GroomPod 478 Vince Polentes with Coat Defense Transcript

GroomPod 478 - April 14, 2026

Susy Welcome to episode four hundred seventy eight of The Groom Pod, recorded on April twelve, twenty twenty five. I'm Susie, the groomer and as always, I am joined by my partner in crime that is partner in crime, Barbara Bird. Today, we're delving into the world of skin health and ingredient integrity. If you've spent any time in the equine world with both Barbara and I have, you probably know today's guests very well. But his mission has expanded far from the barn. We are thrilled to welcome Vince Polenz, the co-founder of Co-defense. Vince, welcome to the show.

Vince Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Susy Excellent. Well, tell us a little bit about. Oh, everyone, remember to support our sponsors. Best Shot show season grew more stats and precision sharp. All right, Vince, tell us about how you got started with coat defense. I know in this area I'm in the northwest and as far as the equine world, we deal with scratches, rain, rot and thrush like nine, ten months out of the year. It's kind of sad. That's my parrot. If you guys are hearing that in the background, that is my parrot. Just ignore that. Good. Okay. All right. Um, anyway, so many people are really familiar with your products here, but how did you get started?

Vince Well, um, we were just kind of living a life. We had three young children. Um, and my wife wound up, uh, Sandy, uh, getting ill. She had no energy. She got out of bed. I'm running around. I was in the logistics software world, uh, responsible for sales in the US for a small software company. And, um, she just went to doctor after doctor too. Who said, your problem is all in your head. You should be on these antidepressants. And, you know, we're just like, okay, you know, we'll try it. And, um, she called me one day. I forget what town I was in. Uh, we lived in the DC area, uh, raised our kids there and she said, I'm crawling out of my skin. I think I'm going to, I just, I want to get out of here. I'm. I'm freaking out. I said, drop those pills down the toilet and flush them. I want to hear it because this isn't healthy for anybody. And you've got three young kids. They're mine too. Let's figure it out. Uh, her next doctor appointment was with a holistic guy who was a wellness doctor. I came along because she was not making a whole lot of sense and maybe not processing as quickly as normal. It's a pretty bright girl. Um, but he said, I don't know what's wrong with you, but we're going to test everything. And while the tests are coming back and we'll figure it out. But while the tests are getting done, we're going to make you feel better. And he said you got a detox. The first thing is eat organic food. Well, twenty three years ago, that made sense, I got it. Uh, the second thing was take infrared saunas, because you can only poop or sweat out toxins. And infrared is a good way. So my dad gave me a hand. We built an infrared sauna in our home. And the third thing is what kind of knocked us for a loop. He said, don't put anything on your skin. You know, they're just and kind of taught us how to read labels. He said, this word fragrance is just a catch word for three thousand different petrochemicals. And these things act as hormone mimickers. They act as, um, endocrine system disruptors. And, you know, they're just in everything and mostly women in skincare things you put on your skin. So we got a little smarter then, but it kind of woke us up. Sandy was reading labels incessantly and found herself a shampoo and a soap that seemed to have, you know, no documented chemicals in it and, um, couldn't find a deodorant. So I remember having, like, this slime under my armpits when I was in high school from some sort of speed stick and, uh, putting my mom's deodorant powder on top of it so I wouldn't feel so yucky, but I made a deodorant powder with some simple ingredients. No talc. Obviously, we had to stay away from that. The lawsuits were coming out about Johnson and Johnson and Tout creating ovarian cancer. So I came up with a very simple formula of organic cornstarch. Um, some essential oils that I played around with just for fragrance. Not a lot of it. And a little baking soda. And it turned out to work. And I had.

Barbara An arrowroot arrowroot.

Vince Uh, that came a little later.

Barbara Yeah, yeah.

Vince We, we, we, we played with it. We're using it on our own. And then we, um, we found a manufacturer, um, to go into the human skincare who was like the cleanest manufacturer we've found. And we went all over the country. I travel a lot and we visited eight or nine different manufacturers that said they made clean things. And we found a little one who, um, had a, had a powder. So we followed their ingredients. We kind of merged and came up with our own, but that's when we integrated both arrowroot, um, to keep the, to keep the, um, slipperiness that the talc would offer a normal powder, but the bentonite clay was a big one that we've added on top of that. And it it really did a lot of drawing. Although it wasn't to stop you from sweating, it would dry you a lot of, uh, a lot of women used it in between where their flesh folds over, you know, and it gets.

