Intro: 

Hey friend, and welcome to this week's episode of the trend report. I'm glad you're joining me today for what I know is going to be a very informative conversation. We're both going to learn a little bit of something new today with my guest, lance Amato, who is the head of customer experience at Canoa, and we're going to dive into all things Canoa in just a minute. But I'm Sid Meadows and I'm a business coach and a strategist, and I've been a long time student of the office furniture industry and in this podcast we have powerful conversations, just like today, that hopefully help you grow and help your business grow. So let's dive into today's conversation with my guest, lance.

Sid:

So, Lance, let's just get started. What is Canoa?

Lance:

It's very, very nicely put. Short answer and we'll dive into it a little bit longer. Canoa, in effect, is a browser based platform. Its overarching goal is to simplify the process of specification, selection of furnishings into procurement, into inventory Just be planning it all in one simple platform.

Sid:

Okay, so I'm going to try to reframe that a little bit. So you've got a web based platform that allows customers or users to select product and to specify product for their projects. They can share it with other people so other people can see what's on the project. And then the last part you said that it leads into inventory management. Did I hear that correctly?

Lance:

It does.

Sid:

Yeah, okay, I want to dive into inventory management in a second, but let's talk first about how did you get started? Like, where did the idea for Canoa come from?

Lance: 

Yeah, it's coming from a Genesis, even before our time, of just the industry as a whole. I mean, we've been practicing this industry for so long now and over the course of the last decades we've kind of adhered to a series of aspects that are really comfortable, like, I'd say, processes that are really comfortable and actually very solid. We're a service based industry where individuals like specifiers of furniture, designers, dealer designers come in and they use methods to attain information and they do it in one way, a certain way, and then people buy and procure furniture in a certain way and then it actually gets into a place, literally the furniture gets into a spot and that conversation, it kind of sits there and goes into the ether of unknown.

But realizing that those steps, those consistent steps, are continually just happening over and over and over again it's been happening the same way for decades, with very little progress in technology We've realized that there's a window here, there's something we can capture and there's a problem set we wanted to address. So really many of us came from the industry of interior architecture, interior design, first specification for inter-dealerships, and we realized this problem was really apparent. We wanted to do something about it. We also knew it was going to be very difficult because, speaking candidly, our industry is kind of slow to adopt technologies as well. Yep Totally agree with that yeah.

Sid:

So, before you go too much further, what is the problem? Tell me what the problem was you identified?

Lance:

You know I hate saying this word because it seems to be a very salesy marketing word, but efficiency is one of the biggest problems. If we were to go to the core of finding furnishings, you go to the core who? The person who usually finds those furnishings that people like to find is usually a designer or person that selects furniture. And what do they have today to look for or look at to find the sources of furniture? Well, sure, we migrated away from paper libraries in the digital libraries, which is fair enough that that's the next step of evolution, but you're still going through dozens upon dozens of websites or going into the furniture selections of what came up like in the first click of a link or something that came across there, and the information you're looking at is very limited.

You're looking at a pretty picture, you're looking at the size, you're looking at the textile finish and the information remainder of the data what it could be, how long it would take is embedded deep, deep, deep within these websites and these libraries. And listen, it's totally fair. There are companies that have organized catalog programs of multiple, multiple specifications in one website and that's totally great, but you're still going into multiple websites to get your creation and get your full list of real materials and specification. And that's one aspect of it. Now you've gotten your selections, you bring it into another technology and people use vastly different technologies to collect and present those products into this new platform.

Sure, so you're carrying that data over there. Now I said the keyword efficiency. I know it's like the whole word of the decade here, but to the time, to select the websites and bring it into a design presentation platform takes more time. You're recreating the information over again and then, once you're done with this type of program to convey your concept, you have to bring it into another program to order it, quote it, communicate on that, build enough information to actually pay for it, and just keep going and going and going. And so those few steps. Specifically, we're talking about just one kind of industry of procuring furniture, the furniture dealership world. You're going through and micro-grain through series of technology, the series of steps to get to it.

