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Episode 132

How Marketing Earns Respect in the Boardroom with Kimberley Gardiner, CMO at Tractor Supply

Did you know poultry is the third most popular pet in America, behind dogs and cats? It's surprising stats like this that reflect the rural lifestyle trends driving growth at Tractor Supply Company.

This week, Elena and Rob talk with Kimberley Gardiner, CMO of Tractor Supply. Learn how she measures marketing impact through business outcomes, builds teams grounded in humility, and why she rejects the brand versus performance marketing debate. Plus, hear the undeniable impact of connecting directly with customers.

Topics Covered

• [04:00] Transitioning from automotive to Tractor Supply marketing

• [10:00] Using marketing strategically as a business driver, not cost center

• [15:00] Investing marketing dollars for measurable returns

• [18:00] Customer metrics that matter: traffic, transactions, basket size

• [22:00] Why brand marketing versus performance marketing is a false choice

• [26:00] What Kimberley learned about rodeo after joining Tractor Supply

Resources:

2024 MarketingWeek Article

Kimberley Gardiner’s LinkedIn

Today's Hosts

Elena Jasper

Chief Marketing Officer

Rob DeMars

Chief Product Architect

Kimberley Gardiner

CMO at Tractor Supply

Transcript

Kimberley: I think we love to talk about our customer as it's really at the center of everything that we do. I can't think of a decision that our team has made almost ever in my three years here, where we didn't genuinely talk about how is this going to be more helpful to a customer?

Elena: Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions.

I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-host Rob DeMars, the Chief Product Architect of Misfits and Machines.

And we're joined by Kimberley Gardiner, the Chief Marketing Officer of Tractor Supply Company. Tractor Supply is the largest rural lifestyle retailer in the United States with more than 2,300 stores nationwide. Kimberley has spent her career leading marketing at some of the world's most recognizable brands from Toyota and Kia to Mitsubishi and Volkswagen.

Kimberley: Mitsubishi.

Elena: From Toyota and Kia to Mitsubishi and Volkswagen. It's just so embarrassing for me. Before stepping into her current role in 2022 at Tractor Supply, she oversees a team that balances efficiency and creativity, proving marketing's impact both in the marketplace and in the boardroom. Kimberley, welcome to the show.

Kimberley: Thank you so much for having me. It's a real pleasure.

Rob: All right. I had so much fun digging into the history of the Tractor Supply Company. I found it fascinating. The amazing growth that occurred going from a cataloger to brick and mortar, then almost losing it all. Doing a rebrand to TSC, or rebranding to Town and Country and then even selling women's clothing. And then a huge pivot back to the roots of the Tractor Supply Company. And today, now, such an amazing success, literally being seen as a critical part of the community hub. Serving the growing category of the farm hobbyist.

So some people don't know. So you think the number one pet ownership in the US is dog. Number two is cat. A lot of people don't know. Number three is poultry.

And we like to not claim necessarily, but we certainly like to assert that Tractor Supply might have had something to do with that, just given the popularity of live birds and our Chick Days promotions and our sales that we have in our stores, pretty much almost year round, so for many years now. So that's pretty fun. And number four now is goat.

Rob: Really. So wait, wait. So I just want to make sure I'm hearing you right. The number three pet in the United States is the chicken?

Kimberley: Correct.

Rob: Wow. Yeah. I am going to talk to my wife about that. That sounds like fun.

Kimberley: Backyard Poultry. Correct.

Elena: We got a good, fun fact. We'll be rolling with that. Okay, we're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions in data research and what drives business results. And I'm going to kick us off as I always do with some research. Today I chose an article from Marketing Week, and it's titled "Over Two-Thirds of Marketers Think There Is Room for Improvement on Financial Fluency."

