Celebrating Mother's Day and Family with EvoBox
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The New Warehouse podcast hosted by Kevin Lawton is your source for insights and ideas from the distribution, transportation, and logistics industry. A new episode every Monday morning brings you the latest from industry experts and thought leaders. And now, here's Kevin.

Hey, it's Kevin with the new warehouse podcast. And today we have a special mother's day edition. We're going to be joined by a mother and son duo here on the podcast, which I think is, is very awesome. Uh,

I do some work with my own mother, so I'm interested to hear about their dynamic. But I'm going to be joined by Lisa Evenson and Ty Evenson of EvoBox. And they are a 3PL with locations in South Carolina and Utah. And we're going to dive into their business a little bit, how it got started, what their main focus is. And we're also going to talk a little bit about that family dynamic, specifically the mother-son dynamic.

duo we got going on here and how they work together and also how they're working on growing their business into the future. So Lisa is the CEO. Ty is CMO, but also jack of all trades a little bit as I've learned here. So Lisa and Ty, welcome to the show. How are you both?

We're good. Thank you. Happy to be here. Thanks. Definitely happy to get you both on here and talk about this a little bit. So why don't we kick it off? I guess tell me a little bit about EvoBox, what it is you do and what you're all about. Go ahead, Ty.

Yeah, no, I mean, obviously we're just a fulfillment center. We've been in business for almost 11 years now. It started when I was still in school at BYU and it started kind of just as like a little side project between me and my parents. And I don't know if you want me to dive into the history of it yet. Yeah, let's hear it. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Like where did the idea actually come from? Like where'd you get this idea to do some fulfillment stuff? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, the story goes, well, my parents already had a business, kind of like an online drugstore. So they had a tiny little warehouse in Bluffdale, Utah, and we're just operating like a

I mean, I don't know how big the business was. It was not big. And margins were awful on having to ship chapsticks. Yeah, it was like a Walgreens. And so...

Separately, we had a friend, kind of a family friend that we knew who was like, he reached out. He's like, hey, you know, don't Rick and Lisa, don't they have some, like they have a warehouse. Is there any way I can store some watches there? Because he just started a small watch company.

And so we were like, yeah, of course you can store your watches there. And he started to come in and fulfill his orders. And then basically I just, you know, it was like, well, if you want, my parents are already shipping stuff out of the warehouse. If you want to teach me how to pop into ship station, then like I can, I can do it for you. And yeah.

You know, obviously talking with Rick and Lisa, they were fine with it. So started shipping his watches every day instead of him coming in and grabbing the watches. And really I was just hopping into a ship station and filling the orders there.

And it kind of just grew where he had a lot of connections with Utah businesses, Utah startups. And so we started having other people reach out to us and be like, hey, you ship for Arvo watches, right? That was the company. And so, you know, they talked to Lisa or to me and we would both just start shipping all these products kind of as a side thing separately from their company and everything.

you know, one business and two, three, four, probably like by the time we had like four or five companies is when we were like, we should probably, you know, make this a real thing, go official with it. Right. Lisa, am I missing anything? You're totally right. Yeah. It was after about a year of shipping and we got up to six companies and we incorporated, did all the

paperwork and everything. And in the meantime, Ty and I were running around tables and putting inserts in and my other, my daughter and I were folding baby slings and kidding and doing all the customer service and everything. And so obviously once we decided to take it seriously, we're trying to come up with names and, uh,

My nickname in high school was Tevo. Ty Evenson became Ty Evo Tevo. I remember my dad was like, you should call it Tevo Box. I was like, that sounds awful. Yeah.

But then we were like, well, it's kind of become a family thing. So yeah, he was like, what about EvoBox? And it's kind of a play on like Evenson plus evolving the company because we liked seeing the companies that we were shipping for as they gave us the shipping aspect, the fulfillment part of their company.

Suddenly, we would watch their companies. They would focus more on the marketing. It was cool to see all these companies, these local companies go from a dinky little watch company to a little more serious of a brand. There was a shoe company called Tapped Shoes, a diaper bag called Fond Design. It was fun watching them all.

slowly just take themselves more serious and grow. So, so yeah, that's, that's where the name Evo box comes from is it's play off of Evenson plus involving the company. Interesting. Interesting. And kind of the, the evolution of the box in a sense too, right? Even like what was, what was inside the box with the pharmacy type stuff to, to evolve into now the brands you're, you're working with. Right. So at least I got to ask you, you know, Ty comes to you with this idea. What, what'd you think?

