Every Product Pays Rent!

Retail is not complicated. It is hard work. 

This episode gets us back to the basics that keep a store alive: profit, time, and turns. I sit down with Maximilian Anderson, founder of SKUMAX, to talk about seeing your true cost of goods, why every item should pay rent, and how to make better decisions with the data you already own. 

If you lead stores, this is a clean reset on what to measure, what to move, and what to let go. Try the free trial in the show notes and see how long your inventory has really been sitting.

What you’ll learn:

• A simple way to see real profit in real time
• Why “time on shelf” is cash leaving the bucket
• When to promote, relocate, or remove a product
• How to build a daily rhythm around the right dashboard

Stay in business. Make more money. Start with the basics.

Visit SKUMAX: https://skumax.app/
14 Day Free Trial: https://app.skumax.io/sign_up
Connect with Maximillian Anderson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximilian-anderson-821525368/

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:50

So I've been in retail for a long time. One of the things that I don't hear a lot of retailers talking about anymore is this one thing that will help them stay in business, and that's profitability. Profitability. I know we talk about tariffs all day long. We could talk about turnover, all these different things. But if you're not profitable, if you don't know what your store is doing from a sales and revenue standpoint, I don't know why you're in business. Today, we talk with founder of SkewMax, Maximilian Anderson. He has a platform that will help retailers understand profitability, understand what's actually in their store, what's moving and what's not. It's a situation that a lot of retailers are facing. They're not focused in on profitability. So a lot of them are going out of business. We don't want that. We want you to stay in business. So enjoy this conversation with Maximilian Anderson on retail leadership with Steve Worthy.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Welcome to Retail Leadership with Steve Worthy, where we go well beyond the corporate playbook to unpack major opportunities, hidden challenges, and critical issues that senior retail leaders face every day. So let's get started right now.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

All right, so um I'm excited for us to have this conversation. This is going to be a sort of a continuation of something that we've already we've already started. But for those who do not know you, could you uh introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Sure, sure. My name's uh Maximilian Anderson. I'm the founder of a new app for retail. Um it's not just an app, really, it's it's more of a new way of calculating our profits and a new way of improving our profits. So there's going to be a little bit of a learning curve involved with new users. But I think once they see how we're how we're operating and once they see the value of the app, it'll all it'll all start making sense pretty quick. And it is for physical retail. I just thought I should probably make mention of that because I know we do have some online retailers. This is for brick and mortar stores.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Yeah, that's awesome. I'm glad you said that because I always chuckle a bit when I hear or read a story that says um physical stores are still cool. Um I'm like they they've always been cool. They've always been cool. They're not going, they're not going anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

It's about 80% of retail. I know everyone seems to think that you know Amazon, Amazon, online, online. And yeah, there's some truth to that, but um, there's an awful lot of places that I go that are physical retail to buy my products. I mean, we all we we can't avoid it. So you can't. So those are the people that we're trying to help.

unknown 3:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

All right. So before we get into to to the to the retail stuff, let's talk a little bit about um your background, right? And um your your uh I guess not even your start, but um your experience within construction and what and what you did there. And then we can we can slide over into Skew Max.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Okay, yeah, sure. So I've been in the construction industry for probably 20 plus years, uh, about that. Um and and that's where I really kind of learnt my uh my workflows and and sequencing, job sequencing, scheduling. And and when you get into the tech space, you'll find there's a lot of sequencing and scheduling, a lot of workflows, things have to happen in certain orders. Um and I think the other thing was margins, really. You know, I noticed that if you make a mistake in in construction, it's gonna affect your margin pretty quickly because we deal with bigger numbers. But even uh even the smallest things for me, it's uh down to the receipts. I I had uh one of my old mentors, he said if you lose receipts, you lose money, meaning that you can't bill your client for that 40 bucks or 100 bucks or whatever it might be. And and when I started getting into that smaller, smaller space, the smaller numbers, that's when when I was thinking about retail, because retail margins are so tight. A lot of these stores, um, especially where I'm at, I'm in Hawaii. They're paying $14 per square foot. So it really, the the efficiency that I learned in construction, I've applied, I mean, it's not exactly the same, but we we have to operate efficiently in retail if we want to make those margins. If you want even those slim margins, we need we need every penny. Um and that that's kind of the the workflow sequencing and the margins is really what I what I'm bringing from from construction, I would say, into the into the tech space.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Outstanding. And you know, one of the things you said, you just mentioned it um just a second ago around sequencing. When I think about construction, I always think about um, you know, scope, right? Project scope, but then also scope creep, right? Because, you know, if you if you are missing a certain element of that sequence, right, that doesn't necessarily mean that you could just keep moving forward. Sometimes you actually have to go backwards to fix something, and then you and then you have to move forward. I almost feel like that's a similarity that a lot of people within retail don't don't don't really get. They they think if they are able to move the scope forward, then everything else will sort of balance itself out. And I and I I would almost hazard a guess that you don't agree with that.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Well, you know, I I think timing is probably a big part of it. And and time, time in and of itself, um, we need to perform on time. And I think maybe, maybe that's yeah, I'd probably I'd probably say that's what I'm bringing, that's what I'm bringing to retail. I'm bringing you guys time. Um, it's something that you don't measure much, unfortunately. Um so I think I think, yeah, time time is time is our friend that I'm gonna make it your friend.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

