March 28, 2025 • 45 mins
Geoffrey Huber shares his journey from art school to industrial design, discussing his expertise in creating custom access and safety equipment for industries like aerospace, aviation, and manufacturing. He reveals insights into building a successful custom manufacturing business and the importance of hands-on experience in engineering.
Main Topics:
- Transitioning from art to industrial design
- Building a custom equipment manufacturing department
- Developing innovative safety and access solutions
- Challenges of scaling a small business
- Importance of hands-on manufacturing experience
About the guest: Geoffrey Huber is an experienced industrial designer and entrepreneur with over 20 years of expertise in safety and access solutions. As Co-Owner and Manager of SAFE-T-FAB, he leads the design and production of innovative, code-compliant fall protection systems, ensuring rapid delivery and market leadership. He also operates GAH Enterprises LLC, a consulting firm focused on product design, prototyping, and engineering solutions. Previously, he held leadership roles at Ortho-tag, Inc. and Tri-Arc Manufacturing, Inc. Geoffrey holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Design from The Art Institutes and is recognized for his commitment to efficiency, innovation, and excellence in the industry.
Links:
Click here to learn more about simulation solutions from Simutech Group.
🚀 Join Us at PDX 2025! 🚀
PDX 2025 is the Product Development Expo designed for engineers who want hands-on training from industry experts. PDX focuses on practical skill-building, cutting-edge tools, and real-world solutions.
📅 October 21-22, 2025
📍 Mesa Convention Center, AZ
🔗 https://reg.eventmobi.com/product-development-expo-2025
About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Geoffrey Huber (00:00):
Try to gain some sort of employment in a
physical, tangible manufacturingspace as soon as you possibly
can.
Aaron Moncur (00:07):
Hello and welcome to the being an engineer
Podcast. Today, we have thepleasure of speaking with
Jeffrey Huber, co owner andmanager of safety fab, a
(00:30):
division of industrial productslimited with a background in
industrial design. Jeffrey hasdedicated his career to
developing innovative safety andaccess solutions ensuring
workplaces are both efficientand secure. Jeffrey, thank you
so much for being on the podcasttoday. Thanks for having me. I
appreciate it.
Well, how did you decide to getinto the field of design and
Unknown (00:53):
You know, it kind of found me more than I found it,
engineering?
if you will. I actually, I wasalways involved in, very
interested in the arts ingeneral, lots of drawing and
tinkering and things that natureand I was always kind of like a
maker before a maker was athing. And that, like when I was
a kid, I was always justtinkering around and just
holding the flashlight from mydad, you know, that kind of
(01:14):
thing. And, yeah, while I was inwhile I was in school, the
closest outlet were the thingslike, you know, wood shop,
machine shop, you know. And thenso I gathered those up. I always
like to be interfacing andtouching feeling with my work
and so forth. So then I, then Iwent down some did a lot of art
school, really things as far asdrawing and painting and
sculpting and stuff while I wasin high school. And that
(01:35):
actually led me to getting ascholarship to the Heart
Institute of Pittsburgh while Iwas still in in high school, and
I I really gravitated toward theArt Institute because they had
industrial design, which isreally like that Tinker's kind
of curriculum, if you will. Imean, you're really kind of
creating and designing andinventing, you know, items or or
modulating and taking what anengineer has created that works
(01:58):
and then turning into somethingthat's a little bit easier to
interface with as a human being,you know, and making that
experience different. So that'sthe way I kind of, like, you
know, gradually, kind of like, Isay it kind of found me for lack
of better terms.
Aaron Moncur (02:10):
yeah, you put that very, very kindly, taking
something from an engineer, I, Iwould say, making it look like
an engineer didn't design thatthing, right? You industrial
designers just have a way ofmaking things look so beautiful.
And us engineers are, yeah, itworks, but it's like this boxy,
clunkyyeah, you put that thingthat looks awful.
