243. Where Your Profit Is Disappearing With John Cunningham

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builders Secrets. In this episode, I interviewed John Cunningham from OX Tools. OX Tools are in 35 countries around the world, but their tools are built a little differently. They're all about engineering their tools to enhance on-site efficiency. But in this episode, we talk a lot about on-site efficiency, wastage, and how you as the building company owner can improve your profitability through understanding where the inefficiencies come on site. It was a really interesting conversation and I hope you enjoy it. This episode of Professional Builders Secrets is brought to you by Apparatus Contractor Services. Apparatus provides full scope, end-to-end QuickBooks Precision construction accounting and CFO services for residential builders. If you feel like you can't completely trust your weekly and monthly financial reports, or you feel like you're flying blind, Apparatus Group will rebuild and operate your QuickBooks accounting system and give you precision construction accounting capability you can trust. Learn more at apparatusteam.com or on the APB Rewards partner directory. Welcome to Professional Builders Secrets, the podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt, and today I'm joined by John Cunningham from Ox Tools. John, welcome to the show.

Yeah, thanks, Will, and, uh, happy to be here.

Great to have you on. Where are you joining from today?

Actually, I'm joining from, uh, United States, so here in Baltimore, Maryland, so on the, uh, the, the East Coast of, uh, United States.

Yeah, lovely. I've never been to Baltimore. Is it, is it worth a visit, do you think?

Oh, absolutely. If you do come over, uh, happy to host you. One of our delicacies, uh, is steamed crab, so steamed blue crabs, which is, uh what we're famous for. And anybody who's from Maryland would know that we have a very, I guess, connoisseurs of steamed crabs, and you really can't get them steamed outside of this, the Mid-Atlantic area. So most places will boil crabs, but we steam them with Old Bay and black pepper and make them really good.

Delicious. Yeah, I didn't know that. Do you, how do you serve them up? A bit of butter or something, or how do you?

Yeah, it's certainly a chore. They'll be fully encoffed and closed and you'll rip 'em open and you'll pick the crab meat. And a lot of times people will dip 'em in butter, but yeah, most time it's just dipping it right back into the Old Bay and getting the seasoning. So it's always fun to watch a non-Marylander try to open up a crab and eat it. So I'll give you the secrets to making sure you don't eat the bad stuff.

Yeah, I must say I've always preferred when the crab is already out of the shell.

We've had a, there was a time where we saw a family from Russia and they were, didn't understand how to do it and they were taking the hammer and they were literally crushing it.

Yeah.

As Marylanders were like, oh, please somebody, somebody show them how to do this right. Cause you're, you're destroying it.

Well, I mean, I don't want to get too much into crab stuff, but is the strategy you use like the kind of nutcracker thing? Is that how you open up the?

So, what you'll do is there's a little fin on the back of the crab, you'll— on the apron, they'll call it. So, on the apron, they'll open it up and then you'll basically open up the crab.

Yeah.

At that point, you'll clean out the lungs and some of the guts and then you just crack it and you'll go through your technique and there's several different techniques. But, yeah, you're pulling the legs out and eating them like— I'll call it like lollipops. And, it's a chore and you'll typically do a dozen of crabs between 2 people and get your cold natty bow and beer and enjoy it. It's certainly a delicacy.

Sounds good. All right, well, that's on the bucket list, but let's talk about Ox Tools. Let's talk about your background and then we can make it relevant for today's audience, which is all the building company owners out there. But yeah, how did you get into this industry and what's it all about?