Sid: 

From one to the other, to the other, to the other Over and over. And so I love that. The problem is efficiency, because I think anybody listening especially if you're working in tools to build out a specification understand how complex things can be in our industry. Absolutely. I also really appreciate the fact that you highlighted, and I'll say out loud we are sometimes resistant to change and we push back on it for whatever reason, and I think a lot of it has to do with we're just comfortable with the way that we've been working, even though it may not be the most efficient. We're comfortable with that and our industry, in my opinion, is right for innovation. It's right for new tools to come out to help us be more efficient, more productive and to, honestly, from an office furniture dealer perspective, help us save money by gaining efficiencies in the time we put into something, and so I think it's a great idea. But let me ask you this question why do you feel just from your perspective it's my this building and technology why do you feel that people are resistant to change?

Lance:

That's a loaded question, but I will tell you right now. And I'd like to actually like to talk about this part. I actually I question this myself. I'm challenged to answer your question and I want this in this podcast. Don't edit this out. You can keep that in there too. People are resistant to change, but people also criticize the processes that are today. So you're struggling with making enough money on your current projects in order to support all of the service providers. All the people in your company do these things. You constantly complaining about getting like cut on your costs and your fees because people commoditize your industry. You do these things but that's not necessarily changing those things. Those things may not change. They're evolving, just like the remainder of everything else.

Those practices, the way projects are done, the way the products are priced, the way the products are serviced are changing, and it has. Those service evolutions have changed and the seduction technology is so challenging because there is an uncomfortable situation here at the evolution of our industry if we're doing it, but there's a weird comfort level of not trying to evolve the way we work in the same facet. It's a very complex answer Now I will actually address your question directly here is that the reality is, for some reason in this industry we are more comfortable again being service providers, probably evolving the way the humans interact with things and actually the tools that we use and that sounded like a very vague statement here, but if you think about this, we probably used the internet to attain imagery for 20, 30 years.

The only kind of evolution we've received from paper library books and specification books is just digitizing into a PDF. That's not really an evolution of it, really, it's all a matter of like well, what humans can I hire that can do that faster? It's not necessarily the human in terms of the speed. It's this very unusual thing to evolve my practice and to evolve the person in the practice, not the tools they use. It's the struggle to answer at this point.

Sid:

So you mentioned the evolution to the PDF, which I think is a good evolution, but there's still issues with that when things aren't clickable. You look at a lot of manufacturers that have price books that are hundreds of pages, right, and you can't click that. I want to go to ABC Chair Page and that's on page 250, and you can't click that and it take you to 250, and you have to scroll. That's not, in my opinion, necessarily a true evolution. We have to make PDFs smarter and we have to make them work better for us when we're trying to use them. Which leads me to a question how many I've heard this research before and you talk about clicks and going to this website and to this website and that website and it's somebody that understands customer experience how many clicks is it before we lose a specifier on our website?

Lance:

Oh boy, two, three.

Sid: 

Two or three, that's what I thought.

Lance: 

I mean there is studies. I mean dozens upon dozens of hundreds of studies about once you migrate from that very first click, you lose an audience dramatically by a percentage.

Sid: 

Yeah, and you mentioned earlier, like all the information that you're looking for, we tend, as an industry, to hide it and make you go searching for it, like you're going on a treasure hunt, right, whether it's the warranty or the lead time, and you know, heaven forbid that we put two minutes of our pricing information out there for people to find, publicly right, and but every time they click they get one step away from us. I think, yeah, and we make it so difficult to find the information that they need and the time that they need it.

Our friend, Amanda Snyder, talks about this a lot, right About giving the design community, the specifier community, what they want quicker so that they can access it on their time frame and that may be 10 o'clock at night when they're searching for product, when nobody's in the office to answer the chatbot or pick up the phone and answer their phone call when they call us, right. So we got to meet them where they are with the information that they need.

Lance: 

I mean, I couldn't agree anymore. The information, it's public information. It's just so hard to get to at this point and the reality is it's so hard to get to when its actual purpose needs to be surfaced. When we talk about list pricing, usually sure a designer, even outside of the dealer profession, an interior designer who's potentially building a spec list, is probably going to skip over and glance over that information based on what they know or hope that cost be. When that price does service, when that discount is applied to, when that cost is suddenly triggered midway two thirds of the way through an actual project had to be done and the realization that may not be within the bounds of a budget when they have to readdress that. Talk about efficiency. Again you're cycling back over again and having to redo it all over again.

