Is American Manufacturing Making a Comeback?

Chris Kiefer (00:01.034)

Welcome back to another episode of the Pursuit of Purpose. My name is Chris Kiefer and I am here with Nick Roach, who is the marketing director for Lakeside Companies, which is a really cool corporation or business that has a number of sub entities under it. And Nick is a part of the marketing team there. So I will let Nick describe that. But first of all, Nick, we made it happen. This was like three months in the making, lots of reschedules.

So thanks for coming on and yeah.

Nicholas Roach (00:32.33)

Yeah, thanks for being patient with me. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. So, yeah, I work for Lakeside Companies. I'm the marketing director, one of the marketing directors, there's actually two of us currently. And we do a lot of different things. So my experience is in American manufacturing. I've worked in primarily clothing and shoe manufacturing for the first eight years of my career. And now at Lakeside.

We do a lot of different types of manufacturing, very different than the clothing industry. We build houses, we manufacture aerospace parts for planes, and we farm and grow grass seed. So you could call it cultivation on this level, as well as manufacturing, but we have our hands on a lot of different businesses.

Chris Kiefer (01:22.37)

That's so the, when you told me about what you do or what Lakeside company was involved in, I was, I'm intrigued because the American manufacturing in my opinion, or in my, it's not an opinion, my limited knowledge is there was obviously this boom of American manufacturing and then everything was cheaper overseas. So everybody exported their, um, you know, the manufacturing to other countries. And then I think it was COVID where everyone was like, Oh shoot.

we probably should start manufacturing our own stuff again. So yeah, I'd be curious back to your first job, how in your career, how have you seen American manufacturing evolve? And then where do you see it going?

Nicholas Roach (02:05.826)

So the makeup of the United States, obviously, is very different than most other countries in that we have 50 states. And manufacturing was once, to get the shirt that you are wearing on your back, involves someone growing cotton in a field, someone then having a mill where they milled that cotton. They ran it through all the processes necessary to build the cloth, the textiles that will

make the shirt, then they shipped it to someone who was going to cut the pieces and sew it together. And all of that could be done for a somewhat, I think, reasonable price. Maybe if there was leather involved, there was a tannery down the road that was sourcing its hides from a farmer a little further out. And over the 100 years of America, we've seen a consolidation in not only business practices, but efficiencies in how we get to these.

and the goals, which is the shirt. So to tailor the shirts that you and I wear today in America costs about $150 minimum due to the wage cost along the supply chain of getting that shirt made. So think of it as a minimum wage issue. If you were to build the whole thing in Idaho, it would probably be a lot cheaper. But is the labor there to do it? Likely not. So you probably don't have the skilled laborers

shirts at volume or the cotton being farmed or the textile mill in production. And so not only is your

Chris Kiefer (03:41.733)

When you say it's gonna cost $150, is that if I wanted to make one shirt?

Nicholas Roach (03:46.87)

Yeah, to make money on one shirt, it's going to cut. You're going to have to charge. No, it'd be a lot more for one shirt even, I think. Or it might be a little cheaper for one shirt because of how you can source materials. But if you were going to make it in Idaho all the way through, I don't even know if you could. So let me clarify something. Made in America is 51% sourced and 51% manufactured. So.

In order to say something is made in America, you have to source and manufacture that article in America. So one of the pieces, so the first company I worked for was called Filson. They're a famous Seattle woolen mill. Well, not woolen mill. They're a company that makes wool jackets, usually from Pendleton's wool. But we ended up sourcing wool from Great Britain as well, and I think eventually now New Zealand as well. And

So suddenly you're made in America option when you're sourcing the wool from the United Kingdom or New Zealand or even Canada. You can't say made in America on that garment. You can say manufactured in America if it's cut and sewn in America, but you can't say made. And...

Chris Kiefer (04:59.318)

And would you also have to put that it was sourced or what would the word, the wordage be that it would like from this country?

Nicholas Roach (05:04.138)

Yeah, from material sourced elsewhere, or if it made sense for the brand, it made sense to say with material sourced from England, because that's high class, correct? Yeah, it's exactly, you're like, oh, England. They must have the finest sheep there. So we actually got, we didn't get in trouble, but we were used as an example by the FTC, because, so the company I worked for was called Filson.

Chris Kiefer (05:14.834)

It sounds more prestigious or whatever, yeah. Ha ha ha.

