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Are You Positioning Your Brand Correctly? A Roundtable Discussion with Executives From Doris Dev and Canopy

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The way you position your company in the eyes of your customers is the most make-or-break decision you can make. Who are you selling to? What problem are you solving for them? Why should a customer buy from you? All these questions need answers, and if they aren’t the right answers, it’s going to be a pretty rocky road. 

So when you hear about a humidifier that’s being positioned as a beauty product, what do you think? Good idea or bad? Well, for the guys at Canopy, it turned out to be a great idea and we got into it on this special in-person roundtable episode of Up Next in Commerce. 

Joining me in-studio here in Austin, Texas was Eric Neher, CMO at Canopy, Justin Seidenfeld, CEO at Doris Dev and Co-Founder of Canopy, and Lucas Lappe, Head of Product and Co-Founder at Doris Dev. We talked all things Canopy, but we also dove into Doris Dev, a product development agency that has helped scale companies like Blueland, Magic Spoon, BioLite, Supply, Lalo, and many more. During this epic chat, we touched on a little bit of everything — from branding and logistical issues to product design and marketing, and beyond. I hope you have as much fun listening as I had hanging out with this lively trio.

Main Takeaways:

  • Trendspotting: One of the most recent trends, particularly in the world of beauty, is blending innovative, creative experiences with products that are created with sustainable materials. Today’s customers have higher expectations than ever before and they are looking to support brands that rise to the occasion in every way.
  • An Obvious Way In: When you are thinking about using a subscription model, you should have an obvious reason to get in touch with your customer or a product that they need to replace or replenish that is the basis of your subscription. When you force goods on customers that they don’t need or even necessarily want via a subscription, you spoil the relationship you have built with them.
  • The Need For Newness: Bringing new products, experiences, and opportunities to customers is one of the best ways to keep them engaged. But in creating new things — even if it’s just an updated version of something that exists — you are constantly struggling to make sure that what you build works, does what you want, does what the customer needs, and never takes away from the brand or the experience. But those are challenges you need to face in order to not pigeonhole your business by relying on one or two products forever.
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For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.

Key Quotes:

 

“It’s been very enlightening on both sides as a brand owner and then as a service partner. And I think being involved with both — Lucas and I straddle both Doris Dev and Canopy — we’ve been able to make better decisions, more informed decisions, both for the brands helping them do things more efficiently, but then also as a service partner to serve some of the Doris Dev clients in a better fashion, because we understand some of the risks or the issues as a brand owner too.” –Justin

“For a marketer especially, the most interesting challenge around our product line in totality, but the humidifier specifically, is that there are so many benefits that are real, tangible benefits across the health of your skin, the health of your body. And so we’re always thinking about ‘Okay, how do we get the right message to the right person at the right time?’ That’s what it’s all about.” –Eric

“Educating people around the skincare story for humidifiers has been a major initiative that we’ve really leaned into. But then what we saw actually, as we got into the market was… maybe the secondary group of customers, like one ring out from that super tight ring that we started with. We found that those people were coming to us naturally because a lot of people search every month on Google for ‘best humidifier.’ There’s just a lot of search activity. We were finding that both based on how customers were finding us and how the press was placing us, we weren’t just the humidifier for beauty. We show up on the list of the best humidifiers against all of the legacy brands who positioned their humidifier just as that thing for your baby or your sick family member. So that’s been really, really interesting.” –Eric

“The singular intent was to create something that wouldn’t mold over so easily, and it was easier to maintain. And part of the architecture for the product then required there to be a filter. And so going back to your question about subscriptions, the filter was just this natural thing that we could tack on as a subscription component. And then through the R&D process, we also stumbled onto the feature that ultimately became the scent diffusion — the aroma diffusion component to Canopy — and realized that we could create an offering for subscription around the aroma kits and that the subscription part, there would be a utility piece, which was the filter. And then we could create this surprise and delight moment around offering new aroma kits and new experiences with aroma as part of the overall subscription experience. So it was a very organic evolution.” –Justin

“When Eric started, Canopy was a million things. It had so many features, it had all these things. We wanted to talk about everything. And Eric came in and was like, well, that doesn’t make sense. You’re not talking to anyone here. And he really crafted Canopy into the brand it is today that speaks to the right number of people. Before we were only speaking to, effectively, one person — a beauty consumer who hated their humidifier — and now we’ve started to speak to more and more people with the same product, but we allowed Eric to the brand to allow that conversation to grow.” –Lucas 

“The best thing to be able to talk about like that people actually care about is newness, new products. And that’s also huge in the world of beauty. You know, beauty is all about newness, always about new products, new innovation.” –Eric

“We’ve seen a lot of inbound come from beauty and personal care brands as of late… all of them are focused on creating innovative experiences as well as leaning into sustainable materials. So there’s been a really big push this year to design,develop, and manufacture those types of things. And I think we’re going to see a lot more of those. And there’s a ton of energy and focus and money and influencers and celebrities that are leaning into that CPG beauty, personal care sphere. So I think there’s going to be a lot more of that next year as well.” –Justin

“One trend that we’ve seen… is putting products in paper bags. We’ve seen it across a lot of the Doris Dev clients — By Humankind, Soft Service, Canopy, — all started with this experience of opening up this paper bag that was like designed off a bento bag or a lunch bag. And it’s so fun and unique. It’s sustainable, it’s all paper. And we’ve started to see it trickle into more and more brands starting to do it And it’s this very simple, weird thing that started with like, ‘Oh, this is cool. Let’s do it.’ And it keeps going.” –Lucas 

“We’re always working on new product. Right. Which means that there’s newness. And even if it feels like, oh, I’m just making a new version of something, of a pot or a pan, there’s still newness that goes into that, which requires really a ton of thought. And then a ton of testing and making sure that things aren’t going to break and things come together in the right way. And you know, the way people are going to use them, isn’t totally out of whack, that’s going to create problems. So no matter what the product is, there are always problems to work through if you’re going down like the custom design and development path.” –Justin

Bio

“Justin Seidenfeld  is the Founder & CEO of Doris Dev, a product development company based in NYC and Hong Kong that’s helped develop & launch a number of consumer product brands including Blueland, Pattern Brands, Lalo, and Great Jones. Justin also co-founded Canopy, healthy skin’s best-kept secret. Canopy launched its re-engineered bedroom humidifier last October and is on a mission to bring optimal humidity to the home for better health.”

