right? But then, but then when you start to lay out the vision for what it could be, and I feel strongly and I, I will always reference her as a great example, Corey, who I work for is an example of what can happen when you don't put the cap on yourself. When you don't precap and you don't, I mean, you, you sometimes do conversationally, but in terms of how your brains operate, you don't cap it. You're constantly coming up with strategy. Constantly. Compared to where you were even six months ago, or it was more of I'm trying to get through this day, in this week.
Chris:Well, I having employees has really helped with that.
Common Leaders:Yeah. Yeah. I think it's going to go super well. Uh, I mean, I know it will, because as I said, I will be behind you with a plow truck pushing and pulling wherever you ask and allow.
Cassy:Thank you.
Common Leaders:Why should people decide to check out your site? Because right now you have tags and you have some knit items. As the product line expands, what sets Archer knits apart? And how could somebody that maybe hasn't seen your page find you and what should they buy from you?
Cassy:No, I think we are pretty niche. Uh, good and a bad thing, right? I don't know if we have a lot of options for non knitters right now. Hopefully in the future we will. although that's being said, everyone knows one. Everyone knows a knitter. You'd be surprised. They come out of the woodwork. Hold up a pair of knitting needles and say, somebody helped me. And I guarantee you, somebody in your family is going to run forward and help you knit your items. So.
Chris:Think we offer a customized product like. Find a customized gift, especially around the holidays for$20 or less, that's something.
Cassy:We do that great. I think we've said it before and I'll say it again. Our two biggest assets that our Archer Knits's are excellent customer service and an excellent product. We have a lot of competition out there. We will beat our competition in terms of quality, hands down. Like I'm not saying that because I'm trying to be cocky. I'm saying that because the effort that we put in is not something that others do just from my, my visuals of what others are doing, that they promoted on their social media pages or that I'm hearing through hearsay. And through our reviews from our customers, we get several reviews from customers that say our product is quality. Which is not always something you can get. So we're not just there for quality product. We're there to hold. You know, We hold hands a lot. We realized that the product that we make is customized and that's a little bit confusing. We're our customers to help them through the PR experience. We keep them updated. As the experience moves along. They, they have full control over these designs. This is their product, we just manufacture it for them. So like customer service will always be our number one in terms of, mainly because Chris and I have been there, we've ordered online a million times and how many times have you been disappointed by the product you've gotten?
Common Leaders:Right
Chris:So coming up with your own logo can be kind of intimidating. Cassy's put together some templates to help out with that.
Cassy:And we try to be really, we're really wanting to be customer focused. And that's something that I really think sets us apart from other, any, not just, not just lasering or tag engraving or whatever, um, shops, but at Etsy shops. I think a lot of Etsy shops, you don't, you get people who maybe aren't the most personable. And I think we people.
Common Leaders:Yeah, and I, and I also happened to know something else. And you mentioned it earlier in the interview, which has, I think is a great reason to support you where you are right now, which is you're providing jobs to people. There are a lot of Etsy shops that compete in every Etsy market I have found that are not based in the U S. And that's not to say that it's wrong to support something. That's not domestic, but I do think. Time where that matters to people. It's worthwhile to know that what you produce is produced in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with people that live in Hillsborough, North Carolina. And you're not just paying them, you're paying them of, of a good wage compared to what is required in your locality. And I think that's a good reason to support you. Is that you're pushing out a quality product. Doing it in a way that is sustainable, selfishly for you as a business, it's a good move because it's sustainable to treat people well and to pay people well. But as a potential consumer that is considering who to go with I think that that's a really great reason to consider Archer Knits s is because you like, you're trying to build a business that treats its employees well. Um, and that's important, I think also
Cassy:W we not just, we try to treat our employees. Well, we try to treat everyone well. I've said it with my customers. We've said it with our employees. That's really kind of Chris and I. We're not, try to be good people in every aspect of our lives. So this is just an extension of that. And, um, I think we're. Without sounding cheesy or hardworking where, um, a husband and wife team that is just trying to make her way in America right now. I think everybody, every small business wants to do well. And the reason I think we continue to do well is because of the amount of effort we put in,
Common Leaders:Yeah, I agree.
Cassy:we're trying.
Common Leaders:Cool. Well, I appreciate you both taking the time I anticipate we'll have more interviews like this in the future, maybe with better internet service. and also as things continue, you have so many exciting things on your horizon, including what it's like to be an employee or for the first time. Over a period of time. And I think that could be really interesting to people, but I really, really appreciate you working through the glitches with me today and sharing some insights with people. Which I think are going to be really, really valuable, especially for the new Etsy shops of the world. When you talk about what it's like to have a business within your own home and what comes along with that, and, the self-limiting not being afraid is gold. I think because those are things you hear from people that are trillionaires and y'all, aren't big trillionaires yet. You're just people who have been successful with this. And that's attainable. And that's what I like. And that's what I appreciate. Thank you.
Cassy:thanks.