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What's up, DTC Pod? Today we're joined by Justin Seidenfeld, who is the co founder of a bunch of companies doris Dev, Canopy and Factored Quality. So, Justin, I'll let you kick us off. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about your background?

Awesome. Yeah, Blaine, thanks so much for having me on. So my background goes deep in consumer goods, specifically around developing new products, bringing them to market, and then going deep on the supply chain set up and management side. I spent the last ten years either developing or setting up supply chains for different durable product brands, predominantly through a company that I started seven years ago called Doris Dev, which is a product design, development and supply chain management company. We've got offices in New York and Hong Kong and specialize in bringing new product ideas from concept all the way to shipping. From that, we incubated our own product brand called Canopy, which we launched to market a little over two years ago. The Hero product is a humidifier that has some technology baked in, which focuses on the health benefits for skin. And so that brand has been positioned as a beauty wellness tool. And that's been really exciting to build a brand from the ground up. And then most recently, we incubated a managed service software company called Factored Quality, which provides quality control and supply chain management services through a single point platform with managed services on the back end. And that business is providing factory audit, inspection, product testing services for a bunch of physical product brands around the world.

So, yeah, there's going to be a ton to unpack in this episode. So really excited to get into it. Why don't we start with Doris Dev. How did you get started in the world of product development and what was, I guess, a little bit of your background before there and how did you get started? Let's just talk about Doris Dev for a little bit.

Yeah, for sure. So I actually stumbled into it by getting involved with a startup now a little over ten years ago, with a company called Quirky, which a lot of people know brings up kind of a visceral reaction. A lot of the times when I say that that's kind of where my roots came from, because it was notorious back in the day for some really great things, but then also having a momentous spiral into bankruptcy at the end of it. But Quirky was a VC backed, tech enabled product business that leveraged the power of the crowd and a community to bring really great product ideas into the world. And I was very lucky in that I kind of stumbled into a job there predominantly because I didn't know what I really wanted to do out of school, but was really attracted to the intersection of what Quirky stood. For which was physical products like real world operations, consumer goods, technology, the kind of power of the community at a time when that was kind of burgeoning or there was a burgeoning tech scene in New York and so that kind of brought all of it in under one hood. And it was a really fun place to kind of get my beak wet. And that experience I started working at Quirky ended up working there for five years as the kind of company went on. This rocket ship trajectory was very lucky because of that because I got kind of exposure to a lot of different aspects of building a business from the ground up. But most specifically is I got asked by the CEO of that company to essentially go set up our manufacturing and sourcing office in Asia with about three days notice. So on a Thursday, he asked me, hey, we need somebody to be on the ground in Hong Kong by Monday morning because we had an important meeting with a partner then. And so I had to pack my bags and get on a plane to go to Hong Kong that weekend initially, which was only supposed to be a three month stint, which turned into two plus years living in Hong Kong and essentially running around China setting up production lines for all different consumer goods. But that was really kind of my foray being thrown into the deep end of supply chain operations and a boot camp in all things, bringing new product to market and manufacturing. But yeah, no, keep going. Quirky was just like a really special experience. Again, this rocket ship trajectory got exposure to all different aspects of the business, but really the basis for my background in product and supply chain started with me kind of building out a network of manufacturing partners in Asia when I lived out there. When I moved back to New York, started getting a ton of inbound from friends and friends of friends who are looking for help bringing their product ideas into the world and came from different backgrounds, from finance, from creative, from whatever. But they didn't necessarily know how to take their concept idea, put pen to paper to flesh out what it was and then go find or set up a manufacturing infrastructure to bring it to market. And so I got a ton of organic inbound when I moved back to New York. This was in 2015. And the next few years as kind of the D to C product boom happened in New York, there was just a ton of folks that were looking for help and that was kind of the genesis for what ultimately became Doris Dev.

Cool. That makes a ton of sense. And I'd love to kind of talk about when you started Doris Dev, what some of the different first, let's go through a couple of different examples of products that you guys were able to bring to life that you worked on at Doris Dev. And then from there, I'd love to also just talk about the frameworks for taking products to market. So let's just start with a couple of anecdotes of projects that you worked on and how you were able to execute them and what it took to be able to produce and deliver them.

