How to Win by Giving Value to Local Retailers

0:00I have from day one, because I grew up in a retail store, a liquor store, that also had to fight for allocations of hard-to-get wines. I have prioritized retail stores from day one. And what retail stores have done is I've gone first and showed love to them to the best of my ability first. And they've reciprocated twofold. And I think a lot of people shit on retail stores because they don't realize they're trying to extract value from retail stores instead of giving them value. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. Hey, Gary, how are you? It's good to see you guys. Hey, good to see you again.

0:34Gary, I don't know if you can see us. Sometimes you have to, if you, right where about my finger is, if you like move the mouse over it, there's like a little pin. If you click that, it'll expand us. You'll see both. I'm going to do the same on our side so I can see you fully. All right, so you have been on the Sports Cards Nonsense podcast before with myself and Mike. This is another podcast that I started in January 2025. In addition to Sports Cards Nonsense, now there's Hobby Nonsense. It's mainly just dedicated to non-sports and everything around that. I'm super aware. You've upgraded your co-hosts.

1:14You've gone even nerdier. I'm very excited about it. Here's the thing. Those kinds of comments need to be saved until the recording starts. So let's go ahead and just get that kicked off. All right. I'm going to go ahead and just hit record. I know, I understand you've got like 20 minutes. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Of course, always brother. All right. Your audio looks good. Everything looks fine. If you're ready. Yeah, and we're good to 625 mind time. So we've got about 22, 23 minutes, 627. We've got 25 minutes. Perfect. Awesome. So we are here with Gary Vee, who basically needs no introduction but Gary Vee is the creator of Vee Friends.

1:52Gary thank you for coming on the show thank you for talking to us a little bit about the new release. I gotta ask you and this is something kind of surreal even for me even though you've been in this office we've interviewed you before but my co-host Ray is a is a fan and he's gone back and looked at some of your previous interviews is it like something you're used to doing now interview after interview or is this Do you ever get butterflies coming in and doing something like this? Because Ray and I are both kind of experiencing it a little bit. Well, you're being very sweet. I mean, from a butterfly standpoint, no.

2:24Something about public appearances, you know, my first ever thing I did in my life as like a public person was literally Conan O 'Brien's late show where we didn't rehearse. They literally pushed me out of a curtain and I'm in front of national television and I'd never done anything before in my life and I wasn't really, you know, I'm trying to remember, like I don't think I understood what was about to happen at some level. Back in 2007, you know, I was just like, I didn't know. I didn't know anything. And once I did that and that went so well, I'd already been doing public speaking at that point.

3:00I would tell you that my nerves aren't real in this environment because I'm improv oriented. Meaning I'm prepared for anything at all times. I've gotten very good and I've always been very good at talking about things I know. And if you ask me a question and we're like, Gary, blah, blah, blah, and I didn't know, I would just say, I don't know. And I don't fear the embarrassment of not knowing who's Superman's arch nemesis. If I didn't know who Lex Luthor was, I don't know. What do you want from me? I'm a fucking human being. I'm very comfortable in my own skin. And so I'm not nervous, but I'm grateful.

3:36You and I have had a really nice relationship. I've said this to you publicly. I'm thrilled that you've upgraded your co-host and that is a dig to one of my favorite guys in the game we actually got to meet at our local trading card store here when you were in Nashville I recognize you right, I remember I remember but I'm grateful because you guys are on the same kick I'm on you know this, in fact I showed Rips who's hanging on the side here I found a tweet from 2001 where I where, oh excuse me, 21, excuse me, thank you for that reaction. From 2021, I'm getting old, you know. I got some slips, you know.

4:18Literally from January, ironically, 2021, five years ago, a screen, you know, I recorded Superman 1940 Gum Ink rookie card results, like auction listings, like a 15 second video, and I tweeted out like, anybody know anything about this? I'm starting to get very curious about vintage, fictional, blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, I think you and I, you two and I have been on the same kick. Like I think there's something else going on with our hobby that's not, and by the way, I'm a bigger sports fan than I am nerd fan. I got good nerd in me, right? Star Wars, you know, for sure action, you know, superheroes in Star Wars, right?

4:57I grew up collecting Star Wars, WWE wrestling figures, which I've got some right here on my shelf. Dude, Ray, are you seeing this? I'm seeing it, baby, I know. But one of the biggest things I collected was Super Powers and Secret Wars mid-80s action figures. And in fact, in the 90s, I collected Mego, 1970s, and Kenner's Super Powers and Secret Wars action figures pretty aggressively on card, in package. I was a pretty hardcore action figure collector. In fact, I sold all my baseball cards in 1994 and put all my money into action figures, buying up old Star Wars, because I heard Star Wars was coming back, and I heard right.