I mean, it wasn't even me coming to her with the idea. It was a collective like presented to us almost. Yeah, it was because we were trying to figure out how to get more capital into the business, into the drugstore business. And so we were just all three brainstorming. Should we try this? Should we try this? And I think somebody, it was either Rick or Ty, was like, we should just see if we can store some stuff for companies and then...

Jake came to us and kind of went from there. Interesting. Interesting. So do you still do the pharmacy stuff now or is it just all in fulfillment? No, at one point Ty and I took over the operations of Evo box and we told my husband to just continue with the drugstore. And the goal was to sell the drugstore and then just all of us jump into Evo box. What was it Ty about a year and a half or so of,

doing it, both of them, or maybe a year or something of doing both, and then we finally sold it. No, it was probably three years, because we started in 2014-ish. Oh, that's true, yeah. And I'm pretty sure the drugstore company sold in like 2017, January 2018 maybe, so it was a few years ago.

Interesting. And Ty, I got to ask you, I mean, so I know for me, right, so I do some work with my mother now. We do like some consulting stuff and she's had this business for a long time. And when I was younger, I was like, no, I'm not interested in your business. Like I don't want anything to do with it. So I'm curious, did you grow up like wanting to be a part of like the family business or did this just kind of like serendipitously happen? Yeah.

No, yeah, I was very excited for this. I was still in school at BYU. And as I was graduating, I went to school for advertising. And I actually had a job lined up. I mean, it was a very standard starting job out of school out in Santa Monica, California.

And when I graduate, I was supposed to join in like June of 2016. They needed a firm answer from me. And I...

At first, it was like, that's really exciting. It's pretty cool. I'd love to live in that area. And I had a couple of friends from school moving out that way. But I actually went on a month-long surf trip along the coast of Baja. And it was really fun. We started in Cabo.

and slowly made our way up the beach and we would like camp on the beach, surf in the morning, drive a little bit in the afternoon, surf in the evening. And on that trip, there was a lot of meditation and just I thought about it nonstop and I was like, you know what? I think I'm just going to go into a, go like stick it out with EvoBox, see what happens and then if it doesn't work out, I'm sure I can find something eventually. And that was 11 years ago.

That was actually nine years ago. Cause yeah, Eva box was already at the front end a little bit, but yeah, I'm glad I stuck it out. Nice. Nice. And, and Lisa, how, how about you? Were you, were you happy when he decided like, Oh, I want to do this as a, as a family thing. What did you think? There was always the side of me that was like, I hope, I hope he stays with us. But then there's the other part where I didn't want to be the excuse or I didn't want to be the reason why maybe he didn't fulfill a dream that he had.

because he was so good at the advertising part of it and the creativity. And so I just tried to keep quiet and not really give my opinion. At least I think that's how I remember it. And I think I just kind of let him do his thing and come to his own decision. But yeah, deep inside, of course, I wanted to work with my son.

It's fun. Nice. Nice. So inside you're like jumping around like, yeah, yeah, we're going to work together. Okay. Yeah. Very good. Very good. So outside, are you sure? Are you sure? That's what you want? Don't ever let me hold you back. Yeah.

I love that. So, so tell us a little bit about the dynamic, right? I mean, I noticed Ty, you're very formal calling, calling your mom, Lisa here on the podcast, right? So tell us a little bit about the dynamic, like how, how do you guys work together? How do you balance each other out? How do you, you know, how does that maybe make it easier or maybe make it a little more harder at sometimes to work together on this business?

Yeah, no, she's definitely not Lisa outside of work. It just feels like my mom over there, you know. Serious. I mean, we have a hundred something employees between the two warehouses. So honestly, I don't even know if...

I'm sure most know that I'm your son, but I don't know if all do. Like, I don't go around announcing that. But no, the dynamic's good. Yeah. I think, you know, it's been 11 years and like, obviously we have disagreements about how to navigate some situations, but I don't know if we've ever gotten into a fight. Have we? No. Like.