Yeah, so I've been in the tool industry for about 28 years. Actually started out in finance as an accountant and got a really good basis for business and understanding, you know, how money is made. So certainly love to spread some of that knowledge back to some of your listeners, but got into the industry and, you know, really started at the ground level. So started out as an accountant, worked my way up now to at OXSA as global CEO. And, you know, the industry was always attracted to the industry. Black Decker is, was headquarters here in Towson, Maryland, which is our hometown. So, as a kid, I knew I'd work for McCormick Spices or for Black Decker was my two companies that I want to work for. So, as a young, young lad, I would go up and get quarterly reports and study their financials and really fell in love with the company and joined it back in 1994. Joined Black Decker and really as an auditor with Ernst Young and then moved from finance into product development, into marketing, branding,, and ran Black Decker as a president for a couple years. So, passionate for contractors. It was what my love of contractors and understanding the building process. I'm pretty hands-on myself, so I use tools and do some woodworking and do some things around the house. But, yeah, just really, really fell in love with talking to contractors and, you know, had an obsession with product development and looking how do we make the contractor more productive. So that was my love that kept me in the industry now for 28 years and still kicking and still love what I'm doing.

It's interesting when you say finance, I'm thinking numbers, spreadsheets, all this. It doesn't sound like, you know, wanting to get on the tools. It's a bit different.

No, it's, yeah, my background's certainly a unique background and, you know, the I think it's benefited me because I can get sense of things like waste, things like where you're losing money and how you make money. And coming from a big corporation, I've always been an entrepreneur. I've always been take that tough road, try something new, try something adventurous. So when I had an opportunity to join Ox, it was really a small family company. Took the big corporation and brought it into a small family business. And, you know, over the last, you know, over the last 8 years, been able to scale the business and grow significantly and now compete with the bigger brands, even though, you know, we're still the disruptor, we're still a challenger brand. But I think it's that passion and energy that most of your business owners know that a lot of times success of a business is driven from the top down. And if you're a passionate owner,, that usually breeds culture, usually breeds, um, people that want to be around you and do great things. So yeah, it's, it's been, uh, it's been an interesting journey, but I wouldn't change it for the world.

It's an interesting dynamic you mentioned there about coming into a family business because in this industry, as you probably know, a lot of these builders that are listening today, that they're family-run businesses, whether or not they're working with their partner or, you know, they have multiple generations in the business as well. And a lot of them, hopefully they're getting to that point, like when they work with us or listen to content like this, where they're thinking about bringing in, you know, a general manager or someone externally. How did you find that transition for you personally?

You know, there's certainly, they always say with businesses, you don't hire friends or family and try to be objective. So for me, it was a challenge to go from working with many people in a corporation down to You know, the father that's doing HR, who's doing payroll, who's doing, you know, building and quality control and doing many different hats. So you had to learn pretty quickly that, you know, as a small company, you have to make ends meet. And as a small company, you know, I never worried about cash flow. And at Stanley Black Decker, I never worried about it 'cause, you know, they have plenty of cash. When you go to a small business, there's, you know, that Friday comes and you look at your bank account and said, whoops, we don't have enough to make payroll. So it's a different dynamic. So it does, it takes a, you know, it takes a lot of retraining and reprogramming to say, okay, you're going to have to do more jobs than just one. And you're going to have to be very frugal and be, you know, pennywise and pound foolish and making sure that, you know, that you're not sitting there going through, burning through cash and, you are thinking like the owner and know that you're, you know, you're employing other people and providing for them. So it was a tough transition, but you also realize that, you know, I knew what great looked like. I knew working with the best players in the industry. So I knew that, you know, we had to upgrade and make some tough decisions about, hey, this person's not going to make it, even though they might have been a shareholder, they might have been somebody— Yeah., you know, in the company, you, you basically make that transition to say, uh, let's make the tough decisions and get the right people.

Well, it sounds like it was the right move for you anyway.

Yep. It was, it was certainly, uh, you know, they, and I look at the, the, at contractors and I look at, uh, what we do as a company at Ox, you know, we're, we're here servicing, you know, we're servicing the, the needs of contractors. So we're, we're out there trying to make their jobs more productive, make their, you know, their, their lives easier. Knowing that if we make them productive, they're going to make more money, they're going to become loyal to our brand. And, you know, it's a rinse and repeat type strategy where we keep doing it over. And, you know, we pride ourselves on listening. You know, we go out to the job sites, we find those opportunities that, you know, sometimes the contractor doesn't even know they have an issue. They don't even know there's a better way to do things. And that's what really makes it rewarding for me is to be surrounded by people who who want to go out there and listen to the pros and listen to the opportunity to say, how do we make things better? How do we make your life easier?