Chris Kiefer (05:20.693)

Yeah.

Nicholas Roach (05:31.958)

And simultaneously, the owner was starting a watch company called Shinola. And you may have heard of Shinola because there's an old phrase you don't know from Shinola. I'm not sure how I feel about cursing on this podcast so I won't say it, but it was a shoe polish brand about 150 years ago called Shinola. And he bought the rights to that brand. And this is just a fun story, but he did a survey across the United States and he said,

Chris Kiefer (05:42.133)

Ah.

Nicholas Roach (06:00.51)

five dollar pen that was made in China, a ten dollar pen that was made in USA, or a fifteen dollar pen that was made in Detroit. And the response to the survey was everyone wanted to buy a fifteen dollar pen that was made in Detroit. So through that he gleaned, all right there's a manufacturing history in Detroit, people will pay more for that perceived history, what do we want to build there? And then the eventual product was decided to be watches. And on the initial watches they were saying made in Detroit.

And the FTC was like, no, you can't say made in Detroit. Those are built in Detroit, but they are sourced. Pieces are sourced. Well, the owner of this company started fossil watches. So he had an incredible supply chain from China for sourcing parts, um, and preliminary labor on casings and movements. So you're essentially sourcing parts in China, movements from Switzerland.

and then putting them together in Detroit to build a watch that was then a $600 quartz movement watch. So a very premium priced for a battery powered watch, not even an automatic watch. But he was trying to start a portfolio of American manufactured goods companies and he had gone public with Fossil and had a lot of success in that. But the numbers on American manufactured goods.

Chris Kiefer (07:01.278)

making it in the US.

Chris Kiefer (07:13.954)

Mm.

Nicholas Roach (07:28.834)

The volume just never panned out because shirts are, I mean, if they're made in the States, they're $150 minimum. And if they're made elsewhere of the materials we're using, they were still in the $95 range. And then the jackets increased from 300 to as much as $1,000 now. So the price increases, what's that?

Chris Kiefer (07:46.622)

if it's an American-made jacket. If it's an American-made jacket.

Nicholas Roach (07:51.21)

Yeah, and these products are very sturdy, but they're also technologically deficient. It's like wearing a coat from essentially the... Part of the hard part of American manufacturing is whether it's boots or clothing, the technology on making this stuff hasn't really changed at all. And the technology of the materials hasn't. You're using primarily cotton, wax cotton or wool, and then with shoes, you're usually using leather.

soles, so like a Goodyear welted leather stacked sole, maybe with some rubber on the bottom, leather uppers, and that's a very early 1900s model of clothing and workwear, so it's heavily workwear, and it's a style that is quite frankly not as usable today as it was when guys were mining and lumberjacking out in the woods. You know, most people work in an office now, so.

Chris Kiefer (08:49.665)

Mm.

Nicholas Roach (08:49.715)

All birds are going to get the job done for you.

Chris Kiefer (08:53.527)

True.

Nicholas Roach (08:55.235)

They won't on a style or taste level at all, but no offense if you're wearing all birds right now.

Chris Kiefer (09:07.064)

So, what's the future of American manufacturing in your opinion?

Nicholas Roach (09:11.01)

Well, on the clothing and manufacturing side, I think it's dwindling. I think you will either see very high end goods that are manufactured here, that people know they have a market for or they have a specific buyer for, but in mass, unless we bring back incentives and a culture for manufacturing, it's gonna be tough.

So.

Chris Kiefer (09:36.318)

I feel there's a part of me that's like, how many Americans would even want manufacturing jobs? Just because of, could be negative view, but it's like, I feel like Americans are very entitled. I'm very entitled. And just like, you have expectations of what you want to do. And the reality is that to do manufacturing of textiles and stuff, it's just factory work, right? And there's, I just wonder if there's, if you could even get.

the, what is it, what are we on now? Gen Zers. They're working at Starbucks for, you know, 20 bucks an hour and, and getting tips or whatever. It's just like, I don't know, seems, it seems like that's probably also a difficult mountain to climb.

Nicholas Roach (10:21.466)

Yeah, I think you're keying on something that's important, which is like, there's a general disconnection from the work that most people are doing. And so when I was working at Filson, we started this little pocket called the Filson Restoration Department, FRD. And it was two people who would literally take old Filson bags that had been sent in because Filson's so hardy. And we would send those people new bags if you had a lifetime guarantee on a lot of stuff.

