The CWB Association Welding Podcast
The CWB Association Welding Podcast
Episode 181 with Charlie Griffin and Max Ceron
The CWB Association hosted this year's annual CanWeld Conference in collaboration with Fabtech Canada in Toronto, ON. Join us as we bring you special episodes recorded on-site to keep our members on top of what’s new and exciting in the steel and welding industry.
Today's guest is Vice President of Sales at Exocor, Charlie Griffin. With 18 years at Exocor and a background in industrial sales, Charlie’s transition into the welding world is full of insights, challenges, and the crucial role of education. We dive deep into product traceability and quality assurance in the ever-evolving steel industry. Charlie sheds light on the importance of comprehensive certification and the necessity of a dedicated QA department to meet stringent market demands. Charlie’s insights offer a treasure trove of knowledge for anyone looking to understand the welding industry's current trends and demands, making this episode a must-listen for industry enthusiasts and professionals alike.
Check out:
Website: https://exocor.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exocor/
A special thank you to Cooperheat Equipment for sponsoring our Podcast Booth at 2024 Fabtech Canada! https://cooperheatequipment.com/
Thank you to our Podcast Advertisers:
Canada Welding Supply: https://canadaweldingsupply.ca/
Miller: https://www.millerwelds.com/products/mobilearc
What did you think about this episode? Send a text message to the show!
All right, I can check. Check, I'm good. So I'm Max Duran. Max Duran, cwb Association Welding Podcast, pod pod podcast. Today we have a really cool guest welding podcast. The show is about to begin.
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Speaker 1:This episode is brought to you by our friends at Miller. We're excited to talk to you about their training solutions, offering MobileArc, an augmented reality welding tool designed to introduce and recruit students to welding. We all know that engaging new welders can be a huge challenge. Mobilearc uses augmented reality to simulate live welding so that recruits can get hands-on experience that introduces them to a career in welding and that only seven pounds, it's easy to transport to remote learning and recruiting events. Introduce, recruit and inspire the next generation of welders with mobile arc. Head to miller weldscom to discover the right training solution for you. Hello and welcome to another edition of the cWB Association podcast. My name is Max Theron and this week we are here at Fabtech Canada, canweld. We're co-locating CWB Group with the whole Fabtech team. We're going to have a great week. Today is day one of Canweld, day two of Fabtech, and it's early. We're rocking and rolling. I'm here with Charlie Griffin from Exocor. How are you doing, charlie?
Speaker 2:Very well.
Speaker 1:How's the day been so far?
Speaker 2:It's been great.
Speaker 1:Yesterday we had today or yesterday. No, I want to talk about this morning oh. Yeah, let's start there, because I already heard some good stories.
Speaker 2:The morning had adventure. This morning had adventure, I should say. We had a fire alarm at my hotel just after five in the morning I'm usually an early morning riser anyways, but uh. So everybody had to exit the hotel in their jammies or whatever and go to the lawn, and there was, of course, no fire, which is a good thing, but uh, just uh, start your day, yeah then you couldn't get your car out of the parking lot and then the little guard arm that takes your car out to come here.
Speaker 2:I said, well, I'm plenty of time, I'm gonna come. Uh, it wasn't working, so I Ubered it down here. So I just, uh, I don't like to be late, so here I am Well let's hope the rest of the day is nothing but awesomeness. I'm sure it will be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so so you're here with Exocor, your VP of sales. 18 years with the company, that's a commitment. That's not something that you see very often anymore. You're right.
Speaker 2:You're right. Yeah, it's a long-term position and I like my job, I like what I do.
Speaker 1:What did you start at? You know like your position 18 years ago.
Speaker 2:I was actually VP of sales, really, hello, I'm Charlie.
Speaker 1:Make me the boss? Yeah, not really, but I.
Speaker 2:I owned a distributorship, a gas distributorship. I sold it and I knew where I wanted to go. I also knew where I didn't want to be. I built a company up with some partners and some good employees and I knew Excor well. So I knew when I exited my old company, the company I had built was going to be taken care of, but I just didn't want to see it change. I thought I only wanted to go to a couple of different places possibly, and fortunately there was a good spot for me here and I knew the company well.
