StoneTalk Episode 5 – Sasha Shtern

Aug 22, 2014 | Business

StoneTalk Episode 5 – Sasha Shtern

In our 5th episode, Patrick chats with Sasha Shtern, founder of multiple countertop-related businesses, including Lazy Granite and vanitycounters.com.

ST005 - Sasha Shtern

Listen to this episode to learn:

  • How too many choices can make it hard for customers to buy
  • How one granite fabricator makes money from DIYers
  • How vanitycounters.com lets homeowners buy finished custom vanities

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (and please give the show a review!) or via RSS … and please let us know what you think! You can leave comments for this show at stonetalk.org, on the StoneTalk Facebook page, via Twitter, or on this site. And of course, you can always email patrick@moraware.com, too. If you have stories or insights that you’d like to share with other fabricators, please reach out to Patrick.

Transcript

Patrick: Today I chat with Sasha, founder of several countertop related businesses including Lazy Granite and Vanity Counters.com. Let’s give them a call.

Sasha: Hey Patrick, can you hear me?

Patrick: I can hear you great. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate it.

Sasha: Absolutely, sounds fun.

Patrick: As a way of starting, even before I dive in and ask you questions, can you just tell me the story of how you started your business and how it’s kind of evolved into a series of different businesses?

Sasha: Sure. It started as an EBay business.

Patrick: Really?

Sasha: Yeah. I started selling bathtubs on EBay, large luxury tubs. And that business was good, I made some money there. But there were all sorts of problems with the products that eventually turned out years down the road and it was largely based on new construction, because these were items that you had to design a bathroom around.

Patrick: Okay.

Sasha: So with the fall in new construction, that business pretty much went under, and we looked at what we could do. We could either go get jobs or we could try something else.

Patrick: By the way, who is we? Who do you work with?

Sasha: Now I work with my father.

Patrick: Oh nice.

Sasha: Yeah. So we could go get jobs, or we could try something else; and one thing that we had a little bit of experience with was granite tile.

So we decided to go in that direction, because it would be less risky. So the big problem with these huge bathtubs is they’re not liquid. It’s very difficult to sell them when there’s not a lot of new construction going on. So we wanted something that was more of a commodity so that if it wasn’t going well we would be able to liquidate it relatively quickly. And that was granite tile.

There’s a chain of stores, a pretty big business called Floor & Décor, and they were selling this edging product and the edging product wasn’t very good. The part that hung over the countertop weighed more than the part that sat on the countertop itself.

So what happened is the tile guy would set the tile; he would set the edging piece down and then 20 minutes later the edging piece would be dropping over the countertop, because the part that hung over the countertop weighed more than the cantilever.

So we thought we could solve this problem pretty easily. We can come up with an edging product that is deeper, has more area on the countertop itself so it doesn’t tip over; so we did that. And at the time we were selling 12 by 12 tiles; so we were selling this 3-inch bull-nosed tile. And then two 12 by 12 tiles, and then the customer would need us to cut one of the tiles down to 9 inches, because the countertop total depth is 24 inches.

So okay, the next thing we can do is make that job a lot easier, we can make the tiles 21 inches deep so one tile plus the bull-nosed piece covers the depth of the whole countertop. And gradually the Lazy Granite system developed from there. We just kept eliminating pain points for customers and making it better and better to work with.

Patrick: Who are your customers? Who are you selling to?

Sasha: Our customers are largely home owners, DIYers.

Patrick: That’s cool.

Sasha: We have some tile installers. Tile installers like the idea of the product because they usually charge per square foot. Our product is a lot easier and faster to install. Each Lazy tile is over three square feet. So for them the job is easier, faster, they are earning more hourly. And for their customers it looks better than 12 by 12 tile. We have a lot of tile contractors recommending our products to their customers.

Patrick: Interesting. It looks like you kind of took that same concept and applied it to showers, or am I reading that wrong?

Sasha: We had five products lines and we applied similar lessons in each of the product lines, in four of the five product lines. The biggest thing is we’re not industry insiders, we are I guess you could say outsiders. Prior to this business we didn’t really know anybody in the stone business and we didn’t know anything about how the stone industry worked. And that gives us an outsider perspective and we saw there were some pretty basic innovation that could be done that hasn’t been done for whatever reasons. And we saw the same thing in the shower glass, the same thing in bathroom countertops, and in cabinets as well.

Patrick: Are all of those product lines, do you pretty much have the same customers, so you’re selling directly to DIYers for most of those things?

