Some people start out as entrepreneurs and stay there, preferring to follow a less traditional path that allows them more flexibility and autonomy. Others have entrepreneurial experiences and then find ways to apply their creativity and love of learning in a corporate setting.

In this episode of Logistics with Purpose, Enrique Alvarez and Wesley McArthur are joined by William Sandman, Market Development Manager - Channel Strategy for Avery Dennison. William's career has taken him from Louisville, KY to Vietnam in roles that leveraged his entrepreneurial upbringing and allowed him to experience successes, challenges, and work with a number of amazing mentors along the way. Today he is now helping to create Avery Dennison's strategy for several different target markets so they can see the optimal route for investment and direction over the next 3-5 years.

Additional Links & Resources:

Learn more about Logistics with Purpose: https://supplychainnow.com/program/logistics-with-purpose

Learn more about Vector Global Logistics: https://vectorgl.com/

Subscribe to Logistics with Purpose: https://logistics-with-purpose.captivate.fm/listen

Learn more about Avery Dennison: https://www.averydennison.com/en/home.html

Avery Dennison and The Premier League Present: The Name Behind the Numbers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7UO0eVSqmM

About Avery Dennison RBIS Vietnam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnasjaeBjP8

Show Dawgs Vietnam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnasjaeBjP8

This episode was hosted by Enrique Alvarez and Wesley McArthur. For additional information, please visit our dedicated show page at: https://supplychainnow.com/learning-new-stuff-like-entrepreneur-lwp81

Welcome to Logistics with Purpose presented by Vector Global Logistics in partnership with Supply Chain.

Now we spotlight and celebrate organizations who are dedicated to creating a positive impact.

Join us for this behind the scenes glimpse of the origin stories, change making progress and future plans of organizations who are actively making a difference.

Our goal isn't just to entertain you, but to inspire you to go out and change the world.

And now, here's today's episode of Logistics with Purpose.

Good day and welcome to another great episode of Logistics with Purpose.

I'm Enrique Alvarez and I'm very excited for this episode for many, many reasons.

The first one is that it's the first one that I've ever made in person.

So face to face, looking at each other's eyes, I think that's going to be fun and interesting.

I, of course have an amazing co host today with me, Wesley.

How are you doing?

Yeah, good.

I hope everybody else is doing well.

And I'm also excited to have Will.

He's one of my close friends here in Vietnam.

We've known each other for two playing soccer.

My wedding was last week, so he came and that, yeah, it means a lot to me.

Beautiful wedding, amazing story and yeah, an amazing guest.

Right.

We have Will Sandman with us, Sales Manager of Avery Dennison.

And Will, thank you so much for taking the time.

Of course.

Yeah, it's great to be here.

I'm happy to, happy to be in person with you guys and happy to share, share my story.

And people don't know this, but we actually are going to do this interview for the second time because we had an amazing one hour conversation before and for whatever reason, technology didn't help us much there, so.

Well, that's all good.

Yeah, yeah.

Looking forward to hearing the, the next version.

So thank you again for taking the time.

Thank you also for being such a good sport.

And let's start us off, Will.

Yeah, so we've had some good practice from the last one.

So Will, just to start off, tell us about where you grew up in Kentucky and, and everything about your childhood.

Yeah, yeah, grew up in Kentucky.

It was, I was adopted at 4 days old.

Hit the jackpot.

Absolutely.

My parents are amazing people and, and then, you know, went to college in Wisconsin and then kind of, you know, had a great childhood growing up and was very, very fortunate.

Yeah.

So I mean, you mentioned before that it's quite amazing that you're, how you got adopted, that you had a long list of people ahead of you and then you got, you got selected.

Absolutely.

Yep.

So March 28, 1980 was the day I was adopted, four days after I was born.

And my parents, who are wonderful and amazing people, went to the adoption lawyer and there was a long line in front of them.

And actually my mom just sent me a note and told, you know, explained the story to me on the phone, left me a recording.

I've now saved it in my archives.

So she said that they, they waited and waited, and the lawyer said, listen, it's going to be like nine months or it's going to be a long time before you actually receive a child because there's a lot of people in front of you.

And lo and behold, about a month later, they got a call, and the adoption lawyer said, all the other couples have declined and we have a baby ready for you, so go to the store and buy the crib and buy the diapers and buy all this stuff.

And then, you know, there's pictures of the adoption lawyer actually carrying me up the driveway to be.

To be put in my, my house on, on Travoy Lane in Louisville, Kentucky.

And that's kind of where.

Where it all started.

And, and it's big.

It's.

It's a, you know, probably very similar story to what a lot of people have, but for me, it shaped a lot of who I am in a lot of different ways.

And then having parents that were willing to do that, it shows their character.

And, and that's probably, you know, meant quite a bit to me in my life and the different decisions that I made.

Well, incredibly emotional and powerful story, for sure.

But then you actually landed in an amazing household with two incredible parents.

Serial entrepreneurs, I guess.

Could you tell us a little bit more about them?

And totally.

Serial entrepreneurs, they.

They've started things from worm farms to dating services to.

My dad was a painter for a while.

He renovated homes.

My mom had an antique and consignment furniture store where she would go to auctions and buy things in auctions and then resell them.

And then there's also a furniture business that my dad had importing from Vietnam.

There's, there's a myriad of different things.

We, we.

I think at one point we had a fireworks stand.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, that's.

That's one of the stories that's probably not most, not the most successful one, but it's a great story.

So there's, there's, there's.

That household bred kind of an entrepreneurship, and it's translated into what some people call intrapreneurship, which is, you know, entrepreneurship in a big company.

So we'll Talk about that later.

But it's, it's part of who I am and my DNA is in my business life.

It always, it always kind of has been because of my childhood.

We have a, we have a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to our show.

So this is a very interesting subject, not only for me personally, but for everyone out here.

And having you here, it's, it's amazing for that reason.

So could you tell us a couple of examples of things that you remember when you were maybe younger, 15, 18.

You started since you were 5, 6, right?

Yeah.

Telling us.