Sid: 

It's cost time and money.

Lance: 

It's cost time and money for the designer. It costs time and money for the dealer. It costs time and money for the rep, who probably invested a lot of human hours being involved, interacting and building that relationship, trying to get their specification across. It's a challenge in general.

Sid: 

So I've played around with the site and it's pretty cool what it does and things of that nature, and I want you to explain it just a little bit. But talk to me for a minute about who is your target audience. Who are you trying to reach with this product?

Lance: 

Yeah, it's a great question. We always say our target audience is the designer and specified of a product. Now, it's a very broad statement when I'm and we use designer in, sometimes in a very focused term, that being an interior designer, potentially working in a in a professional design firm. That's not the case here. A designer is a person that curates and selects a series of products for turn. Fixture is to create a space. It literally can be anyone to do so, and we talk about interior designers, interior architects, sole proprietors, dealer designers, salespeople trying to compile a product listing for their projects and end user workplace strategists that might actually select and encourage finishes. It's the term designer is is, in effect, the person that creates that space.

Sid:

That's, that's that's our user Sure In that case it could be someone at a facility, right, that's a user, and so designer people specifying for the product. But anybody can use your website, right, you just have to log in, create an account and it's there. And so let's talk specifically about how you help the dealer community, like why, if I'm a dealer, why do I want to go out and invest time to learn can oh, register, learn can, oh, and how is it going to help me be more efficient? That's a good question.

Lance:

Going back to. We talk about the efficiency part of it. All those, all those problems that I that I address the very beginning of this conversation, even though myself I come from a background of interior architecture. I was specifically talking about the dealer, designer, the salesperson trying to source that information. Whether there are and there are universal tools that have come out there, whether it be from major manufacturers or companies, which are great, that actually compiled as information. You're still parsing through pages upon pages of catalogs and specification books to build your list and you're not always exclusive necessarily to that one specification, not the or, sorry, what manufacturer.

So you're having to go through to find solutions outside of that boundary to keep building it, building it towards that. That takes time. When it comes to the dealers specifically, it turns into well, now, now we have to have solutions across the board. Sourcing those information takes time, obviously, qualifying and putting into pricing engaging with our sales leads to actually interact with clients. To make sure within budgets takes time as well. All this information is just a series of different, different data points and I'm going to get into data because I'm tech, tech, tech nerd different data points being segregated into one an image List, price, discount URL link, a two dimensional block. The current problem is, all those things are just have to be created separately and they have to be rebuilt, rebuilt, rebuilt to convey the actual purpose in our case and what we do here.

Simply put is we in effect are just one massive enriched database. An enriched database means it in effect is it has the core of the data, has a multitude of aspects to it. If you were to click on a product card in the Cano website, it would have its marketing image, its list price, its lead time, its size, its color, its finish, its text style, its, etc. It's back-end ordering specification. It also actually would have its lead times as projected and offered by the brands that represent on Canoa. It has this information and, as the designers potentially using part of that information its image and potentially its size in the design of its space, as they're designing, it's not, they're not only designing with the image and the spec, they're designing with the data, which means that, as they're putting into a plan, all the data is in the back-end, hidden in the background. That's say, they lay out six chairs, it just lays out a spec list of six chairs automatically.

Sid:

I just did it, by the way, sorry, I was looking at you, so you're watching on. YouTube. You saw me look away, so I went to the site. I've already registered as a user because I played around with it. I went to the search bar and basically what I'm doing is I'm creating a canvas, so basically a blank page. It's got nice little dots on. It feels really good. Good job with the feel of it. So I click the search and I just typed in SOFA and I picked a SOFA. Literally I just clicked on it and drug it over to my canvas. So now this is there and what you're saying is all the other data is back there behind it. Because I see who the SOFA is, the dimensions of the SOFA, the list price of the SOFA and then the weight of the SOFA.

