Today, we're going to learn about the importance of creating the best possible products from a guy who has developed over 2,000 products working directly with factories in China.

How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

How's it going, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the serious cellarist podcast. I'm your host,

Bradley Sutton. And with me, I have Kean on the line. Kean, how's it going?

I'm all good, all good, man. Bradley, how are you? I'm doing just delightful. Now, you're right now in the UK, right? Yeah, right now I'm in Scotland.

Yeah, that's where I'm based. But heading out to the States next week and I always find

myself between the US, China and the UK. Okay, cool. You have a favorite place that you've been

to? You know what? I mean, like, I've spent the last sort of 10 years living and working in

China. So, and then I have, I have like some businesses that I work on in L.A. mostly. So my favorite cities are definitely L.A. and Shanghai. But home for me is Edinburgh, Scotland. It's a beautiful part of the world. I don't know if you've ever been out to Scotland, but I would highly recommend it to any of the listeners. Definitely check out Scotland. It's a beautiful place. All right. Well, if I go there, you're going to take me to some of the best pubs out there, right? Oh, for sure. Yeah. Well, so we got great pubs, but also like whiskey is our like national drink as well. So a big, big whiskey fan. I hope you are as well. Okay. Well, I haven't been. I'm more of a tequila person living here in California, but I'm open. I'm open to try new things. You know, I heard this because you guys have the tequila room in your office as well, right? Exactly. We might have to, you might have to, when you come here to our office, you might have to donate a good bottle of whiskey so it can be the tequila and whiskey room. It would be my pleasure. Let's lock it in. All right, cool. All right. Now, this is the serious sellers podcast, but we're talking about serious alcoholics podcast right now.

Let's let's switch bases here. So, Kean, you're, one of your main things I know is, is sourcing and being able to really find great factories. Now, we had, you know, Steve Simonson on here before, but I wanted to kind of, you know, like, do a little bit different podcasts, you know, than I did with him. He had a lot of good tips.

But first of all, I wanted to talk just about how somebody, were you born in Scotland?

Yeah, yeah, I was born in Scotland. So how somebody born in Scotland ends up living in Shanghai?

Like, what's the story there? How did that happen? Well, I mean, I was super lucky because I was sort of,

my father started a business about 32 years ago. So his passion was a camping and outdoors. So he started a brand called Highlander, which he sort of manufactured a few products, tents, rucksacks, sleeping bags. And then by the time I graduated university, he actually had like a medium sized business. And he was going over to China, doing all the sour himself so when i graduated he was like hey there's this job for you if you want it at a

company you can take charge of all the production and i went to chana for the first time absolutely

loved it and then i found a real passion for developing products you know working with factories

going out into middle and nowhere, coming up with new ideas.

And then from there, it just sort of spiraled out of control.

I got really good at what I was doing. And then other brands came knocking and then started partnering with other companies and working on licenses. So, yeah, I mean, I was kind of, I got offered that position, which I guess is really lucky. You know, a lot of people have to work their way up. but when I graduated from university,

I could just go straight into a sourcing job,

but I absolutely loved it.

So... you know, a lot of people have to work their way up. But when I graduated from university, I could just go straight into a sourcing job. But I absolutely loved it.

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