Mike Hendrix (00:00)
Hello, I am Mike Hendrix from smbGOLF. And today my guest is Meghann Butcher, CEO and founder of RepSpark, and this is the Tech Caddie Podcast.

Meghann, welcome to the podcast.

Meghann Butcher (00:25)
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Mike Hendrix (00:27)
Well, we're excited to have you. We don't have as many female founders as I would like. So I'm I'm super glad that your team reached out. I actually was a guest on a podcast today with a female host. There's a lot of female hosts in podcasting, but we don't have as many female founders as I would like. So I'm glad to have you on. and I'm sure we're gonna learn a ton about your journey and and what you guys have built.

Meghann Butcher (00:50)
Great. Yeah. Thanks. I'm oftentimes the only female around a table too. So

Mike Hendrix (00:54)
I can imagine. Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen, I the way I look at RepSpark, and I'll just give a little bit of background. I started to get exposed to RepSpark because I was doing more and more work for the PGA of America. And it does seem like you guys have a strong alliance there. And I think we can I'd love to get into ultimately your go-to-market strategy and how the PGA of America factors into that. But but

The as I would see things, and I'm a I tend to be a curious person and I would read a little bit here and there. I look at RepSpark as a software platform. Maybe you don't, maybe you have a different definition, but I'm also interested to hear from you do you feel like you're B2B to C or do you feel like you're strictly B2B? I'd love to have that conversation and and just really have you share with us your story about how you see those two things.

Meghann Butcher (01:46)
Yeah. So within the golf industry or the golf vertical, it's a really interesting ecosystem. Mike, I don't think you can think of it as only B2B or B2B2C because every brand is working through some sort of facility, pro shop or resort or something like that, to then service some sort of guest. And so it's a very interesting relationship that is quite different from other industries.

where the brand is essentially almost serving that member at the same time. They need to make sure that they have inventory availability, pricing at all times through these different facilities. So it's a little bit different. We definitely work the most with the brands and then the facilities, those those pro shop buyers. But even there, it's it's it's a different relationship than just, you know, a retailer on the on the corner, you know, in a shopping center or something like that.

these these pros in these shops are oftentimes doing 20 different things while servicing a member that is a repeat member, and that location or that establishment is the only place that you can buy that apparel with that logo on it. So it's it's it's a very interesting ecosystem that we're serving here. And then you have the concept of events and microsites and corporate shops and trunk shows and

All of these, but but it's but it's a captive audience, a captive membership. even if it's through a guest or so again, someone visiting the club and and doing that. But someone has to be on site to be able to to have that product. Yeah.

Mike Hendrix (03:22)
It so would you agree, software platform, or do you see the company differently? Okay.

Meghann Butcher (03:27)
It's a software platform.

Mike Hendrix (03:29)
And then for and then for people that aren't familiar, I'll I'll just give like a real brief overview. in my thought of it, or if I was gonna work on a tagline or a strategy or whatever, rep Spark helps people at golf shops buy apparel for who whomever they want to sell it to. Fair fair to say.

Meghann Butcher (03:47)
Yeah. So our mission is to be the connection point for transactions between brands and anybody working in the golf corporate business, you know, pro shop for them to transact, order, view merchandise, look at marketing, look at inventory, visually merchandise product mixes, and eventually place an order.

All the way through tracking an order, looking at order status and essentially paying for an order as well. So it's the whole order cycle.

Mike Hendrix (04:19)
And it and I think you probably in terms of problem you solve, I'm gonna I'm I mean I think a lot of us kind of figured this out over the last 10, maybe 50 years, but over the last 10 years, if you can solve the time deficit, that's a heck of a great problem to solve. And I would think that you you all, when you're working with customers, you're probably talking about how no one has enough time.

Meghann Butcher (04:42)
It's yeah, it's the time, it's the focus, it's the on-demand service. So again, golf is a service industry. And so it's being able to service that member and meet them where they need to be met immediately at that time. not picking up the phone, calling the rep at one of the brands. The rep finally calls back. The pros now telling the member, sorry, I have to get back to you. what did you want to get? Okay, sorry, the gray's not in stock, but they have the navy, just the amount.

calls and the efficiency gains are tremendous.