That's awesome. And and you're and you're spot on because uh I don't know how many times um in my retail career I always would say that, man, if only if I had another 24 hours to get X, Y, and Z done, but I don't I don't have it. So we have to figure out how to maximize, you know, you know, our timing. What um what drew you to to the retail space? And we're gonna get into the depths of Skeumax here in a second, but you know, you were you were plugging along with construction, you understood the sequencing part, um, you know, understanding the products, and that's what you're you've been seeing. But then what was it about the retail industry to say, okay, I can actually take some of my knowledge and some of my expertise and and move over into this industry?

SPEAKER_02 7:05

Well, it it came about when I was doing some um some remodeling for a store. It was a a new store that was opening up, and I hadn't really played in a retail space that much. Um the the first thing I noticed when when I built this store out was that there was a lot of unused space in the store. Um, and I was like, that that seemed a little bit odd. Um and I started getting into conversations with the owner a little bit, you know, about stores and profits, and and and this particular location was I think it was sixteen dollars per square foot base rent, um, twenty percent of gross earnings, and I think the cam was four percent. And I so immediately I was just blown away, you know, like why isn't this place full of more products? And and how are you gonna make it? You know, I I was I was talking to that retailer, like, how uh how how can you make it under these such tight conditions? And that that's kind of where I where I started getting more interested in retail and the math side of it. I have I have a that's that's why I do so well in construction. So my my math brain started playing with her numbers in a sense, and and I was having a hard time, yeah. I was having a hard time seeing how she could possibly make it, and that that's kind of what got me into the season retail. I was like, oh wow, this is a small business. They're laying out a big a big piece of their you know personal finances to to fund this. And I didn't feel like the horizon was was very pretty, you know. It looked bleak out there. Um and that's that's how yeah, that's how I started, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Yeah, outstanding. I I love um your focus, and you mentioned it earlier around profits, right? Because um I I while we may talk about profits in retail, we don't talk about it enough. We we we really don't. I think part of what we we deal with from a legacy industry standpoint um is we're a little slow. Companies try to be fast, but they don't they don't really have the understanding of what problem they're trying to solve in order for them to be fast. So when you think about you know some of the um ideas and some of the issues within the retail industry and that idea like we don't talk about profits anymore, how does your um not even just your app, but how is your company? Because I'm not, it's not just about the app, I believe. It's about it's about the ideas that you want to solve. How does that come into play with with some of the things that I talked about, about the legacy industry, the slowness, and um we just we we already got it figured out. You know, what are you what are you gonna be bringing to the table? All those different issues that retail faces.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

The different issues that retail's facing. Um, I mean, I think one of the biggest ones I see is is not knowing your true cost of goods sold. Um that's the first thing I notice. People seem to think that if they buy something for a hundred bucks and sell it for two fifty, that they made $150. Well, no, they didn't because there's overhead involved and there's carrying costs involved. Um and so that's that's kind of the direction that's the direction I'm going in is trying to give you know the store owners, I guess you call them the leaders, um, give them some clarity and give them some insight that they they never had before. Um POS systems, they're just transactional. They they store data. They just say that you know, Maximilian purchased this shirt at this store at this particular time. And they they have to store that for compliance reasons. That's it. That's all your all your system is doing for you. It's not showing you any metrics, any profits, anything really of much value except that it's holding transactions for compliance. I'm taking that compliance data and I'm turning it into something that you can use day to day. Um I'm giving you live insights from a big pile of data that no one's no one's done anything with. Um and that's that's really the key, is it's it's already there, it's already in your account, and I'm just gonna show it to you so you can make better decisions and see your true cost of goods so that you're like, oh wow, um, yeah, I can't stop this item anymore. It's just it's not making me any money. And and that's just one item. You probably have hundreds, you know. So it's there's quite a bit, there's quite a bit for you to see, I promise. It's gonna be exciting.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

