How Manufacturers Can Sell Better to Architects (From an Architect’s Point of View)

Episode 38

June 18, 2019

Vincent Van Den Brink, Architect Partner at Breakhouse, talks with Jeff and Carman about how manufacturers can improve the ways they provide value to technical buyers and architects during the sales process by thinking beyond a free lunch.

How Manufacturers Can Sell Better to Architects (From an Architect’s Point of View) Transcript:

Carman Pirie: Let’s get it going.

All: [laughs]

Jeff White: You know it’s the perfect introduction. It really is. It really is. I don’t even know where to go. You know how this podcast is going to go right off the top. Anyway, here we go for real, and I may leave that in.

Carman Pirie: I think you should.

Jeff White: Yeah.

Announcer: You’re listening to The Kula Ring, a podcast made for manufacturing marketers. Here are Carman Pirie and Jeff White.

Jeff White: Welcome to The Kula Ring. My name is Jeff White, and starting off this potentially interesting podcast. It’s a bit of an interesting thing. Joining me today of course is Carman. Carman Pirie, how are you doing?

Carman Pirie: I’m doing well. I’m doing well. That is absolutely the worst. This is the worst introduction you’ve ever done.

Jeff White: I know. I got thrown off.

Carman Pirie: You’re usually so polished. You have this radio voice and he’s in the bathroom before we recorded you know and I’m sitting over here, him rehearsing.

Jeff White: Kind of like that Mick Jagger Instagram post from yesterday.

Carman Pirie: Yeah. Exactly right. Exactly. And it’s usually so polished and I feel like I’m kind of caught off guard and I need to really kind of-

Jeff White: Well, see, you finally got one. We’ve recorded like 40 odd podcasts and you finally sound better than me off the top.

Carman Pirie: You know victory’s great even deep in the cheap seats.

Jeff White: That was… Yeah. Okay.

Carman Pirie: Alright. Let’s introduce today’s guest.

Jeff White: Sure. Today, joining us in the podcast, we have Vincent Van Den Brink. He is a partner at Breakhouse, which is an architecture and brand consultancy.

Carman Pirie: Jeff and I did agree before the show that I may be able to introduce Breakhouse a bit better.

Jeff White: Well, go for it.

Carman Pirie: A retail design consultancy that is focused on creating experiences in the built environment. And Vince, welcome to The Kula Ring in the most haphazard introduction yet.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Well I have to say it was entertaining.

Carman Pirie: I’m glad you think so.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Yeah. Well, I can also appreciate that sometimes the introduction is a little bit complicated for us because we do so many different things, not just retail-focused, we do a lot of bigger buildings and master plans. And we just essentially help our clients connect with their customer base and we do it through brand and the built environment.

Jeff White: And you have designed some of my favorite pubs and restaurants.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Thank you very much.

Carman Pirie: I must say…

Jeff White: Great places to spend time.

Carman Pirie: As a firm, we’ve had a great relationship with Breakhouse and it’s really exciting to have you on the show Vince. I should tell our listeners why we have you here a little bit.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Sure.

Carman Pirie: We’re really excited because in some ways you’re the hunted, you’re an architect, you are a technical buyer or someone who sets specifications on incredibly large projects. And so many manufacturing marketers are in that place. They want to talk to engineers, architects, and other technical specifiers, and you know I think they struggle with it. So what we thought we’d do today is get the hunted on the podcast.

Jeff White: It’s like a cheat sheet for manufacturers.

Carman Pirie: Yeah. And just kind of look inside that a little bit and see what we can learn.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Sure.

Carman Pirie: So Vince, I thank you for joining us and perhaps introduce us a bit to your role at Breakhouse, and we’ll begin.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Sure. My role within the company is twofold. So half of my time is spent, as a lot of other owners, managing the company itself, all the day-to-day operations. But the other part of my time, which I think is where we fall in line to this podcast, is the amount of time that I spend working in the design and development of projects in the built environment. So whether or not that is from restaurants and pubs, like you just mentioned, to some of the bigger projects that we have on the go now. Some really interesting 12-story apartment buildings, which could in fact become the first wood high-rise construction building or construction in Atlantic Canada.

Vincent Van Den Brink: So we’re always finding ourselves on the tip of the spear for projects that are a little bit complex or unique in the field and our clients have always been able to work with us to help them through their challenges, and knowing that if they are going to face some oddities that we’re almost always the best person or the best team to help them through with that sort of thing. So I lead that side of the project.

Jeff White: The best team to help with odd things.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Yeah.