Mike Hendrix (05:11)
Re really similar, not that anybody's been great at solving this yet, but really similar to the reciprocal tea time issue, right? The poor pro has to call three different clubs because his member needs to get on and he's sold at and it's just all this back and forth and friction. It's just terrible. So yeah, yeah, I get it. Meghann, sometimes a tough question, sometimes not. Like if you on a on a dime, if you had to tell me who's your customer, what do you what's your answer for that? Who's your customer?

Meghann Butcher (05:38)
Like a specific brand?

Mike Hendrix (05:40)
No, no.

Meghann Butcher (05:42)
Just who's our customer? We actually did a huge project on this recently. So our customer is any brand who sells to more than 250 locations, whether that's pro shops, retailers, resorts, clubs of any sorts. You can think of tennis clubs, pickleball clubs, yacht clubs, resorts, anything like that. they have a sales force, so a sales rep force of probably three or more.

they're selling a certain number of SKUs. So it's not just three products. It's typically 50 products. And that that could be color combinations and everything too. and those those are those are our brands. They typically sell in multiple seasons, multiple deliveries. so it's not just, you know, a single hammer that's the same hammer that's sold year after year after year after year. and our brands typically sell seasonal products as well as kind of

what they call carryover or their core products. so there's a mix of products that's always available and then seasonal drops. And those are the brands we do best with.

Mike Hendrix (06:46)
Gotcha. And and if you think of it in terms of verticals, is golf the leading vertical for Repspark?

Meghann Butcher (06:53)
Absolutely. And that brings me back to two other things. We do really well with brands that need customization. So we have that natability in the platform where any user who's placing an order can customize the product, decide if they want it left chest, right chest, back yoke. But do that in mass, you know, so it's it's at scale, not just I'm having, you know, I'm ordering my one shirt. You're talking to a pro who's ordering 50 styles with all sorts of decoration.

and most often they utilize our microsite products. So that's they're hosting events, they're doing virtual stores, they are again servicing their members with product that's in addition to what they have physically on inventory in the shop. Those are the ones that do the best. And yes, golf is definitely our focus.

Mike Hendrix (07:36)
And so is it ultimately the brand I know you use the word brand a lot, so we'll stick with that. Is it ultimately the brand that introduces let me call it the user interface that introduces the UI to the person in the golf shop? Or like like how does that get, you know, kind of brought to market, so to speak?

Meghann Butcher (07:56)
It's interesting. About 10 years ago, that was probably the case. We have an invitation system where a brand comes on and they can invite, anybody that they want to start

Mike Hendrix (08:05)
These two hundred and fifty customers they have.

Meghann Butcher (08:07)
with the 250. So there's an invitation system. they can invite their 250 customers. Now we with over 7,000 golf shops actually transacting through the platform, most likely that they're using it with some one, two, seven, ten other brands.

and so now they get a notification that there's a new brand that's joined the ecosystem, and they can just click in and request access. and not only that, now we're getting, I think we get four to five a day where it's new retailers, new pro shops, new resorts coming to us through our community, searching for new brands that they would love to carry in their shop, and then reaching out to those brands, requesting a connection.

The brand ultimately has the say of whether or not they want that person coming in because that shop's gonna be able to see their wholesale pricing and their entire line. so the brand has the ultimate say, but now we're seeing it as really a two-sided marketplace where there's an invitation system, but there's also buyers requesting new brands. And we see that a lot. I mean, buyers will say, Hey, I don't like my drinkware company or my headware company that I have in my shop. They're not participating like we would like to.

They'll go on Repswork, they'll find a new one, and it's a lead gen. It's a lead gen opportunity. lead gen is not what we are. Lead gen is

Mike Hendrix (09:24)
I that's why I asked the customer question. Because it seems to me in 2026, maybe it's the person running the buying program at the country club that's the because they're actually well, a heavy user of RepSpark. and then ultimately because of because they use it so much, they make it more exciting, more enticing to the brand to participate with RepSpark because RepSpark, because the brand knows my goodness, how look how many buyers.

rep Spark is now connected to like that's the payoff.

Meghann Butcher (09:56)
In the last three years, that's exactly the trend we've seen. It's been really exciting. at the PGA show, we'll have we'll have buyers or, PGA professionals or the merchandiser of the shop come up and say, I won't even stock anybody anymore if they're not on RepSpark because it's too hard. It's so easy for me to just go brand to brand to brand, look at all my product together. it's it's so easy to use. I always have access to inventory. I can have these events. I won't even stock a brand that's that's not on rep Spark.

