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Blaine Bolus
00:02:10 - 00:02:21
What's up, Dtcpod? Today we're joined by Day Lim, who's the founder and CEO of Sunday school. So, Day, I'll let you kick us off. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the brand you're building, Sunday school.
Dae Lim
00:02:21 - 00:02:59
Hi, guys. Sunday school is a cannabis lifestyle brand. We sell high quality goods for high minded people, ranging from smokeware, which is your uniform for your recreational consumption, to actual cannabis goods in legal states like California. We sell edibles, we sell pre rolls, and we are about to sell many more and in few other states as well. And thank you so much for having me out here on the pod. Blaine and Ramon.
Blaine Bolus
00:02:59 - 00:02:59
Yeah.
Blaine Bolus
00:02:59 - 00:03:34
So, Dave, one of the reasons we're super pumped to have you on today was because Day and I go way back. We went to school together. I've seen the launch of this brand from the inception several years ago. So, Day, I'd love to just chat about what goes on this episode. Would love to really go into what goes into building a quote unquote iconic fashion cannabis lifestyle brand. So why don't you take us back to a little bit before you launch sunday school. Before you start building out all these different products and offerings, what was the idea? What gave you conviction to start building it? And why don't you just give us.
Blaine Bolus
00:03:34 - 00:03:36
A little background on the history of Sunday school?
Dae Lim
00:03:36 - 00:04:31
Yeah, so it dates back five years ago. I was kind of toying around with the idea of quitting my job because there were some moral conflicts. And before that, I didn't really even know that I had professional values. But I was like, oh, shit. This project does not fly with me in terms of my impact to the world. So I was like, okay, it's time to piece. So while I was doing that, I took some time off and I came back home in Korea, which is where I am right now, and right in this bed, which clearly I have not made because my MBTI is ENTP. I had snuck in a vape pen from the States and I was just hitting it.
Dae Lim
00:04:31 - 00:05:36
And then I think it was like 08:00 A.m., and I was just like, fuck, what am I going to do with my life? Before, I thought I was going to go on this partner track or work at private equity, but kind of like after this project and after kind of seeing the inner workings of what it takes to get promoted, I was just like, damn, this is not the life I want to choose. So while I was doing that, I heard a distant kind of yelling from my mom. Just the morning shits as usual. And then I was like, oh, fuck. And then I was like, oh, it would be really nice if my mom could also smoke some weed because she needs to chill the fuck out. And then somehow, in my high vein of thought, I was just like, oh shit. What if God is Korean and smoked weed every day and created this world, which is why it's so beautiful, but it's also so fucking chaotic.
Blaine Bolus
00:05:37 - 00:05:38
Yeah.
Dae Lim
00:05:38 - 00:06:26
And then from that I was like, oh, you know what? This sounds like a great story to start telling. So I started doing it the best way I know how, which is by doodling. And then naturally these doodles manifested into a new life form, which is clothing. Yeah. So I just had all this verve and kind of vigor, and I wanted to embark a new project because I didn't want to feel like I was just chilling and lounging around. Yeah. So started kind of running around in the garment district and made some t shirts and hoodies and launched it on 420 in 2017. Yeah.
Dae Lim
00:06:26 - 00:07:14
And then obviously was just kind of doing it as a side project. I took a job in fashion at this company called V Files, which was really like connecting young musicians and young fashion designers to bigger ones. And through that met a lot of creative folks, started kind of understanding what the fashion mafia kind of looked like, felt like, and then kind of realized that, oh, shit. Before I was like, I'm a businessman, I'm an entrepreneur, blah, blah, blah. But I was like, oh, no, I am also a creative and I am also a creative director. I'm a designer. Yeah. So basically started working off that.