This is by Neve Carroll. A Marketing Week survey found that nearly seven in 10 marketers believe the industry lacks financial fluency. With just 12% saying their teams are definitely strong in this area, that gap matters because financial skills aren't just about managing tight budgets. They're about speaking the language of the boardroom. A CMO put it bluntly. Unless marketers understand P&L, cash flow and pricing power, they won't be taken seriously at the top table. And research from KPMG shows only about one in five CMOs have a truly collaborative relationship with their CFOs. So to earn respect in the boardroom, marketers need to combine customer focus with commercial acumen, framing their work, not as brand building, but as driving growth.

I thought that article was a nice preview for the conversation to come. So Kimberley, thanks again for joining. To start, I actually want to go back in time a little bit. You started your career in auto marketing where marketing teams were more at the center. Then you were recruited by Tractor Supply and you had an introduction to the brand by their CEO. Could you take us back to that moment and share a little bit about what made you say yes to working at this brand?

Kimberley: I love talking about this transition so, as you said, I spent a long time in automotive marketing, about 20 plus years. Love cars, love driving cars, all the things. And automotive marketing is really exciting. It's a complicated product. It takes a lot of thought in terms of making a decision, so you have a long time to build a relationship with a customer, and not only on the sales side, but then you've got service and they hopefully will be a lifetime customer.

So to cut to the chase, I wasn't looking to make a change. I was at Volkswagen, had just worked on the ID Four EV launch. And I got an email from a recruiter saying, I have a confidential CMO role that could be interesting to you. I was just curious to be honest. And when I found out it was Tractor Supply, I thought, I don't have any direct experience in tractors and farming and anything that I thought was relevant to what I thought about the brand at that time. And then she said, well, tell you what, let's just have you do a Zoom conversation with the CEO with Hal Lawton. It never hurts, and that is great advice. Always take the conversation if you have the chance.

And I did. And I tell people it was one of the best, most thoughtful, most interesting conversations I have had with a CEO in my career. Full stop. 35 minutes later, she called me back and she said, so he thought it went quite well. What did you think? And I said, I don't think I've ever talked to a CEO that was that smart, that humble and that prideful about the brand that he is working on.

Fast forward, he met me at a store. He flew out to a store in Virginia. Where I was at the time, to meet me, to walk a store. That's a very common thing at Tractor Supply. We constantly are in stores all the time, as you can imagine. He introduced me to a few team members at the store. We talked to some customers. He's helping customers load up their carts and take them to their vehicles, answering questions.

He never said, oh, I'm Hal Lawton. I'm the CEO of Tractor Supply. He just said, Hey, I'm Hal with Tractor Supply. How can I help you? Are you looking for, what are you looking for today? That humility, and that sense of pure just delight around how do we help our customers was something I've been craving for so long in marketing and I couldn't do in automotive marketing because at a brand level, you're about how do you encourage customers to shop for the product, but ultimately it's the dealer that has that retail experience.

And I wasn't part of that equation. So it fulfilled a couple of needs. And I think that it's one that drove, I think a pivot for me personally. How do I be part of a culture and a team that works really hard, clearly enjoys what they do, and they've been here, many of them for a long, long time. With a brand that I thought, you know, if I'm going to stretch myself as a marketer, I knew automotive.

I didn't know retail at that level, and I certainly didn't know lifestyle around rural America and all those things. And I figured it was a good chance to push myself in some new directions. And one of the best career decisions I've ever made.

Elena: Wow. It seems like Tractor Supply is definitely careful and puts a lot of thought into who they bring onto the brand and making sure they fit the culture. When we talked, you mentioned that you, even as CMO, you personally interview every new hire. What does that say about how you think about building teams and culture at this brand?

Kimberley: So, our mission and values and our culture are everything at Tractor Supply. Our team is a small team within Tractor Supply, small but mighty. And I want to make sure that as much as I can, I foster the same kind of really special, unique culture within marketing, within Tractor Supply. So, a couple of things. One that I always say to my team, and I always say to candidates that I talk to, I do interview everybody.