And that that's when it gets fun. Yeah.

Mike Hendrix (10:25)
Is there RepSpark branding on the UI?

Meghann Butcher (10:30)
there is RepSpark brand. I think it just says down at the bottom, powered by RepSpark.

Mike Hendrix (10:34)
Just in a real small way.

Meghann Butcher (10:35)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the brand is really the one putting together branded landing pages and catalogs, merchandising their product. But the thing that the golf shops really love is they all look relatively the same. They know where to find the filters, they know where to start an order. You know, if they want something in a different view or they're looking for their invoices, it's on the same spot. And that's, you know.

That's what is a real driver, especially for the larger brands that are on, you know, a home built platform, something that they've had for a long time. These pro shops don't want to use it anymore because they're so used to, again, starting it over in the order in the upper left-hand corner, going to the card on the right. Like they're just, it's becoming part of their everyday operations.

Mike Hendrix (11:19)
a

lot of sense so I'm sure on some level some people think of t-commerce maybe when they kind of hear about I mean I my feel is your product is much larger you know you're dealing in much bigger numbers etc etc I'm curious to know like do you have a competing product to it to a T-Commerce you know these one-off embroidery orders is that something that Repspark can support

Meghann Butcher (11:46)
So T-Commerce is an awesome company. it's amazing. And what they do that is a bit different is they, you know, extend a limited offering of the brands through the Pro Shop so that they can have kind of an online presence 24-7. It's a perfect synergy, actually. You know, T-Commerce and RepSpark is really a perfect synergy to aid each other because they're working with the same brands that we're working with.

Mike Hendrix (12:11)
Yeah, yeah. I guess I just am I'm thinking about strategy and whatnot. And it would seem like that could be a natural evolution for RepSpark that ultimately there would be a similar product. To

Meghann Butcher (12:22)
For sure.

Mike Hendrix (12:23)
comment on that. so so you talk about how this all came to be because in some of the research I did, I can get RepSpark dating all the way back to like 2007, right? I mean, you're you're looking at like 20 years of history here.

I feel like the the company probably went through a couple of changes in a twenty year period, but explain why you started this, how what's the seed that got things going and how hard was it in the beginning too?

Meghann Butcher (12:50)
Yeah, it you're right. It was the end of 07 when we started it. but we are we started actually as an internal platform for a multi-branded operation. So my dad owned a company that would work with brands once they got to a certain level. A lot of brands, you know, are started by creatives and they don't really know how to run the operations behind the business. And so he would come in, and I think at that point in time he had about seven brands.

Spanning all different industries. one was a very early golf brand that was a casual golf brand 20 years ago, which now probably would flourish, but back in the day it was way too casual. but he had a footwear brand, a backpack brand, action sports, swimwear. and he was he he was seeing the same problems that we're solving today. The sales reps were putting in orders that were dead on arrival with the wrong products, the wrong inventory.

At that point in time, think about it, there was no e-commerce, there was no B2B, there was none of that. So it was really all about the reps placing a good order, having the information that they would need, pricing, inventory, all of that to be able to put a good order in. a lot of the reps are multi-branded, independent reps. They'll rep for four or five different brands. And they came back and they said, This is amazing, it's streamlined, it's so efficient. How can I have this for my five other brands that I rep for?

so my dad looked at me and he's like, Do you want to run with it? This seems like something you know a lot about. You know the industry, you know what we're trying to solve for here. Yeah. so that's how RepSpark started. we grew, I think, to about 30 to 35 brands, just on word of mouth alone. There was two of us, our former CTO and myself, you know, sitting there and trying to make this happen. And

Mike Hendrix (14:31)
Before

probably back then integrations I'm sure were much more difficult than they are today.

Meghann Butcher (14:36)
I found my own old marketing file. I was sending people product demos on a disc. Yes. So I would record the product demo and mail it to them. Is that crazy?

Mike Hendrix (14:47)
That's

how AOL. That's how AOL happened, right?