Yeah, the, the, the fish restaurant called the fishery in St. Matthews, Kentucky, was kind of one of the first ones.

I remember because, you know, my aunt was working on the fryer and my dad is cutting fish.

He's, he's picking up from the airport from, flown in from Boston at 7am Cutting it by 10:11, breading it and serving, you know, frying it and serving it for lunch to have fish and chips.

Now fish and chips in Kentucky, you think, oh, God, this is going to be not great.

But because he was getting in from Boston every day, they were catching it at three in the morning, he was getting it to, at the airport at 7am and then serving it fresh for lunch every day.

And that was one of his mantras, like, we have to have quality, we have to have the best product.

And it worked.

We were in a very Catholic community, so that helped with some of the sales.

But yeah, I remember running around the kitchen, you know, in my, you know, five, six, seven years old, clean, you know, having to clean the grease trap or something like that, like, oh, that's not what you want to do at a fish restaurant is clean a grease trap.

So, so there were, in the, in, you know, I was always kind of doing something to help out.

Your hands get a little cold when you're, you're peeling shrimp back in the, back in the sink.

And yeah, it's, it's always been kind of family, a family business.

I definitely know how that feels.

I worked at a fried chicken restaurant and they used to make me go in between the grease with a scraper and scrape all the oil off.

It was disgusting.

Yeah, in Atlanta.

In, In Douglasville.

Yeah, in Atlanta.

Yeah.

Yeah, there was some, there were some great relationships built there too.

You know, like, I'm just thinking about it now, just remembering the guys that were working there as I was growing up, you know, in my, you know, 10 years old, these guys are all 17, 18 high schoolers.

And so, like, some of my music you know, interest came from these guys.

I think one of the guys gave me the first Run DMC King of Rock cassettes.

You know, I'm dating myself.

But, like, this is.

You know, there were some formidable years growing up there, so it's great.

So, yeah, you had a pretty entrepreneurial childhood, and then that led you to go study your BA in evolution.

And.

And what was the Evolution, Ecology and Behavioral biology.

The.

So the.

I talk about this all the time because it really relates to business.

Right.

In ecology, when one thing changes in the environment, everything else changes.

So if you look at, like, ecology similar to, like a porter's five forces.

If something changes over here from threats of competitors or threats of new entrants, that's the same thing that happens in environmental ecology.

So I got the degree in biology because I was pretty much done with it, but decided really that I wanted to do business probably my junior, senior year of college.

Now I told my dad, I was like, why don't I just.

Why don't I just go into business now?

And he was like, you're getting your degree.

We paid for this.

So, like, you're gonna finish?

I was like, okay, okay, I'll finish.

But no, it's the.

The.

The degree came from a love of being outdoors, and that leads to some of the sustainability conversations that we have and passion that I have from that part of my.

My business career as well.

But I loved being outdoors growing up, and so ecology seemed like a logical degree to get at the time.

No, it makes the connection to your entrepreneurial kind of upbringing as well.

Right.

I mean, it's everything.

People.

It's everything.

Very behavioral, if you will, a lot of, I guess, psychology too.

Could you.

You share a little bit of the story?

When you were working at the restaurant when you were very little, do you remember any other good stories, kind of like May later in your lifetime kind of with your parents and their multiple businesses?

Yeah, they're, you know, the.

Well, dad.

Dad always had the.

He would paint houses or renovate houses.

He buy houses and renovate them.

And there was a lot of, like, summers of pulling nails out and stepping on a nail or yard work or scraping paint or, you know, just doing any sort of business that we could do and kind of to.

To figure out how to make an income for the family.

We were very fortunate.

Don't get me wrong.

Like, my parents were successful in.

In several of the businesses they did.

You know, mom having the antique, you know, consignment furniture store and learning kind of that business was, you know, great to, to learn how to deal with customer service.

So yeah, I was very fortunate.

And there was several different ways in which we, we tried to, to figure out how to hustle.

I guess you said something that kind of brought you to logistics very closely, very quickly about unloading containers or what was that about?

Yeah, that.

So when I was importing pottery, so, so we were importing pottery from Vietnam in between 2003 and 2009, I would say around there.

And when we'd get the containers in, I would have to get buddies at the time to help me unload the container.

So we're 23, 24.

You get a container, a 40 footer in, it's full of pottery.

You literally have to dolly it out and there's a, you have to rent a rider truck, dolly it onto the bed of the rider truck, and then lower it down to get it out in the yard or the warehouse, depending on where we were.

So yeah, from, from an early start, from my first, one of my first businesses, you kind of figure out how to deal with logistics.

Now pottery at the same time is super delicate to transport, so you kind of had to expect, you know, 3 to 10% breakage for every container you're going to get.

And that's part of the cost you factored in.

It's not like you could go back to the person you bought it from on the side of the street in Vietnam and be like, give me my 10% back.

Right.

They're, they're just not gonna, not gonna do it.

And the logistics company was like, we can't help the flex at the ends of the containers that, where your pottery might bounce and break.

So that also led to shipping throughout the US If I wanted to sell to a garden center and I had to put it on a pallet and wrap it up and ship it out, I usually got some breakage there.

Now how do I go get that and how did I account for that stuff?

So, so all of those kind of logistics things were important to trying to figure out how to move product because it's obviously, as you guys know, it's very important to have things moved safely and, and on time.

And, and so when you came to Vietnam, that, that was in the early 2000s.

And how was that trying to find suppliers with pottery and anything else that you were sourcing at that time?

Yeah, luckily from my dad's previous business, he had an agent that helped us still really close family friends with, with her and her family, but they, she kind of helped us in, in the Bindung area.

There's a lot of pottery companies that are there.

So we would go out there and I would select which ones I want.

I'd take a sticker and I'd put it on.

And it was a lot of trial by fire.

You know, you, for instance, you'd go to a pottery company on the side of the road.

You'd say, I want this yellow one and I want this red one.

And then you'd get a blue one and a turquoise one.

And they were like, that's not what I picked out.

I promise that's not what I picked out.