Lance: 

That's what I see on that. You call it a product card right, yes, we call it a product card, okay. So while you're using that for that function of putting a mood, we call it canvas. It's an effect, it's a mood board tool to design, tool to create a composition of presentation. While one person's whose job is to do that is doing that, they're also actually building a bill of materials in the background and literally, just by a click of a button, you have a bill of materials with its list, pricing, the quantities of that design, the specification, the ordering number and things of that nature.

Sid:

It tells you who the manufacturer is and all that kind of stuff.

Lance:

It absolutely does Okay and, with that being said, it is list pricing on purpose. We don't sell anything. We do not sell products in Canoa. We offer data and, with the list pricing that we have here, it gives you the opportunity, in just another application, the same platform, with the same data, to apply what's necessary to present the cost to your clients applying the discounts, applying your buy price, applying the quantities adjustments, anything necessary to do that. You can do that on the same platform, having not having to rebuild it again in a different file or format. So once.

Sid: 

I do that. So I go through, I build out my bill of materials. I know what my discount is for all these different brands. I put that in. I know what my margin is. I put that in, can it? Be, exported and, if so, what formats can it be exported into?

Lance: 

It can be exported in the multitude of formats, whether it could be PDF'd, it can be into CSV, excel. We are working right now into skip files to actually adjust those numbers as well. Okay, the thing we have not yet built out, to be quite clear, is the ordering system. When you get into the actual physical, like dollars, right, the taining dollars and paying dollars, that's the next level, the next step of where we're going. Okay, it's a whole other world of experiments we're going to get into.

Sid: 

So once I've done this and applied and I've downloaded my SIF file or, excuse me, whatever my file is, so I can take either a SIF file or a CSV file, whatever it might be, and then I can upload it into my ordering system. If you're a showcase dealer using Hedberg, if you're a Hayworth dealer using something else, and if you're a mill or an old dealer using something else, right, everybody's using different things.

But then I can, using that comma or that standardized form, I can upload it into my system and finish it. Yes, finish it. Right, that I need to to get it moving forward. So there's this little star over here on this picture that says View Recommendations. That's right. So tell me what that is. And I would encourage all of you to go to canoasupply.com register and play around with this, because it is a really cool site. But what is the little star? Because I want to talk about this with you a little bit.

Lance: 

All right, you're kind of leading me into every point which I love in this conversation, that's my job man. Yeah, it's the word of the last two years AI, which generally another keyword that I hate saying often enough. I'm actually going to dive into detail exactly what powers or what we use in Engine on Canoa. But if you were to broaden it out, AI, which people tend to be scared of, or replacement, that's not the case here. We're not replacing anyone in this case. What we use in our AI Engine we call it Canoa Recommendations is simply two different styles of engineering.

The very first one when you hit that star, it will build out a very defined data search and search our database for similar recommendations of that product. It can be a series of chairs, tables, colors, different size and scales, different types of manufacturers, brands, based on the shape and color and size of it, but what it's doing it's doing a quick alternate database study of our current catalog.

Now, how it actually identifies and understands what you search is the second part of this. Never recalls it something differently. There is a technical term for it which our engineering teams know, but I like to call it like image mapping, yep. Generally it's just taking the pixelization of the actual product. It's basically drawing a pixel line around the chair and identifying its shape and then quantifying all the colors and pixels inside of it, whether black, brown, red, blue, whatever it is, and saying, hey, this is the shape of a chair and it's gray. So while you're searching the database for your then sorting through prices and lead times, it's searching that shape and gray shares for the similar pricing and styles of it. It's like a quick alternate database.

Sid:

So in layman's term I understood all of that and I'm sure most of the listeners understood all that. But in true layman's term it's literally like using the Google image search and take a picture of something and Google is immediately going to show you what it believes that product is and then other things that are similar to that product.

Lance: 

That's even more layman's right, and it gets better than that Because of a now-growing process that we're experiencing. Specifically in my interviews with dealer communities, a lot of ownership is being put on dealerships to specify and select products from concept imagery provided that design firms Sure, Sure. This was, I'd say, my personal opinion was from a customer from the West Coast. Now it's actually migrated more nationally at this point where dealerships have provided hey, hit this concept board at $50 square foot. Yep, I hear this now a lot.