Lucas Lappe is the Head of Product and Co-Founder at Doris Dev. He has a background in design engineering and previously held a design engineer position at Quirky. He also worked with BuzzFeed Product Lab’s first ever product release, the Fondoodler.

Eric Neher is the CMO of Canopy. He previously worked in marketing and ecommerce for Walmart and Birchbox.


Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce

 

Transcript:

Stephanie:

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Up Next In Commerce. I’m your host, Stephanie Postles, CEO at Mission.org. Today on the show, we are having our first round table in the studio with three lovely gentlemen. I would love for you guys to introduce yourselves, Justin, Eric, Lucas. Maybe let’s start first with Lucas.

Lucas:

Hey. I am Lucas, I am head of product and co-founder at Doris Dev and Canopy. There’s going to be a lot of multi-title stuff going around.

Stephanie:

I’m here for it. All right. Eric?

Eric:

Hi. Eric Neher, I’m the CMO at Canopy.

Stephanie:

Awesome.

Justin:

And I am Justin Seidenfeld, CEO at Doris Dev and co-founder at Canopy.

Stephanie:

Amazing. I think first, we should level set and talk about what is Doris Dev and then we’ll get into Canopy after that. Justin, do you want to start?

Justin:

Sure, yeah. Doris Dev essentially is a company that helps other companies bring their products to market. It’s been around for about five years, I always start with the roots of Doris coming out of a previous company called Quirky back in the day, which is where Lucas and I worked together on a lot of different types of consumer products and a lot of the team from Doris actually came from quirky as well. But Doris Dev has been around for the last five years essentially helping predominantly startups take their ideas, develop them, set up a supply chain for scale, and then scale the back end and support operations as they grow in market. We’ve got an office in New York, an office in Hong Kong and then teams that lead the work for industrial design engineering, sourcing, supply chain setup and management, and then fulfillment operations.

Stephanie:

Awesome. So how did you know this was something you wanted to jump into? Like you wanted to actually to-

Justin:

Product or supply chain?

Stephanie:

Yeah, like actually developing other people’s products and doing all the hard things essentially.

Justin:

For sure, I would say I definitely did not know that I wanted to get into it, but got a taste of it at that company I referenced, Quirky, which was about nine years ago now, 10 years ago. Wow, scary when I think about it like that. And fell into it when I was at Quirky because I was very lucky to have and a VC back startup as an early employee. And then through the course of my time at Quirky, got to wear a lot of different hats across product operation, supply chain, even got chipped out to Asia to set up an office out in Hong Kong and lived out there for two years. So through the exposure of seeing end to end ideation through manufacturing and shipping of physical product, I got hooked. And it’s a lot of hard work and heavy lifting but I think that’s the fun part. And so that was the genesis for Doris Dev, was to help other people who didn’t necessarily know how to or want to deal with the hard part, the heavy lifting of getting an idea into market and support them in any way possible.

Stephanie:

And you’ve had a couple people go through Doris Dev that have also been on this podcast which is cool, you’ve had about Lalo, right? Or you did a partnership with them?

Justin:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stephanie:

Did they go through Doris Dev or no?

Justin:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stephanie:

Okay.

Justin:

We helped or we got in touch with the founders of Lalo and they still had day jobs. We helped with the early supply chain setup and supply chain management work for their initial few product lines.

Stephanie:

Cool. And then you and Lucas, did you meet at Quirky?

Justin:

We did. We met at Quirky, Lucas was a fresh faced engineering intern-

Stephanie:

Oh, engineering.

Justin:

… in the New York office, actually when I was out in Hong Kong. So coincidentally, I don’t think we ever overlapped in the same office while at Quirky.

Lucas:

The very end where he was on its way to nothing unfortunately. But I always sucked up to Justin when you would come back for holiday parties, be like, I’m going to try and get to Hong Kong. This is how I’m going to get to Hong Kong because that was always the dream, to live out in Hong Kong and see all the factories. Justin was my window to that.

Justin:

The predecessor.

Lucas:

Yeah, didn’t work out that time.

Justin:

No, but the irony there is you did, you ended up moving out to Hong Kong. We followed a very similar path, I think you were just two years behind me with other product brands.

Lucas:

Yeah, exactly.

Stephanie:

What actually happened with Quirky? Because I feel like I knew of it when it was in its peak and then your company reminds me a bit of Quirky.

Justin:

Oh, God!

Stephanie:

So I’m sure you’ve had a little piece of it. So I’m like, what did you all learn? And is there any similarities there?

Justin:

For sure. I think unfortunately, Quirky spiraled into bankruptcy in a very dramatic fashion in 2015, but there were a lot of amazing part of Quirky that we took and rebuilt, reconfigured for Doris Dev. I think one of the big things with Doris Dev is we have… and I think we’ll get to this with Canopy, but we’ve never taken on the onus of the financial risk for set up an inventory liability as a service partner until Canopy. So we dove in with Canopy as the brand owner. But for Doris Dev as a service business, we basically partner with startups and entrepreneurs and teams that are looking to bring concepts to market and then fill in the gaps for what’s needed. And the team at Doris Dev is very similar to the team at Quirky that it attracted a group of people who are really excited about building products and don’t want to get stuck at P & G or Apple or whatever, working on the same product for five years and it may be not chipping. What attracted me and I think a lot of people to Quirky was like, we get to launch 100 products a year and we effectively do that at Doris Dev today.

Stephanie:

Awesome. And before we jump over to Eric’s amazing background, you both also took a pit stop at BuzzFeed, right?

Lucas:

Just Justin.

Justin:

I did.

Stephanie:

Just Justin, okay. What was that like?

Justin:

That was fun. So the founder of Quirky got tapped to set up a commerce vertical, a strategy to basically commercialize products to the BuzzFeed audience. So I joined him for a little bit working on new product there and then realized I was mostly passionate about bringing fresh product concepts to market under new brands and working with startup founders and teams and tackling the hard bits. And so that’s when I spun out to start Doris Dev and do it on my own.

Stephanie:

Cool.

Lucas:

Do you think the Fondoodler wasn’t a fresh product idea? [crosstalk].

Eric:

We should always have it with you, Lucas.

Lucas:

Yeah. The Fondoodler is a once great product, that is-

Justin:

What do you mean once?

Lucas:

… is a strange cheese hot glue gun.

Justin:

Apparently, the inventor has retired to The Bahamas.

Stephanie:

Actually, that does sound nice though.

Justin:

It was an insanely stupid idea that right after Quirky, was the idea of like okay, I think this is dumb enough to actually get funded on Kickstarter, and it will give me the experience of building my own product, designed it, built it and then BuzzFeed licensed it.