So if you had a bag that had worn out, you could send it in. Filson would send you a new bag and we'd take these old bags and we'd rebuild them into these like one of a kind beautiful products. And then they would charge about twice as much as what the original bag cost for this like tailored fine art but also extremely sturdy luggage bag. And these guys would do that for six months out of the year. Then they'd go work for the Patagonia Wornware Tour. Do you know what Patagonia Wornware is?

Chris Kiefer (11:20.798)

Is that the, I know that Patagonia does something similar where you can send in your old jackets and they'll repair them. Is it the same idea?

Nicholas Roach (11:26.578)

Exactly. It's a refurbishing deal, but they also drive around. And so maybe they'd come to Coeur d'Alene and everyone could get in line and they do quick repairs right there. And so you're meeting people. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (11:37.482)

So these are like artisans that are just, and they get hired by Filson, Patagonia, or whatever. That's crazy.

Nicholas Roach (11:44.254)

Yeah, there's one called Green Eileen, which is an Eileen Fisher brand. And yeah, and so there, there are these ways to connect people to the work again. But if you're just, if you're just sitting there, sewing 100 jackets a day, and all you're actually doing is sewing the arm on one jacket each time, you're not even making a full jacket, there's no tailoring anymore. It's pure mass production. You do not have. So in Seattle, our workforce.

Chris Kiefer (12:01.687)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (12:07.043)

Hmm.

Nicholas Roach (12:13.634)

who was making the clothing and the bags was 98% Asian immigrants. So you did not have any young people, very few. Maybe a couple of those people had children who were coming and helping. There was no diversity in it. It was all essentially ex-tailors or people who had a background in clothing of some sort.

Chris Kiefer (12:22.082)

Hmm.

Chris Kiefer (12:27.508)

Yeah.

Nicholas Roach (12:40.158)

as the tailoring industry disappeared, they would come into this clothing industry. And then their commitment to work is extremely high and their desired pay is less high. Oh, sorry, I have these reactions.

Chris Kiefer (12:53.742)

Hmm. I forgot that they do the reaction bubbles. For those of you listening, not watching, you can, he just gave a thumbs up accidentally. That reminds me though, cause you just made me think when I was a sophomore, I think this was between my freshman and sophomore year in college, I was trying to get internships. I didn't want to just come home and work at Starbucks or McDonald's or something, or just a regular job. I was trying to get something that was like,

Nicholas Roach (12:58.798)

I think I can turn it off.

Nicholas Roach (13:03.598)

Yeah

Chris Kiefer (13:22.422)

gearing me up for the engineering world. So I got a job at Siltronix, or Siltronic, I believe, Siltronic, in Portland, and it's a silicon manufacturing plant. And I was in one of those clean bunny suits all day, you have a mask, literally the only thing that's visible is your eye and then your just head to toe and gloves, everything, it's clean rooms that you're working in. Exactly, yeah. And it was like,

Nicholas Roach (13:47.182)

Like a hazmat suit.

Chris Kiefer (13:51.342)

12 hour shifts. So I'd get up, I'd get there at seven, I'd be done at seven, I'd work three days on, two days off, two days on, three days off, and that was the schedule. It was absolutely grueling. But the thing that was related to this is that I remember that I was, I think there might have been, like you're saying, let's say maybe 10% of the manufacturer employees, which I was, 10% were like white American.

and everybody else was all, I think it was all Vietnamese. I'm not 100% sure. I just know that I was first of all a giant, I'm 6'6". So all of these Vietnamese workers are like 5'6", 5'7". And so you'd look out in the fab and there'd just be like all these little tiny workers. And then there's 6'6", Chris.

that's just like this big man. You couldn't see, you know, skin color because we're all covered up in suits, but it's like, oh, there's Chris. But you couldn't tell who anybody else was, just that Chris was there working. So yeah, I feel like the, that's so funny, I hadn't thought about that in a long time, but I agree that like, there's not like other high schoolers, college kids could have gotten jobs like I did, you know? But it's like, nobody's seeking that out. It was absolutely grueling.

And for some reason, I feel like the work ethic or the, not to say, I'm not saying that I had incredible work ethic, the people that did this for their lives blew me away. Like I had to do it for three months. And I was like, I'm trying to make money and get experience and that was my goal and I just grinded, you know? But I was not going back the next year.

