Kamal Datta (00:02.882) Hey everyone, I'm very excited about today's episode where I'm going to learn and share more about what's all about, what it takes to make a race bib. And I'm fortunate to have here Tyler McGraw, the founder of RunVirt based in the bib town of America, Anderson, South Carolina. Tyler, glad to have you on the pod. Hey man, I appreciate it. And thanks for the intro and thanks for the shout out of Bibtown USA Anderson South Carolina, man. Great. And to learn a little bit more why it got the the name of Bibtown of America. But I do going to deep dive a little bit on that. But let's start with a little background of you have a fascinating background, how you actually got into the racing industry. Plus you founded Race RunVirt. If you can take us back and you're generally a little bit more about your personal story. Yeah, absolutely. You know, um, yeah, I think a lot of people that I've met so far in like the running industry, you know, they've all kind of got their start because of running. And for me, that wasn't the case. You know, I wasn't a runner. Um, you know, I got my start in the running industry because I wanted to get into something related to manufacturing, um, you know, and find something that, know, like a product that I could really sink my teeth into and really understand the manufacturing process. And so. You know, for me, that was it. You know, was so far from a runner, you know, I smoked cigarettes and I was like the most unhealthy as person when I got like my start in the running industry. And, you know, it's come full circle, you know, now it's been 13 years. And so it's really changed my life. But, you know, going back to those early days, there was a leadership development program at a, uh, at a company in Anderson, South Carolina. was just graduating college. You know not the time you know all I knew coming out of college was how to weigh tables and how to drink beer I really needed to You know I wanted to start a professional career So I what I really liked about the leadership development program at that time was you know I spent time and Really everything that really went into running a printing shop So I got into you know how to do the estimating you know how to do the customer service You know the front office work, you know, then we actually got into Kamal Datta (02:27.982) you know, how to run the equipment, how to run the finishing equipment and really got into like the nuts and bolts of what makes, you know, a printing company go kind of caught the bug, you know, and, and the one neat thing was it wasn't just any printing company. was a company that had a very unique niche and, and bib production and had been doing race bibs since like the mid seventies. And so it was such a really cool time, you know, at the time we were doing, I would think probably the most. Vibs, I think we were probably the leader in market share at the time. So we were doing pretty much all the majors here in the US. And it was a very hectic time. But it was a fun time to kind of understand everything that goes into the art of making race Vibs. So I got my start, so I kind of cut my teeth. I spent close to a decade there, working my way through mostly the production side. I got to spend a little bit of time. At one point a couple of things happened where people leave the organization and kind of create an opportunity to move into the sales side, which at the time I never really considered myself a salesperson. I was more of an ops guy. It was all about solutions and trying to improve our processes. And that to me is what really got me going. I never really thought of me as a salesperson until Yeah. prepared me for the process that I'm in now, know, now running my own business. You know, I had about half a year of managing a P &L, you know, managing all the things that go with, you know, running a, you know, a company. And so that was, that was a kind of a unique period of time. And honestly, it changed a ton. You know, I think what changed a lot obviously was COVID, you know, for everybody. Kamal Datta (04:51.022) You know, so at the time and I was, you know, was running the competition media side of our business. Things were going great. had just, you know, just coming off a record year for us on the running side of the business. We had just merged with another facility under the R and not only umbrella, which kind of complicated some things, but you know, things were kind of settling in and then COVID hit. And honestly, I remember COVID being, When it first came on, we were in Las Vegas at Running USA. And I remember like traveling and seeing people kind of wearing masks and not, honestly at that time I didn't really take it that seriously. What impact it might have because, you know, how many of these things have we seen, you know, throughout our time that it's never gonna turn into the dumpster fire eventually turned into. it completely, Uh, think shook our world in our world. I mean, the running world completely upside down. Right. And at the time, you know, it felt like the world was just flipped upside down and you know, what are we going to do? You know, it's just, it's like a family at that time. had, uh, we had a, uh, he was nine months old. So my oldest son was nine months old. And, you know, personally, you're thinking, you know, how are we going to move forward? You know, half of my income is shut down because no longer doing. and I'm not gonna put food on the table. And then we got hit with the fact that she, we found out that she was pregnant with triplets, which completely, you know, that immediately changed the for me personally. So yeah, I mean, so at that point I actually took a little bit of a break from the running industry for about a year. And I'm gonna tell you that was the longest year of my life, you know, in terms of, Well, we had COVID and at the same time, you know, we had triplets and, you know, and, and was able to work from home. And, you know, you're talking, I mean, so many diaper changes, like an unbelievable amount of diaper changes. know, being away from an industry that, you know, I'd grown to love, you know, coming back, said, going back from when I first came into a being, I'll be one of the most unhealthiest, know, 23 year old males. Kamal Datta (07:18.777) ever, right? you know, smoked about a pack of cigarettes a day and loved to drink cold beers. But at the time, you know, when COVID hit, I had started to kind of caught the bug of running, you know, is, you know, had a weekly running routine and really started to kind of miss my friends in the running industry. And so you don't realize the thing is your thing. didn't realize, I didn't realize that I had, you know, the bug until I was away for a year. And then next thing I know, was trying to explain to my wife, hey, I know we have four kids. I know they're quite young. I know that we're a single income household, but what if I decide to quit my job and go both feet into starting my own race