How to Avoid Product Copying Overseas!

Transcript: 

Jared Ward: 0:34

We're good. Okay Alright, welcome back to Ops Unfiltered. This is the first time we're bringing back a guest. We have Darin Long. This is round two round two.

 

Darin Long: 0:51

The first time I didn't know what I was doing, so he's having back second time to teach me the ropes so the first time.

 

Jared Ward: 0:59

I think in my opinion I might be biased, but I think it was our most valuable episode. The views reflected that it's our highest viewed episode so far, so we're bringing it back on. Darin is for those of you who don't know, who didn't see the first episode, Darin is a sourcing expert. He has literally decades and decades of manufacturing experience from multiple different countries. Most recently, you own a factory in Guatemala right now, is that correct?

 

Darin Long: 1:32

Yes, I do.

 

Jared Ward: 1:33

Okay, so Darin is fluent in Chinese. He's owned a sourcing company for decades. He's sourced for. Sorry. It's saying this card is full. Oh, really, yeah, I'm sorry that one should be fine, keep going. No, we gotta. We probably just need to restart, no worries.

 

Darin Long: 2:05

Well, it started right.

 

Jared Ward: 2:06

Yeah, there are so many people with such high levels of expertise but I feel like nowadays there's people with like my level of experience who say they're sourcing experts Like I. I I have experience in China, I've, I've sourced, I speak Chinese, I I've gone to multiple factories, I've sourced for a bunch of brands, but like I do not consider myself an expert Like there's. You can't replace decades and decades of experience across multiple verticals and multiple countries, and it's just I guess that's that's true.

 

Jared Ward: 2:51

Cause we live in a day and age where, like, yeah, like people with my level of experience, which is just moderate at best, proclaim themselves as experts. It's like, dude, cool, cool it down. You just speak Chinese and not even that good. So I think your like actual knowledge shines through and like that's what people sense okay.

 

Darin Long: 3:20

Yeah, I honestly don't know how I'm taking. I sought considerable feedback on what I presented out there. I didn't have anyone provide critical feedback, and that was what I was looking for. Even folks that private messaged me said we should have more stuff like this. That was encouraging, but I didn't have folks that private messaged me said we should have more stuff like this. That was encouraging, but I didn't have anyone give me critical feedback about wait. You needed to do something like this, or speak a little faster, speak a little slower or no. What would be your critical feedback from going through and editing the first? I'd really be interested. Chair your question. I think storytelling is amazing.

 

Darin Long: 4:03

That's what people want to hear it's a drawing the first.

 

Jared Ward: 4:06

I'd really be interested, jared, what I think storytelling is amazing. That's what people want to hear, so it draws them in. So in content, even if you look at shorts that blow up that get thousands of views, there's a reason for it. It's because there's always a formula and you just get better at doing the formula. If you do more content, it's hook story lesson conclusion it's like okay.

 

Darin Long: 4:30

So I actually did a search on hooks and there's like 15 different hooks. I don't know how to use a fishing hook, let alone I know a catfish trouble hook and put your stupid thing on it. So how do you yeah?

 

Jared Ward: 4:44

So like, even with with tooling management, you could say, like this one mistake cost us millions of dollars, whatever, I don't like something alarming and then go into the story. Okay, you're already really good at the story part, though. So like, if you just if you just say the hook, which is typically something alarming, or or like a open and open in the question want to know how, to want to know how to handle tooling in china, here's two simple steps or here's a story that will help you out, okay like, all right, all right, I got you.

 

Darin Long: 5:17

That would be it, thank you.

 

Jared Ward: 5:18

You're already freaking good at storytelling um my kids are like oh ancient how many kids do you have? Four what is the oldest oldest?

 

Darin Long: 5:37

okay, then, sarah and anna okay what are the ages austin's 30 this year, I think.

 

Jared Ward: 5:44

No way, I didn't know.

 

Darin Long: 5:46

Yeah, it's amazing to me. Sterling is 27. Sarah is 24. And Anna's 22. Okay, all right, yeah, we got faster, we got better at it.

 

Jared Ward: 5:59

A lot of practice, but we got better at it, nice, sorry, this is very much a learning curve. It says this is 36 minutes left and this one says 16, I mean there's only 16 minutes left of the video.

 

Jared Ward: 6:14

Yes, it says these other cards are full, but I looked and I couldn't delete them. There's no content that we delete. Really, let me see. I just I can't. There's nothing to do with these cards. That's what's weird. Yeah, just troubleshoot on Reddit. While we're, we'll just start recording If it stops, if, um, but as of now let's just start talking and then, if anything, I'll pause you guys and we'll pick up where we left off, and then, I'm sorry, okay, let's take two. Alright guys, welcome back to round two of Ops Unfiltered. This is our first time that we have a returning guest. Today we have Darren Long.

 

Darin Long: 7:00

Thanks for having me back, Jared.

 

Jared Ward: 7:02

Yeah, no problem. So Darren, last time he came on he regaled us with plenty of stories. With his decades and decades of experience through sourcing and manufacturing, Darren is the quintessential sourcing expert. I'm not sure what he hasn't manufactured everything from batteries to hard goods to soft goods, to a lot of things, quite a few things he's. He's run a company that had significant presence in china, um and sourcing from Asian manufacturers. Then, most recently, he's pivoted over. Not pivoted, but you've bought a factory in Guatemala. You're getting more established in South America and Central America manufacturing Greenfield startup in Guatemala.

 

Darin Long: 7:59

Yes, in 2019.

 

Jared Ward: 8:01

Yeah, so. So last time Darren came on, it was our best viewed podcast and I think it was because of the value and the wisdom that he provided. I wanted to have him back because I feel like we were just scratching the surface when it comes to value, like valuable answers that he could bring to the table. So, yeah, I've we prepped a lot of questions and these are specifically for brand owners and company owners that are manufacturing, and we've got some very specific questions that I hope will be very valuable I agree, jared, the first time he had me in I thought it was for my looks and stuff.

 

Darin Long: 8:42

No, obviously my wife told me it wasn't either.

 

Jared Ward: 8:45

We fixed the lighting this time too, because the lighting was making him look bald, and that's not true.

 

Darin Long: 8:50

Thank you, jared, you really accommodated me. But the last time was completely unscripted and it took me down paths and experiences and basically opened up some experiential memories that led to critical learnings back when I was really young, carried forward over decades of time, and, of course, other learnings that built upon former learnings. That built upon former learnings as technology and manufacturing processes changed in China and the markets just exploded right and technology exploded and the markets just exploded right and technology exploded. So I really appreciate you providing some additional questions that lead to critical thought processes for today and how to make decisions and how to critically assess supply chain risks and values and stuff like that. So I really appreciate your insight.