Stephanie:

I’m not surprised.

Justin:

So it’s one of the products that I worked on at BuzzFeed sitting on the other side of the table from Lucas, who was the inventor and product creator.

Stephanie:

Wait. So you invented this.

Justin:

Yeah.

Lucas:

Oh, yeah. And engineered it and designed it.

Justin:

[crosstalk] and he did not retire The Bahamas.

Stephanie:

We are in the presence of royalty. I hope you bring one next time.

Justin:

I know, it may be in your stocking. Well now, it’ll be considered like a relic. It’s probably price pretty high [inaudible].

Stephanie:

I would buy it. All right. So Eric, going over to you now, you were at Birchbox, Walmart, I want to hear a bit of your background and then how you met these two.

Eric:

Totally. So it’s all part of this amazing community of being part of mostly New York startups, consumer startups, it’s all funny how there’s a lot of connections. So Birchbox, which was my first foray into the startup world, I was the eighth employee at Birchbox, really focused there on building the partnerships with the beauty brands. So when Birchbox launched, there was no subscription box for anything. And our founders had the insight that there would be a better way for consumers to discover beauty than going into at that time department stores in Sephora, were the only places to find beauty products and they wanted for people to be able to have that experience at home and to have more control over the experience. And I had actually just gotten into the beauty space. I spent my entire childhood and my college experience wanting to be an actor, and so I was pursuing that professionally. I used the air quotes there for a few years after college. And then the last time I ever had a survival job just to pay the bills, my friend got me a job selling cosmetics. I had no experience with makeup or skincare products or any of that, but I sold in for this little brand which is still around, now called Lipstick Queen, it’s a really cool brand. And I sold in retailers that don’t even exist anymore. Barneys, Henri Bendels. And I was literally on the selling floor talking to customers, that’s where I really, really became obsessed with the beauty space and with the whole product offering. Was really fascinating to see how customers interacted with this category and how much when a customer found something that was really right for her or him for them it was this connection with the product that really made the customer feel better about out themselves, gave them more confidence. And so it was really fascinating to see, and that’s also where I got introduced to the brand landscape and all of the amazing brands that were out there. So from that job, I went to Birchbox and started building this stable of partners that we had who ultimately gave us samples for the boxes, the subscription boxes that came to our customers every month, and also we sold their products in our online store. And it’s just wild to think about how much has evolved in selling online from the time that we started our online store that was built completely from the ground up on our own technology, our own internal team building all of that stuff. And so actually Quirky was one of the brands. We also put some lifestyle products into the Birchboxes and we also had a subscription vertical for men. And the men’s vertical was more focused not just on the grooming and personal care products, but also on other gadgets and stuff that you might want for your home. And we partnered with Quirky. So I didn’t meet Justin and Lucas then but I definitely was familiar with the business. I still have some of the Quirky products in my home and my family does too. So there’s definitely a connection there. But the way that we actually met was more recently in the beginning of 2020, and actually to shout out another amazing New York based startup in the beauty space, my good friend from Birchbox, Rachel Liverman, who’s the founder of Glowbar, 30 minute facial studios with amazing results, had recently met Justin. Justin told her a little bit about this idea that Lucas and he had that time really focused around a humidifier for the beauty consumer. And so Rachel introduced us and that’s how we got to know each other and started working together. But I think my career has been very focused on building brands in the beauty and in the past several years, wellness space and the way in which those spaces have converged. I did make a stop in the corporate world working for a startup division of the larger Walmart enterprise under Walmart e-commerce and I got to develop a beauty and wellness brand there that we sold in 2,800 Walmart stores.

Stephanie:

Wow.

Eric:

And on Walmart.com. So that was really cool to experience developing something in honestly a more constrained environment, but also an environment where the potential for scale was just wild from basically within a week going like from your product being nowhere to being in 2,800 locations across the country, that was pretty cool. After that role, is when I met up with Justin and Lucas, got really excited about their idea as soon as we started talking about it, and then it was just like a few months later, maybe six weeks later after we met, that we… and it was actually the first official day of COVID lockdown in New York State, I would pretty sure.

Justin:

Yeah.

Eric:

Was the day that we started working together. So we met twice in person, and we remember having conversations that were like, oh yeah, this thing, this virus, people are getting so worked up about it. We remember having those silly in retrospect, very silly conversations. And then we all had to go into lockdown, but we built the Canopy brand as a totally virtual team.

Stephanie:

Okay. So you guys are running Doris Dev, you have all these products that you’re working on. Why did you want to jump into one and be CEO and CMO when you’re probably used to acting in that capacity for many brands at once? Why was this the one that you were excited about?

Lucas:

I think the goal was almost always to start our own product business. I think maybe the goal was to do both always, I think we love building products and we spent four plus years, including Quirky, 10 plus years building products for other people and always wanted to take the driver’s seat, half thinking we could do this better and half thinking, God, thank God, we don’t have to do this. But I think as after a year plus of doing it for Canopy, it’s been a great opportunity, one to do all the things we wanted to do as a service partner sit on the sidelines and we finally get to do it. And from the product team, that’s really fun because we get to design the product and design the packaging exactly how we want it to be. And then from the Canopy side, we need things from service partners that there aren’t service partners for and Doris Dev gets to service Canopy. And then we get to offer those services to other Doris Dev clients.

Justin:

It’s been very enlightening I would say on both sides as a brand owner and then as a service partner and I think being involved with both, being Lucas and I straddle both Doris Dev and Canopy, we’ve been able to make better decisions, more informed decisions, both for the brand that’s helping them do things more efficiently, but then also as a service partner, to service some of the Doris Dev clients in a better fashion because we understand some of the risks or the issues as a brand owner too.

Stephanie:

Tell me, what is Canopy? Because I think about humidifiers and I think about the ones… I have three kids, so of course you get a baby, you get a humidifier, put it in the corner and you’re like maybe I’ll change you one day. The only reason I ever knew humidifiers could actually be any bit dirty was my mother-in-law at the time was like, “You have to disinfect it.” I was like, “What are you talking about?” I just keep refilling it and she’s like, “There’s all this slime now at the bottom.” No idea, I was probably poisoning my twins, who knows? But tell me-

Justin:

Are they okay?

Stephanie:

They’re okay. They’re 19 months, they made it. Like after you get past one year, you know you did a good job. So yeah, they’re still around doing good. But tell me, why is Canopy different and why did you guys want to reinvent a product that’s already been out there for a long time?