company? here we are now three years in, three years into Runbert. All right. All the, that's a fascinating story. And then it took a leap of faith and I'm very glad that we are talking today because you make sure it definitely made it work and you have to grow going forward, I'm sure, and all the best for that. When you said you take a break for a year, I know that was at that time you have to put food on the table, so you have to make sure. So you switched the industry and went into a different industry, right? That's what you meant? Well, I stayed in printing and this is where I started to learn the difference between, you know, if I identified personally as a printer or as a bib guy, you know, that I, you know, there's two different, I, being away for that period of time, allow me to understand the difference that I'm not necessarily a printer, you know, that's not necessarily what I missed. wasn't the, um, the printing aspects. I was still in printing, but it was a different type of printing. We were doing direct mail for, for banks at that time, you know, it was there in COVID, everybody was refinancing. So, you know, I go ahead and apologize in advance for anybody that got all that. know, that spam mail in their mailbox for refinancing their house that was mostly coming from our company that I was with at that time. but, you know, so I definitely, at that point that really helped me again, understand the difference between being a printer, just trying to put ink on stuff and really what I truly miss was the product side, the bib side. And now what it's good for us, what we consider to be an expanded idea of what bib is, really more of a participant identification. Kamal Datta (09:42.24) And so that kind of helped set the foundation for where we are at RunVirt today and kind of the future and where we're headed. Great. Great. So let's start with what is your vision with RunVirt and why did you found? Because I think you want to, you call yourself as the weird BiB guy. I'm sure I think you painted the picture while you are calling it because you found that. how is RunVirt different? than maybe the traditional, BiB printing kind of side of business? Yeah, and I would say the answer to that is, we are solely focused on this. And it's not that, you know, people that are, you other people in this space, there's a ton of really, they're all great. And I'm not gonna sit here and talk about any of them because they've, I've know all of them personally, and they all do a really good job. What my vision and why I thought RunVirt was needed is because I think that there needed to be a sole focus on the product and not doing other things, not doing business cards, car apps, we're not just trying to put ink on anything. I'm not trying to do any of those other things. I want to be solely focused on this, this thing, how to improve it, how to improve all facets of it. And I think by doing that, that's what's kind of a last. You know, that's why, you know, in my opinion, and this is somebody who's worked in before this in a previous life, you know, had was working at a large company that did this, but mostly did a bunch of other stuff. Yeah. You you just, they're not going to try and broke, you know, they're not going to try and fix something that's not broke. And so that's why you haven't seen any innovation on the bid front since the invention of digital printing in like the late nineties, because, you know, it's been on the same material. pretty much looks the same. It functions in the same way. you had a guest on previously, was talking about like, why are we still using safety bands? mean, and it's the truth. Why are we still using safety bands? And it's because, you know, if it's not broke, don't fix it. So nobody's trying to improve materials, the materials involved. You know, nobody's really trying to kind of take the product and look at it from a product itself. Kamal Datta (12:04.5) Instead they're looking at it from, we have equipment that can run this and also, you know, four other different, you know, revenue streams. And they're focused, that's where they're buying the equipment. That's where they're focusing some of these other things as opposed to being focused on the product. And then you can, you know, inform your other business decisions after the fact. So this brings me to I think you're referring to probably, I had a chat with Frankie of Miami Marathon. Yes, Frankie, absolutely. Like, yeah, come on, this is 2025. Why we still have to use safety pin to put the bib on our T-shirt and all, which is definitely a great question. This brings me to a point, I think it would be good if you can give a landscape of the bib industry, because I think you have been into the industry, a lot of big players, and you are from the bib town of America. If you want to paint a picture on that, what does the landscape looks like? And then we'll probably dig in a little bit more what you are doing differently. think at RaceVirt. Yeah, I would say, you know, it goes back to, you you touched on Bibtown USA a little bit, you know, so my, so my history and my understanding, right, is not just mine. Like there's a, you know, when I first started working for that, that, that RaceBib company was Electric City Printing, and they had started producing RaceBibs in 19, we say 1975. Nobody has like the exact date as when the first RaceBib came off. the press, you know, in the of downtown Anderson, then, but we so we just say like the mid 70s. But so we it's kind of like an oral history of what the industry is how it's kind of shifted. You know, my understanding is, you know, when it first started, you know, you, there's there was race, there's well before that, but it wasn't anybody that specialized in the actual production race, right? It was just a few people that would do a couple number pieces of paper. But, you know, Electric City is one of the first that actually had a focus on and a program around the production of race bibs, which is well before digital printing. And there was really two main players and both no longer exist. So the other one was Rainbow Racing out on the West Coast and they existed for a long, long time. And then had Electric City here on the East Coast. When it ended up happening, you know, it's kind of as things evolved is Electric City was acquired and big part due to the running business because they had a niche. You know, the thing about printing is, Kamal Datta (14:31.522) You know, there are dollies of the world where I used to work, you know, they got, you know, they're not, they're known for being the phone book printers, right? That type of stuff. It doesn't, it's no longer needed. So if you don't have a niche in printing, like if you don't have a, a thing that has value, there's no longer, no longer buying, you know, magazines. There's, know, there's no such thing as like all these other big things that were tied into print for so long. You gotta have something that has an edge. And so. That provided