Sid:

I, literally I'm involved in a project that started just that way. The design firm gave our dealer their concept document and said find me furniture, yes, and that being said, when you use Canvas, you can not only use our database.

Lance:

You can drag in anything from your desktop or any other website. You can pull in concept imagery from anywhere, and when you do so and I see you're trying to do it now- I was literally.

Sid:

I'm looking on my desktop to see if there's an image that I can Drag an image in there.

Lance:

Well it is. That's funny what our engine is doing. It's going through that same process. I mentioned before those two principles of AI I mentioned before. It's parsing through and it's trying its best. It's not perfect all the time, but it's trying its best to get those pieces of furniture in that concept image identifying those things. You're going to see a number of stars starting to populate on the image. If a designer gives you a concept board showing a series of I don't know if I can name brands in this podcast, but a series of well-known task shares that are there to identify that task share, you hit a button, that star button, and it'll start searching the task shares on the database. That's really cool.

Sid:

So you click the AI button and it says stuff like me. So that's taking that image and it's saying these are things that are like me. You can shuffle it, It'll rearrange it. It looks like it added maybe one or two in there when it shuffled it around, so it gave me some more options, Because there's nine that came up I just put in a sofa, right, yeah. But it also has something that says find friends. By the way, I love the wording Stuff like me. That's really easy. Find friends means, yeah, what goes with it, right, what are friends of the product you're looking at? When you do that, it gives you other products that would work with the style.

So I'm loving that too, how you're branching out and showing what else could work together. So that's, I mean. I think it's all great, and then I can just click that and add that If I wanted this chair, literally, I just add that chair to the board and then there it is. That's right, that's pretty awesome, and you can change it to the board.

Lance:

You can switch that into an image or a two-dimensional vector line drawing as well. Maybe try this too.

Sid:

So lots of options there that help me create something to share with our customer. Now, if I'm a dealer and I work with these brands, can I build my own product database so that my salespeople aren't going rogue and using a brand X and I want them using brand Y? Is that possible to build your own brand database?

Lance:

Yeah, absolutely so. We have something called my Catalog, which, in effect, is a privatized catalog system. It is your own database. It is not shared for public, which means you can either use the data from our products library or you can bulk upload, in a variety of different formats, specifications that you use from brands we may not even have on our platform to use for your designs. The function that Elinne mentioned before, the search functions, the AI it searches your catalog as well when you're doing this.

Sid:

OK. So we all have that customer that says, well, I really want to look around and see what's available and just play around with it myself before we get too far. So if that's my customer, I could actually say here is our library on Canoa, Click this link and go out there and build a board to your heart's content of the products that you're interested in. Yes, again, and that customer is only selecting from my product because I gave them the link to my board, basically, or my database.

Lance:

It gets even better than that. You can share private boards with any client or customer and it can be with your standards. You can actually, specifically if you're a studio user, you can embed a Canvas board into your own website and actually offer that same functionality you mentioned before saying hey, if you'd like to play with our standards of design to build your Canvas, please go ahead and click this link to learn more.

Sid: 

Yeah, that's really cool, which then I think ties into what my next question is. So, first off, thank you for all of that. Again, I'm going to encourage everybody to go check it out, because it's really cool. Talk to me about how do you work with manufacturers. So I'm a manufacturer. How do I get on here? How do I validate my data? What's my benefit to being here? So let's talk about how you work with the manufacturers.

Lance: 

So with that manufacturer, obviously our database wouldn't be as robust as we have. So we have had great supporters. Really, in the very beginning we had only Hansel and now we have in the hundreds at this point, which is actually fantastic. As a supplier of data, you can simply put, you can just basically upload your own data and manage it on Canilla, and we realize that this becomes a challenge sometimes. Some brands don't have data people. Some brands don't have robust inventory features. Some brands literally have Excel lists of their price points. That's what they have at this and that's okay, because everyone does something differently here.