Unknown (02:29):
It's funny that you mentioned it too, because i i
Actually I COVID that skill onboth ends of it. I'm fascinated
by the elegant, the elegance ina simple design as no you know,
esthetics to it at all, but justokay. I love the sparseness and
the, you know, something thatcan be a very spartan and basic
design. The beauty of it is howit works sometimes, but then,
(02:52):
you know, when you get into themore of the commercial
environment, where you need totake a piece of equipment and
and make it not only what willwork, but look nice too. That's,
I'm always fascinated by thecutting edge of the industrial
designer. Like you said, they'relike magicians. They can take
something that you would thinkhas nothing beautiful behind it
and turn it right, somethingelegant, you know. And I'll be
honest with you, I'm alwayschasing both of those aspects,
(03:13):
the elegant design and thebeautiful design, and they're
difficult to achieve.
Aaron Moncur (03:17):
Yeah, yeah. They are. Tell us a little bit about
your journey, your history. Soyour your co owner and manager
of safety fab right now, andmaybe tell us a little bit about
that. But also, where were youbefore safety? Fab, what were
you doing?
Unknown (03:32):
Yeah, so as I mentioned, I went to, I went to
the artists in Pittsburgh. Iliterally left high school, and
the next day after I graduated,I moved, just moved out to
Pittsburgh and startedimmediately, because I had a
year round curriculum. Had ayear round curriculum, and that
was very intriguing to me,because I didn't want to waste
any time. I wanted to get towork when I got to school, I had
to start, you know, figuring outhow to pay some bills and things
like that. So I got involved intrying to get in the jobs
(03:54):
placement program at school tosee that, see if I could use any
of the things I was learning atschool in the evenings, you
know, paying for schooleffectively. And I did just
that. Ended up getting not ascholarship, but I got some
internships and some things. Iworked at aluminum foundry for a
little while prior to 911because I went to, I started
school in 98 so I started towork a little bit in the
(04:16):
industry 99 2000 and I wasworking at the the aluminum
foundry. And then 911 happened.
And like that business really,really took a hit because it
was, it was primarily an importbusiness. Realistically, we
made, like, we made giftware,effectively, like wind chimes,
gauntlets, things that nature.
And it was really like oldschool. We were making sand
casted molds do all this. Oh,wow. So we were used, you know,
(04:37):
doing match plate making andthings of that nature. So it was
a really good hands onexperience again, while I was in
school, and actually hadn't beenexposed yet to the 3d side of
technology yet in my curriculumat school at that time, I was
still hands on, because myinitial time at school, I was
actually going down the specialeffects track for 3d movies.
(05:00):
Model making. And then I turnedmy course about a year and a
half into the curriculum, andthen started to focus more on
industrial design, largelybecause I felt a I had a certain
knack for it. And then the otherthing is, I just felt like it
was more marketable. I felt likeit was a lot, it would open me
up to larger opportunities thana little bit more of a pigeon
holed thing. Maybe I made theright the wrong decision. Who
(05:21):
knows, but at the end of theday, what that did lead me to
is, after I lost employment atthe aluminum foundry due to the
economical circumstances andwhatnot, I think we all
experienced things during thattime. I was able to gain
employment through a temp agencyoutside of school. It was
literally just me finding a jobat a factory. I wanted to work
(05:41):
at a place that made thingsbecause I knew that I could
figure out how to get myself tobe marketable. I could figure
out how to be make myself. Icould both market myself and I
could make myself valuable in aplace where they were making
things whether or not, whetherthey knew it or not,
effectively. So I took thatapproach, because I took a temp
job that was not engineeringbased. It was not design based.
(06:02):
I was literally filling out workorders, you know, for people.
And it was at a ladder factor.
That's the key. The that's thelong way to go around, is that
that's my first foray to workingin a manufacturer of climbing
and access equipmenteffectively. So interesting.