a ton of eye in why Electric City was acquired multiple times and ended up being acquired by the largest printing corporation in the world. So at the time, you know, and this is, I would say you almost have to separate as pre-COVID and post-COVID. Pre-COVID, you had, I would say, really, you know, two here in South Carolina, us and eMedia. We actually all, Electric City and eMedia are kind of related in a really strange way where e-media actually came out of Electric City as well. So they actually came out of Bib Town as well. They moved up to Greenville. have pre-COVID, you had Boulder Bibbs out there in Colorado, some really great folks. You have Marathon printing in Oregon and I'm not trying to intention this, athlete race numbers in New Jersey pre-COVID. And then you still had Rainbow doing things. Once COVID hit Electric City, dropped out of the business, &D, does what big corporations do, divested, pivoted, know, they're now in by private equity and doing a bunch of other stuff now, but definitely not doing anything near race bibs, rainbow racing, get out of the business. So you had two of the longest standing race bib companies completely out of the industry. And for our little community, you know, to me, that was a sad thing, you know, to see, you know, close to four decades of a product and you're talking the 1984 LA Olympics bibs were printed in Anderson, South Carolina. The 1996 Atlanta Olympic bibs were printed in Anderson, South Carolina. Our little community takes pride in this. It's a very proud thing for us that we play a, we're a small town, but we play a very big role in the biggest races in the world. Kamal Datta (16:53.678) and so you know that that was so anyways beginning back to like the the bigger picture of where we are today you know there's I think now you so had two major players come out and you there was no new blood coming back into it you know it was still the same people yeah I think now you have you know race result doing some really cool things out of out of Germany where you know they're able to kind of pair and in a period of time. so that actually ended up bringing some newer materials into the market for the first time. it was almost like no questions asked what material you were getting. It was always Tyvek from everybody. And that supply chain issue, which was really, I would almost even say it was a DuPont inflicted issue where, and they're saying it was like the government mandated that they had to require a certain amount of Tyvek for the healthcare industry, which I agree with, which I'm not. and kind of starting to further the conversation and something that we're definitely pushing further into ourselves. Let's talk about, so I'm getting curious about this Tyvek looks like. So most of the bibs today produced are used, are using Tyvek materials, right? Is that correct? Correct. Absolutely. So if you want to walk through the process of making a bib. So in here I have. Kamal Datta (19:18.766) And I am to come to run Virt in a bit. So I have two bibs in my hand. One is the Burle Marathon that I ran in 2023. And I can see the back doesn't have any timing chip. So it's just like a plain, simple piece of paper, but has ton of information. I get a little bit of your thoughts on how it And this one is my Chicago Marathon bib, which has my lap's timing chip at the back. Again, both of them, you see that I have the still pins, they're still hanging. So I still have the pin up on my t-shirt. So if you can tell her what and real quick about the safety bins, you know, I do want to make sure I do a shout out for my guy Brian Goodell. He has a really great product and a lot of people have utilized the BibBoards product. the fact that we haven't evolved. Yeah, the fact we haven't evolved race bibs. He's done a really great job of being able to bring a new product to market to make the activity of putting your BIb on your shirt a lot easier and brandable. And he's done a great job. Yeah, absolutely. And he's done a great job with that. sorry. That's good. That's good to point that out. Some innovation is happening in that front. So if you can walk through the process of like you mentioned about Tyvek and then how we get to that, because it's not a simple process. I think it's very complex and lot of inputs and you have to work with multiple stakeholders to get the finished product out. Right. Yeah, absolutely. And so there is, you know, that's when you look at a race, babe, It's more than just like a stupid piece of paper that I like to say, right? There's a lot of things that RaceBib is used for. So if you look at it across the board, so EraseVib is used, obviously as a vessel for housing the timing device. So it's a timing, it's a part of the timing solution. It's used, it incorporates a ton of the registration data. So it ties in directly to a lot of the registration platforms. You know, it's a credential for race day. So like, you know how you can get in certain areas There's a lot of races that you know have VIP or member access or you know prefer things elite runners things like that, right? So there's a lot of you know value there if you look at even The New York Marathon does a really complex bib where Kamal Datta (21:40.888) for them is like one of the most complex things about their bib is the pre-race logistics. You you have to shut down a city like New York, but you still have to get, I mean, 60,000 people to the start line. And so getting all that pre-race logistics, so like they're printing what you need to get on the Staten Island ferry. You need to take this location to here and all that is printed on your race bib as well. So there's a lot of value that a race bib can provide, a lot of utility if used directly. And so, but getting into how that's done, there's a lot of that. we do a lot of work with the timers. I would say a lot of my relationships are usually kind of going to be in the timing industry and with those folks, but we also do a ton of work with the registration partners. Some of the best, right? You had Bob on with Run Sign Up and they do a ton, right? They do a ton of races. Yeah, one of things that they've done uniquely is really kind of push the dynamic bib assignment. It's really, I think, changed a lot of how efficient Expos run. But, you know, there's even, you know, some of the people like Haku, you know, Jackie and Jose and that group, they do a ton of like the really, really big events like Chicago you just had. You know, they do, work with New York, and they do a lot of like the complex data. And so we work a lot with them and how that needs to how that needs to work with the race bib. And so, you know, a lot of that, I mean, it's complicated. You wouldn't think just by holding a simple two-sided piece of paper that, you know, how much complexity is involved, but there is, know, because each file is different, know, each bib is different from the other. So you don't realize, and so you almost, if we were to like run like the linear foot of how