Justin:

I think I’ll start and then I’m going to hand the mic over to Lucas because the Genesis of the idea really came about from his experience and perspective, that was the big aha moment around where we eventually positioned Canopy as a beauty brand. But initially, with humidifiers, what you’re describing is very typical. Most people think of humidifiers as either for seasonal allergies during the winter, drier months or I’ve got a baby and I’ve got to get this humidifier for the nursery, I don’t really know why.

Stephanie:

I’m just supposed to. And then they get sick and you’re like, I guess it’s because of that.

Justin:

And then the mother-in-law always says like, “But you got to clean it out every week.” And that’s the story. I think for us and actually for Lucas in particular, I think he was always… And I don’t want to speak for you, Lucas, so feel free to chime in, but always pretty intrigued about the category in particular. But then the big aha moment was when he saw his girlfriend, Izzy, using it year round essentially for the skin health benefits as a beauty hack. And as we dug into that, there was this community of beauty enthusiasts, skin enthusiasts who are using humidifiers because of the benefits it has for skin health. And I think one of the things that we noticed was that there was this weird expectation or need to clean it out every week, which is for products, that’s like a lot of touches to have to deal with something and maintain it every week. And so as product people, we were like, that’s interesting, I wonder if we can redesign or re-engineer something that was a much better experience. And then through that process, there was just this Blanco effect of all of these things that we unlocked around features and brand positioning and learnings that ultimately yielded what is Canopy today.

Stephanie:

Okay, tell me about these health benefits because I actually don’t know much. And actually maybe Eric, you were the person for this. Tell me, why should I be using it?

Eric:

So it’s interesting. We get questions a lot of the time about like, what are your challenges? And this is like for a marketer especially, the most interesting challenge around our product line in totality, but the humidifier specifically is that there are so many benefits that are real, tangible benefits across the health of your skin, the health of your body. And so we’re always thinking about okay, how do we get the right message to the right person at the right time? That’s what it’s all about. But on the humidifier side specifically, for the skin, if you think about like sleeping eight hours in any given room, and if that room is below optimal indoor humidity which is between 40 and 60% relative humidity inside, I learned all this from Lucas, but relative humidity is measured as a percent, whereas at 100%, the air would be water. And so you want to be between 40 and 60% and if you’re below 40%, which in most parts of this country at most times of the year, you naturally would be, then the air is going to be looking for moisture. It’s going to find moisture your skin and it’s going to suck the moisture out of your skin.

Stephanie:

Rude.

Eric:

Yeah, horrible. You talk to people all the time, we talk to people all the time who say, “Well, I do everything I should for my skin. I’m using all these expensive products and I still wake up and my skin feels tight or flaky or red.” And changing the environment and increasing the relative humidity inside makes it so that the air doesn’t need that moisture from your skin and it’s not going to just be sucking the moisture out of your skin all night. So for the skin, there are real benefits there and you’re going to see your topical products that you’re using, you’re going to see those start to work better and be more effective because your skin barrier is healthier. Hydration is key to keeping the skin barrier which is the outermost layer of the dermis, it’s key to keeping it healthy. When it’s working well, it’s going to let the products in that you really want to have an impact on your skin and it’s going to be like a protective layer that will protect your skin from irritants and bacteria and other things that can cause damage and breakouts. So that’s on the skin side and our customers tell us like, “I’ve never had such plump skin when I wake up, it’s so hydrated. My skin is softer, more glowing.” We hear all of that and it comes right from our customers, which is really amazing.

Stephanie:

What do you do? Because your skin looks great. So like how many-

Justin:

Eric’s got amazing skin.

Stephanie:

I know, I’m just looking like… Amazing. Like oh, so nice!

Eric:

Thanks.

Stephanie:

How many humidifiers do you have around you?

Eric:

I’m not at the Mariah Carey level, I don’t know where you’ve ever heard. She says that she sleeps with like 60 humidifiers going or whatever.

Stephanie:

I want to be on that level, I’m still sleeping in water.

Eric:

Yeah, exactly, I’m not quite there. But it is really about I think, thinking about all factors and that’s what attracted me so much to what Justin and Lucas were doing with Canopy and with this idea at the beginning, is that there are factors currently that customers are ignoring. Like there are consumers out there, this is the consumer that I love, the person who’s super plugged into skincare and wellness and looking to build the best routine. And those consumers are always looking for something new and if something really works, they’ll incorporate it into their routine. And people are focused on a few factors, mostly like what products am I using? Am I going to the dermatologist? I think people skip straight to like Botox injectables and things like that, whereas the environment in your home is actually a factor that we all have a measure of control over, that most people are not exercising any control there. So just quickly on skincare, my thing is it’s about the right ingredients, it’s not necessarily about the fanciest brand, that’s just the one thing that I always advise, keep your face out of the sun. And actually you should also really keep your body out of the sun, I’m not as good at that part but like a hat, a wide brimmed hat, there’s no substitute-

Stephanie:

It all got hats on it.

Eric:

… for that. And actually if we were outside and I was at the beach, it would be like a much bigger hat and wear a good mineral sunscreen every day. Those are the-

Justin:

Maybe Canopy swag neck should be a giant.

Eric:

Totally, that’s a great idea. But then on the benefit side, as far as the health benefits are concerned, I think we’ve mentioned that people really associate humidifiers with oh, someone in the family has a cold or allergies, let’s put the humidifier on. But the fact of it is that if you’re breathing easier in your… you just breathe more easily, you’re going to sleep better every single night. It’s not just about when you’re not feeling well. So combating symptoms of cold and flu and allergies like cough, sinus irritation, it’s going to make all of those things better. I have never experienced this in my own life but we have people like one of our partners who we’ve worked with a lot, Lauryn Bostick from The Skinny Confidential, she said that it really stopped snoring altogether. So that’s another one. And then also having increased humidity inside can help reduce the spread of airborne viruses indoors as well. The science behind that is interesting. Before COVID, I didn’t know anything about the droplets that carry the virus, but of course now we all know that that’s how viruses are spread. And if there’s more moisture content in the air, then the moisture will bind to those droplets, make them heavier and they fall to the ground faster so that you’re not able to spread things as easily. And so another reason just why I was drawn to working on this brand is that there are a lot of brands out there that say that they’re beauty and wellness brands. All the legacy beauty brands have tacked on plus wellness, and they’re adjusting their product assortment or you see brands in the topical skincare space that have to go back and revise all their formulas now because they were using all these ingredients that now people know first of all, are not conducive to making their skin healthy and could actually harm their health. And so with this product offering, we truly are a beauty and wellness brand where our products, the humidifier is one but we also launched an aroma diffuser this year where the benefits span across, like benefits for healthy, beautiful, glowing skin and benefits for the wellness of both your physical body and your mind too. So that’s the long version of how the product can benefit you.

