SEO Success for Manufacturers: Balodana Teams Up With IMEC and B2Btail

Damon Pistulka  00:03

Alright, everyone, it is Friday, and you know what that means. It is time for stop being the best kept secret. We are. Got a great show for you today. I am Damon Pistulka, cohost of the show that pretty gentleman right over there is Curt Anderson, from B2Btail, we are going to take it away and have some fun talking about SEO Success for Manufacturers today. Curt, let’s go.

Curt Anderson  00:30

Let’s do it, man. Hey, this is an honor. What a privilege. We have two amazing, wonderful friends on the program here today. I’m going to start with this lovely lady here, Dana Todd, Dana, happy Friday. How are you? I’m great. How are you? Oh, my goodness, I couldn’t be any better. And then on top of it, we’ve got none other, the one, the only, Tom grant Tom, how are you, dude, I’m doing great. Thanks. Curt, this is awesome. Damon, Are you fired up, or what? Man, I’m ready to go. Okay, let’s, let’s hit this heavy. So alright, I have to do this. We’re just Dana, you and I have a little history. We go way back. You, my friend, are truly a pioneer in search and internet marketing, all the things I’m going to dive in how you and I actually met over 20 years ago. We were like, we were kids, right? We were teenagers at the time, I think so.

Dana Todd  01:18

Absolutely. 1213, yeah.

Curt Anderson  01:23

You know what? Before we go there, before we get in, like, what an eCommerce, internet marketing, SEO guru, Pioneer that you are, I’m going to go back a little further than that, maybe back to when you were little. So, Dana, when you were a little girl and Tom, I have a totally different question for you. So be ready. Be prepared. Dana, the question I have for you, not for Tom, but for you, is this, when you were a little girl growing up, who was your hero? Who did you look up to, who just showered you with unconditional love? Who was your hero when you’re a little girl growing up? Well,

Dana Todd  01:55

of course, I gotta say my mom, because she was the closest role model. Well, not honestly, that she and some of the other women in my family who were entrepreneurs or business women were, for me, very instrumental. Both of my parents were entrepreneurs at various times, if not most of their lives. So the the entrepreneur lifestyle, the feast or fan, you know, but the level of creativity and flexibility, and just like pioneer, like you said, like not being afraid of of the untraveled road was something I can literally, was my whole world. So it’s very much shaped who I am today and how I approach things. Well,

Curt Anderson  02:34

you’ve been a career entrepreneur, and I love it. So just a little more insight, if you could. So first off, mom’s name, Marilyn. Marilyn, okay, what type of business did Marilyn have? She was a,

Dana Todd  02:45

believe it or not, a professional artist and educator. So she taught at the college level, and that’s kind of how she paid most of the bills. A divorced mom of three in the 70s, you gotta do something, right? And she continued to teach well into her 70s, and but she actually was a working artist. So she was well known for her ability to execute horses. Horses were her passion. So I was surrounded by horses and horse people and oil paintings. And it was just really such a very interesting way to grow up. Because, you know, she horses. Horses are, at least in America at that time, aligned to mostly very wealthy people, because they use them as a tax write off. So you know, you would have the Cowboys, yes, there’s the Cowboys, the working people with horses, and then you’ve got the a completely different set of horses, each aligned, by the way, around a very different breed. So I guess that early on, taught me about market segmentation, because your Hunter jumpers very different than your rodeo people, very different from, you know, your quarter horse people and your show ponies and all of that. So, yeah, it was even within something as narrow as horse owner, there were segmentations to look at. Well,

Curt Anderson  03:57

great story. Thanks for sharing. And what’s fascinating, I feel like a little the Apple didn’t fall far from the tree in some aspects. But you’ve really taken like, that creativity, that artistry, and you combine it with technology, and have taken it to a whole different level. And we’re going to dive into your fashion tech Wiz, if I if I can say so and so I love the I love what you’ve done there, from an entrepreneur standpoint, did you like? So you’re sorry, your mom kind of going through the roller coaster. And as an educator, what was, what was it like as a little girl, watching your mom kind of going through that, that roller coaster? And

Dana Todd  04:30

it was always interesting, yeah. And like I said, it was a house full of creativity. You it was tools, right? You saw tools and how they worked, and then the outcomes and how many hours it actually takes to create that oil painting and the relationships that she built with the people who hired her to paint their dogs, their horses, through whatever, their homes, their landscapes. She she was very much an inventor. Again. I love the adventure. I wish I was as adventurous as her. Honestly, somewhere in I think she was really. Well into her 30s, possibly even 40s, when she went out on a working ranch with her camera and just like lived on the ranch for a couple of weeks with a bunch of working cowboys and took pictures on spent the whole time on horseback just documenting that and creating a painting series. So yeah, fun and adventure. Life should be adventurous, right? Your work should be adventure and fun. That would

Damon Pistulka  05:25

be a nice adventure. Well, very

Curt Anderson  05:26

inspiring. So single mom raising three wonderful kids, and she did an incredible job with you. So thank you. Big shout out to Marilyn. Thank you for sharing that with us. Tom, I have a different question for you that I’m going to come at you. Actually, it is not as different question when you were a little guy growing up? Who was your hero? Who did you look up to as a little guy?

Tom Grant  05:44

So it was definitely my parents too. My I was fortunate to have two parents with me, and so my mom brought she went to college when, when I was in grammar school, which I hated, it was a major distraction from me. And she was, she was just, she was very unique. And out there, first, she had eight children, and she decided, I’m going to go to college and I’m going to do this. She always wanted to finish her her education. And she did it. She did it when she was probably 50 years old. My dad, on the other hand, was somebody who, you know, he, he started out as a fireman, and then he built a small, little real estate business, and he would every Saturday would take all eight of us to go work, and so we would get up on Saturday morning and we would go and paint and sweep the floors and clean out the garage and fix the roof, and do every single thing that that he could get his eight children to do legally, and then, and then we would, and then we awesome. Then we’d get our little paycheck at the end of the week. And he would always, you know, if we needed money in between, he would have a little book, and he would record that book, which we have to this day, to see what those little, little micro loans were and so he taught me about, oh, cool, about discipline, about money. She taught me about, you know, as following your your dreams and just being a wonderful parent. So I was just very fortunate to have two parents that I