Dae Lim
00:07:14 - 00:08:09
Somehow we kind of got caught in this viral instagram algorithm with our first launch collection, and we ended up getting featured in Vogue New York Times, like Hype Beast, just super organically. And then from there, we got an opportunity to showcase our designs in New York Fashion Week. And I was like, really like Korean Jesus inspired clothing. But we did. And then we got our first order from Barney's, which no longer exists, R-I-P. But that is like the iconic store. So that was 2018, in August, and I quit my job then and never looked back since. Our mission really is to globalize cannabis culture as well as obviously integrate it with Korean culture.
Dae Lim
00:08:10 - 00:08:29
And the way that we are trying our best to do it is to really work in the intersection of community culture and content to really enable commerce. So that is my homework as a creative director and as a marketer.
Ramon Berrios
00:08:29 - 00:09:10
Okay, well, there is so much to unpack there. That's a cool story. I hope your mom is still not giving you the shits in the morning by now. That never ends. I hear that. So I want to take it back to the point where you decided to work for a fashion company where you met the designers. I find that really interesting because you wanted to do this, but you said, hey, I might as well embed myself into the culture and really understand this from the inside rather than just starting to hustle and randomly start making stuff. So how instrumental was that to the success that you had? Like that decision to join?
Dae Lim
00:09:12 - 00:09:58
So I'm going to be honest, a lot of that decision was driven by money. There she goes again. A lot of that decision was driven by money because I have been financially independent and it was like a breaking point where my savings couldn't last, which is why I looked for a job. But looking back, it was like a soft slide into fashion rather than just kind of trying to figure it out on my own. Because honestly, even if I didn't join V Files, I don't think the outcome would have been much different. But at least for me, it gave me stability, it gave me network.
Ramon Berrios
00:10:01 - 00:10:11
Could have been different if the job, though, wasn't something completely unrelated, maybe where it was just like sucking all of your time. It had nothing to do with it and you were drained.
Dae Lim
00:10:11 - 00:10:56
I was going to work at Spotify, so thank God I didn't do that. But had I just jumped into entrepreneurship also, I think outcome could have been different in that I could have gotten burnt out because early days especially, it's really hard because you're putting so much input and you don't see that much output. But I think you're right. I'm happy that I got to do it. I had a year and a half to build community, to build what Sunday School designs look like, what our content looks like, with some financial stability.
Ramon Berrios
00:10:57 - 00:10:58
Yeah, go ahead, Blaine.
Blaine Bolus
00:10:58 - 00:11:38
No, I was going to say I think that's so important when you're launching a business to be in the right atmosphere to do it right. So it was very compatible with the direction that you wanted to take Sunday school. I'm sure there was a lot of learnings that came along the way that really became essential in being able to build this out, especially as like a side hustle as you were growing it. And then it put you in a really strong position to be able to say, okay, we've got air under the wings, things are starting to move, let's take it to the next level. So I'd love to kind of unpack maybe what some of the most valuable things were on both the learning side, on the network side and everything while you were at V Files, while you were still in the side hustle sort of phase of the project.
Dae Lim
00:11:38 - 00:12:51
Yeah, one biggest thing going from McKinsey where it's all just super high level, like, OOH, this is what's going to happen in ten years to start up where I was the only business people with twelve creative people who got opinions. That was a huge shift. Blaine, I'm sure you can recall from our times in Beijing together, but I've always been like a doer. I'm like, okay, we're doing this. I don't really plan, plan, plan, but once I make my mind up, I'm like, okay, it's happening no matter what. But I had kind of forgotten about that. It was more like just think it. But then going back to V Files, I had to be the one who not only had to think and organize, but also really kind of communicate downwards and communicate to people.
Dae Lim
00:12:53 - 00:14:12
I had to explain every single decision because they're like, well, that's not cool, and yeah, I know it's not cool, but do you want to get paid? So kind of like bridging that gap of creativity and commerce, that was something that was new and it was more than just thinking it, it was also a lot of doing it. So I think that execution that ground up like that, bottoms up. Building and project management, I think that was one of the biggest learning experiences there. Plus it was nifty to meet a lot of young designers, understand kind of their pain points and understand. And this was like when Musically was just launching and all these people, they were talking about it, I was like, what the fuck is that? I had just started Instagram in 2015 or something like that. But I think being at kind of like the forefront of the pulse of global fashion, global music scene, that was something that was super beneficial.