many bibs have been ran. on something like Chicago. That's a ton of linear feed and each eight inches is a different image from the next. So it's not like you're just duplicating the same image over and over again. You're incorporating QR codes, some even incorporate variable imaging, I think I would encourage more people to do where you can come with a database and you can even like version logos that hit demographics, like certain Kamal Datta (24:05.93) know, package your demographics by, you know, different, different folks, just like you do programming, you know, like old school TV programming. Yeah. So you can kind of change who, you know, offer, you know, maybe, you know, better price sponsor packages based upon demos and that could populate on a race. So there's a lot of things that could be done with better programming. And, but yeah, there's a lot of stuff that happens. you know, just in the before a race bib is even printed. Yeah. That's so much of the process is before the bib even actually gets printed, there's that. And then you have what happens after. There's a ton of work that happens after it too. That's true. Cause I do the bag checkup and then if you have some, you know, post-race part details also goes into the bib sometimes, right? You know, the tags that you put it into. Now, Thanks for setting up the context. Now, if you want to walk to kind of the supply chain and the manufacturing side of the things, how it, what it goes. I think where I think probably you are innovating and I to go different and to understand more and how RUNVIRT is doing it. But if you to say before you started to say, innovate in this space, like what is the traditional supply chain and the manufacturing steps looks like. Yeah. And so that's. One of the things that I credit being able to spend 10 years in the background. It has really helped me say, okay, now if I had my own business, how would I do it? And the number one thing is I want to reduce the amount of steps. I want to reduce the amount of overhead, increase the amount of automation. And that was like number one thing. And so I've always kind of had my in my head, you we all do, right? How many jobs have you had? You'd like, you know, if I was the big boss. This is how I would do. And I've always had this kind of vision in my head of like, well, this is the holy grail of what a, like a super efficient production line would look like. so, you know, Hey, fast forward to, you know, 2022, I got my own company and we're, we're stacking volume. So at the time we didn't have any equipment. were actually, you know, doing a lot of work with the people we compete against now we were buying from. And then eventually we were able to get volume to the point where. Kamal Datta (26:28.524) you know, it was kind of a no brainer. We have to get our own equipment. and I'm like, the only way that I'm going to do this the right way is I want to do it with this little thing I had in my head. And so we were able to, to like literally build a one of a kind bib production line. First of its kind does not exist anywhere else, you know, in the world. And it's sold for focuses to print race bibs. This thing couldn't print business cards if it wanted to, I wouldn't even know how to. so the unique thing, you know, so what we were going against is this. So when I was at, you know, electric city, you know, we had, we had two web presses that all they did was print the sole focus of what they did was print. And so we just actually had an onsite, a really great onsite visit with the Atlanta track club. were celebrating the launch of the Peachtree road race, which, you know, big shout out to that group. They're, they're wonderful. And, you we were able to, they were able to come up to run road at HQ. We made our whole place look like Uncle Sam threw up, you know, because they're a fourth of July race. So we just had, I'm just, we had a balloon arch. We had a blow up Uncle Sam. We had hot dogs. You know what I'm saying? You got to celebrate fourth of July the full way. Yeah. And so, but anyways, so we, had them up there and I was like walking them through the process. I was like, you know, if for, for instance, when we were, would run the peach tree in those days, um, you know, we would spend probably a day and a half. that roll the Tyvek and just print the backs, not actually doing anything but that. Then we would flip it over and then we would print the fronts. Only printing the front. So it would just go roll to roll. Then we would have to go to a separate step where the sheeting would happen. So we'd get it off the roll and then you would get it in the sheets, right? And then from there, so now you have one operator on press, you have an operator at the sheeter. You would then go to another step where the perfing would happen. So like the tear offs would go through a step where the tear offs would be done. Yeah. From there. So now that's a third operator. You would go to the guillotine cutter where it would get cut down in the final size. So at this point, you're multi, you're going be two or four up on a sheet. You would then go to your guillotine cutter where it would get cut down to final size. So now you're at operator four. Yeah. You would then go to the round corner. Kamal Datta (29:21.004) with order like Peachtree where they're gonna have 53,000 finishers this year. You're talking, it's the world's biggest team cake. They're gonna have, you're talking eight, nine days before we ever even put a tag on. Before we ever put a tag on. And so that again, that's gonna add even more time. You're talking at least probably two weeks with tag fixing. So just crazy. And so- And all these test-tellers are all CL. They're like- Sequential they're not like this not happening in parallel, right? This no steps. No, exactly. They have to what? Yeah Well, I mean so the way we were doing it is You know, we would have we had two web presses So you would think and we could print all day long We can't print print print print We'd run two three ships even at one point and just printing all day long didn't matter because we only had one shooter Yeah, we did. So you just have a humongous backlog So when you really look at it like from only manufacturing standpoint Kamal Datta (30:25.866) and So they all had to happen, you know in step, you know, so they're all there's always something going it wasn't like it Yeah, there's always somebody at the shooter, but it they had to happen in those in those ways. So Yeah, so it was Coming into it at my own. I'm like, all right You know and generally kind of being familiar enough with you know who were like it was already in the place, I kind of generally know what they have as well. I think the opportunity for us would just be, let's just do it more efficient than anybody. And it's two fronts. When I look at efficiency, and that's one of our three pillars I want to talk about is efficiency, sustainability, and creativity. When I look at efficiency, to me, it's