Curt Anderson  07:15

love, and mom and dad’s name, please. Oh, Jack and Betty. Jack and Betty. And so, Damon, how did that ring for us? So what lots of admiration and respect for Betty. My mother went back to college. So it’s very similar. Got her bachelor and masters, I think, in her 40s, 50 around there. Damon, your mother went out and got her PhD when she was later in life. So lots of symmetry here. And so, alright, I absolutely love this. And we’ve got a comment here, Damon from our friend,

Damon Pistulka  07:45

yeah, we got Diane saying, happy Friday everyone. Thanks for stopping by today. Diane. Alright guys, do us

Curt Anderson  07:51

a favor. Drop us a note. Let us know you’re out there, and do so do yourself a favor. Connect with Dana Todd on LinkedIn. Connect with Tom Grant on LinkedIn, while you’re at it. Follow Damon. He’s got tons of followers. Follow myself. We’d love to hear what you have going on. You have any questions, drop it in the chat box. We’d love to hear what’s going on your world. We’ve got a couple experts here, so we’re going to dive in. So Tom is with IMEC, that is the Illinois Manufacturing Extension Partnership. Tom, I’m going to hit you up in a minute, but Dana is just a wonderful, incredible, inspiring entrepreneur, I had the honor and privilege. So Dana, sit back, because I’m going to brag on you for a second. So in 2003 I had an E com business. And like, there was, like, Google was brand new. There was no social media. There was, like, no blogging, Facebook, I think, started in 2003 so like, it was really difficult to get an E com or an internet business off the ground. So I, like, I had no money, and I decided, like, I took what money I didn’t have, and I went to this conference that was really expensive in Silicon Valley, and they had all the energy was amazing. And it had these dynamic speakers. There was a speaker there, Dana, can you hold up your mug real quick, please? So there was a speaker there that had the color of hair of Dana’s mug. It was that red, and lo and behold, it was my dear friend, Dana Todd. Was one of the keynote speakers at this conference. I was completely smitten. She was like a rock star to me. 22 years later, Tom calls me up, says, Hey, Curt, I have a client for you. It’s Dana Todd. I almost fell out of my chair, and lo and behold, Dana, here we are. You are e com. You’re my hero. Love what you’ve done. Let’s start here. In the 90s, you got into internet marketing really early. So when I say pioneer, you are truly a pioneer. Start there on like what attracted you to E, commerce, SEO, this whole internet marketing thing. Let’s start there first. Well,

Dana Todd  09:42

so there was no ecommerce, let’s just say that there was no I started at the end of 1996 and I joined an agency then called beyond logic. I ended up purchasing is purchasing it with some partners in 97 and we spun out to become site lab at that time, every. Thing was handled. Everything was built from scratch. You know, there was a few tools and things, but we really had to build everything, you know, ourselves. And in the early days of digital marketing, there really wasn’t digital marketing. Were banner ads, and then search marketing was kind of a thing, but they were really the again, the banner ads themselves were very kludgy. I don’t even think half of the models were built well, you still bought them. Like an insertion order, you like, run it for two weeks, right? All the business models were not established at that time. And certainly there were no standards for development or interoperability. And so back then, SEO, you literally, I don’t know if you remember this, because there were six major search engines, all the VISTA, web crawler, all these others, you actually if you wanted to optimize your site, you had to make six versions of it. Each search engine had its own set of preferences for optimization, so it was an absolute nightmare, but we made great money out the first website I ever built with my team cost a million dollars because they were just not that many people who could do it. And the level of complexity of what we were building was pretty significant. It was for San Diego Gas and Electric. So I was very lucky. San Diego was a hot bed. We had so many initiatives coming in and and some of the most interesting clients that that I’ve ever seen, you know, who wanted to try this out, and they were very adventurous with us, and allowed us to risk their money and build things that had never been built before. So we just really started out in a very early, you know, kind of experimental mode, and building things, uh, Ulta Vista, by the way, had the first pay per click ad, and it was a banner ad, it was a listing. It was top listing, and you it was auction based. It was the first auction, but there were no tools to manage it, and so you had to manually move your bid by a penny up or down to try to adjust to the competitive landscape. So, as you can imagine, this wasn’t particularly scalable for a digital agency. So we ended up building a $250 for a $50 bid, you know, for a $50 ad. So it was not a, you know, I, I firmly pronounced it a waste of time, and this will never fly. So, you know, my prognostication sometimes didn’t work, but we kept trying, and the tools came and, you know, over time I was gonna, actually, this is going to be relevant for later at that time. In addition to kind of all the wildness of how many versions of your website you had to have, there was no standardization in how people made websites. So you could have a home page that was basically a giant graphic. You could have ones that were used during making Dreamweaver, even the navigational structure, I remember, we made a law firm website, and the navigation was pictures of drawers that you opened. So we were very creative in those days, you know, in terms of how we thought people might interact with information, how we should structure it. And because at that time, we were largely coming from an old school advertising kind of look, you know, feel right, and then trying to stick it together with coding things were, you know, fun and cool and interesting, but ultimately not good for any kind of growth or scalability. So over time and due to the pressure of companies like Google and others, who then started looking for certain things, things to be in a certain way so they could consume that information in order to rank you. That was that carrot and stick right they they changed the web into what we see now. And the parallel is that the garment industry is where we were back then. The difference is now we’ve got 1000 years of people doing it one way or 1000 ways, and it’s a little harder to change behaviors and create standardization that would allow that growth and interoperability.