But that's, you know, things you learn.

So that supplier maybe you couldn't trust anymore and so you'd have to find another one.

Yeah, it's a learning process.

Totally.

Yeah.

And I guess like now it's probably a lot better in Vietnam, I mean, you're not in pottery anymore, but I think the service has probably gotten better as well.

Yeah, totally.

I mean there's, there's two types of pottery manufactured here.

There's wood fired kilns, which, like a dragon kiln that goes down the hill.

And there's also temperature controlled kilns.

And the temperature controlled ones, you're going to get the same color on the glaze every time.

For the dragon kiln, they're literally shoving them in a tunnel and heating the bottom of the hill with fire and it's heating the subsequent chambers up the hill.

It's really interesting to watch.

But what happens every now and then is a little glaze that's on the top shelf drops down onto the, like a turquoise will drop down into a blue and create a beautiful streak.

Those are the ones I wanted to, because they were little imperfections that were beautiful.

But explaining that into to someone who's like, oh, no, no, you want only the blue ones.

I'm like, no, no, I want the ones that are like have a defect because they're special.

Right.

I remember when we went to that trade show in District 7.

I remember you telling me about that.

It's quite interesting.

Yeah, it's, it's to, you know, the manufacturing process when it has some, some unique characteristics that are art related, things like that can happen.

They can be really beautiful accidents.

And I guess it also helped you when you finally, you did that job.

Or was it after, was it before when you found the old wood through one of your family friends and then you had to create art and then sell it?

Yeah.

So this, this guy, Ken Hendricks was a guy I met just out of College.

He was.

He liked me because I tried to start a fraternity while I was in college.

It didn't work out.

But he heard from a guy that was on our board that I was an entrepreneur.

And we had lunch on Friday before my graduation.

He said, I've got this warehouse full of old wood.

Now this old wood was molds that used to make machine parts for the Beloit Corporation for Beloit Ironworks.

And that was a foundry that back in the 50s and 60s made parts for the paper making industry.

Which is crazy because full circle, I'm kind of working with paper now, but.

But we had to take these molds and figure out how to make pieces of furniture and art out of them.

Now these are massive pieces of wood that look like machine parts.

So you can imagine a 10 foot tall wood tower essentially, but made of mahogany or willow or whatever was appropriate for the type of heat that was going to be put against or pressure that was going to be put against it.

So it was a great introduction.

Introduction to some entrepreneurship early in my career because I had to hire artists from Portland and Louisville, guys that I had gone to college with and known from my childhood.

And we had to buy machines and like big lathes and band saws and table saws and figure out how to, you know, disassemble some of this, these, this wood because they'd have nails in them.

But we made some.

They made.

I won't say we, because I didn't make.

I'm not the artist, but they made some unbelievable stuff.

And I guess it also, it was a unique way to sell it to you, to find the places to sell it and find the right people and probably unique people.

Yeah, 100%, man.

We, we, we did an installation in a hair salon in Chicago and we thought we had hit the jackpot.

It was like it, you know, we did this beautiful installation.

It was amazing.

We had a party.

We thought, oh, this will turn.

This will be able to allow us to sell more.

And it was a great experience because we were just trying to figure it out.

Like, we were just trying to like, how are we going to show people about how beautiful this stuff is?

And we did that for about a year and a half, two years, and it was.

We made some money.

Ken Hendricks, the guy that funded the operation, and some of the guys at CC ACT were instrumental in just supporting us and helping us.

They basically were like, this stuff is all, you know, gonna be waste if you guys figure out how to do something with it.

Amazing.

Because they couldn't use it to make more machine parts.

The competitor had bought it and said, here's the deal, you can't use this to make machine parts.

You can only use this in a way that either you dispose of it or you found a creative solution that's not related to the industry.

And so our idea was tables and wall hangings and kind of telling the story a little bit about the, the town of Beloit, Wisconsin.

So.

Well, Ken, go ahead.

No, I just.

Ken, amazing entrepreneur himself.

Right.

I mean, you were unreal.

Can you tell us a little bit more about.

About him and his.

Yeah.

So Ken, at 21 years old, decided he wanted to roof an Air Force base.

So he put a bid in.

And he put a bid in.

Not like rounding up to the nearest 10,000.

He did it to the penny.

And he said, I'm going to roof this against what the unions want to do and I'm going to do it by square foot.

So I'll pay you per square foot you work and.

Or per square foot you roof.

And so what happened was these guys came out of the woodwork.

He got it done under budget and ahead of time.

Wow.

So then the US Government was like, okay, roof all the rest of the Air Force bases.

And he did in the country.

Yes.

And he, and he.

From what I've been told.

Right.

Most of them, at least.

Right.

And he.

And it, it's got him kind of on the map where he had made some money.

And I took that and figured out how to do vertical and horizontal integration.

So he was, he would start a bank and then get other people to put their money into the bank.

And he was.

Had rental properties.

He started getting roofing supplies into the country and made a catalog and would sell roofing supplies to other people.

He also went around to a lot of family owned roofing supplies companies and would.

He told, this is what he told me.

He said, I will go around to the back door 30 minutes before the meeting and I'll talk to the warehouse guy.

And whatever the warehouse guy tells me, I'm going to walk right into the front of the building I'm going to use in my conversation with the owner.

So he would walk in the front door and say to the owner, like, listen, I understand what's going on with the business.

You want to retire, you want your son to take over, but this is what's going on.

You got too much inventory or whatever it was.

Right, right.

And.

And the owner would be like, exactly, it's exactly what I want to do.

And so then he would be Able to acquire that business and fold it underneath his umbrella.

And he was very.

He's very successful guy in the manner that he was always asking questions and trying to figure out what was really going on.

I think that really helped you shape you into, you know, the salesperson you are right now.

Yeah, 100%, you know, that, that his spirit of.

Of trying to figure things out was.

Was very influential.

I've.

I've had a lot of really great mentors, Kent.

Ken was one.

Unfortunately, he's passed away, but he is a.

He was.

You know, he's worth $4 billion at the, the.