That's awesome. I think there's um, you know, what I think what you're referring to, what we we tend to um not talk about is opportunity cost, right? Because when you think about retail, every square foot within that uh every square foot space within that, within that, um, uh within that building, there's an opportunity cost associated with that. Like are you actually going to move a pro move a fast moving product maybe closer to to the front, or what does your actual assortment look like based on you know the the inventory turn. So let's get into a little little specifics around um around SkewMax and how it actually is not so much just a bolt-on application, but it's it it it's it already sort of in it'll be infused within the current um structure within within a retailer. And if I'm not mistaken, you've you've decided to focus in on Square um users first, and then we'll talk about expansion and all those things.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Yeah, currently we're we're going with Square, um, mainly because it has a large user base um of small businesses, and and I really believe in helping the small business because they're they're struggling. Um, a lot of them are struggling. In my location, they are, and it's it's not that they're in the wrong place or that they have the wrong products necessarily, but maybe the timing of their products is a little bit off. Um so what I'm bringing is just uh a way a way for them to track their products um like they haven't before and be able to see, you know, where where those leaks are. Because there's those slow bleeds that people just they they don't know. There's a whole shelf back there with products on that hasn't moved in months and months. And what does that shelf cost you per month? Well, I mean, time isn't free. Uh I don't know anyone that gives their time away for free. So I feel like that time on that shelf, that shelf back there, I don't know, maybe it's a hundred bucks a day, maybe it's a hundred bucks a week. I don't know what how much your shelf costs you. But if that product's not turning over, why is it why is it in my store? What is it doing here? Are we waiting for that guy to buy it every two years? Um I think I think we need to organize our our products and and get some get some clarity from our products. Our products are gonna talk to us and say, hey, I do well and this guy doesn't. Well, we're gonna keep selling more products that that sell well. That's the the bottom line.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

I love it. I love it. And one of the things you we mentioned, I think it was in our one of our first meetings, you you said that um I've got it I've written down here, every item pays rent. Um you wanna you wanna expand on that a little bit? It should.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

Well, okay, so let's say, let's say your store, um, we'll take a five-gallon bucket and we'll we'll fill it up, right? Maybe we won't fill it up, maybe your store is not that full, but we got a five-gallon bucket, that's our store, okay? Um and and there's fortunately that bucket has a leak in it. And that leak is that's your overhead, that's gonna be your rent, your utilities, uh, maybe your cam, uh, your payroll, all of those things. Actually, Skeumax has a nice uh a nice profit calculator for you guys so that you don't miss any of those those small amounts. But basically, you've got a a bucket of water, that's your potential profit, um, and it has a leak in it. And that's that's your overhead. It's constantly, constantly draining profit. And so my my thing is what what we did at the end of the month is we look at all the products that we sold. They've left our store. They're not they're not tenants anymore, they're gone. And the money that we made from them, we have to pay our overhead. We have to pay for everybody else that's still in the store. Um, and so I feel like every item should pay rent. And what I what I mean by that is the longer an item sits in your store, the less potential profit it has. And that that's a concept that I'm gonna need to kind of slowly coach you guys into. But basically, if I sell something and I make a $150 profit on it, but it sat on a shelf for you know 18 months, yeah, what was that cost? It didn't, it didn't just it's not just the cost of the good, it's the housing cost. So finally, I'm giving you guys a housing cost of every single item in your store. So that the longer the item sits, the less the items were. And what's happening at the same time is we're subtracting that little bit of overhead, that little bit of leak from each product, every single skew that we have in our store is going to contribute to that overhead. So my bucket's got water in it and it's leaking every day. My daily overhead. I can't do anything about that, can I? It's just going away. It's going away, it's bleeding out. What I need to be doing is I need to be selling cups of water so that I can get more water to fill my bucket up, right? My store needs to keep filling up. And what I want it to do is I want I want I want to fill up so much that I put it in a bank account. Yeah? I need to make more than I have so that I continue operating. Because if I don't make any sales today, what happens? Some of that, some of that bucket, the bucket's going down, right? The bucket's going down every day. If I don't make sales for a week, well, here goes the bucket. It's it's just it's leaking, it's leaking, it's leaking. I need to make sales to fill that bucket back up again. And everyone in that bucket, everyone in that store, I believe is is responsible for a little bit of that leak. So I've developed what what I call a display cost per day for every one of your products. Um, but in doing so, we can also calculate uh profit in real time. So now you look at a dashboard and you can see your net profit accumulating. Um no one's ever done that, especially not from some old siloed transactional tada, you know, that no one cares about. That's um that's the point. So the rent, the rent thing is every item pays rent, every item loses money, every day it's in your store. That's that's our philosophy. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