beyond just a cost efficiency. There's energy efficiency. And these things all kind of tie into each other. And so, if I'm able to do this with one piece of equipment instead of 10, I'm saving money, I'm saving energy. We're doing all this other stuff in a way more efficient way. so, yeah, so that's what we did. We went and we had this thing in my head, got this one of a kind, big production line installed later than I was expecting. Again, these are things now I look back and kind of laugh, being first time business owner. I probably should have planned that. You know, things always are going to be later than expected and cost more than expected. know, that's definitely, definitely what happened. But, you know, so we were a month behind and getting our production line installed. it took us a month to really kind of get it dialed in. And it honestly even took us a year to really get to the point where I have it, where we are now. So like, you know, now we can load up, you know, raw material on one end and out the other end comes a completely finished product with one operator. I don't need 10 steps. So when we are showing the folks from Peachtree, I'm like, we're able to tag right now. You are here to see the launch of that first bib came off. We're able to start tagging immediately instead of waiting those 10 days. that's a reduction in speed of market. It's providing value all throughout our supply chain. So that is the efficiency part that you mentioned, that one of the three pillars that in a RunVirt Kamal Datta (32:43.415) So what is the efficiency gain from your understanding is like, like probably seven steps to now it's like one step end to end. step, you know, one operator. like the thing for me is like, you know, these are things that we could do from a, an engineer, getting machines to do it the right way, getting a smarter machine, allowing people to do people things. That's what I like to tell people is like, you know, I could put things in and we have a leaner team, but we are able to do things. much more efficiently. So I have people doing people things and the equipment doing the things that equipment should be doing. No, no, that makes sense. But I looking at more of a percentage, like 60%, 70 % efficiency gain from the traditional big printing to the what you have at RunVirt, end-to-end in one step with one operator. there a way to present it? Yeah. Why not having like the empirical data to tell you exactly? I would say that our team you know, is we have six full-time employees and we're doing the same through, you know, basically the same throughput that we were doing, you know, back at Electric City with, with basically three times the footprint of employees and, you know, overhead and all the other stuff, you know, and, and, we still have opportunities to add more. Like we still have capacity that we could, we can add into it. So cool. the best thing that I think it probably will bring it up is that You are thinking bib not as a outcome of a printing, right? So you have a printing press, your goal is to print paper and doesn't matter what you put in the paper, right? That's what the traditional was. But you are thinking bib as a product and you optimize the whole product life cycle, leveraging, obviously, you're talking about brain, but I think you're leveraging a lot of technologies to actually get there because you combined all the seven steps into in one operator too. And then Part B is that you're also bringing in the sustainability as one of the core pillars that how we are doing it as you're rethinking the product. If you want to highlight a little bit on what you are doing differently or how you are thinking sustainability as the forefront as one of the pillars. Yeah. And it is, you know, and it's one of those things. And another shout out is the my chief bib guy, Jay Gidry. You know, he's my sales guy. You know, he's somebody that I have a long relationship with. We were roommates in college. Kamal Datta (35:05.774) And he is, I would say, he's the lead hippie at RunVirt. So he kind of brings that kind of, that ethos into our culture. When we were in college together, he's an environmental science major. So like he is, his wife's a conservationist for Upstate Forever here in South Carolina. And so like he is very environmentally conscious. And so he, he has educated me and made me aware of a ton of different things. And it's kind of brought me in, it kind of brought me to the light and say, okay, yeah, like we should take this seriously. And it's not like, I'm not sitting here saying that like Tyvek is the reason for global warming. It's not. And honestly, most runners keep their bibs, but what really started to kind of weigh on me is like, when I see the amount of Tyvek that we personally throw away and know that Tyvek is not a recyclable material. and And so yeah, we, so we've got to work. We've, we do a ton of work with, Tina Muir and her team with, racing for sustainability. I'm not sure if you've, if you've ever heard of her or any of the great work that they're doing, she'd be honestly a great, great person. She works with, running USA as well. would guess. Right. She Yeah. She does. I mean, she works with, I mean, everybody, I mean, and she does a ton of work. I'm doing a lot of things. She does a thing called plogging where, they'll go and before the course, like they'll have like before the race, like they'll go and like run the course with her picking up the trash beforehand. And it's kind of like made it into like an activity. She's like, she has a really neat initiative that they were talking about with the folks from, um, um, she had Matt Helbig. She had Matt Helbig. Kamal Datta (37:25.358) Her Matt Helbig were doing a program at Running USA talking about Save a tree plant or save a tea plant a tree, which is a really neat thing that they're doing where people can bypass Getting a t-shirt with their registration instead it turns into You know, you can plant a tree. So it's a really neat program that they're doing and And it's benefiting all different, you know I forget how many trees that they said that they were able to plant and around st. Louis but and and really it makes it like irresponsible to recycle. It's so hard to recycle because it's so lightweight. It's like trying to recycle a ton of feathers like the sheer amount of like square footage you would need. And so, you know, so they just don't, they don't put any effort into another recycling facility. the same. So, but anyway, so we wanted to find something that can do all the great things that Tyvek does. And we've put our own work into our own R &D into a, we've Went with multiple different, you know, and the good thing about working at a large printing corporation like our Donnelly. I have a crap load of, um, Up connections, you know, right? I was able to tap into, you know, a deep network of people on the material side and we were, we went down a bunch of different rabbit holes since we finally settled on this