So, in the multitude of the options to maintain an organized list of data, we offer very simple ways to upload an Excel, google Sheet and air table. We have more robust ways to sync in data lists with other lists. We offer from those that are the small brands, the large brands, the ability to list it. Now, when they do that, it's very, very important to say like, hey, we've offered these channels to give data to you. The data does have to be as realistic as possible and I know that some people might roll their eyes there like, oh, I gotta go. All those websites and the lead times are never correct as they go forward.

The reality is is the strength of our platform is based on the truthfulness of the information that's given to it. Sure, so making it so uncomplicated to keep the data up to speed was important aspect number one. Number two, that is to making sure the data is real. So we always engage our brands and say, when the prices change, we're making it so simple for you to adjust this automatically. Sync, please keep it up to date Because, by the way, if you fail at that, you're not being reliable to the people specifying also. So, that being said, like very, very simply, but the channel is easy. You don't have to reinvent the wheel to provide the data because we have templatization.

So we have what we call APIs, which are syncs between data points to do it, and once you have it here, now you are a brand on, but as a free to subscribe, browser based platform for specification. Now, I'm going to keep on going to that part. It boils down into like well, now we have this, what's the benefit of it? Well, now you're actually exposed out to our growing audience. As of today's podcast, we just exceeded 3000 designers on the platform, which is very exciting to us.

Yes, I got a little over anxious and free our head of marketing getting approval. I posted on LinkedIn this morning, but did you get in trouble? Yeah, I will get in trouble. So, I'll get in trouble, but no one will know. But it's been pretty phenomenal because of the tools we've been offering. Before I go into that part, like we've been, it took us three years to get to a thousand users. Wow, three years. It took us five months to get to 2000. It took us two months to get to 3000.

Sid: 

Wow.

Lance:

We're starting to feel this.

Sid:

Sure, I digress, but you're picking up some momentum and speed. But I do have a question that I want to insert here for a second, which is so you mentioned, the manufacturer can upload their data and all that kind of stuff to it and syncing. So I'm going to use a real life example. So at Thinkspace, we're working with a cloud-based specification tool. We're partnering with Syncly at the moment, which is the former 2020 working product, and so can I just upload my worksheet catalog or can I sync it with our cloud data so that when I change a price or change a product, they would automatically sync over to you? Is that possible? I'm putting Lance on the spot, by the way, guys, so I'm just curious is that a possibility? I mean, possibilities.

Sid:

So for the people that don't understand. Quickly describe API, please.

Lance:

Oh boy, there's a big technical term for it, but basically it's a point by point. It's the way to open up the ability to update information between, I say a point from two points. Very simply put, let's say an API, think of it's like a cell. And you have a cell like cell A1 has a cell, right, what I'm doing, and I'm calling the cell price. So what I've done is I've opened up this technical link to someone else, this key that goes to this, to say, hey, when this changes, I can change this price into a sale. And it's literally. It's that simple. I'm basically breaking the firewall at this point and allowing you to just update that one Got it.

Sid:

So I'm going to simplify it even further. It's a bridge between two platforms to allow them to talk to each other.

Lance: 

Fantastic, that's what I said.

Sid:

Okay, you were drawing it I was trying the best If you're watching on YouTube, you can see him like drawing with his hands, but it's expected for you to be technical because you are an architect, so, but it's basically just a bridge between two platforms sharing data. Okay, so I can update all of my information in there and then my product then becomes available to be searched. And when you're searching, you're searching. How friendly is the search tool? Because when you start typing into Google you can say Cube and Google, and it knows that you're talking about a workstation and it starts to try to finish your sentence. So how friendly or advanced I'm not sure the right word there is the search feature?

Lance: 

No, actually, great question. First and foremost, I am not the web person of the company here, but literally every product card, every product card we have on Canal is also web searchable If you type it in Google. If you were to type in that company, it will show up in a variety of different things Like so every single one is clicked, which is fantastic. Now, some are rated higher than others. Unfortunately, I can't speak too in detail beyond that, but the reality is, one of our priorities for every single brand was we make sure that every product card shows up on Google, which is great. That's part one.