Meghann Butcher (14:52)
There was none of this. I found it and our marketing people are like, you have to keep this forever. anyway, so that's how we started. And then we, we transitioned to a true software platform where I have to make sure you're secure, you're scalable, integrations are done properly. You have an API, then you have a support team, you have, all the rest of it. And it's grown since then. and then the product itself spin through transitions. Again, we're focused on the rep. Then we're on the bleeding edge of B2B buyers, pro shop buyers, retailers logging in.

that was an interesting moment in time because the reps are like, no, those are our relationships.

Mike Hendrix (15:24)
Yeah.

Meghann Butcher (15:25)
Jobs. We're like, no, you're gonna make your job that much easier. it's the onesie twossies late at night that now these retailers can fulfill or, answer a question on the fly about pricing or inventory, things like that. COVID hit and we really transitioned to being able to support digital catalogs, virtual showrooms.

integrated video swatches of the product. So these sales reps couldn't be on site. lucky for us, we were already in the golf industry at that point in time. we had already come out with we call it insignia. So that was our product customization. so we you we had reps open up golf shops that they'd never visited before just because they were on our platform, which is pretty cool.

Mike Hendrix (16:03)
That's it.

Meghann Butcher (16:04)
Then transition to this kind of community we talked about where the

The end user, the pro shop or the retailer can actually request access to brands and they can connect through that. Grew into the next thing the retailers wanted or the pro shops was I can see my invoices, but I can't pay them. That's super irritating. So we built out the AR hub. and that's really been been the kind of genesis. then we'll move on to what we're positioning kind of the commerce layer of golf. So we partnered, we formed a strategic alignment.

With the PGA of America, we have to say that right. and really focusing on how we touch these 37 or 30,000 PGA professionals again to make their life easier. They want, they all have a different focus. And how can we help them sell more in their shops, spending less time doing, doing this sort of thing or doing it right or doing it better if they're a merchandiser. Yeah.

Mike Hendrix (17:00)
You you mentioned the PGA, that takes us into playing golf, right? So instead of just quote unquote wearing golf, playing golf. And and I know, literally today, I saw in the golf wire you guys announced, I think it's called Perfect Spec.

Meghann Butcher (17:13)
It is.

Mike Hendrix (17:14)
And that's essentially your foray into golf clubs. I it it, but I you explain it because it's so new, I really don't know a lot about it.

Meghann Butcher (17:21)
Yeah, we're really excited about this one. So we had been able to support very complex golf club customization through it's called a customization container. So the large, large hard goods could actually have their own system that they use and and integrate it into RepSpark. But then there's a subset, you know, right under you know, the big five that really need club configuration. They probably have, I don't know.

500,000 different configurations that they need, not a billion. And again, I wish I had that number. I'll I'll send it to you later and we can correct it. But, you know, really supporting that next level of wedges, putters, and being able to support that configuration in the same process that the buyers are used to when they're ordering apparel. So they can come in, they can pick the the shaft, the lie, the right hand or left hand if they want to change the grip.

so they're really able to configure on the fly and add that to a cart. they could add 10, they could do be doing it for a single member and at the same time be adding their vests and be adding, you know, whatever else you need to add.

Mike Hendrix (18:30)
Seems

to me, I really like that because I think of a Scotty Cameron. actually the person, Scotty Cameron, if you were gonna start building clubs, it would seem perfect spec would be invaluable to you, right? I mean, it just takes care of a whole chunk of the business that you don't need to really think about and you can stay focused on design.

Meghann Butcher (18:48)
You can stay focused on your design. You get the order back for the person ordering. It's really easy. You pick the model and then you build it out from there. It's like again, your perfect spec. Yeah you build it out and Scotty Cameron or whoever would receive that order, spec'd out exactly how they need to do it, create it and ship it.

Mike Hendrix (19:07)
Yeah, yeah, no, that's that's excellent. So tell me about the early days. Did you have to raise money? How hard, you know, like how the the like the grind. I mean, I don't get the sense that you're grinding and getting up every day wondering if it's gonna work. I think you've probably crested that wave, right? But like give us an there's a lot of founders, Meghann, that watch this. A lot of software founders in golf watch this and they go through it's hard, right? It's it's hard for them to figure out who their customer is.

It's hard for them to figure out how to speak to a potential customer, all those early things that founders go through. give us some insight into how that was for you early on.

