Decision Vision Episode 151: Should I Rebrand My Company? – An Interview with Stephanie Stuckey, Stuckey’s Corporation

Intro: [00:00:02] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions. Brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full-service, accounting and advisory firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality.

Mike Blake: [00:00:22] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we discuss the process of decision making on a different topic from the business owners’ or executives’ perspective. We aren’t necessarily telling you what to do, but we can put you in a position to make an informed decision on your own and understand when you might need help along the way.

Mike Blake: [00:00:43] My name is Mike Blake, and I’m your host for today’s program. I’m a director at Brady Ware & Company, a full-service accounting firm based in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Dayton; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Indiana; and Alpharetta, Georgia. My practice specializes in providing fact-based strategic and risk management advice to clients that are buying, selling or growing the value of companies and intellectual property. Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast, which is being recorded in Atlanta per social distancing protocols. If you’d like to engage with me on social media, with my chart of the day and other content, I’m on LinkedIn as myself and @unblakeable on Facebook, Twitter, Clubhouse and Instagram. I also recently launched a new LinkedIn group called A Group That Doesn’t Suck, so please join that as well if you’d like to engage. If you like this podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast aggregator, and please consider leaving a review of the podcast as well.

Mike Blake: [00:01:41] So, the topic today is “Should I Rebrand My Company?” And I think this is probably on people’s consciousness because we’ve had one of the biggest rebranding, certainly in my memory, which is the company formerly known as Facebook now would like to be known as Meta. I think that’s going to be a tough rebrand until they actually change their platform to something other than Facebook, but they didn’t ask me for advice. And what do I know, I’m just a finance guy anyway.

Mike Blake: [00:02:13] But branding is extremely important. And according to Forbes, presenting a brand consistently across all platforms can increase company revenue by 23 percent. And there’s a HubSpot statistic out there that suggests that 86 percent of consumers prefer an authentic and honest brand personality of social networks. And our guest today, I think, does that frankly exceptionally. And according to Facebook, the aforementioned now Meta, the top four qualities people use to describe why they are loyal to a brand are cost, quality, experience, and consistency.

Mike Blake: [00:02:52] And joining us today, and I’m very grateful because I have some idea of how busy she is because I suspect we only see on social media the tip of the iceberg, but joining us today is Stephanie Stuckey, who is the third generation CEO of Stuckey’s Corporation. She started her career as a lawyer building her own practice before serving in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1999 through 2013. I did not know that. She and I served on a board together years and years ago, and I never knew that she was in the Georgia House of Representatives.

Mike Blake: [00:03:25] After that, Stephanie became the Executive Director of Green Law, an environmentally-focused law resource center. In 2015, she was appointed the City of Atlanta’s Director of Sustainability, and then to the position of Chief Resilience Officer, which is something near and dear to my heart. She’s a Georgia bulldog, having earned a degree in French, just like I did, as an undergraduate and then earning her law degree there as well, too. I’m deeply disappointed that Cincinnati did not beat Alabama, nothing against Alabama, but since we have an office in Dayton, it would have been really cool to have a Cincinnati UGA College Football Championship, but there you have it.

Mike Blake: [00:04:01] Stuckey’s was founded by W.S. “Sylvester” Stuckey Sr. As a pecan stand along Highway 1 in Eastman, Georgia in 1937. Through hard work and grit, Stuckey’s grew into a roadside empire that numbered over 300 stores in the 1970s with the familiar teal sloped roof and Refresh, Relax, Refuel billboards dotting the nation’s highways. The stores fell out of family hands for decades, but were reacquired by Billy Stuckey, son of the founder and former US Congressman in 1980 — I’m sorry, in 1985. Stephanie took over in November of 2019 after a career in public service that we already discussed. And under Stephanie’s leadership, Stuckey’s has undergone a rebranding, added three new franchise stores, expanded B2B retail customer base, and ramped up its online sales with a brand new website. Stephanie Stuckey, thank you for joining the program.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:04:54] Thank you. Wow, what an amazing intro! I didn’t know Facebook was switching to Meta.

Mike Blake: [00:05:01] Well, you’ve been busy doing other stuff.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:05:03] That’s crazy. They should consult us on that because I have an opinion.

Mike Blake: [00:05:09] Well, that’s good. We like people on the show who have opinions. Otherwise, it’s a very boring show. But yeah, they’ve decided to really jump into this thing that some people are calling the metaverse; others are calling Web 3.0. Not sure what that means, but yeah, they felt that a rebranding was appropriate. So, they are in the process of doing that. But I want to talk about your rebranding. I want to talk about your rebranding because you’re here and Mark Zuckerberg’s not.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:05:38] He is not.

Mike Blake: [00:05:38] You’re probably more interesting anyway, so-

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:05:39] He’s not consulting us. And also, let me just say go Dogs!

Mike Blake: [00:05:44] There. There you go.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:05:46] I’m kind of looking forward to us playing Bama.

Mike Blake: [00:05:52] Why is that? I mean, obviously, you’re playing for the national championship. But Alabama, they’ve done well against the Bulldogs.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:05:59] Exactly. It’s been this psychological block for us at this point. And I think you really have to conquer the 800-pound gorilla in the room if you’re going to move forward. I don’t think that Georgia will feel like a true national champs unless we get the Championship by beating Bama. I know you didn’t have me on the show to talk football, but take [crosstalk] away.