Ramon Berrios
00:14:12 - 00:14:31
Do you have any stories of when the creatives or anything regarding creativity broke the conventional business? What you thought that the spreadsheet would predict, but then you listened to the creative and it just blew up all expectations?
Dae Lim
00:14:31 - 00:15:33
Yeah, for sure. At V Files, obviously plenty, but even at Sunday we have like every day is like that. So for instance, I'll give you both examples. One is with virality, you can't predict it, right? So for me, I always want to have my boss would always be like, oh, this shit is just going to go viral, blah, blah. And I'm like, yo, that's nice, but what if it doesn't? And let's have a plan so that if it doesn't go viral we can put some money behind it to make sure that all this content that we fucking shot, it can be served to the right people. And then she's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There were no big celebrities involved. It was like Subway Gorilla fashion show and it went viral.
Dae Lim
00:15:34 - 00:16:37
It went like 100 million view in first week viral with no money spent. So I was just like, okay, this girl knows what she's talking about. Like and then, you know, when moments like that keep happen, I was just like, oh shit, maybe there is some sauce to virality. But even last week we just did this giveaway with this amazing creator. Her name is Tinks. She's this girly based in California, in Los Angeles, and I met her like seven years ago before she was famous or anything like that. And I was just like, oh, let's do a giveaway. And when we usually do giveaways Max like 200, 300 followers and we give away a fleece, the amount of buz that this giveaway has created.
Dae Lim
00:16:39 - 00:17:32
There were 6000 people who entered and then I think they told their friends. So 6000 more people, we were at 92k followers and now we are at this happened in 36 hours. And I was just like because I was like, hey, my goal, I'm the social media, I'm the Instagram manager for our brand. And my goal was like, okay, let's try to hit 100K this year and then come December 1 I was like, okay guys, I don't think we're going to hit it, but let's try to hit 93 the year I was born, let's do it. But then it just totally surpassed and like the sales from this just so crazy. So now we are sold out of almost everything.
Ramon Berrios
00:17:33 - 00:17:35
Saw that on the website.
Dae Lim
00:17:35 - 00:18:09
Yeah, like crazy. Obviously that was also poor inventory planning on our part, but you live and learn and we hope to do better next year. But yeah, I think there's a lot of times things you cannot plan for, but once there is even beyond creativity, when there's well thought out intent and good communication of that intent to your audience. I think that's what really hits home.
Ramon Berrios
00:18:09 - 00:18:24
So what about your initial? You mentioned that early on, you guys went viral in the early days, and that's when then Barney's took you guys. What was the first campaign that really just started it all?
Dae Lim
00:18:24 - 00:19:15
Yeah. So it was called the Genesis. We modeled it off of the first chapter, the first verse of the Bible and God. It was just as a quick refresher for people who missed real Sunday school. There was total darkness, but then God says, Let there be light. And obviously that light was lighting up a blunt or a spliff or a joint for us. And for me, this is a very personal story for me as well, because I used to be super religious. Not so much anymore, but before, I would always just kind of communicate.
Dae Lim
00:19:16 - 00:20:45
I wouldn't really communicate with myself. Never really about checking in with myself till I smoked weed, really. That's when I was like, oh, shit, I can talk to myself. Because I think growing up in a super rigid environment where there was just always this pressure to excel, I'm seeing AP chemistry books over there, and I'm getting some PTSD, but I was that bitch, or can I say that, who took three AP courses in 9th grade. I was, like, doing the most because I had this burden of, oh, my parents sacrificed everything to send me to America. Got to do it and got to make it out here. And I always just felt like I had to almost play a character in a way, like a caricature of myself until I think it was sophomore year of college when I started, and I was like, oh, fuck, I'm my best self when I do me. And kind of that sort of journey of on the second day, god says, Let water separate from water and create skies and create the ocean.