 

Jared Ward: 9:43

Yeah, no worries, and stuff like that. So I really appreciate your insight. Yeah, no worries. I think that in my life, failure has been failure is the biggest teacher Like, what little experience I can give to people normally just comes from my failures. So I hope today I mean you have decades of success, but also failures that have taught you and you have some really valuable lessons around tooling and intellectual property, managing your clients, trusting you with all of that information and how you know how. What have you learned about guaranteeing the success of, or the successful completion of, a project without IP getting stolen, without your tooling being stolen? So let's go ahead and I'd say let's start diving into some of the tooling management questions that we talked about. So, before we even start, give us like a two or three sentence answer. What is tooling for people who are watching?

 

Darin Long: 10:47

Cool. So any shape that you have, any form that you have, whether it's metal, plastic, anything, it goes through an engineering process for development.

 

Jared Ward: 10:57

Like this.

 

Darin Long: 10:57

Yeah, oh yeah, and this particular device is probably going to have four or five tools.

 

Jared Ward: 11:05

How do you know that right off the bat?

 

Darin Long: 11:06

Well, you've got a cap on the back. You know that you've got an inside capsule. You also have a series of membrane switches here on the top and those are going to be their own tools as well. So each one of these components is going to have a tool which has a cavity, and that cavity then receives an injection of plastic to create each one of the components. Or for this, the membrane is going to have a two piece and on the back side of it is going to have a circuit board and a chip that receives the signals and converts those into RF signals or, depending on whatever the signal is, so ultraviolet.

 

Darin Long: 11:46

At any rate, that is the tool set and you can have an individual tool and sometimes your tools will have single cavity, dual cavity, tripled or quadruple cavity, and that will allow you to either make one whole component out of one tool set or multiple of the same components out of one tool set. Basically, of the same components out of one tool set. Basically, it's a matter of regulating the flow of the plastic or whatever your substrate is into the tool at a regulated point, so you're not going to have any curls or pulls or any drags in it, so it's always going to come out the same uniform piece, thousand by thousands, by thousands. So that's a tool.

 

Jared Ward: 12:27

And a tool is it's made to manufacture at scale, Because any Tom Dick or Harry can come up with a prototype wooden or metal or whatever. You can hand make a lot of things, or even just 3D print but tooling is entirely different. It's what allows you to manufacture at scale, right?

 

Darin Long: 12:47

it is. It allows you to put together things at volume, at a highly regulated pace and quality control. Any other type of tooling, whether it's a vacuum form or something like that, they they provide modes of error that you don't have in this sort of rigorous tooling process.

 

Jared Ward: 13:07

So tooling management, like so when you get a tool done for a customer, how often do factories like pass that around or something gets stolen? Is it a real issue?

 

Darin Long: 13:22

The answer is yes. So, as a supply chain specialist, one of the most important things that I ever did was quickly identify the fastest course or path for a product to be brought to market. Often that is researching your competitors' supply chain and then identifying the hurdles within. They're basically your subject matter for study, right, and you're going to identify what the weak points are and what the strong points are of their supply chain, all the way to tooling and the production facility that either made the tooling or uses the tooling to manufacture your product. And early on, what I recognized was these tools were often for rent. Now, I'm not saying that I ever rented any of those Jared, but I know at times many of those tools were also used for sampling for other people's products.

 

Jared Ward: 14:16

The factory.

 

Darin Long: 14:17

If you didn't go there, you wouldn't know they were doing this, that they were sending you someone else's product as evidence that they were capable of making that product for you. So every time you mount your tool onto an injection system and every time you take it off, you suffer the risk that that tool is going to fail. Moving it on from the factory floor on the back of a truck into a warehouse, you suffer the risk of having a failure in your tool or having it damaged. Fall off the truck, fall off of lift.

 

Jared Ward: 14:49

So what you?

 

Darin Long: 14:49

want to do is you want to mitigate that risk by limiting the moves and limiting the mounts and that's where a lot of the cost is in tooling is making it and maintaining it, as well as preparing it to load on the equipment for manufacturing. That could be two or three hour cycle time, and when you put it on your machine to make your parts, you want to make sure you get as many parts good parts as you can pull the tool right off and get it in safe storage, and most people won't ever tell you this, but the only way to secure your tools. There's only three ways that you can secure your tools from other people borrowing or loaning or making samples on. One is you have a counter installed in the tool itself.

 

Jared Ward: 15:32

What's a counter?

 

Darin Long: 15:33

A counter is a mechanical, non-digital. It's a mechanical switch where every time it is parted and joined, parted and joined, there's an internal counter that you can't remove that tells you how many times it's been parted.

 

Jared Ward: 15:50

Oh, okay, okay, got it.

 

Darin Long: 15:52

Now, that's the most expensive method to do it and some people say you can do it.

 

Jared Ward: 15:55

That's expensive, interesting it's relatively expensive.

 

Darin Long: 15:57

Okay, the process we like to do the most was the simplest and easiest for me was using a can seal, like a 40 foot or 20 foot container. There's a seal that's put on that container before it ships and that that seal can't be broken or else you've got there's heck to pay for that. So we would use those seals to bind our tools to make sure that they couldn't be opened and used. The seal would have to be broken and then it would be opened and then resealed. So we would seal the tool with that twist-on seal and then take a picture of it and log that and then use that for our next use.

 

Jared Ward: 16:37

Well, would somebody? I might be ignorant here, but would somebody still be able to open, to break the seal and then reseal it without you knowing? No, no, no, it's impossible. Would somebody still be able to break the seal and then reseal it?

 

Darin Long: 16:47

without you knowing. No, no, no, it's impossible, impossible, it's impossible to avoid tamper detection.

 

Jared Ward: 16:51

Got it. The third is you simply take it off-site and you store it in your own warehouse.

 

Darin Long: 17:02

So you know physically nobody's going to touch it because it's just right in your back door. It's going to lock the key in your own back door. Now we would take off-site, store off-site and seal and those are the least expensive, most sure ways that you're going to have to prohibit your tools from being used for someone else's supply chain.

 

Jared Ward: 17:17

So, just again, help me understand a little bit more. So the problem is okay, I have this gizmo or this gadget, right, client bit more like. So the problem is okay, I have, I have this gizmo or this gadget. Like client comes to you with a I don't know 3d printed sample and you're oh great, here's, here's the tooling. It's going to happen. They pay for it, the tooling gets made. So the danger is, you know, you're away from china, you're away from the factory, and they could be just sending this to another factory for them to use it, and it could be. So.