5:37And so, you know, this non-sports trading card world for me, just like some of the stuff I have back here, like, you know, especially like, you know, is this Taz's rookie? So like, you know, like Tasmanian Devil's rookie. That's true, 1974 Warner Brothers, okay, wow. Or this one that I'm obsessed with this. So Tom and Jerry's rookie card. And, you know, along with the obvious 1940s Superman the 66, Tops, Batman the 66, Marvel Donra set that I think is gonna explode in importance. I'm obsessed with fictional trading cards. And then you and I, even since we've known each other, have seen tops go completely ham with Disney, Marvel, you know, and SpongeBob now, you know.

6:24And there was that era during the hype of trading cards during COVID where I talked a lot about Marvel cards from that 91 set and that thing got hot. But I like a little more vintage. But anyway, very long-winded to say thank you for having me on the show because I want to talk about this category more than anything. This is the number one thing I've collected for three or four years. Fictional, vintage trading cards. Number one. Well, it seems very legit, like not just because of the fact that you are into VFriends because it's like, I think the argument could be made like, oh, well, he's into the non-sport world in business.

7:00So it makes sense that his interest would already... It's actually the reverse. I created VFriends because I was into this stuff my whole life. That's exactly what it sounds like. Yeah, exactly. It's being spawned from your... Yeah, I mean, you know, and you know this, and you probably sensed this when you first met me. My favorite thing is I'm very empathetic to the judgment, there's cynicism, there's a lot of bad behavior in the business world. I'm empathetic, I'm loud, I'm out in front. Often characters that are up to no good kind of look like me on paper. I never get disappointed if someone's like, fuck this guy or you know like or like it's it's when people get to meet me actually that i always feel like they get a sense again like if someone comes up to me we start talking about like you know valiant comics from 94 with bloodshot and turk and and if we talk about like hulk 181 or if i talk about secret wars or migos or i talk about yak face or blue snaggle tooth from the Sears Cantina action.

7:59Then they're like, wait a minute, like, wait a minute, this guy is actually like us. Like, he knows this stuff. This isn't like he thinks there's a couple of bucks in Lion King fucking super fractures and he's gonna use his social media followers. And I think, again, I'd like to think at this point, I've been pretty loud about collectibles and now seven years, you know, I went through that era where I was, I'm a collector at heart, sharing, whether it was Giannis or Durant or whatever I was collecting, I recognized that people were speculating on the back of my content so I stopped being specific and now I talk in generalisms and I think I've also been very proud of how I've built VFriends over the last five years we're one of the only NFT products that has real demand and sells NFTs every day and then what we've done in trading cards and comics has been a movie you know you can make fun of it all you want the data's the data go to eBay comps type in VFriends and tell me if it's fake or not and I'm aware of MetaZoo and I'm aware of all this other stuff, but every day that we execute becomes another day where someone cynical has to ponder it or someone who supports is seeing the truth in the outcomes.

9:07But I appreciate too that it's not just you, like some could say, oh, anybody's out there with a little bit of recognition to their name could be out there pumping whatever product, but I was on the town hall meeting for the Super Sticker Spectacular series that's coming out. I heard what you were saying to some of these guys where it's like hey you know this product is going to cost you know whatever it is per box but don't go out there thinking like oh this is going to be you know tripling or quadrupling in the first you know week or two weeks or something you were very conservative with how you were approaching this to the people that were going to be buying it and then selling it in their shops not to say that you didn't think it was going to be successful but you were also like well this is the perfect opportunity to pump the crap about it as a thing, but you actually hit the brakes almost and like tried to temper expectations.

9:55Well, that was, that was. What a down to earth cool guy for doing something like that. That's very kind of you and let me tell you why I did that. It's not lost on me and not lost on anybody who's listening here because of the nature of the show and they're paying attention to this non-sports stuff. Like, VFriends Chrome went out of control. It came out at$99 a box and it went to$700. I knew a lot of those people on the call from card stores went through that. I wanted them to know that the Spectaculars product that we're coming out with has a$99 SRP. We made it against demand. It's not short of demand.