At the end there.

And what was the name of his company again?

ABC Supply.

Supply.

Yeah, they're.

They're a roofing supplies company.

He's got several different offshoots.

Corporate Contractors Incorporated and yeah.

Other real estate.

Amazing stories, right?

Yeah, it's.

It's.

He was a great first person.

Well, probably second or third person to learn from.

I would say.

My parents, I learned from first.

But.

But he was.

He was a really good entrepreneur before.

We kind of deep dive into your career, Will.

And thank you very much for sharing all these stories with us.

I'm sure that people that are listening are incredibly interested as well.

Could you tell us a little more about your parents?

Any other cool, interesting story about your relationship with them and their multiple businesses that kind of sticked in.

Do you mind?

I think, you know, one that I haven't told you yet that is actually quite interesting.

And it's not one of our most successful stories, but we, My cousin Abel and my mom and my dad.

Right when I first came back to Kentucky, this is previous to the.

The pottery, started a company called Tofu.

And it was.

It was a women's sandal that we got imported from Vietnam.

And we spent about a year going around to all the trade shows.

My cousin and I on the road, Abel is his name.

And we went to Atlanta and Chicago and Dallas and LA and New York, and we tried to sell these shoes.

And what we.

A lot.

We didn't realize a lot of things, but one of the things we didn't realize was everybody had the same idea kind of at the same time.

So we were going to these trade shows and there'd be 310 by 10 booths of people trying to sell women's sandals.

And like.

So we were just.

We were out of our league in a lot of different ways.

But.

But it was.

I could see, you know, the four of us sit around the table in my mom's office and in her store and we'd try to say, okay, how do we come up with a name?

How do we go to the USPTO and make sure it's not already trademarked?

How do we.

How do we go to the trade shows?

Who are we going to, what stores are going to buy from us and what.

What's our main store?

That's going to be our, our target market.

So from an early, from an early stage, they were people that were also trying to figure out the angles and ask questions and, and learn about how.

Things could work well, which I'm guessing and connecting the dots with the stories you've told before, maybe that's the connection and you have with the shoe industry.

That was your kind of introduction and why you kind of full circle and ended working on that as well.

Yeah, there's been some.

It's weird paper and connected and then this tofu and now your shoe.

Now that you mentioned it, there are some connections that are.

That are going from my previous.

So yeah, that's it.

It is full circle.

The.

The shoe industry came about just after grad school and I was working as a.

In a company that was called Paxis and they are now part of oia, but they were a supplier that helped with packaging and with materials consolidation for some bigger brands.

It.

We were supporting kind of a Nike initiative at the time.

I had a desk there.

I was not a Nike employee, but had a desk in their materials library for a little bit and was able to kind of try to help some of their efficiencies and what, what they wanted to do with their material strategy.

Yeah.

And I think just going back quickly to your shoe story, I mean failing also probably helped you a lot learn how to, as you mentioned before, taking no.

And finding a way around it to find, you know, the right way to win.

Yeah, totally.

Like there's that.

That was one experience of, of, of you have to try things.

Right.

You have to try things and, and some things are going to be successful and some things are not.

If you're.

If you're.

You probably learn more from the things that don't work.

Similar to kind of.

I. I worked for a company called Central Edge staffing and recruiting and the guys that own Louisville Geek and a few other guys.

Louisville Geek's account of a Geek squad company in Louisville.

Um, and I say Louisville, like Louisville, but most people say Louisville, but I'm.

But I'm from there.

So I say Louisville.

So anyway, the.

But the.

These guys kind of threw in some money together during a very Profitable time in.

In our economy.

And we were trying to help staff jobs at, like, Toyota suppliers.

So Kentucky Association, Kentucky association of Manufacturers was our partner.

We tried to go to their company list and say, how can we provide?

How can we get you the guys you need for your business?

And I was calling on HR departments.

Essentially, I would call 60 people, usually before noon, and then use my afternoons to email and follow up with people that I had actually connected with.

But that learned.

That taught me a lot about hearing no and hearing no and being confident and okay enough to.

To hear that somebody doesn't need our services at this point.

Also taught me a lot about planting seeds and about things that are kind of come to fruition later on if you had make genuine connections with people.

So.

So yeah, it was.

That was one.

I.

One story about how, you know, you can get on the phone but you're gonna hear no sometimes and it's okay.

It's not.

It's not the end of the world if something doesn't work.

It's not the end of the world if somebody says they don't need you right now.

Yeah, you just gotta keep on trying.

So, yeah, it's great to hear that.

And.

And then when did you start with Avery Denton?

About eight years ago, right?

Yeah, about eight years ago.

Started with Avery.

I had come from working at that company, Paxus, and then I worked for Chinook Trading and a company called Hua Chong.

Hua Chong did synthetic leather based out of Jinjiang, China.

And then Chinook Trading was based out of Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Hua Chong was just a synthetic leather supplier for the footwear brands.

And they would sell to the factories, and the factories would then make the product for the brands and ship to them.

Chinook Trading was a little different.

They were an agent, so they would help the design and development process for smaller companies.

Because it's expensive to build an ELO in another country, a liaison office in another country.

So I would.

We would help them, kind of guide them along for their footwear production.

And that led me to Avery, which has been an unbelievable ride of.

Of eight years that I love and will.

Before we kind of deep dive into Avery, could you tell us, for the people that are listening to us that might not know who they are or what they do, could you tell us a little bit more about their.

And what they.

Why are they so relevant in logistics in general?

The simple answer to that is a guy named Avery met a guy named Dennison, and they made some labels.

It's a great combination.

It sounds Like a name, right?

Yeah, it sounds like a great story too.

At some point we should have interviewed them as well.

Well, I wish you could.

It's about a hundred year old story.

So those guys were in Southern California and they were trying to figure out how to make like legitimately figure out how to make us label sticker for prices onto products.

So these guys back in the day were like, all right, we know we need to put a price on this.

How do we make the label?

And so they figured out like other people want these too.

And the company kind of was created from that.