It's not just about you. Whatever level you come in at, you could be a contractor or a summer intern, a vice president, doesn't matter. I want you to know who I am. I want you to hear from me what I think makes this place so special. I want you to know me before you potentially start with us. So the first time I'm not meeting you is in a meeting and I, oh, that's so and so, and oh, I haven't met you before.

I want you to know who I am and I want you to know I have an open door policy. I often do one-on-ones with my team. And I'm always here to help. And that helps a lot if you see me before you actually start, I think. And then the other part is just your why, right? I tell this to people all the time. When you are interviewing for a role, especially marketing, make sure you have your why. Why are you interested in this brand? Why do you want to work in marketing?

What is it that drives you and what do you know about life out here? You don't have to live a lifestyle. I certainly did not prior to coming here, but I want to know you have the curiosity. I want to know you have something that's inspiring you and you're passionate about. So I'll ask you those questions and that's why I want to make sure I interview every single person that comes on the team. And then when you do see me in that first meeting, we have a weekly meeting of the whole team.

I can welcome you and talk a little bit about what I know about that person and make sure they feel welcome and they're an integral part of our team. And they know that I'll value their opinions and I want them to speak up in meetings and be part of what we're doing.

Elena: So when you have these interviews, I know that's something you're really looking for is humility. Why is humility such a non-negotiable for your team?

Kimberley: Fundamentally, humility and being humble is a huge part of being, I think a team member at Tractor Supply. It goes back to again, our mission and values. We value things like teamwork, communication, accountability. And our mission. And it's in every single office. It's in my office here in a few places. Every single conference room, every single area of the organization has these mission and values.

We have them on our badges as well. I've been at companies that have mission and values. We all have, right? I've never been in an organization that takes them this seriously, and that's just integrated into everything we do, humility and the willingness to roll up your sleeves. We talk about our mission being work hard, have fun, make money.

Full stop. Humility is a key ingredient of that mission. And I think that's something that you can foster with somebody. I think it's not unteachable, if you will, but I think if somebody has it, you know it. And that's really, really important to us. When you interact with a customer in a store, you want to be just as curious as anybody else in terms of a team member, how do I help you? What are you looking for?

That kind of thing. And you need to be able to relate to any kind of customer issue, any kind of team member issue. We're here to serve our team members. We call this place, we're in a, not our headquarter building, but our store support center. So there's a humility and a servant leadership fabric that's woven into what we do. That's why it's so important.

Elena: I just love how it's a part of everything at Tractor Supply, how it just bleeds through. That's really, really cool. When we were talking before this interview, I kept coming back to this idea in my head of earning respect in the boardroom, because that's something that marketers talk about a lot. They want to be taken seriously, they want to contribute to the business. How do you think about using marketing strategically at Tractor Supply, not just as a cost center, but a true driver of impact for the business?

Kimberley: Well, and I think it's much like you were mentioning earlier in terms of that acumen that's so important for CMOs to have, around the financials. Around the P&L understanding, what are the levers that drive the business, not necessarily your marketing levers. You always need to know that, right? What is your brand awareness? What does your consideration look like?

How are you doing in terms of your customer attraction, your customer retention, things like that. But at the end of the day, how does that ladder up into real business outcomes? How does that help us in terms of our sales goals that we have for the year? How does that help us in terms of our margin goals? How does that help us in terms of our net income? Those are the things that are important overall to any business.

And if you start with those, we start with what is the group of customers that we are going to attract? What is it that in terms of a basket size and revenue that it will drive for the company? And then how are we going to get there versus starting with. I don't want to say the flash, but something more flashy or exciting or the content piece.

Look at what we're going to do and then let me tell you how that's going to drive the result. Start with the expected outcome in financial terms, in sales terms. For us, it's traffic and transactions. What is it going to look like first up at the top? And then you can talk more about, now let's talk about how we're going to get there. Let's talk about the messaging, let's talk about the channels. All the things that marketers know and love and are really good at.