Sasha: The same customers; we are also selling a lot of shower glass through tile retailers.

Patrick: Okay, getting back to the Lazy Granite, how do you make the granite? Obviously three-foot sections of granite tile-like stuff didn’t exist before. Are you fabricating that yourself, or did you spec it out and have it fabricated in China? How are you doing that?

Sasha: Yes, it’s getting fabricated for us overseas. We now have a design patent on the system. We just have it sent out and it gets fabricated for us.

Patrick: And so you have a pretty broad geographical reach then I would think. Are you selling to all parts of the US? Are you selling beyond the US?  How are you dealing with geography?

Sasha: All over. Lazy Granite.com, we actually just recently, I think in the last week, had one of our furthest away customers ever order, somewhere in Alaska. We ship to Canada, Alaska, and I think we’ve even had some customers in Puerto Rico, but all over the US, and particularly in rural areas.

Lazy Granite is an alternative to 12 by 12 tiles and slabs, so the idea is that it looks nicer than 12 by 12 tiles, but it isn’t as expensive as a slab. But if you’re in a rural area often there are no stone fabricators at all, so Lazy Granite is the next best option. A lot of our customers come from rural areas.

Patrick: That’s cool. And then what about Custom Granite. We happened to meet at a Park Industries Digital Expo. What made you look at equipment like that? Is it because you’re doing custom also, or for some other purpose? Or is that for your vanity business?

Sasha: Sure, about two things we plan on doing there. With Vanity Counters.com we sell a lot of bathroom countertops.

Patrick: For people who haven’t seen it, you go to Vanity Counters.com. An end customer can spec out what the basic bathroom vanity looks like, but it’s still specific to their bathroom finished the way they want it with various colors. And then it gets delivered to their door so that they can install it. Is that about right?

Sasha: That’s right, and I’ll give you the premise of that as well. In Denver we sell a lot of bathroom cabinets and a lot of our customers started asking for us to supply them with countertops. The challenge for the customer is that Home Depot and Lowe’s carry standard sizes, 61 inch, 49 inch. So if you need a non-standard size, say 53 inches between walls, you need to go to a fabricator.

Well fabricators don’t stock the material, and for a 53 by 22 inch vanity it’s not worth it to buy a slab. So customers are looking for remnants, which can be not such a fun process. And at the end of the day it’s not necessarily the kind of business all fabricators want. It’s a pretty small job, so if the fabricator doesn’t have remnants they probably don’t want to the business at all. The only reason they would want it is to get rid of some remnants.

So what we started doing was bringing in slabs that are 22 inches deep and we charge customers per linear inch for the countertop. And we offer them four sink options: big rectangle, big oval, small rectangle, small oval. So the whole idea is semi-custom; if they need something deeper than 22 inches we can’t sell it to them. We say go visit a custom fabricator. If they need whatever special sink that they absolutely love and can’t do without, once again we just refer them to a fabricator.

For the simple products bathroom countertops is kind of surprisingly difficult. What I found is to just buy a bathroom countertop I need a 55-inch bathroom countertop standard doves, it’s not that easy. So we sought a way to make an easier way of doing it, and came up with a pretty straightforward process, deployed that on Vanity Counters.com. And the same thing; we have customers ordering from all over the country, bathroom countertops.

We ship them directly to their house. You don’t need to have any real installation skills to plop a vanity top onto a cabinet; it’s straightforward.

So one of the reasons we are looking at C&C equipment is to automate and improve the quality of our bathroom countertops. We want better consistency in our sink cutouts; potentially offer more options with sink cutouts without increasing our costs.  But quality is number one, so we want to improve our quality. We have good quality now, but I think we can have excellent quality with C&C equipment.

Patrick: So you’re hand cutting right now?

Sasha: No we’re using incremental finger bits with a radial arm machine. So the fabricator for sink cutouts is following a high density plastic template that’s clamped down to the countertop. So we have good consistency with the cutouts, good quality, but we can have really, really good quality and attain that next level with C&C equipment I think. So that’s one of the reasons why we’re looking at C&C equipment.

The other reason is we do plan on starting fabricating here in the Denver area.

Patrick: Okay, nice.

Sasha: A lot of these lessons that we learned with bathroom countertops and how to make this a simple process for customers, we see that we can apply to kitchen countertops as well. So we have customers regularly coming to us thinking that we do sell kitchen countertops. We show them the Lazy Granite system, but if they’re looking for a slab then we refer them over to someone else.