 

Darin Long: 17:46

That's common, though, or like relatively common I don't want to say how common it really is, but it was a practice that was available to us over and, over and over again like you could have called somebody up and been like hey, we really need the tooling for this, can we borrow it?

 

Darin Long: 18:04

and they're like it's kind of like behind the scenes you don't walk into a scenario or walk a client into a scenario where you're, you're basically helping them violate someone else's property. But in the design process often you found this as a rapid way of prototyping. And then you would adjust your design processes.

 

Jared Ward: 18:29

Okay, that makes sense.

 

Darin Long: 18:29

Just slightly off, but the truth is you're still using someone else's capital to advance your own product development, and when I realized that that was happening, we quit doing it. Most people don't know this happens behind the curtain. There's a lot that goes on in Oz.

 

Jared Ward: 18:50

Okay, so you would talk to factories and you just didn't know that that's how they were producing the prototype, and as soon as you figured it out, you're like no, I don't want to have a part of that.

 

Darin Long: 19:00

You often wonder how fast, why they were as fast as they were. How could you get this prototype or how did you get this sample done so fast? You didn't always know it was a Sony product or an Indian product or a product from another country, and you could often search your own databases and have your own attorney search the IP database and make sure that you're not stealing someone's IP.

 

Darin Long: 19:28

But not everything is out there, and so the speed with which they would render a sample sometimes was just staggering and it was like wait a minute, how did you do it so fast? You're so good. Then they'd open the curtain to me was just staggering and it was like wait a minute, how did you do it so fast? You're so good. Then they'd open the curtain to me, and that's how I learned that that was a critical path process for them to be so rapid and fast to market. Number two was once they knew that you wanted a tool similar to this, then they would take you to the tool factory that made that particular tool, because now, instead of them having to rewrite all of the code necessary to make that tool, all they would have to go in to do is to tweak a few of the parameters and then now you suddenly have a different arc or a different shape or a different whatever, and they're not spending as much time in the reprogramming of the CNC machines and the code.

 

Jared Ward: 20:21

Wow, that's really interesting. So this is still a related question, but is it possible to do tooling in the United States, or I guess? Let me rephrase that question Absolutely what is the most cost-effective way to do tooling and what is your recommended way of doing tooling?

 

Darin Long: 20:49

Okay, I would say there's two recommended ways. One is the way that you feel most comfortable with, and the other is the path or method that is the fastest to market. Sometimes they are the same. Often they are not, because you feel like you need to have more quality control over the tool or how it's developed or made. And if you have a deep pocketbook making your tools in the United States, it's fine. But I have worked with toolers here in the United States. I've worked with toolers in India, I've worked with toolers in China, and India and China are by far faster than any tool makers I've ever worked with in the United States.

 

Jared Ward: 21:35

Ah interesting. Why is that Just infrastructure?

 

Darin Long: 21:40

There's a little bit of infrastructure to it. We never seem to be waiting for tool steel in China or India. There were blocks of steel along the roads where people would come and basically have it cut off and then have it delivered within four hours or eight hours to the tooling plant to start being planed and ground down or put in the EDM machines, so we never seemed to have a shortage of tool steel available. Many of our first prototype tools, though, were made in aluminum, to make it really quick get your prototypes right If you have to do any redos. Aluminum tooling is quicker, and then we would move to steel tools okay after we prove the design interesting so what?

 

Jared Ward: 22:26

why would somebody do tooling in the United States?

 

Darin Long: 22:28

you said a deep pocketbook, but deep pocketbook and control over the process. Make sure they're right. There's a lot of people engineers, and from well-founded experience they might say that the attention to detail wasn't given or that the Chinese will make a tool too fast, which results in its shortened lifespan. So instead of getting a million pieces out of your tool, maybe you're only going to get 500,000 pieces out of your tool thousand pieces out of your tool.

 

Jared Ward: 23:05

I've also heard stories that chinese tooling or asian tooling versus american um. Tell me how right or wrong I am like. For example, going back to that remote um, if there's blemishes in the tooling, it will come out in mass production like there will be like random. It won't be as smooth. Is that true or no?

 

Darin Long: 23:25

not really okay, I've never experienced this. If we have a surface condition in a tool where we want a sand finish, or we want a high gloss finish, or we want a smooth or semi-smooth finish, those are all, all declared in the design documents.

 

Jared Ward: 23:40

Okay.

 

Darin Long: 23:48

And there are periodically flow processes within the tool cavity itself that maybe are not engineered the way they could, because when you have a pen and your pens get pushed and the injection process occurs when that plastic flows in, if the tool isn't the right temperature and the plastic is in the right temperature, you're going to see flow lines and it's going to look like a blemish from the, from an outsider's perspective, you're going to look and see there's a pattern on the plastic. Sometimes that's not a tool, it's just a matter of.

 

Darin Long: 24:14

This is an early part yeah and things weren't up to temperature yet. But but if that's going to be coated or chrome coated or painted or anything like that, normally the manufacturer doesn't care about that.

 

Jared Ward: 24:27

Got it Okay, so that was good. Yep, nice, okay, that'll be good to move on to intellectual property.

 

Darin Long: 24:44

Did I summarize how to protect your tooling concisely enough?

 

Jared Ward: 24:49

No, we'll be able to make cuts. We'll be able to cut it. I think it's perfect. What's a good hook to get him into the black book, trying to think like what is the biggest secret you could share with us from your career?

 

Darin Long: 25:12

I don't know do you have any secrets? Okay, this is one I've never told anyone?

 

Jared Ward: 25:17

Yeah, I'll say that, darren, do you have any IP secrets Should? I say like Chinese IP secrets oh yeah, what is the biggest secret to Chinese IP? Chinese infiltration of IP? Could I say that?

 

Darin Long: 25:41

I don't know if it's infiltration of IP. Could I say that I don't know if it's infiltration of IP as much as proliferation. Those books were available anywhere in China. You had to show credential. It wasn't like I could just walk in Well no, I could never walk in. Right White boys no yeah. Well no, I could never walk in. Right white boys no yeah. But you had to have a factory that would that were was making complementary products or competitive products. So you, you needed to show that you had the engineering, credibility and credence and a factory and a reason for you couldn't just go in and I got it for you couldn't just go in?

 

Darin Long: 26:20

and uh got it like a library and say yeah, you know, I want to read up on honda for interesting, yeah so, but once you, once you submitted your request, they told you when the when the volume was available, or volumes that's incredible when I first saw that, I was like what is this? And I started flipping the pages full large engineering diagrams. I was was like are you serious?