But that front door needs to be that relevancy, exactly what you were saying earlier in terms of that boardroom for them to take you seriously. And just to be relevant to the business. That's what we're here to do. We should be obsessed about how do we grow customers and how do we grow the business? And I know there's some folks that are talking about CMO roles changing pretty dramatically over the next few years. Do we call ourselves marketers?

Are we Chief Growth Officers, Chief Customer Growth Officers, those kinds of titles? We'll wait and see. I think if you know everything, and I tell my team this every single thing we do, if it's not about driving a business outcome, if it's not about growing our customers, either our current customers or bringing new ones in, then we're not doing it. Full stop.

Elena: That's an amazing focus and it's what all marketers need to do if they want to have a seat at the table. But sometimes new channels are so fun and it can be easy to get caught up in new things like that. But you've said you're not a shiny penny marketer, which I hadn't heard before, but I love it. You're not chasing trends. You're not just motivated by trying to be on stage at a place like Cannes. So how do you filter out what to embrace then as a marketing team, and what to ignore or avoid?

Kimberley: You know, I've been doing marketing for 23, 24 years now, a long time. I think I've just always been somebody who, I want my work and I want the work of my team to speak for itself. I've not been somebody that's ever really chased what's the next award? What's the next accolade?

I think that you should just like our mission and values here, you know, work hard and have fun, and show the value that marketing can bring to the table every single day. I think that there are a number of ways to look at it, but for me, you know, it's not shiny penny and exciting versus boring and performance.

That no one's going to get excited about. I think that everything should be about how does it drive an action. We're in the game of persuasion. We're in the game of influence and we should drive action. That's what I'm mostly concerned about today. And yet, and of course we're always going to talk about AI.

My team does quite a lot of work in terms of integrating AI into our workflows into our briefs, into our go-to-market strategy, into our customer models. So it's there. Absolutely. It's just working really super hard for us. It's not necessarily something that the shiny penny reference that we're going to create something to make ourselves, I don't know, look cool.

I'm not in the business of cool hunting necessarily. That said, I'm definitely telling my team all the time, what are people talking about? And how do we be part of the conversation? What is our way in? And maybe it's around companion animals, pets. Maybe it's around gardening, maybe it's around people just want to get outside and enjoy being away from, how many screens are we on all the time? How do we weave in the fact that if you follow the life out here mindset, you're not looking at your phone, you're outside. You're pursuing your passion. You're probably taking care of your land a bit. Maybe you're tending to the garden, you're tending to your animals. You're building something, you're taking care of something, you're mending something. Like that's really good stuff.

Rob: Maybe it's about the chickens. I'm super excited about that. I need to get in.

Kimberley: Could be.

Rob: Heck. Yeah. You talked about small and mighty, which is a great way to think about your team and the energy and mission behind the team. With a smaller budget and a mostly in-house team, how do you think about

Kimberley: Every dollar that we invest, and I talk about with my team, invest. Using that language, using that kind of financial language of not what are we going to spend, how much is it going to cost, what's our budget for it? Yes, we talk about that. What's our forecast? Of course. But if you think about it in the words of investment, it automatically in our team's heads, they go, what's the return?

What are we going to get from it? Whether that be short term traffic, like I talked about before, to our website, to our stores, transactions. Which are something that we obsess about and it's very, very important to us. It's the lifeblood of having customers come in and buy from us. We want to do that at the least cost possible.

We want to be the most in terms of our shepherding of the dollars that we're spending, and good stewards of our investments that we're making. I think about things in terms of not only where do we want to put those investments to get the return that's short term this week, this month, this quarter.