Yeah. So while I'm there, I'mworking, I'm learning about how
they make these ladders,literally at the baseline level
where, you know, Bob comes insays, Hey, Bob made 17 ladders
today, you know, on line numbertwo, and I plug it in. Learned a
(06:24):
lot about manufacturing, thoughit was, it was a really, really
nice way to learn about wereally were making bespoke
ladders. We're making thingshandmade effectively. You know,
hand bending tubing, weldingthings together, bringing in
some sub assemblies and soforth, but largely turning piles
of metal into completedproducts, or our customer base,
which their customer baselargely the company's name. I'll
(06:48):
leave it out of the equation fornow, but it's one of the large
manufacturers that makes rollingladders that you see at places
like Lowe's home, Home Depot,Walmart. They're not the ladders
that they sell, they actuallyuse them for like inter store
operations, such as stockingshelves, picking and pulling
pieces of equipment forcustomers, things of that
nature. But because they hadsuch a large footprint in the
(07:10):
ladder industry, they had a verylarge catalog with 1000s of SKUs
and things of that nature. Theby and large, you'd be amazed,
with 1000s of SKUs. There'salways a guy who wants something
that's not in a catalog. Andthey did have a small, small
quasi custom department that, ifthey were like, not busy or or
they got a really nice, juicyinquiry that they thought they
(07:31):
could turn into some money, theywould take it, and then they
would design a really, reallycustomized piece of equipment
for accessing a piece ofaerospace equipment, an
aircraft. It could be at spacecapsule. I know that we did
things for, like, we made abunch of custom movie
scaffolding for Burt Reynoldshome in, like, in the Palisades
or something like that. At onepoint in time, because he had,
(07:51):
like, a whole, like, movietheater. He wanted to have his
own, like, stainless steelscaffolding equipment. Oh, cool.
So, like, those are the type ofweird, unique, niche things that
we would get. And I was kind ofsitting on the sidelines as a
designer who wanted to designthings, but was filling out work
orders. It was a small enoughcompany that I could go and
knock on the owner's office andsay, Hey, I'd like to try to
(08:13):
design some of those things.
Because, like, they would turnthem away if they were busy, and
they would get an inquiry forsomething that was custom. They
would be like, Yeah, we don't dothat. And then next month, they
would get an inquiry and theyweren't busy, and they'd say,
Oh, yeah, we'll take that. And Ithought maybe some consistency
would make a little more sense.
So the Cliff's Notes are, isthat after about six or eight
months of me knocking on theowner's door and him finally
(08:34):
kind of saying, all right, youknow, shut up and go quote some
stuff, they gave me theopportunity to give it a shot.
And that was around the timethat I was starting to do some
3d modeling in college. So Ithink we were, at the time, we
were using a package. Mostpeople don't even know it's
called form C, so it's a really,really old school nerves type of
(08:54):
modeler is really bad, but it'swhat we had at the time, you
know. So what I started to do iseverything that they did the
factory when they would, infact, interact with customers,
quoting them custom pieces ofequipment would be through
AutoCAD, primarily. So Iobviously knew a little bit
AutoCAD and touched up myskills. But I started to bring
the 3d to work, and I started topresent my designs to customers
(09:19):
in ve and the conversion ratebetween quote to sale became
very, very high, because therewas no one in the industry that
was showing a piece of equipmentto this level of detail, okay,
prior to it existing, you know,it was all interesting. It was
all verbiage, quotes, maybe 2dline art drawings that not
(09:39):
everybody really understands,you know. So we were able to
transcend a communicationbarrier that really yielded in a
high sale result. And it turnedwhat was like a little bit of an
every once in a while, they takean order here and there, it
turned it into a we should focuson this. And then, amazingly.
The company and myself, and froma career and inflection points
(10:01):
perspective, the next crisisthat happened with 2008 2009 the
whole home crisis. And as Imentioned, that specific company
very tied into the retailbusiness, Lowe's Home Depot,
Walmart. These are all companiesthat, if they're not doing well,
our company is not doing well,and none of those companies were
doing well around the hominghome and housing crisis time.
(10:23):
Now, what was amazing, though,is that, remember, I started
working there in 2001 2002 ishright after 911 and I had had
about eight years to build upthat custom department. That
custom department had now takenover from a profitability
standpoint. So when the housingcrisis hit, and the rest of our
business fell out. That custombusiness had inflated. The
(10:43):
margins are higher. We didn'thave to push out as much volume,
and it helped save the business.
A lot of the bladder companieswent out of business during that
time frame or got really hurt.
We were able to sustain itthrough diversification. And it
really turned it turned my lightbulb on, is that, like, hey,
maybe I'm not, maybe I'm goingdown a good direction here. You
know, there's, there's a lot ofmerit to it,
Aaron Moncur (11:08):
that that is fascinating. So you said
something that strikes me asvery interesting, because I have
always assumed the opposite wasthe case. You mentioned that the
off the shelf ladders, the Iguess their margin was, you
know, whatever it was, but thesecustom ladders, the margins were
much better. Did I get thatright? Yeah, okay, yeah. So we
(11:29):
make custom equipment, and I cantell you that our margins are
not huge, and we just developeda product last year, and the
margins on the product are much,much better. So how was it that
the custom stuff you were doing,the margins were better than the
off the shelf products?