Mike Blake: [00:06:26] Well. look, you can’t avoid it in Georgia, especially this time of year.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:06:31] I am just obsessed right now, yeah.

Mike Blake: [00:06:31] And I think what — I’ll go ahead and continue that. We’ll go off script, tThat’s fine. I mean, it’s our show, it’s the internet. Like, what the heck? So-

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:06:38] Hey, we can brand football too. That’s a big brand.

Mike Blake: [00:06:42] It certainly is.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:06:44] Big brand. There’s lots of [crosstalk].

Mike Blake: [00:06:44] I grew up in Boston, so I’ve been a lifelong Red Sox fan. And if you follow baseball, if you followed it for any amount of time, they had something called the Curse of the Bambino, which stems from a Red Sox selling Babe Ruths to New York Yankees, and they had not won a World Series since. And they wound up winning the series by a historic comeback over the Yankees, which wasn’t even possible because of the way divisions were aligned for so long. But it was only after beating the Yankees that they then broke through and won the World Series. They’ve won three cents. And I think there’s something to what you said. I think the only way the Red Sox could really win the World Series was to drive a stake through the heart of the vampire New York Yankee.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:07:29] Exactly.

Mike Blake: [00:07:29] Any other way, just God wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:07:33] And since we’re talking branding, there are so many great branding lessons to learn from sports. And especially that whole comeback idea, to me, the greatest story ever told was the comeback. And you see that quite often in sports, not only real life, but some of the best movies that we love like Rocky, they’re all about a comeback. And so, that translates into business as well. People love to root for the underdog. They want to see the underdog come out on top and win. I think coming into this national championship, Georgia is the underdog because we have consistently been wooped by Bama. So, I would like to think there’s a lot of people out there who haven’t been following either one of these teams, but they’re going to root for the Bulldogs because we’re the underdog. So, that translates to Stuckey’s. We’re an underdog.

Mike Blake: [00:08:28] I think that’s right. And there is a comeback story there, isn’t it?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:08:31] Absolutely. We are a comeback brand. I like to say that all the time, not only because it’s true, but psychologically, we want to see people come from all sorts of adversity and persevere, come out on top.

Mike Blake: [00:08:47] So, yeah. And frankly, I think that’s why I reached out to you, because I do follow you on social media. You do a fantastic job of transmitting your story on social media. Again, finance guy, what do I know?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:09:01] Thank you.

Mike Blake: [00:09:01] But I do think it’s helping your brand. I do think it’s bringing your brand into a sense of awareness to the younger generations.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:09:11] Yeah.

Mike Blake: [00:09:11] Right? Because they’re not watching billboards, and half of them don’t even drive anymore, right?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:09:14] I know, it’s crazy. So many don’t drive.

Mike Blake: [00:09:19] Yeah. Well, yeah. It’s the new world out there, right? So, I’ve been fascinated to kind of watch your brand. And interestingly, I follow. I think you know that my wife, who does e-commerce for a long time, she carried Stuckey’s for catalogs as a flagship brand in her e-commerce site and really only stopped because Amazon-

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:09:43] Yeah. Billy and I caught up on that.

Mike Blake: [00:09:43] Really only stopped because Amazon made the rules for selling food just so draconian that she couldn’t — as a small business person, that just wasn’t worth it anymore, unfortunately, but they’re a great seller for her. So, I’ve been following the brand actually from afar for quite some time and in a way, was sort of invested in it.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:10:01] Thank you.

Mike Blake: [00:10:01] Tell us at a high level — we’ll get into the details of the rebranding, but tell us at the high level kind of — you walked in at 2019, and I want to hear about the origin story, but before we even hear about how you got there, what did you walk into? November 2019, you walked into Stuckey’s, you take the CEO’s office or wherever you worked, what did you walk into?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:10:24] The office was a rundown, double wide trailer that we were renting.

Mike Blake: [00:10:29] Okay.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:10:29] I swear to God.

Mike Blake: [00:10:31] All right, keep going. So-.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:10:33] If I did not have the last name Stuckey, I not only would not have bought the company, I would have run screaming from the prospect of buying the company. So, I bought a struggling business. What I bought was a trademark, which I think was the most valuable thing I purchased and a rented warehouse in Eastman, Georgia, with a lot of dead inventory that hadn’t moved in years. And I knew nothing about business. I knew something about budgets having worked in government, which you may or may not think is valuable budgeting lessons, but-

Mike Blake: [00:11:17] I think it’s very valuable.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:11:19] … the one thing the Georgia Legislature constitutionally had to accomplish every single session was to pass a balanced budget. So, I did know about budgeting. I had a budget running a nonprofit and a law firm, and I had the budget running the Office of Sustainability for the City of Atlanta. So, I understood base level finances. So, I did have that understanding, but I had never run a warehouse or, now, we’re in the manufacturing world that was all new to me. But I did know innately that if you have inventory that’s sitting around for several years, that’s not good. You should be having a turn rate of a lot faster than that. So, I inherited a lot of dead inventory like Britney Spears t-shirts and ashtrays shaped like toilets and say, “Put your butts here.” We had some John Wayne bobbleheads. We just had all sorts of random shtick.

Mike Blake: [00:12:05] John Wayne bobbleheads?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:12:07] Yeah.

Mike Blake: [00:12:08] Wow!

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:12:09] Yeah, but random. Like they were miscounts and slotted wrong, and there were three out of a case of 10. So, no store is going to buy three random items.