 

Jared Ward: 26:42

That is. I can't believe it.

 

Darin Long: 26:45

And Juyu, who's my partner in that particular project. We co-invested in a motorcycle manufacturing plant and he said, Darren, we can get any motorcycle, any frame. If we want Yamaha, we want Honda, we want Kawasaki, Suzuki, we can get them all. And it includes all the metallurgy, hardness of every screw, bolt, everything, Full rebuild. Do you want?

 

Jared Ward: 27:15

to do all that again. Oh yeah, all right, let's ask that again and start recording. I didn't want to interrupt you, that's why, no worries, all right. So, moving on to intellectual property, well, this is a hot one, yeah, so you told me before this that you have like a pretty big secret that you can share with us, like something that you've never shared on a podcast. What is the biggest, what is the best kept secret around Chinese IP that you can share with us?

 

Darin Long: 27:49

All right, I'm quite sure that you've never heard this or no one's ever heard this on a podcast. There are what's called black books in China, and if you're a manufacturer of a motorcycle and I had a co-invested factory where we were making motorcycles in Chongqing years ago and we need to do some research I didn't know what the nature of that research would be and where it would lead us. And one day I walk in Jared. This is one of the most eye-opening experiences I ever had. I walk into our meeting room and engineers are all there and everyone that was planned to be there was there and there were these large black books on the table and they were thick, four inches thick, six inches thick and large books maybe two feet by two feet. They were in varying sizes. Books maybe two feet by two, two feet. They were in varying sizes and when you open them up, they included the full blown-up diagrams of this particular one was a Honda 450 motor, along with the Honda frame so this is like insane IP at your fingertips.

 

Darin Long: 29:01

It was the full deconstructed. I don't remember what year. It was. Honda 450R or Honda 450. That's insane, from soup to nuts. It included metallurgy for the motor. It included hardness for the nuts bolts, torque. No way Torque things down. No Cam sizes motor. I thought To torque things down. No Cam sizes motor.

 

Jared Ward: 29:22

I thought that was just like a myth.

 

Darin Long: 29:25

No, there's no myth. These are real, and if you're in that particular industry in that particular industry, it's not like I could walk in and check out one of these books. You submit a request, the request is reviewed and then you're told when your volume or volumes are available. And that would allow manufacturers to rapidly assess what the marketscape looked like from a technology perspective and for them to rapidly duplicate, if they wanted to, or to borrow some of the metallurgy, the understanding, whatever element they wanted to borrow and implement within their own current production design, whatever they wanted to do.

 

Jared Ward: 30:04

Do you think the chinese get a bad rap for like as ip stealers, or is it just the fact that maybe everything is just like so open source and openly shared? What's your thoughts on that?

 

Darin Long: 30:17

um, yes, they do get a bad rap. They. They begin the bad rap for years. But when I say bad rap, um, there's ip theft, there is it actual theft, and then implementation. So what's?

 

Jared Ward: 30:34

what's the difference between studying, for example, like a honda engine, and like taking? What's the difference between theft and studying, then?

 

Darin Long: 30:43

The difference between theft and studying.

 

Darin Long: 30:46

Some would say there's a broad line and some would say there's a fine line.

 

Darin Long: 30:50

But when you see the actual product being built in exact duplicate or close to exact duplicate and put on the road and sold and implemented, that's when you know. I had the unique experience of this would be a completely different podcast of being on a military base at one time, being told that a particular IP that I was responsible for was not duplicable and could not be manufactured and the license agreement under which we were operating could not be executed. And I flashed a name card, walked in, I was on the base and then I saw pictures of the product and announcements where the product was being sold to military and to police. So I knew that the IP that we were representing was in fact being built, commercialized and sold. Wow, yes, so you know that IP is being shared and off of that IP, a lot of the copying and everything that's going on has been used to develop industries in China. I'm probably going to get in trouble for that, but it's so interesting, though, that you know what comes to my mind.

 

Jared Ward: 32:07

That's super random. I watch anime, so one of those. In almost every single anime there's this concept of a library with big books that just has the information for everything, and it's so interesting, like in avatar, the last airbender. Um, there's like this, there's this, there's this library that you go to. It's called one sheet Hong's library, and basically you can like research anything, and I feel like there's some truth to that. In China, like they, there's some actual libraries like this.

 

Darin Long: 32:42

I've seen evidence that there are libraries like that. It was amazing to me what these volumes held and we spent days poring over them. We had to return them on schedule, but I would never have been able to see a Honda or a and we could have gotten a Suzuki, a Yamaha, kawasaki, whatever style, design, year, make, model we wanted. We would have been able to receive the full diagrams and metallurgic reports and hardness reports of everything.

 

Jared Ward: 33:12

Wow so what's the most blatant IP theft that you've ever personally experienced?

 

Darin Long: 33:20

latent IP theft that you've ever personally experienced. I had one experience with the. It was a Swedish company and their IP in China.

 

Jared Ward: 33:26

Okay, got it. When you get a client and they entrust very secretive IP, what measures do you go about to protect that intellectual property?

 

Darin Long: 33:47

um, you know, we approach everyone's IP with a high degree of respect, because it doesn't matter if it's a remote control, whatever the widget is, if it's an inductor, if it's some sort of battery or anything To that individual. That IP is a considerable investment to them and very valuable to them. So we treat each piece of IP or design or development with the same amount of respect. Piece of IP or design or development with the same amount of respect. The first thing we do is we break it down into its individual components and we identify which things would create a differentiated notion of what this product really is. Most things are plastic boxes, enclosures, carriers, straps, bands, you know whatever, and it all looks common until you reach that certain level of assembly or this one component which creates this differentiating thing or causes a person to say what is this?

 

Jared Ward: 34:40

and what is this?

 

Darin Long: 34:40

for that key component. Then we take to a more controlled, recognized site or a manufacturer, someone that we know we can trust to make that one component and that's all he'll make. The rest of the components will be made somewhere else in a more commoditized platform. And then what we might do is we might delay the final assembly to a certain point in time or a location where we have a higher degree of control over the assembly process and put that more IP-centric or differentiating component in last. If it's a matter of software or firmware that helps make it fully IP-laden, that's a little easier, Right, and you can always pull that to the final end or even do the firmware injection here in the United States Do you ever feel like that is a bit overkill.

 

Jared Ward: 35:30

Like, for example, if brands watching this are really concerned about, I don't know, taking a design to China or to Mexico, when should they take those measures? Versus like, ah, it doesn't really matter, like, just give it to the factory.