Like, um, my, both my parents. So, so Rick actually, he works with us too. He deals with a lot of like the warehouse, like the, just making sure we have racking the forklift, you know, he's, he's worked a ton throughout the years. And so he still does a ton with Evo box. Initially the plan was to kind of have Rick, my dad take a little bit more of a backseat with like some passive stuff, but it's not his nature. So he still does a ton. Yeah.

But as far as the ownership goes, Lisa and I are kind of making the biggest decisions. But I would say the dynamic's good. I don't want to speak for her. It is cool having two parents who are just some of the most level-headed people. Everybody who meets my parents just thinks they're super nice, very easy to talk to. So for me, people all the time are like, oh, I don't know if I could ever work with my parents. I'm like...

Maybe, yeah, like in most situations, but they're so easy to work with. It's very easy for me to like voice my opinion to them and they respect my opinion. I think it helps that I know that they work really hard. So if they're ever taking like a day off or something like that, like, uh,

Like even like what the other day I noticed you were at the mall. I was? My first instinct, well, cause yeah, you had something, you were already in that area. My first instinct wasn't like, what the heck? Why isn't she working? Literally my first instinct was, she's taking a second to like regroup and like a little bit of me time because I already know how hard my family works in this business. So yeah, for me,

There's a lot of trust that goes in this relationship already. Interesting. Interesting. So you're tracking her location. That's good. Normally I'm not looking to find my friends, but I think we had something and I was like, oh, I wonder if she's going to make it back in time for this meeting. And I pull it up and it was like, oh no. But to clarify, it's very hard. So like I said, my first instinct was, oh, like good. Yeah, she deserves the husband.

Nice, nice. He also knew I was at my wit's end probably. Yeah, yeah. It was a stressful week for sure. It was a stressful week. Tyler, so as far as I'm concerned, Tyler is my voice of reason because, you know, I'm still, I, sometimes I get a little bit too internally emotional sometimes.

And I take things pretty personally because we worked so hard and there's been so much sacrifice to get Evilbox to where it's at. And I feel so deeply for the companies that we shipped for. Like if they knew how much I cared about them and how much I put them in front of anything else, that there would be never a question about anything, you know, is Evilbox doing me right? And so

When I hear things or when I get an email or if I get a complaint or anything, because I'm involved in the finances part of it, the invoicing, it sometimes more than others, it hits me pretty hard. And I take it too personal. And so I'll go into Ty's office and I'll be like, can you believe such and such? And he'll very calmly, as you can tell, he's very calm. He'll just be like, hey, look at this perspective. It's only business.

And so then I'm like, okay, I've got this. But every once in a while I just take a day off and go do something. Very rarely does she take a day off. They take more time off, but they don't. Yeah. So yeah, I think we balance each other out really well. Yeah, she probably, sorry, you probably have questions about that, but I will say she probably gets frustrated at times at how stone-faced I can be in regards to some situations.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. It's very, I would say it's like very similar to my dynamic with my mother because I'm, I'm like also very like chill, nonchalant kind of and, you know, sometimes like she should get worked up a little bit and she's like, how could you just be like, just okay? And I'm like, you know, I'm okay. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so it's very, very interesting. And I love to hear that you guys have found that balance and are able to balance each other out. And I guess interesting question here. I mean, because you know, your, your family, right. And you spend time together outside of work, I'm sure. Right. So how do you kind of turn it off? I will speak to that type than you can, but for a little while,

a couple years ago i would text tyler at six in the morning wake up really early and he would wake up to a text from me about a new company or a potential or whatever was on my brain at six in the morning and he's always been so polite but he would he set his boundaries and so i know that ty's working hours are you know

8 o'clock, 8:30 until 4:30. And then after that, I don't bug him. I'm pretty respectful about that now. I'm really careful to not bring up work when we're... Because I don't like it either. I don't want to talk about work after. My husband's a little bit more just it's always on his brain. And so he will bring it up at all hours.

But with Ty, because I know that he has such an active life outside of work, I respect those boundaries and just give him what he needs to be able to come back. Because when you're always talking about it or always thinking about it, it just wears you down. And so.

I think I've kind of set those same boundaries, although having it in my house, I can't, I can't really do the same thing. Yeah. What do you think about that? Cause I think it is, it is interesting, right? Like family business. It's like, well, you know, you go to the dinner table and it's like, oh, you're having dinner with your, your coworker basically. Right. It's like, how do you not talk, like talk about work? So I'm curious your, your take on that tie.