Just one second. All right, we're back. So for the listeners out there, we had to do a little bit of a pause because my fire alarm in my building went off. And so I had to keep conversation with John about crabs for another 10 minutes, which was good. Anyway, we spoke about the Baltimore Ravens and all of the workings there, but John, thanks for being patient with that. Let's dive back into the conversation and I want to start with a little bit more about Ox Tools. We'll get into the specifics of what you guys do a little bit later, but just for a bit of context for the listeners out there, what is it that makes you different as a tool company when it comes to working specifically with builders?

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, so Ox Group, we actually have 4 brands that we own. We have the OX brand, we have Tracer brand, the Bora brand, and the Smart brand. So those brands are all like specialist brands. So whether it's hand tools for OX, whether it's marking products for Tracer, portable workstations for Bora, and oscillating tool blades for Smart, you know, we really get into making tools that are unique and have typically some type of either patented feature or some type of feature that is unique to us. So, we focus on the contractor. So, we're 100% pro-grade products. You know, we design the tools to be durable, to last on the job site. And then, what probably makes us unique is we're going out there and two paths. We'll either observe, interview, we'll talk to contractors and most time observe their pain points. We'll watch them do something and ask the question, "Why did you do it that way?" Mm-hmm. And they'll be like, "Ah, well, this piece doesn't work that way," and, you know, blah, blah, blah. So then that gives us the inspiration to say, "Hey, well, if we fix that feature or we fix that pain point, you know, we're going to come out with a better product." It may not be visible, it may not be obvious, but somebody who's using the tools 8 hours a day, you know, they're going to appreciate the fact that the ergonomics are better, the positioning of the buttons are better, and it's just a more well-thought-out product. So it's hard. It's something that takes more time. Mm-hmm. And takes a lot of iterations, but that makes us different. In addition, we are, I'll call it, very inventor-friendly. So we do, a lot of times you'll go out to a job site and a contractor will say, "Hey, I've created this piece here. I made it for myself." And there's many of our products that, you know, we took from the contractors and now we pay them royalties. We help, enrich them. And we've kind of cut through a lot of the legal BS, and we make sure that we're bringing that product to market fast. And, you know, contractors will always have ideas, and we are the first to listen. And a lot of times, we're the first company they'll come to because a lot of times they'll talk to me, and they're talking to the CEO of a company and saying, hey, shake hands and let's go work together. So those are some of the things that—

but— Yeah.

Ultimately, we're about productivity. If we can make tool, if we make the contractor more productive, we'll make them more money.

Something you said in our pre-call was interesting too. You mentioned, I think the phrase was measure once, cut once, which is against the grain of what the normal phrase is, which is what measure twice, cut once, I think. Talk to me about that. Talk to me about accuracy of tools and wastage and why that's so important in what you're doing.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think for your listeners, I mean, they'll be the first one to tell you that, you know, waste on the job site is usually their profits shrinking, right? Typically you're not building in huge waste numbers and you can look at statistics anywhere from 15 to 30% of a job's materials are wasted. So if we can cut down on waste, we're ultimately gonna make them more money. You think about the other challenges in residential building. I mean, certainly labor shortages probably is a worldwide issue. So if we can make, you know, if we can measure once and cut once, I just saved, you know, basically, you know, cut the cost in half. So, you know, so we look at it and say, okay, you know, tape measures, you know, they're notoriously inaccurate. And if you're— Yeah. If you have a new laborer or unskilled laborer using a tape measure, you might be off an 1/8 of an inch. And that's the difference of, you know, a piece of wood that's cut, you know, too short and you run it back over and you fit it in, then you just have to scrap that piece. Or, you know, now it's too long and on the other side, now you gotta run back to the miter saw, cut it again. So again, that's just twice the labor cost. So, you know, accuracy is— Yeah. Is paramount. I mean, if you can be more accurate and if you can be easier to use, then, then your skill level goes down. You can use the apprentice on the job site to do some of the measuring versus, you know, the 20-year-old vet who knows how to, knows how to read a tape measure versus some of the new guys that may still be looking at some of the fractional numbers. Here, at least here in the U.S., you have the luxury of using millimeters, which is probably a lot easier than fractional system here in the US. We make things complicated. So, um, you know, it's certainly, uh, if you can make it easier, then you're going to improve accuracy and reduce, you know, the labor.