Speaker 1:So you had been working in the sales field through the distributorship company for a long, long time.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was for 10 years. I did that Part of that. I started in this industry at a, at an independent distributor going way back, and I was in. I started in sales outside outside sales, and then I became the sales manager there at that place and, uh, that's where I I I became familiar with his business and and when you started down this sales path, you know, almost 30 years ago.
Speaker 1:Then, yeah, were you in this like field or specter of business working with you, know, know, the welding industry, or where you know how did, where did you cut your teeth?
Speaker 2:I cut my teeth at uh in industrial sales and uh in primarily Niagara and Hamilton, ontario and um, I was selling pipe valves and fittings, so industrial supplies. So I knew lots about sales. I knew nothing about welding, yeah, and I had friends who were with this startup company that was with a new gas supplier in the country and I had lots of success with what I was doing but their stories were always more exciting.
Speaker 2:It was just you know, I got fooled because it just seemed to be just interesting. They were always trying to attract me to their company. Hey, come on over, You'll be good at this. I don't know anything about welding. When they finally convinced me, I jumped in. I took a welding course at Niagara College. I enrolled in that course because I needed to know what I was doing, the jargon even. Exactly right. I started that prior to me, starting with the company.
Speaker 1:Don't look back you know I mean here, what was that learning curve like coming into the industry? I mean, selling industrial supplies is going to give you kind of just a taste for the, the environment, right, um. But then getting into the welding bubble, there's a lot, it's huge.
Speaker 2:I I made the mistake, uh, when I first got in this business, of thinking that, well, geez, you know I'll take a course, I'll work hard, I'll. I had a nice mentor. That was quite helpful, uh, and pretty soon I'll know everything there is to know about this industry what a mistake, I gotta tell you because you know. Some 30 odd years later, of course, you find out. You discover that that nobody knows everything in this industry it's too broad it. It's too uh, too big but uh and always growing.
Speaker 1:There's always new stuff every day.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Which brings us to Fabtech.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, that's right.
Speaker 1:Right, so you know you're out here. Do you guys have a booth on the floor? We do, and for you and your team coming to Fabtech Canada, you know, with a booth, what is it that you're looking to get out of the conference here? Are you coming here to promote or are you looking here to make sales or kind of everything?
Speaker 2:A little bit of everything, but I'll tell you we're certainly well-known across the country but, I think it's time that we, but people don't know everything about us.
Speaker 2:So I think you know my goal when we're here is to sort of fill it. So, first of all, I guess to introduce yourself to people who don't know us, because it's not everybody you know we're well known but to fill in the blanks because, uh, people just maybe know a piece of us. Hey, you guys are the x, you guys, yeah, you guys are this x or y, or you know. And I go no, we're much more than that. That's what we really want to inform.
Speaker 1:Here's what we do you know when we have the educational kind of just like let people know absolutely yeah, yes, yes and you know with your 18 years now with the company, how much has the company changed in your 18 years there, like, do you guys sell the same stuff you sold 18 years ago, or is it like a?
Speaker 2:bazillion more things you know our secret, part of our success say it that way is because we're focused. We're focused on filler metal, and every time over the years, when somebody suggested to me or we talk about it and we say we should add, this part of our success is that we're just really focused on filler metal. What we've done, though, is we've expanded our offering. We've expanded that filler metal line, because, of course again, like we talk about, our industry is quite broad. It takes us a long time because we're extremely careful about how we do that, because you only get that one chance to make a good first impression.
Speaker 2:And when we introduce a product boy, we really micromanage the daylights out of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the electrodes game, I'd say it's always been kind of an interesting market because there's always specialty rods, there's always specialty situations and things that have been created for specific things, situations and things that have been created for specific things. But it was always sort of like the big three, big four, consumables players out there, electrodes players for me coming up, and then now, you know 2024, I walk around a show floor like this and I see the variety. You know, like, when I was coming up, it was like either you're running an excalibur or you're running a hobart and that's it. You know, those are your two options and if you're running an excalibur, or you're running a hobart and that's it.
Speaker 1:You know, those are your two options. And if you're somewhere real fancy, they got ok, 55, and you're like wow, that's a fancy one, you know, and that kind of, was it. Yes, now you can see like and it's so much more accessible, like I got rock mount in my garage, like there's all these amazing crazy companies coming up with all these. You know proprietary solutions. How do you manage navigating that world? What do you like? What do you want to bring in? What don't you bring in? You know, it's twofold.