Barbara That's a nice way of putting it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we had.

Vince A human skincare. We had, you know, face moisturizers that had enzymes from rare Swiss apples that didn't turn brown when you cut them for a week. Like we had really good ingredients and it was all very crunchy granola level. Um, you know, we won't put things on our skin. So we started twenty two years ago playing around with that. And, um, you know, one day after we started the company that was closer to maybe Twelve ten. Well, ten years ago, we got a call from a horse person and she said, hey, um, can you make this powder in larger containers? And we said, well, why? She said, it made the rain rot fall off my mare. I was like, okay, start from the scratch. What's rain rot? And are you talking about, uh, a female horse or the guy who runs your city? You know, but I'm done. So that's kind of how we started. And I, we lived in Northern Virginia and I went down, you know, on my way to Costco, I stopped, there's a horse training area. And I went in, I said, hey, you don't know me. I'm a stranger, but, uh, I brought you something because I'm doing an investigation. This crazy girl from California says, this makes rain rot fall off. Can you tell me if she's crazy or if she's real? And we got a text back four hours later from. Hi, I'm Caitlin White, I'm the head groom and Anne Louise horse training and we love your powder weave. It's removed all fungus from all horses that we put it on. And they made a board, bought it and had lesson horses, maybe thirty horses. Maybe they had six or eight with fungus. At that time it was, um. What is this April? Yeah, it was.

Barbara This.

Vince Year. It was springtime this time of year, ten years ago. And um, I just went and started hanging out there like, yeah, I can get you more. And they wound up giving our eleven year old lessons on horses in exchange for powder. So it was, you know, it was like we had a little barter system going. But the big thing was I was learning more about, um, you know, the parts of a horse, you know, I remember one day I was pointing. I was like, what are those white splotches doing on those horse's ankles? Don't call them ankles, she would say. You're going to be big and you're embarrassing us. Those are.

Barbara Fetlocks.

Vince And these are pasterns and like, get it down. I was like, okay, okay, what are these white splotches doing on the Paston and Fetlocks of your horses? She said, that's your powder with water. We're putting on scratches. I was like, tell me about scratches, you know? She walked through and I said, how's it working? She's like, it's drawing them out really nice. I said, I can figure this out. So I went away for three weeks and made a paste for horses called Trouble Spot Drawing paste. And it looks like clay peanut butter.

Barbara Yeah. And clay slap it up.

Vince And it turns into a mask is what it turns into. And it's got all natural ingredients that'll turn white in about ten minutes. And it's amazing because this draws everything out, the bentonite clay in it and it becomes a scab. So.

Barbara Unlike, you know, a lot of.

Vince one of the issues in horses is, you know, their wounds don't heal. And they, they have an immune system that where the flesh granulates and grows up to meet where the skin was, where the new skin's supposed to be in about twelve days. And if there's no new skin there, it just grows through. And they call it proud flesh. So that's going on everywhere because most of the wound care this day is Neosporin type petroleum jelly or lanolin based. And antibiotics is really what it is. You know, it's antibacterial stuff, but when it's wet, even with honey, it doesn't work well. You know the wounds don't heal. Scabs can't.

Barbara Barbara.

Vince So that's how we figured out how to get into the horse business.

Susy Barbara, you had a question?

Barbara I was going to say so. It seems that your formulation was largely intuitive.

Vince Yeah, we had.

Barbara Some basic info. You know, that's how I developed the the, um, aromatherapy. Products that I eventually sold to show season. It was, you know, like I did go through a, a schooling, but my putting things together. It was just really kind of, uh, an intuitive, Trusting myself to identify what I thought was going to work and and it either worked or didn't. And, um, those that did, um, I got a lot of good feedback about, I had the, the main one that I made was called mellow pet and it was a calmative. And, um, a lot of people are still coming up to me at, at Atlanta and saying, oh man, do you have any, you know, pet? I said, no check with show season. They got it. And uh, I'm still using that stuff. You know, it's cool. Um, so.

Vince Um, let me guess. Lavender.