Now, once you're in the platform, this was by far one of the most important features in the aspects that are head of product and our product teams did. We wanted to make the navigation clean, well-designed and structured a little bit differently than other platforms. At this point. Now, our user base, like I said, is any type of designer. That also means that our user base can be, frankly, anywhere, so it could be a single designer based in Nebraska. Then, like you know that as a metaphor, we have designers in Nebraska at this point, their search function they're used to actually using more lighter weight, residential style websites search specifications. That's just the truth. For now.

We constructed it in such a way that it's mimicking, I'd say like things were comfortable as people to search from. The CB2s and the West Elms of the companies have nav bars and separated different columns. I'm drawing game of my hands. I apologize.

Sid:

I was listening.

Lance:

You're good man, but it's done in such a way that you don't have to spend forever to search for a brand. You just have to sort it by field, by brand, by price, by typology or type of product listing.

Sid:

That's great, that's awesome. So you're making it super easy for people to find the things that they want. You're making it easy for designers to go build outboards, dealers to use it to leverage and simplify in their process, and then making it partnering with manufacturers to be sure their product is up there and the data about their products or our products is as accurate as we can possibly give it to you today. So you're touching all things right, which I think is great, and again, I'm going to encourage everybody to go check it out, because it is really cool, and play around with it. Reach out to Lance if you got any feedback about the product or suggestions, because I know, as an emerging technology, you guys are all about taking consumer feedback right.

Lance:

Absolutely. We build with our product, with our users.

Sid:

Yeah. So I'm going to shift gears on you for a second and I want to know how did you go from architecture and building, designing buildings and leading a practice to being part of the founding group of a technology company? That's a big jump there. Tell me how you got there. Yeah, you know he's smiling. He's going to catch me up guard. He's going to catch me up guard a little bit.

Lance:

You may have to hit me at the ums up for the very beginning of this conversation and just leave it in. I would say for many of us well, I am still a practicing architect and I spent most of my career doing it Many of us felt that there's always been kind of a gap in the system, like a hole to fill is something to reinvent and change. I mean, prior to this, a majority of my practice at that point, when I was in an interior architecture firm, was always kind of pushing the clientele that was always looking forward towards the future, trying to effect change, I think.

Well, I said we're comfortable with pursuing the evolution of something and so when we realized there was just this pressing need for it to reinvent the traditional aspects of things, we did realize that it most probably would have to be done, stepping out of our industry as a do-you-sev and I'm using it a lot right now, but it's making me smile. But what's really funny is that during this whole process it just didn't actually start and get triggered immediately. It was conversations for years prior to that.

There's been a lot of valuation and studies of what we wanted to do, but the funny part of this is that we all decided to do it and take the leap at the same time, which was June 1st of 2020, which was, if people have their count correctly, probably the worst time to start any type of business, especially those that have to furnish spaces, so I would say 2020. People say it's the bravest or the stupidest thing that you could do, and we say it's a little bit of both.

Sid: 

It is, and look at you now here, into 2024, your platform is growing, you're doing amazing things. And just the timing of when you said, hey, let's quit our corporate jobs and start a technology company.

Lance:

The reason I am smiling. I will say this and I'm glad you actually noted my prior experience and why I'm hugely excited and supportive we're doing here. Many people and I speak for myself, but I think I hopefully this takes note to the community that's listening here In the interior architecture practices like I was a big city, a big practice I always I always, I'd say I undervalued and depreciated the work and the effort that the dealer community has put into this, the manufacturer community has put into this. It is often overlooked and that reality hit me fairly, fairly quickly when I started to do this. It brought me to a very humbling experience to realize that you guys work exceptionally hard for what you do. It is not an easy profession and it needs. It needs more, more tools to empower you to help do your job better.

Sid:

And so, on behalf of every office furniture dealer and every office furniture manufacturer, thank you for saying that.

Lance:

Yeah, it's I. More people need to know this, and I always say this publicly whenever I can.