Speaker 2:Sometimes there's some obvious one where there are holes in the supply chain and I go gee, you know this particular category of product for whether there's a tough time getting it, or or, or difficulty or um, an opinion of course, but I go gee, what's out there is not so nice, that's just you know. And, and today I think that's part of that change. You know, uh, this industry is exciting because you talked earlier about just new technology and things like that. The industry changes as to what it wants today. And today, you know, there's a lot of new welders, you know, and there's certainly a shortage of welders across our country.
Speaker 2:So the need for products that are easier to use is more important today than ever, in my opinion, and I think that's a big focus. You know, it has to meet all of the criteria to make that product acceptable and certified and things like that, and perform the way it should. But it also has to be really easy to operate, because today you've got a lot of new entry-level people in welding and things like that. So ease is more important today than ever. You can say it was always important, more important than ever, I think, today.
Speaker 1:So ease is more important today than ever. You can say it was always important, more important than ever, I think today. And you know, one of the things that we have here at CWB always on the top of our minds is sort of the we're in the certification game, right. So electrodes fall under certification codes, and it's something that we are quite stringent on here in Canada, much more so than many other countries and often the countries that produce many of these electrodes we often get questions about. You know, can I use this for this job I got it overseas or can I use that? And for us, as a certification body, we have to navigate those waters pretty carefully because there's pretty tight rules On the sales side. Obviously you can sell theoretically whatever you wanted, but how does Exacor manage those certification standards in Canada when having to deal products?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. I mean, first of all, everything we sell is fully traceable. That's again something that we're known for. Cell is fully traceable that's again something that we're known for. So that helps out a lot, because our product will do whatever we say it's going to do because we have a traceability with it.
Speaker 2:We give you an actual cert with it, not a typical. So today, like you're mentioning, more than ever there's all kinds of things to consider. There's AML, like approved manufacturer list from people. The specs are tighter. We have an AWS spec and sometimes you've got a spec that's beyond that spec for that particular class of wire. Again, that focus just really helps us out because we've got a QA department at our company and when we get an order with a variety of specs or a variety of questions attached to it, we really focus on it. It's important, yeah, Very important, More important today than ever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you guys test rods out on your own? Absolutely. Do you have a little weld lab where you can be like, hey, let's. I mean for me it'd be like let's go play with the rods, but I'm sure there's probably a business motive behind it. Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 2:We do actually, you know, and I'll say we are better than ever at doing that. You know, we'll take a pile of products and then we have a variety of criteria. We always I've got two very talented people in our staff, uh, who do that for us and we do a comparison and, of course, the I. They all see I I don't influence that at all, I mean I want, I want the actual results you know, what I mean.
Speaker 2:So we, we make that as certainly as impartial as we possibly can, and then you know, we it works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now, access to information now is easier than ever I can. I can Google 90% of what I want to know about a product you're selling. How do you arm your sales team on that 10% that that closes the deal? Because, again, the client today may know just as much as you about certain things, about the thing you're trying to sell them yes but you gotta, you gotta make the difference somehow. You're right. Yeah, what is that? What do you do?
Speaker 2:um, most of our people, we. You know that. That saying that everybody talks about you, we've got a website but just in the midst of updating it or all that kind of stuff sort of a perpetual statement you make. I'm really proud of our website because we pack a lot of information on there and we update it constantly. So we utilize that and I tell my guys to utilize that because I want them to be using the same information that everybody gets to see it's consistent. And then we have a chat line. That I know that I'm. When, when I said, yes, we, I want a chat line or chat as a system on our website, I go I'm the wrong demographic because I never use that chat line, I never do for anything.
Speaker 2:I but I know it's not all about me, so I can't tell you how much that gets used by our customers today I, I'm I Gen Xer, I'm somewhere in the middle, I'm of the generation that we hate to answer the phone. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, like I would rather not talk on the phone than just about anything in the world. Right, I like to converse through text and emails and messaging, and you know we use a chat system at work. It saves my life, because that was one of the parts of business that I never liked was answering the phone, and I don't know why. It's very crucial to talk to people, yes, but I felt like on the phone like it, I never. It was like I lacked my own traceability. I would talk to someone and then I would forget what I had said or what I had promised or you know, and I'd lose track of it because it was like in the ether, right.
Speaker 3:So like for myself.