Curt Anderson  13:49

Man, great point there. And so I so the fashion industry, so you’re saying it’s Wait, it’s kind of where it was 20 years ago. Is that what you’re saying, yeah,

13:57

yeah, it’s 1996 here. Man,

Curt Anderson  14:01

is so on. You know, many of our dear manufacturers, Tom are, you know, they, you know, God bless them. They, you know, been around for 5070, years, maybe generational business. Grandma and Grandpa founded it, mom and dad, whatever, and just had legacy business. Marketing wasn’t a real top priority. And now you know the manufacturers are in a very similar boat, trying to play catch up through COVID and everything. So all right, Tom, let’s come over to you and so you’re with an agency called IMEC that is the Illinois Manufacturing Extension Partnership representative. Please share with folks who is the MEP, and specifically who is iMac. Sure,

Tom Grant  14:40

thanks. Curt. So IMEC is a public private partnership. We serve small and medium sized manufacturers in the state of Illinois. We provide them with a range of tools, resources, training, expertise, anything they would need within the four walls of their facility. 30 we provide assessments to help them figure out why there are slowdowns or production issues. We provide consulting fee for service consulting to solve some of those lots of times they can do it themselves. We connect them with grants and with funding. We connected with Dana through a grant and lots of other clients that we manage or that we know are out there, and we let our clients know they’re there. So you know, our clients are deep into their business and not always looking for they don’t know what tools are out there. They don’t know what resources are available. They certainly don’t know all the grants and how to deploy them. So we do so what we do is we connect with them, we try to get to know their business, and then find ways to to help. So we’re part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is, which is in the it’s actually called NIST MEP, which is the manufacturing extension partnerships. There’s a specific manufacturing nationally group that does what we do, and you know, so they’re responsible for connecting manufacturers in America and helping American manufacturers grow. And then they’ve got 51 or 50 groups, one in every state. So IMEC is the Illinois manufacturing MEP, and Florida has a different one, because their manufacturing world looks different, and so does Texas and Hawaii and so on. So that’s that’s kind of what we do. We provide tools that just are all over the the range of service, I guess so. Problem solving on the shop floor is one. Lean Manufacturing is kind of our bread and butter. Shop Floor layouts, reorganization, performance, strategic planning, Exit Planning for those folks who may want to retire in five or 10 years. And how do you how do you you know, what are you going to do with your business at that point? So we’ll help them with that. We’ve got ERPs for the folks who are moving into the next level and they need higher and more complex systems to support that. We’ll help them select it. Will help them implement it, leadership training, just a whole range of sales and marketing. So one of the things that we do is the things that we do with you, Curt, and you’ve been a wonderful partner to IMEC, when we work with you on websites, and we work with you, obviously, or for Dana’s website, and Dana, I’m just going to say you are a wonderful client, one of the few, well, not one of you, one of the one of the special clients, who did all of the things that needed to be done on time and kept everything on track, and you just did a did a great job, and so did you Curt the so just want to point out for both you guys, but at the end of the day, will help with sales, marketing, or any of the things that you need within your plant.

Curt Anderson  17:42

Well, Tom, thank you. And I absolutely and Hey, thank you for the kind words. Appreciate it. And so in So for folks out there, again, if you’re just joining us, we’re here with Dana Todd, she’s the founder and just the brain child behind Balodana, we’ve got time Tom Grant from IMEC, the Illinois manufacturer and extension partnership. So you might be thinking, Oh, now, wait a minute. If you go check out the website, we’re gonna be showing Dana’s website in a minute, and it’s this wonderful fashion brand. And you’re like, wait a minute. Curt, you’re just Dana. Was this? Was this internet marketing pioneer, and how did we get into fashion? And we got Tom here for manufacturing. So now I kind of tie it up in a bow here, Dana. Let’s now, I do have to say I was there today. You actually were the founder of a search engine marketing association back I think it was, like in 2005 in San Francisco or San Jose, if you remember that I was actually, yeah, I was, I was at that conference talk. I want. What I want to do is I want to fill in some of the blanks. Of like, when you had site lab, internet marketing pioneer, kind of things that you’re doing. And then I want to speed up to when you got into when you made this big transition into the fashion industry. Absolutely.

Dana Todd  18:50

So tempo is the search engine marketing professional organization, and at that time, it’s kind of hard to believe now, when Google is a trillion dollar company, but back then, search engine optimization and ppcl, the whole entire search marketing world, was considered a cottage industry, and it was full of a bunch of weirdos. I learned lovable weirdos. I loved them all. You know, they were the coolest, and still are some of the coolest and smartest people, but they came from a bunch of different, different backgrounds, because this did not exist before this level of combining technology. And there were people coming in, literally from, like, the porn industry and stuff like, who were all trying to figure out how to get this, you know, this search engine traffic and visibility, because it was absolutely unknown in marketing. Prior to this, it did not exist a way for you to truly capture and engage someone right at that point of decision and consideration, right? It was very new so sempo, so by the way, that meant that our conferences were a lot of fun and very interesting, but it also meant that it was really hard for us to grow because I. What we really needed in the industry was a lot of outside capital. We needed major partnerships with ad agencies, with advertisers, with brands. We needed money. We needed professionalism. We need a lot of things to help this go from being a footnote or a cottage industry or snake oil salesman, which is what a lot of SEOs were accused of being back then and and, you know, could we do that? So I will give full credit here to Barbara call, who was aka web mama back then. She stood up in front of a bunch of crazy SEOs at a search engine conference that says we were going to start a club. It’s going to be a training organization. It’s going to be called sempo, because the domain was available. Um, you know, that’s what we got, right? So, and you know it, literally, people were in fisticuffs screaming. That’s how badly people did not want to organize. They wanted to keep it Wild West. They were very frustrated about it. And when everyone piled out of the room, there were 13 of us who sat there and said, we’ll do it. And from there we we had to professionalize ourselves the industry, work together. This was a global team. So we had people all over the world who created this board, blesser Barb, who, by the way, was writing a lot of big checks to Google and Microsoft and, you know, and Yahoo at the time, said, Hey, Pony it back up. Kick in some money to start this. So they were our first funders. I think she brought in like a cool 2.2 million just to get that organization off the ground so we could start doing that. From there, we started creating formal research programs every year, and we got the analysts on Wall Street to pay attention to us, right? So because every year we would show them what the trends were, are the prices going up? Is the volume going out, you know it’s gone. So they waited patiently for our annual research. We created training programs and standardizing the at least the training and certifications around that, creating a baseline for how people approach search marketing. And little by little, it worked. And that one, I still remember when Barbara so excited, one of the analysts from Piper Jaffray at the time, Safa Rashi, was the first one to say, you know, I think this could be a billion dollar industry. So they

22:12

there’s like, like,

Curt Anderson  22:13

Doctor Evil, right? Yes, $1 million

Dana Todd  22:16

yeah. So yeah, Famous last words, right? But the simple, it allowed us to to have a platform, and ultimately, I mean, we, I got to ring the bell at NASDAQ.