material dry text that is far and away. I think the best, you know, type of replacement and having the ability to, um, you know, do all those great things. And not only that, you know, it's actually even at a better price point, because like, that's the other thing is, you know, if you're going to bring something to market, that's going to be a sustainable offering, they're oftentimes are going to go with the better price point. So we want to like, Hey, let's go ahead and take that out of the way. Let's get something that's at a better price point in Tyvek. And so not only can you save money by not using Tyvek, you get Kamal Datta (39:50.734) in opinion, a better product. It looks better from a quality standpoint, because it's meant to be printed on. It's not second off label use. there's a ton of future aspects. Like you showed, I think, Berlin. And Europe, I think it's actually, you look, it's probably a different material. In Europe, they don't print on a tie bag. In Europe, they're using mostly another material called Teslan that is slightly different. And one of the aspects of their stuff is like you can print do a lot more printing on site Tyvek is super heat sensitive again This is where I'm getting into the weird bib guy thing, man I'm looking at it. There's no way for me to tell yeah the Tyvek or non Tyvek Yeah, good point though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so like there has like different heat properties between the two Yeah, like, you know, so for me, it's like, you know, I would like to arm of our American races with the capability of being able to print on site. You're not going to do that with Tyvek. The aspect of doing that is just crazy. So let's start now. So the Stripex is a great alternative. It's recyclable. And so we're working now with the manufacturer to get more more information out. even now, we work with the Eau Claire Marathon, Emmy and her team. to and actually Tina they got the certification through Tina Muir for know for racing for sustainability and you know one of the components among a bunch of different things for their there's the environmental certification that they got was the fact that they use the dry text bibs and not tie back you know had the ability to then offload any unused bibs because they're all you know any race that's going to do that are always going to order you know typically 10 to 15 percent more bibs than I need because the worst thing that you want to have is no bib on race day. Like what are going to do? And so those typically get, you know, those can get recycled now versus just go to the trash and go live in a landfill that will probably outlive our kids and our kids' kids. So, so yeah, so that, that is one. We have another, you know, another exciting one that I'm super excited to kind of you guys. This is our hemp product. So, Kamal Datta (42:12.174) We just did our first live order with our hemp bibs for USATF and was for their Throws National Championships out in Tucson. And so the neat thing about that is this is a, we're looking at a compostable product, something that's fully easily recyclable, compostable. The supply chain for us is that we're located in South Carolina. We have a massive hemp economy. Not marijuana, you know, we're still very anti marijuana here. Yeah. But you know, we have we're very pro hemp, you know, strangely enough, you know, welcome to the south. But but no, so hemp farming is, you know, it's very prolific here. And but one of the one of the drawbacks is we there still needs to be more economically viable products for hemp. And so this is South Carolina grown hemp that we have here. You know, so we have a really close supply chain here where we could take the South Carolina grown hemp. and turn it into basically bed material. So we have filler, have some hydrophobic properties that we're adding to that. Because that's kind of the line that we're having to tow. You want it to eventually absorb water, but just for a couple of days. Can we not absorb water for a couple of days? And that's what we're shooting for. then eventually, so we've... We're able to work with a custom material manufacturer along with our South Carolina farmers to kind of make this really neat product. We're in talks with a few other events that I'm really excited about, about rolling this product out. And then it's, so there's a ton of opportunities on the sustainability side. And again, it goes to show like what we're doing from the material side, and talking about that conversation with Frankie is like, it starts with material. Like, you know, with Tyvek, that's why it's always had safety benefits because people only want to print on Tyvek. You're never really going to get any type of material innovation on a material that is so heat sensitive that it restricts all the different other processes that could happen with like, you know, lamination and or getting like, you know, any type of like adhesives and like custom adhesives and all this other stuff. It's like very hard to work with this type of stuff. It allows us to start to look at. Kamal Datta (44:31.522) Well, let's check this box and then start heading into these other arenas. Makes sense. Cool. And then anything you to highlight about the third pillar of RunVirt? creativity, Yes. Yeah. To me, creativity goes a long way. It's in how the looks, like the artwork, who is designing the bib, how are they able to design the bib, what part of the process are they designing the bib, how we even communicate. and market ourselves is another thing. You know, how do we like to me like the creativity element is truly us going from a BIP company into a participant identification company. So like, how can we be creative enough to look at avenues to where, you know, we can expand the utility of our product and what we do. And I mean, that's even as recently as, as two days ago, like having a in my opinion, a really unique opportunity for content for a race. Right. Yeah. You know, it's not, we're not just, you know, coming in, let's do a photo shoot. No, I was like, we, we were like, we had our mayor. So we like literally had the mayor of Bibb town. Yeah. Which is not really an end of our town, by the way, guys. It's, it's Anderson south now, but we had the mayor of Anderson, AKA Bibb town USA. We had him on site. We had, the President of Atlanta Track Club, Rich Canal, great dude by the way, former Olympian, Quta, salt of the earth, came on site and we, like I said, we had a whole big, we went overboard, had a balloon, had so much like 4th of July stuff. It was cool. But that wasn't there, we didn't just stop there. We took it a step further. We have a really great local running club called the Anderson Running Club. We wanted to interact there too. So create more opportunity for our customer to connect with and through a grassroots way with our local run club and then build content around that. And then you're able to get that out there and hopefully, that just any little bit can