Mike Blake: [00:12:23] Yeah.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:12:24] And it just — the company had, frankly, just gone somewhat on autopilot and had a very small skeleton crew. We had two main people running it and they are terrific. We’ve kept them on. They’re fabulous. This is no fault of theirs. But if you don’t have financing, if you don’t have a structural support, if you don’t have all the basics to run a successful company, it doesn’t matter how hardworking or smart you are, you can’t turn it around. And so, we had a company that had been on autopilot for about a decade.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:13:00] My dad and his business partners had sold off the most profitable part of their business. We don’t need to get into all that, but they owned a profitable business, Interstate Dairy Queen corporation. That had largely propped up Stuckey’s. And then, when they sold Interstate Dairy Queen Corporation, they retired, they left a skeleton crew in charge managing what was left of Stuckey’s. And what was left was a rented warehouse that is a distribution facility and the trademark. But none of the stores are owned or operated by us. They’re not even franchised at this point. They’re all licensed. So, very little revenue generated from the stores, very little control over the store. So, that revenue is slowly declining and we started losing some accounts.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:13:44] So, yeah, it was a double wide trailer, run down. And I remember, I visited the stores, and I sat in the parking lot of one store, and it looked so bad, it was completely rundown, I could not even bring myself to walk in, and I started to cry. Now, I do cry pretty easily. I cry with Hallmark commercials and-

Mike Blake: [00:14:08] Okay.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:14:09] … when I see college fund ads, I always cry, but I’m an easy crier. But I am in the parking lot crying, and I call my vice president, and I said, “This is just horrible.” He didn’t skip a beat, he said, “Welcome to your kingdom.”

Mike Blake: [00:14:25] Interesting. Interesting response.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:14:28] Welcome to your kingdom. Like this is your roadside mess. So, you have to have a sense of humor, you have to laugh, and you have to be able to see the potential. And I saw the potential because not only do I have the last name Stuckey, but I was around when the business was profitable, when my grandfather was still involved. He had sold the company the year before I was born, but he remained involved on the board of the company that acquired it for some years after he sold. So, I knew what it could be, I knew what it was capable of, and I believed in my heart that we could bring that back.

Mike Blake: [00:15:01] So, we didn’t come on to talk about this, but I’m so curious, I think it will come back to the topic, and that is, what do you remember that your grandfather did with the business that seemed to have stopped going on when he left? What was missing?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:15:20] So, I didn’t remember anything about him actually running the company directly. I just remember being around the company.

Mike Blake: [00:15:27] Yeah.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:15:28] Well, being around the stores, visiting the stores because we road trip just like everyone else. What was interesting to me was one of the most important things I acquired when I bought the company was not only the trademark but his papers. My mother gave me several boxes of his archives that no one had even touched since the 1960s. It was like opening a time capsule. So, I spent those first couple of months after acquiring the company reading through all his papers. Every single night, I would just sit down, and I just start reading, and I took notes. And he went from being my grandfather, who I call Big Daddy, he went from being Big Daddy, and I had these warm, fuzzy memories of of a granddaughter-grandfather relationship. He was not a businessman to me, but he became Stuckey. He became the businessman. I learned about how he ran the company, and that made all the difference.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:16:29] Honestly, so much of what I’m doing is following his basic business principles. And he didn’t get an MBA. He had to drop out of the University of Georgia because it was during the Great Depression, but he had a strong understanding of people. He was a gifted salesperson, just naturally gifted, and he really firmly believed in the power of branding. He put 20 percent of everything he made into branding and marketing, even during the tough times.

Mike Blake: [00:17:04] Interesting and-

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:17:05] Especially the tough times. I realized, that’s what you need to do. You have to brand. And I’ve learned that from him, but not until many, many years later, when I got his papers did I learn that.

Mike Blake: [00:17:17] So, you bought a virtual memoir, basically. Or you bought a virtual mentor, actually, is the best way to put it.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:17:23] Yeah. If I can only get some sort of psychic to channel him for me, that would be awesome. But unfortunately, I’ve got his papers, not him.

Mike Blake: [00:17:31] I have a feeling somebody’s going to listen to this podcast, they’re going to come to you and ask if they could publish them because if they’ve been that valuable to you, given the progress that you’ve made with the company, they’re going to be valuable to somebody else too.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:17:44] Yeah, it’s been fascinating. But the interesting thing, there’s not a lot of his personal correspondence, it’s mostly interviews and magazine articles, original articles. A lot of these are small town papers. They’re not really going to exist anywhere else. So, it’s a lot of hard copies of original firsthand accounts. And Mercer University Press actually did a self-publish. My aunt, to her credit, got a lot of first-person narratives recorded and publish this book called Stuckey. I think five people have read it and they’re all family members, but I read that book three times, and took notes in the margins and really studied that. It’s kind of dry and clunky as far as like reading, but just the material was so helpful to me. So, I felt like an archivist.

Mike Blake: [00:18:34] Well, that’s — I’ve got to be careful because I do so much work with multigenerational businesses, it’s such a treasure trove, but I want to get back on topic the. So, from what I’m from what I’m inferring, and you tell me if I’m wrong, please, because you’re the expert, I’m not, but it sounds like maybe when you walked in, Stuckey’s didn’t necessarily have a brand at all. Or did it? I mean, how would you characterize it?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:19:03] It did.