Barbara No, no, no, well, I did, I did use some lavender in it. It was. But I no longer support lavender. No, no, no, the reason that I don't support lavender. I no longer support a lot of essential oils because the essential oil. Stream has just, um, decayed and there's a lot of. Essential oils are showing up as allergens for for people. And it's only a matter of time before they are identified for dogs. But it's only because there's no system to identifying canine allergens. There is in Europe a system where all. For human products, where they can report adverse events and all doctors and everything had to feed adverse events into this single central file. And so the scientists have data to to go on. And from there they pick out essential oils to patch, test and do a rigorous scientific method testing of them to determine if they're allergenic. And they now have, uh, identified several essential oils, including lavender. That in itself, not just its components, but in itself, it is an allergen identified by the EU on their reporting system. And so what that means is that if there is a certain total amount of a identified allergen, they need to put it on the label so the consumer can see, uh, there's lavender in it. Oh, and it's, um, linalool is a component of lavender. That in itself is a, an allergen. And then. Lionel acetate is a another component. And together they make up the largest part of the lavender and it creates some symbiotically, creates a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. And the lavender itself has become an allergen. Well, and this has happened because of the mass marketing of essential oils by the multi level marketing companies that have made every housewife into an aromatherapist.

Vince Right? Right, right.

Barbara You know, and it's. And so another side effect of that of the huge expansion of the marketplace He has been. Mixing it up, you know, extending oils by mixing in. Other than their true oil, more vegetable oil, more of their, one of their cheaper components or whatever. So you have a lot of contaminated essential oils on the marketplace. And there's no way that they can police every little or even big large farms in the world. You know, I mean, and the whole, you know, it's very difficult to truly manage agriculture.

Vince Um, it's, it's very interesting because lavender is one of those things that was off our list very early.

Barbara Um, yeah.

Vince Because in the horse world, uh, there's two governing bodies on the English Circuit, which is what we got introduced to first. The inventors, uh, we kind of followed around in the beginning. Uh, but you couldn't be USF or FAA compliant, which is the international body. If you had lavender in your products of any amount, because it was, it was looked as a sedative. You know, they, they don't want their horses to have anything even on their skin that could be a calming agent or considered a calming agent. So it was really dangerous for these competitors to have something that was non compliant because that's interesting.

Barbara Yeah. Yeah it does.

Susy So did your daughter. Did your daughter go into eventing. Heaven forbid.

Vince That's kind of the way this barn that happened to be on the road from my house to Costco. They were training on eventing. But, um, you know, some people have it in their blood. And I think she didn't. You know I do. Yeah you do. I get it. Hey, let's go feed rebel. You know, I got some carrots. And she's like, nah, that's not. You know, like she she never cleaned a stall and probably won't, but, um, I was okay with that because we were sponsoring these professional athletes and um, eventing is a kind of a crazy sport. You know, it has show jumping, which makes sense. And then it has dressage, which is kind of a control thing. And then you have this other part called cross country. And, you know, no offense to any inventors, but it's dangerous. I mean, I mean, it's you jump over concrete walls and if you miss the jump. I've seen people do full rotations where the horse falls.

Susy The horse lands on top of you. Yeah, yeah. I love eventing myself.

Vince I do too. It's the most exciting part. But when you're talking about your baby girl, sometimes you think, why don't you try barrel racing? You know.

Barbara I did barrel.

Vince Racing.

Barbara I did barrel.

Vince Racing, baby. Don't. Yeah. So, um, anyway, it was just a great experience. I got to hang out there and, you know, get feedback and learn more about what's going on with the horse's skin and, um, how they were using the products because I was not from their world. And, you know, we really had this mentality of getting feedback right away before we would release a product. And one of our criteria was, would we put it on our bodies? Because that's our standard in terms of petrochemical fragrances, you know, we don't put any junk that kind of the cleanest organic products wouldn't have in them. Don't go in our product. We don't just add something because we hope it works. We go to the Environmental Working Group. We check out what the cancer issues could be. You know, every, every ingredient we do, in fact, we give to the Environmental Working Group. It's a nonprofit in DC.

Barbara And they just.

Susy I know, I know.