help. And I think, especially in our world right now, in the content economy that we're in, I think there's an opportunity to have what we do just provide little touches. Kamal Datta (46:55.66) And honestly, how we do it is so unique because, you know, with everybody else, you're gonna have to show like eight different steps for how a race bib is made. Like for us, hey, stay right here for 10 seconds and you see a race bib be made. So that made me curious, Tyler, because one of the things, and I've seen more as I participate in different races and I've talked to folks, like there's a cut off time when you can have your name printed on the bib, right? Most of the races have like. Hey, if you your name printed on the bib, make sure you register by that time after that. No, it's just a generic babe. And I think I see that since your manufacturing time is so kind of short, you can probably accommodate that, the order or the changes further than traditional manufacturing will take. I wonder, that's probably some of the creativity aspect of how you make it. think I was looking at in a run Virt the whole. life cycle because folks can themselves design their babe on the Euro website itself and then you start from there. I'm wondering how you're solving that to, you know, maybe have a little longer time for the folks because most of the runners do choose races toward the end, very last minute. I would tell you, you know, this is probably one of the most exciting things that I'm working on actively is that element of, and it's not even like to me, it's not even so much that it's us doing the printing. You know, that's the game. If you're a printer, you just want to print all the everything. Right. I think for me, the value is how can we arm other people to print themselves and not necessarily, I'm not advocating for runners, printing their own bibs, you know, at home, but can we build out a suite of products where timers are armed with, you know, being able to just, all they have to do is print a lot of them are printing their own tags. Like, why can't we make it to where that's a standalone product and we can build a solution around them doing that. then so, and we even have a few timer customers that are even doing that today. I have a great client in New York and he does a great job of, he will literally print. We've set him up, we have a relationship with Xerox and we were able to literally put him with a very specific and affordable Kamal Datta (49:28.382) Oh, and Kamal Datta (49:48.366) really the logistics out of it. And I'll tell you right now, that's a nightmare because good luck trying to get anything truly. Yeah. You know, it's just, and so it, you know, to me that is a big like focus of mine and how we can expand what a base race that is, not necessarily being so focused on how do we dominate the main production of it. I think it's how can we, you know, facilitate, you know, the bid production. And I think, you know, honestly, you know, through timing partners and through you know, the material side and then also on the software side, how that and building that and making the production of BraceVibs so easy that, hey, you know, anytime they can hear you with a timing company can do that. And to me that facilitates a ton of different opportunities. Oh yeah, definitely. Because you are shifting it being one point, you know, everybody's dependent on versus spreading across the timers who are actually ultimately you know, getting that, you know, the chips with the bib to the race directors and then the runners eventually. And then going back to the on-site bifurcating, that's, know, they're going to be on-site. And I think if we could do that for timers and we could, we can, you know, easily set that up. you know, know, race expos and we've even done that. Like this is, you know, when I was at Auradonnelly, one of my favorite things that I've ever done was we worked the New York Marathon Expo in 2016. Okay. And we did this on behalf of the, um, I think was a team for kids charity that they, that they, you know, very prominent and you know, what they had asked us to do. And this is before it had ever really been done was can you come to our expo and print custom vanity bibs for people on site? So what they were wanting was not just that they were wanting like the full activation. Can you set it up to where people can customize it, you know, set up tablets, man that. and then and so we took that as a challenge it was something that honestly was one of the most fun things yeah no i'm a as you could probably tell from accident i'm southern born and raised like going to the big city and like yeah that was fun by itself yeah and also being able to do something really cool like that interacting i think i want to say you know that's obviously one of the most heavily trafficked expos in the world and you're talking i think over the course of the three days we were there i think we printed Kamal Datta (52:17.102) close to 15, 20,000 bibs on demand for people. And like, they're just saying for whatever reason, right? And it was, they did it, it was free, but it was like a suggested donation. And so they were able to, the fundraise off of that activation and you know, people were, you know, so you're able to connect directly with runners, you know, while they're running, right? You're connecting with their why, which is a really neat thing. So that to me was one of the funnest things. That reminds me. And I remember the Berlin Marathon and I hope my observation was correct because they were actually printing at the expo. remember, if you go there and say, is my thing. And then someone goes back, it's like less than a minute, they're back with your baby printed out. Yes. And Mika, think that's probably, they do a really good, Micah, sorry. Yeah. So they do, they do a really fantastic job of all of that. And that's something that, you know, for us here, we need to be doing that. You know, we need to be, And it's really something that's a charge of ours. And I think that we're gonna be the ones that can get there here for the US and we already are. That's pretty good. That would be an awesome forward journey. Tyler, if you could share a little time about the unit economics of a BIB. Because in the context of everything is going around and the tariffs and the supply chain side, what is the impact of it? And then like, what is the unit of scale to make a BIB? And it may be for the timers. I know this is your primary customer that you're working with, or maybe for these directors. Because I think I had a good chat with Jay. I think you definitely know him, Jay Tyler. Yeah. Jay Holder, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I think we talked a little bit about kind of the impact potential that Tariffs may have overall for the race production side of things and how it may impact. the runners themselves for everything is bundled within the race costs, right? So it's how much, but since you are talking about the bibs