I think I think one of the things that I know you're gonna be able to help um a lot of these retailer retailers with is how do you take the emotion out of the products that you have on your shelf? Because I've been in was in retail 27 plus years and working with either big big box or smaller box uh stores, but then also working with um you know, sort of mom and pop retailers. And what I found was that a lot of them were so emotionally tied to their assortment and to their products, and they didn't have any data to actually back up why they should be actually keeping it. It was more of an emotional decision. So, how how are you gonna help them break that sort of emotional um tethering to to their products and just focus in on what's actually selling in your store?

SPEAKER_02 19:30

As soon as, as soon as you sink, you're gonna get little progress bars on every single one of your items showing you how long your items have been there. And most most users are immediately in shock. Wow. I had no idea that I've been there that long. Um and and when you say that they're emotionally attached, absolutely, because every retailer I've spoken to, you know what they say? They say, my products. Yes, my products, yeah. What do you mean my products? They're someone else's, you're trying to sell them to someone else. So that emotional attachment's obvious. And I haven't met a single retailer who didn't have um emotional attachment to certain products. But they don't know how long they've been there. And and for you to tell me, go go to find a few products and and tell me how long they've been there, um, it's gonna take you a few minutes, uh maybe more. You're gonna have to go dig through some invoices and try and figure out when that when that item arrived in your store. Well, I'm gonna show you. You you sync your Square account to uh to Skew Max, and within a few minutes you'll see how long every single product's been there. And that that that will take the emotion out of it. I I think your emotion is probably gonna be you're gonna feel a little bit sick because you've got a few things in there that have probably been in there way too long. Um but that's all right. We're gonna we're gonna fix it, we're gonna expose them, we're gonna or we're maybe we're gonna replace them at better things. Uh we will help you. We'll say that.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Yeah, that's good. I think part of the um part of the issue too when I when I when I see retailers is is that a lot of these smaller ones um don't have a a really solid rhythm to one checking their data and looking at it on a consistent basis. So let's just take let's just let's just hypothesize and think about um a SkewMax um you know user. Uh what do you what would you like them to do, you know, with the application? Like they come in, they open up their store, like what's what does that look like for them to actually engage with your um with the SkewMax app?

