Signing a lease for an apartment in Austin, Texas, is not assurance that my daughter Buck Wheat is definitely moving out. But it certainly affects the odds! And so it seems that our baby is ready to leave the nest.
NOW what am I going to write about?
Luckily, at 22 Buck is done losing her teeth! I'm not sure that the tooth-fairy would be able to make it to Austin and back to Stamford in one night. I hope she knows that the bed-making, bathroom-cleaning, dinner-cooking and laundry-doing fairies are going to have the same issue!!
This ought to be interesting!
Some of you have met Buck. For years, she’s attended Allpro shows and NHS with me. Buck either loves a good time or is a certified paint geek; in this family both are possible! But despite the paint “creds,” Buck mostly remains mostly just a name on the page for most of you.
Until now!
It was time to make a podcast about my e-commerce project for independent paint retailers, The Revolution and I needed a co-host or guest who could help me get to the meat of the issues of what this system can do for paint dealers. Who could be better to than the Buck?
Only, she didn’t want to do it.
I tried everything! Including a rehashing of how much I just paid for her journalism degree while asking “don’t journalists make podcasts?”
When that didn’t work, I tried something every parent’s tried-and-true method for offspring compliance: Cash! Apartments in Austin need furniture and so I figured I was golden!
On to “Plan C.”
It’s hard to negotiate with someone who only wants one thing. In the end though, I needed to make the podcast so she had all the leverage. What did she want in exchange for 30 minutes of time on the mic with dad?
Retribution!
Long the brunt of my jokes here in my blog as well as at the kitchen table, Buck was only willing to help me with my podcast if I was willing to let her even up the score a bit. Like the genie when you rub the lamp: Buck grants wishes! But she may do it in a way which makes you wonder why you had had that wish in the first place!
And that’s why you are about to hear about (perhaps) the stupidest thing I have ever done. I say “perhaps” because if I need to use Buck again on a future episode, you may discover that I’m not as smart as I keep telling you I am!
After a few laughs, we got to work!
Work for me these days means a lot of time speaking about e-commerce. As we move towards sending out contracts to my first clients (probably later this week), I continue to work with developers to add features to THE Revolution web sites and e-commerce platforms. The more dealers I speak with about their needs, the more features I have been able to add to meet them and so I am really excited for you all to see what’s coming. But since we have to build them before you can do that, and since I don’t ACTUALLY build them myself, I am keeping busy on related projects while the development team does their thing.
I’m not the only one working on this.
Vendors who service the independent dealer channel also have a lot of work to do. Just a few months ago, web sites with a few can cuts and product slicks were enough to support dealer needs.
That’s no longer true.
Applications like THE Revolution will require vendors to step up their digital marketing offerings in a way that supports the data rich sites dealers are demanding. Color displays will need to be made digital, and available to retailers to display on their sites. Product descriptions paired with pictures will need more than just being made available for bulk uploading. They’ll need to be made available in bulk AND in a manner, which allows for consistent updates.
Manufacturers who leave it to dealers to gather this data and keep it up to date will find their products poorly represented in the space.
If you’re interested in joining THE Revolution or just hearing more about it, click here (LINK). Fill out the form and I’ll be in touch!
And if you want to hear Buck humiliate her father, THAT is on Soundcloud, Apple, Stitcher, Blubrry and right here on my site!
Shoutout to the C2 dealer who texted me the picture of their color chip called Buckwheat! It's Buck Wheat! Two words! No one could ever capture the essence.