Yeah, well, it helps having nephews around who kind of take all the attention. Yeah, I would say for most of the last 11 years, it's been really easy. Like as soon as I leave work to just like turn my brain off from work.

and just be able to focus on my personal life. I keep pretty active. I have way too many hobbies outside of work. So it's pretty easy for me to not think of work when I'm playing tennis or

climbing skiing mountain biking whatever but yeah I definitely there's probably been times even where like maybe we should have talked about certain stuff and I it's just I don't know it's I sometimes do feel like I'm a different person at work where it's like okay I got I walk in at work and like okay focus trying to get everything done and then I don't know like Lisa probably agrees that like out

outside of work, I'm a very different person. I get, I get maybe just pretty serious during work. I always tell my friends, I'm like, yeah, I hope you never see me. I'm a, I'm a different person, not like worse or rude or anything, but I just, I kind of like lock in at work. So yeah, the dynamic is interesting every now and then. Yeah. Well, we'll still talk about stuff outside of the work because we have to, you know, like that's, that's just, I mean, it's,

if it's really important then obviously we'll talk about it but we have i mean when we're together usually it's like there's a lot of family around so it's it's easy to not focus on work

Gotcha. Okay. Actually. Yeah. It totally like, like the dynamic of, and this is maybe this is a flaw. I don't know. But I think of like when I'm in my office talking with either my parents or something like that, that relationship feels very different from like a Sunday dinner relationship. It's almost like, I don't know, just different. Well, a perfect example is Ty and I recently took a trip together. Okay.

We were together, what was it, eight days? And it was so fun. And I don't even know that we really brought work up a whole lot while we were out there. And then he stayed out in Europe a week longer and I came back. And so his first day back, I was so excited because we'd had so much fun and he had his work face on.

I had a lot of emails to catch up on. And I think I said, do you still like me? Yeah. I'm just working. I'm sorry. I'm not mean during business hours. Yeah. I love that. And I, you know, I think it's very interesting and I, I love that you've figured out how to, to find that, that balance. It sounds like, which I think is a really good thing because I think that probably the

reduces like a lot of the the stress and allows you to focus on the the family aspect as well and and you know still balance that relationship and and keep it strong on on both sides of the spectrum there i guess so so now we've heard a little bit about kind of the the start of evo box and

I've heard about the fun dynamics that you both have and with the family involved in the business. So tell us a little bit about the your business now. You guys have two locations, right? Tell us what you focus on, what you're doing as a fulfillment provider and and really kind of like what's your what's your sweet spot?

Our sweet spot, geez, I would say that's, I mean, smaller products. Supplements, our largest product is probably a skateboard, like a log board. We do not a ton of those, but most of our products are like between like wallets, cat litter, apparel and supplements, things like that. That's kind of our sweet spot. We have two locations. One is just outside of Greenville, South Carolina, and then one outside of Salt Lake City.

We use Ship Hero for one warehouse and we're trying to get Ship Hero into the other warehouse, but it's a longer process. I would say our business is definitely growing. We've got like, I want to say around 50 clients. All referral based. Yes, it's all referral based. So we actually, yeah, we are in a stage of growth, a ton of growth right now.

And we've been in talks even to like bring on a potential outside help. We're not quite sure if that's happening yet, but yeah, for the first decade, it's been all family run, no debt, just kind of growing it ourselves. And like she said, it's all referral based because our clients really like us. Like we, we really do all we can for our clients to make sure that they're happy. And we're constantly looking for ways to improve and like kind of

Okay, what are other warehouses doing that? I would say our bread and butter as far as why our clients like us so much is probably just our good customer service. We kind of struggle with the dynamic of like, okay, we don't want to present ourselves as a mom-pa shop because that sounds like we're behind the times as far as technology and systems and processes. Obviously, people like the relationship of a mom-pa or a mother-son relationship.

