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0:00:14.4 Chris Ronan: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Inside Geocaching HQ. This is the podcast about things happening at Geocaching HQ in Seattle. I am Chris Ronan. One of the lackeys who works at HQ, my Geocaching username is Rockchalk. And today I am happy to share a conversation with Marty Evans. Marty is HQ’s merchandise manager. He leads the great team at Shop Geocaching. You can check them out at shop.geocaching.com. And if you’re working on your holiday shopping list, Marty is the guy to talk to because he knows about all of the cool stuff that is available for Geocachers. So here is me and Marty talking Shop Geocaching.

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0:01:10.5 CR: So you are a fan of the podcast.

0:01:13.1 Marty Evans: I’m a fan of this podcast.

0:01:14.6 CR: That’s what I wanna start with. I wanna start with how much of a fan are…

0:01:18.7 ME: Long time listener.

0:01:19.3 CR: Long time listener, first time interviewee.

0:01:21.2 ME: First time. Yes.

0:01:22.3 CR: Well, I think the first thing we should address kind of the, I didn’t tell you we were gonna talk about this, but it’s kind of I think it’s the elephant in the room is that you follow me around the world.

0:01:35.9 ME: I guess that’s one way to put it. I’ve gotten to travel.

0:01:39.2 CR: To mega events.

0:01:40.4 ME: A few times to mega events and you’ve shown up. So I guess we could…

0:01:45.3 CR: I don’t know that I showed up. I think it’s debatable who showed up.

0:01:47.0 ME: Yeah, it’s kind of weird. The percentage of times I’ve traveled that you’ve shown up there. That is interesting.

0:01:55.4 CR: Again, the way you’re wording it. Yeah. Where have we? We were in Prague together.

0:02:00.5 ME: Prague, Essen, Germany.

0:02:02.3 CR: Essen. I almost forgot. Yeah, that was amazing.

0:02:05.4 ME: Salt Lake City.

0:02:06.0 CR: Salt Lake City. We were together.

0:02:10.2 ME: Kansas City.

0:02:10.3 CR: Oh, I forgot about Kansas City. Oh my gosh. That is a lot.

0:02:14.5 ME: Yeah.

0:02:14.6 CR: You were easily the most common lackey to show up at places where I am.

0:02:19.8 ME: And that’s, most of the times I’ve traveled.

0:02:22.8 CR: You don’t think that’s strange?

0:02:23.9 ME: I do think it’s strange.

0:02:24.9 CR: You do.

0:02:25.7 ME: Yes.

0:02:25.8 CR: I don’t think it’s my fault. I don’t think I have anything to do with this. I think we need to investigate what’s going on with you and.

0:02:32.4 ME: Yeah. Some awkward…

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0:02:33.2 CR: And why you’re attracted to coming to the places that I.

0:02:36.1 ME: You know how to travel, I guess.

0:02:37.7 CR: I guess. Yeah. I mean, you’ve been to some good places.

0:02:40.4 ME: Yeah.

0:02:41.6 CR: I mean, those were some great, memories of those events.

0:02:45.6 ME: Absolutely.

0:02:46.2 CR: We had some barbecue in Kansas city. I remember that.

0:02:48.3 ME: Oh yeah.

0:02:49.5 CR: And we had the Giga in Essen, right?

0:02:52.4 ME: Yes.

0:02:52.4 CR: The Giga event. That was amazing.

0:02:54.9 ME: That was an incredible event.

0:02:55.0 CR: And yeah, we’ve done some caching in those places. I remember in Utah we went caching.

0:03:00.5 ME: Oh yeah. I have it to my cash fund by like 20% that afternoon.

0:03:03.3 CR: That was a big afternoon for both of us. So you’re here to talk about Shop.

0:03:11.3 ME: Yes.

0:03:12.5 CR: I guess.

0:03:13.7 ME: That’s, yes.

0:03:14.1 CR: Right? That’s what I assume we’re talking about today.

0:03:16.3 ME: I always enjoy talking Shop.

0:03:20.1 CR: So you’ve been at HQ for a long time. How many years now?

0:03:20.2 ME: 12 years.

0:03:22.5 CR: 12 years. For some reason I was thinking it was even longer than that, but you’ve known Brian and you know.

0:03:29.8 ME: From way back.