Nicholas Roach (15:33.334)

It's incredibly the barrier to entry for Americans who are entitled about what we want to make, what we want to do, how special we think our opinions are. You know, that's very high. And to kind of piggyback on it, Filson had this manufacturing group of people in Seattle. Well, apparently that population is not only dwindling, but the state of Washington is making it so expensive that now they have moved to...

California, so all of Filson's Made in America pieces, which is now jackets and a few bags, are all made in California, in Los Angeles, because they still have a manufacturing district in Los Angeles where they can pull the talent and the people necessary. But you don't own your factory anymore. You're outsourcing your labor to a third party. You're outsourcing your manufacturing to a third party. So they're no longer a direct, vertically integrated supply.

builder of their own goods. And I think that's where you're seeing most things go, is anyone who used to have somewhat vertical integration on their supply chain, probably didn't source the materials themselves, but like, they were getting raw materials and manufacturing them into a finished product. On the clothing and like footwear front, you're gonna see that going away in favor of consolidation of manufacturing, where you just have a third party manufacturer.

taking care of the building of it all.

Chris Kiefer (17:01.77)

And so, and you're saying that the, it actually reminds me of a book about Andy Groves, who is the founder of Intel, or the CEO of Intel back in the 90s. He had said, I think what you're describing is the horizontalization as opposed to verticalization. So you're saying that there would be, in the same way that like Intel manufactured chips and for all these different computers, brands.

Nicholas Roach (17:13.631)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (17:30.77)

you'd say that you'd have a manufacturer, like a textile manufacturer, and all the brands are just going to the same textile manufacturer because of the machinery and the skill and the knowledge of the technology behind fabrics is crazy to try, unless you're like, maybe Nike or something has their own purchased manufacturing facilities.

Nicholas Roach (17:56.142)

So the environment is even a faster mover in some ways than I think what you're describing. So Nike is massive. They are global on a different level than anything I've ever worked in. So I wouldn't attempt to speak to them specifically. But I know at Philson, say that Philson was making 10,000 wool jackets a year, which might even be high.

and there were four different or five different colors, so 2000 jackets of each color.

Pendleton woolen mills was supplying the wool for six of those jackets those jacket colors So six thousand of those jackets. Well, Pendleton has pulled out a color a year For the past couple of years, so they're now only supplying 2,000 of those Jackets because they can't even meet the demand like there isn't a supply of Pendleton wool anymore and so they're having to go to Other wool manufacturers of which

Chris Kiefer (18:44.514)

Hmm.

Nicholas Roach (18:55.562)

I don't think there are any other major wool manufacturers in America. I could be wrong there. But the wool industry, and this is anecdotal, but I was in Scotland last year, which is a heavily producing wool country in the past, and they said they went from having like a hundred mills in England and Scotland, they have three woolen mills in all of England and Scotland now. And most of their wool comes from New Zealand. So the other thing that happens here is the minute you decide to exit an industry, you

Chris Kiefer (19:18.35)

Hmm.

Nicholas Roach (19:24.622)

from a country like the minute Levi's decided they weren't going to make jeans in America anymore. It's not like the machinery sits somewhere in a factory. They sell it to wherever they're going to manufacture it to in the future or ship it there. So they moved to Mexico soon after they quit manufacturing in America. Levi's moved their production to Mexico. They ship all of their machinery down there. And so you no longer have the machinery in America anymore to build those jeans. Then they replace that machinery as technology improves, labor force.

changes, robotics increase, whatever. So suddenly those old machines that made like the nicest salvage denim jeans back in the 50s and 60s, no one even knows where they are. They got sold off in parts sales, you know? And so your manufacturing shifts along the way in a way that makes it almost irre, you can't reproduce it unless you're doing it completely by hand.

Chris Kiefer (20:09.282)

Hmm.

Nicholas Roach (20:20.234)

So if you go to Levi's.com, you can still buy Levi's jeans from the 50s. They're going to be like $350 a pair, and they're probably completely handmade in LA or something to mimic what was once done in factories.

Chris Kiefer (20:34.57)

Wow. So yeah, I see what you're saying that you basically would have to, to get back to the fifties because we outsourced and sold everything. You basically have to like go through a reinventing of all of the steps that got you to the fifties. But who's going to do that? Cause that's, you know, like a hundred, 150 years or whatever of development and improvement to get to those machines. And now you have robotics that you're competing with overseas. So it's like,

Nicholas Roach (20:51.137)

Yeah.