But, but like, sometimes that just feels, that feels like, okay, once they hit a certain level, they outgrow us, but our clients don't like we have a good system in place. And so we have some clients that are only doing, you know, a few orders a day and other clients that are doing, you know, 5,000 orders a day. We handle both just fine. But yeah, like I would say that one of our biggest struggles is people thinking that they've,

like outgrown us even though we're like dude you guys you guys are so small yeah but it's like there's this weird dynamic of um i mean that's that's helpful for me is people are always like what else is out there and they're getting hit up constantly so i've done a little bit of research and the average client stays with the enrollment center for like anywhere between two to four years we have

multiple clients that have been with us from the beginning. We have multiple clients that are around the eight, nine-year mark. It's because we do a good job and I think they like the personability. They like being close to us. I myself am constantly making sure that our softwares and systems are the latest and greatest. If there's something we...

struggle with I would say it's just

Sometimes people like the idea of a more professional... Appearing. Yeah. And so that's something we want to focus on this year is making sure we're surrounding ourselves with people with a lot of experience that have done this before that could even bring in some capital if we need it. Maybe even start up a marketing team. Finally start having people reaching out to companies rather than just everything being referral-based. Like I said, we have 50 companies and they're all just from our clients talking about us.

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Yeah, that's really, I would say it's really impressive to have their growth just strictly through referral. And, you know, I think it's interesting to see, you know, how you've taken this dynamic that we've been talking about here and you'd be able to leverage it to create these great relationships with your clients as well. And I think there's a lot of value in there. And I think that's, it's an interesting point there, Ty, about

being a mom and pop or mom and son, as you mentioned there, and being able to have that type of relationship, but then also have the technology to not be thought of or considered like a traditional old school mom and pop type of place or business. So you mentioned that you recently kind of switched to Ship Hero as well. So tell us a little bit about

Why that decision and how does that help you maybe set up for this next phase of growth? The transition to Shapiro was not easy. I did it all myself. We probably could have paid to have set up more of it, but it was worth it because now I feel like I understand the system really well.

So we've been through so many different WMSs, warehouse management systems, and there's been a little bit of each that we like, but the thing that to me, the thing that matters most is that our client is happy with the system that we're using, right? Because if they're not happy with it, then they're going to leave. And that's been the case for us. We've, we've had really like, we've done amazing jobs for certain companies and, and,

at the end of the day they're like honestly like there's this one guy he's like yeah but this other the fulfillment center that we're going to like they have like this little like progress bar for every order that goes out that says like the percentage that it's done through the warehouse and it just makes it so easy to follow along i'm like i mean we have that too you just have to

look at it this way. He's like, it's just not the same. It's not as pretty, which is true. Our last system was just, it didn't look as nice for our clients. So there's this weird balance between, okay, it has to look good for the clients. The client portal, you know, the software has to look good for the clients, but it also has to be really functional for the warehouse. So that's what sold me on Ship Hero was, um,

The client side of it just looked a lot better and it seemed really functional. Our last system, you couldn't even edit and cancel orders. Like you had to go about this rant kind of like backwards way of like,

fixing it in Shopify and then canceling it and hopefully it would re-import unless like something happened to it. There were so many flaws and we still actually use that software for a couple of companies that just, yeah, just one company that just slow to slow to change the larger company. But, but that, that's, that's the main reason why we switched to Ship Hero is

was the client facing side just looks really good. And sure enough, the feedback has been like our clients that are using it all love it. They really do love the client portal. And they keep improving it too. Like they just keep adding new features to it. The most recent thing, Post Hero,

I sent out an email to all of our clients a couple weeks ago letting them know that Post Hero has been added, where they can see actual data, how long an order has taken to get from... As soon as it hits our system and gets out the door, and then as soon as it leaves our warehouse and gets to their front door...

you know, they've been taking all that data, combining it so they can see like for us, it's great because now they can see, oh, they're getting my orders out in 15 hours on average or 13 hours. I had one customer just to interrupt you for a second. We had one customer the other day that was complaining saying, I just want to go back to where you guys were fulfilling my orders under 24 hours. And I said, we are.

We're doing 14 hours and he goes, no, no, no. I want to go back to where it's just under 24 hours. I said, wait a minute.

We're doing it longer. 11 to 14 hours. You want it longer than that? And then I didn't hear from him. Did you refer him to post here? And then of course, you know, there was nothing like good job. No, like, Oh wow. Yeah. I love, I love post hero because it shows in fact, our,

our rep at Shapiro was like, are you sure you want me to turn this on? Because they can see like your order or how long it's taking for orders to get out. And I was like, no, that's good. We want them to see this. And sure enough, even like with wholesale, which, you know, wholesalers tend to take longer, sit in our system a little bit longer. Even with that, our slowest clients, it's like the average is 17, 18 hours getting out of our warehouse. And then

Three days. Yeah, like three days getting to people's doors is the average time. And so...