Yeah, for sure. So now where we are with Dorsetv is we get involved with all different types of companies, startups, growth stage, everything in between. We love getting involved with pre revenue businesses, basically entrepreneurs or startups that have an idea but don't know how to get it made. And that's kind of where the first few anecdotes of projects that we worked on, brands that we worked on, that was the profile of them. So a couple that I can speak to, one is we got involved with Gravity Blankets, which was a weighted blanket brand that actually launched through a partnership with a media company called Futurism back in 2017 or maybe 2016. But we initially connected with that team and the founder who launched a Kickstarter around the concept of the weighted blanket and creating a humanized commercial version of that product for the wellness category to focus on the benefits it provides for mental and physical health. And they had kind of tested it through this kickstarter but didn't necessarily have the know how, the network or the infrastructure to really then bring their product into the world with a robust manufacturing kind of set up and they didn't necessarily have the chops or understanding of how to build a brand and extend kind of the product beyond that first offering. And so that was a really good project for us to get involved with because A, we got to go deep on setting up a robust supply chain for scale because the demand out of the gate, coming off the coattails of their Kickstarter was immense. I think they're one of the highest grossing Kickstarters of all time, having done, I think about $5 million in the first 30 days. And so we had to hit the ground running in terms of finding and setting up a manufacturing supply chain for scale in China very quickly that was able to produce high volumes right off the bat. And then the other thing that was really exciting about it was because it was incubated out of a media company, they didn't have deep product expertise or the know how to understand, how to essentially expand beyond that first product offering. And so we were able to really lean in and flex some of our expertise in that area and help drive kind of expansion for the brand beyond that singular product. So that was introducing new product line extensions behind their Hero product, introducing totally new product lines like the weighted eye mask that was kind of derived off of the basis for what they did with the weighted blanket concept. And then beyond that, really setting up an operational infrastructure for them that allowed them to scale the business scale distribution beyond just Kickstarter and become a fully fledged kind of product brand. And so that was a really great starting point for Doris.

Yeah, from there that's so interesting. Having the whole manufacturing network in place is going to be key. And then as you start to learn lessons from working across multiple brands, you're able to kind of understand not only what products may be compelling to yourself. And I'm sure we'll get into Canopy as well, but yeah, we'd just love to get some of the learnings about when you start to work across a couple of different products. What immediately comes to your mind when you're thinking about product development, starting a brand or even if you're a brand and you're looking to develop new products? What are some of the either mistakes that people might fall into that you'd be like, oh, I've seen this happen so many times, let's definitely avoid that. And what are some of the big opportunities that you'd be thinking of having worked in this space that are really important for brands or new entrepreneurs to tap into?

Yeah, I think some of the there's definitely a laundry list of pitfalls or things to really think about going into building a new product and brand from scratch that a lot of folks fall into. One of the big ones that I always harp on is really validating the concept and the demand before you invest time, energy and money into the product. And what I mean by that is really making sure that you've identified a problem solution or a problem set that a product can solve and that there are specific features and claims that you can build a new product. Offering around that will address those problems out of the gate and that you've done the work to really validate that there's demand for it, not just operating on a hunch or operating on a feeling. And that can be done in a lot of different ways. Whether it's leveraging your network to kind of snowball feedback and momentum around what people like or believe or think, that there's value around, that's kind of as simple as having as many conversations as possible or doing surveys to your network to much more robust exercises of doing claims or validation studies or using Facebook and kind of measuring conversions on specific things that you can use. You can drive traffic on a landing page to measure conversions on specific claims or a product idea or seeing if people would be interested in buying a product. And we have a ton of brand partners, meaning clients on the Doris side that have done different types of exercises in that regard before they invest energy around time or money into the product itself. And the reason I always harp on that is because it's just such an expensive endeavor to invest into new product, both not just capital but also just like human capital and energy wise that you want to make sure that there is demand behind what you're building. So validating your idea with whatever tools and whatever you have access to is a really important part of the first step.

