An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Be prepared to work like you’ve never worked before. Being successful in business is harder than ever, and there will always be competition. If you’re not willing to put in the time and sweat equity, it won’t pay off in the end.

As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Joe Zalta, co-founder of Riverbend Consulting.

Joe Zalta is co-founder and co-owner of Riverbend Consulting, where he manages the sales and advertising teams. Joe also heads up the brand partnership and referral divisions. He has founded and run successful businesses in multiple industries including e-commerce and wholesale/manufacturing.

Before founding Riverbend, Joe was in the wholesale and manufacturing space for 15 years. He focused on apparel lines, which he represented to major department stores, mass retailers and off-price chains across the country.

This included designing successful private-label programs for Macy’s, Kohl’s, JCPenney and other large chain stores. He was also responsible for driving direct-to-consumer business for multiple men’s and kids’ fashion brands.

Joe then shifted his attention to Amazon and e-commerce, where he continues to specialize in apparel as well as beauty. He is skilled in design concept, trends, merchandising and licensing, and he has leveraged these abilities to create brands and successful seller accounts on Amazon.com.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory?

I worked in a big umbrella apparel company for 11 years in different departments and divisions, and I was trained in different areas. I started in sales and was then taught merchandising by one of the best merchandisers in the entire industry. He was my mentor for 3 years. I also learned the finance side of the business.

In the end, I was doing deals with the likes of Macy’s, Dillard’s, TJ Maxx and others, building merchandising groups for Men’s, Big and Tall and Kids clothing lines that I represented. During that time, I worked with many different brands including the NBA, Lee, True Religion, among others.

I also worked with niche brands, helping them get placed with retailers, and would build out how their products, primarily clothing and accessories, would look on store displays.

Beyond brick-n-mortar retail experience, I also became a reseller on Amazon and other e-tail sites and came to learn a lot about the ecommerce marketplace. That experience led me to my current spot at Riverbend Consulting, where we help sellers on Amazon and other online marketplaces solve urgent issues and grow. Last year, we doubled our revenue as the number of companies selling online continues to grow rapidly.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

There’s a quote I read from Dale Carnegie to the effect of “Show interest and interest will be shown back.” His book How to Win Friends and Influence People is full of great quotes and nuggets of wisdom. That book helped me greatly in my career by helping me become a good listener. By listening to people, you build good relationships because you show interest in their needs, wants and desires. That goes a long way when you’re selling and building partnerships.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

There are two books that have resonated with me. The first is the aforementioned How to Win Friends and Influence People by Carnegie. I’ve read this book more than 20 times.

Another book is Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger. I love mergers and acquisitions and this story detailed how he brought the Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel franchises into Disney. The part I found most interesting was how he learned to work with each entity in a complementary way without changing them and their core competencies.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?

That’s a daily challenge for me, but in my experience, I’ve found that ideas are worthless without execution. You can never spend enough time on how things get executed, and you can never be detailed enough.

If you’re trying to launch a product, you better know every single detail of your product and every step of its conception and production — from designing it and producing it, to transporting it and delivering it to the retailer or the end-customer. Being able to clearly explain your idea, product or business off the top of your head is vital.

Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?

We all have access to the internet, so you’ll likely find your idea if you look hard enough. However, just because something has been done before, doesn’t mean it can’t be done better.

Yes, you want to be first to market, but doing it right, better and more creatively is much more important.

One example is the Comfy hooded blanked. It wasn’t the first to market, but the brand creators took their idea, went on Shark Tank, added new colors and good marketing — and they took over the segment.

For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.

First, you need to trademark the name of your brand and your product. Trademarks are category-specific, so be sure you select the proper category to avoid confusion and potential conflicts

Next, you need to hire a good patent lawyer to get a patent for your product. Then you need to research and meet with factories and find several good candidates to determine who can produce your product efficiently.

You’ll need to do your due diligence here because your manufacturing partners are very important. Take the necessary trips to visit factories in China, consider Alibaba, or go to a virtual/in-person sourcing show. Then see how they do with test orders.

It is also very important to work out payment terms with your manufacturers early in the process. If you get this wrong, you could be without cash flow, or even worse, bankrupt.

Anticipate work that the warehouse needs to do — size of containers, labels, etc.

Then you’ll need to work with customs agents and freight forwarders to bring your products to the United States.

Then you’ll want to work with a third-party logistics (3PL) provider or carrier who can pick up your products from the port and transport them to your US-based warehouse(s) that you’ll have procured.

In the meantime, you’ll want to attract and build relationships with relevant retailers in the US. You’ll need to send them samples of your products and maybe even test sample batches to see how well they perform in the store or online.

Also, important to note is that for hardline or molded goods, costs are based on how many products you want to produce and there is typically a minimum order quantity per product type and product variation (i.e., color, style, etc.). On soft goods such as clothing, the minimum is typically 1,200–1,800 for one item style and for one size.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why?

1. Build good infrastructure processes and habits from the beginning so you don’t have to adapt as you go. With that said, it’s also really important to review your processes from time to time and adjust, expand or change as needed, based on your company’s growth.
2. Think Big — when you introduce a new service or product, you need to be willing to invest in the infrastructure and marketing in a significant way, so you can maximize your ROI
3. Hire the best people you can — if the right candidate comes along, don’t hesitate to bring them on board, or your competitor just might. Also, be sure you continually create a great space for your employees to work and grow. This will help minimize turnover.
4. Pay attention to your expenses and always keep a handle on them. If you are not aware of your P&L at least as a high level, then you need to get better acquainted with your own books and understand your cash flow.
5. Be prepared to work like you’ve never worked before. Being successful in business is harder than ever, and there will always be competition. If you’re not willing to put in the time and sweat equity, it won’t pay off in the end.

Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

Test your target market to see if the product is something they would like. If they don’t immediately react/understand it, then it probably won’t take.

There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?

There’s no shortage of ideas. Just strike out on your own and see what you can do. If you make mistakes, evaluate what you did wrong and fix it. That will be the best way to learn and grow.

What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?

Why would you give up equity if you don’t even know what you have yet? Bootstrap as long as you possibly can. Then go get loans rather than venture capital. There’s nobody better to invest in than yourself. Then you still maintain all of the equity, and eventual profits.

There was a time when I started a company, and I had the opportunity to approach a family member for initial funding to get me started. I decided, however, to do it on my own through loans. I ended up growing four times the amount of the loan needed without giving up any equity or ownership.

Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

I think it’s important to give back where you can, and help mentor others along the way. I do a lot of career guidance for local schools and I’m part of multiple charity and service organizations.

You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Learning how to manage your money at a very early age. Most people mismanage their money unless they have guidance early on from family, friends and education institutions.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Michael Jordan — I think he’s truly inspirational. Learning how he built his brand and how he developed such demand for his products. How he always kept it going and looked so good doing it — that’s a sign of genius.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.

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Making Something From Nothing: Joe Zalta Of Riverbend Consulting On How To Go From Idea To Launch was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.