Meghann Butcher (19:45)
I didn't know we were going to go into PTSD world. just kidding. no, early on it was hard. I mean, again, I was we were up at 3 a.m. trying to test, you know, software and seeing a yellow screen shoot across. I mean, if if anybody was in software back in the day, yeah, it was it was hard. So we just I just did friends and family for a while. that's really all that invested, and we continued to grow.

looking back, I'm like, how did we do that for that long without an investment? But we did. we worked with we got some loans, so we had to pay those off, but we got strategic investment from headlight just this last June. So that was our series A. That was our first round. Wow. after about 19 years in the business. Yeah. And yeah, they're great partners. They're awesome. They believed in the vision. they believe in the golf niche, and that's you know, they're they're

Awesome partners that have really helped us with strategy and and really focusing down. So, but the early days are rough. again, I remember videoing these discs and sending them out, just making sure are we gonna make, are we gonna make payroll, not paying myself for a couple of months, just making sure. Yeah. Every decision, I think when you're small and nimble, every decision is so big, but you have to make it so fast and really understand the risk.

too because you can't wait on three months to make a decision. You need to make it within that hour. Right. and have a lot of information and then surround yourself with really good people who also believe in the vision.

Mike Hendrix (21:15)
And

in your world, you clearly were a disruptor on some level, even if the people that felt like they were gets getting disrupted ultimately came along and and realized no, it was just a benefit for us. But I'm I'm sure early on you were seen as a disruptor. And that that can make it even more difficult in in the early days.

Meghann Butcher (21:32)
Yeah, you had to I mean the brands again were really supportive. They, you know, they would help with the reps. Hey guys, we're not taking away your commission. This is an actual tool for you to use to sell more and be more present at your top accounts, where you know, the ones that you visit twice a year now have access to the line the same that they did. But yeah, I mean, you have to figure out who you're talking to and what's important to them, who on each phone call is there. Is it

IT well they're gonna be really focused on something different than your sales manager, your CFO, your CEO, your for sure. You never get with a with apparel, especially you never know who you who's gonna be on that call and who's pushing for it, who your advocate is, who your champion is, who your naysayer is.

Mike Hendrix (22:17)
the other role that you, I'm sure, interact with a lot today, maybe not in the beginning, boy, that club accountant slash controller can really put the kibash on a lot of advancement. You know, I mean, if the if the money is gonna cause them to have to even consider a new account or a new line item or something, it can be really challenging. How have you navigated the the world of the controller?

Meghann Butcher (22:43)
controller at the brand or the controller at the

Mike Hendrix (22:46)
At the club. At the club, yeah.

Meghann Butcher (22:47)
luckily so the rep sparks side of things we don't actually even charge the the retailers or pro shops to use it so we haven't had to deal with that really all that much thank goodness so

Mike Hendrix (23:01)
That's it's a that's a huge advantage.

Meghann Butcher (23:03)
mostly it's just a benefit every it's a benefit to

these seven thousand golf clubs that they can log in and and again sell more with less time.

Mike Hendrix (23:12)
But are you are you helping the OEM collect their their rep their their money? their their billables, if you will.

Meghann Butcher (23:18)
They can, yeah. but again, it's it's more through the brand posting the invoices and then you know, these these golf shops paying through it.

Mike Hendrix (23:27)
Gotcha.

Gotcha. And so you're just passing it through.

Meghann Butcher (23:29)
Yep, we're just passing it through. We're really a conduit for that.

Mike Hendrix (23:34)
if you look at, obviously you're in golf, but if you especially once you take on investment dollars, you're always gonna look for growth. What other verticals are interesting to RepSpark? and and and even give us some insight. what do you think is meaningfully bigger in five years than it is today in terms of these other verticals?

Meghann Butcher (23:53)
So it's interesting you said that we actually are niching down. So we really want to be that commerce layer for golf, whether it's the Pro Shops, placing their own orders, whether it's integrating with POS systems, whether it's connecting in through tournament management software or booking platforms. so really doubling down actually on this exact vertical. That's what we're seeing.

And we see so much growth here. there's a lot of growth in brands that we just don't have yet and aren't using the platform. and then again, looking at this ecosystem of golf shops and how we can make all of their lives easier as well. and then there are some side verticals which are interesting. So the corporate space, you know, again, what do they need? They need insignia, they need customization, they need access to that.

