Mark Graham Wow, I'm honored. I'm honored. Thank you. And it's great to be podcasting with you again, yeah. Marshall Atkinson Yeah. So for those of you that don't know, Mark was one of the founders of PromoKitchen and I've been a PromoKitchen chef for -- I don't know, four or five years now. And so I've known Mark for a while and we've done a couple of podcasts together for PromoKitchen about the promotional marketing industry. So, you can look us up there at promokitchen.org. Mark Graham Absolutely. So it's tough to be on the hot seat right now. I 'll see if I can do my best here today. Marshall Atkinson That's okay. This isn't 60 Minutes, so, all right. So let's start with the tale of your origin story. So talk about Right Sleeve. How did you get started? Who are your customers and what was your main focus? Cause you did that for two decades. Mark Graham Yeah. It's hard to believe that you said it was two decades. It makes me feel old because I've always felt very young in this industry, but, maybe not so much. So the story of Right Sleeve goes back to around the late 90s or 2000s when I got into this business as someone who is escaping corporate life. I had just graduated from university in Canada and I had gotten into, of all things, the investment banking industry. So I suited up with a slick suit and tie, and I went down to Canada's Wall Street... a place called Bay Street in Toronto. And I did that for about half a year and I couldn't stand it. I was in my early twenties and I was an entrepreneur at heart. I was the kid who had paper routes, I had a lemonade stand. I did businesses all throughout high school and university, and I was really looking to get out of this boring corporate job and get into something entrepreneurial. And the promotional products industry -- it was a calling. I had a friend who was in the space and we started a partnership in the late 90s, and that business then was the foundation for Right Sleeve. And the reason I say that is when I got into the space, I didn't know anything about the industry. I didn't know there was a PPAI, I didn't know there was an ASI, I didn't know where t-shirts were, I didn't know the difference between SanMar, and Alpha, and S&S. And I didn't know anything. And getting into this space at that time was intimidating but also very exciting because I felt like there was a completely blank slate and I was able to go out and apply my sales andmarketing skills andmy entrepreneurial skills in an industry that was interesting to me but mystifying at the same time. That's how I started. The initial customers that I served in the very early days of Right Sleeve were quite honestly the customers that I had relationships with.
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