Stephanie:

I love it. So when thinking about from like a marketing perspective, are you going after the easier customers first who you already know, they’re really big into beauty and putting them as first up to go after, and then infiltrating the people who just are looking for humidifiers? How do you think about acquiring customers in a way that is maybe tapping into probably the crowd that’s easiest to get in front of? What are you guys thinking around that?

Justin:

That’s a great question, and actually we’ve learned so much in the one year that we’ve been in market about how people respond to the messaging and how to acquire customers. So actually our strategy has informed a lot by what’s worked and then leaning into those things. But certainly, after doing our own customer research and then building the branding and the messaging ourselves, our first message out to market has definitely been about beauty skincare. And we have found great success with that messaging, for sure there are certain consumers out there who already know that humidifier is good for your skin, they’re just looking for the best one and we’ve also designed the Canopy humidifier to have features that are specifically right for the skin enthusiast consumer. But then also, there’s a great opportunity to educate people, which again for our marketer is like a dream, like you want to tell stories and give of people information that’s actually useful for them. So educating people around the skincare story for humidifiers has also been a major initiative that we’ve really leaned into. But then what we saw actually as we got into market was that sort of, you described them as maybe the secondary group of customers, like one ring out from that super tight ring that we started with. We found that those people were coming to us naturally because a lot of people search every month on Google for best humidifier. There’s just a lot of search activity. We were finding that both based on how customers were finding us and how the press was placing us, we weren’t just the humidifier for beauty, we show up on the list of the best humidifiers against all of the legacy brands who position their humidifier just as like that thing for your baby or your sick family member. So that’s been really, really interesting. Then one other thing that I’ll call out is that we knew this up front around the humidifier that we would at some point, and we knew we wanted to do it quickly, also start accessing new parents and expecting parents because that’s how the conversation started for you obviously around a humidifier. And so in the middle of the year, we actually opened up the channel and it didn’t take much, you just we talked to some new parents about what the most important features are to when it comes to buying a humidifier for their nursery, for their baby and we just bubbled those features to the top. We also partnered with Lalo as a trusted voice in the parenting space and opened up Babylist which is an amazing channel. And so we’ve already started to segment our audience a little bit even as a young brand, but there’s so much more that we can do from that perspective.

Stephanie:

Well, how did you guys think about getting into subscription? I’m sure you came from Birchbox and you’re like, we have to do subscription and right before you all came here, I was talking to a company called Lovevery. Amazing company, very, very cool. They sent us some kids’ play kits and I was blown away. And of course I was very jealous of thinking about like a subscription model with them as well. How did you know that you wanted to get into to that?

Justin:

I think a lot of that is putting back the product dev hat and sitting on the sidelines for a lot of product brands that go to market with a singular product, and then trying to figure out and jump through the gymnastics of trying to figure out how to keep a relationship going with those customers. For us, it was like this organic natural thing because a critical part of the product is the filter. And we knew, and actually to speak a little bit about that, Eric just gave a really good deep dive into the way we’ve been thinking about positioning this as a beauty product and brand, but the initial genesis for Canopy, it started with us focusing on building a humidifier that wouldn’t mold over so easily and was easy to maintain. And then as we went down that rabbit hole, we learned about all of these great benefits for skin health and then it got repositioned as a beauty product and we leaned into that with a lot of the features and elements that got added to the product. But it started as… the singular intent was to create something that wouldn’t mold over so easily and it was easier to maintain. And part of the architecture for the product then required there to be a filter. And so going back to your question about subscriptions, the filter was just this natural thing that we could tack on as a subscription component. And then through the R&D process, we also stumbled onto the feature that ultimately became the scent diffusion, the aroma diffusion component to Canopy and realized that we could create an offering for subscription around the aroma kits, and then the subscription part, there would be a utility piece which was the filter and then we could create this surprise and delight moment around offering new aroma kits and new experiences with aroma as part of the overall subscription experience. So it was a very organic evolution but it was very much, it happened in the sequence of starting focusing on this one feature, it unfolded into all of these other things which was pretty cool.

Lucas:

And to give Eric more credit as well, when Eric started, this Canopy was like a million things. It had so many features, it did all these things. Like we wanted to talk about everything and Eric came in and was like, “Well, that doesn’t make sense, you’re not talking to anyone here.” And really crafted Canopy into the brand it is today that speaks to the right number of people. And before, we were only speaking to effectively one person, a beauty consumer who hated their humidifier, and now we’ve started to speak to more and more people with the same product, and Eric built the brand to allow that conversation to grow.

Stephanie:

What methods are you all using to keep your customers engaged? Other than they have the subscription, it seems pretty easy, I would think to get someone in a subscription for a filter that you’re like oh yeah, that’s obvious. Like I need filters for a lot of things and if it can just show up my door when it’s supposed to, that seems great. But what other ways are you all interacting with customers to keep them coming back and check out the aroma, new products that you guys are launching? How are you doing that?

Eric:

I would love for you guys to talk about this too, but I can just say that one of the huge benefits of being so closely partnered with Doris Dev is that I’ve never in my experience had this speed from the time that we have an idea to getting something to market and the best communication, the best thing to be able to talk about, that people actually care about, is newness, new product. And that’s also huge in the world of beauty. Beauty is all about newness, always about new products, new innovation. And so we have done a handful of partnerships with other brands around the aroma feature that Justin mentioned and we also then saw that the aroma feature was getting so much traction on the humidifier itself, that we launched an aroma diffuser that doesn’t humidify the air but there are a lot of the same pain points around aroma diffusers as well, that they’re messy and they grow mold and gonk inside, and that they spew this yucky mist into the air that can ruin your furniture. And so we have a totally waterless aroma diffuser that Lucas can talk more about how it works, but it’s totally waterless. So the idea of mold growing there is like not even a possibility. And so it’s really been about new product and this aroma feature has really allowed us to bring newness. Every quarter, we’re bringing newness on the aroma front and then with other, in hardware as well as you can… we talked about some of the new hardware. And so that’s a really great opportunity. I knew a little bit about aroma diffusion and fragrance coming into this but after learning more, I found that there isn’t really a fragrance or aroma brand, home fragrance that people go to, there isn’t a go-to in the space. There are big essential oils brands that are more commodity type products. Now we also have the opportunity to grow into a go-to for home aroma oils that are safe and clean to diffuse, but very on the cutting edge of trends, and also that bring in to the fold, like some of our customers existing favorite brands. So that’s been the main way that we’ve communicated with people and kept them engaged.