Performance marketing types of channels, search, et cetera, shopping. But it's also how do we think about effectiveness with efficiency. So how do we think about what's going to stand out? You have a lot of choice these days. How do we make sure that the brand Tractor Supply and the things that we sell are things that are your go-tos, so that you're not tempted to say, oh, here's five different places that sell my dog food. Oh, I'm going to buy at Tractor Supply. That's about messaging. I think that's about resonance. So effectiveness to us is how close are we to the pin of where our customer's mindsets are at right now? That's effectiveness, that's going to help us to figure out what is it truly about that's going to speak directly to that hobby farmer, to that pet enthusiast, to that backyard homesteader, to that country dabbler, which we call our more casual customers, and how are we going to make sure that whatever image they're seeing, whatever video content, social media posts, those kinds of things that we talk to our customers through, or local community marketing, that it really resonates. That's going to be more effective. They remember it, they take action on it, and they think that's why I love my Tractor Supply.

Rob: Can you go deeper on that for a minute? 'Cause I'm really interested in how Tractor Supply measures and improves marketing's impact, and you're kind of getting into that right now in terms of what are you looking at? What are you seeing that allows you to kind of go back to the team?

Kimberley: Absolutely. So the metrics that we report on every week, both within our team and then more broadly, like I said again, traffic, transactions, units per transaction. So what's being put in our customer's baskets and how is that reflective in terms of the things that we know are being promoted at the time that are seasonally relevant to our customers that we know we should be selling.

A lot of live birds during Chick Days, for example. But it's not only that, it's are they then putting the feed into the basket? Are they buying a chicken toy? You bet. You probably didn't know that. We sell chicken toys or that those things exist. So we want to diversify that basket.

So we also watch and see what's literally being shopped for, what departments are being shopped for, and are we growing that over time. So we look at how many of those things are in that basket today? And then we watch that over the next, call it year or two. We look at customer lifetime value, but we also look at how frequently you're coming in.

We look at what's in that basket and we look at what departments over time and what we're seeing in the data. That is really, I think a positive sign is we have something called Neighbors Club. It's our loyalty program. We've got 41 million plus members of that loyalty program. So we sit on a ton of customer data.

And we know for a fact that once they join Neighbors Club, that a year or two in, they're doing exactly that. They're shopping more, they're shopping more of the store. They're putting more into their basket, and ultimately that drives more sales in terms of dollars spent. And more time spent with the store or time in store, I should say.

So those are some of the things that we look at. We look at retention as well. We look at lapse customers and how we're doing in terms of bringing those back. And then every week we report on which customers are going to be new customers, how are we doing with retaining current ones. And then again, like I said, those lapse customers. So those are kind of the buckets. Retaining customers, bringing customers that might have lapsed for six to 12 months. And then how are we in terms of reaching net new customers?

Rob: You guys are clearly customer obsessed, right? Just by what you were just talking about. I mean, that's fantastic. I mean, and it's obviously shaping how you guys are marketing and how you lead the marketing there. Can you talk more about that, just what that means to be customer obsessed at Tractor Supply?

Kimberley: I think we love to talk about our customer as it's really at the center of everything that we do. I can't think of a decision that our team has made almost ever in my three years here, where we didn't genuinely talk about how is this going to be more helpful to a customer? And I'm talking about every single small thing it could be. A promotion, it could be a social media post, it could be a partnership that we're doing with Lainey Wilson as we did a few years ago.

It might be something we're doing in terms of rodeo or state fairs. We always talk about what does it look like for that customer who's interacting in that moment? How are we making them feel? Do they feel better about life out here? Do they feel excited about life out here? Does it make them more likely to say, I really love, 'cause people do, I swear they'll see something on, if you're traveling and happened to me yesterday at the hotel, I was checking out.

Someone said, oh, Tractor Supply. Do you work there? Oh, yes I do. Oh my gosh. You know what? I grew up in Indiana. I can't tell you, I love Tractor Supply. I love Tractor Supply. That's the gauge. When we talk about being customer obsessed, is it going to continue that love for Tractor Supply? Is it going to make them feel like we really understand their needs? You may be an equine customer, but maybe you're not shopping us for your dog. And we know a lot of our customers have both.