Mike Blake: [00:19:03] Okay. What was the brand?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:19:04] So, that’s the great thing. I firmly believe I started on first base or second base, how far along you want to say I am, to continue with this sports theme, but there are still a lot of people out there in 2019 when I bought the company and they’re, albeit older forties, fifties, sixties and up, who rode tripped in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, early ’80s, and remember stopping at Stuckey’s. They remember us when we had 368 teal stores with the slope roofs, and these exact carports, and the red and yellow beautiful, iconic billboards that dotted the nation’s highways. They remember that. They remember stopping at our stores and the wonderful memories.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:19:50] And I kid you not, I get easily ten or more messages a day from people sharing very personal stories about our business, about their road trips. When I say “about our business,” it’s not; it’s about them, it’s about their families, it’s about their road trips, and their vacations, and their memories and how we are entwined with that. So, I tapped into that, and I hunkered down on the people who knew us already. And I pulled on my experience in politics, which is you go to your base first. Don’t go chasing out after these — if you’re a Democrat, don’t go chasing after a bunch of Republican voters who are probably not going to support you. Those aren’t your people. And you go after your base, you shore up your base, and then you target those undecideds who could be persuadable.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:20:52] So, you figure out like, who are those people? So, for us, our peeps initially were the people who actually remembered the brand. So, that was 40 and up, and I was totally okay focusing on that. I wasn’t going to start chasing after millennials right out the bat because we needed to get the people who remembered us to know we were still alive. And then, you start looking beyond that, and you look at what are the things that really define us as a brand. And that’s road tripping. And to me, road tripping defies age categorization. It defies sex or ethnicity, anything, I mean, nationality, people all over the world like to road trip. And so, I’ve expanded to talking more about the road trip, but initially it was just drawing on, “Hey, remember us? We’re still around. Here’s our story. Let’s tell you what happened to us, but we’re still here. Where’ve you been? Come back.”

Mike Blake: [00:21:49] So, that’s a very interesting, I think, distinction because some brands rebrand to get away from something or to move to something new, right? The aforementioned Facebook is trying to get away from the bad reputation they’ve accumulated over the last couple of years because of social media basically. And so, they need a reboot. In your case, you’re going the other way. You’re doubling down on what you already had.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:22:19] Yes, exactly.

Mike Blake: [00:22:20] Almost going retro. But I think that’s maybe unfair and that sounds old fashioned, but you’re definitely doubling down on the base, as you said.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:22:28] Exactly. And I think where you modernize, or at least for our brand, is how you communicate. What are the mediums that you use? So, we started with Facebook because that’s where the older demographic is. And then, we added Linkedin. It has been incredible for us, especially if you’re looking in the B2B space, which is how we’re growing the brand with more retail partners. So, I started with the obvious, the traditional social media forums and Twitter. Twitter’s a little harder. It’s kind of sarcastic and has an attitude, a lot of the brands that do well on Twitter. So, Twitter has not been as strong a platform for us. And Pinterest, but we’re on Instagram. And now, we’re on Tik Tok. And I’m trying to get more on YouTube and Clubhouse. You mentioned Clubhouse. I need to get more into Clubhouse, but I am on Clubhouse. So, it’s not so much the message to me that’s modernizing. It’s how we approach people, how we meet people, how we communicate in a language that they can connect with us, but the core authentic what our brand is, which is about the road trip, that’s not changed.

Mike Blake: [00:23:54] And it’s interesting, you mentioned sort of the teal roof, and that kind of reminds me of Howard Johnson’s. And I wonder if this was deliberate, right? Howard Johnson’s always had that hunter orange roof that you could see from a mile and a half away driving 70 miles an hour, right? And I wonder if-

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:24:12] What a simple sign in [crosstalk]-

Mike Blake: [00:24:15] Yeah.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:24:17] When?

Mike Blake: [00:24:17] Yeah, and it was that part-

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:24:17] [Crosstalk].

Mike Blake: [00:24:17] Was that the thinking behind the teal roof for Stuckey’s as well?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:24:24] So, I don’t know if my grandfather was inspired by Howard Johnson’s or not. I do know the genesis of the teal roof was when the interstate highway system came in; and suddenly, the roads that we had been located on, we were on Route 66, and the Lincoln Highway, and the Old Dixie Highway, and some of these older interstate roads, and then the National Interstate Highway System, Eisenhower starts that initiative in 1956. And so, we’re bypassing these state roads and these other roads that we are on, and we had to make a very strategic decision to survive. I say we like I was around then.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:25:04] But to survive, my grandfather had to make a move, and he had to literally not only move how his strategy was, but he had to move his stores. And so, he used that as an opportunity to brand. And before, his stores had been sort of a mishmash of architectural styles, and there was no consistency in the color. He did have a consistent logo, but he used the move as an opportunity to get a consistent color, to get a consistent store design, to get consistent motifs.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:25:41] So, my father for some reason came up with a carriage design. I’ve told him I’ve never been a fan of the carriage design because it does not speak to our brand. To me, it’s kind of like this old South notation. So, that, I did dismiss with, and I called my dad and I said, “No disrespect, but I’m doing away with carriage.” And we put a we put a cool little — I call it the happy car family image, which is an original advertising image of Stuckey’s from the ’60s. So, it was a retro image, but it was more aligned with our brand. But he had all these distinctive elements, and that’s when he put that blue teal color in.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:26:18] I do know he was friends with Howard Johnson’s. No, I’m sorry he was friends with Kemmons Wilson, the founder of Holiday Inn. They were contemporaries, they were friends, they were on the interstate. It’s quite possible that he knew Howard Johnson. I don’t know that, though. I did not find that in any of his paperwork.