SPEAKER_02 21:36

Well, the first thing they're gonna see on their dashboard is they're gonna see their potential profit. And what that means is how much how much money they could make today. If you sold every single item in your store today, um, this is your potential profit. You're gonna see how much profit you have on the line, I guess. Yeah. Um, and then they'll be able to see how many uh during the during making sales during the day, they'll be able to see their true net profit today, the calculation of true net profit today. The other thing I really like is they can see their average turnover rate. They can see how long on average items spend in their store before being sold. Um so the lower that number is, the better. If all my items sell, you know, in under 60 or 90 days, I'm doing really well. If we start getting over 120 days, four months on display, and we're not making any sales, we're we're getting into that seasonal territory. So um I I think that's really that's really where we're gonna see some changes, is is people will know right away um what's doing well and and what isn't doing well, just just at a glance. Um so you'll know your you know your hey, this is how much my store holds in profit. This is how much my store makes or has made so far today, um, and this is how long all my items have been sitting in my store. And you get those those those moments of clarity are just they all hit you at once. You sync and uh let let Schemax run and get all that, get all that new data. Um and then we can help you help show you what to do with that data if you don't know, but it I think it's gonna be pretty obvious when you see how long things have been around and how little money you might be making on some days. Um you might you might be surprised.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Yeah. I I think your your construction background in in understanding time, in understanding sequencing, um how do you get the most out of out of the current resources that you have without trying to add any more resources because you just you just may not have the opportunity to do that. I think one of the areas that you you can you're gonna be able to help them in is what decisions that do they need to make once they look at the data? Because there's one thing within the retail space, we are not short of data. We are not. It is just the mindset of like, what do I do with this? How do I um uh what's my what's my next step? So when you if you think about that in the context of like you're working with a retailer and they're they're they're they're looking at their dashboards and things like that, I'm quite sure you already have a thought process and a game plan to help them think about what they should be doing next.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Well, I'll I'll give you I'll give you an example. Um I have a it's a it's it's a future user. She's a she's a client of mine, um, a construction client of mine who owns a a large retail store. And what she does is she goes through piles and piles of invoices and finds items in her store that have been there for longer than 120 days. This might be a little bit extreme, but you know what she does with those things? She she takes them to Goodwill. She takes those to Goodwill because she realizes she's losing so much money on her shelf space. It's a store in Hawaii, it's very, very expensive real estate. And so after four months, 120 days, she takes those things away. Now I'm not saying you have to do that. What you probably should do is if anything's been there longer than 120 days, is maybe put them on better display. You know, maybe, maybe they need better display. Maybe they're hidden in the corner and no one's seen them. Um maybe you need to promote them, put them on sale, or uh, or some some kind of local advertising saying that you're putting some items on sale, whatever you might have to do. But essentially, we need to replace moving items with better, better moving items, better performers. Um, Skeumax is gonna show you your top 10 performers, the ones that make you your most profit, and also the ones that move quickest. The faster an item moves, the faster we turn over our shelf space, the more profit we're gonna make. So that 120-day mark, uh, for most retailers, in my experience, is it's it's almost a dead product. Uh unless it's really been hiding out of sight. I don't know, there's some corner no one goes to. Maybe that maybe that might be something we bring up front and try and sell, maybe it'll perform better. But if that item's sitting front and center in your store and it's already on sale and it's been there two years, I think it's gotta go. You know, there's there's there's gonna be a time when when we have to remove that item from our store. But uh as much as we can, we're just gonna try and work with that item and and move it faster. That that's probably what we're gonna try and do.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Yeah, no, that's so good. I I think part of, you know, um what retail typically does um is that when a certain product hits that, well, let's say it's the 90-day time frame or the 120-day time frame, they they will put it in the back end cap. Right. That's where all the clearance goes. That's where all of those areas of like, you know, um, yeah, long-term product product goes, and you you try to refresh it, but you still have that product in your inventory. You you you still do. So you have you know all this carrying cost, you know, associated with it. So I'm you know, I know that was that maybe a little drastic for her to maybe take the the close to the goodwill, but I think more and more retailers will probably have to make a different decision and decide how do they want to actually treat that hundred and day 120-day product compared to this product that's brand new that's uh that's on the shelf. So I'm excited that SkewMax is gonna be able to help them help them do that. I I want to talk a little bit about you as a founder before we get out of here. Right. So you're in in the construction business, um, and now you're sliding over into this retail space. What are some of the things that you are gonna be bringing from? I know we talked a little bit about the sequencing ideas, but what are some of the other things that you're gonna be bringing from that construction, your construction background over into the retail space that a lot of people are are missing? And it's and it's great that you're coming in here in the context that you you you have an outside perspective, an outside idea of what certain things should look like and how they should be going according to plan. So, what are some of your thoughts?

SPEAKER_02 27:46

I mean, efficiency. Efficiency has to be the first thing. Um I love that. If you're not efficient in the construction industry, you're you're not gonna make it. Um and if honestly, if you're not efficient in the retail space, uh I I don't know, that's that's a tough one. Um remember I told you the story about the about the lady who who we had an argument um about time.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

Oh no, no, we're I remember, but I think the audience would love to hear it too.

SPEAKER_02 28:13

Okay, all right. So um I was talking to a retailer and uh and I was asking him about profits because I like I said, you know, I'd done a little bit of construction in the retail space, so I started talking to retailers a little bit more. So after dinner one night, it was uh a friend of a friend, he's a store owner, and I was like, okay, tell me about your profits, and she's like, Oh, well, it's it's easy. You just uh you look at your sales, and then um you subtract the the cost of the goods along the way and and your overhead and and um and that's your profit. And I was like, okay. And I was like, what about time? And yeah, it gives me it gives me goosebumps. Just talking about it. What about time? She said, time doesn't matter. So he said, so it doesn't matter. It's the same profit on that item doesn't matter. And I'm like, but it's taking up shelf space or hangar space, and and that isn't free. So yeah, but it doesn't matter. And and it it bothered me so much that I I stepped out of the room, um, and I have I like my math brain, like I told you, and I started writing down the algorithm, the foundational algorithm for Skew Max that includes time in the retail equation. Stores that that use time in in a in a sense uh a little bit, but not like we do. We're uh we're doing things a little bit differently at Skew Max. And so that display cost per day, that shelf space, that you know, time isn't free. Time isn't free. Uh I I can't say it enough. Um so and oh Steve, you think take a guess, do you think that do you think that lady's in business still?