10:29Long term, I think it's a monster because Rips, I always love to give them flowers when I can. I'll show you some of it. We made a really good product, right? We made very smart inserts, right? And we know how popular our stuff is right now and it's gonna do very, very, very well but it's not gonna come out at 99 and be$600 a box and you know it's funny I didn't see you know there was a lot of people on the screen now I'm remembering that you were on but yeah I mean you got to see you know it's funny you see me at the National you see me on this podcast that was probably maybe the reason you took note was that was the most business Gary Vaynerchuk not Gary V content you know you got to see why I have what I have in real life which is it's about the steak not the sizzle.

11:18Look, I want to bring awareness and promote my stuff. I'll tell you why. I believe in it. Yeah. You know when I go, hey buy comic book number two. This was comic number one. But when we came out with comic number two it was$19.99. We're selling it on whatnot. I'm like hey I believe in this. We're not making enough against demand. It's a huge character in our world. It's Fearless Ferry's first appearance. Well we're fucking not even a year out and they're a buck 80 on eBay. that was a good$20 buy. Wow, man, that is, yeah, it's such a great, it's great to see that it's not just like the NFT holders and it's not just the GaryVee fans, but it's just people that are appreciating the message.

11:58You want a good one on that? My buddy Phil Toronto saw somebody wearing a Vee Friends hoodie, texted me this weekend, in Disney, wearing it, just wearing it. Came up to him and was like, yo, GaryVee, and he's like, who? Dude, I'm so mad. I'm even more mad hearing this. I literally just read a text message two minutes before you got on here from my wife that she sent two hours ago. She's like, hey, don't you think it'd be cool to wear one of your VFriends shirts? Because I've got two different ones. I could just bring one to the office. I didn't see it. First of all, you have an amazing wife, which makes perfect sense to me because you're a great dude.

12:34Yeah, anyway, so I'm excited about VFriends. I'm very excited about this launch, and I'll tell you why. we need to make product that gets into people's hands that don't know us. Like this whole thing folds if I can't get a lot of people to fall in love. It starts, by the way, back to you guys, it starts with this. The comics are the most important thing I'm doing. Like I'm obsessed with trading cards but when people read Rare Robot and they're just starting to, I've gotten from the hardcore five years collecting VFriends crowd on Twitter saying Rare Robot was not in my top 10. I might make him number one.

13:09I can't believe this origin story. Ooh, love that. Right, because that's comic shit, right? It's like creating like a connection to people. Of course. The people that collect V friends in the first three years were, let's call a spade a spade, Gary V fans, who believed that I was good enough over a decade to make it popular, thus it will go out or go up, or they just want to support me for, you know, what I've done for 15 years, changed their life, made them money, like, it was just good natured. Then it was people that kind of like fell in love with the other fellow collectors and the narrative started to build, right?

13:42Like in our little nerd world, Patient Panda and Rare Robot meant something, but it didn't mean anything to the broader world. Now I'm making 10 ,000 comics that are going to get into 1 ,000 to 5 ,000 people's hands of which 20 to 50 % don't know me or it well. And then how the fuck did us three fall in love with Batman and Spider-Man and Superman? Yeah. So I know what I need to do. Comics, cartoons, social media content, manga, anime, you know, like it's all coming and but the comics are really exciting. Everybody's watching or listening right now. It's vfriends.com slash comics. I believe in it so much that we lack after, what is it, usually about two to four weeks after a book comes out?

14:26Six weeks? I don't know. We're lagging a little more than I thought. Somewhere between a month or two after the books come out, you can literally go to our website, vfriends.com slash comics, and literally read the comic. Like people right now, if they're like, wait a minute, let me give this a chance. They can go read, I'll give you a recommendation, go read number five. This is a crazy comic, so much so. Look at this. What does it say? Heads up, parents, ages 14 and up. Oh, wow. Not intended for younger readers. Interesting. Yeah, just to give you a preview, in Motivated Monster, a brother pisses on a brother's grave.

14:58Like it's nasty. It's gnarly. Dude, I did not, I literally, that is almost shocking to hear. I thought all of these were made for younger. No, this is Batman. We're made for three to 93. Batman may come out and you may go watch the Lego movie, Batman the Lego movie with your four-year-old. Yeah. And then Batman may come out a year later with a Dark Knight that's fucking rated R and no three-year-old's going. No, V Friends is three to 93. We've done a ton at four, five, six, seven, and eight because we want to build that base. I already have tens of millions of followers that are 25 to 40. I can turn that spigot on any time.