Mike Blake: [00:26:38] Yeah. Well, and Holiday Inn also has a trademark color scheme that makes it easy to see, right?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:26:43] Yeah.

Mike Blake: [00:26:43] You can’t miss that yellow and green.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:26:45] Yeah, I think he was definitely inspired by them. I’ve not found any paperwork to confirm that. And I think he just came up with the blue because it was different, nobody else was using it and you could see it from far off. And then, a lot of people did the yellow and red and their signage because of the visibility.

Mike Blake: [00:27:06] So, you touched on something that I didn’t think we’d be going in today. I hadn’t thought of it. But now that you bring it up, I think it’s really important. The south, I think, is undergoing a difficult cultural and identity transition, right?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:27:26] Yeah.

Mike Blake: [00:27:28] As the country comes to terms with reacquainting itself with its history, how we teach it, race relations, I think, are changing, certainly in the most radical way that I can remember, I was born in 1970, so I was after the Civil Rights Movement, was Stuckey’s being sort of an old school old South brand? Is that something that you’ve had to confront and really think about? How does it fit into the millennial or post-millennium vision of the South while still staying true to the core values? Is that something you’ve had to kind of wrestle with? And if so, how have you done that?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:28:10] Certainly. I think any southern brand that’s been around as long as we have has some racial history that you have to come to terms with and you have to address. And our history, just like our region, is messy and complicated when it comes to race.

Mike Blake: [00:28:29] Yeah.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:28:30] Stuckey’s has an interesting story in that we were never segregated in a time when many places were-

Mike Blake: [00:28:41] Interesting

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:28:41] … especially in the south. We never had a whites only sign on anything. We were always opening.

Mike Blake: [00:28:46] Good for you.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:28:46] My grandfather had a saying, “Every traveler is a friend.” And so, he wanted Stuckey’s to be known as a hospitality brand, as a welcoming place, and that really reflected his core values. He was a Christian, he was very philanthropic, he was a quiet donor, he was not very flashy in how he contributed to different charities he supported. And in fact, I have yet to track down the actual people, but I do know from my aunt that my grandfather actually paid to have several African-Americans from our hometown go to college. But I don’t have any specific records. I don’t have names. He did it quietly. But I say that to reflect that’s who he was. He was just a a caring person.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:29:41] And so, we were never segregated. And if you’ve seen the movie The Green Book, there’s actually a scene in the movie where they shop at a Stuckey’s for that very reason that we were not segregated. And I do have a lot of African-Americans of a certain age who told me that they remember stopping at Stuckey’s, and they also remember driving for long stretches and needing to stop, and their parents would say, “We’ve got to wait for Stuckey’s. We’ve got to wait for Stuckey’s.” And they said, “Well, we just thought our parents loved Stuckey’s, and they did,” but one of the people told me they realized many years later they had to stop at Stuckey’s, that was the only place they could stop.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:30:27] So, we’ve got that part of our history, but we also have a history where, frankly, we have sold Confederate flag memorabilia. We’ve sold — I’m not proud of it, but it’s part of our past, we’ve sold some of those black mammy’s little figurines. I’ve seen them in pictures of the stores. So, I know that is part of our past. I would like to think my grandfather didn’t mean any ill by that, but that is what he sold. We don’t sell it anymore.

Mike Blake: [00:31:07] Yeah, of course, you don’t sell them anymore. And look-

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:31:08] But I will say, when I took over the company, there were two stores that were selling Confederate flag stuff, and I stopped that. I said we will de-brand you, take that out of the store, that is not what we represent this day and age.

Mike Blake: [00:31:28] Yeah.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:31:28] And I just don’t want to get in the whole debate. I recognize there are people out there who feel very strongly that this is heritage, and I respect that, but that doesn’t mean we have to sell it in our souvenir store. You can buy that in a museum shop. So, I felt very strongly that we needed to really be a — For me, it comes down to being hospitable. Are we offering products, are we recreating an experience that is going to be welcoming to everyone? So, if there is a product that we sell that is going to alienate people, that is going to make people feel divided, I don’t want to sell it.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:32:10] And I get upset when I find out that our stores are selling Trump stuff. Frankly, that’s what I’ve heard. It’s not the other party, but Trump stuff. And I’m like, “I don’t want you selling Biden or Trump. Don’t sell it. Don’t sell anything that divides people. Don’t sell anything that antagonizes people.” Even with my background in politics, I always struggled with being a consensus builder. Like that’s what I wanted to be, and it was hard doing that in a highly charged partisan environment like Georgia politics.

Mike Blake: [00:32:46] Yeah. And someday, you’ll never have time for me to do this, but I would love to get your take on on politics generally because I’m sure you have such an informed view, but-

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:32:56] Yeah, I mean, I [crosstalk]-

Mike Blake: [00:32:58] … it makes no sense to align — Sorry?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:33:00] I walked away. I said I will not run again. This was not — I mean, no shame if you ran and got defeated, but I didn’t get defeated. I left.

Mike Blake: [00:33:09] Yeah.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:33:10] I did not seek re-election. I said, I’m done.