Unknown (11:47):
You know, I think it really comes down to a scarcity
equation effectively, becausethere's no one out there that
could do there's a smallcollection of manufacturers out
there who do what we do makemake custom fall protection
equipment that takes intoaccount code, human factors,
ergonomics, and do it well,package it up in a frame for a
(12:08):
customer that any one of yourcustomer bases can understand.
It doesn't have to be anaeronautical engineer. If you're
working with NASA, can be asafety professional, our
specific and I think it wastwofold, to be honest with you,
I think that it was both the thethe way that we were willing to
offer some immersive designexperience to the customer base
up front. And then I also thinkthat the other thing that I
(12:28):
forgot to mention is that, as Ibuilt out the department, as you
can imagine, trying to scalethis, you know, you have to be
doing bespoke, one off designsfor more and more of your
clients. You need more you needmore designers. I went back to
the Art Institute and found moreand more of my former colleagues
that I either went to schoolwith or whether I knew them or
not. I knew that they had theappropriate pedigree, because
(12:49):
all of the things that I learnedwere I found essential to my day
to day operations. I need to beable to draw, I need to be able
to sketch. I need to be able tocommunicate my ideas to a
customer or a potentialcustomer, and I needed to do it
skillfully, not like not in away that they would be able to
understand. These are all thingsthat we learned to do while we
were in art school, because wewere largely responsible for
being our own advocates. In artschool, we had you come to art
(13:12):
school and design class. Yeah,you're bringing a design. You're
you're you can't cram, you can'tfake it. It either works or it
doesn't work. You know, iteither is doing what you're
supposed to do. If it wasdesigned where we were given a
parameter as a set of studentsand we had signed around it, you
either followed those rules oryou didn't, you know, and you
had to be able to communicatehow you followed those rules.
And I found that to be it gaveus any a phenomenal skill set
(13:35):
for that customer experiencevery different. And I think
that's the that's the way thatwe're able to ratchet those
margins, because that experiencebecomes much better, too. And
the other thing to keep in mindis that the general place where
customers were going before theyfound a specialized company who
really did it like we did, waslike a fab shop, you know, they
would go to, like a guy who had,like a pile of metal in the
back. He had welding torches,maybe a, you know, he had a
(13:58):
press break, a couple ironworkers, and he knew what he was
doing. And I have no doubt thoseguys are amazing. Those guys can
build anything. However, theydon't have any of any of the
certification behind it a lot oftimes, or any of the engineering
behind it. So we brought that tothis to the table as well. So a
lot of times, customers werestriking out. Going to a ladder
manufacturer, wouldn't do acustom piece of equipment. Then
(14:20):
they went to a local fab shop,and he couldn't do it because he
didn't have all the appropriateengineering certifications so
forth. And by the time they cometo us, we can embrace them,
bring them in, give them animmersive design experience,
give them the certificationsthat they need, give them the
accreditations that they needto, give them the confidence
that they know that they're inthe right spot. And I think all
of that lends itself to thatrecipe where you could actually,
(14:42):
you know, squeeze a little bitmore out of the deal, but
everybody's no one's gettinghosed here. I mean, the bottom
line is that, yeah, they haven'tfound any place you can do what
we do. And the reason why we dowhat we do is because we've
dedicated ourselves to it forthe last, you know, better part
of two decades, and now we knowhow to do something uniquely,
uniquely positive. For acustomer, our customer base,
it's a very niche thing. That'sthe important part. I mean, it's
(15:04):
not for everybody. There's, Iknow a customer who's calling
me, who they just want a ladderthat's a little bit taller than
a ladder they can get out of acatalog for 700 bucks or
something like that. I'm notyour guy, but if you're Blue
Origin, and you're looking for apiece of equipment that can
service a space vehicle inbetween turns, and you need to
do it in, you know, X amount ofhours, and this amount of time
(15:24):
with grounding lugs and all, youknow, all the other
accouterments that you can thinkof, power, near plump, the
system, led, lighting, thesetype of things. Now you've come
to the right spot, you know, andgranted, what I described were
of widely contrasted products.