 

Darin Long: 35:48

Jared, that is a really good question In the light of Honda, kawasaki and all of their IP basically being laid bare for anyone to research and you know they've got deep pockets of protection against that and seeing then that IP basically proliferated through the markets, whether it's hidden under a different brand or inside of a motor that no one will ever open and operate. You know there's IP leak. We call that IP leak.

 

Darin Long: 36:15

But when you're talking about small manufacturers one, two or three product-focused companies knowing that in 30 days their product could be on Amazon competing with them they want to ask themselves how long do they have? Not, if it will happen, how long do they have? We have a new client who basically is producing their products, had them online for six months and, as soon as they move towards the thresholds of approximately 1,000 sales per month, a new amazon vendor came on. It was a chinese factory and the chinese factory threw a lot of advertising at it, marked things down three, four, five dollars under what the product original product cost was, and then basically began scooping their market, taking all of their sales from amazon. Their sales dropped by like 30 or 40 percent over the first, I mean.

 

Jared Ward: 37:13

I even I know personally a lot of people like that One of my friends, jason. He owns Dori Home. Alicia is the CEO, but they're a Luminous client. But yeah, they sell bath stones and Chinese knockoffs are like the number one killer of their sales on Amazon. It's insane.

 

Darin Long: 37:33

It is. They duplicate the whole Amazon sales model and the product, number one killer of their sales on Amazon. It's insane, it is. They duplicate the whole Amazon sales model and the product and unfortunately, the first place we would blame is our own factory and say gosh, who else would have? Been able to duplicate this so fast. The truth is, it's not often that factory because they don't want to lose you either as a client, and they feel pain when you lose market share to someone who's copying them.

 

Darin Long: 38:01

They don't like it any more than you do, which is one of the most interesting cultural passions that we share. They don't like being knocked off.

 

Jared Ward: 38:12

And if it?

 

Darin Long: 38:12

happens from within their factory. They let those people go. They don't fire them and often they will sue them locally, but it happens, jared, this is one of the things. So it's not a matter of do we start it early on. The question is did you start it early enough, and how long can I hold off through some sort of unique engineering process or something? Hold off people from copying me out of China?

 

Jared Ward: 38:37

I have a belief that people a lot of times are a little bit too conspiratorial when it comes to like my IP, my IP's been stolen. This must have happened. He must have passed this to his cousin and then got the key. And this must have happened. He must have passed this to his cousin and then got the key. How often do you think stuff like that, like this conspiratorial, behind-the-scenes stuff, is actually happening? Or is it just a factory? They just see this oh, this is a great product, we can make it. They copy it the best they can and then undercut you.

 

Darin Long: 39:13

I have grown away from the conspiratorial side of things to where I. There's so much information available through third-party uh access and data evaluation of the top stores and top sellers and tiktok and amazon and Shopify everywhere else. You're exposed 24-7. And if you've got an appetite for it, you're going to study your competitor and you're going to study them thoroughly and you're going to go duplicate their process because that's an easy path for you to make revenue. People do it here.

 

Darin Long: 39:50

You see, people all the time saying I'm going to show you how to duplicate this website or this product or whatever left or right, but it's really no longer a matter of do I protect it, it's a matter of how can I?

 

Darin Long: 40:02

yes, and prolong the period of time between now and when someone does it? And then, what is your strategy going to be when someone else introduces a competitive product? You should compete not just by price, but maybe have a supplemental offering that keeps people seeing that you're in the product development lifecycle and offering more, higher value, not just a race to the bottom.

 

Jared Ward: 40:24

Right. Well, changing lanes a little bit right now. As somebody who has worked in sourcing myself, I always found it challenging to find people that you could trust, because you're going to a foreign country to source products A lot of times you're bringing IP your life's work for many inventors. So the people that you entrust in China, in Vietnam, in Mexico to me, sourcing in China, the number one problem was always trust. Is this person representing me? Do they have value? So I'm just curious how have you found trustworthy, value-driven Chinese people, as you've sourced specifically in China for so many years?

 

Darin Long: 41:25

Partners or factories or individuals. Those relationships are curated. You focus on curating those relationships. I have a good story for this one. It was Oklahoma. I think it was 2 o'clock in the morning. There were only certain phone numbers that would ring through on my phone at that hour was Oona Lin, and Oona worked for an electronics company that I had and she was the. She was the export sales manager. She was a. She was in a position of relative responsibility and reported directly to the owner of the company in the president company, and Oona delivered a really painful bit of news to me. She said, darren, I think the batteries that you have selected and purchased, specific for this electronics item, are being used in someone else's supply chain and what is being inserted and put into your product is someone else's substandard battery.

 

Jared Ward: 42:27

So, part of the manufacturing process, you had pre-bought specific batteries to go into the assembly assembly and she's calling out hey, darren, that's not happening, that's exactly right, got it many of us have nominated vendors, and we're all familiar with nominated vendors.

 

Darin Long: 42:41

These are people that have gone through a significant level of vetting and in many cases you have pre-purchased the item, the chip, the component or sub-assembly gotly from them, specifically for your overall build. They're designated and in this particular case, jared, I had gone through the complete supply chain for this lithium battery to make sure we didn't have perforations within our linings, to make sure that we weren't going to have any of these spontaneous combustible.

 

Jared Ward: 43:09

So them switching it up. This was a big deal like major QC issue. Major liability issues.

 

Darin Long: 43:17

And so when Una told me this, she said Darren, I'm probably going to lose my job for letting you know this, oh my God. And I said, una, you probably will, but I thank you for having the integrity to call me and let me know this. But let's work this out in a way that you won't have to lose your job. I said we'll do it this way. Give me a couple minutes, I'll call you back. I'll have a plan. I called Una right back and I said Una, don't tell anyone else, I'll be on the next plane and I'll be over there and we'll do one of our random factory visits. You'll be surprised, I'll be surprised. I'll walk in and we'll take a look at the assembly line.

 

Darin Long: 43:57

What's up, and we can all discover this together.

 

Jared Ward: 43:59

Yeah.

 

Darin Long: 44:00

And, in this process of discovery, identify the root cause, identify the potential damage, the delay to shipment and everything that you would discover in the process of discovery and let's just meet with the engineering team and see where it goes. And she said darren, thank you for respecting the potential for me to lose my job, and I love this plan. We can make this work and everything will go well. We did long story short. Um, I hired una to be my china manager you poached her.

 

Darin Long: 44:29

Nice, I did and I learned a lot from una because once I empowered her to help lead me through this fact finding discovery process and the engineering and how things can work, she basically illuminated to me all of my own weak points within a factory manufacturing process that I wouldn't have seen on my own because I'm not there. And if you're not there and you don't have presence, you're going to have components sub-assemblies replaced. It happens. This is a pervasive challenge. Even with nominated vendor delivered product. They can still be packed in someone else's product.