Yeah, there's so many hidden costs that you're talking about there because there's the cost of the material, the cost of the labor like you mentioned, but then there's the timeline. If you compound all those small little inaccuracies across a job, then it's going to take longer to build. You're going to extend the time of build, which extends your fixed costs associated with the build and all that kind of stuff. And most of that is just hidden and wrapped up in a typical build, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And if you, you know, if I go back to death by a thousand cuts, it's usually not one big catastrophic issue that happens on the job site. It happens, but a lot of times it's just every hour, every day, there's just little inaccuracies here and there. And then, you know, if you go back and it's not right, you know, then God forbid you have rework and you have a callback, which again, rework and callbacks are just brutal to, you know, the owner. Those are just wasted dollars. So if you think about, you know, the whole flow of the job sites, there's so many things that just are critical to make sure you have the timing right. So yeah, if you have to cut it twice, now you're off by 10 minutes and that 10 minutes leads to 1 day and now the electricians can't come in because the—

Yeah.

The, the framer's still on site and the drywall guy can't come in and now he gets pushed out. And yeah, the, the accuracy you would say is probably one of those things where, uh, is probably not appreciated, but the, the guys who are doing it for a living understand that, you know, accuracy is, is, uh, paramount. And it, it certainly is a, probably the number one way to in increase your, your, uh, your profits.

Do you find that, uh, when you are, are you working directly with like the owner of, the, the building company, or more with the subcontractors? Because I know in Australia, but also in the US as well, the research we've done, there's often a split between companies that are set up with in-house carpenters and things like that, or they subcontract out.

Yeah, it's a little bit of both. I mean, I would say when we're looking for ways to improve the product, uh, we're probably working with the subcontractors. We're working with the guys who are swinging the hammers. Uh, but when you look at— step back and say, look, what are, what are some of the the challenges on the job site. And it might be more of a macro view, you know, then we'll talk to the owner and we'll get, you know, the owner involved. Here in the US, a lot of the guys are single entities, right? So they have, they go in, they bid it, they estimate it, they do the work, they sub it out and they're bringing it back on and they're taking the risks of, you know, making sure that they can make the profit. So a lot of times that owner, you know, is critical., in the whole process.

Okay. This next question is going to go straight over my head, but I know the listeners will find it interesting. Talk to me more about the mechanics of your tools. I think we've spoken at a high level about wastage and accuracy and making sure you don't need to cut multiple times, et cetera. What does that actually physically look like? Like, how are your tools different to other tools out there that help with that?