Curt Anderson  22:29

NASDAQ, how cool

Dana Todd  22:31

to kick off Cyber Monday. So, yeah, I mean, it suddenly we became, I suddenly, it was 10 years in the making, you know, but it took a really long time. So why that’s relevant now is that I feel like a lot of what I’ve been trying to do here in this industry, there are people, there are my people. There’s little fashion nerds out there who are looking at fashion from a data perspective, from a software perspective, not just tools, but you know, holistically, what can we do to change this and unlock new business models? Um, they’re a lot like the early days, really smart people, but, you know, they’re kind of spread out all over the place. So I’ve, like, formed my own clubs. I just had one this morning. It’s called OCAC open circle apparel coalition. And we all just compare notes. We do projects together to try to figure out, you know, what works and what doesn’t,

Curt Anderson  23:19

right? Awesome. Okay, so, well, man, go ahead. Damon, well, you

Damon Pistulka  23:24

you said a while ago, and it’s probably going to lead into this, but you said that the fashion industry is still setting back in 1996 What do you mean by that? I

Dana Todd  23:34

mean that the that there is so little standardization, almost zero standardization. I mean, just start with the fact that it’s global, right? So you have basic inches versus centimeters kinds of things, yeah, um, there’s where you measure things, how you measure things, how you express that measurement. There are systems that don’t talk to each other. There are broken everything’s siloed from the front end. You know, we’ve got all this. We’ve got all these wonderful tools now. We’ve got body scanners, and we’ve got pattern making systems, and we’ve got 3d you know, product creation stuff, and none of them talk to each other, and none of them really carry the information through in a completely accurate way, and then nobody feeds it all the way back up again and or creates any kind of corrective learning cycle. So in terms of where we are in standardization and the baselines of trying to create a digital infrastructure that can globally, not just connect us, but unlock those next levels of efficiency, new business models. I mean, who knew in 1997 that pay per click Search Engine Marketing would be, what 40% of all advertising dollars on the planet, you know, in the future? Yeah, it’s a lot. That was brand new. No one did that before. I mean, actually, Google hired an economist to build their business model, not a search engine person, not an advertising person. Yeah.

Damon Pistulka  24:59

You make a great point, though, about the standards. Things not. I mean, just as for simple as, as someone like myself, you buy a pair of pants that say they’re a certain size from three different companies. They’re not the same.

25:13

No, you

Damon Pistulka  25:16

know. And that’s the simplest thing. It’s like, right? Okay, it’s supposed to be this size, and it’s like, it’s not, yeah, and none of them are probably right,

Dana Todd  25:24

no, well, right? And accurate are loose terms. They’re fully subjective, right? And that’s why, that’s actually what the what drew me into this whole thing, because I could not find clothes that fit me consistently. And I was like, Well, this is cuckoo. Why did why is this? Why is this? And so, you know, my little brain digging brain, like, why? So I was like, Well, you know, I just come off as a chief marketing officer role, and I was looking for my next gig. And I was like, Well, I’m going to make a perfect white blouse that fits every woman has a hidden zipper, and right? And I was like, Well, do that. I’ll just I’ve never done it before, but why not? So I hired a consultant. Take me to New York City show me what’s involved in creating a prototype and bringing a single garment to market. And it was, I left there going, well, that is stupid. Anyways, you know, because it was over 1000 it would have been $1,000 just in, not even including the fit model like, but just just to bring one simple white blouse to pattern, and having the grading, just the sizing and all of that, was going to be about $1,000 to prototype that. And that’s cheap, by the way, compared to a lot of them, right? So, but that was like the minimum I was going to get away, and I’d still have to then go out and buy a minimum set of things. And by the way, that still didn’t guarantee that it was going to fit everybody, because the person who was deciding the sizing was like a an old lady in a walk up in New York, in the garment district, who had a bunch of, you know, models, and she would do a pencil and paper, and it was so not the way I thought it would be right now. So I was like, well, let’s fix that, shall we? So that’s where I’m that’s what I’ve been trying to do ever since then. Because what I found out is that fit wasn’t just frustrating for people, it’s actually one of the biggest impacts to the waste that we find. Yeah, the in the retail side,

Damon Pistulka  27:14

well, especially now when you’re trying to think it from an eCommerce perspective, right? You know, an eCommerce company that is selling clothing has a huge return rate, huge return rate. If you could minimize that, I think the last time I saw something on shoes and shoes is similar as well. I’m sure it’s like 50%

Dana Todd  27:36

almost, yeah, and that’s slightly more standardized than garments.

Damon Pistulka  27:40

Yeah, yeah, it’s a huge problem. Yeah, that you’re addressing that’s cool us.

Dana Todd  27:47

We’re still not building, we still don’t make enough clothes for every size. So in the United States, here’s some fun facts for you. So when most of the most of the clothes that are being produced are being built towards what’s called an hourglass figure for women. This is women’s clothing. So an hourglass figure is mathematically so we have the same measure for the bust and the hits, and then there is a tenants difference between the bust and the waist, right? So you’re assuming this perfectly symmetrical hourglass. And so 90 that’s that’s the basis for what they create. The the Fit charts around. So guess what percentage of the population actually has an hourglass ratio? Idea, 10% 10% 90% of the clothes are made for 10% of the body shapes for women. So we just have these fundamental disconnects in the real data. And by the way, in the United States, I think in the UK as well, but certainly in the United States, fully half of the female population is a size 14 and above. And yet most fashion lines stop their sizing at about 14 to 16.

Curt Anderson  29:03

Yeah, now for demon and I, Damon, I want to speak for you. But like, do they have, like, a pear shaped type? I’m just kidding. That’s,

Dana Todd  29:11

there’s pears, there’s all kinds of things. But those are people have. There’s like, nine morphotypes, depending on who you ask, between eight and 10 more photographs, right?

Curt Anderson  29:19

Like the dad The dad bod shape, right?