Company stores, corporate space. And then it's interesting, the tactical, tactical side is very similar as well. So it's a lot of small shops that someone's doing an outdoor activity in. And they they're like a prestigious club. And so they have the same needs. And then tactical uniform scrubs, they all have the same thing. So if you think about hospital.

They're wearing their apparel with their scrub. They have their name on it. They have the customization. It's a lot of locations. So those are really what we're niching down on.

Mike Hendrix (25:17)
You mentioned booking platforms, and that's the world that we cover a lot here at Tech Caddie. Are when you say booking platform, I guess the first thing I think is, mm, maybe member guest event and I'm gonna throw in a shirt or something. But what do you what are you thinking about when you say booking platforms in terms of integrations?

Meghann Butcher (25:36)
So I think that there's two ways to look at it. One is more of like the tournament management side of it. So someone's setting up a tournament, they want to offer a microsite. How do you make that really easy? So, you know, the pro right now will will typically work with one of the brands. but those are for really big member guests. What about, you know, the smaller tournaments that, you know, you want those players to come in and be able to choose, you know, some product.

So, how do you integrate that microsite product into the tournament setup? and then the other one is for all these courses, imagine you book your tea time, you go play your course, and there's the opportunity then to shop after, hey, did you love your time? You know, something like that. And that's more of like the T commerce world. Yeah. So you want to go ahead and order a vest or have, or you're going with a group to go play some course. Why don't you order your gear so you all have your

Yeah. Uniform on before you go. Something like

Mike Hendrix (26:32)
And so it sounds to me like the integration to get to get in the weeds a little bit, the integration is the pass through of the name of the person that's on the T sheet, per theoretically their contact information, maybe even a card on file or something like that. Although I don't think that that would fly. But

Meghann Butcher (26:49)
Or their confirmation email, right? Hey, your tea time's booked at this time. did you want to buy something? Click here. Yeah. So it's for the integration of the site into those booking experiences where we see some growth there.

Mike Hendrix (27:02)
In the we it at smbGOLF, we track a ton of the golf facility data, right? We know the t sheets that everybody uses and we know who their website provider is and all that kind of thing. And so you talk about 7,000. And now when we are tracking, if if I add indoor facilities to North America, like we're up over 20,000 locations. But of your 7,000, well, first of all, I guess some could be in Europe, but

W what generally do you think is the breakout of private versus public?

Meghann Butcher (27:35)
Ooh, that's a good question. I don't know. I really don't know. I mean, it's definitely the top 100 are are the big users that are selling a lot of gear. Yeah. where your public course, I mean, where you're or there's the resort courses. I mean, they're selling a lot of gear as well. Yes. public courses, they probably don't sell as much, they don't stock as much, but that's why it could be a really great opportunity post event or post-something to

Give that player, hey, if you order, over the next week, you get a 10% discount or something like that. and this also allows it to expand exactly the off course opportunity. do you are you doing some work event at, you know, I don't know, some some other, you know, type of event? And do you want everybody to come with their matching gear? You know, something like that. So it really allows it to expand plus the.

on course play. Right.

Mike Hendrix (28:28)
If you look at 2030, I actually use some of your AI functionality today on your website. I just

Meghann Butcher (28:35)
I saw that you did.

Mike Hendrix (28:36)
did yeah, I was really trying to drill into microsites. I was interested because we so part of the my business, we deliver what we call digital hospitality to golf courses all around the the continent, really. And to me, great digital hospitality is

no rough edges. They ought to be able to buy whatever they want to buy. We actually just launched for a public course yesterday selling gin handicaps. the public course had never had really occurred to them that, people come to your counter and buy a handicap once in a while, right? why aren't we offering that digitally? Right. So we're very big into hey, we think everything should be for sale via e-com.

And it shouldn't be a follow-up phone call. We ought to be able to transact, the whole deal, right? And so as I saw microsites, I thought, well, microsites is even interesting to SMB golf. maybe we could do something with microsites on behalf of these courses. At any rate, the AI was pretty good. The AI gave me not the most canned answers ever. I thought the AI, I think you guys referred to it as Sparky. I thought it was was pretty good, but that leads me to my question.

If you think about RepSpark in 2030, how important is AI? how integrated is AI into the company? How much does it change the company? Et cetera, et cetera.