Stephanie:

Do you have some holiday aromas coming out on like Christmas tree, smells? No?

Eric:

Well, actually last year, we did a holiday focus one that was all about the aroma kit, that was all about the places that you weren’t traveling for the holidays last year. So give people a little bit of that taste of the holiday travel when we were all totally trapped at home. This year for the fourth quarter and holiday, we’re focusing on two big things that we’ve done this year. So in October, we launched a partnership with the custom hair care brand pros, and they have developed amazing fragrances. They have a team of perfumers in Paris who develop their scents. And so part of what’s made their business so sticky with customers is how great the hair care products smell, and so we took three of their best selling hair care fragrances and translated them into the format for our diffusion. So with our diffuser and with our humidifier, right now, you can experience pros scents as a home aroma experience.

Stephanie:

That’s smart.

Eric:

So we’re focused there and also earlier this year in conjunction with the launch of our aroma diffuser, we launched a signature collection of aromas, the Canopy signature aromas collection. And so Sanctuary, which was our first drop from that ongoing collection, which launched in July, is still a focus for us now because that collection is going to grow and we really want to show customers. First of all, we’re very proud of it and customers have love so far, but we want them to understand that we’re going to be building our own brand so that they can stay tuned and stay engaged.

Stephanie:

Okay. So the other thing I wanted to hear about was trends that you’re seeing at Doris Dev, because I’m imagining it’s very cool having eyes and all these different brands and seeing what they’re trying out, and maybe even you guys being able to experiment a bit and try new things out. What are you seeing right now, especially like the D2C market with these brands coming to you and looking for help? What’s going on behind the scenes?

Justin:

I’ll speak to some, I’m sure Lucas has some perspective on this too. We’ve seen a lot of inbound come from beauty and personal care brands as of late, who are doing really innovative things around what I always call the goop, the consumable bits, and they’re looking to marry that with also innovative durable parts of their product, meaning like primary packaging. And all of them are focused on creating innovative experiences as well as leaning into sustainable materials. So there’s been a really big push this year to design, develop manufacturer, those types of things and I think we’re going to see a lot more of those and there’s a ton of energy and focus and money and influencers and celebrities that are leaning into that CPG beauty per care sphere, so I think there’s going to be a lot more of that next year as well.

Stephanie:

What kind of wild experiences are you seeing being tested out right now? And it doesn’t have to be within Doris Dev, it can be just in general that you’re like oh, that was a very cool experiment, or that could have worked well for us.

Justin:

Lucas, do you have any interesting perspective on that?

Lucas:

I’m trying to think. One trend that we’ve seen, I credit with starting is putting products in paper bags. We’ve seen it across a lot of the Doris Dev clients and by humankind, soft services Canopy, all started with this experience of opening up this paper bag that was designed off a Bento bag or a lunch bag, and it’s so fun and unique. It’s sustainable, it’s all paper and we’ve started to see it trickle into more and more brands starting to do it. And it’s like this very simple, weird thing that started with like oh, this is cool, let’s do it, and it keeps going.

Stephanie:

That’s cool. Were there any moments that you guys maybe struggled and you’re like I’m not sure if this is really going to work? Anything [crosstalk].

Lucas:

All that all the time.

Stephanie:

All the time?

Justin:

[crosstalk] my eyes were open. I think one of the things that’s very challenging is on the Doris side, we’re always working on new product, which means that there’s newness. And even if it feels like oh, I’m just making a new version of something of a pot or a pan, there’s still newness that goes into that, which requires really a ton of thought and then a ton of testing and making sure that things aren’t going to break and things come together in the right way and the way people are going to use them isn’t totally out of whack that’s going to create problems. So no matter what the product is, there are always problems to work through if you’re going down like the custom design and development path. So that’s what we live and breathe. It can be really stressful but I think that’s what the Doris team really thrives in, is attacking those problems and figuring out how to overcome them. And we like doing it across a lot of different categories, so we haven’t pigeonholed ourselves into like one or the other. It’s more about problem solving in the physical world.

Lucas:

I think one of those things we’ve seen that are like, oh my God, this is so much work and this is so hard for Canopy, is the aromas are really complicated part of the business and-

Stephanie:

What makes them hard?

Lucas:

There’s the development, that’s hard where we get to work with great fragrance partners but you’re dealing with their manufacturing schedules across their manufacturing locations, U.S. And Asia, the bottling suppliers who want to sometimes want to fill your product. And we’ve grown this business that was one time, a very small dinky idea that we were filling a couple 100 bottles maybe into hundreds of thousands of fragrance oils a year now across a lot of SKUs, which they absolutely hate. And dealing with really cool custom packaging, that’s a pain to assemble, that’s a pain to-

Justin:

Those paper bags [crosstalk]-

Lucas:

I know, exactly. And designers and the whole team wanting to do something unique and different, which means it’s a pain in the butt and it costs them. And dealing with that many skews that are getting kitted all over the place. So it’s very, very complex.

Justin:

There’s a lot of suppliers. It’s a small thing but there’s like 12 different components that all come from different suppliers. So it becomes a complicated thing when you have to manage that yourself. And you can’t ship a kit if it’s missing.

Lucas:

Oh, and you can’t. And actually there’s also a ton of paperwork and legality to work through on air shipping oils and importing them into the U.S. So that’s another fun thing that we’ve had to figure out.

Eric:

And as graded as it is, and it’s been so exciting for me to see how much our customers have loved what we’ve put out there in the aroma space. But we’ve committed ourselves with the subscription that every six weeks, we are giving our customers something new. So this whole process that Justin and Lucas have just described and how complicated it is, it’s a constant state for us where we’re doing it all the time. But we’re getting better.

Justin:

The problem’s getting bigger too. So it’s hopefully scaling proportionally.