Mike Blake: [00:33:14] Yeah. Well, I think there are a lot of people that are doing that. But it’s interesting how you bring that up because you really are sort of sticking your fork in a toaster if you’re going to turn your company into a political platform, aren’t you?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:33:32] Yeah

Mike Blake: [00:33:32] Right? And especially now where things are so volatile, you can easily see a scenario where you have customers in your parking lot fighting each other under the right — Right? Because we see that in our society. And that sounds very antithetical to the brand that you have, right? So, why even approach it, right?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:33:57] Exactly. But I will say, I think there were some brands where that is entirely consistent with what they represent. And so, some brands-

Mike Blake: [00:34:06] For sure.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:34:07] … it’s good to be edgy, it’s good to be out there. I think of Nike doing the whole Colin Kaepernick commercial. I think that was a hundred percent aligned with what they represent. And so, it works for them. That’s not so much political, but it is something that was highly charged, right? I mean, they’re [crosstalk]-

Mike Blake: [00:34:29] For sure. I thought it was very risky for Nike to do that.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:34:32] It was risky and it wasn’t risky because when it came out, I thought not only was it just a beautiful ad, it’s so well done. But to me, it was just embracing their brand. And these people who were out there burning Nike sneakers, I thought, “Well, Nike’s making money off of that because people are out burning Nike sneakers for people who weren’t wearing Nike.” Those weren’t their peeps. So, they probably went out and bought some. They didn’t have them.

Mike Blake: [00:35:00] Well, and the data suggests you’re right because their stock price did go up, so.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:35:04] Yeah, it worked for their brand. So, just know what your brand is, and your brand may be political. That may be a hundred percent where you want to be. So, go in on it. That’s not us. And you also have to accept you cannot – and it’s hard sometimes, especially like me having been in politics, a lot of times, if you’re in politics, you’re a pleaser or you’re a people pleaser, you can’t be a people pleaser in branding. You cannot be all things to all people. What is your brand? We’re a road trip brand.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:35:40] I talked to this guy about six months ago and he said, “I’m not a road tripper. Tell me why I should stop at Stuckey’s.” I said, “You shouldn’t stop at Stuckey’s. You’re not our person. You’re not-”

Mike Blake: [00:35:50] Right.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:35:51] I mean, I would love for you to try our product, but if you don’t enjoy road tripping, we’re really not your brand.

Mike Blake: [00:35:59] Right, you have to drive 30 miles to get to our store, right, which is-

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:36:02] We’re on the interstate. And yes, we are branching out, we are getting in more venues, but even though we’re pushing the product, and we’re promoting the delicious pecan snacks and candies that we make, it’s all wrapped up in the story of the road trip. So, know what your brand is, and hunker down on that, and don’t try to be something that you’re not, don’t try to appeal to people that really aren’t going to connect with your brand. Not everyone’s going to like your brand. If you hate sugar, if you hate candy, then I would never try to sell you a pecan log roll.

Mike Blake: [00:36:42] Sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, a brand is about — push brands don’t work, right?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:36:48] Yes.

Mike Blake: [00:36:48] And brand is a poll asset, and you’re rallying people towards your banner for something, right? People who believe what you believe. I’m crazy a fan of Simon Sinek and all his thing about Star Wars.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:37:03] Oh, my gosh. Yes, I love Simon Sinek.

Mike Blake: [00:37:06] Yeah. Well, if you know him, tell him I want him on the program, but nobody’s been able to provide that yet, but-

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:37:13] I don’t know him. No, I’m just a total fan girl. I watch his YouTube videos every morning. I’ve got a cynic for video on Simon Sinek, Gary Vee.

Mike Blake: [00:37:22] Yeah.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:37:23] I’m a big Oprah fan. They all have just such great content that they put out. I listen to sort of an eclectic mix. I like Russell Brand. He’s got some philosophical side to him. But there’s some really great people out there that give wonderful perspectives, but Simon, yeah, Simon Sinek, like the whole getting to the why? Businesses know what they do. A lot of times, you may know how you do it, what your formula is, what your process is, but why are you doing it?

Mike Blake: [00:37:57] So, you walked in, you walked into that double wide trailer, realized that you had maybe not a brand change, but certainly a brand rehabilitation or reinforcement to do.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:38:08] Yeah.

Mike Blake: [00:38:08] Maybe that’s a better way to put it.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:38:12] That’s the patient.