Nicholas Roach (21:02.37)

Well, I had a way cheaper labor force.

Chris Kiefer (21:02.522)

Like you said at the beginning, you're looking at like a 10 X cost and price that you have to sell it for. Yeah.

Nicholas Roach (21:07.57)

Yeah, well, and your investment up front to even get back into the machinery is nearly impossible at that point. Just reopening a factory, the cost of real estate, the cost of replacement on all of like, so getting the building, getting the, all the pieces for the factory, getting the people it's a. Yeah. It's, it's just an impossible cost. You have to concede to, okay, we can do this cheaper elsewhere, no matter how much or how cool.

Chris Kiefer (21:14.478)

Hmm, interesting.

Chris Kiefer (21:27.01)

The build out, yeah.

Nicholas Roach (21:37.238)

Unless you're building such a high margin, low cost product. So maybe things that we can manufacture well in America. Anything that something could just stamp in place, but it's still gonna be more expensive to do it here than elsewhere.

Chris Kiefer (21:41.9)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (21:53.886)

Interesting.

So is that a, I guess this is like the, I've heard people argue, cause I'm not, I kind of feel like, again, this, I just heard this during COVID of like people being like, we need to manufacture, I can't even remember the statistic. It was like Tylenol or like some simple like painkiller that was all like 98% of our supply or something. It was some medical or like a health thing. Maybe it was band-aids, I can't remember.

but it was like all of a sudden this very, or maybe I think it was penicillin. It's like we have no like the, when there's issues with transportation of goods, we just like had all these shortages on things that are so common and so cheap for us. That's like, it would be ludicrous to think that we'd run out of penicillin at the store. Like that's the most easy, you know, antibiotic ever. But it's like, they don't make it here. I don't remember if it was penicillin, but you know what I mean? It's like.

Uh, to me, I heard that and was like, yeah, we should start making stuff in America again. And I feel like there was maybe some PR or some publicity by major companies that were like putting out, you know, press releases that they're moving things back to America, but I would imagine that this is not pessimism as much as just like the capitalistic reality of like you do that for it's like, I feel like it's the new year's diet or the new year's, uh,

Like, hey, it's new year, I'm a new me, I'm gonna go start doing this. And then you just kind of slowly fade into what's like easier and lower friction. And it's just gonna go right back to where it was, you know? Once people stop caring about it.

Nicholas Roach (23:34.95)

So you bring up two really interesting, well, you just said a lot of interesting things, but I think you're absolutely right that the incentivization to bring manufacturing back to America is not actually present. And what would force that presence? Correct, correct. We're such a globalized society at this point that unless we entered a situation where people were purposefully withholding trade from us.

Chris Kiefer (23:49.866)

Yeah, it was just some pressure.

Nicholas Roach (24:05.694)

then the incentive would change really quickly. And I think you would see the ingenuity of America spin like a top again, super quickly. But it's a really challenging, what you're saying is correct. I'm just affirming what you're saying. It's absolutely correct. Actually, you brought up Intel earlier and the Chips and Science Act is something that was introduced, I think, by the two senators in Washington State, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.

Chris Kiefer (24:21.534)

Yeah.

Nicholas Roach (24:36.006)

And the point of that CHIPS Act was to bring chip manufacturing back to the United States because of the chip shortage during COVID, where suddenly cars and computers were not able to be manufactured because we didn't have any chips. There was a six month backup in China. And so the CHIPS Manufacturing Act has resulted in I think there's now Apple is building their own chips in California. And I want to say Arizona Intel is building two chips factories, one on the East Coast, one is down in Arizona.

And I know that, so at Lakeside, we just brought this aerospace tech hub. We have a aerospace manufacturing, I guess, skill set in this area in Spokane, Seattle. There's 900 manufacturers within 300 miles of Spokane. And so we applied to be a designated tech hub under the federal government saying we have a IQ here.

for aerospace manufacturing is something that we should bring back to the United States and focus on developing in our area. But there's a massive government incentive we're going for to get there. So the goal would be that we bring that supply chain and that manufacturing back to America. It's also a little higher margin. It's a industry that is supported globally. And so it's very different than clothes making, which is a lot more trendy or fatty. It's, you know,

Chris Kiefer (25:58.409)

you

Nicholas Roach (26:04.014)

Clothing and shoes, they're very much a spur, like it could change very quickly what people are into because style has become so individualized, but planes are pretty limited. They're standardized on some level. And so that's a much safer industry. So, I think that's a good point.