Yeah, I'll give you a part more of a story, a recent story. So, uh, we had actually a contractor who was doing a major renovation to a 300-year-old house. So Anybody who's in the building trades know if you're doing a renovation on a 300-year-old house, there is absolutely nothing square. So, you know, you're measuring every stud, you're measuring every angle in the house is being measured. So, you know, the example of a 10-foot ceiling would mean that you're probably getting up on a ladder, you're measuring it, you're going up the ladder, you're coming back down. So think about that process. And this, the guy who invented one of our products, He had over 300 studs that he had to cut. So he did about 30 of them, and he was an older gentleman. His knees were hurting. He's like, there's got to be a better way. So he ended up inventing this, what we call the SpeedFrame now, but he invented that product and essentially came to Lowe's, which was the partner. They had an innovation event. They came in, and he won the event. Lowe's trusted us enough to call us and say, "Hey, look, developing products is hard. Supplying Lowe's is hard. You're a contractor. You probably don't want to go down this route." So we worked with Ray and, you know, literally built the product that he wanted from his wooden model that he built. And we went in and did all the steps, all the design work, all the testing. So that was one where you're talking about now instead of, you know, using a tape measure to get into a bend, you now go from point to point and you get an absolutely dead nuts on accurate measurement. So you can lock the tool in place and then take the SpeedFrame right to your work and make the exact cut. So it really sped up the whole process of measuring, cutting, and then installing. And really, we timed it, it was about 8 times faster.

Wow.

By using the Speedframe, and it was about 90% more accurate by using the frame. So those are the types of things that we, you know, we look at a product where, you know, why is it inaccurate and how do you, you know, you look at digital lasers as another solution, but there's a lot of times you don't know if you got the laser, you know, level and are you getting an accurate measure. With the Speedframe, you know, the level is built into the measuring product, so not only do you get the measuring, but you also get the level, which is very thoughtful. But, you know, we can't take credit for it because it wasn't our idea. It was actually a contractor's idea, which it kind of goes back to our brand value and our brand mission is that we listen.

Yeah.

As simple as that. We listen and then we act and, you know, we trust contractors that they know what they're doing. We're product developers, they're builders. So that, that's probably the, the secret sauce of, of looking into, you know, how do you, how do you make it easy? And, you know, where is that, that problem? So that's just one example, but I think it kind of really in essence kind of comes back to saying that listening when, and for your listeners, you know, even on the building process, you know, sometimes the laborer might have some great ideas or he might know where the inefficiencies are. So for the build, for the owners, get out there and talk to some of your guys. Get out there and talk to, and the contractors and say, hey, wait, where are we finding waste? And you know, you'll be surprised how many times they'll come back and be like, you know, every time I go change my batteries, which was a whole nother phenomenon now that every job site is cordless. So yeah, we solved the tripping hazard, but now we have guys taking smoke breaks every time they change batteries.

That's an inefficiency right there.

Solve one problem, create another one.

Of course. Bit of a sidetrack here. Where does the buck stop in terms of, uh, risk when it comes to safety with tools? Is it, uh, like, who, who owns an accident in that scenario?

Yeah, I guess when you look at, um, you know, we obviously the manufacturer, we have our safety warnings, we have the right way to do it. Um, there's going to be plenty of protection there to make sure that the user's using the tool correctly. But ultimately, the owner is going to be— the buck stops with them, right? I mean, they can— their insurance company is going to rely that they have the safety training, that they have all the mechanisms in place to ensure that the people are doing the safe thing. So certainly, the manufacturers are going to, you know, if it's a faulty product, that's— the buck stops with us. But more times than not, it's the user creating an error, i.e., on a diamond blade, using the wrong diamond blade to cut something, you know, cutting steel-reinforced concrete with a wrong blade, and then a tooth falls off and cuts somebody. So, you know, we're going to come back and say you used the wrong blade and you didn't have the right training. And ultimately that insurance carrier for the contractors are going to have to cover that risk. Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That makes sense. Do you guys manufacture in the US or how does that all work?

Yeah, we, we design, we have design centers in both UK and in, uh, the US. So we typically will go source, uh, so we'll do the design work and then we'll find a manufacturer, uh, you know, anywhere from India to Thailand to Taiwan. Uh, majority of products, we actually, you know, oddly enough, are all our circular saw blades are made in Australia. So that's one of the areas that we do have. We designed the saw blade and we found a high-end industrial woodworking saw blade company to partner with us to go more into the 7¼, the smaller size blades. But yeah, that's probably our best known hidden secret is we do have manufacturing in Australia.

