Hi everyone and welcome to MacRAE’S Growth Challenge Podcast. Inside with B2B and manufacturing leaders where we uncover their stories, strategies and solutions to overcoming growth challenges in their industry. I’m your host Maria and in each episode we will dive deep with founders, CEOs and industry experts to explore how they scale, innovate and lead in today’s competitive landscape. So let’s get started.
Today we have R.J. from Icon Fixtures. Nice to meet you. How are you today?
Doing great Maria, how about you?
I’m great, thank you. RJ, just for our audience, why don’t you introduce yourself, your role, and the company you work
Sure thing. My name’s RJ Lincoln. I’m in the Boston area. I work for a company, Icon Fixtures, based out of St. Louis, Missouri. And my role is business development. I head up basically broadening awareness of the company and our capabilities and value propositions to people mainly that are in high fashion retail.
Awesome. And you’ve been in the role not too long, right?
Right, I’ve been with Icon for around six months, but I’ve worked with retailers, a broad range of retailers from grocery to home improvement to fashion retail for a number of years.
So obviously in your experience, seeing the landscape change over time, what are some of, you would say, the most recent challenges that you’re seeing in your industry?
That’s a great question. you know, I’m probably on the older end of the spectrum as far as the workforce. So I would say one of the challenges is for me personally, as well as a lot of companies, I think, is that technology is moving so fast. So I’m kind of an old school guy. I use a database. I go to trade shows. I build relationships with people. And that’s how business has
uncovered itself and developed for me and this company in the past. Whereas now we have a younger breed of people coming into the workforce. They’re using a lot more technology. know, everybody’s talking about AI. There’s a lot of different tools that can be used now. That’s one thing. I think another challenge that I’m experiencing, I think it’s the industry because I hear it a lot from colleagues in the industry.
is that during 2022 during COVID, a lot of retailers cut staff by 30, 50 % in some cases. And then once we got through COVID and the work started to scale back up, the headcount didn’t, they didn’t increase headcount. So now people are stressed. know, there are a lot of these retail executives that I work with, you know, they’re doing the jobs of two people in some cases. So.
That’s making things a bit challenging as well.
On the business development side, which is your side, how then being overloaded or the change of tech and the new people in the workforce, how is that affecting your job and what you need to do in order to perform?
Well, definitely, it’s definitely making me change my ways in a sense. Like for example, we can’t, you you used to be able to call on somebody and tell them what you did. You know, we’re, we’re a fixture manufacturer and, you know, tell them about the different materials that you use and the different, you know, types of fixtures that you could manufacture where that doesn’t really work anymore. now with all of the
changes in materials as well as again going back to technology. You can’t really just build fixtures or shelving anymore that they put product on. You need to integrate, you know, it’s more of an experience, a customer experience. even the fixtures have technology in them now where, you know, you have to have in some cases there’ll be lighting or interactive displays.
Bye.
So things are much more advanced now and that’s one of the things that you have to, you know, when you can get in front of these chain executives, you have to let them know that, you know, you’ve got a much more advanced product than what we used to talk about. And this has all taken place in the matter of five or 10 years where things have changed and really drastically, I’m sure you and all of your listeners have been into stores and
you see interactive fixtures and displays and it’s all about the customer experience now.
Yeah, you’re so right. actually, I didn’t even think about that, but we actually had somebody the other day that was in the light manufacturing production and they’re moving really fast with how they’re displaying their product. You’re 100 % right. Technology is not only about how people are finding you, right, for you to be able for your, how people are searching for your solutions, but it’s also when they do find your solution.
How do you show it to them? Technology has so many moving parts here. When it comes to product display, which is part of your job as well, how you communicate the product, how you show it, and also how you attract new businesses, which one do you find that is a little bit more challenging for you at this moment?
Well, I think this company has done a fantastic job in growing organically. A lot of word of mouth. They do a really good job with the customers that they have, and those customers talk to their colleagues, friends in the industry. And a lot of their business has grown just word of mouth. And we just recently have acquired a new
a new space, another new building, it’s about a hundred thousand square feet. So now we have the ability to scale, you know, manufacturing by a large number. So now that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to bring on new customers at a faster pace than we have in the past. And again, that goes back to where, you know, we’ve got challenges now, everybody’s working really hard, so they don’t really have the time to take to.
interview and spend with new prospective supplier partners or manufacturing partners. the other thing is that a lot of times, and this is not just going back to COVID, this is going back a long time, is that a lot of times retailers struggle to take on a new supplier partner because in a lot of cases they’d rather stick with the devil they know than the devil they don’t know. So a lot of times
Even if a supplier is having issues with quality or delivery or installations and the supplier is falling down, they’re afraid to reach out to… There’s a certain reluctance for a retailer to move off into another direction with a new prospective supplier or manufacturer because they’re like, well, what happens if I go through all this trouble and aggravation to get rid of this guy that’s not performing very well?