And what we hear on a pretty regular basis from customers that we send somewhere else is that the buying experience isn’t the most pleasant; that buying a granite countertop for the kitchen can sometimes be similar to buying a used car. There’s not much transparency. I think there’s not enough education for the consumer.

I think what that boils down to is most fabricators are skilled tradesmen. They started their business by being stone fabricators and realizing that they could go out on their own and do it. That’s their biggest skill, their fabrication skills.

Dealing with uneducated consumers often I think isn’t their best skill, and with us we’re kind of the opposite. We know how to deal with uneducated consumers and bring them up to speed. But we’re not the most knowledgeable fabricators; we don’t have as much experience as some of the guys in the industry around us. And with C&C equipment I think we can close that gap a little bit. I think we can deliver equally good quality, that more experienced fabricators can produce, and result in a better more pleasant customer experience.

Patrick: That’s kind of cool, that you’re approaching it from the customer back to the product and what they customer is asking for, as opposed to starting it from what you know how to make and then trying to figure out how to deal with customers.

Sasha: Exactly. And there are a lot of lessons to be learned from this whole bathroom countertop experience. One of the lessons learned is that more selection isn’t better; that customers don’t need 50 sink options. In fact we’ve found that for some things, more selection hurts. We lose sales because we have customers that simply can’t decide.

So we simplify the process by reducing some selection, and what that also means is we’re not going to take on jobs that may require more expertise, things like say, a fireplace surround. There are plenty of custom fabricators that love that kind of business. What we just want to do is make ordering countertops easy; that’s it. We don’t want to be the place that people go to for complicated shower walls and benches and things like that.

Patrick: You mentioned transparency, and for me, I’m not a countertop guy at all. I don’t fabricate counters, don’t sell counters. But I am a consumer, and I can imagine myself replacing my kitchen counters and transparency would be important to me, too. I fear getting ripped off like that used car salesman thing you were talking about. So transparency is interesting to me, the idea of showing me how you’re pricing and showing me that you’re not ripping me off as part of an overall educational process.

But flipping that in the other direction as a business, how do you avoid chasing the low price and being the low price provider? Or is that what you want to do? How do you simultaneously sell on value while also being transparent? How do reconcile those things for yourself?

Sasha: That’s a good question. First of all when you identify who is the real competition out there, I don’t see the local fabricators as the main competition. I see Home Depot and Lowe’s as the main competition.

Patrick: All right.

Sasha: Home Depot and Lowe’s may utilize a lot of local fabricators, but they are our direct competition. And they don’t do that great a job on either transparency or service. I think they are often under staffed. And when I go to Home Depot.com I see some advertised pricing, but it’s impossible to see what you’ll actually pay.

So on the issue of transparency it’s a little bit of a two-way street. Part of the problem with custom fabricators, and I see the reason why they can’t be transparent. Not all jobs are equal; some jobs are in remote locations, or complicated jobs, and they don’t want to say one price fits all. And part of the way we solve that is we say, well these complicated jobs; we’re not going to tackle them to begin with.

Patrick: All right, fair enough.

Sasha: We can do a one-price fits all type of model. The other part to transparency is the slabs, as the materials, because fabrication and installation and the labor side of things is only half the cost really. The other half is the material itself.

Fabricators as well as Home Depot and Lowe’s can’t be very transparent when the customer has to buy the material from somewhere else. When you as a consumer go to a stone distributor, such as Dahl or Stone Collection, they’re not going to give you pricing, because they want to maintain a relationship with the stone fabricator.

So just the fact that there is kind of this distributor that exists for a reason, but they’re not going to give the consumer pricing and there’s no way the fabricator can price things without the distributor, it just adds a layer of complication to things. And the other way we resolve that is by carrying a certain amount of inventory in stock, the same way we do with our bathroom countertops. We have 15 colors in stock, and we can do our best to help customers with those 15 colors.

If they have a specific color that we don’t have or one of our 15 colors doesn’t suit their taste, at that point they can go to Stone Collection or another distributor and we will gladly work with that distributor. But by having those colors and that material in stock we can give them an exact price on the material, as well as the labor.

Patrick: Got it. And so in reducing those choices, as you said, has other benefits about making it easier for the customer to buy in the first place. So that and your price transparency kind of reinforce each other.