How do we put those messages in front of you where it's like, oh yeah, I do have a dog and I do have a couple of horses. Why aren't I shopping for my dog food at Tractor Supply? Maybe I should. So we want to be helpful, right? We want to genuinely know that that customer knows we understand you. We see you. Everything that we do. I promise you, we always talk about our core customer front and center, right in front of our faces, right?

That's who we have in mind and we spend a lot of time in stores and that also helps a ton. Talking to customers. Listening to customers. We have a whole panel of customers, about 450 or so customers now that are part of a qualitative panel that we do. Think about it like an online focus group. So we ask them questions about the brand, about what they're shopping for, about how can we help make things a little better, what are they looking forward to for the holidays, things like that.

So we are also customer data obsessed, I would say, as well. So we really, really help to understand what that customer's all about today. And then what are they looking forward to in the future, and how do we make sure that we're delivering that legendary customer experience that we talk all the time about.

Rob: It's hard to argue against anything that you've talked about. It just sounds like you guys really have focus and best practices in play, but there must be something contrarian that you do. Do you have a, we love a good contrarian approach here on the Marketing Architects podcast. What's your most contrarian marketing opinion?

Kimberley: I'd say a couple of things. One, I really don't like the idea that a lot of marketers talk about when it's like brand marketing versus performance marketing. And so we're either building up the brand with wonderful content and experiences in all the things, or we're driving you down the old school funnel to shop right now. Everything should be either in one category or the other. I've said for a long time that great brand work should drive retail.

It should drive a better customer experience. It should drive you to take action. It may not be today or tomorrow, but it should drive action at some point. And every piece of performance, I put in quotes, marketing media, it should make you feel better about the brand. Everything leaves an impression. I know that our attention spans are 1.8 seconds in social, just a few seconds more in IRL. These days anyway, I get that people aren't maybe obsessing over every single message the way marketers do, but at the end of the day, it should make some kind of measurable difference.

It should make a difference in that customer's opinion, their beliefs about us, how they think about, for us, it's like life out here. Do I want that lifestyle? I want more of it. I just want to make sure that we don't forget, I should say that customers probably don't think about things in those buckets.

And I think what it does is, and I heard this recently too, with some CMO friends. That we've swung the pendulum one way or the other, sometimes too much. Right. It's all about performance. It's all about efficiency. It's ROAS. Yeah. Trust me, I agree. It's an investment that you want to make sure you get a return on, but then you pull away from the brand side.

Oh, that's all the fluff. That's some of the shiny penny stuff that I sometimes talk about, which I reference. We need to figure out how we combine both of those things together. Everything that we do should be for an action. But it doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. It doesn't mean that it shouldn't be helpful.

It doesn't mean that it shouldn't be meaningful. And the other piece I would say is unlike many marketers, since I don't watch TV, I watch a lot of programming. But I don't sit on the couch and watch TV. I haven't since. I don't know when, not even high school. I didn't even have a TV for a while in high school, believe it or not. So I grew up without that idea of that's how you entertain yourself.

That's why I'd probably look at content that we make, and I just want it to be purely entertaining no matter where it's seen. No matter how it's consumed. And so that also makes my bar a little higher when it comes to how does content really make you feel and what is it, what do you think differently when you see this content? Just a 32 second TV spot. And by the way, when we create those, at Tractor Supply, for sure, you will feel life out here. You will feel different. But it's not about, I don't call it a TV spot. It's content.

Elena: I love that. I think as a TV agency, we definitely are on the same page about brand and performance. 'Cause we see TV do it all the time. And whenever we hear someone doesn't watch TV, it does hurt a little bit, but good for you. Good for you for,

Kimberley: I watch much content though I promise you. I do. I promise you I do. Yes, I do. Absolutely. I'm on my phone more than I should be and all the other devices and such. I do have a screen in my house. It's just, I don't watch traditional TV, I guess, in the traditional way, but maybe that makes me a good case study because my attention span is short. I am looking for something more rich and interesting and I also get bored pretty quickly like a lot of us do.