Mike Blake: [00:38:13] What did that to-do list ultimately look like? If you could boil it down, what are some of the key steps you had to take in order to do that?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:38:20] Well, you said it in the very beginning, in the intro, the quote from Forbes about consistency. Branding is consistency. And I knew something about branding because I’ve been in politics. And so, you have to brand yourself, and I had a brand that was my family. So, in a way, it was easier for me because the brand was so personal to me. It was tied in with my own brand, so I had a good sense of what my brand was, and I understood the company, I understood my grandfather, and I knew the stories. I had great stories. And I had even more stories than I thought I have had having read all my grandfather’s papers. So, my playbook was really watching what Gary Vee advises you to do, which is every single day, you get out there and post on social media. It’s just that consistency, and it’s the storytelling.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:39:24] And it’s not just posting for post’s sake. It’s not just like, “All right, I’ve got to get something out there.” It’s got to have sticking power, and it’s got to have a higher purpose. It’s not about selling a pecan log roll; it’s about building a community. And you’re building a community around people that share an interest that you share. They care passionately about what you care about. I would rather have a small group of rabid fans that absolutely love our brand. There are a ton of people who buy our product because it’s cheap or easy to get, and they’re not loyal. There’s no sticking power there. So, the way you get that rabid fan base is you share something in common.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:40:15] So, I just started putting out their content that was long-form narrative storytelling about what we believed in. And I wrote down our brand attributes, and I made sure every time I did a post, it touched on those attributes. And the attributes are family-friendly, hospitable, pecans because we’re all about the pecan, Georgia-grown pecans, that sense of place, small-town America, road trips, vintage/retro, Americana, celebrating all things, small-town America. So, I kind of knew those themes. I had them written down. Sort of, I have this sheet, I have a visual. It’s a diamond. And the different facets of the diamond have different words on them for the brand attributes. It’s my brand diamond. You can use whatever works for you, but I look at that all the time and I think, “Am I being brand-forward? Is this family-friendly? Is this promoting the road trip?” It’s got to hit on some of those brand’s attributes.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:41:23] And it’s a slog. It is a slog. Every single person out there who’s got a million followers, they started with one. And you just keep at it. Somebody asked me yesterday because I didn’t know I was up this high, but it’s very gratifying, they said I had 72,000 LinkedIn followers. And when I started on LinkedIn, I think I had a thousand, which is a very respectable number to begin with, and that was from being a state rep and being head of sustainability for City of Atlanta, but I didn’t have 72,000. and I didn’t get 72,000 overnight. I got maybe a dozen a day, but you get a dozen a day over a couple of years, it adds up.

Mike Blake: [00:42:09] And this gets to a point that I think is important, I want to make sure that we get to because I think a common perception of changing or, in your case, rehabilitating a brand, but in this case, the difference is not material, and that is that, well, all you have to do is change your name, or a logo, or something; and therefore, you have a brain change, right? And to me, what you’re describing is exemplary of, at least, my view, and I may be completely wrong, but in a way, those are the two least important things. The brand is who you are every day, and the brand is what you will do every day. And most importantly, and this is why I think it’s so important, we go back to phasing out or wiping out kind of the Dixie, if you will, type memorabilia, Dixie type products in your product line, you define yourself by what you won’t do, right? You draw a line someplace.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:43:11] Sure.

Mike Blake: [00:43:12] And I think that’s why there’s a lot of cynicism – at least I sense cynicism and I have cynicism about Facebook/Meta’s brand change is that it occurred only after Mark Zuckerberg had his rear end hauled before Congress to testify. And there started to be some talk about antitrust action, et cetera that it doesn’t seem like there’s a genuine change in the mission of the company, but rather it’s really just sort of a coat of paint; whereas, what you’re doing is by getting out there and being the lead cheerleader from the brand. And I remember the stories, I didn’t do the homework for this when I had you on the program, I love the story about you going out to Arkansas and seeing a hole in the roof of one of your stores. As a CEO, I cannot imagine how that must have impacted you. Or on the Christmas rush, you’re there with a picture of yourself on the line packaging stuff, right?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:44:13] I got so much grief from some of my team, though. They’re like, “Do you know how much it’s costing us for these boxes to have the CEO on the line?”

Mike Blake: [00:44:21] Well, you know what, it costs you a lot more for people to want to buy Stuckey’s products and they can’t get it.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:44:26] I’m like, “It’s branding too. It’s like showing that we are rolling up our sleeves and is all hands on deck.” And I absolutely needed to be there because we had to build a hundred boxes in a day, and we did 120.

Mike Blake: [00:44:41] Yeah. I mean, don’t we all want to work for somebody that will get down in the trenches with us?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:44:51] Yeah, [crosstalk].

Mike Blake: [00:44:51] Not just telling us what to do from from the corner office, but geez, I just got to get in there and do it, right? And I think that, what a boost for morale. I’ll bet you probably got a lot of resumes from people after that of people just want to work for you because of that.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:45:09] I did actually. And we can’t hire anyone because we don’t have enough money.

Mike Blake: [00:45:13] Right.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:45:15] We are scrappy. We are still a scrappy startup. I joke, we’re an 85-year-old startup. We are. And I think it’s really good to have that edge to be in that hungry space, that startup space. I think there’s something about it that really keeps you on your toes. But you’re right about the logo. You can’t just slap on a fresh coat of paint and say, “That’s a new brand.” But I do think one of the first things I did was bring the logo back to our original logo. But for me, that was an outward manifestation of an interchange.

Mike Blake: [00:45:56] Yeah.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:45:57] So, I think as long as what you’re doing externally is reflective of an internal shift, then it makes sense to have that name change, it makes sense to have that new design work done, but like you said, it has to be authentic and there has to be this message from the top that this is more than just we’re changing the logo.

Mike Blake: [00:46:24] So, a lot of companies doing what you’re doing, they bring in outside help – consultants and PR firms and branding experts and such. Did you avail yourself of that expertise as well? Or did you primarily make this an internal project?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:46:38] Both. So, initially — and this is just me, and I don’t want to give consultants a hard time because there’s a lot of really good ones out there, but there are also a lot that frankly will take your money.

Mike Blake: [00:46:52] Yeah.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:46:53] And rack up those billable hours.