Chris Kiefer (26:17.823)

Yeah. That's an interesting point too of just, yeah, how, how a volatile or iterative is a given product that you're working on because yeah, the, um, retooling or programming of machines, if they're, if you're relying on that, you don't just like say, Oh, new design coming out tomorrow. Like it's just, you know, it takes years.

Nicholas Roach (26:40.21)

Yeah. Try out our new plane. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (26:44.971)

No, thank you. I'll stick with the ones that have a like 0.0000001% of crashing. So what else is in this manufacturing space? Is there any other topics that you love discussing or you feel like are common misconceptions or interesting things?

Nicholas Roach (26:51.874)

That's great.

Nicholas Roach (27:04.234)

Yes, I think the last thing I'd say is, well, not last thing, but something I've thought about a lot in my time in the industry was I remember I went to work for Philson because I wanted to work for a local Northwest company. And the year I started working at Philson was a year after they had sold to essentially like a global, not a global, they had sold to a family office conglomerate that was very, very national.

Um, and what happens is, and investors are smart, there's a consolidation of money happening right now. When you have a family business, um, it's essentially hard to maintain a line of credit during times like COVID that can extend your business to make ends meet. And so often what happens is you look for a buyer or you close your doors and the marketplace opens up for someone else to swoop in the best position person. And so I think something that's worth thinking about is there are ways to support

I guess, local business or family business in a really healthy way. And we should think about those things because the trend is if you have a cool company that's family owned, eventually a larger company will come purchase it to add to their portfolio because it's a value add. And that's where consolidation happens. And it's due to generally a lack of resources or lack of exit strategy. A good example is with like farms, you know, if you have five kids and you own a farm and all five of them want to take over the farm. Well, when you split a farm five ways, it'd be

becomes a lot less profitable all of a sudden. But if no one wants to take over the farm, then you have to sell the farm. And selling the farm is generally the best offer is gonna come from someone who is in best position to buy it. And most of the time, like a young farmer, say you wanted to start farming tomorrow, it's very cost prohibitive for you to take on everything, to take on that, to bring that farm into your...

I guess, grasp. And I don't know what the answer is to this particular, I'm kind of iterating a bigger American issue we see where the incentive is not really for smaller family-owned businesses. I think the family is not really incentivized in America on a cultural level. And so I think finding ways to support family-owned or family businesses where you can is important. And I work for a family office that is, we're not one family.

Nicholas Roach (29:32.178)

it's owned by a single guy and he, John Hemingsen, and he's a, I would say a good, what's the, what's the term when someone is a, it starts with an S, they're a, yeah, he's a good steward of the Inland Northwest. We do a lot of work specifically to buttress the Inland Northwest. Whether people agree with what we're doing or not depends. We're a home developer. We build homes that, you know, can...

Chris Kiefer (29:44.488)

Steward.

Nicholas Roach (30:00.93)

push people the wrong way. Yeah, we manufacture plain parts and we farm wheat and we no till farm. We use drilling, which is very environmentally friendly. But wheat is not like a local crop that everyone here is then you don't go to the market and buy wheat because you don't buy you don't make your own bread anymore. I'm diet. I'm going all over the place right now, which is a little bit my style to a fault. But the point being that I think that

Chris Kiefer (30:01.238)

People don't like, yeah, people don't like growth.

Nicholas Roach (30:29.866)

We have to find different ways to connect to the industries that were, or the, I guess, people were buying things from or supporting locally now. And so I think being very intentional about why you want to buy from who you want to buy from is really important. And I'm an Amazon buyer like anyone else, but I've really, maybe it's a new year's resolution, maybe I'll return to the path of least resistance, but I'd like to emphasize a focus on maybe supporting rose hours more.

They're more expensive, but they are a Spokane company. And I live in Spokane. And so there's something to that of otherwise, they will get bought up by probably the Albertsons conglomerate of they own most 90% of the grocery stores in America. And I'd rather we still have some diversity in the marketplace on grocery stores. So I don't know. The consolidation piece is happening

Chris Kiefer (31:03.83)

Yep.