Now obviously a hundred year old, 100 plus year old company has evolved massively since then, as you can imagine.

Yeah, you said 30,000 employees around, around the world.

30,000 Employees were probably in about or 50 plus manufacturing locations, all different types of businesses.

And today you can imagine how those solutions have evolved.

At the core, you know, we've got integrity and sustainability as kind of our attributes that we follow every day.

I've been lucky enough to work in several different parts of the business.

Do you want me to describe a little bit?

Yeah, that would be great.

Tell us a little more about your career.

So the, so the area that I'm in is called Retail Branded Information Solutions.

And the reason it's called that is because we have to manage the data that's associated with price tickets and care and content labels and all the things that a consumer needs to see.

Now the reason it's hard to manage is because it's just so much information.

You can imagine how many different styles, how many different languages and we become kind of the go to company for managing all of that, that data.

And I, I started out in Portland, Oregon after my boss Matt Leffler hired me to manage kind of a few of the brands in the area.

And it was a great learning experience.

Luckily that office has some brilliant people and they were, they allowed me to ask a lot of questions because it takes a long time at Avery Denison to learn all the ins and outs you imagine a company of 30,000 people is not.

It's, it's got its ins and outs so that it all started there and then it led me to Hong Kong doing business development and then it led me to Vietnam to manage a team here.

And luckily I'm able to stay in Vietnam hopefully for a little bit and, and continue to do some of the strategy.

How long have you been here in Vietnam?

I've been three years in Vietnam.

Previously I was two years in Hong Kong.

Vietnam's an amazing place.

Love it here really nice people.

And yeah, you were before, right, with your fa.

With your dad and your dad came here as well from time to time.

So it's nice.

I've.

I knew some people when I came here in Hong Kong.

I didn't, I didn't really know too many people when I arrived.

Luckily I had some, some football friends.

But the, the time in Vietnam has been, has been a blast and it has been much easier because there's some people locally that, that we're friends with, family friends with.

And you mentioned some of your passions.

Aussie Rules has also helped you find friends everywhere.

And you mentioned last week you had your Hong Kong friends come over for a tournament, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, that was, that was really special.

The.

I played for two years for the Hong Kong Dragons, so Aussie Rules football is a long journey for me.

It's been over 20 years now.

And I started when I was about 22, so I played for Milwaukee and then I played for Louisville, Kentucky and then Portland, Oregon and then Hong Kong and then now, now Vietnam.

But it's a great, it's a small, tight knit community.

Aussie Rules is only played basically in about five cities in Australia.

Professionally, there's 18 teams.

Nine of them are in Melbourne, I think nine are in Melbourne.

And so when you play it internationally, everybody knows everybody.

So when I was moving to Vietnam, the Hong Kong guys were like, well, you need to meet this guy and you need to meet this guy.

So when they came over to play, I played the first half with Hong Kong, I played the second half with Vietnam.

Vietnam's definitely my team now.

So just so that everybody knows that.

Yeah, make sure that the, it's clear who you're supporting.

So what was the score?

Oh, it was.

I mean, you won regardless.

We didn't.

We didn't.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Playing for both teams makes it a little easier, but it, I think it was pretty lopsided at the end, 150 to 50 or something.

But you have to give the Hong Kong guys a little bit of benefit of the doubt.

They didn't have some of their, their normal players over and so we.

Yeah, and they had you cheering for the other team.

Right, for them.

So.

Yeah, so it was, it was a great game though.

We, we had a lot of fun.

Nobody was injured.

That's key.

That's the, that's the main thing on the day.

And it was at rmit, which is really cool.

I know that's Wesley's alma mater, so that field is beautiful.

And we got a, we had to play a really great game.

And Vietnam, what an amazing country, what a great city.

I've been in Saigon.

This is my second time.

So I haven't, I don't have a lot of experience for what I can tell.

Just it's growing fast.

The people are amazing.

Caring, hard working, very compassionate people, humble.

It's just, I don't know, it's been a incredible experience so far.

Yeah, Vietnam is, Vietnam is, it's a great, great place.

I attribute it a lot to the people in, in, in every, you know, culture, nobody's perfect, right?

But in Vietnam, you know, I, I've started doing a lot of cycling lately and you'll be with a group of, of, you know, five, you know, Westerners in the middle of nowhere in Vietnam.

And you'll get the, every, every now and then you'll get the wave of, you know, from somebody, hey, how are you guys doing?

This is, you know, you know, hey.

And they just wave to you.

You know, I, I, I don't think a lot of times that would happen in other countries.

You know, I, my friend Tim and I were doing, we just, after Covid, we're going, trying to find somewhere to have a beer.

We went to a restaurant, it was closed.

We, we happened upon this little food cart that had had a beer, had beers in it.

So we grabbed a couple and it's kind of started to drizzle.

So she took the couple chairs and a table and sat it under this awning for us.

It was so nice.

And we thought, oh, you know, I hope maybe she'll let us play some music.

So we had a little, little stiff speaker and we played some music and, and she was okay with that.

And then, you know, we had to use the restroom.

So she, she invited us into her house.

You know, grandma's laying on the couch, grandpa's on the computer, there's kids running around.

We're walking through these people's houses.

Two complete strangers.

Complete strangers.

And, and we sat there for three hours listening to music, drinking beer, and became friends with his family.

Now I'll go back there every time and buy beer from them because they were so sweet to us.

But that's the kind of compassion and kind of humanity that you get in Vietnam when you, when you, and we didn't speak the same language.

There's no, you know, English communication here.

It's all pointing and suggesting and, and, you know, Google Translate on your phone.

And these people are just so, so nice and.

Yeah, yeah, in Vietnam, they're always so welcoming, especially you go to their house with food, with drinks.

You know, it's never, you never feel uncomfortable wherever you're going.

In Vietnam especially, you know, when we did that bike ride like you mentioned, waving some people, what are you doing?

You know, they're probably wondering why all of us on our bikes in the middle of nowhere.

But yeah, and you've been here for a while too, right?

Yeah, I've been here five years now, you know, and same thing like Will experiencing the same things.