Would you say on the idea validation side, would you say a great way for it is like you were saying, spinning up either different landing pages, maybe testing a couple of ads, see if maybe putting together a waitlist, just like being able to understand if people are clicking on it or if it's something that just people don't care about. Is that one of a good way that you've seen be successful?

Yeah, 100%. So landing pages, obviously you can get really professional and go very deep with that approach. And I think that that's a really smart way to do it. And you can really get a ton of confidence if you do it well and do it correctly. But it doesn't have to be so, I guess, so refined. I've seen other folks use Instagram surveys, email surveys, Google forms, different ways of just kind of trying to measure some form of traction. And I think obviously the landing page approach is a really smart way to do it. If you don't have an existing brand, if you already have an existing brand, or you've got a brand partner that you can tap into that has an audience, a relevant audience for who you think you would be targeting, then we always also recommend to see if you can kind of tap into some of the hyper passionate people within those communities to kind of go deeper on the product concept with them. And so we've seen that work well for brands that are in market or influencers or folks that have audiences that they're able to tap into.

Got it. And then so let's assume that you found a product that has a bit of traction or pull to it. What are kind of the first steps in working with you guys from the Doris Depth perspective? What are the first things you're thinking about? Are you thinking about who the best manufacturing partners are for this thing? Are you thinking about building out a supply chain? How are you thinking then once we've reached the okay, it's time to go moment and let's actually put things in production, how do you think about things next?

Yeah. So there's two ways we approach kind of creating new product. The first path is kind of starting from scratch and you're building a custom product to your vision, which is going to be unique around your product design. It's going to address specific pain points that you're solving for and you're really building something from a blank canvas as your starting point. The second approach is you can actually start with what I would call an off the shelf customization approach, which is you're going to go and actually scour the landscape for a manufacturing partner that is producing something that's relevant or similar. And you're going to go find a product that's in market that you can engage a manufacturing partner to then customize to make your own. Obviously, there's going to be limitations and trade offs if you go down that path. But that is also a different path that you can take that a ton of brands have started down kind of path b and there's trade offs for both. Right. So if you go down that first path with a totally custom product, obviously you're going to end up with something totally unique and is uniquely yours, but you are going to invest upfront in the design of that, having to validate it. Building something from scratch is really complicated and expensive and time consuming and frustrating. So there's a lot of pitfalls that you can kind of run into. If you go down that path versus the other side, you're just going to be limited in kind of certain aspects of what you're going to end up with that you have to understand those limitations from the get go, but it will be less expensive and potentially less exhausting and draining.

Cool. And now I kind of want to talk about you've been in market, you've been helping different brands kind of think through bringing their products to life. You know what it takes to kind of execute against them. So when did the inspiration for Canopy come up? How did you think about that? What gave you guys conviction that it was something that you wanted to incubate yourselves and yeah, why don't you just walk us through the whole kind of flow through Canopy? From the inception of the idea all the way to the execution, how the growth of it happened and what that whole story looks like.