Vince Yeah. Alright, so I'm making Barbara have convulsions, but anyway, we yeah, we had a nice, um, run in the horse market. We still are one of the leading suppliers, but there's nine million horses and they're owned by one million people. And, uh. Late twenty nineteen, we started getting our horse folks who, you know, had given us all these different uses for the powder, for the paste, for the shampoo, what they're using it for. And all of a sudden we started seeing pictures of their dogs, and we were told that this cured my dog's allergies and were scratching my head. Now I need to understand this and know you need a dog product. You need a dog product. We had a distributor called Bradley Caldwell, really great company in the northeast that, um, you know, helped us find a lot of independent, um, in a lot of cases, Amish feed stores that, you know, use the products on their own horses and, um, but anyway, they were used. All the salespeople didn't have horses, they had dogs. They were all using these products on their dogs and, uh, and on themselves. So, um, we got enough documentation to say people love it for their dogs and those, those are real spots, but we couldn't really explain it. But we, uh, we started with a dog label in twenty twenty and, uh, it's five times our horse business. It's just people are pulling us in. They're saying it's doing this. It's doing this. It's doing this. I mean, the yeasty dogs in the world are these English bulldogs, and they're so yeasty that they grow, um, interdigital cysts. They're like, I don't know if you've ever seen those puffy clear.

Barbara I've seen it in a digital system. I think they're all groomers have. Yeah.

Vince It's all fungus. And this stuff sucks it out in three days, you know? And these these are dogs scheduled for surgery. So we're finding more and more that we're, um, you know, our customers who were on Apoquel no longer are on apoquel. Um, not that we're against drugs, but we, we handle a big side effect of antibiotics and I know. They're a fact of life. They're overprescribed. But when you're dealing with a skin biome that has bacteria and fungus on it, and there's a kind of a equilibrium going on, and all of a sudden you interrupt that equilibrium by killing all the bacteria that feed on the yeast or fungus, the population explodes. And that's what's going on with most of the dogs that are itching today.

Barbara That's interesting. So and so does it work the other way around? If you kill the the fungus does the bacteria expand?

Vince Uh, that's Cliff's perspective. Yeah.

Barbara That's Doctor Cliff's.

Vince Notes. Yeah.

Barbara Doctor Cliff.

Vince Most vets will tell you that, but I don't I you know, when you when you bring something that kills both, it's kind of cool because.

Barbara Well, let me let me share with our listeners. Let me first of all, let me. Tell you why I freaked out. Um, I do not support the working group. Um, and it's because of, um, my strict science. Disposition. And there's a. Lot of scientists that think that, um, e g is, um, uh, I don't know, I. Yeah, yeah. Well, and, and not, not they're, they're taking some they're misinforming. By means of, uh, exaggeration. And, um, they, they don't weigh the evidence according to the, um. Source so that it all, it all, you know, like, um, some of their findings are based on pseudoscience and, um, studies that shouldn't be acknowledged. And I will, I will dig into my files. I don't want to go into it in depth, but I just don't. It's, it's the easiest and most informative place where you can just go to, to find out. The safety of ingredients, but it's not telling you the right things and I will send you my. What's wrong with EWG material, just so that you can look at it. And I'm not trying to change your mind, but you might want to know what the other side says.

Vince We don't introduce new ingredients very often, but twenty two years ago it was available and they did seem to be pretty straightforward. Listen, I questioned them because they'll produce a review about The Honest Company, for example. Yeah. Um, Jessica Alba's supposedly, you know, everything is greenwashed. It has. And and they go to the EWG and say, hey, have you tested this crap with this crap, with this crap, with this crap? And they'll give them some money to white out their warning about what they would normally say. So I think it's probably, uh, a fluid organization. And what you're saying could be very, very true right now. I know in the beginning we we counted on them. You know.

Barbara I, I used them in the beginning too. Um, but I, but I, because I was, um, following the beauty brains and some of the scientists, the beauty, the, um, the beauty brains has always been a trusted source for me. And, um, they're, they, they led me to voices that were saying different than e w g and helped me to understand that they were using poor science and they were not scientifically one hundred percent. Um, and there are lots of science Minded people that that have spoken out about E, w, G and it and it remains a fabulous produced source. You know, it just looks so good and it's so and I just, I go nuts when, uh, another shampoo comes on and they've used it and then they publish it in their website, the, you know, like, oh God, no, uh, what do I do? You know, like I'm just a little nay, nay. Yeah. I'm very, I'm just very wary of it. And I'll send you the information just so that you have it and you can take a look at it. And um, the information is my, my counter information is dated. And that's because one of the, um, one of the websites that I used that had guest writers and everything on, um. On ingredients and cosmetic ingredients. I can't remember if it was like, I'm going to make it up, but it was sort of like cosmetics truth, you know, it was, it was an alternative voice. They suddenly disappeared, which means that someone got stirred up and put some kind of.