One of the main reasons I stayed here is because of the people.

I mean, I stayed in Hanoi at first and I taught English with Vietnamese students.

And yeah, they, they welcomed me to their hometowns.

They try, introduced me to all the food.

They taught me some Vietnamese as well.

We drank beer, we had a really good time.

And I think that's one of the main reasons why I stayed here.

And then also some funny stories is people helping us out.

Is me and my friend did a motorbike ride through Southern Vietnam and his bike broke.

And I kept driving because I was just looking at the scenery, didn't even notice.

And then I realized he wasn't there.

So I turned around in like 5 kilometers back, 5 miles or whatever it was, came back and he's sitting there.

There's some Vietnamese guy there helping him, trying to fix his bike.

And, you know, it's getting dark now and we're wondering like, what are we going to do?

We're in the middle of the mountains, you know, there's nothing around.

And he's, he Google Translate us that he's going to go get a mechanic.

And I was like, oh, I don't think this guy's going to come back.

He's just saying that.

And so we just kept pushing our bikes up the hill, trying to, you know, hopefully run into a mechanic, go to a town, something like that.

And about the sun went down, it was dark, and like an hour and a half later, this guy comes with two mechanics and they tie my friend Z's bike up and then they, they drive his bike through the mountains.

Z jumps on the guy that came back on his bike.

I rode my bike, followed him.

We found this like little wooden house in the, on the top of the hill.

The mechanic, he helped us out, he fixed his bike, he took it apart, you know, and I mean, they charged us.

Obviously they did a service for us.

But the guy that helped us, he didn't want anything from us.

And he still had to drive 200 km to his, to his work the next day.

And he still Helped us out like that.

So you hear amazing stories like that all the time.

We tried to, we tried to tip the lady and she was like, no way.

We were like three hours we're sitting here drinking beer, she's like, nope, I don't want anything.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

You don't hear, you don't hear stories like that enough.

Right.

And the world desperately needs them.

Right.

So thanks, thanks both for sharing them.

Jumping a little bit more now into the logistics side of things.

What trends are you seeing?

What can you tell us?

What's the connection to?

Because maybe making it a mental picture of what the labeling company does.

I mean, is it.

Who manufactures?

At what point do they stitch the label?

I mean, what's the process?

And where do you see this industry heading?

Yeah, so there's.

So let me just start up first with kind of what the process is.

So a tier 2 supplier like us would provide the materials to the factory, like a garment factory who's making a jersey.

They would get the, the name and number from us.

They would get the patch that goes on the left crest.

They would get the sponsor logo on the front.

And then they would also order the fabrics from a fabric mill in the, in the thread from a thread company.

And so they would gather all these materials and then essentially they would stitch them all together and heat press what they need to heat press.

And then that would be ready to send.

And they would package it and that would be ready to send to the brand they had purchased, purchased it from them.

For the industry, a lot of things are going towards, like every conversation I've had for the last three years has been about sustainability, probably longer than that really.

But there's.

Everybody's trying to figure out how to make things smarter, more efficiently, to use less waste.

And sometimes that means less materials.

So we've got to figure out kind of how do we still manage that data that's in the products?

So the hang tag or the, or the care and content label, how do we continue to manage that data and make it accessible to everyone without actually physically making that product?

Potentially, I don't think it's going to happen overnight, but there is a thinking that those will go away maybe.

And what are some sustainability things that you see happening in your industry in the next four or five years?

Definitely, obviously less materials, but also just more efficiencies in the manufacturing.

There's, I think I read it that there's 3.3% of waste in supply chain is from overproduction.

And in the food industry, that equates to like $1.1 trillion.

Wow.

Which is like, which is wild.

Right.

That means we're over making somewhere a ton of food and then obviously people aren't getting it in other places.

So that's a huge gap to try to figure out.

And, and so that's some of the stuff that we're seeing is these.

And it's very quickly there's like a company organization in Atlanta called Gooder and the lady that started basically said that hunger is not a source.

It's not a lack of sourcing problem.

It's like a logistics problem.

Yeah.

And speaks to your point.

Right.

It's just food is not at the right time where it needs to be, but we have enough.

Right, Right.

It's there.

We just got to get it around everybody in the right way.

And one thing I want to say though, I went to your factory two years ago and I'll say that's super efficient from what I've seen.

And there's not much wastage and it's.

Yeah, it was pretty amazing to see.

Yeah.

There's a couple things that Avery Denison does really well I would say, and I mentioned this to our customers quite a bit is like we, we manage our, our, our money really well and we're super efficient in our manufacturing.

So.

And those are two of our mantras.

You can read them on our, on our annual report.

But they are two like kind of pillars for us that we focus on as being really, you know, wealth management or financial management efficient and manufacturing efficiency.

Yeah, you got to keep.

Because we do things the right way at Avery, like we have to do things in a sustainable way.

We have all our certifications that we need to have.

We do all the audits that we need to do and those things cost money and it can sometimes raise the price.

But when you're doing things efficiently in the manufacturing and you're doing things with your working capital in a responsible way that can bring the price down.

So we, we, we work in a very obviously price driven industry and we have to be very cognizant of where we can do things the right way, but then be more efficient on kind of how we produce.

Right.

And you were telling us before that there's of course a lot of brands and a lot of companies out there that are currently working with you guys and maybe others that are doing a really good job.

I think you mentioned Adidas as being a good example.

Could you.

Yeah, primarily, you know, they're, they're doing a great job and they've recently come out with some information from their footwear report.

And the, the report is basically saying that a certain percentage of the products are going to be considered sustainable.

Now they have to prove that which is there.

That has to do with their traceability and the transparency to that data.

They have to, first they have to trace it and then they have to be, they have to have the ability to make sure that people can understand why they can make that claim.

And so they've done a really good job.

And we've, we've worked closely with them to try to help them in any way that we can with that kind of responsible behavior associated with the product.

And you mentioned before, Avery Denson is, you know, a driver in sustainability.

But why is that?