Carman Pirie: Odd, large, expensive things.

Jeff White: I think we really nailed another tagline.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Well, oddities are usually the best opportunity for something, right? So if everything seems to be status quo and there aren’t unique challenges from a client’s perspective, then it doesn’t necessarily have the opportunity on the other side to be something unique to our clients. So that’s what I essentially mean by finding the right work for clients.

Carman Pirie: So I want to talk about your experience in setting specifications and researching products et cetera for these engagements because obviously, that’s where marketers are trying to influence you, that’s where sales people are trying to influence you. I guess how does that process typically work for you? What’s the typical experience?

Vincent Van Den Brink: Well, it’s actually similar from supplier to supplier across-the-board. The usual process is somebody from our team gets a phone call or an email from a supplier that is looking to share whatever new products they might have. Almost always in the lunch and learn type of a setting. That gives the team the invitation to have a bit of time, and it’s usually over lunch, to hear what a supplier has to say about some of their new products. And then over a lunch, which is usually and almost always mediocre-to-bad food, which I actually never eat any of because it’s bad. I will show them into our library and I would say almost every architectural office and interior design firm has a library full of material literature and everything from samples, to like, it could be like a full size 4×8 panel of some kind that we’ll be looking at installing to a building. So that all gets stored into our library.

That initial invitation and acceptance to have the lunch and learn, more or less gives a supplier a kind of clear road to our material library. And they can see who else is up in the library for competition, they can then follow up at a later date with whomever it was they made the first contact with in our office to say, “Oh, we’ve got a new product. Can I just come in and place in it the library and take the old ones out?”. So then they become the sort of manager of materials of their company in whatever it is that they’re supplying in our library. When they come in, you can almost always guarantee the question will come up, “So what are you guys working on? Anything interesting?”. It’s pretty transparent with the question that it’s not out of interest of our office. It more or less ends there, from the initial introduction to the company to stocking our library. The next stage is where I find it can get a little bit complicated.

Carman Pirie: Before we do that, I’m kind of curious because obviously you’re not a fan of the lunch, but every supplier is kind of taking the same approach. It surprised me that there is some room for innovation in the middle of that. Is part of you just hoping like hell like that somebody would just do something other than the rubber-chicken lunch?

Vincent Van Den Brink: Yeah. I would say in the lunch, the most memorable one that I had was by Interface Carpets. They had probably the best lunch that I’ve seen. It was actually smart. Like they’ve actually given it some thought. They recognize that their position is one of environmental sustainability so they brought their own dishes and they brought them back with them when we were done. They had locally-sourced food. Meaning they found restaurants and catering companies that source their food sustainably and ethically and then they brought that, and that was a part of their story. And that consistency, it really resonates with anybody.

Carman Pirie: I like how we’re just suggesting to improve this by having a better lunch.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Well, it’s true though, right? It’s all touch points of a company. Like in what we do, if you have a restaurant and if the restaurant doesn’t have a place to hang your coats, all of a sudden your chairs get littered with jackets and the jackets fall on the floor and then people step on them, and that becomes a nuisance. So part of the experience is what do you do with your jackets when you come in to a restaurant? And that’s not any different than what is the introduction of a company to potential spec writers or designers of your product, and the first is actually over dinner. It goes further than that even. Like if you want to go on a date with somebody, you usually converse and get to know each other over a meal, so it makes sense in many ways, right? It’s a nice starting point. But you build a relationship with the supplier more than you just have a relationship with the product itself.

Jeff White: Well, I think the thing that’s interesting about that too is that you have a finite amount of space in the library for new products, a finite amount of mind share to have kind of a range of things available to you in all the different finishes and everything else that you need and a desire to not be sold to in this way. So if everybody’s coming in and saying you know, “Can we have another lunch and learn and we’ll bring the Subway?”, it’s kind of like the desire to actually go through with that, unless it’s a really compelling product that you’ve kind of sought out, is just not there.

Vincent Van Den Brink: 100%.

Carman Pirie: Man, you just flashed back to an old client that we used to have that would order in Subway for lunch. It was the worst thing ever.

Vincent Van Den Brink: See?

Carman Pirie: If she’s listening, I want her to know that that was terrible.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Right. Exactly.

Carman Pirie: Anyway, okay.

Vincent Van Den Brink: You don’t remember… What is the quote? “You don’t remember what people say to you, you remember how they made you feel.” And I remember how a lot of people made me feel after lunch. I associate that product with the bad food.

Jeff White: Oh, god.