Dae Lim
00:20:45 - 00:21:43
And we interpreted that as, like, hitting the bong and separating the water into clouds and into bong water. So we had a lot of fun with kind of we selectively quoted the Bible and put imagery that kind of matched the birth of Sunday school, where you just have to be higher than your grades. So with that kind of mentality embedded yeah, we put out a fire piece of content for $300, and then we got immediately covered by Vogue and High Beast and Business Insider and whatnot. And I'm sure we got millions of earned media, which is how we started this whole journey.
Blaine Bolus
00:21:43 - 00:22:19
Yeah. And I think what's really cool there, Dave, is the fact that you guys started from a place. You had the brand, you had the creative direction, the symbolism, everything kind of tied together, and that allowed you to kind of get picked up. And through cool creative and through the brand, you were able to get picked up and get all that earned media, because I know there's a lot of brands that may be not doing something as cool and as innovative. And maybe you're just like creating a more generic product and selling that. Those aren't the types of things that are going to go down and grow the way that you guys grew. So could you speak a little bit to what going down that path looks.
Ramon Berrios
00:22:19 - 00:22:20
Like for a brand?
Blaine Bolus
00:22:20 - 00:23:05
Right? Because as people start out, there's a couple of ways to do it. You can either go the traditional fashion route, which is similar to kind of what you guys were able to do, or, you know, screw old school fashion. I'm going direct to my consumers. I'm going to run Facebook ads, create a cool product, create my own brand, and just do it that way. And it seems like you guys have been able to really take advantage of both sides of the coin, building up a big e commerce presence, your own digital presence, as well as leveraging all the different benefits and things that come along with being mentioned in all these great publications and fashion weeks and et cetera. So could you just provide a little color to what going maybe that route kind of looks like and what it looks like for a brand?
Dae Lim
00:23:05 - 00:24:23
Sure. So my hot take well, actually, one, we used to be in 60 wholesale accounts, and that was like our business when we started. And that was great because you get deposit, you make the clothes, you sell it, right? So that was like the first year, 2018 to 2019, but then 2020, January. When I was in Korea, I was hearing all these rumblings from my friends who had been in Hong Kong being like, yo, the world's about to end, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? And then I went to Tulum. And then literally a week after, all these department stores called me and said they either have to cancel the order, Barney's went bankrupt, that all these stores were just like, we have to shut down, and we cannot do this. And that is when we opened up our shopify store. That is what we switched from a landing page squarespace to Shopify.
Dae Lim
00:24:24 - 00:25:02
And I was like, we are never doing wholesale again unless we get money 100% upfront. Which I said it then, but I have not kept because you got to do what you got. Like, we are now in, like 200 dispensaries, which is entirely wholesale, and they never pay money up front. So that's a whole another story. But yeah. So it's not like we were like, let's capture both sides of the coin. It was kind of, like, forced on us. The first month, we made, like, $4,000, and I was like, oh, shit.
Dae Lim
00:25:02 - 00:26:00
Okay, this is how we go bankrupt, guys. I think we had three people, plus myself. I was like, it was a nice run. Let's prep to move out, pack your bags. But then I was like, we have six months left. Let's give it all we got. And we just started really fucking doing different. Because when you're designing for department stores, it's totally different from when you're designing for your customers, right? So we were making these sick ass trench coats that were like $1,000 and puffers and shit like that, and who the fuck is going to buy that during the pandemic? So we were like, we need to make essential things, which is masks, and we need to make tie dye sweats so that we totally pivoted.