Meghann Butcher (29:50)
So we look at it a couple different ways. first of all, impact and doing it very intentionally because you can go off the rails pretty quick. Sure. so we have an AI Tiger team that does a training every single week on a new topic. We have an Ask RepSpark internal AI that feeds Sparky. our internal one's a little bit different. So we we use it for that. so it's a it's great for education, knowledge base, things like that. so that's kind of AI.

As a service, then we look at how we can streamline our operations with AI internally. So you know, what weekly dashboards can you be getting? How can you be querying? It's really good at putting big data sets together. So, you know, when you're looking at I just was doing a whole report actually on with GB and I to see what our penetration was there. And it was great using AI and Claude and all that.

Our engineering team, 95% of their code is written through a coding agent. So that's great. First two rounds of QA. So we're using it in that department product. I mean, they're the best, they're the vast at it. They're you know they use it the most, but we're using it in support to you know service our customers and then integrating it into the product as well. So, how can we use this vast amount of data that we have to service both the

Pro Shop users as well as the sales rep users to help them order more intelligently, save them even more time, spread out visual assortments, give them analytics. So we have like a sub-rep that pops up and it says, You know, did you know you have, you know, 12 orders and draft status? And you know, two of them have product that are almost at so those types of things where you're really just helping people. We have an order balancer. So if someone has a multi-date order, you can click balance the order.

change the the start dates and if one order has only one product in it but the next one has twelve and it's only three days later, you know, it'll tell you why don't you move that product into this other order? So

Mike Hendrix (31:46)
So you're pretty you're pretty deep into it. What do you think that looked like 18 months ago?

Meghann Butcher (31:50)
Mm, we were just trying to dip our toe in. I mean, again, we didn't we're still small company. So we didn't have, you know, 20 people doing some think tank of AI. Yep. but we've embraced it. I mean, we're running with it. It's exciting. It's fun.

Mike Hendrix (32:06)
Good. That's good. That's good. okay. So i if if we're kind of well, how many how many customers did you launch perfect spec with? The the club piece to remind people.

Meghann Butcher (32:16)
So we're just launching it now. So now it's let's talk to all the people who maybe tried RepSpark and it wasn't a fit because we didn't have it. let's talk to all of those people that are not or are still using it the old way, which again for one product, you may have 40 listings of it with all the different configurations. Let's get them onto perfect spec and then it opens up a whole new pipeline of opportunities. Yeah.

for any hard goods company now. And it doesn't just have to be clubs. you could be configurating a hat, a gear, a golf bag, a golf glove. think about the things that you put pieces together and configure things. Yeah. You mentioned

Mike Hendrix (32:54)
the big five earlier, I think, right? And and so for these biggest golf retail well well golf manufacturers I guess is the right way to say or brands in in your vernacular do they participate with you on apparel but not on equipment and you don't anticipate them participating on equipment or how do you see that?

Meghann Butcher (33:11)
No, they could it it really depends on number one, if they already have something built that they're using for direct to consumer or have something built that they use internally, that can integrate into RepSpark. it's really depends on the complexity of their configurations. and so if they have something pre-built, great, that can hook right into our customization container, you know, and sales rep could be ordering or a pro could be ordering, pop into like pop into their system.

configure the club, it still goes on the order. So it's almost as seamless, but it's for again, perfect spec is really for the ones that don't have that complexity and don't have something pre-built. Or some of these guys have really old, old platforms and they may look at perfect spec and be like, perfect. This fits exactly our need. Yeah. I don't know.

Mike Hendrix (33:59)
Contemplating building this and

Meghann Butcher (34:01)
Yeah. And now we don't need to do it or this this this I think you can have 20 options and 20 options within each option times that by however many. So, you know, maybe it fits exactly what they need and they don't need to use their custom software anymore.

Mike Hendrix (34:17)
How mobile is is RepSpark in terms of UI, in terms of usability on a on a on a mobile device?

Meghann Butcher (34:23)
it's completely mobile.

Mike Hendrix (34:26)
Do you have a sense for where it gets used more if it's if it's desktop or mobile?