Vince Like all the doctors who cure cancer, they disappeared.

Barbara Yeah. You know, I mean, and I mean, a lot of ingredients are are labeled as causing cancer when there's really no, no direct science to, to back that up in EWG. That's one of the things that I just like balked at. And, um, uh, and that was. Before two, twenty ten. So I've probably, I, you know, I've probably been a naysayer since at least twenty ten. But anyway, I just wanted to explain to you that that's why I was cringing so bad. Um, okay. But, um, my, my own experience to tell the audience, my own experience with, with, uh, code defense is I love the powder and I have two yeasty, one very serious and one moderate Maltese. And, uh, my little girl just gets, just gets a third of her body covered with yeast growth. And, um, I took a look. I didn't see it on her feet, but I took a look with the power of the air plus light.

Susy The neck dryer.

Barbara My pet neck dryer. I you know, I took it off my neck and I use it as a hand thing and it's got a, like a, a light on the front. And you so you blow the hair away from the skin and you see the skin boom. Right there. It's the best skin investigator tool I've ever had. And, um, I think every vet should have one, you know, because it really lights up the yeast and, and brushes all the, the hair away from the area. You can really see how bad it is. I did, I went backwards, I blew into her toenails And saw the yeast around her toenails and in there. And she does clean her feet a lot. She takes whether she's got anything going or not. She cleans her feet. It's just something this dog does. But she was licking her feet more, and I noticed that. And on her body. Remember the other day I told you that I had, um, I oh, I took the video that I sent you on about one side of her body that was pretty extensive. That was at least twenty percent of that area had some kind of yeast problem. And I, after our conversation, I bathed her in the shampoo, and then I powdered all those areas. And the areas that had really had surprised me on my video were her nipples. So those are like out of sight, but I was feeling something under there, so I took the. I stood her up and took the light and blow dryer and looked in. Her upper nipples were just caked with yeast and all of her nipples had some yeast growth going on there. I powdered that down real good. Her vulva and her, you know, her fruit was had spots of that yeast and I powdered that real well. The next day everything was clear except the upper ones where there was a lot of hair around them. So I, I that was the second time I had an overnight, um, result from Cote Defense powder. And I just, I really think it's a good, it's a good product. And you were right. I bathed her with your shampoo without a conditioner? Susie, I was. I was just using any any other conditioner on her because I couldn't not use it. Well, I, I didn't use it. And her coat came up fine. So, you know.

Susy And that's, that's the your main cleansing agent in the shampoo. Is that a saponified type of product?

Barbara Yeah, it is a saponified product and I expected it to be harsh. I expected it to be very alkaline. And I did a very professional pH test on it and it tested five point six, which is moderately acidic. So it was just the opposite. So it's closing the hair cuticle, not opening it. And I, I didn't expect that. And, um, but, uh, I kind of liked it, so not so now, Vince, if you're going to sell that shampoo to groomers, you're going to need larger quantities. I mean, groomers like to buy by the gallon.

Vince Yeah, yeah, I know I've been going like this about it.

Barbara Yeah.

Vince So, um, yeah, I know it's, it's a nine ounce bottle of shampoo, but, um, what people don't realize in the beginning is that it makes half a gallon. Just that nine ounce bottle. It's pretty thick.

Barbara So it should be diluted before you use it.