Speaker 1:I need it written down. So if you need some for me, put it in a text, I won't forget. You know what I mean. Right, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's the same as me. But the thing that I certainly have learned is that everybody has a different system. What surprised me most about our chat system. I always thought, gee, it's going to be much younger guys than me, of course, or people than me who need access to that. But I was surprised because people dealt with us for 20 years.
Speaker 3:They were all over it. They were all over it, you know, and I go gee, you know and everybody's different how they communicate.
Speaker 1:You know and I prefer the phone.
Speaker 2:I might prefer to answer the phone. Hey, let's have a conversation about this, but not everybody works that way, so we want to have all those choices. Basically, you want to send us an email, you want to talk through our chat system, you want to call us on the phone. We still have people who fax us, oh wow.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. I don't have a fax machine.
Speaker 2:Every once in a while we'll get a fax order. I go go. Wow, these guys still use fax, you know.
Speaker 1:So you have to be prepared for everything, yeah, whatever somebody's comfortable with, you know so so what are some of the products that you would say are kind of your flagship products, like the ones that people are going to know you for, or, if they don't, they should they certainly know us probably.
Speaker 2:Uh, on average for cabalco, cabalco specialty steels well, cabalco is is a leader worldwide for flex cord stainless that's what they're known for so so and and that's interesting because I'll say, more people know us because of that probably, or possibly, than anything else as we grow and as we've gained foothold in other areas and things like that, of course we've expanded on that. But certainly that's a big brand where we've been the exclusive provider for that product for Canada for many years and we've got a great partnership with those guys. So Cabelco Cordwires, stainless steel in general. You know, when we started we really our company started, our company started out and its foundation was stainless steel and nickel and we've grown from there. So we don't dominate many fields, certainly in Canada, you know, with the mild steel and stuff like that, but stainless steel we do.
Speaker 2:We've got an extremely large footprint in stainless steel and nickel and we've earned it, yeah, and we keep expanding that and keep working at that, keep refining that. Where we've grown from there is we add products incrementally and very proud of the products that we've added as far as mild steel, right from 7018 to 70S6 to 71T1, t9, t12.
Speaker 1:All the bases covered now Almost.
Speaker 2:Almost all the bases. You know we certainly have the ones that we want to be, and if we don't have an answer, because you know we have our partner mills that we work with to get exactly what we want we just don't do it Because if we can't do it, well, we don't want to. We also have something for you, Absolutely Great.
Speaker 1:Someone else will have something for you, Absolutely. Now. You talked about stainless steels. I'm a lover of stainless steel. I probably got enough hexavalent chromium sticks in me to send me to the moon.
Speaker 1:I'll probably glow when I die. But I worked with stainless most of my career in the mining industry For corrosion resistance and even nickel cladding in the potash mines and servicing the mine area. And stainless has exploded in the last decade. Great. For a long time it was very fine to just have your 304, 308, 309, 316. And when I started there was 324 around quite a bit. Now you don't see 324. I don't think I've seen it in a long time. 316, 308, 309 are kind of the basics. I don't know if 304 is around anymore, but this is a base. Yeah, now you got the duplexes and the 22s and you have all these new mixes of stainless. The nickel and canal world has exploded into a million varieties. How do you keep up with that? Or how do you keep your products, um, I guess broad enough to satisfy the majority of your customers?
Speaker 2:we we stay current. We're always looking at, at new products, testing and things like that. We I didn't mention, but we also we represent exclusively uh, special metals for Canada for nickel, and an interesting fact is that 80% of all the nickel alloys welded with today were invented by special metals. Really Special metals is the grandson of Inco.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's where it came from.
Speaker 2:So we use terms in our industry for nickel like Inconel and Minel. Those are all terms that are owned by special money. It's like the Kleenex of nickel.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:So I think the things that changed for us because it's interesting, we talk about nickel and years ago there was tons and tons of code. Electrode was the big way to weld lots of nickel, of course, nirod, nirod, their product, and duns of codelecto was the big way to weld.