I'm just like, yeah, we want people to see how good we're doing. So yeah, Shapiro does a great job of A, letting our clients access everything, see everything, see the billing. It's not perfect. It's had some issues in the setup and there's still some issues, but the potential that Shapiro has with this is way higher. The ceiling is way higher than what we've had with any other system. And even then, like, yeah, what we currently have going is better than what we had with any other system. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's amazing here. And I love the, that you are so in on the transparency because I think that, you know, like one of the complaints that I hear a lot is that, you know, fulfillment providers, 3PLs, like they lack transparency a little bit, right? Like, you know, you say like, Oh, where's this inventory? And they tell you something, but maybe you don't have full visibility. And then like you said, you know, you're,

you're just like showing them the data basically like, Oh, well this is how long the order is actually taking. And then, you know, it sounds like maybe that was just some silence in the realization of, I'm saying the wrong thing here, right. From, from that client. Right. Let me just, let me just crawl back a bit, you know, but I think that transparency is such a, such an important thing when you're, you have those client relationships. And I think even more so when you look at,

consumers themselves, right? We're used to transparency, right? We order something from like Amazon or somewhere and you can check the tracking, you can see where it is, right? So that's bleeding more and more into the business side as well. So being able to provide that I think is great. And it's great to hear that like that's kind of building a foundation for you for this next phase of growth as well. So now if we look at kind of the

the future of EvoBox. What does that look like to you all? Lisa, you want to kick it off here and tell us what does the future look like for mom here? Well, I'm definitely in a different phase of life than Tyler is. But for me, I think our goal is pretty common. I mean, we share the same goal. We would like to see it continue to grow over the next three years. We have some financial goals for it. We have some revenue goals. And then at that point, I mean,

Is it okay to say that we're wanting at some point we want to do an exit and then take what experience we've had and I have my dream of what I would like to do and I know Ty's got some ideas of what he would like to do, but it's definitely not going to be a legacy experience. I think that

We've had our fun and we've helped some companies and we've gotten it to a good place. And I think that we're in a niche that would be really good for to have somebody, you know, maybe like a larger fulfillment center, take what we do and add that to theirs because ours is very personalized.

We have always said that our warehouse is just an extension of the companies that we ship for. So if they want pretty tissue paper and if they want, you know, stickers or whatever, however their unboxing needs to look, we understand how important that is. And so I think that that's something that should stay with EvoBox.

for its future. But I think that's the goal, right? Ty, would you agree? Yeah. I mean, the idea is to get it in a place where it's kind of just auto running, like our managers and everything that we put in place. We have really good managers. I mean, we talk about this a lot, how our company is, or I guess it's like our systems are only as good as our employees who enforce them and our employees are only as good as the systems that we use.

And so we've put a lot of focus into making sure that, and it's not quite there yet, but we wanted to get to the point where it's just kind of auto running. Like our employees, they know what to do. They have their systems. Like we want to set it up to be just perfectly self-sufficient without us having to manage it.

It's definitely not there yet. And like, we enjoy working together. And I know my parents, like, they're never going to retire, that they just like working too much. But I would like, you know, eventually, I want them to keep working as long as they want to keep working. You know, I don't want this to be a stressful thing for them. And I think we're definitely getting there where it's a lot less stress than it was a couple years ago, in my opinion, at least for me, I was

I was pretty close to quitting a couple years ago. That's why I'm working from home right now. I had to come up with a little bit more of a balance. So the future of EvoBox for me, yeah, eventually, I don't think this is something we want to do the rest of our lives, but we definitely want to set it up so that if it were to ever change hands, it would be very easy for them to take it on because of the systems and the companies that we have put in place.

Yeah, no, I'm sure like we'll probably be a part of it at least for another four or five years unless something crazy happens. Yeah, that's kind of my thought process. We want to bring on, like I said, people, people who've done this before. And that's kind of the goal of this year, even though it is in a really good position and like financially, you know, it's in a great spot.