Dae Lim
00:26:00 - 00:27:03
And then it worked. And then we really worked on decreasing our lead time to put the product into market. When you're working in wholesale fashion calendar, that is usually like twelve to 16 months of prep work from design to production. But we could shorten it to like three months, right? So really kind of delved deeper into that mindset. And then I think six months later, we were doing like forty k and we were like, oh, okay, there's a path here. We have six more months left. And then wintertime came and we were like, hey, what else is as cozy as a sweatsuit? But for us, rather than basic color sweatsuits, like cool tie dye prints and cool embroideries and stuff like that was working for us. And we're like, okay, let's make a fleece jacket.
Dae Lim
00:27:03 - 00:28:13
And that really changed the course of our business because I had never seen, mind you, now we can. But back then especially, we couldn't run any ads because there was like that cannabis scarlet letter stamped in every single ad platform for us. But to see 100K day, to see like a 200K day just from the product and gifting the product to the right people, I remember very vividly. I think this was in 2021, there was this viral moment where we had gifted this fleece to Jacob Illordi because we just DM'd him and we were like, hey love, euphoria would love to get you some gear. And he fucking responded. And then there was a paparazzi photo of him wearing the fleece, like barefoot, grabbing coffee. And that went viral. But then the next day there was a photo of he was dating like, Kaia Gerber back then.
Dae Lim
00:28:13 - 00:29:11
There was a photo of Kaia Gerber wearing his XXL custom jacket that we made for him grabbing coffee or like going to pilates or whatever it is. And that day, just so much sales. And then the other kind of like the micro influencers that we had gifted all were like, oh, I influenced them. You know what I mean? So it kind of created this ripple effect. We had never sold products in unit of thousands, let alone few hundreds. And we were like, holy shit. Like, yeah. So that was, you know and then, you know, as soon as we've kind of figured out that that works, we have replicated that same kind of ethos a few times.
Dae Lim
00:29:11 - 00:30:49
Now. This year is the first year where I feel like, oh shit, we are definitely getting more established because before I always had to rely on external. We don't do any press and stuff like that because I think my personal opinion is that New York Times mention is not as worth as the right person plugging your shit with the right message. And then this year we've had few days like that, but with no influencer help. So I think our products are getting better, I think our team is working together more and there's more of us now, so we're more in sync most of the times. And then going back to my first point, going back to what I was about to say is I don't think this glossier model of DTC shit works anymore, right? Like put a product and put a fucking pink background on it or put a gradient on it. If you're doing that, maybe you're catching the people in Wisconsin. But I'm sure you guys are not that customer, although I'm sure we were a few years back.
Dae Lim
00:30:49 - 00:31:43
But times have changed. COVID I think gave people a lot of perspective on what they really value and how they spend their time. And I think a lot of us kind of are now more susceptible to authenticity, to actual grounded. It's not even skit humor that is like the most viral content anymore. It's more like people getting slapped while not knowing that they're going to get slapped and seeing that crazy reaction kind of from it. Yeah. So I think really for a brand, and especially, I think more for us, for like a lifestyle brand, content is king. I mean, content has always been king.
Dae Lim
00:31:43 - 00:33:02
But focus on how do you showcase what your brand values are in the most authentic manner as possible. Which for us is like Whimsicality, but also kind of like some sort of education like scholarly focus. But our kind of persona always is that substitute teacher that you get high with after PE. So we try to incorporate that in every single piece of content that we make and that's a really big focus for us going into 2023. We started our TikTok this year and TikTok is now like our biggest source of traffic. And it's not just like, this is what I style my Sunday school with. We do anything from Korean degenerate vocabulary words where I explain Korean sex terms that people can use, to KBBQ reviews, to high or not high and these sort of stupid little things that we do kind of showcase what our brand is about.