Wow. So you manufacture the blades here and then you're getting them shipped back to the US for like obviously you have operations in Australia as well and other parts of the world, but that seems like a long way away from anywhere.

Well, I mean, if you figure we get them from China, right? If the other alternative is getting from China and I guess, you know, going through, you know, going back to your listeners, I think the other part that they will appreciate is that over the last 24 months, the supply chain has, you know, for a manufacturer like us, supply chain has been an absolute nightmare.

Yeah.

Coupled up with the US, the tariffs have just been wreaking havoc on everyone. So I'm sure all your listeners are probably fed up now with materials shortages, with supply challenges, you know, going to go get, you know, drywall and saying, "Hey, you gotta wait 6 months to get, you know, get that many pieces," or having to wait, you know, when, you know, prior to all these different things, you know, prior to COVID, no one, you never waited for materials. It was always go get your plywood, go get your studs, and, and rock on now, you know, you got people saying, yeah, boy, it's going to take that. It's going to take 3 months to get that. Or, hey, I know you paid $1.50 for, you know, a 2x4 in the past. Now it's $9. Yeah.

So, so in your original challenge, if you're, um, manufacturing blades in Australia and the other tools in China or other parts of Asia and things like that, and then you're getting them shipped back to the US, you're paying a tariff and an increased tariff on that, all of those products, and then you're passing that on to the customer. Is that kind of the scenario?

I mean, that's a logical scenario. Um, but most major retailers, um, have to, I mean, COVID, COVID, most people took price increases, right? I think as inflation started skyrocketing, uh, the retailers definitely did, um, put a clamp down on price increases and, and, and forced most manufacturers to eat those, those tariffs. So, um, just despite the, uh, the news cycle that, um, that China is paying for all these tariffs, I can be the first one to tell you that that's not maybe the case.

Yeah. So I guess my question is, who burdens that cost in that chain of the, the additional tariff cost?

I mean, we do. We're burning. Yeah. If we can't pass price on, then, you know, we're the ones who are eating it. We had to pay at customs at at the port, we had to pay the government upfront and to get our goods. So yeah, there's no getting around it. So if we can't pass it along, then I would say majority of the tariffs that happened last year, we ate as a company.

Yeah. How are you primarily distributing your product at the user end? Are you like distributing through suppliers like Home Depot and stuff like that? Or is it direct to customer through online? How does it all work?

No, we go through distribution. So we'll go through everything from online, i.e., Amazon to, you know, the Bunnings for your situation. Bunnings, Home Depot, Lowe's. So some of the major, and then we'll look at supply houses. So here in the US, Whitecap, some of the supply houses, drywall supply houses, GMS, we'll distribute through to those. So we stay away from everything like a Super Cheap Auto or the Walmarts of the world or some of the more DIY places. We typically are priced, our products are too, typically too expensive for DIYs and they really gear for that pro so he can appreciate the quality that we put into it and pay for it.

How much do you get to control your price in that scenario? Cause there's some big, big players in there like the Home Depots, Bunnings of the world. I suspect they've got some sort of control over what gets put on their shelves and how much it costs.

Yeah, no, they ultimately set the retails, right? We can simply sell to them and suggest, but they set the retails. I mean, quite honestly, our, our, I guess our marketing machine is probably our unique, another unique thing for us. So we, we typically try to drive the demand. So if you look at our socials, you look at Instagram and look at TikTok, um, if you see that, you'll see us, uh, partnering with contractors to almost make the content. So, and it's not, you know, it's not overly brandy, you know, it's basically the contractor, you know, doing the work and, and. videotaping the fact that he's using a tool. He's not calling out OX, he's not calling out, you know, any features and benefits, just doing the job. And we typically, we like to be authentic. So we like to, it's risky. Sometimes the builder might do things that you don't want them to do, but you know, we think that authentic view is probably the best way to do it. So what happens is we create demand.

Yeah.