Mike Blake: [00:46:56] They don’t have clients, they have victims.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:46:59] Yeah. So, I’m not trying to say I didn’t have good consultants because I think I did have some good help, but it did not make financial sense for us. We had a very small budget when I bought the company. Like I said, we were six figures in debt. And a little bit of money we had available was money that I frankly had invested. When I bought the company, I negotiated to invest a very small amount in the company to have some upfront capital to brand and to also work on a strategic plan. And so, I paid some consultants for that. And they were good. But we had such limited dollars, and we ran through that money in a matter of months. And so, then, I had to figure out how to do it myself. And that’s when I started watching Gary Vee and some of these other resources.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:47:58] And I think the lesson here is if you’re small, if you are scrappy, don’t think that you can’t try it yourself because a lot of the stuff, you really can do yourself, especially if you know your brand. Nobody knows the Stuckey’s story better than I do except my father and my aunt. No one. And so, that puts me in a unique position. And so, a lot of the stuff, you can do yourself. I just think too often we think, “Oh, we’ve got to hire this digital firm to run these digital ads.” And Lord knows I spent money on digital ads. And then, I went online and watched a couple of YouTube videos, and I do the ads myself.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:48:45] What I can’t do is the creative design work, and I do have an excellent — I have two graphic designers who are amazing, and I use them. And I do have a guy who helps me with copy who’s really, really good at helping me do the e-blast, and he helps with speechwriting. So, I do have a very good writer who supports me, and we work really well together, we have similar styles. But I cut back dramatically because I just didn’t have the funding for it. So, I still do it myself. We don’t have a marketing firm.

Mike Blake: [00:49:19] I’m talking with Stephanie Stuckey, and the topic is, Should I Rebrand My Company? I have so many questions. We’re not going to get to them all, and that’s my loss. But a couple I want to get to before we let you get back to – hopefully you’re not in a double wide trailer anymore, but if you are, that’s fine, but get back to your work day.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:49:38] That’s my home. I’m recovering from COVID.

Mike Blake: [00:49:40] Yeah, okay. Oh, really? Okay. Well, you sound great.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:49:44] Yeah, I got [crosstalk] cases. I think Atlanta is super spiking right now, and that’s [crosstalk].

Mike Blake: [00:49:48] Yeah, for sure.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:49:49] Yeah.

Mike Blake: [00:49:50] So, how would you describe your your brand resurrection or resuscitation effort? Do you think it’s been successful? Is it still a work in process? How do you evaluate it at this point?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:50:04] Work in progress.

Mike Blake: [00:50:06] Okay.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:50:06] And I’m still figuring out how to evaluate it because, obviously, you want metrics. My board especially wants metrics. So, I’m doing my best to hunker down and try to figure out what is the return on the investment that we have made with branding. And I think sometimes, that’s hard, because there’s too — I mean, generating sales comes from branding and in part. And there’s also just brand awareness. And it’s hard to measure, sometimes, that brand awareness piece if you don’t have the budget to go out and do some sort of market survey to say, “What’s your name recognition?” We don’t have that. We don’t have that budget.

Mike Blake: [00:50:54] So, it’s a work in progress, and I’m still trying to — I think for me, what I really hope moving forward is, can I figure out better ways to measure. And we are measuring conversion rate, and click rates and all the typical things that people measure. But it’s just, what is the value of people knowing your story? What is the value of people recognizing your name? But to me, that’s really hard to put in a spreadsheet.

Mike Blake: [00:51:28] It is. Stephanie, you’ve been so not only generous with your time, but really generous with your with your authenticity and revealing sort of the thought processes and emotional processes you’ve had to go through during this journey of yours. I’m sure there are questions that our listeners wish that I would have asked or wish that we would have spent more time on. We just didn’t have the time. If one of our listeners wants to follow up with you, would you be willing to share with them maybe some of your brand knowledge? And if so, what’s the best way to do that?

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:52:06] The best way is to send me an email. Linkedin messages are sporadic for me. I do my best to answer them, but I get a lot of LinkedIn messages and quite a fair amount of it is just out and out solicitation. So, sorting through all of the clutter to find the real genuine request to reach out to me is, sometimes, daunting when I’m running a company. But email, I get, and I look at, and I respond. If it’s a pure solicitation as a service that is not aligned with me, I’ll be honest, I started hitting just the delete button because I used to write polite replies, and I realize I was literally spending 40 minutes a day writing polite replies to people who are offering services that we didn’t need.

Mike Blake: [00:53:00] Okay.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:53:00] If it’s something aligned with our brand, I will forward along to the appropriate person. But if you’re asking for advice, yes, I will respond. And it’s sstuckey@stuckeys.com. So, it’s sstuckey@stuckeys.com. And I can give that to you to put in your show notes.

Mike Blake: [00:53:17] Great, that’d be terrific. And you’re also on social media, and I would encourage our listeners, before you reach out to Stephanie, just simply watch what she does. She’s probably just going to tell you about what she’s doing anyway, but she sets a great example for how to reposition a brand, how to modernize a brand. And then, if you still have questions, go ahead and use it. And Stephanie is very generous with giving back to the community. But I would encourage you to do that homework first.

Mike Blake: [00:53:47] That’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. And I’d like to thank Stephanie Stuckey so much for sharing her expertise with us today. We’ll be exploring a new topic each week, so please tune in, so that when you’re faced with your next business decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy this podcasts, please consider leaving a review with your favorite podcast aggregator. It helps people find us, so that we can help them. If you would like to engage with me on social media with my chart of the day and other content, I’m on LinkedIn is myself and at @unblakeable on Facebook, Twitter, Clubhouse and Instagram. Also check out my new LinkedIn group called A Group That Doesn’t Suck. Once again, this is Mike Blake. Our sponsor is Brady Ware & Company. And this has been the Decision Vision Podcast.