Sasha: That’s right. The experience is really what we are hoping to sell; it’s an easy, haggle-free experience, which to me is one-stop shopping. Although it might not necessarily be one-stop shopping, but at least you don’t have to make quite as many visits to Stone Distributors and so on. Home Depot is probably better for one-stop shopping, but we can provide better service in terms of educating the customer and making sure that there’s somebody to talk to when they walk in the door.

Patrick: Now at Moraware we’ve had customers occasionally request what you’re doing with Vanity Counters.com. We’ve had people say, “Hey, can you build this so I can use it?” Now you already have it, and so that brings up an interesting question. Any fabricator who doesn’t want to do that kind of work can just link on their website to Vanity Counters.com and if you don’t want to do that it’s easy; just have you do it.

But what if a fabricator said I’d like to do the work, but I don’t have that little website widget. And it’s not high enough on our list any time soon; I don’t know when we’re going to do it. Would you ever white label that for other people, or do you see that as competing with your site too much?

Sasha: The answer is yes, absolutely. We’d love to work with others and white label it. I don’t know if it would be a white label or an affiliate-type program. White label would probably be most appropriate for stone fabricators and we’d love to do that with them.

Patrick: Very cool. So that they could embed it on their website and it would look like part of their website without having to shift out to VanityCounters.com.

Sasha: Yes, absolutely. The challenge with that is just the focus, is that do you want to be at some point we have to say we’d better wait for Moraware to put that out because they know how to deploy technology better.

Patrick: Fair enough.

Sasha: As you know, it’s not a point of technology, there’s a lot of support required with it, right?

Patrick: Correct, and that makes a lot of sense.

Sasha: My concern isn’t sharing the technology with somebody else; it’s supporting them after they’ve started using it.

Patrick: That’s right, because you’re largely a technology company already, except your customers are still buying physical product. It does change the nature of support when you’re supporting bits and bytes. It’s just a different animal, so yeah, that’s very true.

Sasha: A different animal. But it’s definitely something we’ve thought about and wondered how we can help local retailers with it as well as other fabricators. Moraware is obviously put together, what I would say the equivalent for kitchen counters with your estimated software now.

Patrick: But it’s still not for the end customer; it’s only for fabricators, because again, it’s a completely different support animal. It takes a couple hours to learn how to use even our simplest software. Well, an end user isn’t going to take a couple of hours; you have to be able to use it instantly, which for VanityCounters.com a homeowner could just go in there and start entering data and it’s pretty intuitive.

Sasha: Yes and the whole idea is that your wife or grandmother or somebody who’s not very tech savvy and at the same time knows nothing about countertops should be able to figure out how to get a price for their bathroom countertop within a few minutes on there.

Patrick: Right. You mentioned focus, how do you stay focused? You said you had five different product lines; you’re moving into custom granite? Is that something you struggle with, or is it just something that you have a lot of different interests and you want to see where they lead?

Sasha: It’s a huge struggle. There are all sorts of things around it, but an idea without a strategy is only a distraction, right?

Patrick: Right.

Sasha: I can’t say that we’ve figured out a good strategy for reconciling all these cool product lines that we have and the technology that we have. Right now what we’re doing is we’re essentially following the path of least resistance. Where we see growth opportunities and customers buying we try to expand into that.

At some point we’re going to need to decide more or less what our niche is and grow with that nationally. But when you have five successful product lines it’s difficult to choose which of your children is your favorite.

Patrick: Right. Is there cross promotion there? Let me back up a little. So how do most customers find one of your products, let’s say Lazy Granite shower doors or vanity counters? Does it come from a web search? Does it come from some other recommendation? How do they typically find it?

Sasha: The bulk of it I’d say is web search.

Patrick: Okay.

Sasha: And also a lot of just referral and repeat customer traffic.

Patrick: Okay.

Sasha: Through retailers that we sell through. But a lot of it is web search.

Patrick: Do you purchase AdWords or do you focus more on organic results?

Sasha: We prefer organic. We do spend quite a bit on pay-per-click, and we’ll probably start spending more on pay-per-click. The difficulty with pay-per-click is measuring things.

Patrick: Right.

Sasha: With pay-per-click when you’re advertising a pair of shoes or whatever online it’s generally an instantaneous purchase. If you like the shoes you’re going to order them. When it comes to home improvement products the buying cycle is much longer. If you’re ordering a bathroom countertop from us from the time you visit our website to the time you’re actually ordering could be three months. And there could be multiple decision makers, you need to talk to your spouse, and then you need to ask your contractor builder or whoever, and maybe price out a couple of other places. It takes some time.