Is that because you guys are part of an organization that helps you guys do that or just, it's just within the company that helps you?

Well, it's, it's, it's within the company for sure.

Sustainability is a pillar for us and we, we do things the right way.

But we're also part of organizations like the Sustainable Apparel Coalition which groups together brands, factories, suppliers and says we all believe it being a better steward of the planet is, is the right thing to do.

So we're definitely part of all of those types of organizations.

Yeah, that's amazing.

Well, and yeah, Avery Denison is also very, not only sustainability, but it sounds like it's not a very purpose driven organization, I think.

And I read that you also do women's empowerment's important disaster, education, equity, all those things that kind of shape and make the company and your values and culture on your team as well, right?

Yeah, definitely.

Our women's empowerment initiative is very important.

We're trying to get more managers in that respect.

And yeah, as far as materials go, anything that we can do that's non virgin materials, FSC certified both for plastic and for paper or plant based products.

Anything that's recycled is definitely on our radar.

We've got some, and we've got some stuff we've reported that's like, you know, we've started at this baseline and this is where we are today, which is all part of our annual report.

We do an annual, a combined annual report now.

So part annual report, part sustainability report.

The Shoe dogs I think is the name.

Well, that, that's part of a little bit.

I'll tell you about the Shoe dogs.

So I'll preface this with saying I'm not a shoe dog.

There are guys that have been in the industry for decades.

I've been in somewhat of a footwear industry for about 12 years.

But some of these guys that were, you know, in Korea in the 80s and you know, in Taiwan early days and go way back to the origins of footwear, you know, stuff with like Nike expanding finally into manufacturing China in the, in the early 80s, I think that was 84.

So I'm, I'm not a shoe dog by the definition of shoe dog, but I am part of a group, I'm on the board and we do basically it's fun and philanthropy.

So we're trying to figure out how to raise money for organizations locally at the same time as having some social networking events to kind of keep the people in the footwear industry connected.

And can you share more about the one in Dong Nai, the Hope Organization?

That's.

Yeah, that's a bike ride, right?

Yeah.

The, the Hope center is of 145 kids, mostly of Hmong descent with the.

Which is an ethnic group in Vietnam, primarily in the North.

But these kids come to the Hope center, which is about 107km away from Saigon.

And we've done things like, you know, add solar panels and gotten other organizations in to collaborate and yeah, it's kind of through the Shoe Dogs that we've kind of tried to help raise money.

The Avery foundation put in money two years in a row now to them.

So that's been really good.

Yeah, it's been a, it's been a.

Great experience and something they want to do as well.

They're also being self sustainable, trying to set up a farm in the back.

It was quite amazing to see that.

Yeah, that's right.

They, they've kind of got the, they, they, we help them dig a well and so they've got some water that can kind of irrigate this kind of back farm they have.

And they're growing mangoes and things like that out there.

It allowed them to have a bigger area for the chickens, which is, doesn't sound like a huge deal, but it's, it is when you got 145 kids and it's, it's this Pastor Non and his, and his wife and, and it's their family kind of taking care of all these kids.

And it's, it's pretty amazing.

It's pretty awesome.

It's, it's like I said, I was adopted when I was younger, so to be able to give back to kids that, you know, potentially could be adopted, might not be adopted, but just also.

Give back and have a good life, you know.

Yeah, totally.

It's yeah, it's been wonderful.

The HOPE center was.

Is a great project.

And are there some things that need to be done for the HOPE organization over the next few years, months, that are quite important?

Yeah, I think there's things.

So in my mind, in a perfect world, I'd love to get some computers out there for them.

Okay.

That's been.

That's been kind of one of the big gaps is that they've.

They've got WI fi, but there's not.

There's not a way for the kids to connect with it much.

And I think in this day and age, you probably want to have some kids that are going to go out into the world and be members, productive members of society.

You want to have them to have some of the skills to make them not feel so out of bounds.

Right.

You know, if someone says something on their phone or does something on their phone, you know, how do they.

How do they know how to use that as well?

And it'll help them so much learning, you know, from school and learning about the world and help them become more knowledgeable.

I definitely think that's.

That's something.

Something they need.

I agree.

We'll.

We'll add it to our.

To our interview notes.

We'll add the link so that people can learn a little bit more about the HOPE Organization and, and maybe through our network and maybe just working together, we could make that kind of goal of yours.

Thank you.

Thank you again for, for sharing.

Yeah.

Shifting gear.

Okay.

Sorry.

Last thing is the bike ride.

We.

We're going to do that annually.

Oh, in November.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I think we definitely need to note that down, too.

Yeah, that'd be great.

I.

We.

We.

We did the bike ride.

It was so.

I've gotten really into biking, but it was kind of my.

One of my first big, long bike rides, and it was amazing, and the kids loved it.

When we drove through, they were throwing confetti and.

And it was a wonderful experience.

And we're trying to do satellite locations.

So my friend John, who's our sustainability guy at Avery Denison, he said he wants to do one in Southern California.

We'll do one in Atlanta.

Yeah, that'd be great if you guys do.

It's just.

It's just the more people we can get involved, you know, the more fun it is, first of all.

Then also, it's a great.

It's a great cause, so.

Well, you've mentioned a lot about your team and your team.

It sounds like you not only work with amazing people, you're part of an amazing organization.

But what, what have you, what have you learned from your team?

I mean, working with them?

What's one of the two or three things that they have taught you?

And, and, and what have you learned about yourself working with them?

There's, I've learned a lot at, at Avery Denison, you're learning something new all the time, which is if any, if any entrepreneur out there doesn't love learning new stuff all the time.

Like, I, I, I don't know kind of what to, what to tell you, because you have to, right?

Even entrepreneurship in a big company like Avery, you gotta be.

There's stuff that comes up all the time.

My team has, the team here in Vietnam has taught me a lot about, about how much, what it really means when the chips are down to care about each other.

During COVID things were obviously very tough, and we had to make some really tough decisions.

And in some of those decisions, we had to let some people go or they decided that they didn't want to do the amount of hours that we were asking them to do, which may have been not enough for them to provide for their family.