Vince You don't have to. I mean, you can use a little, um, you know, we use it on our hair and we just know it doesn't take much. I mean, we used to give our kids bubble baths and that stuff. It, it, um, it's real thick. It's aloe based. So it kind of even if your dog or your horse is aggravated, it really does. It pulls welts out of horses. I've seen it. Not welts, but hives. You know, Welt would be a big word for a hive, but, uh, it really does reduce the aggravation of inflamed skin. Um, the question is, you know, I know grooms are used to buying stuff by the gallon, and it may be that it doesn't work out, but I think there's enough of them right now that are saying this is we sell this as an upscale, like, just like doing a medicated shampoo. This is an extra service we're, we're charging for and we'll respond to the, to the market. We're not, um, we're not here to not listen to our customers. I mean, we'll make it in bigger containers. Um, we have a, um, challenge. Keep it in stock in the spring. We're making it as fast as we can. And, uh, we think we got this spring and summer covered, but, um, we're growing. So we've got, we're figuring things out. What, what we talked to Groomer's about, though, is the whole issue of if you knew you can stop these dogs from being in this endless cycle of medicated shampoos and, you know, you ever see a shitzu with a gooky golden paw? Like, could you just if you could end it for your customers, do you care? Like, is it something you would do? And ninety percent of them say yes like they would. But I know there's a lot of dancing that we got to do. We don't want to make enemies out of the vets. But what they're doing, uh, at the vet's office with these yeasty and allergic dogs isn't helping. It's just a cycle, right? And I'm not saying they're evil, and I'm not saying they're not intelligent. I'm just saying that our system kind of breeds this. And we've talked to people who have been doing this for years. And I mean, look at our reviews. It's it's incredible. Or, or look, just if you're ever on Facebook, if you see an ad for us, just look at what people say underneath it. They're just awestruck. You were surprised, right?

Barbara I was oh, I was very surprised. Well, I actually went to the vet before I tried this. I went to the vet with both dogs, and it was after I had tried a number of things on my own. I tried Dead Sea salt baths, which I made. I made a, um, a clay mask with special um oh, I don't know, a number of expensive ingredients. The jar that I made cost me ninety dollars. The vet, I took them to the vet and that didn't work and nothing worked. And so I went to the vet and it cost me seven hundred dollars and I got, uh, apoquel and, um. An antibiotic, an antibiotic and an antibiotic. And, you know, like, I mean, I shuddered, I didn't, I didn't want to do the antibiotic, but I just said, I'm here at the vet. I might as well do what she says. So I did that, and then I. And, um, it cleared up. The yeast cleared up on both of them. And, uh. And then shortly after it cleared up, it started happening again. And so I refilled the prescription and that cost me one hundred and some bucks. And I just said this.

Vince Mhm, mhm.

Barbara Excuse me, but that's what I said. This, you know, like, you know, I this is not what. This is not happening. This is not, this is this is what she's been trained to do for this. And, um. Because it is effective in the first place, people just keep refilling their prescriptions and doing it over and over again.

Vince You're on auto ship?

Barbara Yeah. Auto ship. And I said, I'm not. I'm not going to do that because I already have a real concern about antibiotics and what's happening in our industries and vet and grooming and, um, and the medicated shampoo. She told me a bottle of medicated shampoo that freaked me out because not only was it chlorhexidine, but it was ketoconazole, ketoconazole, ketoconazole, ketoconazole also, you know, like, and, and a third thing, you know, like, so it was like an atom bomb and antimicrobial shampoo. And I was supposed to bathe her three times a week in it.

Vince Do you know.

Barbara What? I just couldn't stand it.

Vince Do you know the Environmental Working group labels that chlorhexidine as a skin allergen? Did you know that?

Barbara Oh. Well, there you go.

Vince There you go. Take it with you. Well, it's so I.

Barbara It's bad. It's bad. I, I mean, I used it once on her and it went into the back of the cupboard. You know, like no, no, no. And, uh, it's just like, I'm not going to do that to my dogs and I, and I, um, I wouldn't do it to anybody else's dog either. You know, and so people come in and they bring those bottles with them and, you know, what do you do? You know, you, you, you know, and my vet said, bathe her with this, you know, and so they're going to do it or they're not, you know, I, I actually was trained in a kennel when the, where the guy said, what you do is you pour a little bit down the drain and then you give them the bottle back and say, yeah, she's got a bath, you know, but I would never do that. I, I mean, I always would say, well, I, I always would argue or I would, you know, present an alternate reality to my customers. But my alternate reality doesn't have the credibility that the vet's alternate reality has. What can you go? You cannot put a groomer, even a self-taught groomer, or even a schooled groomer. You can't put them up against that because of just the credentials.

Vince Mhm. Mhm.

Susy So I've got a havanese that has exactly what you're saying with the yucky paws and everywhere the skin folds and all that. So how would you recommend I use your product to deal with that? Not the shampoo, but the powders, because they this owner will probably not do the bathing in what we want, but they would definitely be compliant with the powder. And they're not using chlorhexidine. They're not we're not using anything but hypoallergenic stuff on the dog. And they, they have.