Damon Pistulka  29:22

Yeah, yeah. I mean, because you think about, yeah, it’s, it’s normal, like 90% of the people, this is really hard to fathom, though, right? That when you think about everybody you interact with, we’re all different shapes and sizes. And it is. It’s, could be smaller on the top, bigger on the bottom, bigger in the middle. It doesn’t matter, and, and, but we’re making it all for the one size, like, that’s what we are. We aren’t, right? So from the user perspective, then your clothes never fit. Yep,

Dana Todd  29:53

definitely. And so you either don’t wear them, or you give them away, or you throw them away. Yeah. Yeah. So,

Curt Anderson  30:00

alright, so we’re at the top of the so. So, Dana, I know we might keep you here for a couple more minutes, because we this is awesome. All right, so let’s, let’s digest this. I can’t hear it right. We’ve got a technology, digital market wasn’t even called digital market, internet marketing pioneer who makes this massive, massive pivot to go into fashion. Because, like, and again, like, how many success stories in entrepreneurships and entrepreneurs? Tom, you see this all the time where, like, hey, there’s a problem. It’s a problem. For me, other people must have the similar problem. Let’s go conquer it. Let’s go solve it. So alright, let’s dive here, because I’m going to pull up your website in a second. So if you’re just joining us, we have Dana Todd from Belladonna, we have Tom grant from IMEC. How So Tom, you met. Talk just a little bit on how did you meet Dana? How did you guys? How did your past cross, and how did she come into your world? And let’s, let’s talk about the IMEC, Baloana relationship. And then we’re going to pull up the website. So

Tom Grant  30:53

because Dana in fashion also has production capabilities, she’s part of the cut. And so manufacturing world, so there’s a it’s a segment of manufacturing, just a little slice of manufacturing, that impacts everybody. And you know, in Illinois, we had a pretty strong community of manufacturers. It’s still here, not as strong as it used to be. And so it was, there was an opportunity, through a grant, through Cook County, to reach out to some of those folks. So I reached out to Dana, and then she immediately followed up and applied for the grant and got connected. She was awarded the grant, and today we we’re going to see the the beautiful work that you guys did together. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  31:44

awesome. Okay, so let’s take a look. So alright, before I pull up the website, let’s talk about Bell, Dana, Dana, and just share how like so you’re identifying some problems, some challenges, please share with folks as I’m going to pull up the website, how do you and your amazing team make the world a better place. Describe the solutions that you provide at Balodana, please,

Dana Todd  32:05

absolutely. So what you’re going to see is our new and our new our new ballad. Anna, so anybody who looked at us even six months ago would have seen a very different ballad, Anna, because I couldn’t fix the supply chain that was out there. I created my own supply chain. So we had a marketplace of makers who did made to measure. I wanted to see what was involved in not trying to perfect the whole system, but just narrow in on those skilled people who could make things on demand, one at a time, perfectly to a body. And so we worked with makers in 10 countries, and that made it through COVID and a whole bunch of things. And during that, what we realized is that we had an opportunity to support other brands on a commercial basis. So we’ve just now moved to a completely B to B model, and sadly, we had to say goodbye to our consumer facing but we’re a startup. You gotta focus right? So we are focused now on creating the a whole new way to for designers and for people who need custom uniforms, anyone who needs smaller batches, but really needs them to fit well. So we are doing on demand and made to measure, excuse me not, but we can do still do made to measure, but on demand and small batch. And there’s a difference between those two. And then third part of that is that we are building technologies to help add value into that manufacturing stream. So not just sending you a box of clothes, but sending you essentially a data fee that has everything that you need to plug those clothes into the emerging search engines, which are the fashion discovery engines. You’ve got your Metaverse, you’ve got your AR VR you’ve got, by the way, did you know that Google has a virtual try on? Oh, do they? They do. They do. And it has a whole new set of things that you need to optimize for, wow, to get your stuff into that. So we, we found that really no one’s doing this. And certainly, what I’ve seen is no one’s doing it at the factory level, like going in and saying, Okay, you guys have the you’re the center of truth about these garments, what they actually look like, what they actually are made, of how what the final measurements are, and the amount of stretch to it. You’re the ones who you know have all those technical files. So most people are focusing on this at the front end, the retail, the designer of that side, I haven’t really seen that much focusing on unlocking the value at the factory side. So we’re starting on ourselves, and then as we build it for ourselves, we’ll be offering it to other manufacturers of governments as well.

Curt Anderson  34:39

Excellent. Okay, so lots of unpacked, lots of digestion. So

Dana Todd  34:43

really excited. By the way, I love the new website. I know it was, it was for us. We had to go from being very girly because we were 100% female audience. Now we’re talking we’re and it’s a complicated story, right? We’re not just making clothes, we’re making the future. So it’s a complicated story to tell. I. I appreciate that you guys were able to listen to all my rantings and be like, Okay, what does this look like on a website? And really bring that in?

Curt Anderson  35:08

Well, it was, it was a privilege. It was a wonderful, incredible experience. Now, shamelessly so we have. We love diving into Damon and I talk all the time about buyer personas. We call them soul mates. Dana, you dove in and like you, like it was fantastic. Talk a little bit about, like, who is your soul mate? Who you targeting? Who’s out there that really should be talking to you about your solutions,

Dana Todd  35:34

absolutely. So we have kind of three main buyers. We have the, probably our largest ultimate segment are fashion brands, and typically in the small to medium size, we’re not we’re not focusing on the Mega brands. We want people who are more nimble and are looking for a more sustainable and affordable way to approach their manufacturing so and could be more flexible themselves, so we can do both men and women, so we’re not particularly picky. That would be our primary the other one, though, that we’re talking to first are people who need uniforms. Get back to my point, about half of the women being oversized. 14. Most uniforms do not fit, or they’re very ugly, and so like you, you should be able to have, particularly in hospitality, casinos, things like that, where you really want a branded presence, or something a little more glamorous than a polo shirt. We can help you design that, and you can actually will that will store your fabric. And then, as you hire people, you can use their body measurements, and we make these very customized grading charts for people even down to the physical location. We have one casino that we work with, and we have three different size charts for their three different locations. So and then the third is our pattern makers. My my geeky, wonderful technical friends. So the pattern makers are the ones that work so hard to put so much technology into the engineering of garments, from idea to execution, and it’s really sad when all their beautiful work just gets kind of thrown into a file somewhere. We really want to help partner with them and a give them a way to be able to help execute that next step for their clients who want to go ahead and start bringing something to market and see if it sells, and then buy more. And additionally, working with them to help make all that work that they do. On the technical side, putting into tech packs something that’s useful and really powerful. On the back end, yeah,

Damon Pistulka  37:35

that is really something, how you’re putting this all together and using that, you know, the same, not the same, but a similar approach to structuring it and letting the data flow through the system to help really drive the efficiency, drive the drive the better customer experience. At the end, with clothes that fit and allowing companies like you, said, like hospitality or something, where you really want your brand to stand out. You don’t do that when you put everybody in something that looks like a circus hint, or, yeah, or worse, you just, you know, picked it up. And, you know, it’s so cool to be able to do that. And like you said, even down to the saving the fabric, so we make sure that it’s consistent all the time. And, yeah, that’s very cool.