15:37Makes sense. Yeah, you're reaching out for those other audiences. Yeah, and the other thing, my biggest goal with VFriends is to help parents parent, right? I want kids to learn about kindness and compassion and empathy and patience. When I grew up with He-Man and Transformers, like parents got help through the content. Like literally Adam from He-Man made me a better person. I'd watch a He-Man episode and at the end, Adam would literally talk to us little seven-year-old boys and be like, and remember boys, be nice to your sister. I'd literally run outside and hug my sister Liz. You know, like it was important and I feel like nothing does that now and one of the biggest reasons I built VFriends is when people, you know, and this is why I want to make a$99 box which doesn't exist unfortunately in our world enough yet, you know, in a regular box, in a hobby box, not a blaster.

16:26That's why I did this. you know we have a huge kids book called meet me in the middle that's done really well i want to help parents but i want to tell stories and when i wrote motivated monster with my comic team i wrote the whole story in my head with the hopes that it's like a eight part series on netflix similar to wednesday adams that is even more mature to when like i want to build the biggest intellectual property business of this generation i keep saying it i know people keep hearing me say it. I'm aware that 99.9 % don't even care to listen, which they shouldn't. They have a million things going on.

17:01And even if they do listen, they're like, okay, whatever. But I want to be very clear. I'm going to try for the next 40 years to make something that does stand up against Transformers, G.I. Joe, My Little Pony. And very honestly, I'd like to pass that and sit in more rarefied air like Disney, Disney Inc, Star Wars, Marvel, Disney. I don't know if I can. I do I do believe I'm one of the weird people on earth that could. I've gotta make a lot of good decisions with my talents and leverage, but I'm hungry. Do you ever get to a point where you're just like, hey, I feel like I'm maybe overdoing it.

17:39You know, I don't wanna push too hard, so I'll back off a little bit. Or is it mainly like, hey, this is, because I haven't seen you let up, honestly. Like, you, your emphasis on like, this is not just like for the next year or two, five years. You're paying attention a little bit. Like, I would argue I have let up, Meaning like I've been very in the lab using a Batman reference. I've been in the cave using a Justice League thing. Like I've been building. When NFT Winter was there, I was building up the cards and comics and the content. I would say anytime I'm asked, anytime I show up here, do I want to let up on saying that I'm trying to build, you know, G.I.

18:15Joe or, you know, Avatar? No, I'm not going to let up. Why would I lie to you or the audience of what I'm trying to do? now you know to be very clear with everyone am I 100 % positive I'm talented enough no am I 100 % sure that God will get me with enough years of health that allows me to have the time to do this I don't know I surely hope so but I you know to just go completely left field on this interview I hope one of the greatest things I hope with Beat Friends is that people are inspired by how big my dreams are to maybe dream a little bit bigger for themselves I love that I love that thank you I really hope somebody's listening right now and being like, wait a minute, one card store?

18:55Fuck it, six card stores. I want to push the boundaries of what I'm capable of. Had I not had all, listen, if I didn't dream to buy the New York Jets, I don't know if I'd even be doing VFriends. Wow, yeah, that's a really interesting way to put it. So I have big ambitions. I think I'm talented enough. I'm way more creative than people realize. My comic book team has learned that. It's given me incredible nights. like had a night with Rob Liefeld, founder of Deadpool, creator of Deadpool. We had a dinner during Comic-Con, like that I'll never forget. Rips, right? A Night to Remember. Just four hours of jamming nerd comic.

19:31I'm excited, by the way, I'm excited to bring really good energy to the comic book industry. I've helped the wine industry. I've helped the digital assets industry. I've definitely helped the trading card industry. I'm kind of excited to help the comic book industry. Will there be OGs that are like, ah, this fucking guy ruined it? Yeah. Will everybody five years later be like, wait a minute, He was a net positive, of course. By the way, that's what happened to me. And by the way, I'm used to this. This is what happened in wine. Everybody in wine was mad at me for making a casual video show about wine because I was dummying down wine and they thought that was beneath wine.

20:01And then when I left, could do other things, they wrote articles of dreaming that I'd come back. And oh, by the way, both the trading card and the NFT market have already been through moments where they're like, you know, wait a minute. We like when Gary's around. So I know who I am. I know my tent is good. Many things happen. People take things out of context. People use you. Somebody wrote a scathing thing the other day about someone. They literally used a photo of me involved. 9 ,000 people come by my booth when I'm at National. They're trying to allude to things. There's a lot of people that virtue single in the trading card world who are actually dickfaces themselves.