Speaker 1:Uh, lots of nickel, of course, nairod, their product, thyrod, and today, uh, you know people again, that development of something easier to weld with there's there's flux cord, nickel, those same things you used to weld with years ago that there were no flux cord options like 625 and 622 and that I remember today early iterations of wired nickel and it wouldn't uh, it wouldn't make it down the liner it would like it would snap because it was such stiff wire yeah, right it would keep the helix so hard, you'd see your whip moving through the wire and, uh, I remember being like, how are you gonna do this? But stainless flux core is a dream, as poisonous as it is. Where are your respirators? Kids, fresh air respirators, and I'm sure it's gotten better. Companies are more vigilant of the poisons of stainless.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:But stainless flux core just goes in like a dream.
Speaker 2:It does. Yes, it does for sure, and again, we're pleased to have a product that is the standard. You know what I mean. Kevalko is really well known for it. They actually have a hexavalent reduced from a nickel or, sorry, stainless steel plus cord wire out there these days. But yeah, they're, they're, they're. It is a dream to weld.
Speaker 1:Yeah, plus cord, plus cord, nickel is easy. So what's your? What's your welding skills like now?
Speaker 2:I, I don't weld very rarely, very rarely do I pick up a torch these days. Um so, uh, you know, I'll say that they were, uh, fair to poor. You know, years ago, just just just from testing, I was the, you know, I was like a lot of people in our industry. Yeah, I could muster through a product demonstration and then, of course, I'd stamp my you know my distributor days be demoing near a bonafide, really high quality welder, yeah, so they, they they would watch me struggle through for a minute and I go.
Speaker 2:You can make this look a lot better than I just did.
Speaker 1:Try it, you know, and that's that's what you became expert at, so I don't, I don't weld too much today. So you know you've been with the company a long time.
Speaker 2:I think this business has grown more and more. I think it's bigger today than I thought it would. I probably thought it would be, and a lot of things I'll say I didn't recognize, I think, the technology and equipment.
Speaker 2:Today we don't sell equipment of course, but the advances in equipment is just mind-boggling To me. It seemed like the last 10 years have been the more profound than the previous 15 years, you know prior to that. So I think, just trying to stay somewhat current with those details and those advancements I think are amazing. Automation, which we've always talked about for years, is coming. It's so much more commonplace.
Speaker 2:I remember years ago, hey you guys have a welding robot or something like that Of course, those days are far beyond that or orbital welding or things like that. I'm not going to say they're mundane, but they're everywhere, yeah they're around yeah. And I think we're going to see more and more of that. I think that that's going to continue down that trajectory, because we need to don't expensive expensive crap in the consumables world, like for electrodes.
Speaker 1:What do you think is trending now, like do you see more wired products as we start to get away from and this is things that I'm heard. I'm paraphrasing other people, but you know we seem to be getting away from tig, getting more into like a semi-automatic process for speed, for cleanliness and stuff like that. Do you see?
Speaker 2:a trend? I do. I think that, uh, you know, when we talked about TIG TIG was we only discussed TIG and, as in a manual breath, you know, hey, this is, oh, they're TIG welding. You know, it's all manual, but today, of course, we have automated TIG you know which is just profound, but I think the processes remain the same. Um, you know, it's still TIG welding, with a whole bunch of advancements attached to it, and a roll of wire now, and a roll of wire now versus cut length you're right, and I think that you're just going to see that productivity is important.
Speaker 2:I talked about, you know, how the specs are more advanced today. I mean, you know impacts are. Everybody wants greater impacts on, on, on a lot of the welding that they're doing today and things like that. So I think, uh, automation and uh, and and even tighter specs, you know where do you see it going?
Speaker 1:You know you come to shows like this to kind of get the, the pulse right of of advancements. But I'm sure your company, like many of the companies here, they're already thinking five years down the road trying to figure out what, what's the next big thing on the horizon to get the to get on it.
Speaker 2:You know what are you looking for I think, um, you know, we, we, we. You mentioned it just a little while ago about you know, when you talked about health and health and safety, welding fumes and things like that. There's lots of products out here to capture weld fume and things of that nature, but producing wires that produce less hazardous things in that weld fume that fixes it right off the top Right absolutely so you really eliminate it, control it much more to a great degree at the source is important as well.
Speaker 2:And again, that attitude I started out earlier, where things need to be easier to weld with today they really do and, of course, more productive. The cost of labor is high. We want to keep those jobs.
Speaker 1:Electricity is high, everything is high, everything is expensive these days.