Stephanie:

I always when hearing about that, I think back in the day, I used to have an iPad Magazine subscription for teachers, very different. But every month, I would make this iPad Magazine, literally get all the writers, do all the formatting, put it on the iPad, sell the subscription and by month three, I was like oh gosh, what did I get? Like now, this person just bought like a 12 month subscription, they’re wanting me to fulfill this and I’m not so sure this is feasible anymore for me doing it all by myself. So I definitely feel that of getting exciting, having that predictability but then also having to meet that demand at the same time. What happens if you can’t meet the demand? How do you handle that with your customers? Because I know you guys sell out quickly and people love your products, how do you handle it if maybe you actually can’t meet, the bar?

Justin:

We can speak to a very recent experience unfortunately with some of the supply chain issues the world is facing, there are definitely occurrences where we’ve run into a wall or run into a hurdle. What’s nice about Canopy and because we’re constantly developing newness and there’s always something on the horizon around new products and aspects to the product in terms of like the aroma kits and things that we can offer, we always want to do right by our customers and our supporters.

                  A recent experience was that we actually had a shipment of limited edition humidifiers that we did in collaboration and partnership with The Skinny Confidential, get stuck off the coast of LA on a vessel.

Stephanie:

You were one of them?

Justin:

Yeah, we were one of those supposed to land at the end of September, got stuck on a boat for about four weeks, waiting to birth at the port.

Stephanie:

Wow.

Justin:

And we had a lot of anxious, very excited customers that our great partner at The Skinny Confidential had basically promoted the product and we had people waiting. And so what we ended up doing as an interim stop gap thing was sending them just one of the samples for the limited edition aromas that we had co-developed with Lauryn as a teaser, as an amuse-bouche before the product got delivered or before we could retrieve it from the port. And again, that was just something that we did proactively not because we had to and not because it was our fault that we were one of 130 vessels that were waiting for birth, but we wanted to make sure that our customers always have a delightful experience with every touch point with Canopy.

Stephanie:

Did it work? Did you hear good feed from customers?

Justin:

I think so, yeah. I think so. We definitely, people were very appreciative because it was a nice surprise. But it was also tough because they were very eager to get their humidifier, but definitely appreciative that we were being proactive about putting something in their mailbox that they could get even more excited about receiving the humidifier in a short time. And we did this midway through while we were still waiting and we were getting unclear information about when the humidifiers were going to actually get delivered from the port. So we were still in this limbo situation where we couldn’t give definitive information.

                  And it’s been really tough. I think a lot of brands, we’ve seen this on the Doris side as well, but a lot of brands are experiencing all different types of supply chain issues both on the freight side, on the manufacturing side, and so everybody’s just trying to figure out how to get creative, how to get proactive with communication, how to set expectations so that customers know what’s going on and what to expect going into holiday. I think there will be a lot of hopefully education across the anxious consumer sphere going into holiday this year, but we shall see.

Lucas:

I think one hack was having a few humidifiers available for very, very angry people. We were able to come a few people.

Stephanie:

That’s probably good because honestly, those few people would probably be the loudest, so maybe always good to have a little buffer inventory of just like just in case, hold this here. I think what I’ve seen is like the communication the brands do and get really far head of it and are completely transparent. I feel like usually, 90% of customers are like okay, I get it, I know what’s happening but the brands who… I ordered a sofa and it’s still not here, it’s supposed to be here in August.

                  And it was September and I was like, “What’s happening?” In October, I’m like, “Okay.” I know they never told me anything the entire time until I reached out. And I’m like, “This is the problem here. If you would’ve told me something was up, I’d be perfectly fine. I would just wait and not care.” But you can see the difference between the brands who get ahead of it and just say hey, everything’s going wrong right now. Just so you know, we’re going to try and make it or we can’t do anything and that’s okay too, but communication seems to be key. So where do you all want to be in the next like one to three years?

Justin:

That’s a great question. This year as Eric mentioned, we introduced our second hero product which was the diffuser, and I think what we’ve built out is this brand and recognition as a brand to be living in the home, focused on providing functional benefits for beauty and wellness. And so we’re going to continue to build out product that supports that mission and really speaks to and leads into the beauty enthusiasts and personal care and wellness enthusiast customer with all different types of products that support their overall wellness and I think continue to grow our distribution footprint so that everybody, we’ve obviously have made a splash in the direct to consumer landscape but there’s a lot more runway to get Canopy in front of the right people. So I think the big push going into next year is going to be in retail, wholesale partnerships.

Stephanie:

Cool. Eric, Lucas, anything else to add of what you’re hoping for?

Lucas:

As a product person, just making more products. I think there’s a lot of products in the home that you touch every day that really suck and can be so much better, and I think I’m really excited to really use the Canopy brand and the community and what we’ve built to make better products for people.

Stephanie:

What do you see when you walk around your house? What do you want to reinvent?

Lucas:

Oh!

Stephanie:

I want to see how your brain works.

Lucas:

Oh, there are so many and so many of them are not the right fit for Canopy. My go, please reach out if you want to build this brand with us, but a tactical dog wear line is my dream.

Stephanie:

What do you mean by tactical? Tell me what you’re thinking.

Justin:

Lucas is a proud dog.

Stephanie:

I have a dog but… tell more.

Lucas:

It’s actually four small dogs, I’m thinking like either or one of the higher end like out Doris brands but for dogs, that’s the dream.

Stephanie:

Okay.

Lucas:

Get at me.

Stephanie:

Right. Anything else?

Lucas:

That’s the [crosstalk]. Yeah, exactly.

Stephanie:

That’s the moonshot idea.

Lucas:

Yeah.

Stephanie:

Got it.

Eric:

The only last thing I’ll say is that the people all over the world can benefit from the Canopy product line. So I’m also excited about how we can potentially get this to customers outside of the U.S. and now Canada as well. We sell in Canada but that’s one other that I would add.

Stephanie:

All right. I want to do a quick lightning round with you guys. Lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce commerce cloud. I’m going to ask one of you a question and you have one minute or less to answer. Are you ready?

Justin:

Always.

Stephanie:

All right. Eric, what do you wish you knew about Justin?

Eric:

Ooh!

Justin:

Oh, gosh!

Eric:

What do I wish I knew about Justin? I think just generally getting to know each other better, I think that starting virtually, it’s like when a virtual little meeting ends, you don’t get that, like we’re walking to the elevator together or we’re walking to the subway or whatever, when you talk about the things that are going on in one another’s lives or little bits of history, hearing before about like how your parents met in their residency or whatever. I think it’s just generally really getting to know each other better. And we’ve been able to do that but I think just knowing more, it always is interesting to me to really understand what makes people tick. And so I’ve been gathering things as well

Stephanie:

That’s great. Justin, I feel like Lucas can be probably a ham working with you all, it seems like. So what’s a funny memory of him that comes to mind?