Vince It down to the skin. You put it in between their paws. These are new, uh, format. We have, um, like new groomers can get a six pack of these four point two ounces to leave with their customers for fifteen bucks and get a yeah For in the shop. And.

Barbara Oh that's good.

Susy Yeah, yeah, I want that. I need to order that right away. That's great.

Vince You can start with six or twelve of these or whatever you want. We're not here to make stuff grow on grow dust. But once people try this, they like to keep some in the shop. And, um, you know, we even have a dog version of this, um, paste that actually, you put it on in three days later, you rinse it off and there's the hot spot is new skin. It's it's just that good. So we have a hot spot. We encourage groomers to try one of everything like a big powder, a nine ounce powder, a shampoo. See if you like it. Um, the paste for hot spots. And we also have a balm, which is a, um, you know, we used to sell it to humans for psoriasis and, um, Eczema symptoms, cuts the itch and really deep moisturizing a lot of propolis in it. But those are for products. Yeah. So yeah, I would recommend it. And if there's a way you can solve the problem for these people, I'm telling you they're very grateful. Our customers are forever customers. And um, if you're dog groomer, I'm sure your, your customers are that way because they know you care. Um, and I'm not trying to create an uprising here. I just want these dogs to feel more comfortable because after you hear about a thousand stories of, thank God it arrived yesterday and it was the first full night of sleep we had for four months. And it's they can't make this stuff up. You know, I'm not I'm not making it up. I'm like reading this and I'm thinking, oh my God, I didn't even make this for dogs. I made it for people.

Susy So it worked great on my horse's rein rod. She only had a little bit, but it took it away so quickly. I just used the powder, I just and it just disappeared. So yeah, that's the only experience I have with it. But I'm so thinking about this dog that I'm. They're just having such a terrible time and I think it would be a good step for them. They're very crunchy granola as it is. So this would be a way to help them help their dog. And I think that's great.

Vince Yeah, I, I, um, I think, uh, much as we grew pretty quick in the horse business by only dealing with neighborhood, I don't know if you remember this guy, Howard Schultz, he started Starbucks.

Susy Yeah. I'm from Seattle.

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah.

Susy Yeah, I live in Seattle. So. Yeah. Yeah, we know him.

Speaker 4 Well, I used.

Vince To be in the, uh, online ordering business, you know, the. And, um, yeah, they, they, uh, invited me to come present to them to help their research department on a Monday morning and I was in DC. That's the way they do it. These big companies, they try to like get the little guys to have to travel on Sunday. It just.

Speaker 4 Helps.

Vince It helps negotiations, I guess. But anyway, no, I liked his book. And, uh, he, um, he was talking about his history as a espresso machine salesman, and he got this, um, itch to start opening coffee shops where people could communicate with each other based on his visit to Italy. And, you know, every street corner, there's a place. And I guess he realized that, you know, humans need a third place. You know, if they're at work, they go home. You know, a place in between is their third place. And whether it's a, you know, a coffee shop or a bar or, you know.

Barbara Pub.

Vince Joint, you know. But the third place, and in a lot of cases, people who live on farms, the feed stores. They're only there's their second place. So we think the groomers are, um, you know, they're, they're close enough to the customers. They're trusted. We believe that, um, you know, they can help us help more people. So we've gone through a lot of trouble. Uh, back in the feed store days with making sure that Amazon isn't undercutting our prices or their prices. So we control, we fired our distributors. We, we control our pricing on Amazon and we make sure that the price we tell you, we sell it for. Is a reasonable price that they can make a margin on, because what happens to the little guys and everything in this world is they get squeezed. It's like Amazon's undercutting the price they can buy this at. No thank you. That's not the way we're going to build our company. You know, we really count on people connecting with their customers. So we're looking for advice, you know?

Barbara So cool.

Vince So the shampoo and a bigger container is.

Barbara Yeah, I was going.

Speaker 4 To number one.

Vince Piece of input we got so far.

Barbara Well, even if we started with a half gallon, you know, even or, or even yeah, a half gallon would work. So because the dilution rate, sometimes.

Speaker 4 You don't mind paying shipping.

Vince For all that water.

Barbara Well, but they're paying, they're, they're paying shipping for all that water right now. You know, like God. Um.