Meghann Butcher (34:31)
It depends on what type of order. So if it's an at-on-cept onesie twosie type order, I mean a pro can do it playing with a member. The member could be like, I love your vest. And you could be like, great, let's order one. So the onesie twosie type things, we have scanning capability. so that's typically used on mobile as well. But when you're really placing kind of a larger pre-book order, you're not just looking at inventory, you really need the real estate of a screen because you're potentially working with.

Seven to ten deliveries at the same time. And each delivery has 50 products. That's really hard to do on, small form factor.

Mike Hendrix (35:05)
Yeah. You mentioned community. As you've kind of grown this community, have you guys gotten into this world of awards, you know, top merchandiser and XYZ section or whatever that is? Is that part of your community approach?

Meghann Butcher (35:20)
Not yet, but you're reading my mind. Yeah. There's so much more that we can do with community. We actually just hired our new product manager that we hired is really excited about community and just making that more actionable, more data, more data driven, more exciting for you know the merchandisers and pros that are in the community. how to gamify it.

Mike Hendrix (35:41)
Totally. Yeah. Yeah. We we used to do user conferences and I was I was an early, early employee at GolfNow. And we used to do user conferences and bring people in from around the country. And part of the underlying goal, we didn't talk about it in the user conference, but part of the underlying goal was we knew that they would change facilities over time. And we were trying to create super users of our platform because we felt pretty good that our platform would travel with that person then as they went to.

location two, location three in in their career. And we found one of the best ways to ensure that stickiness was that they they would win an award while they were at job one or location one in their career. And then you really were incredibly sticky and it and it worked really, really

Meghann Butcher (36:28)
That's cool. Yeah.

Mike Hendrix (36:29)
Yeah. Well, listen, I appreciate you sharing, your your story with us. it's a I I feel like there might be a few competitors here and there. I am s I also like we didn't talk about this, but like when you talk about the golf shop, you know, do start to think about some of your integration partners and what's the what's the route gonna be and who's gonna get to this point first. And but but I everything, you know, time will tell, right? I mean that's part of the journey.

Meghann Butcher (36:57)
Yeah, and it's it is fun it's it's a very large, vast community, but within the platforms and systems, there aren't that many. there's there's fortified POS system. There's, a couple booking platforms. There, there's not you go to you go to mass retail and POS system, there could be 40 different ones that you would have to integrate with. So it's it's nice. It's a closed ecosystem that I think we can really capitalize to to make it easier for

Everybody to do business.

Mike Hendrix (37:26)
Yeah. I can tell you don't you don't see we have a site where people write reviews about software. There are over 60 T sheets now in play in golf. There's

Meghann Butcher (37:39)
Only four.

Mike Hendrix (37:40)
over 30 point of sales. There's now more than 10 what are considered to be all in one platforms. it there's an absolute explosion.

happening in golf software right now. There's, no no doubt about it. And there's just as many investors that are interested in getting in, right? They're all hedging their bets on what horse they think is going to run the fastest and that type of thing. it is an exploding space. But it but it in your world, obviously there's Shopify and those kinds of things. But I do feel like you guys have really carved out the golf piece of that. And when you say you're almost de-niching, you're becoming more focused on golf.

the runway I think is is excellent in terms of being there. Although you mentioned healthcare. Healthcare's not bad to get into either. So

Meghann Butcher (38:24)
It's it's an interesting one. It's an interesting one. But but for now it's it's all golf and we're looking at every opportunity here to again streamline, integrate, and just make everyone's lives easier.

Mike Hendrix (38:35)
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's great. That's great. Well, listen, hopefully we'll see each other in Orlando in January. And I'm off to Tacoma, Washington. to to do one of the section events in Tacoma next, I think maybe in two weeks. And then in December, I don't know how much you work with the USGA Allied Associations, but in December, we'll have a nice size meeting here in Ohio with the Miami Valley Golf Association. So we're looking forward to

being in those environments and talking to all those reps and I'm sure some of your your users will be in those rooms.

Meghann Butcher (39:09)
I hope so. Yeah. We have we're gonna do big push with sections next year as well. And and we'll be at the show too. We will be at the show in Orlando. So

Mike Hendrix (39:18)
Okay, well thanks for coming on the tech caddy and I wish you all the success in the future. All

Meghann Butcher (39:23)
Thanks, Mike.

Mike Hendrix (39:24)
right, thanks, Beckon. Bye.

Meghann Butcher (39:25)
Bye.