Ramon Berrios
00:33:02 - 00:34:12
Yeah, I think you're touching on something that a lot of brands need to hear. That if you hire a creative studio that all they have is the colored wallpaper to shoot your product there, that's who's telling your story. And your story needs to be born in house before you can even outsource the story to creators that are part of your tribe and community because those are the only people outside of your company that can actually tell your story. It's not a creative studio that has a lineup of ten different products and they're going to put in the same backdrop. So how do you keep that culture within your company? This all comes from the team that you've built and from the culture that you've built. So this must even be a principle that you have when you're hiring and recruiting someone. And you're probably thinking, if this person were to make a TikTok about a brand, what would they say? Because if they come here with that lame shit like pink backdrop, it's not going to work. You're not going to hire them.
Dae Lim
00:34:12 - 00:35:35
Yeah. I think it really comes from we have a really small marketing team, actually, because I kind of run two businesses, right? One is fashion and the other is weed. On the branding side, it's the same, but the mechanics of operations are totally different, right? Like, one is entirely direct to consumer, one is entirely wholesale. One has so much advertising regulations, and in person experiences are the most important for running a cannabis brand versus for fashion brand. Running social is like the, you know, digital content is the most important, right? And even gifting and like, influencers, like, whatever works on fashion doesn't work on weed. Because I could be like, oh, buy this weed, but you can't buy it there, so you have to go to a dispensary. So me actually working with the sales staff at these dispensaries, incentivizing them to push our product is so much more time efficient and cost efficient marketing dollars spent for me. But I think for us, we have kind of our Ten Commandments that we have engraved onto our packaging.
Dae Lim
00:35:35 - 00:36:54
And first one is like, Know thyself, right? We don't want people. Authenticity, I think, is at a core value of myself, I think. And I always just try to do me rather than someone else or something else. Yeah. And with that, we really focus on stories that we have expertise in sharing about, right? So that is stuff like being a third culture kid, right? Like that feeling of displacement, but also channeling the trauma through humor. Number two, I think, is about being a stoner, right? And whether it's like learning about the plant itself, but also what are some of the stuff you can be eating right now? And it's 02:00 A.m. And you don't want to order Dominoes, right? Number three is also about globalization of Korean culture. All of our kind of founding team members are Korean, obviously, just because that's where we were.
Dae Lim
00:36:55 - 00:37:53
And that's the first kind of line of network that I had to recruit. And we really lean in on that because that's something that we can own. We try to stay in our lane most of the times, but then. As we are doing execution, that's when we get inspired to try different formats. Whether it's like, I don't know if you guys know the rapping trend that happened, like the Nicki minaj rapping. And I used to be an amateur rapper myself, so wrote out some bars and rapped to doing some skits. When we collabed with true religion, we were really inspired from old. Their content was all like, oh, like dope photo shoot, like money, money, which was sick.
Dae Lim
00:37:53 - 00:38:47
And I was like, thank you so much, because we could have never produced this level of content. But for us, we were like, okay, well, we can't do that. So we looked into archives of Korean and Japanese variety shows and created this skit of one of our team members being wrapped up into seamless paper like a joint. And then our fashion director smoking it by green screening it. And that video got way more views than any of true religion photos ever did. So, yeah, I think for us, it's just like really being strategic about where can we play, how can we play, and how can we win.
Ramon Berrios
00:38:47 - 00:39:01
So tell me about your marketing team. You mentioned you're a small team. How are those roles divided up and who's responsible for all this? Is this mostly spontaneous? What's, like being a Sunday school marketer?
Dae Lim
00:39:01 - 00:39:46
Yeah. So I think I'm a part time marketer too, including myself. There's four of us, and what's crazy is none of us do ads. But then next year we're going to, I think, dabble a bit into front end traffic generation. But this year for us, it's just more about that universe setting, right? So myself, I do a lot of the storytelling. So whether it's I'm kind of like the front end creative director BD guy. So partnerships, like collaboration from sourcing to deal structuring, I do a lot of that. And then I'm like, hey, guys.