 

Jared Ward: 45:12

Vendor delivered product, they can still be packed in someone else's product. So a sub-assembly is just you have a bunch of core components, Like a manufacturer will take on the building, for simplicity, of an iPhone, and within this your build materials might have like 10 components and within those 10, a couple of them will for sure have sub-assemblies that have to go to somewhere else.

 

Darin Long: 45:34

Yeah, that are delivered from somewhere else.

 

Jared Ward: 45:36

Okay, and so what you're saying is to cut costs or to bring up lead times? Factories will routinely if you're not there, they'll get a different sub-assembly.

 

Darin Long: 45:50

Unfortunately, if the management is not of high integrity the management in this case we learned that the management had made the decision to elevate the product of one of my competitors with my battery through a different warranty. So they oversold their own internal product and said we will guarantee this battery this long life, this recharge capability and flammability research. I already had the Bura, veritas and SGS reports on what the battery in terms of durability, rechargeability and lack of I call it flame retardants in life.

 

Darin Long: 46:30

I already had that, and so they just took my report, put someone else's name on it and then showed it to their client and basically replaced their original battery stack with mine.

 

Jared Ward: 46:42

That is insane, and it's no wonder. That's why I do have some empathy for, you know, for products that get busted and you know, maybe the that get busted and you know, maybe the CEO of this small company was actually oblivious, like the factory was just swapping out a sub assembly and they didn't know. Um, I mean, it's why they need a company like yours, and also experience like yours, to understand what things are happening and how to stop it.

 

Darin Long: 47:15

And supplemental to that from for future experiences where we had relatively high, complex builds, we would place a potential employee in a hiring process to be hired in the factory For a corporate intelligence perspective. If we had long-run products and clients with long-run plans, we would have people hired into their assembly line and it was part of our built-in cost for the product. Now, most companies, most people, they wouldn't think to go through this corporate intelligence process to help understand and secure their supply chain and their manufacturing and assembly. But if you don't do this, you're missing one of your most valuable insurance protocols possible Knowing the inside workings of your own product and your own factories. That doesn't mean I distrusted the factory owner or management. There are many motives to things being shifted and changed in process. No worries, Are we banging on all cylinders?

 

Jared Ward: 48:20

Yeah, I figured out while we were doing this how to clear an entire cart.

 

Darin Long: 48:38

Now I know how to. I thought it was as simple as erasing it off the computer, but it's not, oh, this is so all the times I've discussed with people, they've never heard of me, even in american chamber of commerce when I've talked about it my top viewed TikTok, we're gonna do what's your top viewed? Just ring the bell this.

 

Jared Ward: 49:01

This one got 52,000 views organically and it was marketplace in China that does billions and billions of dollars of business and almost nobody knows about it. It's called the Iwu marketplace. So, if I do, of dollars of business and almost nobody knows about it. It's called the market, yeah so if I do the black book I bet that could get like a million views. It's like the intrigue what I notice with people that watch. They really like the intrigue of china, like the oh, you'd never guess this and um, I really thought it was cool.

 

Darin Long: 49:33

The other question is is someone using your tools to make their product and sell in China?

 

Jared Ward: 49:40

Yeah.

 

Darin Long: 49:41

The truth is, unfortunately. The sad news is, yes, if they have not taken one of those three steps to protect their tools, their tools are being used in China to supply at least a domestic product. That's the sad truth, wow, and we could restate that if you'd like.

 

Jared Ward: 50:01

Yeah, let's wait, let's so.

 

Darin Long: 50:04

I'm curious right now. Yeah, you can say what would be one of the saddest experiences, or something like that Around tooling. Yeah, just real quick on that tooling okay, okay, yeah because if they're not using one of those three methods to secure their tooling, they're being maybe not international markets, but domestic markets how sasha would be a good hook for that.

 

Jared Ward: 50:26

What is the saddest? Uh, what's more poppy.

 

Darin Long: 50:33

So are your tools being used to support someone else's supply chain? Is it possible that they're Absolutely I don't know what the hook? Is it possible that?

 

Jared Ward: 50:47

your tools are being used? Oh yeah, Is it possible that your tools are being used to support China's supply chain? Okay, Wait. So tell me, is it possible that your tools are being used to support China's supply chain unknowingly?

 

Darin Long: 51:08

This is a sad truth. This is a sad truth If you're not using one of these three tool securing methods. Your tools are being used for other people's supply chains. You either have a counter in the tool, you're using a container seal to wrap your tool and make sure it's not being parted and used at another time, or three, you're not moving it off-site. Wow, I'm sorry to say that, but yeah that's insane.

 

Jared Ward: 51:36

Now, that was a good. That was a good hook. Uh, now also just closing out the, just closing out the, the story about una. Um, what comes to my mind as, as you say, that is, you can't train ethics. You can train QC all day and the best practices and how to source a sub-assembly, but none of that. This is just ethics. That was it. It's just something that you can't train like somebody just wanting to do right by the customer. Many people say you can buy loyalty.

 

Darin Long: 52:12

You can pay for trusts, ain't like somebody just wanting to do right by the customer. Many people say you can buy loyalty, you can pay for trusts. But the truth is it all boils down to an individual integrity and honesty, and that can be either at the individual level or you can see it within departments and it can be institutionalized. But if you can see it within departments and it can be institutionalized, but if you have bad actors within an organization, sooner or later you begin to see this integrity erosion where?

 

Darin Long: 52:40

they're moving your product to a lower cost. Lower cost because margins are being pinched, inflationary pressures are driving costs up. But if you don't have open dialogue or you have the right eyes in your process all along and, frankly, that you're open as the buyer, that you're open to the fact that inflationary pressures and costs of labor and capital are increasing, you periodically do need to reevaluate your cost structure. If you keep pushing back and pushing back, you're forcing them into a scenario where they have to take measures that are not forward-facing.

 

Darin Long: 53:15

That's an illegitimate design and development practice when you're not opening things up and having open dialogue on what the real needs of your marketplace are.

 

Jared Ward: 53:23

That's so interesting. We've talked a lot about the good and the bad of Chinese manufacturing. Yeah, we've talked a lot about the good and the bad of Chinese manufacturing. With the United States trying to move as much manufacturing to the continent, to North America and South America, as possible, what do you think they can learn from China manufacturing?