Carma Pirie: Oh, no.

Jeff White: Oh, god.

Carman Pirie: All right. All right. All right. So where does it fall down after that? So we’ve gotten through the bad lunch, but you said after that, that’s where you tend to find a follow up.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Sure. So the most potent story to this I think where it’s been negative, and I have to say before I say this, like I’m sounding awfully negative about it. We do have some really nice relationships with suppliers that are represented as sales people, that do supply products to us in a great way. So I’m not saying this blanket all suppliers in the way they go about it in the same old way, but it just… This story that I will share is an example of how my flag goes up over some products to make sure that I’m talking… Or the team. I direct the team to make sure that they’re talking to the right people so we don’t get burned as a design firm.

The example is there was a really big building that I was working on. I was the project architect at the time, and that was before my days at Breakhouse. And the building was the largest of its type in Atlantic Canada and one of the bigger materials and building systems was the curtain wall. So the curtain wall needed to be selected carefully. Everything from the glazing type to the backer bar, and the sun shades that we were hoping to put on to the curtain wall system. We spent months laboring over the materials and the technical aspects of it, both in terms of its environmental sustainability and its cost and just general capability of the project. After dealing with the salesperson for this length of time, we got really comfortable with the system that we were proposing and it went from there into a pre-tender.

So it was an early cost evaluation before we got into any kind of value engineering process, but it was to invite some selected contractors to bid on it and help us down through the process. Because usually in this stage of the game, contractors, really good ones, will offer suggestions and how to do some things a little bit different. The big thing that came up with this process is the salesperson really told us with a lot of confidence that the system that we were selecting was going to work and be good for the building. The contractors came back, and the supplier connected to the contractor was the same company that the salesperson was representing. So I’m just trying to unsay the name because I don’t want to throw the person under the bus, right?

Jeff White: Yeah.

Vincent Van Den Brink: So the salesperson representing the curtain wall system was told by the manufacturer that they can’t actually do what we were told could be done. And that’s just something putting a sun shade on a particular curtain wall system. That led to an enormous amount of rework on our part. So when a building of size, any single drawing that we had, and there were many of them, that showed where the curtain wall was going to be meeting the slab, all the other… I don’t want to get into too many details here, but the point of the story is that it ended up causing us to redraw another set of drawings, which was a huge amount of work of billable time that we could not bill a client for.

As the client looks at it, no matter how we argue it, as our fault. It was the designer’s fault that we put these systems together, even though we were told by the salesperson of the manufacturer that it could be done. We couldn’t go back to the manufacturer, I don’t know I guess my boss at the time could have gone back to the manufacturer and tried to sue them for it, but in closing to that whole process, the salesperson felt really badly about it and was nice enough to bring me a coffee thermos with the manufacturer’s logo on it to take and hold with me  and to use for however long it was going to be at that office.

Carman Pirie: Was there at least like a sleeve of golf balls inside the thermos or anything?

Vincent Van Den Brink: You’d think. You would really think. The closest parallel, just to give you a sense of how much it cost us, would have been a nice brand new car versus the billable time that it took us to redo this work. So the coffee thermos was really just salt in the wound, to be honest with you. It just didn’t show any kind of empathy or respect to the amount of time and support that… I’m trying to say, it didn’t show any degree of respect to the amount of time that we have to put into their advice and the changes of the results.

Carman Pirie: You showed an incredible whack of understanding of how the actual work unfolds for the people that he or she was selling into, which is interesting. And then of course, I mean in that moment you’re thinking probably never send me a salesperson again, only send me the technical experts. Is that it?

Vincent Van Den Brink: Yeah. That’s exactly it. Any time that we are specifying a material that is connected to building envelope in any way or anything that could be damaged from wear, whether or not it is a seat cushion that we specify for a bench in a restaurant, or the type of roof membrane that we’re going to put on a building, or even what kind of tile we’re going to select inside a retail space. We want to make sure that the tile isn’t going to stain, the bench isn’t going to wear out quicker than is promised, and that the roofing isn’t going to leak. And the only way to get the true answer from all of that is to get it from the technical representatives at the supplier, not the sales people, or at least that’s where I’m at right now. Anytime we have a material that is subject to a great deal of wear or potential breach of water or weather, I just tell whoever’s in the office not to talk to the sales people, just to talk to techs.