0:03:29.9 CR: Those guys from way back. Yeah. So maybe that’s what, but 12 years is a long time and Shop. Wow. I wanna give people a picture of Shop Geocaching because I think for some folks they just know the website. They go and they order cool stuff and we can talk about that, but I wanna start by talking about the physical place because yeah, just describe it because for me the first time, every time I go there it’s like going into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory and I don’t know if you feel that way or not. You probably have to not feel that way. Otherwise you would just spend all your money when you’re there. But every time I go, I’m like, you guys need to check my pockets when I leave because there’s so much cool stuff here. So, for people that don’t know anything about it, tell us about the place, the people that work there and yeah, then we can just kind of go from there.

0:04:22.2 ME: Okay. Yes. Shop Geocaching is at a different location than Geocaching HQ for those that have visited. It is a warehouse in close to downtown Seattle. So it’s kind of unique old building. There’s not a lot of warehouse space down there, but there are a few in this old building and it’s basically a setup for, there’s four of us that work out of there. So it’s a pretty small crew works kind of independent of the rest of the company and is shipping items every day. So there’s, you know, we usually introduce about 120 items a year. So there’s a lot of new stuff always coming in. It’s all lined up on shelves so that we can get stuff out as quickly as possible when people order. And so if people order by noon our time that ship same day. So we’ve got a good crew over there that is very efficient. It’s a very veteran crew for Geocaching HQ. Our new guy is about to hit 10 years. So it is a crew that’s been around and doing this for a while, but a lot of expertise there on Geocaching products and shipping and getting things to people. So we ship retail to the US and Canada out of that facility. The rest of the world we ship to distribution partners who are located in various countries throughout the world. So hopefully everybody has access to our products through us or one of them. And yeah, we’re out there Monday through Friday, shipping every day with the little crew.

0:05:51.0 CR: Yeah, let’s shout the guys out. You said.

0:05:57.2 ME: Four yes.

0:05:57.7 CR: And they’re all awesome. And yeah, tell us about the guys.

0:06:02.0 ME: We’ve got Mark who kind of focuses on the day to day operations, getting things out the door. He does the international shipping also. So he’s our day to day guy. Gary is big on our keeping our inventory straight. We have hundreds of skews that we have to keep straight and he keeps that all in order. Does the physical ordering of products, all the receiving, all that falls on Gary. So big job there. And then we have Dylan who really kind of does a lot of the shipping, a lot of putting kits together. Things come in, we try to put together little kits that are relevant to Geocacher. So it’s a lot of random items we put together and say, okay, we think Geocachers would like this combo of things. And we rely heavily on Dylan to do a lot of that work. So making it ready so that when that order comes in, it’s ready to go out the door. So that’s the three. We also have Phil who’s actually works now out of HQ but does our social media. He’s our lead for that. So we also get the shop social media, Instagram, Facebook, people can follow us there separate from the Geocaching HQ accounts, you can just learn about new products and that sort of thing.

0:07:09.0 CR: Yeah, so you guys are a well oiled machine down there. I mean, I would think that everyone knows what everyone else is doing. And it helps everything be super efficient.

0:07:19.1 ME: Oh, yeah, there’s definitely efficiency that comes from that many years together. We all know what everyone’s role, everything is very efficient getting out the door. And it’s just, it’s a fun group. It’s a very close family like setting there. It is people have spent a lot of time together over the years. And yeah, we absolutely know what each person is gonna do and how we’re gonna do it. This is a very busy time of year for us. We have our biggest promotion the year launches on Tuesday. And so it’s a very active group right now. There’s a lot of going on. There’s a lot of things flying around and we’re getting ready for that Tuesday launch.

0:07:56.7 CR: So you mentioned there being hundreds of skews. And so for somebody, first of all, who doesn’t know what a skew is, let’s kind of a technical term if you’re not in retail.

0:08:07.4 ME: Separate items. So we have just hundreds of items on the shelves to choose from. And we focus on the different categories of Geocaching. So we have a lot of what we have as trackable. So we have Geocoins, we have tags, there’s tons of both, we try to have a lot of different options for that. We have our evergreen products that are just items we always carry. And then we have new things coming in circulating through all the time. And then we have tools of the trade, we have a lot of things for finding Geocaches, everything from a GPS to a log sheet roller. We have maintenance kits for people to maintain their Geocaches, we have items to create Geocaches, from labels to actual Geocaches themselves. We’ve been focusing on that, added a lot of new containers for people in the last year. So every aspect of the game, we try to help out event hosts, we try to help out people are hiding people are finding and just people who love the game wanna get a t-shirt or a patch or something like that.