So measuring the effectiveness of pay-per-click is difficult. Measuring the effectiveness of anything is difficult, but with pay-per-click we’re working on developing that funnel to make sure that we can invest more with confidence. So the problem right now is confidence. We’re not sure if it’s working or not; therefore we can’t start spending more money on it.

Patrick: Do you have a Facebook page, or multiple Facebook pages potentially for these things?

Sasha: Yes we do. Lazy Granite, Vanity Counters, Sharp Showers; they all have all the social media basics. I don’t think that, because of our clientele, you know, our clientele is typically homeowners, probably in their 40s. They’re not so eager to jump on Facebook and like their granite countertop vendor.

Patrick: I don’t know; I mean, I hear you, but at the same time I know a whole lot of middle aged men and women who are on Facebook and love interacting with vendors on Facebook and specifically sharing and telling people, hey, I just redid my bathroom. Check out this vanity counter that I got from this place that I like. I don’t know, I wouldn’t rule it out. I think there could be some interesting things there.

And the other issue is, if I were going to buy your product I would be interested in the community of other people who have bought it. Have you done anything to foster that kind of community, and if not, could you, or have you thought about that?

Sasha: We’ll hire you as an advisor. I think there’s a lot of room for improvement. I guess the better way of putting it is we just don’t know how to do that very well.

Patrick: Okay.

Sasha: Well to be honest, I think we’re going to hire a gal that does have a little bit of experience with that.

Patrick: Cool.

Sasha: But we’ve done it to the extent that we know how, and we don’t how so …

Patrick: No, that’s fair. I think social media in general for most of this audience, for custom stone fabricators I think it’s less of a good fit, because the community people care about so specifically their own friends. So you know, if I’m going to get a custom countertop I really don’t care what somebody thinks who I don’t know. Right? I want a recommendation from my brother or from my next door neighbor.

But for the work you’re doing, anytime you add a product in there, and especially something with a DIY element to it, I think there’s more opportunity simply because, okay, if I’m putting a counter on myself I’m going to be terrified, and I just want to know there’s a place where I can talk to other people about it.

So I’m happy to be; you don’t need to pay me to be an advisor, you can call me anytime you want. But I think the place to start is simply to ask. So if you’re hiring someone to work on these things, you know, step one is, hey, like our Facebook page; be part of our community. Ask others. I think it just starts with asking people. Talk to other people about this, be a part of it. I think that would be useful.

Sasha: I’m glad you brought it up, but it’s something I’ll need to evaluate.

Patrick: Cool. I know a lot of Moraware’s customers actually have more success with Pinterest than anything else, because it’s so visually oriented. But when it comes to social media it all depends on the specific circumstances of your business. So yes, it is pretty complicated.

Sasha: That’s a good point with Pinterest. Social media has changed so fast, because Pinterest, you know, Patrick, Pinterest has sold 18 months ago; we’re onto Houzz now, right?

Patrick: Right.

Sasha: Things are moving quickly. But Pinterest probably is going to stick around for a while.

Patrick: Unfortunately one of the lessons we’ve learned is we have to meet people where they are, and so if they’re on Twitter, meet them on Twitter. If they’re on Facebook, meet them on Facebook. Unfortunately for a business it means you have to expand your reach across multiple platforms like this.

There’s a really good book about this by Gary Vaynerchuk called Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. The basic premise being you have to give, give, give, give before you ask for anything from anybody. So give something useful. For you it might be, hey, here are tips on how to be your own contractor as you’re rebuilding. Boom. It’s a little gift. You’re not asking for anything from them.

You give, give, give and start building your audience, and then eventually say to the people who care about you and go for the sale, “Remember when it’s time to do your kitchen to use Lazy Granite,” that sort of thing.

The other premise of his book is there are all these different platforms, as you mentioned, and if your customer cares about one more than the other you can’t convince them otherwise. So if they’re on Houzz, meet them on Houzz. If they’re on Instagram, meet them on Instagram. It’s only going to get harder, I think, for all of us trying to do that.

Sasha: I agree. Well you brought up the point so anybody listening out there, please like us on Facebook.

Patrick: Heck yeah.

Sasha: It’s Facebook.com/lazygranite.

Patrick: So what’s next for you? Obviously you have a whole bunch of things going on. When you get off the phone what are you going to be working on today, tomorrow, next week? What is your biggest focus right now?