specifically, if you're gonna shed some light on the unit economics of that. Yeah, I would say definitely. it's kind of we're winding the clock a little bit, the supply chain difficulties immediately drew about the cost of type. Kamal Datta (54:42.094) So Tyvek, I want to say increased in costs. There was a period of time, I don't think it raised prices for like a decade plus where Tyvek did not increase. And then post COVID, there was obviously different demand for healthcare supply of the raw material for Tyvek. that drove the price up. And so now I would say, but it's still manufacturing. So we don't necessarily have the tariff impact. on material for Tyvek, but you know, there's other things, right? I mean, you're looking at like the equipment that's mostly used for the production of race vips are not US made, know, ours happens to be, but a lot of, you know, the other ones are, you know, coming from, you know, other countries. And so parts, you know, all that stuff, toner, you know, everything kind of related to that is like, you like, like you look at Packard, There was a ton of that today. so there, you know, I'm not sure exactly, because we don't, that's not the one that we use. There is probably a, I'm sure an impact there, but I know for a fact on, it's really going to be more on like the timing chip side. You know, you're going to see, you know, impacts on, you know, the chips, you're going to see impacts on, you know, the inlays and the materials that are used for those. And so that's where you'll see some slight impacts. and bringing in new new materials, you know, if we can reduce costs, 15 % and race bibs, I'm gonna tell you, when it to their budget is not a major, major impact. It's still something, you know, that's still, that could help in any way, shape or form. That's where we want to be, you know, providing some, some reforged work. No, but that's good to know. And thanks for sharing that context as well. Now, last question, what's next for RunVirt man. Kamal Datta (57:20.414) that that's always a daily thing, a daily thing. And looking at it, it's a quarterly review where we're looking at our processes. do something called how to make things not stupid is what we call it. And we literally review all of our processes. It's an all-hands thing. We don't have a big team, so it's not like we're bringing in a bunch of people in, but we bring in all the different facets of our business and say, okay, let's review our processes and then have those people kind of explain what they do. then they have to kind of, if there's anybody that has a question, that's what we're really starting to see, just continuous improvement on our side. But that's a big thing. How can we be more efficient? And that's even, we're We came up with a new program now where we're able to capture what we used to throw away, a ton of Artaevec. And now we're able to recapture that. And then we have a secondary print method that is able to handle a lot of our non-bleed orders very economically. that was a big thing. Obviously the sustainability stuff that we talked about. Getting newer materials into the market, working with people that align, you know, kind of with our vision, you know, and it's not just a whole, you know, but I think that we can also be capitalist and also environmentalists at the same time. And that's where, you know, we're trying to kind of blend those two concepts. want to provide options where people can save money and also help. Again, I was a Captain Planet kid growing up. Now I'm not sure if you know who Captain Planet is, but you know, the wonderful 90s TV cartoon and I grew up in Atlanta area. You know that you know, that's Ted Turner is one of my like aisles and so You know, we we we are we I'll make our team like watch a random episode of Captain at least one You know, it's a You know, it's you know, it's a sustainability is a big part of you know Where we're headed and where we're focused and then on the creativity side as well Those three things when they're when they're really kind of formed together and they all kind of work together Yeah, you know, we're really heavily focused on Kamal Datta (59:34.574) You know, how can I make the the race bib and the RFID one thing instead of two things? It's honestly in, in, talked about the safety thing. That is honestly a thing. I, a real quick story is, know, when I graduated college, I got that job at, um, Thomas consolidated graphics. You know, I was no longer waiting tables. I was actually making what I thought at the time was like, I'm making money, man. And the first job they put me doing for. two months was just literally putting tags on bibs. Oh, really? Like on second shift, there was nobody there. And like, it was a, I felt like there was like ghosts in the place. And I'm like, this is what I graduated college to do. And it's always, it always, it's kind of like 808 me is like, why that should not be a thing. Like we should, we, should be such an automated process. then, and a lot of people know like, probably over, I would say, over 10 million bibs annually are put on by hand here in the US. Over 10 million bids are put on by hand. know, the Races All has a great solution over there in Germany where they're automating the fixing of their own tags. But you know, there's only so much of that. So I think for us, we would like to be the leaders and again, it all goes back to material. It all goes back to material. So if we can, build a better, smarter material using our better, smarter process and then building better, smarter systems. That's how we leave an impact and truly make participant identification a thing and truly show that we're not just a race-bip company. We're not a Bib company. No, that makes real sense. it was great having you on the pod and thank you for sharing. You know, you definitely know a lot about Bibs and you're living and breathing it. And thank you for sharing the overall context of the industrial landscape where RunVirt is heading and also the challenges we have seen that you're solving through RunVirt. So really appreciate your time. Hey man. And I'm going to tell you, this, what you're doing is unbelievable because just even I watched the Frankie episode. I watched the Bob Bickel episode just from watching those two alone. Kamal Datta (01:02:00.36) I'm picking up stuff. And so I want to encourage anybody in our industry. It's not just, you don't just need a watch it because I'm in registration and somebody from rogers on. the sharing of ideas that are through this format and what you're doing is going to have a demonstrative impact. And so I just wanted to make sure I pass along that. Like it's an unbelievable. It's unbelievable, And so you just keep you keep doing what you're doing, man. I'm excited to see where you take this. No, thank you. I appreciate for the shout out for sure. And that is the goal to highlight some of the yes and then help it, you know, whoever can help. Right. Take it on and absolutely. Thank you. Yeah.