Dana Todd  38:24

Yeah, that’s, that’s the difference in an on demand versus small batch. Small batch is usually sort of one and done, but on demand you actually have to think about, and I’d love to convince more factories to try this, but most of them aren’t set up, you know, to be able to even build bid budget this way, right? And I think most, most people who are ordering garments don’t think of it that way either. It’s like, how many do I think I’m going to need in the next year? Yes, and how much fabric am I going to need to cover that? And then I just buy into the smallest batches possible within that, and then I can adjust, oh, we’re selling more of this size, or, oh, we need, you know, more in this area, so it’s a more nimble way of approaching the manufacturing process, but I think it’s harder for everybody to adopt until they get used to

Damon Pistulka  39:09

Yeah, because everybody’s like you said, they’re they’re moving towards small batch rather than the longer term relationship with a single garment supplier, for lack of understanding, yeah, but being able to drop that inventory in place and buy, you know, reasonable amount of inventory, but then flex what I want and when I want it throughout the time frame, it’s

Tom Grant  39:30

so cool. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. And you

Curt Anderson  39:33

think about the flexibility from like, you’re, say, the casino buyer, yeah, yeah, roommate out there. We’re now look what Dana is doing as far as, like, you know, cash flow, inventory turnover, you know, it’s really kind of adjusting. It’s not really kind of, it’s a just in time model. And Dana, we got into this, and I’d love to hit this a little bit from, like, just kind of a culture. We have a client that comes on the show, and we talk about, like, what’s your brand promise? Business, you know. And like, how do you like, how uniforms can help, like, build your culture. Can Build Your, inspire your folks. And like, Dana, what you’re doing is, like, you’re, you know, for folks that are, you know, we’re all different sizes, you know, now people don’t feel it was uncomfortable. You’ve got here, we’ve got this trademark, I know. Do you want to talk talk on this at all the the real body sizing services. Yeah.

Dana Todd  40:21

So this is actually something we had in place in the consumer model. We used body scanners we were at the time we were working with 3d 3d look, which is out of California, and you take two pictures front and side, and it’ll extrapolate your body measurements, and then we utilize that in actually creating the the clothing. So now moving over into A, B to B, how we’ve utilized this again, back to that casino client. We will either have them, they can give us, like a standard, you know, give us a tape measure, measurement, or just use our our app and send us that body measurement. And then we can utilize that in creating the grades that we’ll need and the sizing charts for that, and then it becomes an ongoing conversation, because I think a lot of clients aren’t ready to think about this. And I was have been surprised even some of the most advanced on the fashion side and the design side who came out of fashion school are really don’t start talking about the fit until the very end, then they’re like, oh, okay, just use your best judgment. It’s just not the first thing, because they’re often driven by the creativity and the art or the seasonal deadline, right? So they’re they’re really not thinking about the data. And so having this in place allows them to dabble or go full, full bore if they want to, you

Tom Grant  41:44

know, if I could just jump in the you know, I worked for a uniform company. I worked for Aramark. I was a director of sales for them for for several years. And we have clients here in Chicago who I’m definitely thinking about having a separate conversation with you afterwards. But the, you know, we always talk to clients about how the Fit would be, but it was the was a secondary, you know, thing we’d always our fits better. It, you know, it was not necessarily better, but it part of the conversation is, yeah, but, but at the end of the day, the, you know, they’re, they’re concerned about the brand image and the color, make sure the colors are right, and then the individual figures out the fit. But if there was a way to manage that, simply that, I think there’s a real, there’s a real opportunity there. Definitely, yeah,

Damon Pistulka  42:37

and, well, just think from an employee experience, right? So, and in the end, we’ve got a much better fitting clothes. It’s going to consistent because of the material, like you said. But just think if you’re an employee coming in and saying, Listen, we need to measure you for your clothes, because you get custom clothing from us when you work with us. What the heck would that do to them? That would be awesome. That would be an incredible experience for that employee coming in. They’re going, Wow, they care enough that they’re going to create custom clothing for me,

43:08

right, right?

Curt Anderson  43:11

And that it fits and it felt and yeah, like, you know, like, I want to say, just like, you know, I’m hearing my sweatshirt, but like, you know, just like, people want to feel good about what they’re wearing. Yes, and like, if you can have your employees, like, just think if you made your employee 1% better because they just felt better about like, This thing doesn’t fit me. You know, it’s too tight. Here, too here, so and so forth. And like, and Dana, and forgive me, I like, and we can archive, if I’m saying that, right, we can archive those measurements. So say, for your long time employees that are there five years, 10 years, we can, we can keep track of that of of their sizes, yeah, and you know, and now it fits every time, you know, yeah,

Dana Todd  43:51

yeah. And we can remeasure them, like what we did actually for that one casino client, the way we finally worked it out for one of their locations where they had extreme variations in body shapes among female employees. We finally ended up settling we worked with them over a period of years to refine it, you know. And I had literally drove to Michigan and hand measured some of their people. And we have finally came up. We have the adjusted set of sizes for them. And then we also allow them, if they have an employee who did not fit one of their standard sizes, we would create, at no additional cost, a made to measure version for that one, because it for us, it’s, we’re still doing small bad chain. Anyway, it’s not a big deal to throw one more on. That’s a has an adjusted pattern. Yeah. So cool

Damon Pistulka  44:39

this

Curt Anderson  44:40

and Tom. The cool thing is, from I like, I love the job that you have, because you get to see all these fascinating manufacturers. Because, you know, we take for granted. You look around your room, you’re like, well, somebody manufactured everything around Are you just constantly, just blown away, like, with the creativity, the innovation of like, folks like Dana,

Tom Grant  44:58

it’s unbelievable. Yeah. Yesterday I was at, I was at a busy beaver button company. And they make, they make buttons here in Chicago, and, you know, just like of all different types and stickers, and they had a amazing crew and this old building, and just, just like all kinds of wonderful, unique things that are happening all over the place. So, yeah, it’s one of my favorite parts of the job.