What happens if this guy’s worse than what I’m doing now? I’ll get myself in trouble. So, you know, that’s where it’s on us to do a good job of helping the retailers understand, you know, our capabilities and that we do deliver, you know, what we say we do. you know, and that’s a lot of hard work these days.
Yeah, the grass is not always greener on the other side and moving a whole business in for a new supplier. That is a lot of work on any type of business. always risky. But I’m curious to know with all of these changes, obviously right here at the front door with you guys, you did share a little bit with me earlier about how the owner of the company has had multiple successful businesses. So this is not his first rodeo of adapting to changes because
If you’ve been around for 40, 50 years doing multiple businesses, like technology has evolved, like tremendously. Of course, right now we’re also at a point where technology is improving technology, not humans improving technology. So things are happening even faster. But what kind of conversations are you guys having internally in order to start tackling some of these challenges?
Is it on the table these discussions or is it just, you you’re ignoring it and going down the route of what has worked in the past?
Yeah, that’s a good question. And I think the answer to that is kind of a combination of what you just said. mean, where obviously I mean, AI, you hear AI everywhere, every, you know, and I actually have friends, relatives, even that are in these industries that are 20 years younger than I am that tell me stories about what they’re doing with AI. And it’s just mind boggling. But we, we, would say
are scratching the surface on starting to look into different ways of, A, reaching out to a large number of prospects at one time, different ways of how we can get their eyes and ears and all of their senses on what it is we do. So, you know, have them listen to our story, but also show them visually, you know, the things that we do.
Obviously, we’re also integrating our time and energy into different shows, industry events that we go to where people can actually come, see our stuff, touch our stuff, and actually engage all of their senses. in many of these cases, you can engage all of somebody’s senses with a certain fixture. Visually, there may be audio. It’s very interact customer.
interactive, a lot of these fixtures. yeah, we’re, you know, we’re starting to look at different ways to reach more people and also at the same time, not only reach them, but like I was saying earlier, if we can engage with somebody for 10 or 15 minutes, then that starts to open their eyes because they actually see, you know, they can see and feel and touch. And then also we have great customers already that
You know, if somebody’s got scratching their head like this looks really interesting, but I’m a little reluctant, you can have them talk to one of their peers and say, hey, I’ve been working with these guys for five years and I wish I hadn’t heard about them before because they’ve done such a fantastic job. So I think there’s a lot of pieces to the puzzle that have to come together to be really successful.
You did mention earlier that if you just get a chance to speak to somebody for 10 to 15 minutes, you can really start a foundation for a really great relationship. You know what, why don’t you tell us like, what is it that somebody would have to know within the first 10 to 15 minutes about your business and in order to be, know, start that relationship, what would you tell them?
⁓ you know, it’s a great question. There’s a lot of and that’s that’s where the challenge comes, right? Is that you’re only going to have so much time and you’ve got so much. You’re such a great story to tell. So you’ve got to concentrate your presentation. What I’ve always said is in a short amount of time, in five or 10 minutes, I have to talk about who we are, what we do, what’s our value proposition, what’s our differentiator and what’s a call to action. So you have to do that all quickly because
As I’m sure you’re aware, because of all the technology we’re surrounded with and our phone is glued to our hands, everybody’s got an attention span now of like seven minutes. That’s probably too long. So you have to get the message out quick. So one of the things that I find works well for me is to let people know we have 140,000 square feet of space right in the center of the country. That’s great because you can deliver.
throughout the country easier if you’re in the middle of the country. That’s in the amount of space that we have. Then also the different materials that we use. So people are impressed with, we work with, you know, six, seven, all of the materials really. And then our ability, you know, like our supply chain is, again, the principles of the company have been doing this so long that there’s no question they’ve got this down to a science.
and they deliver, you know.