I guess we're kind of at the point where we're curious, like, what could happen if we got some real outside perspective and experience? Where would it take EvoBox? So while it's not like a for sure thing that that's what we want to do, we're kind of at the point where it's like, okay, well, what is the next step? Because we were very rugged, you know, the first few years. The first three years was just us shipping stuff.

how we knew how to do it and like whatever, whatever our clients would tell us like, okay, yeah, that's, that's how we do it. And there was like years like three through six or three through five where we started to be like, Oh no, there's more to it and there's more we can do and there's more that we can provide. So there was a lot of learning going on. And then around like 2021 actually is probably when it was like,

okay let's take this or 2020 is when it was like no there's another level that we could hit there's more knowledge there's like more things we can learn more things we can apply at this point we've learned a ton so we can start actually telling our clients what to do to save money rather than just us being like well how do you want us to do this so yeah the balance between

doing what they want us to do and also being like, no, there's a better way to do this. So the future of EvoBox now is just kind of like, I feel like we've perfected, maybe not perfected, but we've gotten really close to like, this is a good flow, not just for us, but for our clients. There's a, there is a balance between how much we take on from what they want us to do and how much we are like, no, there, there's a better way to do this. If you kind of trust us and like, listen to us, there's a better way to do it.

So that's kind of what the future of VivaBox looks like. Finding some outside help, growing it a ton in the sense that it's just, yeah, we've never reached out to companies really on our own, except for like a few companies where it's like, I got a product from a board game company and I was like, I love this board game. I'm going to reach out to them. We're going to ship for them. And it works out. We are. We are. I think he's right. We, we went,

Like, going way back when we owned the drug store. And then we started this, I was doing customer service. Ty was doing the packing and we kind of just went through each.

aspect of a business and what do they expect out of their fulfillment partner. And so inventory management and efficiency and accuracy and all of the list of things that are important. And I feel like now we finally have all of those pieces where they need to be.

And we can confidently say we have an amazing inventory management and manager. We have an incredible receiving team. All of these different things that are so important to a company to not have to think about the fulfillment part of it. They just have so many other things that they need to do that we want to handle it. So there's very little communication between our customer service and them because it's just taken care of.

Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic to hear. And I love to hear kind of the, well, the evolution, I guess we'll say, right, of the business. And, you know, Ty, you talked about kind of that real learning phase. And it's very interesting to hear how...

you know you're just trying to figure out like well how do we just ship this stuff through like ship station these these watches right and how you've taken it so far now to to the point where it is now and it's great to hear it kind of that that recognition too of the the teams that you've been able to to build and the solid systems put in place to be able to to handle that so

So really interesting to learn about EvoBox here today and hear all about the business and the mother-son dynamic that's going on there. So I think today, Lisa, I think we need to close out this interview with your best motherly advice. It doesn't have to be around business. It could be around life. But we definitely need to get the top motherly advice from you today, Lisa. Yeah.

I have four kids and they're all so different and so unique. And so I think what I've learned, the youngest is graduating with his master's on Thursday. And I think what I probably learned that has helped is to be on their level wherever they're at in their life.

Whether that was, you know, tie in 6th grade and. And what did he need at that point? And so and to not. Interject so much my desires. But to trust them and trust what their. Goals are for their life because they're going to be different than mine except ties isn't. But but no, I think I think just letting them be.

be who they are and then and applaud them and and be excited for them because each of my kids are so different and yet I feel like the relationship I have with them is all incredible because I've allowed them to be who they are and love them no matter what no matter what choices no matter where they're at

All right. I love that. And I think that's such a great advice here on this special Mother's Day edition of the podcast. So really appreciate you both coming on. And if people want to learn more about EvoBox or get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?

I think probably just email me, Tyler at goevobox.com, goevobox.com. Usually either one of us is like the first point of contact, but I'm Tyler at goevobox. She is Lisa at goevobox.com. That's probably the best way to get in touch with us.

All right, great. And we'll definitely put that information at thenewwarehouse.com as well as in the show notes here for the podcast. And so a very happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there. And I'll go with Thai style, work style. Happy Mother's Day, Claudia. That's my mom, I'll say. All right. So thank you guys for joining me today. It's been a pleasure.

You've been listening to the New Warehouse Podcast with Kevin Lawton. Subscribe and check us out online at thenewwarehouse.com. Enjoyed this episode? Make sure you are subscribed to the podcast and for more content from The New Warehouse, find us on LinkedIn and YouTube. Links to subscribe can be found in the show notes and for everything The New Warehouse, head to thenewwarehouse.com.