0:09:09.5 CR: I suppose there’s a number of different ways that new products come in to Shop Geocaching. And one way being that if there’s a promotion or 25th anniversary coming up next year, you must work pretty closely with various teams at HQ marketing and so on, to make sure that or to, I don’t guess to dream up different products that could be associated with those kinds of promotions and souvenirs and what have you.

0:09:41.0 ME: Absolutely. Yes. We do really try to be a resource to Geocachers. That’s our main focus. As I know that we’re a shop, I know that we’re selling things, but we’re trying to be a resource. And so when things come up, like for example, community celebration events, there is assets that are created by our creative team that’s really fun for promoting those events and that event hosts can use. We also make the physical products that event hosts can use. So that’s a piece that we try to do to make it. We get requests from people that wanna give out something at their events. So we’ll have things for community celebration events that will be available hopefully by the end of this year. So people starting those events in January will have those items available. We’ll have a lot of items celebrating 25 years of Geocaching. We’ll have items for people doing block parties. And so all those things are created by when it’s a souvenir moment is generally created by the in-house creative team.

0:10:36.6 ME: And so that makes it so souvenirs match, merchandise matches, the things that marketing uses matches. They’re all from the same designers. And that’s kind of fun how it kind of goes across all the aspects of the game. But yes, we really do try to have those items for Geocachers that wanna celebrate in way with physical products.

0:10:58.4 CR: And what other I mean, I guess there’s probably countless other ways, but what are some of the other ways that new ideas come in or other than for me? Because I do give you some of me sometimes. But but I just know that you go to events and I hear you talk and other lackeys too here in the building. And it seems like your mind’s always open to new things that could possibly be of interest to the Geocaching community.

0:11:23.8 ME: Absolutely. We’re always looking for new products. We love introducing new products. We try to, you know, can’t have everything always in our mind up. We kind of circulate some things in and some things out. But it is important to us to have the things that are relevant to Geocachers, the Geocachers like to have and a lot of our items and a lot of our ideas come from Geocachers. And so people reach out to us with an idea or we go through somebody that’s made a product. We love getting products from Geocaching, and example is like 3D printed geocaches. We’re not printing those ourselves. We’re going to actual Geocachers who are making those items. They’ve tested them. They know they work for Geocaching. They know Geocachers like them. And then we’ll say, okay, can you do some for us and we’ll have them produce the quantities that we need. We’ll buy them from them and then we’ll sell them. And so we have a few different places that make products for Geocachers that we use. And the same with trackables.

0:12:18.4 ME: Places like Oakcoins, Cash Events, Landsharks, Rainbow Cash, and they’re always giving us good ideas on things we can do. We carry their products. They help us out with designs and that sort of thing. So we really try to tap into the community with what we sell. And we’re always looking for those ideas. We love to have a constant flow of new products for people to see.

0:12:41.9 CR: I was on there a couple months ago and I saw it was a folder or something to hold coins and stuff like that. And it was amazing because I have had personally done so much studying and research on and I had my own system for housing my trackables and stuff that was nowhere near as good as this one that I found in the shop. And I’m like, “How in the world did this thing just come out of somewhere?” And I was like, “This is so great, I found this.” And it was just kind of another example of where I think you guys do such a great job of keeping your eyes out for solutions for people. But is that mostly unsolicited or are you like researching yourselves or is it just kind of a combination of that?

0:13:40.7 ME: Both things can certainly happen. We do a lot of research ourselves. We have some great products we have right now that we found from people making them on Etsy and reached out to them and now they make them for us. The books were from a search. We were trying to find something for coin collectors and happened to find somebody that had done the research that we weren’t necessarily experts on. They were experts on protecting coins. And so went with their product because we knew it would be right. And fortunately it was. They did a very good job. So we do a lot of that. We trust in what other people are doing. We come up with our own ideas too, but we really do get a lot of our ideas from what other people are doing in the community and then try to showcase that. We like to showcase some of these other brands in the community and have them be put on display where people can see what they’re up to. We can support them that way and just we get better products that way. It really is, you know, this is a community-based game. It’s really also a community-based shop program in a lot of ways. We do have a lot of products that we sell that are from other members of the community.