Chris Kiefer (31:16.641)

Mmm.

Nicholas Roach (31:29.202)

industry over industry in America. And I don't think there's a way to prevent it, but I think it's something worth pushing back on a little bit because...

Chris Kiefer (31:38.174)

Yeah, there's, I mean, there, I feel like that's super interesting. I'm thinking about what I do in the automation space for businesses. I'm specifically working with painting companies most of the time, but, um, yeah, there is a, when you are a massive company, this is an interesting like analogy, but, um, everybody in, and this is in the painting world, but I think this is true in all businesses. Everybody knows.

Everyone that's familiar with software has like, you know, five to 10 different applications that they use in their business or any business does. And everybody wants to like minimize the number of softwares and find ideally the one software that does it all. And I always use Tesla as an example, because they have Elon Musk was talking about how they developed a, um, a like operating system, a software for Tesla that

start like it managed everything from their supply chain, their HR, their production lines, like time tracking, all everything was just in one software and they custom coded this. And so the efficiency that you have from like literally automating the absolute maximum number of processes that you can in a business is incredible. And you compare that to the legacy manual auto manufacturers that probably piecemealed several apps together, not to mention the parts of their cars and all the other stuff as well.

And it's like, everybody wants what Tesla has in their efficiency of operation. But it's like that they're a, you know, going to be a trillion dollar company. And you're a $2 million company or a $5 million company or whatever it is. And it's like, you can't, you can't compete with like the big guy who has all the systems already sorted out, but the next, I think the next best thing you can do is to.

integrate as many of the most niche apps that you can together to try and make like a, uh, you know, a modified or like a, uh, foe, uh, custom software, you know, to automate as many of those processes, because, uh, if you're trying to do it like the good, the good old way with, uh, you know, the way we used to do it, there's just too much manual labor and data entry and stuff.

Chris Kiefer (33:59.222)

that's just going to crush you. Even just like reporting, like imagine trying to do like competing in farming or textiles without having like real time data on like your square, square feet per minute of fabric that's being pumped out. And like, oh, of course, like the mega companies have this and you're there, like waiting for the end of the month to close the books, to see if you made money. Like that's insane to think that you can compete like that.

Nicholas Roach (34:26.19)

So, yeah, I know we have very little time left, but we're literally implementing a new system at our home building business so that we can see cost per home before it's built rather than actual costs after the build. And it's gonna be incredible for the accounting side of our business. And really cool because you'll be able to see where you can save and you can strategize better with those answers in your hand. And we didn't get to talk about operations much, but I think that's the key to effective business is using software.

Chris Kiefer (34:39.309)

Hmm.

Nicholas Roach (34:55.462)

AI integrations, and then training your people on that software. And there's a whole tangent I want to talk about that we'll cover some other time around software adoption and workforce integration, because it's incredibly challenging and I think it's going to be the next biggest challenge. One of them in, uh, in the workplace.

Chris Kiefer (35:07.985)

Oh.

Chris Kiefer (35:14.174)

Yeah. We don't have time to talk about it, but I'm curious. Job tread is a really popular construction software. I don't know what software you guys are using or builder trends. Another popular one, but, um, job tread.

Nicholas Roach (35:25.794)

So we're leaving builder trend toward this one called Mark systems, ECI Mark systems.

Chris Kiefer (35:30.622)

Mark system. Yeah, interesting. Well, yeah, so last couple of questions, the three book recommendations.

Nicholas Roach (35:38.594)

Did I lose you, Chris?

Chris Kiefer (35:43.818)

Oh, sorry, I don't know if that broke up. Three book recommendations.

Nicholas Roach (35:47.87)

Ooh, three book recommendations. OK, there's a book that I love called The Brothers K. Not to be confused with The Brothers Karamazov, it's by David James Duncan. It actually is written by a guy from Portland, and it takes place in Camas, Washington, Pullman, Portland. And it's about a family of four boys and two girls being raised by their parents and just the challenges they go through over like 40 years. It's just a beautiful story. One parent is an atheist.

Chris Kiefer (36:15.842)

David James Duncan.

Nicholas Roach (36:17.334)

David James Duncan, yeah. And it's about baseball. It's all against the backdrop of baseball. He also has another book called The River Y, which is about fishing. And they're both, both these books are amazing. I know they're by the same author. You only need to read one. If you're younger in your 20s, read The River Y. If you're older, read The Brothers K. And they're both kind of his philosophical like.