20:41I didn't see that and I'm glad I didn't see it. It was very minor. It was like nothing you, it would be nothing that you would see. It didn't get any traction. But I thought it was funny when they were trying to take a shot that they decided to use a photo of me in it. It makes me think there's very little that gets posted that you don't see, that involves you. How about taking that last part out that doesn't say involves me? How about period? It's what I do for a living, brother. I run one of the biggest companies in marketing in the world to be an anthropologist. I want to know everything that's going on everywhere at all times.

21:15I want to know what Bad Bunny wore last night to the Grammys. I want to know how well Luka shot from the field against the Knicks last night. I want to know everything. One thing that you already know and our audience may not know is on February 18th, that's when this product is dropping. This is mainly going to be breakers and hobby shops. This isn't, like you can't go online and find this unless it's from one of those specific hobby shops, right? Yeah, I would say a couple things. First of all, to give you flowers, that was a very professional segue. I've been told once and twice that my segue is for a living.

21:52Yeah, that like actually felt like, oh my God, you're a pro now. So congrats on that segue. Two, I will say that, you know, the David Adams, the blowouts, the Midwest, like there's definitely some of the, you know, some of the places that stores buy from we're giving allocations of this good partners of ours stores are hooked up retail stores have a very special hookup in an exclusive hanger pack which is two packs and something me and Rips did that I was very excited about I think this was my like a push I was excited about this which is the limited edition insert that comes in a 1999 hanger there's a white something parallel what's it called?

22:28White ice parallel and the way we did it this is really cool to me we did like a two pack there's two packs in the blister, but then the white ice parallel is actually on a blister and you can see it when it's hanging at stores. So it's a funny twist, the hit is actually exposed, but what I know is that 99 % of people don't know the character breakdown in VFriends. Only the VFriends Maxis do. So these stores are gonna have VFriends Maxis running to their stores and picking off the shelves the 1999 hit, the characters that are big character hits on the blisters, which I'm kind of excited about.

23:09I like doing little things that benefit. Other characters though, right? Like you have other characters that are going to be on there. It's like, oh, I didn't know. Like that's all the ones that are left. Somebody, some maxi guard, he came and grabbed all the big ones. And more important, kids are going to see it at a cost that's affordable to parents for two packs and a limited insert. And they're going to be like, oh, that's cute. or I like that character. So, you know, that's just a little insight to how much we think. So yes, retail stores get the exclusive hangers, which I'm excited about.

23:40I think will be a really good item. And I want to give a huge shout out to retail stores. Retail stores have been very responsive to how much I've prioritized them. Oh, cool. I want to give big flowers to every retail store out there. I think a lot of people take pot shots at retail stores. Let me tell you as a vendor how it really works. I have from day one, because I grew up in a retail store, a liquor store, that also had to fight for allocations of hard to get wines. I have prioritized retail stores from day one. I did that by going down, when I did your podcast last, brother, I flew down to Atlanta with tops on retail, like literally flew on a weekend to Atlanta so I could meet people, shake hands, make relationships.

24:24We've done these town halls. You know, I've showed up at stores during my launch at tours. And what retail stores have done is I've gone first and showed love to them to the best of my ability first and they've reciprocated twofold. And I think a lot of people shit on retail stores because they don't realize they're trying to extract value from retail stores instead of giving them value. I'm trying to send, I've spent fucking 20 years building a community and I'm trying to send my people to their stores not just take all the revenue on Fanatics Live or whatnot for myself. They're smart enough to realize I'm trying to help them.

25:01and they've reciprocated by caring. Many retail stores are gonna go buy hobby boxes more than we've allocated to them from a David Adams, for example, and buy them because they just wanna hand out packs to the kids because it's a low cost of entry for them or the hanger packs. And I can tell anyone out there who's building something right now, Pudgies, Moonbirds, the MetaZoo Reboot or somebody I don't even know about, that if you give love and care about the retail stores, you will be very surprised what the retail stores do for you in return. The problem is, you know, you've got Tops and Panini and Upper Deck.

25:37They have their normal relationships. That's already a mature audience and a mature system of doing business. But for any of the upstarts that look like us, care about the retail store first if you want them to care about you. Man, you are the only person I've ever heard promote retail stores like that. But you make a solid argument for why you should. Well, I would tell you that I got lucky that I grew up as a retailer so I care about them and understand them, I know them, I am them, which then allows me to understand the truth, which is like everyone shits on a retail store, but hey, when everybody comes to them and just wants them to buy shit and care less if it sells or not, because they just want their bag, well, how do you get these, why do you think these people don't care in reverse?