0:14:48.2 CR: And we mentioned earlier being in Salt Lake City together one year and we were there for a conference or a convention. Some sort of a thing that was about outdoor products. And so things like that too, right? You end up seeing vendors and kind of, I guess, trying to see if there is a way that this product can lend itself to Geocaching. Maybe it doesn’t say Geocaching on it, but you see it and you think, oh wow, that could be a tool for the Geocaching community.

0:15:16.6 ME: Absolutely. So much of Geocaching items are repurposed from something else. So we’ll look at just general outdoor items and say, “Okay, would Geocachers like this? Would this work for somebody going Geocaching?” And we try to have a good selection of those items, just outdoor products that do work for Geocachers. If we can get our logo on it, that makes it more fun, I think, for people. But even if we can’t, if we think it’s a good item for Geocachers, we’ll carry it and we’ll have it available for people. Not just so that they can buy it from us, but also for people to see, okay, these tools make sense. These products make sense. If they just wanna have an idea of what stuff does work for Geocachers, we like to have it on our site for people to see even if they don’t buy.

0:16:03.1 CR: Yeah, I was just thinking about a product that we found at that event in Utah, and it was a flashlight that was solar charged, extremely light. I’ve loved it. I don’t even know how many years ago that was. That may have been eight years, eight or seven years ago.

0:16:18.1 ME: Yeah, That was a while ago ago.

0:16:19.4 CR: Dude, I drove over it the other day.

0:16:22.0 ME: Oh, no.

0:16:23.5 CR: I drove over it and broke it. I went for a night cash and I came back to my car and I was kind of wet from the hike. And I was like, I don’t know, at some point I had put the flashlight on top of the car. And the next thing I know I’m backing up and I hear a kugoong. And I’m like, “Oh no,” I’m still, I’m crushed over that one. But that was such a good thing. That was one of those great products that you were able to discover somewhere. And it was at shop for a while.

0:16:53.7 ME: Right. And that’s something that we saw that it was like, okay, this is something for Geocachers because not only was it a good flashlight, it could charge your phone off of it if it was fully charged. And so that was something that it’s like, “Okay, we all know the Geocaching app can take the battery down.” And so things like that we feel are an important tool to have in there, your pack. And so when we see things like that, we’ve noticed that Geocachers are into things that have multi-use, they just like the utility of a lot of things. So we try to have some items that are kind of fun that way. We have a pen that is a stylus, it has a light on it and you can sign the log with it, things like that where we can have little multi-tools, things like that. It just seems like something that’s a fit for Geocachers. And so when we see things like that, we certainly try to put them in our lineup for people to, check them out and if they like them, they can purchase them.

0:17:50.5 CR: 2025 coming up, 25th anniversary. I know people are already starting to ask, is there gonna be merchandise for the 25th anniversary and straight from you.

0:18:03.0 ME: Yes.

0:18:03.6 CR: You can tell us.

0:18:04.8 ME: We’re gonna have a full line of products for community celebration event hosts, just celebrating community items. We’re gonna have a full line of products for 25 years of Geocaching, ’cause that’s a big deal. That’s a big anniversary. So We’ll have a full set of products for that. Some of those we’ll introduce in December, some throughout the year and We’re just… 2025, we’re gonna be celebrating that anniversary all year long. There’s gonna be products rolling out all year long. There’s gonna be so many events. There’s gonna be so many great things about Geocaching in 2025. We’re still trying to find ways to be like, “Okay, how can we celebrate this even more?” So We’ll be doing that throughout the year. If you get a Geocoin from us in 2025, you might even see a little 25 somewhere. That is just a little additional thing we’re doing to celebrate next year. That’s something we’ve been working on too. So Throughout the year, we’re gonna be having just fun products that people can celebrate along with the rest of the community.

0:19:03.4 CR: And If people have ideas for stuff they think would be cool for shop, how do you take those in? Is there a way people can talk to you or suggest things?