 

Darin Long: 53:55

What do you think they can learn from Chinese manufacturing? Well, jared, this is a struggle I have as an American citizen, and it's not something I complain about. I'm not whining or complaining, but when you try to manufacture anything here in the United States, you struggle with an appetite, an appetite for work, work, an appetite to make a quality product. You struggle with environmental regulations and are we sustainable? And, and our hiring practice is correct? You spend an awful lot of time focused on non-productive, non-production related activity sets and you feel like you lose a lot of traction.

 

Darin Long: 54:35

One of the things I found in China, and basically was one of the things that I enjoyed the most working in China, when I went over there, everyone was focused on output. How can we make the output better? How can we make our product more relevant? How can we maintain relevancy? How can we do it faster? How can we meet the output better? How can we make our product more relevant? How can we maintain relevancy? How can we do it faster? How can we meet the customer's expectations more quickly, efficiently, effectively, how can we make them look better among their peers?

 

Darin Long: 55:03

This is in every single production meeting we ever had. These were key elements in the discussion and often led the remaining balance of our discussion. Discussion and often led the remaining balance of our discussion, and they focused on aligning capital to meet those needs. If we needed a tool, if we needed a new piece of equipment, if we needed anything, it was a phone call at the table the bank or the, the. The bank would send a person over to meet with me or meet with us the tooling profession.

 

Darin Long: 55:32

The tooling factory would send a person over to meet with me or meet with us. The tooling factory would send someone over or whoever was selling equipment that would be related to the manufacturing of this. Maybe it was a unique direct-to-garment printer, maybe it was a heat transfer process, or maybe it was a rotomold, it didn't matter. The factory would send a sales rep over and they would meet with us within 30 minutes to an hour if they were.

 

Darin Long: 55:56

They were there and they were corporal to our meeting. If you have a meeting, a design meeting or anything here, you're lucky to get a call back in a week. You're lucky to have everyone that you ever need at the table really at the table, or or circled in for a zoom meeting it sounds like like they just cut out all the fluff and it's purely output-focused. It's an alignment issue. They are aligned and they really are not aligned and focused on profit. Interestingly, at first they believe profit trails customer satisfaction. You don't hear that very often.

 

Jared Ward: 56:33

Well, it's funny because you say that and that is a common thought, that's a prevailing thought in SaaS, like SaaS software as a service, like Luminous. I mean, that's the whole point of why you fundraise and you lose money. It's interesting that that's how the Chinese think about it.

 

Darin Long: 56:51

And so here in the States I find it difficult to find government, programs, protocols, support, to create this native alignment. If there was a major issue over in China, you could you literally would find government, though he's not a high-level official. You would find an economic development person that will send over from your government local government offices. How can we make this work for you? Mr Long Wow, you can find that here in the United.

 

Jared Ward: 57:15

States. Oh, there's no way.

 

Darin Long: 57:16

Right, and so what we've missed here is rapid-to-market industrialization, where capital markets, labor markets and even your political interests are aligned to deliver a product. That may happen in large Fortune 500 companies, but in the small entrepreneurial engagements you don't find that level of alignment and marshaled resources to help enable the. Us small manufacturer. That's what we're missing.

 

Jared Ward: 57:45

Jared the political landscape and what is being prioritized socially, or like what do you think? What is that actually a symptom of?

 

Darin Long: 58:00

well, it may be political will, it may be a matter of hey, this is too small for me to show interest in. It may be a matter of this isn't my wheelhouse, or we need to focus on something a little more high-tech, longer vision, whatever. But when you're talking about a manufacturing base to support a society, to support a region, whatever their needs are, I think the same mentality and focus of delivery should be the same, just enabling factors of production for alignment, to drive capacity and profitability. And I feel like I'm missing that. Having built a factory in Linden to make PPE during COVID, it was a struggle to get someone out there simply to provide us electricity. It was 90 days before we had even remotely close to the amount of electrical service that we needed. Wow, 90 days that is insane.

 

Darin Long: 59:00

Unfortunately, it was it was difficult.

 

Jared Ward: 59:04

Last question on this, but what is the stereotype of the Chinese kid soldering away in a heated factory? Is that a true stereotype for most factories? I guess are the labor issues that are really highlighted in the United States, particularly like social issues. Did you find that to be true or was it frequently happening?

 

Darin Long: 59:35

In the 90s, there were what you would readily consider and label as child labor issues that were going on, especially in the handicraft.

 

Jared Ward: 59:45

Okay.

 

Darin Long: 59:47

But in the factories where I spent most of my time. An easy early review would let you know that no, there weren't child labor. We wouldn't have child labor issues there. One of the cultural variances between the United States and China is that in order for anyone in China to go to middle school or go to high school or go to a trade school, they had to sit for tests that were progressively difficult. And if you did not test to get into a trade school or go into middle school at 12 to 13 years of age, you were left without an educational path or progress path forward. You could retest, but if you didn't test well, you needed to work on the farm or you needed to work somewhere else to help complement your family's need for additional income and to help maintain your needs too. And so I think from an agrarian, more agrarian society to a more industrialized society, early on we were extending a requirement that from a culture and society.

 

Darin Long: 1:00:59

Early on it was difficult for China to attend to, because many of those child laborers we would call them 14, 15, 16 years old they were already gone through trade school and trade training in order to participate in that level of industry. And so, from a Chinese perspective it wasn't illegal, it wasn't against law and they were trained. But from our perspective they shouldn't even have a job yet. From a cultural and I recognize the differences in our cultural, ethical legal frameworks that we had from the US to China, witnessing that in China I recognize they had a much larger population base that they needed to support and sustain and this sort of process through their industrialization process was one of the factors they found to help smooth out consumer base or an agrarian transition into mechanized industrial base. And it was a bumpy road but I they took attention to it. There wasn't a single parent that wanted to send their child to a difficult or harsh workplace.

 

Jared Ward: 1:02:08

Right.

 

Darin Long: 1:02:09

And many of the parents worked with their own children in the same factory to make sure that they weren't inappropriately used or abused. Right and what I witnessed was that Jared, and sometimes it was difficult for me to see and witness, but I recognized that I was in a different culture and I was in a completely different environment and I tried to weigh it in terms of a new learning for myself. But I saw it very few times and I was always careful to be mindful of that in the factories.

 

Jared Ward: 1:02:44

Right.

 

Darin Long: 1:02:45

Only the 90s, though early 90s, okay, I think this the 90s, though Early 90s.

 

Jared Ward: 1:02:47

Okay, I think this will be our last question. Is there one of these questions? Yeah, Is there one question that you had like a killer story lined up for? I think?

 

Darin Long: 1:03:06

we made a lot of headway though.

 

Jared Ward: 1:03:09

Well, but there's a lot. There's 17, holy crap, there's 20.