Speaker 2:So you need to be more productive. We always used to talk about it, but years ago it would be well. Well, we're going to be more efficient because we're gonna. We want to pay 20 cents less a pound for this. You know, today. I think the the productivity wins out over that. You know how? About if I made you well 20 percent faster, yeah. Or if I reduced your cleanup by 50 percent, or? Something like that and I think it's just a smarter society, it's a smarter decisions. I'd say out there, you know.
Speaker 1:I have noticed that too, yeah.
Speaker 2:It used to be tougher in days gone by. Hey, you're going to pay 25 cents a pound more for this product, but you'll make it up and you know, and here's why. And yeah, I'll still go with the old stuff. 25 cents is cheaper you know, yeah people do do get it.
Speaker 1:You know, they do understand. I've seen that lots, you know. As you made those comments, I, I really I agree wholeheartedly. I think there's a new type of consumer, even in the shops now. This next generations that are coming up are not so concerned with price. They're more concerned with quality or efficiencies or redundancies or all the C's that they want to do. But I think they grew up in a generation where they saw everyone trying to be as cheap as possible and not get ahead.
Speaker 1:That's not what makes your business thrive is being cheap. What makes your business thrive is having good business practices.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent. A hundred percent. You know, I'd walk into shops and I go. I don't hear any welding going on right now. But you're really happy because you saved money on that product that you bought. But there's a problem with it right now there's a stoppage, or I hear people grinding a lot more than they could or should, right.
Speaker 1:So?
Speaker 2:yeah, I thought there were welders. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:Well, every bad welder is a good grinder, so well said. Yeah Now. You well said yeah, now you know. For for exocor, your company's grown. The company's grown also lots over the years. Is there any desire to branch out? You said you know, like different type of products, there must be a uh, it must come up every now and then like maybe we can get into x game, since it's sort of related to what we do, right with it does come up, but we don't Every time we sort of steel ourselves, we discipline ourselves and say gee our home is filled with metal.
Speaker 3:That's what we want to continue to do so.
Speaker 2:We will be adding some new products to our portfolio. We do it slowly, but I think the biggest thing for us is geography. We're growing in areas that we didn't exist. I'll tell you, we have offices in strategic areas in Canada, which we've always had, and we've expanded those and we've increased their size and things like that. It's south that we're going actually, and a big focus for us is expanding what we do in the States, and I'll tell you, I'm not too ashamed to say we sort of took the US for granted. It was always a bonus. We didn't make ourselves easy to be found in the States and then we would get these orders oh, people found us.
Speaker 1:Oh, cool Sister company, yeah, we'd be oh, this is great.
Speaker 2:And then formalize this so today we've got we just doubled the size of our office in Buffalo. We've got people on the road and we thought we would expand slowly in the States, but we really, really sped that up because of demand. So we've got people in the field, we've got logistical warehouses in Atlanta and Dallas and that's going to be growth for us. It'll be long after I'm finished.
Speaker 1:We'll still be expanding. It's a big market down there. Uh, we see a place for us, so that that's that's well. That's interesting because you know like it's in in many aspects. You look at the us market as a saturated market, you know, but there is niches to hammer out right and and and. The thing about the us is that it's 380 million people, so a little niche is millions of dollars, absolutely right, so finding it's not those.
Speaker 1:Like I always tell people in the us, either you're a millionaire, you're pushing a cart down the street like it's kind of one or the other bigger spread there.
Speaker 2:I would say for sure, you're right, you know, and we've discovered there aren't as many people like us that just focus on filler metal. So, again that tells us there's. Like I said, we thought there was a place for us there just because somebody would call us up from the oil district from somewhere in Texas looking for some unusual alloy that we have on our shelf 1682, and they need a pile of it. We know about that product, we know how to weld it, we know how to supply it.
Speaker 2:We know the things you're looking for in it and we would supply it and we would take it for granted is what we would do. But today we're formalizing that We've got great growth down there.
Speaker 1:Do you market yourselves and this might be getting a little deep in the weeds here, but, moving into the U? S, do you market yourself as a Canadian company? Are you saying like, hey, we're here from Canada, it comes from Canada, even though like wherever it comes from. But or or do you position yourself as this is Exagore USA? Um, because they, you know the system down there. Does they watch that, you know?
Speaker 2:that's a great question, because I'll tell you when we first started. I'll tell you how we first started we started out and I would have you know some of the canadian guys go down to the states and try and sell it did.