And people are walking into the Home Depot and Lowe's saying, hey, I want this tracer pencil. I want this OX Speed Frame. And, you know, not to say that we have power, but the more that we can pull our products through, the less it becomes about price. And, you know, we're not a commodity. We don't want to be a commodity. We'll never be the lowest cost guy. We're simply the innovation company. And for us, if we do it right and we connect with that contractor and residential builder, then they'll be our best salesperson because if they want it, Home Depot will carry it.

Well, I guess there's different ways to look at cost, right? Like you're talking about the actual exchange of money to get the tool, but all the stuff we were talking about before, wastage, time on site, fixed overheads, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, if you can prove that your tool is better than another tool at that efficiency metric there, then it's not more expensive.

100%, right? And what I— there's two things I love about contractors is one, they are brutally honest. And, you know, they will give you the feedback, right? Good, bad, or indifferent. If the tool doesn't work, they're not going to be like, "I don't want to hurt John's feelings, so let me tell him it's a good tool." Because, you know, they'll tell me, you know, I won't use the expletives, but they'll tell me, you know, exactly about that tool and whether it's good or bad. But yeah, in the example of measuring and the Speedframe, if it's 8 times, you know, faster and 90% more accurate, you can translate to say that, "Hey, you're going to save $1,400 a year." Yeah. A job.

Yeah.

And you know, this thing costs $200 and you're gonna save $1,400 on your first job. Most guys are like, it's a no-brainer. Like, yeah, give it to me. But yeah, you're right. I mean, that is becomes, you know, being a premium position, being a premium product, you also have to back it up, right? We can't, you know, if it's a bad product, you know, we'll be the first ones to admit it and fix it. And you know, people always ask about like warranties. What's your warranty? It's like, if it breaks on a job site, It's, it's going to be replaced. No questions asked. Because if it breaks on the job site, then we as a company didn't do our jobs. We didn't do it right. So, you know, we need to understand all those pieces and, you know, we become that trusted partner on the job site, not the guy trying to sell you a tool.

Do you have some data around some of those, the, I guess the cost savings and stuff you mentioned there? Have you collected that from customers?

I mean, we did time studies like on a circular saw blade, right? We saw how much we were over 30% faster than, you know, the competitive blade. So we went through and did time studies and realized like in a day on how many cuts you have in a day, it's over $250 of savings that the contractor will have from just a time savings. So, you know, the blade costs $10. So why wouldn't you buy the OX blade if it's gonna save you $250 a day? So that's, It's those type of things. Speedframe is about $1,400 per job that you would save based on, you know, how many cuts or how many measurements you would have. But yeah, we'll go through diamond blades, we'll go through the same type of time studies of how much faster and translate that back to what does it mean for a contractor? 'Cause they, and you know, the other thing about contractors is they don't believe any marketing. So all the things I just rattled off, every one of the, every one of your listeners right now is just saying, this guy is full of. Crap, 8 times faster. 8 times faster than what, a turtle? So, you know, we also are very heavy into sampling. Like, we love to put tools into people's hands. Like, put them in their hands and, you know, within a day, within a week, they're going to tell me, you know, you got it and this is the best and, you know, and thank you. And they'll tell— and our best marketing and best salespeople are contractors. They tell their— Yeah. They walk up to a site and the guy, he's got a new cool tool and he's twice as fast as the next guy. The next guy's like, well, shit, I got to get one of those now because Bob over here is blowing me out of the water here in terms of productivity.

It makes me think of the taste test, the typical, you know, like the Pepsi Coke, no branding, put it in two cups, tell me which one you like better.

It's funny when we did our tape measures, right? We did exactly that. All the tape measures, you know, in terms of the size and the function and how it feels in hands. We put them in an empty box, uh, unbranded, and we had the contractor put their hand into the box and feel around. And he came back and said, ah, this, this is the one I fit, you know. He pulls it out and he's like, well, shit, it's the Ox one. Like, I got a Stanley FatMax I've been using for 20 years, and this Ox one's the one I prefer. So yeah, absolutely. That's That's always, that's always the fun part to go unbrand it. And you know, there is a lot of brand bias of, you know, contractor might see a red one or a yellow one and be like, oh yeah, I love that, or I hate it. And then when it's unbranded and neutral, you know, they give you the honest feedback.