Sid: 

Yeah, I really appreciate because I've been on both sides of the fence, right, and nobody really understands necessarily all that we go through to put the product out there to a designer or a specifier or a dealer or, excuse me, to an end user. So, yeah, on behalf of all of us on this side of the fence, thank you for for acknowledging that and for saying that very much. So let's talk about one more thing before we wrap up. You're not technically a podcaster, but you're a video caster. You got a YouTube show, so tell us about what you're doing as it relates to content creation.

Lance:

So it's interesting. You mentioned that I do have a YouTube channel, and when we talk about audiences, the first thing I did not realize that the audience that I would reach would basically be literally everyone that can speak English. One of my personal passions, as well as a passion that companies, obviously that sustainability. It has been a growing, growing passion of mine and probably has gotten emboldened since.

Since I've started this pursuit in Canoa, I've had the opportunity to speak to well over now, I'd say hundreds of exceptionally educated and very, very, very interesting individuals in the circularity to sustainability markets that's the growing industry. Actually, manufacturers themselves are posed to actually realizing where I would move forward. We're in this time, right now. So I decided I have all this knowledge, all this interest, all these great conversations with these people. It would be very unfortunate if I couldn't find a means and methods to put them on a podium position and out there.

So last year I did create it's like a vlog, it's a YouTube vlog to. Basically, the best way to say it is put them on a podium and let them speak their mind every fast as possible. So we have educators, we have designers, we have people that are creating innovations, technologies, on this YouTube video channel for 15 to 20 minutes segment and explaining what they do and why they're trying to affect change for the community as a whole to listen in during their commute in or maybe in a lunch break and learn a bit more. So what is the name of the channel? We call it learnings I, basically internally we call it Lansing Learns because that's what they I'd like to tell stories internally as well.

Sid: 

So I love that.

Lance:

Oh, it's a glance and learn. I call it learnings on the YouTube channel.

Sid:

So we'll be sure and grab that link to the channel and put it into the show notes so people can go and check it out. So one last question about this how are you in Kenoa highlighting or showcasing products that have a sustainability first?

Lance:

position In two ways. We do have an exclusive category called Second Life. That is that they pre-owned, or certified pre-owned, a refurbished product. We have people that sell excuse me Second Life like liquidators or refurbishers, listed honestly in the same equitable, equitable platform and category as anything else. The second part of that, which is, I'd say, the more growing and obviously interesting point of interest for manufacturers and new brands, is that of our Cradle to Gate and body carbon measurements, which we do have and assigned to every piece of product we have on platform. Now we have our own calculator and it is probably going to take another 25 minutes to explain exactly what that means. However, when a manufacturer has their own structured data for Cradle to Gate, that governs the information we provide. Otherwise, we have constructed our own systems and use them.

Sid:

Wow, that's pretty cool. You're showcasing Second Life product, which is really important. Lots of conversations on this show over the years about sustainability, second Life product, how much product we contribute to the landfills, and those kinds of things. Then you're also highlighting what other manufacturers are doing as it relates to the sustainability initiatives with their product, whether it's recycled component or made completely of recycled product or Cradle to. You said Cradle to Gate, cradle to Gate. Yeah, in our industry it is an important conversation that we need to have more of. I have a lot of people reach out to me to say hey, can you ask more sustainability questions to the manufacturer? I appreciate you diving in a little bit to what you guys are doing to help with that initiative within our industry.

Lance:

It's growing as well. We're going to involve that even further.

Sid:

Lance, what a pleasure it has been to talk to you, to learn about Canoa, all the things that you guys are doing, how you're supporting our community in various different aspects, and a really, really cool new technology. I really appreciate you being here today. If our community would like to get in touch with you, what is the best way for them to do that?

Lance: 

Well, first and foremost, come to our website, which will probably be listed. If you have any questions, I am more than available. Feel free to email me. We can supply or email or just send me a note at LinkedIn.

Sid:

We'll put all of that into the show notes. If you do reach out to him on LinkedIn or through the website, please let him know that you heard him here on the Trend Report. Lance, again, thank you very much for being here sharing this technology with us. To all of you joining us today, thank you for being part of our community. We'll see you again in a couple of weeks and go out there and make today great, everyone.