Yeah, I’m curious to know, I don’t know if you had a chance to experiment with any of that yet in your role. Maybe you just heard some stories from the company, but what are some attraction lead generation efforts that the company has tried or maybe you tried personally with combination of technology that, know, let give me a story where it did great.
constantly.
And give me a story where you just had to pivot so quickly because it was just not doing what it was supposed to be doing.
Well, that’s a good and a tough question for me because as I’ve said, you know, I’m a little bit older, so I’m not as well versed in these new technologies as a lot of people are. And I have to also be careful. I don’t want to give any away my trade secrets, but there are tools that we can use. there are tools on, you know, just for an example, like for LinkedIn, I think everybody uses LinkedIn these days. There are tools that you can use with LinkedIn.
that can get your messages out to masses of people. So in a few moments, you can build a prospect list of hundreds of people. And then the only hard part is in the beginning of setting up your templates and setting everything up. But once you have it all set up, a click of a couple of buttons and your information can be circulated to hundreds of people, hundreds of prospects, depending upon the list that you build. So things like that and…
I actually have a really good tool. don’t even know if I want to say it because it’s, but I have a, I use Navigator. I’m in Navigator every day, but no, it’s a, it’s a different tool that I’ve used through ChatGPT that, that notifies me every week of opportunities. And
Sales Navigator?
Okay.
So, know, that’s, mean, it’s so funny. Like, you know, most people are like, my goodness, tomorrow’s Monday. Well, I’m actually excited because Monday morning, I get to see all these new opportunities that are going to be delivered to me. And it’s really exciting. But, and you know, again, I think it’s, there’s so much out there. There’s so much that, you know, regardless of how young you are and how much time and energy you put into it, things are happening so fast now that new companies are, you know,
starting every day. There are new tools coming to market every day. And it’s really, I mean, it could be a full-time job, just finding the tools and the technologies that could allow you to make you do your job better, faster, quicker.
Yeah. Arjay, you, how big is your department? Is it just you? Are you a one-man show?
I would say that my role is focused on business development. There are a lot of people within the company that have been with the company for a long time and they take on a piece of what I’m doing. So I get a lot of support from other people, the owners. One of the great things about my role and about the company is
once I have qualified a prospect that has some interest in us, another thing that they really like is I have the ability to get the C-suite people on a call or go to a meeting. mean, they don’t think anything of flying halfway across the country if somebody’s interested in talking to us and has a potential need. The rest of the team that I work with, they’re there all the time.
amazed at the amount of support I get from everybody. It is.
That’s awesome. That sounds
like a really strong leadership team. it honestly, based on the story that you’ve told me about the growth and the expansion and the amount of time the owner has been around doing multiple businesses, I think there is like a really good understanding about how to treat people, how to support them, and how to make sure you’re creating a team that is actually a winning team, right? And I think that would probably go back to my question of…
Is the conversation about the changes that are happening, is it on the table with you guys? And it sounds like it’s yes, because it’s such an open communication and environment that is welcoming challenges, because you guys are building a team that can solve really any type of challenge that is gonna come your way.
Right, exactly. And it’s kind of happened quickly, like I said. So before I came here and I haven’t been here that long, everything kind of worked, you know, just the old fashioned way. It was just word of mouth and we did the business. Now we’ve increased all of this available capacity that we can put out. So now we’re kind of trying to move quick to scale the capacity. And that’s what we’re doing. You know, some of us are older and…
we’re starting to look like, oh, if we want to do this and we want to do it quick, we have to start using new tools. So, you know, sometimes I think we get kind of stuck in the challenge of teaching old dogs new tricks, but you know, we’re all on board and we’re all like, look, let’s just take some time and try to learn some new skills and learn some new technologies and get ourselves into the marketplace quicker than we have in the past.
I love it. I think that is such a great approach. I also think that because, and maybe you will agree with me on this, technology has been evolving, like we said, like over the past 40 years, probably even before, but like very noticeable, probably last like 35 years or so, it’s been very dramatically increasing things. And I think that initially people had a little bit of resistance to it.
And I think nowadays, even older generation, mid-level, basically like top management, mid-management, and entry level, all on agreement that technology is just here to stay. There’s no point of resisting it. And what you can do best is actually just find the little tools that work for you and make sure you know them well and use them for your benefit, right? Yeah.