Curt Anderson  45:25

It’s just, it’s just a privilege. And so alright, I know, like, I could keep you guys all day. So Dana, let’s go here. What’s as far as, like, what are you excited about with 2025 as far as, like, moving forward, what are you super excited about for Balodana?

Dana Todd  45:43

Oh, I’m excited because it’s the beginning steps of this. It doesn’t feel like it. I feel like I’ve been working on this for eight months, which I have, but it’s now like, all right, rubber meets the road. So there’s always a hit of energy you get when you start off on this, you know, like, All right, let’s do this. Let’s hit it hard. So I’m excited to meet new people and educate people about how they can create a more personalized search and, excuse me, supply chain. I’m excited about doing the product development that we’re jumping into, because the tech on this is going to be the hardest thing I think I’ve ever done. It really is, yeah, it’s going to be the hardest thing ever. So excited about that, and I’m just excited to continue this journey, because I I feel so alive. It feels like so is as bad as 19 196, was, from the perspective of, you know, interconnectivity, it was an exciting time to be alive. So being in this early phase of digital transformations and disruption that’s happening right now. It is it my hair stands up on the weekly So, yeah, nice.

Curt Anderson  46:50

I agree with you 100% and so, you know, so I was right there with you the, you know, late 90s, early 2000s and being in manufacturing now I say the same thing. I’m like, we’re partying like it’s 1999 in manufacturing, as far as, like, e commerce and digital marketing, yeah, again, like, you know, like in Dana when you and I met, you know, like the main street, the plumbers, the you know, folks that you know, the retail they had to get on online because, you know, you know, grow those was old enough to remember the Yellow Pages. That’s what you know, like, can I just take an ad out in the yellow page? Well, that’s not working anymore. Well, manufacturers got to ignore that for 20 years, and unfortunately, now they really can’t do that anymore. Tom I want to get you in here for a second, and I’m going to pull up the IMEC website. I wanted to do that before we close out for today. So I’m going to grab the website, and I’ve got it right here. And our mutual dear friend Jacqueline, just put together this wonderful brand new website for IMEC. Talk a little bit about for folks. Just join us. Just share again, like some of the services, the solutions that you provide for your clients, the wonderful manufacturers in a great state of Illinois,

Tom Grant  47:59

yeah. So it’s we are. We are operational experts. We’ve got 55 people in the state who will come out to your facility, look at your processes with you, and help you think through solutions to the challenges that you have. So can be anything from, you know, just equipment changeovers, to workforce issues where you want to train your your upscale, your employees, there are just a whole million things that you can get, anything that you would need inside of a plant. We can connect you with. So if you want to make iMac, if you’re in Illinois, make I make your first call when you’re trying to figure it out. We have a we have a supplier matchmaking project on here, function on here, whereby you can, if you’re looking for a certain widget that you don’t know, who makes it, we’ll help you find it. It’s a grant funded position. So essentially, we do the research for you. We have, you know, we’ve managed grants and other funds for clients as well. But the events are also something I think I would encourage people to check out. We sponsor events all over the state. We just did an EV event for folks who want to get an EV. We just did an event for folks who want to sell to the Department of Defense. So the Department of Defense contacted us, and we’re helping them diversify their supplier base. We work with the we’re doing an aeronautics event. We do just a whole bunch of things where clients want to get into industries. We’ll help you connect. We’ll do matchmaking for you. Help you connect to those. We provide training. We provide insights. Almost all of it’s free at the events page. So I would just recommend, if you’re around and you’re interested in getting some more information about what’s available to you, right there, you’ve got leadership training, an economic summit, marketing, adaptable and resilient. I’m. Not sure what that one is, but there’s, there’s a there’s a range of tools, and you can just dive into them yourself. And there’s, they’re almost all recorded and stored there too. So if you want to look back at the catalog, you’re welcome to do that. So we provide just connections, resources and connections.

Curt Anderson  50:19

Absolutely love it. And so hey, I’m, I’m no math major, but Tom, the last line there says 19 to one. Can you please explain? I know, you know, for our friends out there looking for a return on investment, can you please explain what’s 19 to one? So

Tom Grant  50:34

every project we complete is surveyed by the Department of Commerce and and so our clients give feedback in it did did hers, or will do hers. They give feedback on on what they got out of the project. And so our clients have said that they’re for every dollar they invest with iMac. So if they pay us $1 for a project, they get a $19 return on that investment. So that’s it’s a 19 to one investment that is reported by we don’t we’re not even involved in this survey. It’s done by the Department of Commerce directly with the clients. So they these other things are the results that they also show. They show that we help them. Looks like that one is 7000 new jobs, or retained jobs within the state during that period. That’s a lot of jobs that we were involved with, influencing by adding sales, by adding efficiency, by adding things to their business. And the other data is, although I can’t read it all, it’s comparable. These are just data points that support kind of the reason we’re here. Well,

Curt Anderson  51:43

Tom, thank you, and I tell you that is for, you know, if you’re looking for, if you’re a manufacturer in whatever state you’re in, if you’re not in Illinois, don’t feel left out because there is a manufacturing extension partnership near you. And so, Dana, how about would you recommend your friends, your family, your dog, to our friends at iMac? Like, how was your experience like? What are your thoughts there? I

Dana Todd  52:04

Yes, yes and yes and yes. I’ve been very intimidated by the government. It just seems so Byzantine when you look at some of the programs that are available. And I looked at I got so scared. So NIST had the big proposal out last year. The pre read was 80 pages. This is like, I was just like, ah, it feels like the place we need to be, but I didn’t have a friendly face. They’re so Kudos to Tom and his team, because they’re not the just the friendly face, but the the getter dinners also, who helped us through this and gave us support on throughout the project. So yes, thank you for that nice, big round