Carman Pirie: Well, I’m just wondering, are the sales people not even providing you the gateway into the technical resources, you’re just having to go around them. It sounds like there are a pile of them in the process.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Well, there is a little bit. There are some companies that have on their website, for technical assistance, call this person. And then you call that 1-800 number and then you do get somebody. You don’t know how much that person knows and also there’s no repercussion if they are giving you advice that is not accurate. You really don’t know who that person is, what kind of technical background they have. You’re just trusting that supplier.

So the leap of faith is huge, especially since we have to wear it if it goes bad. They do provide some access, it’s just when you get there, you don’t know who that person is. It’s like the salespeople should be the tech people and I know that’s a different personality, it’s a different skill set. Not for all materials, but for a lot of these materials that could be bad for our company if they are done or used in an inappropriate way. There has to be confidence there that we’re dealing with information that is true and accurate.

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Jeff White: Quick question. When you say supplier, are you almost always talking about the manufacturer themselves and are the sales people usually working for the manufacturer or as a separate entity rep?

Vincent Van Den Brink: As a rep, yeah. It’s a little bit of both. Some companies, they are directly connected to the supplier. Meaning they are one in the same. They might not necessarily be representing more than one product just because their product is in such high demand. Interface carpets, for example. I don’t know of an Interface Carpet rep that has other products that they are also representing. But there are other people who… There’s a couple that I can think of off the top of my head that are really sound technical people with sales ability, and they represent two or three products. And I call them on a semi-regular basis and ask them directly for information on products or back up on details and information because I know that I can trust them. But I am very cautious of who comes through the door and what they’re offering just because what’s on the other side of them and what else they’re representing and how important it is to them or what the repercussions could be if they’re giving us something that’s not what everybody says it is.

Carman Pirie: It’s interesting instruction here because I don’t think … I don’t know it doesn’t sound like that hostile a sales environment. I don’t think we have to be Glengarry Glen Ross incarnate in order to sell in this environment. It sounds as though the manufacturers in the space would be well-served to really prioritize technical knowledge over sales ability in some way. Frankly, one’s I think is a lot easier to teach than the other. I know that there’s this thinking that sales is all just natural gift and ability et cetera that you know and-

Jeff White: If that were the case, I would suck at it.

Carman Pirie: I think this is really instructive. Everybody’s trying to figure out, “How do we market and sell to a technical buyer?” And it’s like, “How about have a technical person?”

Vincent Van Den Brink: Yeah. It’s really simple you know. There’s so much complexity to a lot of building systems because they all connect to something else. And if you have a supplier that comes in or a manufacturer that comes in, and they’re selling a curtain wall system, for example, like we were talking about earlier, almost always you’ll see that curtain wall system without any other materials or systems beside it. It’s just in a vacuum. So this is what they’re selling. I don’t know if you can understand the sort of picture that I’m creating, but if you imagine a wall section, I don’t know if that makes any sense to you, but an image of the interior of a wall that you look at from the side. If you are buying something from your manufacturer, they only show that one system on its own, not how it necessarily integrates into the whole building itself and into the wall. So that’s where the questions come in.

It’s not just a product on its own, which is usually what the sales people know, it’s the question of how it integrates into the rest of the wall system which makes it a good or a bad system. And those are the questions that we have and we ask a great deal. And oftentimes, if you’re talking to salespeople, they don’t have the answers and they will tell us to connect to the technical reps and sometimes you get the information you need, sometimes you don’t.

Carman Pirie: It’s interesting because I’m imagining this scenario that unfolds so often, or at least it sounds like part of the time, where you don’t have confidence in that sales resource so you’re probably… I mean you can probably explore the products online in many cases. My guess is a lot of the information is even available there and perhaps you’re even connecting with technical resources increasingly online. Is that the case?

Vincent Van Den Brink: That is the case. Yeah, our library and I would say in general, most libraries in offices are getting smaller because so much of it is available, and information is available online. And if you want to look at something in person, you would call and you would ask for a sample of whatever it is to be brought on site to your office to take a look at. And from there, you would find that technical person, then you would ask more questions to get some more detail. But largely speaking, and I guess this is the biggest challenge—is how much are we willing to take a leap after it’s brought to our office, that we can convince our client that this is the right thing for them. And that isn’t sold by the salesperson or the technical person, that’s sold by us to the client.

So there’s a great deal of sales on our end, especially in new materials. And if we can’t convince our client that this building material is going to last, it’s going to be great, you’re going to be happy with it for years down the road. If we can’t do that, then the product isn’t sold. So we need to have as much technical information as possible. We have to do our own research and dig into it a little bit. And that’s where I find the biggest gap. The more so in materials that have been proven in the past to work, there is typically a little less assistance because they’ve got a proven track record. Say like, “Look, this works in the past, it will be fine.” But we still have to find out more about it on our own. It’s a lot of research on our own to get the information. It’s not your typical sales relationship that we’ve come across.