So we did other things.

We figured out other ways to get food or to get minimum wage or to get something to people.

And you know, our leader here, her name's Chow, and she's got to manage 3,000 people.

But, you know, being in Portland, Oregon, you don't see that.

I mean, you can come visit Vietnam and see the factory, and it's great and you get your tour around.

But then when you're here and you see that Chow's got to manage 3,000 people and she cares about each one of those people and their families.

It gives you a totally different perspective on, on, on what it means to be a, a team player and to have teamwork as part of your, your core.

So they've taught me a lot about, about how to work together and to care about people and integrity.

Doing the right thing and talking about learning.

What is some stuff that you can tell other salespeople, young salespeople that are up and coming, learning, and what can they learn from you and what, what would you say to them?

Yeah, so I think there's a couple things the, the, the thing that I would say is the most important is to listen.

You know, I've done a lot, I've done a lot of talking on this podcast, but what I try to do is I, I, I try to listen to what people want and what people are having problems with so that I can then provide Solutions.

The, the second thing I would say is having genuine connections with people is really important because you, you want to come out of a meeting and have a friend, not just somebody that you're going to work with.

And so what I try to do is I try to make sure that when I come out of a meeting, someone knows that it's not just about, you know, what we're going to try to solve for them, what we're going to try to do for them, but it's also about, how's your kid, how's your family, Are you okay in life?

Are you going to, you know, do you need anything, you know, as a, as a buddy, as a friend?

And so I would say making genuine connections and listening are my two big pieces of advice.

For anybody doing sales.

It's.

Yeah, I think I'm just, maybe I'm just wired that way, but I, I just, I like connecting.

No, I definitely agree.

I think those are some great tips to give salespeople and up and coming salespeople.

So, will, thank you so much once again for being here with us.

How can our listeners connect with you and with your company?

Probably the best way is email or LinkedIn.

I will probably accept anybody on LinkedIn just because I think it's great to have a big network to connect with.

And then anybody that has questions can definitely email me.

I'm pretty open book.

And then, Avery Denison, there's tons of information on our website.

We've got reports that we put out.

We've got tons of content that our wonderful marketing team puts together that I can share with people.

So, and we do a lot of, we do a lot of trend analysis and things like that so that, that information we can definitely share with with people.

We will definitely ask you for some of those links, if you don't mind.

We'll put them on the interview notes.

And you also mentioned on the first one we had about a video, a very.

Is that a public video or that just internal?

No, no, it's a, it's a. I've sent it out to a lot of people recently, so could you share it with us?

Because you spoke so kind of passionately about it.

Oh.

So we're doing, we do a lot of work with the, the Premier League and we've now redesigned the names and numbers for like the third or fourth time only in the history of the Premier League.

So it's a very big deal to do the design.

But for the Premier League to allow us to do the design was amazing.

So I, I'M luckily.

Luckily enough.

I know the guys that are on the design team and they're friends of mine and I'm really proud of them because it's, it's a, it's a very cool thing.

It's a very inspiring video and it shows kind of the career that we put towards these partnerships and.

Yeah.

Being a soccer fan and a soccer player for most of my life, although much slower these days, I still have really passionate about, you know, our connection with the athletic world.

I keep telling everyone that's not about running.

Right.

Yeah.

But maybe it's just my distribution.

You're going to be a smart player.

And what's your team again in the epl?

Leeds.

Leeds I was in.

I was in Melbourne.

So they had.

At the time it was 2000.

They had Bosnich and Viduka and Kuehl.

So I became a Leeds fan and I hope that they can stay up this year.

We'll see.

I hope so too.

Well, thank you.

Thank you once again.

We'll definitely share the video if you don't mind.

And I guess before we leave, last question.

What would you challenge our audience with?

Like the parting thoughts?

I mean, you had to challenge our audience to do something.

What do you think that should be?

What would you like them to.

To do?

If, if, if I could challenge your audience, I would say I would challenge you with just maybe asking questions.

I mean that's, that's the key.

That's how we're going to figure stuff out.

Is it is.

Is asking questions and not being afraid to ask questions.

The.

A lot of times we get in these, these corporate situations where you're afraid to raise your hand or you're worried, but I think, you know, our company and, and I think I'm lucky is very encouraging about asking questions and trying to find out more.

So.

And I would, I guess I would.

The other thing I would challenge them with is, is find someone you feel comfortable with asking questions to as well.

Mentors are great people to have as part of your life.

I like I mentioned earlier my parents, Ken Hendricks, but there's a myriad of different people that I've been lucky enough to.

To meet.

And when I've got a question in my life, whether it's personal or professional, I can go to them and say, you know, what should I do here?

Or what does this mean?

Or am I looking at this the right way?

And they can give me some perspective that I probably am biased to because of my feelings about the situation or my past experience.

So I would challenge them with finding somebody and then asking questions.

Absolutely.

So there you have it, right?

It's asking a lot of questions, listening, building good friendships and not minding.

Getting no all the time.

It sounds like that's kind of the summary of the interview.

And again, this has been more than an interview.

It's been an amazing conversation with you.

There's tons of things that people can learn from your experience, and we're both very thankful that you've given.

You've given us double the amount of time we're scheduled and sharing some of your personal stories as well.

Wes, any parting thoughts, your favorite parts, anything that you've learned?

Oh, yeah, Learning the end there.

Just asking questions, never being afraid of.

No, I think those are great.

As a salesperson myself, reinforcing that idea because, you know, you do get no a lot.

Yeah.

So overall, I really enjoyed it and thank you for joining.

I mean, been planning this for a while, so I'm glad it finally happened and glad it's in Vietnam.

No, anytime.

And if you guys want to do follow up, I'm totally okay with that too.

This has been an absolute pleasure, so I appreciate it a lot.

Thank you very much.

And everyone else listening to this interview and this podcast, if you enjoyed it as much as Wes and I did, don't forget to subscribe.

Drive.

Once again, logistics with purpose.

This is Enrique Alvarez, and have a good day.