Yeah, so with doris dev, it's a product development service business. So we are very lucky in that we work with a ton of incredible brand partners and clients. And through that experience, we've engaged with and worked with incredibly smart people that have different perspectives on how to build product, how to launch product, how they're going to grow and scale their businesses. And so for us, it's been a really amazing experience in that we've had kind of front row seats into a lot of different ways. People have brought products and brands to market and scale them. And in the back of our mind, we always wanted to bring our own ideas into market. And so within the four walls of doris, we've always kind of encouraged and thought about testing and noodling on homegrown product ideas. And so we've been doing that since day one. Within doris dev, back in 2019, the idea for actually designing or reengineering the humidifier, we got some traction internally at doris. My partner and head of product at doris, his girlfriend was using a humidifier year round as a beauty hack and had the ritual of breaking out vinegar and Qtips every sunday to clean it out so that it wouldn't mold over. And that was just the initial nugget that got us interested in the category. When we started talking to people about humidifiers, we realized everybody had that same experience, that they get moldy, they get gross, they get thrown away after a season because of how gross they get. And everybody had different essentially horror stories about their experience with humidifiers. And the other end of the spectrum is a lot of people didn't even know what humidifiers were, but the people that did, they all had horror stories about it. So that was kind of the initial nugget that we latched onto. And this was the beginning of 2019. We basically then spent all of 2019 working on the r and d and the design of what ultimately became canopy. And as we went through that process, we uncovered a bunch of these pain points that people had with humidifiers. And we addressed them through either the design process or the engineering process to basically come up with features and solution sets that would address what those pain points were. And as we went through the process, we just kind of kept gaining momentum and it kept snowballing into something that we really felt had lags. And ultimately we realized we were on the track to design and create a category defining best in class humidifier. And so by the end of 2019, we were like, okay, we have something here. This has really resonated with a lot of people. And the big AHA moment at that point was actually going back to the original genesis of the problem and the concept from lucas's girlfriend, which was she was using it as a beauty hack for her skin. And as we put that idea and the concept in front of people that really resonated with a ton of folks, which was that a lot of people were using humidifiers as this beauty hack. It was kind of this underground thing that was sometimes talked about and sometimes referenced in beauty media, but never really highlighted or focused on. And so we realized that there was an opportunity to really lean into that and position Canopy not just as a best in class humidifier, but really focus on positioning it as a beauty and wellness device for healthy skin. And that's when it really garnered a ton of momentum. And that was when we decided to spin it out into a standalone company.

So I'd love to kind of dig in there on what made canopy a beauty product versus a humidifier. Right? I'm very familiar with humidifiers. I've used them before, whether in the mountains or the desert, sometimes the room is dry and you just need a humidifier. But I guess you said there was kind of a nugget where you realized that people in the beauty community were sort of using it, but what were they doing differently? What led to the ability for you guys to see this as a market opening up and what led to you being able to productize it? I know you spoke to mold growing and different things of cleanliness. And actually, as a sidebar, one thing I noticed about my humidifiers is if I'm out in Las Vegas, for example, the water is really hard. So if you pour the tap water in the humidifier, I can wake up in the morning, it looks like it snowed in my room or something. So have you seen that before?

Yeah, that's a common problem. It's called white dust, and it's essentially minerals that are getting spewed into your indoor environment. That means that you're using an ultrasonic humidifier, right, the traditional humidifier that has a chimney of mist coming out the top. And that's a really common problem with people that use humidifiers all throughout the year, all throughout the country and the world, is that depending on the type of water in your region, there's all different minerals in the water, there's metals in the water. Whatever's in your water is getting spewed into your indoor environment. And so that was one of the things that we solved with canopy, is that we introduced or we basically designed the thing to have a totally different product architecture so that it uses evaporation instead of ultrasonic humidification. There's a filter that the water has to pass through and it captures all of the metals and the minerals on it, so that all you're spewing out from the device is purified humidity. And there's no opportunity for the metals of the minerals or the particulates to be included in what comes out of the device. So that's actually a feature of Canopy that was one of the pain points. What you just your story. Your story is one of the stories we heard through the R and D process and something that we incorporated into the reengineering of the product to solve for that.

That's so funny because yeah, I guess my solution to the problem is like going over to my Ro filter and dumping a bunch of Ro filtered water into this humidifier, which seems like ridiculous, filling a three gallon tank with Ro filtered drinking water. So, yeah, from a product standpoint, it just makes a ton more sense to put the filter in the humidifier, right?

Yeah, 100%. And most humidifier manufacturers recommend that you have to use distilled water, which to your point, it sounds ridiculous. It's like showering with heavy on, but with Canopy you can just use normal tap water and all of that particulate gets trapped in the filters.