Elena: Well, let's wrap up here with this. You clearly have so much love and so much respect for the Tractor Supply customer, but you weren't one yourself before taking the role. So what's something new you've done after making this move to a brand like Tractor Supply?

Kimberley: In addition to being more of a gardener, I think, than I ever have been. Now I have two dogs. I have not yet stepped into the backyard poultry area, but I'm planning on it. But one of the things I loved that you would never, ever have guessed about me, had you known me prior to coming here. I have a great love for rodeo. I've not seen such hardworking, down to earth, humble athletes as I've seen in rodeo performers and rodeo athletes. Gosh, talk about working hard.

And nice folks. And it's a sport that's just starting to really, I think, get a little bit more attention. But it's also a sport where people think oh, rodeo. Yeah, okay. That's for cowboys in Texas and that kind of thing. And it's so much more than that. There's a lot of pride. There's a lot of, I think a sentiment around this is a sport that just makes you feel good in a really fun way. So, yeah, I don all of my rodeo gear and of course it's always got to have a little Tractor Supply in there.

And, yeah, I think the whole activity of it is a lot of fun. Either local level or all the way up to something big, maybe like an NFR or a Cheyenne or that kind of thing. So, yeah. It's fun when you become a fan of something yourself as a marketer that's adjacent to the customer. And that's been a great way for me to better understand who our core customer is, but also what new customers could look like, through that lens of rodeo.

Elena: I mean, we even have rodeo up in Minnesota now, so it's definitely becoming more mainstream, but yeah. Great. Tremendous athletes too. Both human and animal in rodeo. It's pretty cool. It was so fun to have you today. 'Cause I used to live in North Carolina. Wadesboro was my Tractor Supply. I used to work on a horse farm, so I'm a customer, or was more of a customer back in the day.

So it's so great to get to talk to you and just feel from you. It's funny, I was thinking during this interview, I feel from you the way I feel when I go into Tractor Supply. So I think that's right on probably for what you're aiming for.

Kimberley: Yeah, and one thing I should have said before, when I was talking about making that transition from automotive, I love cars. I still do. I still miss driving lots of really fast cars sometimes, especially EVs. But one of the frustrations sometimes is that because you don't have that strong influence in terms of that retail experience.

I would tell people, go test drive a vehicle or drive a friend's vehicle. That's the best way to fall in love with that brand or that and know if that car is right for you. Every single time I tell anyone about Tractor Supply. Go check out one of our stores. You will feel different when you walk into one of our stores. I promise I promise you will. It's got that hometown feeling. It's got that local community feeling.

Somebody will welcome you if you have any kind of question, they'll help you. That's in retail for sure. I think that's something that's really, it's good that we have that. It's really good. And how fortunate are we that the best way to experience our brand is to be right there in brick and mortar, like as a customer and talking to one of our team members. And they're just asking you about, oh, what kind of dog do you have?

And oh, that's great. How long have you had her? Fantastic. Would she like a treat? 'Cause we hide some treats back here behind the register. And you know, and then the next time you come in, they'll probably remember your dog's name. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Elena: Agreed. Definitely can feel it in my heart, the feel of being there and nice to have companies like that where it runs true. It's nice to know that there are companies like that out there. So thank you so much for joining us. Where can people follow you? Learn more about Tractor Supply, anywhere you want to send the listeners.

Kimberley: Awesome. You can certainly go to tractorsupply.com. Check out our social channels if you want to understand more about life out here and all the things. We're on all the channels, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, et cetera. And then LinkedIn of course is another great way to follow what we're up to. And that's where you'll find me sometimes.

Elena: Love it. Thank you so much. This was fun.

Kimberley: Thank you guys. Really appreciate it.