 

Darin Long: 1:03:26

Oh my gosh. Yeah, okay, that one was an eye-opener, not that that is applicable here. So my wife and I were in the I'm going to have to water down, we were in an institute, but it was the Nunging era, are we on? Yeah, we'll cut it out, yeah, so which question am I asking, though we saw, pentium chips before they were released here in the us and we saw them controlling little robots in a lab and the students, the research students that were showing us well, let me I'll start it with.

 

Jared Ward: 1:04:12

So what? This will be our last question for today we might have to do like part three or something. What's what's been one of the craziest things that you've ever seen in China?

 

Darin Long: 1:04:26

so my wife and I worked at an institute for a period of time teaching English, and we were I taught United Nations development volunteers English. And we taught business school and engineering students English.

 

Darin Long: 1:04:43

Okay, in a particular practice and we were invited several times to go see some of what their projects were because they wanted to learn English specific to their project and be able to introduce their project in English. It was part of their assignments. So we were introduced and invited to go to a particular lab and it was a robotics lab and my wife and I are not expecting anything other than just see a robotics lab. He pointed to where they were, so it couldn't be high tech because the windows were always open.

 

Jared Ward: 1:05:18

Right.

 

Darin Long: 1:05:19

Which in most universities back in the 90s that's the way they were there wasn't any central air or environmental controls. So we walk upstairs and we walk in. It's an open classroom with seating and blackboards around it and over along the windows there are soldering chairs, soldering stations, setups and mini PCBs and stuff scattered around and you saw little robots and I was like is gonna be cool. And when we walk over and we look at these robots, there are Intel chips being used to control the robots. And you had 386s, 46, and there was a Pentium chip there.

 

Jared Ward: 1:06:12

What is a Pentium chip? Layman's.

 

Darin Long: 1:06:18

Is there a Pentium chip today?

 

Jared Ward: 1:06:19

I don't know, I don't even know what it is.

 

Darin Long: 1:06:22

It was an early, it was a powerful, one of Intel's most powerful chips at the time and I didn't even know they'd been fully released in the US market yet. And it was one of those aha moments where I was like the Chinese are, they're not just developing and trying to copy technology, they really are looking at being technology advanced and forward and implementing. The next week I had invited some of my friends from Nanjing University to come see the lab with me because one of them was a computer scientist. He was going into computer science at BYU. We went up to the room and it was empty.

 

Jared Ward: 1:07:08

What do you think happened?

 

Darin Long: 1:07:09

We weren't supposed to be up there and we weren't supposed to see that, and it was research and development done under a direction. But we were two of the only four foreigners on the campus and we probably shouldn't have seen what we saw. So the research moved to some other location. But that was still one of the most remarkable, eye-opening experiences I had with advanced tech US tech being implemented and developed into processes. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, on one hand I thought it was way cool. On the other hand, it was a little bit scary to see that.

 

Jared Ward: 1:07:49

Makes you wonder what they're doing nowadays. Oh sure, 30 years in the future, like AI, now I mean.

 

Darin Long: 1:07:57

All sides of the pond Right, everywhere around the globe.

 

Jared Ward: 1:08:01

Can we do with that? One question I asked when you were like politically. Oh, that one question I asked when you're like politically, oh, how will either candidate think, yeah. So actually, this is last question for you, darren um, with the 2024 election looming over us. Um, it was biden trump, now it's, uh, harris trump. What? What will a Trump presidency in 2024 do to the supply chain landscape? Say, trump gets elected, what will happen to supply chain?

 

Darin Long: 1:08:38

okay, I polished my crystal ball earlier this week and I had a couple of thoughts on this that we will in either and I had a couple of thoughts on this that we will in either one of the presidencies we will see a continued advance and increase in the pace of nearshoring and reshoring.

 

Darin Long: 1:09:06

Nearshoring. You're talking about moving a factory to Mexico, for example, moving a factory to Mexico or Guatemala or wherever we see an increasing and rapid rate of Chinese factories moving complete factories into Mexico and driving Mexican business further south, especially where it's a high labor rate, high labor cost and a high labor component to the product. Our factory is actually making shirts and jackets and hoodies, now for Mexican manufacturers.

 

Jared Ward: 1:09:38

Wow.

 

Darin Long: 1:09:38

That's how rapid the change has happened and many of those Chinese factories and I've been questioned on LinkedIn with some of my other contacts is this really happening? The answer absolutely is, and the Chinese factories are investing in Mexican factories so they can benefit from NAFTA and CAFTA. That way, they can have a renewed access to the US and Canadian markets. That's their process, that's their plan. The plan has been laid out and they're executing on that plan. Will a Trump presidency or a Harris presidency change this? I think Trump would make action to see that these investment practices are curbed. He'll have to take multinational steps to limit this sort of market penetration. I don't see a Harris administration doing anything on this. I see this being a foundational principle for them fixing the root causes that they determine are root causes for immigration.

 

Darin Long: 1:10:47

It's technological advance and investment within the region. What they're doing, though, is they're allowing other countries that don't have similar aligned interests to the United States create those investment paths and create those jobs and leverage a trade platform that was not designed to benefit foreign actors. They were designed to benefit people within our hemisphere, and so the Harris platform would support the use of trade pacts with the United States for foreign actors, where I think a Trump presidency would seek to divert that and to change the platform so that those companies could not be leveraged to access the US market.

 

Jared Ward: 1:11:36

Okay, that's a great answer. Well, I think we'll leave it there and hopefully we can. There's still a lot more questions I wanted to dive into. Thanks for having me. This was fun, Thanks for coming, Darren.

 

Darin Long: 1:11:45

Hopefully we brought some.

 

Jared Ward: 1:11:46

There's still a lot more questions that we wanted to dive into. Thanks for having me. This was fun. Thanks for coming, Darin. Hopefully we brought some kind of value today. But, by the way, something I didn't ask on the last episode and I've been doing this with guests now when can people find you and reach out to you if they have questions?

 

Darin Long: 1:12:05

On our website it would be wwwiascmcom. We're called Global Grove now.

 

Jared Ward: 1:12:13

Okay.

 

Darin Long: 1:12:13

We provide sourcing and manufacturing support in both hemispheres, whereas previously it was mostly in Asia.

 

Jared Ward: 1:12:20

Okay.

 

Darin Long: 1:12:20

Now we support that in our own hemisphere as well Global sourcing and nearshoring and reshoring support. Okay yeah, awesome Thanks, jared. Thanks for having me on. These are always amazing opportunities to reflect and help.

 

Jared Ward: 1:12:35

Yeah, no problem, thank you. I think honestly that last question could be a podcast one.