Jeff White: No. And I think what strikes me about that, just what I’m thinking of the work that we have to do with manufacturers. Part of what they could be doing is finding out from the A&D community, from the engineers, and other people that they’re trying to sell into, what resources can we provide to you to help you sell this new product into your client? Because at the end of the day, you are not the buyer, you are simply an influencer of that decision and not the Instagram, kind, a much better influencer.

Vincent Van Den Brink: And like I mentioned at one point and we’ve talked a little bit about it with my partners. The idea of being a supplier to manufacturers as opposed to having a salesperson in between us. Step around that, and the benefit of that is we are… I don’t want to say pushing a product because it doesn’t sound like it’s the right thing, but if we find a product that we really like, that we can bring it to clients and if it is something that our client goes for, then we get the benefit on the transaction financially as opposed to the sales person because we put the effort and time to put it in their drawings to use it in the way that we think is good for the project and good for the client.

Carman Pirie: It’s interesting to me that you’re saying basically in some instances, you found so little value in that process and you have to do it all on your own so much anyway, they’ve actually taken the additional step to get some monetary compensation from the manufacturer for that by making, you said it yourself, by setting yourself up as a direct supplier to then bypassing their system sales channel.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Yup. As an idea. I know that there’s an architect in town here that has done that. He’s representing a couple of product lines and he’s actually somebody that I lean on for technical advice on the number of different products just because he is… That’s the kind of relationship I could see evolving in the future. I could see that being to an enormous benefit to manufacturers if the front end of the chain, which is the relationship between the client and the designer, if that can be supported, then if they have some kind of cut, I’m sure they’ll see a lot more of their product move up the shelves quickly.

Jeff White: What do you think makes… Given that you have to do all of this research largely yourself and some of it is obviously going to be interaction with technical resources at the manufacturer, but what makes a good online tool for you? Like if you need to go and find that information, what are you looking for?

Vincent Van Den Brink: Well, it’s a good question. I’ll use two examples of manufacturers that have really stood out over the years. One is Interface again and the other is a Schluter, they do transition strips on flooring between tile… Different flooring materials or wall to different wall materials. They’re the metal strip that you often see that joined these two. You’d think a company like Schluter would not necessarily have the need to support their designers as much as they do because it almost seems so insignificant to the overall building process, but the thing is that it shows up in so many different ways that they have a great resource online. They have an ability to engage with their manufacturing plants. There is somebody that I put on a plane from an invitation from Schluter to go down to their manufacturing plant and see how it’s built, see all the different products, talk to the people on the technical side to really bridge that technical person to design a relationship. They’re a really good example of how you can make it happen well.

Same thing is done with Interface. They have a regular walk about in their plant, where designers from all over the world are flown down, and they spend time on their property, look at all the work that they do and build up relationships. It’s about relationships that you can trust.

So I tell you, if we can’t find anything other than a Schluter strip to do a material transition, we’ll probably think twice about doing something different because we know the beginning of that product all the way to what it looks like on site. Those are all just phone calls away. Like if we wanted to go on and look at the manufacturing plant, we wanted to go on that sales, or on the walk about, we could we could do those things and we know that that is accessible to us. And a lot of other places don’t do that.

Carman Pirie: I can imagine Jeff, too, a scenario where you asked about online and how this could be enabled online and you know it strikes me that manufactures have a strong opportunity to just have frankly, online chat and have it with a certified technical representative who is… Like if you know every time you pull up their URL, you’re a click away from a live chat with a resource that really knows what they’re talking about and maybe has even profile beyond their work to showcase their expertise elsewhere online. I mean that strikes me to be such a differentiator.

Vincent Van Den Brink: And I know a lot of manufacturers that might be listening to this would say that they do that. They do have somebody on the other line that you can connect with, but it’s who’s on the other side of that line. You get a feeling from a majority of them that they’re overworked and they’ve got too many calls to answer and they’re just trying to get you off the phone quickly. There has to be an investment on manufacturers’ part to make sure that the people that are supplying that technical information are doing it in a robust fashion. It’s not done in any way that makes the person who is pushing that product out to their customers or their clients, you don’t want to make them feel any way that it’s being rushed and they’re just getting some information quickly.