Will we're happy to takeeverything in between what I
just described as well, and wecan support those. But there's a
there's a sweet spot for ourcustomer base, and there's a
(15:45):
time where we tell our customer,hey, listen, I think what you're
actually looking for issomething that you can get. We
can get them into somethingthat's that makes more sense for
them when we're not the rightsource for them. Yeah. Terrific.
Aaron Moncur (15:57):
Okay, well, tell us a little bit about safety.
Fab. At some point you you leftthat company, and I think there
may have been some othercompanies in between, but
eventually started safety fab.
Unknown (16:08):
Yeah, there was so yeah, the long, long, short of
it is that I had kind of hit myrunway where I was at the former
company. I left to go explore adifferent space. I actually got
involved in a small startupcompany. There were some medical
design, medical device involved,some medical device design
involved. And I was the designerwho was hired to micronize some
equipment that had already beenbenchmark created, make it so
(16:30):
that it was able to becommercially developed and then
sold off as technology. That'sthe Cliff Notes on and that's
effectively what happened. Thatwas about a year runway or pass.
Learned a lot during thatprocess as well. And then when
the the technology effectivelysold, and I was looking for what
was my next step going to be,and I decided that I wanted to
get back into the industry. AndI actually went into business
(16:52):
with what a former employee ofwhere I worked before we had a
great run for about three orfour years, and then just things
didn't work out. Personalities,you know, business, everybody's
got different ideas about wherethings are going. And I had a
different trajectory about wherethe business was going than
maybe he did. And, you know,long and short of it is, we
separated. Wasn't as wasn't aspleasant as you would have liked
(17:14):
it to be. But things happen. Andlong and short is, is that that
was the beginning of safety fab,basically. So safety fat was my
own personal venture in thisfall protection space,
leveraging all of my experienceover the years and bringing it
probably to the best form of itthat it is existed in this state
today.
Aaron Moncur (17:32):
Terrific. Okay, what are one or two products at
safety fab that your team hasdeveloped that you are most
proud of? You?
Have you ever wasted weeksfixing a design issue that could
have been caught early orstruggled to find real,
practical answers tomanufacturing or tolerant stack
(17:54):
up problems? PDX 2025 is notyour typical trade show. It's a
hands on engineering trainingevent built for problem solving.
Learn advanced CAD surfacemodeling, Gd and T, DFM,
adhesives and bondingtechniques, metrology and much,
(18:14):
much more directly from subjectmatter experts in the industry.
Bring your toughest engineeringchallenges, get live expert
advice and see real worldsolutions in action. PDX 2025 is
happening october 21 and 22nd inPhoenix, Arizona, walk away with
(18:34):
new skills that make you morevaluable help you grow your
career faster and even increaseyour earning potential. Spots
are limited. Sign up now at thewave.
Unknown (18:50):
Boy, we've, we've got a that's a great question, and
it's a harder one to answer thanyou would think. We build about
250 to 300 pieces of equipment ayear, okay? And they range in
size, scope, complexity. Thecustomer base is all over the
place too. I mean, I talk a lotabout aerospace, those are our
Meet marquee projects, andthat's really where we we get a
(19:13):
chance to use everything that weknow in our repertoire. But we
do things for like food serviceenvironments where they need to
have, you know, clean roomenvironments where you have to
design equipment in a certainway, where it can't proliferate
bacteria and things of thatnature. So there's, there's just
a litany of things that I couldsay I'm proud of that we worked
on, because there, every timethe customer calls, it truly is
(19:35):
a unique problem for us. Andthen we just use all of these
different solutions that we'veused over the years with other
places to massage them and bringthem up and distill them out to
see if they can be used andunearthed for, you know, today's
problem. Couple projects that Ithink I that I am really proud
of, that I can, you know, giveyou a little bit of background
on is amazingly when early on inmy career, I had designed some
(19:59):
preliminary. Area. Prototypestands for what's called the CH
53k heavy lift aircraft. It'sSikorsky now owned by Lockheed
airframe, but, um, it's a heavylift program. And back 20 years
ago, I was designing theprototype, stands for them to
make the first aircraft,basically. And that's when they
were tweaking the avionics onthat first one. And then all of
(20:20):
a sudden, there was two or threeairframes, and they needed to
get one more set of stands. Andwe're talking about stands that
are like, Oh, 20 foot to theplatform. They're approximately,
like, 40 foot long. And they goon either side of a heavy lift
rotor aircraft. And they haveall sorts of different features
and cutouts on the sides of thework surface of the platform so
they can fit close to theaircraft. There's bumpering and
(20:42):
tool trays and laptop stands.