Curt Anderson  52:44

pause for Tom and a team at iMac and so we Damon, I see that you dropped a link. So Dana, you have a wonderful newsletter that we would love for people to check out and sign up. Can you please share where people tell tell us a little bit about this newsletter? Sure. Oh,

Dana Todd  52:58

cool. You got it. So if you just go to find Balodana on LinkedIn or find me, and you can find Balodana. From there, we put out a new we watch. I think we’re the only ones who really watch the fashion industry from the point of view that we have, which is this disruption with, you know, looking at it from the technical side, but also looking at it with a financial and a capital markets side. So we really like this one we just kicked out on Thursday. Really looks at how much acquisitions, mergers, consolidation and new capital that’s coming in right now. So despite all the havoc in the world, money’s a common and it’s turning so there’s activity. So we look at this, because I look at this like I did, you know, with the with the digital disruption of the print and the advertising industry. So, yeah, subscribe. It’s free. We always we. It’s not written by AI human beings. Go in there and find the most important things that give you a sense of the pulse of where the fashion, tech and fashion futures are going right now.

Curt Anderson  53:53

Awesome, excellent. Strong encourage everybody connect with Tom on LinkedIn. Connect with Dana on LinkedIn. Here’s the newsletter right here. We strongly encourage you guys to check that out. And so for anybody out there, if you have somebody in hospitality, you have somebody in uniforms, you just want to have a little curiosity about what Dana is doing. This is really cutting edge. And I’m telling you firsthand, I had a huge you know, Dana was my hero in the 2000s when I was trying to figure out this whole Google Pay Per Click, e commerce, marketing, digital marketing. Dana, you were just a huge hero of mine. I went to every conference I could and like, what were some of the colors of hair that I, that I saw back then, definitely a lot

Dana Todd  54:33

of shades of red and pink. And then when I moved to Chicago, it was grape purple, yeah. And then I was ahead of trend by going natural gray to my to surprise of everyone, well,

Curt Anderson  54:45

that a girl, so I’ll tell you, it’s what Tom I cannot express my gratitude to you for bringing me back in Dana’s life. Dana, thank you for the honor, the privilege of working with you for the past, however many months, I guess it was around one. Thanks, Timmy, I guess when we first kicked things off. And so I just want to tell you I how much I learned, how much fun I had. You I felt you helped elevate us to a new level. And what an honor and privilege to be part of your journey on this new cutting edge. And once again, you’re a pioneer in a whole new so it is just so inspiring. Thank you so much. So how about big round of applause for Dana Todd, our wonderful host team guest today. Big round of applause for our dear friend, Tom grant. Tom, thank you for joining us today. And so I had one last question for you guys. One last question now you’re both Chicagoans and so, nor baseball fans. Anybody a baseball fan out there. Tom Dina, yeah. Okay. Tom, north side, South Side. I live,

Tom Grant  55:45

I live seven blocks away from Wrigley, so I’m a, I’m a side fan, although I was born on the south side, so don’t tell my family. So

Curt Anderson  55:53

now Jack, Jack doesn’t mind that you’re a north side or does he, if you grew up on the south side, is Jack okay with you being a Cubs

Tom Grant  55:59

fan? No, he wouldn’t. He’s not. He didn’t care. He liked him both. Okay, he

Curt Anderson  56:03

was, I don’t want him to anything. Dana baseball fan. You’re, I know you’re Atlanta, Gail, are you? Are you?

Dana Todd  56:09

Believe it or not, I actually like the Mets, because that was my first professional game to go to when I was listening. But here I’ve I’ve only gone to the Cubs games. I actually still want to go to a Sox games. I like the idea. It’s probably closer to my house. But, yeah, I just like, you know, to me, it’s not just about the team, it’s the day, it’s the weather, it’s the food, it’s the crowd experience. How can you have a bad day when you’re watching baseball? You cannot, man,

Curt Anderson  56:38

oh, you just warm my heart. Even you’re just like, that was just you took the wonderful what could be better than a date? Okay, so Tom I hit? I’m going to hit you with this question. You ready? Are you sitting down? You okay? Um, let’s pretend that the cubs are playing. It’s the bottom of the ninth and they’re playing St Louis, Cardinals, okay, bottom of the ninth and it’s a tie score. There’s a person on second base, so two outs. Bottom tie score. Bottom of the ninth. Cubs need a winning run. A manager turns down to the bench and says, Hey, Grant, grab your helmet. Grab your bat, get up there and hit in the winning run. Grab your bat. Slap on the helmet as you’re walking up to hit in the winning run for the Cubs, what’s your walk up song?

Tom Grant  57:24

Oh, wow, that’s good question. I I’m just going to go with three other champions. Just, we are the champions. Like to see the Cubs sing in that song, again,

Curt Anderson  57:35

we are the champion. How about I’m throwing the same question, you walk up? You’re playing for the Mets. What’s your, what’s your walk ups on? Oh, it’s going

Dana Todd  57:43

to have to be Eye of the Tiger, because that’s like high school sports gallery, right? Yeah,

Curt Anderson  57:50

old school, they’re a little clean little, little eye of the tiger survivor. So awesome. Thank you for playing. I appreciate you both for being good sports. So okay, we’re going to wind down again. Please connect with Dana on LinkedIn. Reach out to her. For any of your cutting edge new fashion needs. Tom. Thank you for everything for that you do for manufacturers in the great state of Illinois. Reach out to Tom or reach out to your local MEP. I want to thank you guys and everybody out there. Thank you for joining us. And as I always love to say, Damon, I’m going to turn it over to you. Go out and just be someone’s inspiration, just like these guys are, and you too can make the world a better place. Damon, take us away. Close us out, please. Alright.

Damon Pistulka  58:32

Well, thanks. Curt, thanks, Dana, thanks Tom for being here today. It was awesome talking to you, Dana, and learning about how you’re going to be changing. Our have already changed the fashion industry, but are continuing to change, and it’s just exciting to see what’s coming down the pipe there and what’s going to be happening. And as we always do, we love being here with you Friday. If you got in late on this come back to the go back to the beginning and start over, because there’s a lot of awesome stuff that you missed if you got in late on this, and if you want to see some more of this, come back again next week. We’ll be here. We’ll be talking with other great people, talking about manufacturing. That’s all for now. Be good and have a great weekend, everyone. Thank you. Hang on.