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Uh no.

SPEAKER_02 29:49

No, she's not. Exactly. So but with Stu Max, she probably could have been. So I'm I I I I've I have that live example of a of a of a retailer that didn't understand time, who failed. And and so that's been my driving my driving force this whole time to keep working on this, uh, to get the algorithm flowing, you know, integrating with POS systems and and really helping that little that little guy. I can help the big guy, but I can help the little guy too. It's all it's all just math, but time, please. Time is so important, people. You really, really have to catch up. And uh SkeMax, Skeumax will help you. SkeMax will help you catch up.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Yeah, I'm I'm I'm I'm interested to s to you know if you were to see her again and um what that conversation. I know, I think about it.

SPEAKER_02 30:41

I think about it. I think about it. But you know what? Maybe maybe I'll write her a check and and thank her um for uh for giving you the idea.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

That's right. That's right. She's a she's a she's an early investor. She didn't know about it.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Yeah, if if I hadn't had that conversation, we wouldn't be sitting here today. Isn't that funny? Life life can life can change. Yeah, and hey, I'm I'm gonna get I'm gonna get your store to change. I'm gonna make you I'm gonna make you more money. That that's what I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

That's my keep you in business. That's awesome. Yeah, that should be that should actually be your tagline. Like stay in business with Skeumax, because if you if you don't if you don't make a decision on the information that you're gonna be getting, then I'm not particularly sure if you're gonna if you're gonna be staying in business. So um if you are, it's one of my last questions. So if you were to give retailers right now, I know we just sort of talked about stay in business and time, things like that, but if you were to give you know one piece of advice for a retailer that's out there, um, something that they can, you know, either do now or it's gonna take them, you know, a month or something like that to get across the board. But what's one or two things that you would talk to retailers about right now?

SPEAKER_02 31:53

I would say, I would say go through your store, pick five random items, and and if you're too emotionally attached to your products, maybe maybe have a friend do that. Go go get five random items out of your store and see how long they've been sitting in your store. And also see how long that takes. See how long that takes. You might have to go dig up that invoice or dig up that email or whatever it is. Um, time it. Maybe, maybe, maybe it'll take you ten seconds, but I I bet it takes you more like 30 minutes or an hour. Where is that invoice for that one thing that I haven't looked at in three months? You have no idea. You don't have clarity because time is money and you don't know how long, how much time anything's been on your shelf. You know, so that so in my in my experience in construction, um, you know, time is money, and if I if I lose receipts, I lose money because I can't build a client for that. And I feel like in retail, if you lose track of time, you lose money. You lost track of time. That's that's all. And I'm just gonna give you the time back and I'm gonna show you how much time everything's been here. Um, and I think I think everyone's gonna obviously it's just should be pretty obvious when you see, oh wow, I mean on my first sync, Steve, I had a guy, his uh couple of items in his inventory been there over 600 days. Okay, he found that out in three minutes by syncing. So uh I mean look, it's a free trial for two weeks. I don't know what you have to lose. Sync, look at your items, and be like, wow. Hey, and if you want, you could you could just sync and look at all your items and then never pay, just leave. But at least you'll know that time is money and you'll you'll see that clarity real quick um without spending any money. Um I'm really I'm I'm here to try and help retailers, you know. Like I said, that that lady who failed, um, it's disappointing, but uh, you know, I'm sure there's many more, and I'm sure there's people that are very successful that think, I don't need Skew Max, I make loads of money. Okay, great. Well, would you like to make a little bit more money? I mean, I like to make more money. Maybe you want to make a little bit more money, maybe I can make you another 3%, 5%, I don't know, 10%. For 30 bucks a month, that's like it's like the price of a lunch, and you can see how your products are doing. I I don't know. To me, it's a no-brainer, but hopefully everyone else feels that way, you know?