Dae Lim
00:39:48 - 00:40:37
Whether it's like, these are the stories that I have built for developing our fashion collection or for our new cannabis flavors, or whether it's for hey, for instance, for mother's day next year, we have a crazy guerrilla marketing. Campaign that we're planning and just, like, coming up with some sort of baseline frameworks for stories that my team and I can kind of brainstorm. We all get together and then we're just like, okay, this can be executed this way, that way, through this channel. This needs to look like this. And then we have a marketing director. She recently joined our team. Her name is Maggie. She's awesome.
Dae Lim
00:40:37 - 00:41:51
And she basically does a lot of the project management and with really focus on how to market cannabis and fashion together. So a lot of that is lean, experiential, but also works with designers to coordinate assets and whatnot, right. And then also checks our email retention flows and whatnot, but then doesn't touch content, doesn't touch social. More on the growth marketing, I guess, side sans ads, right? Now. And then we have Nina, who is this girl. She has been with us for, I think, around two years now. And her main focus is community. So gifting influencer relations, like social media, like order questions, affiliate programs, and then email marketing for campaigns.
Dae Lim
00:41:52 - 00:42:45
Like, for instance, in three days, we're about to launch our holiday campaign, which is called High Alone for Christmas. And it's like eight people who are and we did like a UGC campaign where we had an open casting call via Instagram, DMs and Instagram, like Google Form. We got like 1200 people applying and we had to choose eight. So that was really tough. But that's about to launch and that kind of communication. Whatnot? And then lastly, and possibly like, the MVP of our team this year is our short form video creator. Her name is Christina. She's like a producer, so all of our TikTok is run by her.
Dae Lim
00:42:46 - 00:43:07
And, yeah, we saw massive growth. We are now at like 60K followers, and I think we have garnered over 1.6 million likes. Our engagement is always really good. So really proud of her. She's like, the most recent addition to our team.
Blaine Bolus
00:43:07 - 00:44:01
Yeah, I think Dave, what's really cool about hearing all of that is how you guys clearly built Sunday school as a creative first brand as opposed to just a business first brand. But clearly, when you nail the creative, when you nail the storytelling, when everything comes together from the marketing side of things, you're able to see organic growth. This stuff works. Having community, relying on community, getting your product in the right person's place, wearing it at the right time, that works. Running the right social campaigns with your customers, that works. Building the right products. So I think it's really cool to just get the perspective of a brand who's, like, building with a creative first lens and see the results that you guys are getting out of that. The other thing that I wanted to talk about before we wrap up here is I know you guys are kind of this two sided brand where you have the traditional fashion and apparel side of things, which is very creatively led.
Blaine Bolus
00:44:01 - 00:44:34
But then you also, like you were alluding to. You have the weed brand where you're selling in dispensaries and stores and you're creating different products and prerolls, et cetera. So I'd love to talk about the strategy there behind it. Do you see this in the future? Do you see both sides of the business feeding each other? Or why do you guys, I guess, take the approach of building these two different businesses and verticals side by side? And what is the long term goal as you guys continue to do that?
Dae Lim
00:44:35 - 00:45:59
Yeah, so, first, this year was like a really monumental year because it was really like thesis proving for us, you know? So our thesis is cannabis is part of our culture, fashion is part of our culture, especially street wear, you know, where that's the sort of shit we make. And those two there's a lot of audience overlap, right? And when we first launched our cannabis brand two, three years ago shit, three years ago now, people laughed at us being like, what are you talking about? You're a fashion brand. What do you know about weed? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That is when Dosys I don't know if you guys remember the vibrating vaporizer was like, all the craze and whatnot. And then now they're gone from the market, but they're like, you have to either have medical or growing expertise or blah, blah, blah. And I was like, Bro, look at Casamigos. But we just did a pop up in San Francisco, and we brought, I think, around 500 fleeces. And it was three days or 2 hours each.