Sasha: The biggest focus is the custom kitchen countertop business, and LazyGranite.com. Those are I’d say our two biggest focuses. LazyGranite.com is one of those things that is a marketing puzzle. We have a fantastic product. It’s just getting people to be aware of it, and that’s really where we need to figure out how to advertise better, especially with pay-per-click . I think we have a huge opportunity there to scale; we just don’t have the confidence to scale our marketing. We have the confidence in the product, and our delivery speed and all that good stuff, just not in the marketing.

Another thing I’d like just point out, we recently discovered this market for Lazy Granite. It’s multi-family development. We have low-end multi-family development, so I think it’s called Class C Residential.

Patrick: Okay.

Sasha: It’s not a place that you would normally expect any kind of granite countertops. We have customers now that are remodeling pretty big projects, 100 plus unit residences, and they love Lazy Granite because they’re replacing Formica. It’s cheap, it’s easier to fix, so if somebody breaks a single Lazy Granite tile or scratches a single Lazy Tile there’s no need to call a restoration company or replacing the whole Formica top. You can replace a single Lazy Tile, and 18-inch section.

But it’s also super fast. And one thing that we didn’t realize is the importance of speed in remodeling between tenants. To these property owners, time is money for them. They want minimal vacancy.

Patrick: Right.

Sasha: They are buying Lazy Granite and appliances and they’re remodeling an entire kitchen in two days. They are painting the cabinets, putting on new handles, laying the Lazy Granite, and switching the appliances in a weekend basically. A two-day turnaround, and that’s something that is tough with custom countertops. It’s just another thing we learned from our customers, how important that speed is and how few products there are that can do that kind of thing.

Patrick: I think one point embedded in there that’s useful for everybody is that you learn from your customers. You come out with a product or a service. You sell it to people, as well as you can, but then your customers teach you things you didn’t even know.

That happens to use every day. I think any good business person is paying attention to what their customers are telling them, and then you stroke your chin and say, “I didn’t realize that. How do I take advantage of that to make my business better?”

Sasha: Absolutely. We had another huge learning point recently; I think it was at Coverings. We started hearing from major contractors and the TCNA that puts together the tiling guidelines for shower glass. And we sell quite a bit of shower glass via ShopShowers.com. We have the Prosto System, which may or may not be appropriate for this podcast; but what we heard is that what’s happening is tile contractors are waterproofing the shower.

They are laying all of the tile and then the glass installer comes and sometimes they are drilling a huge channel, especially along the floor, penetrating the waterproofing. Two years down the road there is a failure in the shower and the tile contractor is to blame because he was the one who did the waterproofing. So what we learned is that if the tile guy is able to do the shower glass install they eliminate that risk. And they can make some money.

So they are reducing risk and making money, so it’s a win/win. But there’s no way we would have even thought of that unless we just talked to a bunch of prospective customers and just heard what their pain points are.

Patrick: That just makes so much sense; talk to your customers. Hey, one last thought; what about going into the lion’s den. Have you thought about selling your products through Home Depot or Lowe’s or something like that?  Would that work, or is that just crazy talk?

Sasha: It’s not crazy talk, but it’s difficult because I’d say our products, like the Prosto Shower System, is a fantastic product and would be great for Home Depot, Lowe’s. It requires a higher level of care, though. It’s not quite as retail friendly as they would like. It’s not a single box that you can set up. It requires a little bit of hand holding, not a lot but a little bit of hand holding and a little bit of educating customers, and Home Depots don’t really have that kind of resource in the store.

Patrick: Interesting.

Sasha: They have some people in the design center, but often they are overwhelmed and they’re selling 30 different product lines. It’s too much for one person. So for Prosto Showers, the system that we sell on Shop Showers, we’re trying to work with tile stores that are open-minded toward adding new products, because shower glass is outside of a tile store’s niche, right?

Patrick: Right.

Sasha: It’s not something that they’ve thought about before, and it’s not something that was available to them before. So they really have to be open-minded; and we hope to incentivize them that there’s money to be made there. But it requires that their staff learn about the product and can help the customer throughout the process.

Patrick: That makes sense. Well, Sasha, I know you have more work to do, so I will let you go. But thank you so much for sharing your business with us. I’m going to keep my eye on what you guys are doing and I’m cheering for you. I think it’s cool as heck.

Sasha: Thank you, Patrick. I appreciate the call.

Patrick: Any way I can help, just reach out. I find it quite fascinating, so if you ever want to brainstorm just let me know.

Sasha: I appreciate it, Patrick.

Patrick: All right, enjoy the rest of your day.

Sasha: You too, bye.

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