0:19:13.8 ME: Absolutely. The best way is just shop@geocaching.com. People can always send us an email and we take a look at all those. We get a lot of ideas and some of them we just simply can’t do. There’s no way to make the perfect product that people think would be really wonderful. But all the ideas we take into consideration and see if it’s something we can do and if it makes sense. And We’ve gotten ideas over the years that maybe it’s five years before it goes in. Something like that. We definitely like to get those ideas in. We’re always trying to make our lineup better. We’re always trying to have products that delight Geocachers and We’re always trying to make the things like the game board better. So any products that come into those realms or things that trackable lovers will really get into, that sort of thing. Any ideas like that, we just, we love to see those ideas. It helps us. It starts conversations within our team so that we can always be coming out with new and cool products for people.

0:20:15.7 CR: What kind of factors go into deciding if something can work or if it would fit within the lineup? I’m sure there’s a lot of them but, a lot of factors, but what are some of the primary things that come to your mind when somebody gives you an idea and you have to decide, could this work for us?

0:20:32.9 ME: A lot of it is we try to do best practices at Shop Geocaching. There are some ideas that come in and we just say, “Okay, yes, that sprinkler cache would be super cool, but that’s not in best practices necessarily for us to display because maybe that means people are taking apart somebody else’s sprinklers or they’re putting them underground, which cachers are not supposed to be.” So There’s things like that that we have to factor in if it is a best practice sort of thing. There’s also just things of there’s some ideas that are great, but we might have to buy 50,000 of that item and that doesn’t usually work for us. So we’d have to be able to figure out if we can do it and do it in a good way and at a reasonable price for people. That’s the thing too is sometimes the best ideas we have, we simply can’t compete with some other company that’s doing something similar. And if it’s not gonna be good value to people, that’s another factor that we probably wouldn’t carry it.

0:21:34.9 CR: Well, before we wrap up, I always like to ask the people that come in here about your own Geocaching and what you like about the, you’ve been playing for a long time. What are some of your favorite geocaches to go after? Do you have a particular, I mean, I know easy ones, right? Are the ones that you like the most?

0:21:51.4 ME: I do like to find them.

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0:21:57.5 CR: Seriously though, what are your, I if you’re gonna go caching this weekend, what are you probably gonna focus on?

0:22:02.5 ME: Well, I would put myself in the moderate category as far as Geocachers go. I am not a super Geocacher like some people. Really for me, I have a 15 year old kid and if we can go out together and go Geocaching, that is a win to get outside, do something fun. We very much love souvenir moments. So the souvenirs more than anything and also just Geocaching when we travel, that is something that is big. I love to have someone from a local area show me something I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. So those are always big. And then, I’ve gotten to go to some events, just meeting Geocachers. I’ve loved those experiences of getting to talk to people, meet people from all over the world. I got to go to geocoin fest recently in Syracuse. It was a great event, got to talk to so many people, got to hang out with people from all over the country and from, you know, got to spend some time with some people from Denmark, got to do, you know, explore that area that I’d never been to, got to see so many great parts of it. So all those things just make Geocaching really fun and something I really enjoy.

0:23:05.0 CR: And I wasn’t even there in Syracuse. I’m a little surprised.

0:23:07.9 ME: I kept looking to see if you would show up.

0:23:11.1 CR: I’m surprised that you decided to go there. Maybe you just.

0:23:13.9 ME: I didn’t tell anyone so that you wouldn’t just show.

0:23:16.9 CR: Yeah, well, I’ll have to keep an eye on your, I guess I have to break back into your computer to find out where you’re traveling next year.

0:23:24.9 ME: Yeah, that is undisclosed at this time.

0:23:27.0 CR: Undisclosed. Well, so people wanna see some cool stuff, shop.geocaching.com, correct?

0:23:33.5 ME: Absolutely. We’ve got our biggest promo of the year starts very soon and that is free tags with purchase. So we’ll be doing that. We’ve got some great gift ideas for people that need that this time of year and then 2025, we’re just gonna be really focused on improving the game anyway we can.

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0:23:58.6 CR: That was Marty Evans, the merchandise manager at Geocaching HQ. Check out shop.geocaching.com for so much cool stuff. There’s some great ideas there for the holidays. Marty told you how to share an idea with him. Well, here’s how to share a podcast idea. Send an email to podcast@geocaching.com. That is podcast@geocaching.com. Thanks for listening. Until next time, for Marty and myself and for all the lackeys at Geocaching HQ, happy caching.