Speaker 1:That didn't work, actually at all you need american guys to sell to america. You need american guys, you know, and I were.
Speaker 2:You know, this is our neighbor to the south and we're so similar and and we have lots of common things. Boy, there's a difference. And so, to answer your question, we don't hide the fact that we're Canadian-based, but we also talk about the roots that we put down in the States, the investment that we put down in the States to say that, hey, we're part of this as well, and there's no hesitation when we talk about, hey, we're a Canadian-based company. It doesn't seem to hold us back or hurt us. Good, good.
Speaker 1:Is there plans for outside the Americas? You guys look at Mexico, you guys going south.
Speaker 2:We do a little bit, but I think the US is going to keep us busy enough to be honest with you. So again I'll say we're with other countries, Mexico being one of them, where that's kind of the stuff that does find its way to us, and we're really not going to develop that other than we'll just take those as if they come. If they come yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll talk, we'll hop out we'll do whatever we can and we.
Speaker 2:It's funny that the calls that we get from and where we supply stuff we supply stuff into asia, you know, and things like that. They'll surprise me, but there's always a reason why they're connected to another company or they like some product that we had and they've written it into a spec or something like that. But no, we're gonna. We'll be busy enough focusing on the states for a long time, you know. Oh, I'll be a long retired, I think, before well, you've brought that up a couple times.
Speaker 1:Are you pulling the trigger?
Speaker 2:soon. No, no, no, no, no, no, not at no, no, no, not at all.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, should people be sending in resumes to explore.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no. I enjoy what I do. It's a lot of fun, we're having lots of success and I like it.
Speaker 1:I mean, everything's a job Every day is not a picnic, but it's good it's fun, specifically in terms of the relationship with the CWB and the CWB Association that we work in. Your company, your group, is a part of our supplier committee. You guys help out, sponsor many of our events. You're involved with what we do. What's the desire and reasoning for a company like Exacor to work with a not-for-profit like the association?
Speaker 2:I'm going to say we like dealing with CWB. I was trying to say we like it better today. You know what the difference is. You're more visible, you're out there more. You know what I mean, and before it was always just hard to get people to talk and get a question answered and things like that.
Speaker 2:Today it's much easier and that interaction has just helped us, I'll say, develop our relationship with CWB, just that. I know many of your people and they're all helpful. You know what I mean, and before it was a long time for an answer.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I remember waiting on that 1-800 number line as a shop owner and as a welder and thinking there's got to be a better way to talk to these guys.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And from my perspective, a lot of my questions and conversations have to do with certification of filter metal. So you know, sometimes it would just be painful and you know not to over pick on it. But today it's way different. It's far better, it's open, it's the communication. Different it's far better, it's open, it's, it's the communication, it's just far better.
Speaker 1:well, you have to adapt, right, we, we needed to adapt and you know that's, uh, that's a big part and plus, I mean my focus is is the people? Right, that's that's my focus. I was coming in as a manager in the company. It's like all right, well, we have a, we have our product, we have our stuff big deal. You know right, because at the end of the day, if you don't got a client base, that is it's like all right, well, we have our product.
Speaker 1:We have our stuff Big deal, you know right. Because at the end of the day, if you don't got a client base that is looking for what you have, who cares? 100%, right, 100%. So let's stop focusing on how great our things are and start thinking about how great our client is and getting our stuff to them Right.
Speaker 2:That's listening to your client.
Speaker 1:That's listening to your client that's listening to your customer.
Speaker 2:You know, and I think that's a secret, that's what we certainly try to do at our company and I think the CWB listens, today more than ever, and we have very productive conversations and you have to deal with us on a number of levels. Right, absolutely absolutely for sure, and, like I say, they're just much more successful. I I've almost you know.
Speaker 2:Until you ask the question, I almost forget what they were like, but I can recall, I can recall pretty easily and I just it was just frustrating, as as the answer I'd come up with, oh my gosh you know, but uh, today it's quick, you're way faster, and uh just uh more approachable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say reasonable.
Speaker 2:You have rules to follow, but again, just the communication is far better.
Speaker 1:What's on the horizon now? What do you see for Exacor in the next five years, aside from the expansion into the US?