Got it. So after developing the product, it seems like the big kind of innovation were one the way in which you guys were actually turning the water into the humidifier form as well as the filtering process and a couple of other things. But as you took it to market, how were you able to start leveraging that feedback and that product to really kind of grow your own category? Was there any other competition in the space? Why don't you talk us through after you've developed a product and you realized that there was this kind of window for innovation, what the next phase of the journey looked like for canopy?

Yeah, so the first step in that was really focusing really on creating a best in class product and product experience. And so for us, that was making this category defining humidifier and making all of the features thoughtful and addressing of all of those problem solution sets that we talked about and then essentially bundling that into a design led form factor that we knew people would be attracted to. And so that was like the first step was making sure that our product was a best in class, leading across all of the reasons why somebody would buy the product to begin with. What we realized through the conversations and exploration in that first year of development was that there was this opportunity to really position it as a beauty tool because people kind of were somewhat familiar with the idea that using a humidifier was good for your skin. And the reason it's good for your skin is because driving your indoor environment or the environment that you put your skin in to optimal relative humidity, which is between 40 and 60%. Relative humidity helps improve and increase the skin barrier health, so it helps retain moisture. So you won't see some of those fine lines and wrinkles that get formed. And it helps prevent things from being absorbed into the skin that you otherwise don't want to. And so that was the basis for it and some people knew that as kind of this beauty hack, there's folks on influencers and folks that were promoting humidifiers as part of their beauty regimen, but there wasn't really a brand that stood for that. And so we thought that that was an opportunity. Everybody's focused in the beauty world of investing into product that goes on their skin or in their body, but nobody's really thinking about the environment that they put their skin into. And so we thought that there was really an opportunity to lean in and tell that story and build a brand around that intersection. And so that's kind of where we really leaned in for Canopy. And my background and my co founder and partner from Doris. Our backgrounds go deep in durable products, not so much on the beauty side. And so our first step was bringing people into the fold that we trusted that could help us navigate kind of the beauty landscape, the landscape that we didn't really understand. So there were two people in particular that were really helpful. One was we ended up bringing on a dermatologist who helped with that initial phase of validating claims and positioning the product claims around the benefits for skin health. That's dr. Dendy Engelman. She's a New York City based dermatologist who is in the top of her field for cosmetic dermatology. And she was already an advocate for humidifiers. And so for us, bringing a category defining, best in class, easy maintenance version of a humidifier that she could get excited about was kind of an easy proposition for her to get involved as essentially an advisor and a consulting dermatologist. So that happened in 2019. The other person that we were lucky to come across and get connected to was somebody that we brought in as our third co founder, Eric Nair, who ended up becoming our CMO. And he had incredible depth and expertise in beauty. So he was an early employee at Birchbox, was there for, I think almost eight years, then went on to work at Walmart to incubate homegrown beauty brand for them for a couple of years before joining us as a co founder and then ultimately CMO for Canopy. And he was instrumental in essentially crafting our brand strategy around essentially positioning Canopy as this beauty brand and as an entrant into the beauty world. And that was really helpful for us because, again, I don't have the depth or the expertise with that category. The last two years I've learned a ton and it's been very eye opening. But going into it, that wasn't really my area of expertise.

Amazing. And then as you guys started to go to market, why don't you just talk us through what the go to market for that brand looked like? You guys clearly brought in the right people, experts in the industry, CMO, that can help with the positioning and as well as relationships in the field. But then when it actually came to. Taking the product to market. Why don't you walk us through your first couple product cycles? What was the experience, how did you get it out there, what was the feedback that was coming back from it and what did the growth of the brand look like?