Tell me more about, we spoke about briefly about the, the challenges with finding quality team members and stuff in the current climate. You also mentioned like, inaccuracies and mistakes made by, you know, apprentices and things like that when they're untrained and they're not quite sure exactly how to measure and they might have to do it twice. How do you overcome that and how can contractors or builders that are listening today with their teams, um, you know, make sure that they're able to deliver that consistent, you know, accuracy in their jobs?

Yeah, I mean, there's some of the things we do. We like to go back to technical training, um, schools, right? We go back to If somebody can learn one, an Knox product, or learn with a new technique, then they're there for life, right? They're going to keep doing it the same way. So that's the first thing. And for the people listening, I mean, I think a lot of it is, you know, I hate to simplify things, but even in my world as CEO, the number one thing that makes a team more productive is communication. Explain to people some of the challenges on the job that you have. Making sure everybody's aware of deadlines. You know, sometimes there's language barriers that come into play that makes it a little bit more challenging. But, you know, certainly, I think people understanding the expectations and understanding what's going to happen and, you know, have them ask questions. But, you know, a simple— go back to your safety comment. You know, that's the biggest thing that you can do is educate people on unsafe practices. Yeah. And have everybody kind of look for those unsafe practices and call it out and say, look, anybody can stop a job site if you see unsafe practices because it's not worth— one, it's not worth somebody losing their lives, but it's not for the owner. You know, that's, you want those extra set of eyes to make sure that they're calling out things, not because they're trying to be a tattletale, but safety's everybody's job.

Yeah. Well, John, thanks so much for coming on the show today. I've had a lot of fun, um, got to learn a bit about crabs in, in Baltimore. But, um, more importantly, I think you shared some really interesting, um, perspectives on the tool industry and, and how builders can start thinking about wastage and, and actually asking their subbies and things like that around, like, you know, where, where is wastage happening. And, and just being more aware about that is a really good starting point by the sounds of it. So obviously that'll, you know,, you know, played into opportunities for, for tools like Ox. So, um, best place for people to go next, oxtools.com. Is that right?

Oxtools.com. And I encourage you to follow our, our socials, uh, on TikTok and Instagram. Um, you know, certainly, uh, they're entertaining, but more importantly, there you'll, you'll hear about the latest tools, uh, that we have coming out there. We typically will spend more money on, on our socials than we would on our website. So. That would be probably the best place that I would start with. And plus you can interact and ask questions. And crazy as it sounds, I know I'm a busy guy. I interact with the contractors on the socials. I'll answer questions, I'll ask them questions. So I am a hands-on CEO that loves to hear from the experts. And I have a, I guess a passion that I don't design tools, I don't use them. So I always go out to users and confirm whether it's right or wrong. I defer to my boss is your listeners. You are my boss and I'm beholden to asking the experts.

I love that. That's a good mindset.

Just don't fire me.

Cool. Well, yeah, we'll definitely share links to TikTok and Instagram on the show notes as well as the website so people can go find out more. If you want to add any final thoughts, John, just last tips for the listeners out there.

Yeah, no, I think, you know, again, for the owners, you know, get engaged, get involved in, you know, same philosophy I have, ask the questions, always ask one more question. Don't assume anything. And I think if you ask those questions and you challenge your team, you can find ways to make more money. Quality control and reduce rework. It's probably no different than me running a business in the tool space. They have probably the same processes and same challenges. So the biggest thing is I'll leave with communication is key and you can never overcommunicate.

Great. Well, John, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks to our listeners as well. We'll wrap it up there, but Unleash the power.

Thanks, Will. Have a good one.

Yeah, you too. Thanks, John.

All right, cheers.