Dae Lim
00:45:59 - 00:46:45
Three days. And we sold through all of them. One hundred k. And we did it at Dispensaries, right? At Dispensaries, where we sell. And we said, hey, if you buy our weed, we give you the same amount of discounts for our clothing products. Each Dispensary had lines of around 200 to 300 people. They were like, one we've never seen this many people unless it was 420, or unless there's, like, crazy discounts or Black Friday vibe for weed. And the last time we saw this amount of people was when we got Snoop Dogg to come visit our store.
Dae Lim
00:46:46 - 00:47:39
But we had to pay him thirty k. And then we sold around 100K worth of wheat, too, right? It was so shocking. And then, two, they were like, we've never seen this many Asian people at our Dispensary. And basically, the fact that this sort of cross sell, right? Like, this lifestyle of, like, hey, take a gummy and get cozy and fleeces and just chill, they didn't get that. And to be honest, I was just thinking it. We never had this much clout to be able to execute a project like that till this year. But to see that in real life was nuts. I was like, wow.
Dae Lim
00:47:39 - 00:48:35
Because obviously, it's definitely hard being an entrepreneur, as you guys know firsthand. But this is why we do things right for the community. And, yeah, that was really kind of it felt really good. And then I think on the next year, our focus really is to do definitely more of these, because we know it works. And then as we're launching into New York, we'll be having a lot of experiential, hopefully one day in Miami. But know, seems like the government seems to be dangling with us there. It seems like a not so distant future yet. It's been like that for a few years, so we'll see.
Dae Lim
00:48:35 - 00:49:26
But, yeah, I think now this year more than ever is how do we do experiences that have some ROI, like, not just experiences for the sake of looking dope, or experiences that is actually providing value to our customers. And then how can we also make content from those experiences and engage the community? Like, for instance, one of the things that I want to have next year for 420 is to have the world's biggest rock, paper, scissor competition, stuff like that. And then I think now this year, we're finally getting a little better at planning ahead. We're already planning for winter of next year, which is a first.
Blaine Bolus
00:49:28 - 00:50:05
Yeah, that's awesome to hear. And I think as you're building the brand and you see those glimmers of unexpected product, market fit, call it, where you're like, okay, I'm building this out, I'm building this out, people want this. And then on top of that, not only am I generating sales, I'm providing something novel. I'm able to create content around it. And it just kind of gets those creative juices flowing again for all the other opportunities like that you can create. So as we kind of wrap up here, can, where can our listeners connect with you guys, with you personally, with the brand? Sunday school? Why don't you just shout out your.
Dae Lim
00:50:05 - 00:51:30
Socials right before that? One thing I want to mention is that back to what Blaine, you and Ramon said earlier, why brands cannot just rely on Asuna or all these because creativity is your biggest moat, right? It's going to be really fucking hard to start a Sunday school, you know what I mean? It's going to take some time, but it's going to take a lot of effort versus it's going to be really easy to start a vape pen brand that you put generic or like a soda or like a water brand. There's a lot of those these days. And just get people who did Stump Town to do your branding and take photos and run. If it works, people see through it. Yeah, it's not going to work in America, let's say that. Maybe in some other country. And I think that's why we cannot lose sight in providing value through whether it's real value, saving money, blah, blah, blah, or whether it's perceived value. The brand has to do that.
Dae Lim
00:51:30 - 00:52:07
And the easiest way to do that is through content and building loyalty and building affinity. You can find us on Social, on Instagram, on TikTok at Sunday school. Our website is WW sunday school. We have a discord channel as well. Yeah, for uh, main medium that I like to connect is IG. You can DM me DM Sunday school. I run the account, so I'll see. Or LinkedIn.
Dae Lim
00:52:07 - 00:52:11
I'm on LinkedIn as well, but I don't have LinkedIn pro.
Blaine Bolus
00:52:14 - 00:52:19
Cool. Well, thanks for coming on the show. We learned a ton and can't wait to see you guys continue to grow at Sunday school.
Dae Lim
00:52:19 - 00:52:24
Thank you so much. Have a great cozy holiday, guys. Thank you.