Yeah, for sure, I would say the anchor for all of it was really product centric in that we were very confident that we created a really compelling product offering and that we packaged it into something that would resonate with the right people, with our target demographic. But we were very confident that people would love the product. And we knew that because we had done a year of R and D, we had done a ton of testing and validating of the product before we actually launched it to market and so felt very confident that the thing had legs and I'm going to pair that with we also had a fairly limited budget so we didn't go out and raise venture capital. We didn't have a huge access to capital to go just go spend on performance marketing and kind of get a splash through kind of the paid strategy. And so we had to be creative with kind of the way we got The Flywheel started with our go to market. And so what we decided to do actually was invest a lot of energy into the editorial and beauty media world because from our early signals we knew that The Thing would canopy and the product would have a great reaction there. And so we hired a publicist in New York, Jenny Rough, who specialized in beauty. She essentially helped get us in front of a ton of beauty editors the month or two before we went to market. And so we did a ton of desk sides with really all of the beauty editors in New York City at the time we sent them product. We did 30 minutes phone calls with all of them to walk them through the product, walk them through kind of all of the features and attributes and reasons why Canopy was going to be this game changing product that we were introducing. And we got really great response to those desk sides, I think predominantly because we were pitching beauty editors who were for the most part we're mainly getting pitched on topicals and consumables creams, serums, things like that, day in and day out. And so for a humidifier brand to pitch them as to the benefits for skin health was just like a totally refreshing take on the category. And so we got a lot of interest and I think that basically led to getting a ton of write ups and exposure at launch, which was really instrumental in then getting a ton of the flywheel going across all of the other efforts that we needed for activating the brand. But I would say that was really kind of the starting point.

Well, that's really cool and I think that's something that's important because I think brands fall on two sides. Some just some really go heavily into PR and then others maybe don't. It seems like your product and your network was really well suited to making this happen, especially because you weren't trying to run a bunch of PR on like you were saying, the same exact product. And that's been talked about over and over and over again. It all makes sense in terms of you kind of want to not only build a great product, but then build a product where you can kind of stand out. And especially when it comes to the median distribution side, where those editors, if they're trying to get engagement on their posts, they're trying to drive traffic and they want to write something new and engaging for their audience, like you guys have the product to do that. So moving forward, let's get into a little bit of factored quality now. Let's talk a little bit about how all these lessons from not only Doris and what you incubated with Canopy. How did that apply and what are you building at factored quality and why is that really important for brands to be considering in there as they're building, scaling and optimizing their brands?

Yeah, for sure. So, over the last ten plus years working on product, I would say I have experienced firsthand all of the pitfalls and problems of trying to bring new product to market. Everything from getting totally screwed over by manufacturing partners, to running into product design issues really late in the game, to defects and recalls and everything in between. And through that entire experience, one thing that has always been an anchor to figure it, you know, to being on top of any, any product business is ensuring that you have a shored up supply chain. And so over the last ten years, what that's meant is really finding the right manufacturing partners, establishing a really good relationship with them, making sure that you have visibility into what's going on, that there's a mutual two way. Line of communication happening with your manufacturing partners, that there's a level of trust on both sides, that you're each treating each other with mutual respect and that it is a true partnership because there's work and blood and tears and sweat that's going into, again, both sides of it. And so through that process, one of the things that we've leaned into on the doorstep side is really providing visibility, providing boots on the ground, helping to facilitate that relationship building with your manufacturing partners. And what we noticed over that time period was that a lot of it was being done with people and there was no digital platform of record that was kind of serving as this singular system source of truth for everything that was happening. To help basically instill the confidence and provide the visibility of feeling like you had a short up supply chain. And it's something that resonated that we noticed as a team, as a company, as somebody that worked in product for the last ten years. And we were very, I guess, lucky that back in 2019, we connected with the founder of Factored Quality, who he and his partners were building a supply chain software tool that was unrelated to what ultimately became Factored Quality. He approached Doris Dev because he was looking for feedback and insight and guidance on what they were building within the supply chain world. And so my partner at Doris Lucas and I got involved in just kind of an advisory capacity, helping to provide guidance on what they were building. Fast forward about nine months, we essentially continued to feel the pressures and the sentiment that there was no single source of truth for all of the work that was happening around quality control and supply chain visibility and essentially pitched that to Prince and the team and his team that was working on this supply chain software. And that conversation snowballed into them. Building a beta version of a product to our vision very quickly that we were then able to test within the four walls of doors dev with some of our clients and some of our brand partners and then realized that we were really onto something because, again, there wasn't something that was solving this need in the supply chain space for so long. And so this was now a year and a half ago. And since then, Prince and his team have essentially built Factored Quality into a source of truth and managed service platform for all things quality control for physical product brands. So if you're a physical product brand and you need to validate a factory partner or ensure that a factory partner is building product to spec, you can actually go into the platform and book factory audits, product inspections, pre shipment inspections, product testing needs, all through the platform and the work gets handled on the other end. And the reason it's so exciting is because all of the work that's happening on the back end creates a lot of really meaningful data that typically doesn't get captured. And all that data is now getting funneled into the factored quality platform, which unlocks really invaluable insights for the brands, for them to maintain their supply chains, maintain the best in class relationships with their supply partners, making sure that they have visibility into everything that's going on and helping to make the right kind of optimization efforts for their supply chain set up.

