How i5 Industries Works with Averitt

i5 Industries is located in College Station, Texas. So we're centrally located in The United States. We can service the East Coast, the West Coast, and everywhere in between with office furniture products that we bring in from Eastern Europe. And ultimately, we then distribute that out to other office furniture dealers throughout the country who sell our products in their stores. I5 Industries has three different business models or divisions. So we do have i5, the distribution that is all new and that is all wholesale. Then we also have Systems Office Furniture, which is our retail. We refurbish a lot of major office task chairs. With i5 we've been able to hit many buckets. We started out with LTL. We grew that, we've done some LC for them. We're doing international and Drayage and have talked about distribution and warehousing for the future. When you can hit that many buckets with one customer, it's just a win win on both sides. They don't have to go to too many carriers to get services that they need, and we can just provide that with one customer. That one call, the power of one works well when you can connect with a customer in that way. Averitt has really been key in a lot of different areas. When we're talking about our distribution, we use them to do all of our importing. So our containers, bringing the products in for i5 Industries, those containers, they are setting those up. They are working with our manufacturer in Eastern Europe to get everything set up on the water. And then they are tracking it every step of the way for us. We decided many years ago that it was important for us to make sure that our pallet structure could go from Texas to New York or Texas to LA. And so we ship everything out on oversized pallets. That little bit of difference, that additional material that we're using, ultimately it's worth it in the long run. But we have a less than 1.5 damage rate within i5 Industries as a whole. Averitt has helped a lot with that. A friendship has been born from it. We have a crawfish boil every year. We invite them, they come, they know our kids, they know our employees. So it's just the same things that we care a lot about here in terms of our culture. Averitt shares in that a lot. Being closely knit with your customer pays off because you know what they need. I know what you need. You don't have to take that time to explain to me and I can go get those services and we can move quickly to get you to the next step. And that just helps. That comes with knowing the relationship. As we've shifted into our new building, we have Kevin and Curtis that have joined us and are here every day. They're phenomenal in the ways that they show up. Once you get to know the people and they get to know you, it takes it to another level. Then you're involved with how are your children and the family. And that just makes it personal. Once it's personal, you grow it and you want to hold on to that. Our future looks bright. We are really excited about expanding. Averitt is providing that for us through possibly doing some of their distribution centers, allowing us to kind of pilot or test some areas to see if there is enough business in those areas. So we're looking into seeing if we can reduce some of our transit time by utilizing Averitt's fulfillment centers. So it's exciting to think about what the future has in store for this partnership.