Elevator people, elevator suppliers are great with that. Elevator suppliers, there are separate elevator consultants that help you select an elevator that’s even outside of the consultant themselves or manufacturers themselves. There are a few manufacturers and building system types that do have that. It’s just that there’s a much broader selection of manufacturers that don’t, that could really benefit from a more personal and trustworthy technical source, that’s more than just a call online.

Carman Pirie: It’s just a question of investment really, isn’t it? I mean at the end of the day, they don’t blink twice at investing what probably amounts to $250,000, $350,000, $400,000 in an outside salesperson. I mean once you put a senior sales guy or a girl in a-

Jeff White: With a quota.

Carman Pirie: With a quota in a car, and having them drive around the territory doing whatever and buying dinner, you’re at $250,000 or $300,000 before you even know it or more, and you know they’re not paying the people that are doing the online chat that much, right? And in some cases, and what you’re saying is that where the value is. Give me the technical resource, give me the expertise, make it available to me, find ways to ensure that I understand that I can trust it.

Jeff White: And make sure there’s accurate documentation to download.

Carman Pirie: Yup.

Jeff White: So that, that resource can direct you to the appropriate drawings and everything else that you need.

Carman Pirie: Yeah.

Jeff White: I can envision the perfect site right now.

Carman Pirie: Well, you can at least help I think frame it up a little bit.

Jeff White: Yeah.

Carman Pirie: You know I can’t help but notice that we’re running out of time here. So Vince, I think you’ve given our listeners a lot to think about here, but you never know you might have one last bit of information or advice that you wanted to offer that you haven’t had the chance to mention yet. So I want to give you an opportunity to before we sign off. Any parting tips?

Vincent Van Den Brink: Yeah. I don’t know if I have parting tips necessarily. I would stay away from the branded thermoses. They don’t help, but other than that, I think the highest level kind of point of view for me is the sales door-to-door lunch and learns is old school and it doesn’t feel like, from my point of view, that it works. It might have some uptake and it might have statistics that from the manufacturing point of view, it says that it does provide the sales numbers that they’re looking for. I would really encourage manufacturers to think about other ways to reach out to their customer base. There’s so much availability online as a first introduction and from that first introduction to what the product is that there is an easy access then from a designer to that manufacturer to get more specific information that you’re looking for. Being inundated with an invitation for lunch and learns for products that you don’t know necessarily a great deal about isn’t going to make me want to put it in the next project necessarily. It feels a little contrived and it doesn’t have the success that I can imagine happens.

Carman Pirie: Well, I hope we reconnect in a year’s time and you tell me that all of your suppliers have shifted away from lunch and learns on the power of the podcast suggestion alone.

Jeff White: Yeah. There you go.

Carman Pirie: We’ll see maybe that could be the power and reach of The Kula Ring podcast.

Jeff White: Yeah.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Yeah, you never know, or if it ends up being a nice fancy salads for every lunch and learn.

Jeff White: Yeah.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Absolutely.

Carman Pirie: You know we consider that a win.

Jeff White: Yeah, for sure. I mean speaking of podcast too, you guys are currently setting up in developing your own podcast, Design Makes Everything Better, that’s coming soon?

Vincent Van Den Brink: Yeah, absolutely. We will be talking to clients that would have a typical relationship with us and we’d have people from the retail and hospitality sector, developers, people that are developing products for the beauty industry to talk about how the design of their space, their building, their brands have made their business better. So Design Makes Everything Better will be our podcast to be available in about a month.

Carman Pirie: Look forward to checking it out. Vince, thanks so much for joining is on The Kula Ring today.

Vincent Van Den Brink: Thank you very much. It’s been fun. Appreciate it. Take care.

Jeff White: Thanks Vince.

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Featuring

Vincent Van Den Brink

Architect Partner at Breakhouse

Vincent leads the activation and architecture practice at Breakhouse, championing retail and hospitality build and roll-out initiatives. His comprehensive understanding of the complexities of the built environment allows him to create seamlessly integrated experiences that connect to consumers. Vincent has gained his in-depth architectural knowledge through a wide range of commercial, institutional, and residential projects across North America and Europe.

The Kula Ring is a podcast for manufacturing marketers who care about evolving their strategy to gain a competitive edge.

Listen to conversations with North America’s top manufacturing marketing executives and get actionable advice for success in a rapidly transforming industry.

About Kula

Kula Partners is an agency that specializes in maximizing revenue potential for B2B manufacturers.

Our clients sell within complex, technical environments and we help them take a more targeted, account-focused approach to drive revenue growth within niche markets.

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