What were the ways you would do that before? I know all these things that you're talking about are like really important in terms of, like, making sure you have your pre shipment inspection, your quality inspection, all these different things right before they ship you a container of goods that you didn't sign off on. So what was the process like before? Did you have an agent who would manage all this kind of stuff for you where there was no tech and then you were kind of alluding to what you were able to pick up by productizing it I'd love to talk a little bit more about the product and the data side of things as well.

Yeah, for sure. For again, ten plus years. The way we've managed quality control is that there's different needs in different areas of the world, different product categories have different ways in which you would approach quality control and so it's all very disparate. And so we would have different partners that we would tap into. Sometimes they're reliable, sometimes they're not. We would cycle through them because we would have different types of problems with different agents and quality control partners around the world. And so it was just a very fragmented approach to managing quality control across kind of a holistic spectrum that was needed for how we were managing our work. And then the other thing that is a meaningful kind of dimension of this is that all of the output from those activities came back to us in the form of, like, Word docs and PDF reports and emails and so all of that information just kind of ended up all over the place, and there was nothing that kind of tied it together so that we could better understand how our quality control fitness was across our supply chains. And so the idea was to bring that all into a single platform, into a single point solution because once we could do that, we could unlock a ton of really invaluable insights based off of the data if it was all in a cohesive and organized manner. And so that was really the genesis or the original idea for factored.

So how do you see the space playing out? Right, because I think there's a couple of companies that offer this kind of thing as a service as well. You've got other companies like I know we've had Pietro on and they do this kind of thing for creators where they kind of try to connect them to factories. You've got some things like Alibaba from your vantage point, I guess, what's the makeup of the space, who are the players and how do you see things like shaping out over the next couple of years?

Yeah, I think the distilled answer for that is that the supply chain ecosystem and all of the relevant nodes from idea all the way through chipping and distribution of physical goods, all of those nodes are really getting digitized. And the way we see it is that we want to create the node for quality control that's going to speak with all of the other nodes within the supply chain ecosystem. So that means that the nodes for product design and development that are being digitized will speak to the manufacturing partners and purchase order management nodes that are creating the purchase orders. And we want to be the node that's providing visibility into the quality control work that needs to get done across that supply chain ecosystem. And that's what we're building. So we're building something that will play nicely with a lot of those other partners that you've mentioned. We're not trying to create a closed system, kind of fenced in ecosystem. We think that the ecosystem is open and that we want to make sure that communication is flowing smoothly from our pipes to the other nodes.

Amazing. And kind of as we wrap up here. Justin, where can we connect with you? Are you on Twitter? LinkedIn? And where can we find out more about Doristep canopy and factor quality?

Yeah, for sure. So best place to reach out to me is on LinkedIn. Justin Seidenfeld I think I'm the only one, but I could be surprised to be wrong. And I'm also very open to getting emails to my Doristv inbox. So, Justin@doristev.com, if you've got ideas for new product, looking for help with supply chain or just shooting the shit about product and supply chain, don't be shy.

Sweet. Well, thanks so much for coming on, Justin. We learned a ton and can't wait to keep tabs on your guys on not only factored quality, but all the products that are coming out of Doris dev and the products that you guys are incubating as well. So thanks for coming on.

Thanks so much. Blaine this was great.

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