Speaker 2:Well, something that we've done again. I talked to you about the stuff that we had lots of success and to you about the stuff that we we, we had lots of success. Uh, and sometimes you ignore the things you shouldn't. We've paid a lot more attention to marketing, uh, today, and, and, uh, you know, we always had a good website, we always had good documentation, we always had good information, but now we do a better job of getting that out there. We participate in events like this, where we really did not used to in the past. We do far more open houses. We've got a really good marketing guy on staff who's been with us for over 20 years and he's really good at it.
Speaker 2:So I mean you know we've just developed that it's more important. I mean we sort of took it for granted when you're having success, sometimes you don't examine those things.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:And now we look at it, geez, some of our customers would press us for some marketing tools and some marketing information. You know our distributors. We deal with a lot of distributors who are great partners of ours and they would say, hey, why don't you have this, or why don't you have that?
Speaker 1:Or why don of that or wanted to, you know, and that's what we're really doing, that's what we're we're. What I've noticed in the conferences and I think to your point is that there's been a bit of a flip.
Speaker 1:I would say 10, 15 years ago, the conferences were heavily ran by the biggest players, right right, it was almost like it's not, you know, the weld expo, it was the lincoln expo, or, you know, I had like I had this kind of vibe to it and all the smaller niche markets didn't see the value in going to conferences because it's like, well, we're niche, like if the customer needs us, they'll find us, because we're the only one that has that thing that they need, right.
Speaker 1:And I think that now it's kind of flipped around where you're seeing that the niche companies actually see the value in this because, hey, more people might need you, that you even know you're right, like, and they just don't know what they don't know. So if you don't get in front of them, you're just not going to make that connection. Whereas and not to harp on on the lincolns and the millers and these habs but people know what you got, yes, people know what you got like, and and everyone's used it everyone knows what the three dots on the 7018 are. You know exactly what rod that is, and I don't know if they get the same value out of this type of show as, say, a smaller vendor or company.
Speaker 2:I agree. I agree, you know, no matter how I said, we've had lots of growth, lots of success. Being at a show like this just reminds me there's some people who don't know us still.
Speaker 3:Or they know us just for one thing.
Speaker 2:Really you know, or they know, it's just for one thing you know and really you do all these other things you know and uh, that's, uh, that's an interesting, not a wake up call. I know it exists, but uh, it's just a reminder, it's a reminder, and it's a refreshing reminder because, again, that's why we want to participate in these things stainless guys, and that's really all you do.
Speaker 3:Stainless and nickel.
Speaker 2:You have mild steel as well, or something along those lines, and you know it's just a good opportunity to meet people in an environment that just promotes conversation and discussion, and a great opportunity for that Awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, we're going to wrap up the interview here pretty quick, but for the people that are listening, how do they find out about you guys? What do they? Where do they go to find your stuff?
Speaker 2:last, thing is just to is to go to our website. You know I bragged about a little bit. Uh, we get. You know, it's not just me thinking that way. I get that feedback from our customers. Just go to exacorecom and find out more about awesome.
Speaker 1:and what about if people are interested in in the company they want to talk to a rep or same thing, just through the website? It'll?
Speaker 2:through the website. Yeah, you'll get. Uh, we've got. Uh. We've really worked hard. We've always had a good system of communication within our company and I'd say it's better than ever. So if you contact our company, uh, through our website, through our chat line actually that I just talked about, um, you'll get to the right people, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope you have a really good time with the show today. I hope you get to walk around and check out the other booths. This is my issue. I always work in the shows. I don't ever get to see the show. I hope you get some time to do that today. I will for sure I will.
Speaker 1:Awesome Thank you and thanks for being on the show today. Well, and for everyone that's been following along, we're going to be doing many more podcasts here at Fabtech. Thank you to Cooper Heat, who is our sponsor here at the podcast booth, and to many of our sponsors that are helping us. Last night we had our industry party with CWS and that was a great, great time. So you know, over the next two days, make sure you catch all our episodes and if you ever get a chance to come to CanWild or Fabtech, make sure you catch all our episodes. And if you ever get a chance to come to can weld or a fab tech, make sure you do. All right, so stay tuned for the next episode.
Speaker 3:We hope you enjoy the show you've been listening to the cwb association welding podcast with max. If you enjoyed what you heard today, rate our podcast and visit us at cwbassociationorg to learn more. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions on what you'd like to learn about in the future. Produced by the cwb group and presented by max, this podcast serves to educate and connect the welding community. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.