Justin:

Oh, man, I’ve got a lot with Lucas.

Stephanie:

I figured, I can tell by his energy.

Justin:

There are a couple good ones. I have a very distinct memory when Lucas was an intern at Quirky and I don’t re remember how or why this happened, but you had a false tooth that you would pop out at very timely occasions.

Stephanie:

Oh, poor Lucas, he’s like, why are you sharing this?

Justin:

And that I have a very distinct memory of it. And just to be clear, Lucas is for those of the listeners at home that can’t see Lucas, very dashing and mad.

Lucas:

With all my teeth now.

Eric:

A beautiful smile.

Stephanie:

A very pretty smile.

Justin:

But I do remember that. I do remember a lot of really fun anecdotes with the Fondoodler too, of using product and how that product came to be. We got Lucas, and I go way back. I remember hanging out with you when… I can’t remember who it was. One of us was living in Hong Kong and one of us was visiting and just talking about like one day, we’re going to be working on a product development company together. And then here we are today.

Stephanie:

Okay, Lucas, what is something that either Eric or Justin has done that impacts you to today where you’re like you still think about that? You’re like man, that was really nice?

Lucas:

Justin… just background, I’ve tried to live in Hong Kong since I was like 16 effectively, like wanting to go into product to see the world in that space. Justin got me my job that enabled me to move to Hong Kong, which was Goby, which was but supposed to be a one day contracting project that turned into a three month trip to Hong Kong that turned into three years of not leaving.

Justin:

And if you didn’t think Lucas and I were similar enough, I ended up in Hong Kong for what was supposed to be a three month trip that turned into a two years then. So there were a lot of have footsteps that got followed between the two of us.

Stephanie:

That’s great. Okay now, I’m going to go around the horn. I’ll start with Lucas. What’s your favorite niche tool that you use every day? Not something mainstream

Lucas:

I love screenshot tools. I think that maybe, I don’t know. I love it so much and people get screenshots from me constantly from my phone-

Eric:

With arrows-

Lucas:

Arrows.

Justin:

… and call-outs.

Stephanie:

[crosstalk] drawing on it.

Lucas:

I think it’s because I’m dyslexic and I can’t read or write particularly well that I need screenshots and I need to draw on stuff. I think that’s my life and whiteboards. I love whiteboards.

Stephanie:

Okay. What about you?

Eric:

Oh, same question?

Stephanie:

Yep, same question. Because you’re all in such different roles, I feel like you probably lean in at different tools.

Eric:

Yeah, that is a great question. What am I using every day that’s kind of out of the ordinary. I guess among the group, I’m the most focused on all the beauty trends. So I think that probably it’s not necessarily a tool, but I’m doing a lot more research in that space and just keeping up with what’s going on there. So I think that it’s more just what type of information that I’m seeking is different. But those are pretty straightforward tools, so you can just be like Googling and reading stuff. But it’s probably just about the types of information that I’m seeking and who I’m sharing it with and who I’m getting it from. That’s a little different.

Stephanie:

Okay.

Justin:

For me, I’m a physical product guy, so I’m going to talk about a tool in ILL, which is, and we were talking about this this morning, which is I have an ice machine at my house. I’m a compulsive ice chewer.

Stephanie:

Oh, no!

Justin:

Which is not good.

Stephanie:

[crosstalk] worse on the podcast.

Justin:

Yeah, really bad. You’re welcome for me to bring ice.

Stephanie:

You even bottled water for a reason, I knew it.

Justin:

But it’s really bad for your teeth, so my wife got me this pellet ice machine that’s soft ice that I can chew every day.

Stephanie:

Aw, that’s so nice of her. She’s like, I’ll support you have it but [crosstalk].

Justin:

Yeah, exactly. She doesn’t want me to lose my teeth.

Eric:

Yeah, teeth falling out.

Justin:

Probably also Lucas. Lucas had a-

Lucas:

Yeah, exactly, be too similar at that point.

Stephanie:

Okay, the last one and it’ll be the same for everyone again, is, what’s one thing you don’t understand today but wish you did? Justin, I’ll start with you.

Justin:

One thing… Wait, say it again.

Stephanie:

One thing you don’t understand today but you wish you did.

Justin:

Oh, man. I wish I understood some of the updates that are going on with Facebook attribution. And I don’t know if anybody… I’m still struggling to figure that out today but when I’m waiting for somebody to explain it to me better.

Stephanie:

I think we have some good listeners who know this.

Justin:

Yeah, please get at me at just side.

Stephanie:

You’ll get all the help you need help.

Eric:

I think my answer is kind of similar, but just generally, it’s amazing in my career, I talked about like selling products at Barneys and Henri Bendels, like how different everything is now. And there are so many tools like we just talked about, to help you understand how your marketing mix is working, attribution is a big one. I think every person in my position is looking for a better understanding of how people find us, come to us, end up being a customer and I think it’s just about every day trying to learn more. And I think we’re pretty good at that, just every day trying to learn. But I don’t think I’ll ever get to aha, now I understand it all because it’s just going to keep changing all the time, but that is one thing that every day I wish I understood it better.

Stephanie:

I hear that a lot as well. All right, Lucas?

Lucas:

I really want to understand how a factory works.

Stephanie:

I feel like you should that.

Lucas:

No. But we’ve both spent hundreds of days in factories but there are businesses and they’re actually generally very big businesses that are very fractured with departments and different KPIs and the way they work together is so interesting by factory, by team, and I just don’t understand them. They are so big and they have such differing goals often times that I would love to fully understand how a manufacturer truly works in the constraints they’re under because they have very different goals in clients I would say, than the companies they’re building products for, they’re often not aligned.

Justin:

Well, Lucas, you might be going back to Hong Kong very soon.

Lucas:

I can’t wait.

Stephanie:

There you go. Maybe Doris Dev just needs to open up your own facility, then you guys need to [crosstalk] Lucas.

Eric:

Yeah, exactly.

Stephanie:

Thinking. All right. You guys, thank you so much for joining today, very fun having you on. Until next time, where can people learn more about Doris Dev and Canopy?

Justin:

Instagram.

Eric:

Instagram @get.canopy or @getcanopy.co is our site, just completely relaunched this week.

Stephanie:

Nice.

Lucas:

Looks amazing. And Doris dev is @doris.dev or doris.dev or dorisdev.com.

Stephanie:

I love it. All right, thanks guys.

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Episode 167