Vince So we have to change the world. Barbara. We're changing.

Barbara Yeah, yeah, yeah, That's why I love you. That's why you're here. So, um, so I was going to say that I think you've already caught on because you're changing the the lid on the powder. But my experience with the powder is that the holes are too large in these little powder containers that I have. So I have a, I have a special little brush and a little dustpan that's about the size of the palm of my hand. And I can get that because I, I'm losing a whole servings worth, you know. So I put it in my hand.

Vince I throw it under my arms and if I drop some on the floor, I get, I put my feet over it because it's good for your feet. You won't get athlete's foot if you put it on your.

Barbara Well, I don't get athlete's foot, but I do get, I do get, I do have a skinfold situation and I used the dog stuff on myself and it fixed it. And then I bought, um, the people stuff. So I've got, you know, I've got the people stuff going and I, you know, I, I, um, just slapped some on there and it, uh, the next day we're much better, but I haven't, this is just something that popped up since I moved from Arizona to South Carolina. I never had this, but it can get here and there and anywhere the skin folds over. I can get this, you know, and if you don't pay attention to it, it gets nasty. And it's embarrassing to me because it, it smells, you know, and, um, your powder just takes care of it. So I, I highly recommend the people powder for fat girls and anybody else. Well, you know.

Vince Um, you know, it's just a part of life. I mean, think about all those old people who are bedbound and getting bedsores or in diapers. You know, it's that acid that sits on their skin and and makes it thinner than it needs to be. Your skin's already getting old when you're.

Barbara Uh. You tell me.

Vince Something that's a little bit slightly alkaline against their skin, and it won't keep them dry forever, but it'll keep their skin from bursting, you know? Really helps.

Susy What's on the horizon for you guys? What's coming up for the future? Any exciting new changes or different products or just mainly focusing on the dogs?

Vince Well, the dogs are big and I mean, we're not a huge company. I would say we're right at the verge of ten million is what we did last year. Um, it's a lot of powder, but we're going to stay relevant with our horse people. Get out there. We're going to, um, meet a lot of groomers this year. It's our mission, but, um, eventually we're probably going to be doing more human things, but not just because it doesn't have chemicals in it. We're going to go after humans with cause and effect. This wound care I'm talking about. It's unbelievable for for any wounds. Dog. Human horse. Um, I think we're going to, by the end of the year, start to advertise the human stuff again. And, uh, but it will be cause and effect. It will be acne. Dandruff. And the deodorant, those are probably the three biggest, um, and the wound care we're talking to, um, some folks who are connected to Alice Walton And they, um, she's got this dream of like coming up with a completely different healthcare system. It's very difficult when you're, um, competing with the big guys and they're trying to, um, you know, you can't say kills yeast, kills bacteria on Amazon because then they want, they'll take your listing down and say, give us your EPA certification. You know, you're making claims. And if we say that we're, uh, taking care of a condition that's a human condition, like athlete's foot, for example, the FDA comes in and says, hey, you're.

Barbara You're not a medicine drug.

Vince You're not registered with the FDA. So we've got these big chemical companies. And, uh, you know, I don't know if things will change. I used to think things were going to change, but, um, you know, I, I just want to help People with their problems, that's all.

Barbara So, uh, tell us about your offer.

Vince Well, um, for groomers, we sell, um, products at a wholesale rate, and we sell things at seventy percent of what our prices on our website are and our manufacturers list price. And we also. Sell these four point twos, um, as a leave behind. We think you'll like it. Uh, we put a discount code in today if you'd like to just try one and don't want to get a wholesale package. And, uh, you can try anything on the website for fifteen percent off. All you have to do is remember the name of this podcast and type it into the discount code. Go to co-defense dot com.

Susy Cool. Perfect. Thank you so much for being on the show. We appreciate it and your kindness at giving our listeners stuff.

Vince And Barbara.

Susy Excellent.

Vince For trying it on your precious Maltese.

Barbara Ah.

Susy Well, alright.

Barbara Yeah. Whatever those those guys.

Susy The Maltesers. All right. Well, thanks for listening to our show and now watching our show. I hope you're enjoying this new format, everyone. And happy grooming. See you next time on the groom pod. Buh bye now.

Vince Thank you.

Barbara Bye there. Take care of yourselves, because we love you. Thank you. Vince.