Have you seen this in private equity before? What was kind of your gut reaction when it started dawning on you between talking to brands, our stuff, getting in this group with all the retailers? Before you even had all the data, what was your gut instinct there?

Yep.

It happens, um, you know, when private equity ownership walks in, you usually look at all of your contracts.

Um, and you know, there are some that you try to get out of, um, because they don't either make sense for the company, um, or the terms weren't negotiated properly, and stopping payment is, is a tactic.

I don't love it for a million different reasons, um, but it is.

So when I start to look into it, um, you know, this had obviously been happening since, like, last November.

Um, and I had some pretty in-depth conversations with brands because it wasn't just non-payment.

... patterns of behavior as, as they change in the industry?

Mm-hmm.

In in-press releases, they had called it their 38th location.

I went back, and I was just kind of digging around Dover, uh, largely because, and it's part of my content.

I was like, okay, like, you know, I grew up with these brands in the '90s.

Like, where are they now? So in looking back over the last year, they had already closed 10 locations fairly quietly, but their PR releases for WeCo Khala still pretended like those locations hadn't closed.

So I thought it was a little strange, and then they announced a wave of closure, so I'm saying, like, you know, March-ish, around, like, 10 locations, and then they just kept closing waves.

At this time, I had people DM'ing me, whether it's people very, very close to the situation from the inside or from the outside looking in, and started to capture these data points of, like, hey, Dover is not doing well, and they are not communicating very transparently about what's happening.

Yeah

... for doing it, living this life.

Thank you.

Yeah, it is, it is a little scary.

I mean, you know, I had my first job when I was 15.

Uh, I worked at the local Timberland at the mall, and everything that I have today is because I, I created it or, you know, made the money myself.

So this is really the first time that I'm without a steady paycheck.

And again, I think it, it really just comes down to spotting opportunities where there are in the equestrian world, and I think there are so many, which I know we'll get into, and then also just this idea of self-belief.

Yeah