Exactly. And it’s
funny having this conversation with you has started my thinking in that maybe we need to start looking at some folks, some younger folks that are well versed in these. Like, for example, I’ve heard a lot of stories with colleagues in the industry that are older like myself, where they’re like, my goodness, I can’t figure this out with my computer. I can’t figure out this with my co
I give it to my 15 year old kid and they’re like, you got to be kidding me. And it’s done in one minute. so, you know, that’s, you’ve definitely got my wheels turning in this conversation.
Yeah, and I’ll be honest with you for me being a millennial, like I have entered the workforce now 15 years ago, right? So it’s been even for me a journey and how quickly like, so I would say the millennials are now the mid-level managers, right? Like the generation before us, you guys are the C-level, sweet level, you guys are the CEOs, the executives, you’ve been doing, you’re our leaders. We look up to you, we’re inspired by everything that you’ve created.
us right now, the millennials, even for us, the Gen Zs, like how quickly they adapt to all the platforms is really, it’s, now we feel old, you know? So there’s definitely like, that’s what I was saying, like every generation is, is really facing the same type of challenge and it’s really good to have the right partners in place because, and you’re probably gonna agree with this with me and I know this now.
Maybe before I would not think like that, but nothing beats experience. Yes, okay, technology is great.
Well, there’s no question about it. And as you were just telling that part of your story, you know, what’s what’s going on in my head is, yes, you’ve got, you know, typically senior leadership, the operational, they have the more of the full life cycle business operation skills down. But you kind of need the younger people, too, because a big part of the operations now is the technology. So
You know, again, you’ve got me thinking, you know, like I feel like I need to have a young, you know, 2030 something sidekick that can help me develop these new technologies and new technical skills to kind of, you know, speed up our processes on the business development side and reaching out to new people.
There’s so many opportunities with that. And you know, one thing that we talk about a lot in our company, so we are an AI driven digital marketing agency, right? So we are all about efficiency. So even though we use AI in pretty much all of our systems at this point, and even for our clients, and not only about like, you know, cause right now there’s a good opportunity. Right now we’re at a position where Google used to be
10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. Like when you, people started changing the way that they find solutions, right? When Google launched and you can go by keywords and things are, like that was transformational. Like it was just searching the whole website and now you just have these links and here’s your answer. Now we’re actually in a very great time for a lot of companies that are doing things the old way.
because the way that people are searching things is changing. People no longer rely just on Google. It’s now chat GPT, it’s perplexity. It’s about how people are finding those solutions. It’s not just keywords, it’s actually prompts. And if you can get ahead of it right now, my gosh, this is like getting in front of SEO 20 years ago. It’s like getting in front of crypto 10 years ago.
Social media, again, 20 years ago, this is like, because right now there’s changes and there’s so many competitors entering the market trying to beat for the person’s attention on how they find solutions that for companies, like this is a fantastic opportunity. Because right now, if you wanted to try to rank on Google, the amount of money that you have to spend on a strategy like,
the ranking, paid ads, especially if you’re buried somewhere in page 10, if not further, good luck. But now because of how people are searching is changing, you have such a wonderful opportunity to get ahead of the curve with these new platforms that are coming out. And I think this is something that we talk to our clients a lot. It’s getting them appearing in the new ways that people are searching.
especially like retails, manufacturing, automation, like a lot of these industries that have done things traditionally and has worked for them for a long time. How can we combine both of those approaches now? And ⁓ I think another thing that we truly believe in, yeah, AI is amazing. It can really speed up things, but nothing will change human creativity just yet. If anything, AI will take some of the tasks away.
that would allow people to really nurture their creativity and strategy and let that flourish as opposed to be preoccupied with little things that AI can take away for them. yeah. How does it make you feel when I talk about all these things?
makes
me feel like I have my work cut out for me and I’ve got to do some make some changes and Yeah, there’s you know, I was just somebody reached out to me not too long ago and it was an AI sales enablement tool that You know after I saw it. I was like, wow You know my mind, you know, my mind was blown. I’m just like wow. It’s you know again, you know
Amazing.
I’m of the age that, you know, I was pretty old when I first started using computers and the internet. Whereas, you know, people like you were born with technology in your hand. You know, you started using technology, you know, as a child probably. So it’s kind of like I say to people a lot of the times I’m like, I think, you know, like my children, like their brains are wired different because they were, they were born into this where I was already grown up in.
you know, it was, it’s a different world. It’s a different world and it’s changing faster and faster, but it’s exciting. So, you know, I mean, like sometimes I can think about these things and, and get a little discouraged or anxious or worried, but you know, you have to just look at the other way and be excited about it. I mean, it’s a new world. It’s a new opportunity. There are a lot of new ways to conduct business and to grow business and to even operate businesses from an operational standpoint. There’s so much technology we have access to now that
you can run the whole business off of a technology platform. So it’s exciting times.