Chris Kiefer (36:19.619)

Interesting.

Nicholas Roach (36:45.574)

understanding of having one parent who is a believer, essentially, and one parent who is a non-believer, and juxtaposing those in the fishing one, he does it bait fisherman versus fly fisherman, and being raised by two different types of people who fish. And they're just great books, and they just kind of wax poetic about the Northwest. And they're beautiful stories. They enter deep into, I'm a feeler, so I like to feel things. And I just was...

Chris Kiefer (36:58.273)

Mm.

Nicholas Roach (37:14.954)

and I have a big family. So reading them, I was like, wow, these are so good. The other one that I'd read, and so the first two are fiction and they're by the same author. So they're kind of interchangeable. The other one is there's a book by Daniel Kahneman called Thinking Fast and Slow. It's a tough read, but it's essentially about how our brain works and how two aspects of our brain work and help or hinder us in our decision making. It relates to a lot of.

things we've been talking about today in terms of how we make business decisions, family decisions, financial, political. Daniel Kahneman is a economist who won the Nobel Prize, or he's a psychologist who won the Nobel Prize for economics due to his discoveries in psychology and how essentially like he talks about Starbucks and how if you have an emotional tie to Starbucks and it's...

Every time you see a Starbucks, you're at risk of buying one. And when there's 40 of them in your town, that can be a lot of coffee if you don't know how to think and say, I really don't need a Starbucks coffee right now. And that can affect you. That's a basic example of one of the things. He kinda...

Chris Kiefer (38:27.318)

Mmm, that's awesome and your favorite movie

Nicholas Roach (38:34.154)

Man, I have a lot of favorite movies, but I would say The Man from Snowy River, which is a 1984 Australian Western, is just a great romantic movie about horses and the Australian outback and overcoming obstacles. A great example of the hero's journey. Beautiful film, and it has an incredible scene where a guy rides a horse down like the steepest mountain you've ever seen, and the guy did his own stunts. So.

It's really a good movie.

Chris Kiefer (39:06.818)

The thing that's great about that movie is it has a 7.2 out of 10 on IMDB. I don't know if you follow the IMDB ratings, but yeah, it's got a 7.2, which is right under the cutoff of a 7.3, which is my bar for watching movies. So if it's sub 7.3, you have to use one of your mulligans to suggest that movie to me.

And if it's good, I'll give you your mulligan back. But if it's not good, then you don't get another mulligan. And I only take above 7.3 ratings from then on. So would you like to use your mulligan and recommend this movie?

Nicholas Roach (39:45.106)

Oh. What? Wait, is the rating a 7.3 exactly?

Chris Kiefer (39:50.474)

No, it's a seven point two. It's one point under. I'm what I'm saying is that I love finding these. I love finding these cause most of the time when people recommend movies, they're like the dark night or, you know, like these movies like, okay, great. I well too bad I've already seen that. And it's like an eight out of 10, but finding the ones that are these like hidden nuggets that people don't talk about often. That's what I like. So I'm adding that to my list. I'll let you know how, if you get it back. Um, and

Nicholas Roach (39:52.878)

Oh my gosh, absolutely, absolutely I'll use one.

Nicholas Roach (40:13.532)

I'm all for using my mole again.

Nicholas Roach (40:19.576)

I'm all for using my mole again on this one.

Chris Kiefer (40:22.563)

Okay, and then how would you prefer that people get in touch with you if they want to reach out?

Nicholas Roach (40:30.484)

I think LinkedIn or email is...

Chris Kiefer (40:35.855)

So look up Nick or Nicholas, what is it?

Nicholas Roach (40:38.174)

Yeah, Nick or Nicholas Roach and Lakeside companies all pop up pretty immediately. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (40:42.978)

Sweet. Awesome. Well, Nick, it was super fun. Thanks for filling my brain and enlighten me on some manufacturing stuff that I hadn't thought about before. Um, and yeah, this is super cool. And maybe we, uh, circle back in the future to talk about the software and tech and integration and AI, because that's something I'm researching daily. So thank you very much and we'll see you guys next time.

Nicholas Roach (41:06.958)

All right, thanks Chris.

Chris Kiefer (41:09.31)

and then hold on one second.