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Yeah, I yeah, let me let me let me help you save some time so that way you can make more money, right? Because that's that's really what it's about. Like if you can save time and actually have the right product, you know, on your shelf, then come on, that's a that's a win-win situation. I think part of um, and I'm so glad when you said this about syncing, because I I know part of the problem typically when with new applications or um when you know companies are using something new, it's it's garbage in, garbage out. It's about like how do you actually make sure that you have you have what you say you have, you know, in in the store. Because if you don't, if it's if your products aren't even in inventory yet or your or uh uh misappropriate or miss or um mis uh labeled, then you don't necessarily know what you currently have. So when you bring when you do that upfront work and then you add Skeumacs into the equation, now you actually have a solid understanding and a solid foundation on which on which to build upon.

SPEAKER_02 35:11

I'm glad I'm glad you mentioned that upfront work because SkeiMax can only be as accurate as your POS system is. So if you're not, you know, you don't put much time into updating your POS system and you have some items laying around that might not be in it, I I I don't have visibility. You know, Skei Max can't see what what you don't put into your POS system. But I should mention that we're not ever editing your POS system, we're not touching your your square data. We're not we're not doing any changes, no edits, nothing. All we're doing is simply read-only. So we ask you for a read-only permission so that we can see your data. Um, and then we we import it. Um, we're running our algorithm, and then we're pushing that information back to you in a dashboard that's really easy to understand, visually easy to understand, easy to interpret. Um, I feel like most people are gonna take it up pretty quick. Once that sync happens, um actually, to be honest with you, I haven't had anybody sync to unsync. They they they haven't left. Um, once people see this clarity and they see their their store, their product, you know, how they perform and how they don't, um, they need to keep seeing that. That that's one one thing I've experienced. So um I I will warn you that SkewMax might be slightly addictive. That's all I can say. You know, you're gonna you're gonna be looking at that dashboard and wondering what to do with those products that have been there too long. And that then that's what I want, because that'll that'll keep you in business. That's what I'm here for. I'm here to keep you in business. I really am. Um and and I feel like it's a fairly low price point for what you're getting in return, you know? Yeah. That's that's my opinion. I think it's a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 36:47

And then you're starting, and then you're starting, you're you know, you're starting with Square, right? But but but Skewmax has immediate legs, right? So any investor, anybody that's out there listening, right, just think about, you know, we're the problem that Skeumax is solving, you know, traction that um they're gonna they're gonna be gaining um over the next several months. But then also think about the fact that if, you know, I keep thinking about investors, if if if there's a company that has legs that can actually bolt on um and uh integrate with so many other retail um uh POS systems, man, it's it's it's it's a win-win. It's a win-win.

SPEAKER_02 37:24

Um yeah, we'll be we'll be moving we'll be moving it to Shopify, um, probably Lightspeed, Clover, Toast. Um CounterPoint, Counterpoint's uh a good platform. It's a little bit tricky for us to integrate with, so we're getting there. But essentially there's seven or eight primary POS systems that we'll be we'll be integrated with within probably the next six to eight months. So we we're already we have uh the work's been done, we just have to roll out. And currently we're rolling out with Square, um, seeing how that goes, and then we'll be quickly branching into pretty much every POS system we can find. Um I'm not building a POS system, I'm not a transactional guy, I'm an efficiency guy. So we're we're we're kind of we're we're helping the POS systems users do that's our goal.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Yeah, outstanding, outstanding. Well, Maximilian, I I thank you so much for being here. Thanks for being on the podcast and super excited for what you what you're building and how you're gonna be helping companies and stores stay in business because that's what we need. We need more retailers. Stay in business. Stay in business, stay in business and make more money and make more money.

SPEAKER_02 38:31

Yeah. I mean, me too. I I stay in business and I try and be as efficient as I can. And that that's why I'm I'm still here. You know, I'm in construction in Hawaii, but uh I need those stores because there's there's not too many stores out here, and I want to keep you guys around, you know.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

Well, well, I I'm quite sure you will, and um, we're gonna make sure we get a whole bunch of users over there. There's gonna be a link to um go to Skew Max for a free 14 day trial. Um, it's gonna be in the link in the show notes, so make sure you all click into that. Maximilian, thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate you.

SPEAKER_02 39:05

Steve, I appreciate I appreciate your time. It's been fun. Yeah, outstanding. Outstanding.