Yeah. And you know, let’s say five years from now, how do you see your role evolving in this company? Where would you want to take the business development side of things of the business?
You know, that’s a, it’s a good question because it’s going to happen, right? Next thing you know, it’s going to be five years down the road and we’re either going to be winning or we’re going to be losing. I mean, we’re going to be using these technologies or we’re, know, if you’re not growing using these technologies, you’re going to go backwards. I think, and it’s, you know, it’s hard because like, you don’t know what you don’t know, but I mean, I think that the way things are moving and the way things are moving so fast now that, you know,
If you stay up and learn these trends and these technologies, could probably, you’ll probably be able to do in one hour what you used to take a week, you know, 10, 20 years ago. So it’s all about, it’s all about setting, setting up learning and setting up the new technologies. I mean, once you have them set up and that’s where the hard part is, you just got to spend some time to learn them and set things up. But it seems like a lot of these technologies are going to run by themselves. Once they get set up.
And five years from now, the setup process might be, you might be able to talk into a box for 10 minutes and get the whole framework set up and then click start. And we’ll all be sitting on the beach in the Bahamas drinking Mai Tais while all of our work’s getting done.
about all of that. I think we’re going to be busy creating other things because technology is going to take a big component. But I totally think that the visual component of demonstrating products is that I think that’s the next thing that is going to come down the pipeline. Even with current AI capabilities, a lot of it is written form and like still pictures, right? Like it’s not quite as visually, I would say, like expressive yet.
I think for companies like yourself, having to demonstrate concepts from far away, I think it’s going to be a matter of like, here’s this little thing that I’m sending down the mail, just click it and it’s going to demonstrate to you everything that we can build for you.
Yeah, no, that’s a I just took a note there. I mean, that’s really it’s really bright, you know, thinking because like in in my realm, my whole most of my whole career has been I talked to somebody like you. I might get on a call, a video call like this. Then I try to see if I can come see you. And then I come see you and I show you what we have. Whereas now, like you said, I think we need to demonstrate virtually and, know,
And so yeah, I took a note on that. That’s a great idea.
Yeah, the visual aspects of things are so fast evolving and RJ, it’s gonna be six months. It’s gonna be 18 months before we’re gonna start these like visual concepts coming to life. And the reason why is because tech is developing tech now. It’s not people fixing the bugs. It’s the tech fixing the tech. And again, that goes down to like, now you’re gonna have the space to be creative. And I’m sure you have wonderful ideas that right now are.
You know, they’re preoccupied with little tasks that are going to be taken care of by technology. And yeah, it’s going to be wonderful. Yeah.
Yep, yeah, no,
it’s been a great conversation. I’ve really enjoyed it it’s kind of opened my eyes a little bit.
Good. Well, thank you so much for joining us, RJ. It’s been a pleasure having you. Any last, you know, note? I love your open-mindedness, I have to say. You have a great open mind. Any, like, words of wisdom for other companies in your position?
I think, you know, we’ve kind of talked about it, but just to encapsulate and wrap up here, I think it’s just like stay positive, you know, be open minded to new technologies and to new ways of doing business and try new things. Don’t be afraid. You know, I think a lot of times, and maybe I’m speaking in my age group, but I think change is a difficult thing, you know, and you can’t because if you’re not willing to change, everybody’s just going to start going by you.
Yeah, I agree. Well, thank you so much for your time.
Alrighty, have a great afternoon. Bye bye.
You too,
From MacRAE'S Growth Challenge Podcast with RJ Lincoln, Business Development at Icon Fixtures
Companies in the manufacturing and retail sectors face unprecedented challenges. The pace of technological change, shifting workforce dynamics, and new customer expectations are forcing even the most established businesses to rethink their strategies.
On a recent episode of MacRAE'S Growth Challenge Podcast, host Maria sat down with RJ Lincoln, who heads business development at Icon Fixtures, a St. Louis-based fixture manufacturer serving high-fashion retail clients. With decades of experience in the industry, RJ offers a unique perspective on how traditional businesses can adapt and thrive in this new era.
Contact us to explore how we can help your business grow.