And, I mean, it's a real pieceof equipment. It's like a
working environment, more thanjust a platform. And as those
aircraft started to roll outduring the prototyping phase,
they built about 18 of thembefore they went into
production, and we had about 12sets of stands that we built for
those prototypes reallyservicing that program. And the
where the pride comes in is nowthat piece of equipment is in
(21:05):
production, and they'rebuilding, they have the the
government has orders for 1000sof these aircrafts, you know, so
they're making them. And I don'tbelieve that they'll every one
of those sets of aircraft willget a set of stands that we
build, but I can tell you thatmost of them will, and I don't
know that we'll be able to buildthem all, to be completely
honest, because there's moreaircraft than I think that we
(21:26):
have a factory space to build,but I feel very, very happy to
be part of that program everytime I see one of those
aircrafts flying around. Alittle party. Feels like I kind
of helped, you know, keep thatthing up there, because all
those aviation maintenance techswho are up on our stands keeping
that aircraft checked out, and,you know, all up to snuff,
they're using our pieces ofequipment. So it's cool. That's
it gives you a little bit ofpride, I guess, what
Aaron Moncur (21:50):
a great feeling.
There really is something uniqueabout seeing your design, or
something that was, you know,associated with your design out
in the wild, right? Yeah. Imean, what a cool feeling. I
remember when our second childwas born. In fact, maybe it was
both our first and second child.
Anyway, we were at the hospital,and the nurses walked in and
(22:11):
they had this, this badge on,and it's called the Vocera
badge. I don't know why theycall it a badge. It's like an
electronic it's kind of like alittle telephone strapped to
your neck that that is always onspeakerphone, and, you know,
push a button and you page, dr,so and so, or nurse, so and so,
or whatever. It's acommunication device for medical
(22:33):
professionals at hospitals. Andthe nurses were all wearing
these, these Vocera badges. AndI was like, I designed, like I
can point right now to the partson that device that I designed,
and it's this part here, andthat part there in the back. And
it was so neat, right, seeingthat out in the wild, people
actually using it. So, yeah,
Unknown (22:52):
that's cool. I mean, we, for instance, we did, we did
a bunch of work for SouthwestAirlines many years ago, and we
allow into stands. We built atheir, they called it their
Provo stand, which, then it wasa, you know, abbreviation for
provision stand. So basically,their fleet was a 737,
basically, and they would bringthose in and their their their
claim to fame was turning andburning, getting those aircrafts
in and out as fast as possible.
So this provision stand was aspecific stand designed to go up
(23:14):
against the rear of theaircraft, where they bring in
all the ice, the pop, the soda,the water, all that stuff. And
then they also deplane all thatthe old garbage off the old
aircraft, so that the Provostand actually had, like, a
laundry chute designed into itso they could just throw all the
garbage down. And then, like,then had an elevator to bring
all the other stuff up in it.
(23:36):
And like, we were, like,responsible for helping
Southwest Airlines keep theirlike rates lower effectively,
because, like, we had designedequipment that allowed them to
turn their aircraft seven and ahalf minutes faster, you know,
or something like that, whichthat's big dollars in that
industry. You don't realizethat's an industry of dollars
and cents, but it's also anindustry of seconds, a lot of
ways. So, yeah, fun littlethings. And then, you know, when
(23:58):
you're at the airport and yousee these stands out there on
the right, being my factory, Iremember designing that wheel
and that tow bar.
Aaron Moncur (24:05):
How cool. How cool. Well, let me take a very
short break here and share withthe listeners that the being an
engineer podcast is brought toyou by pipeline design and
engineering, where we don'tdesign pipelines, but we do help
companies develop advancedmanufacturing processes,
automated machines and customfixtures, complemented with
(24:26):
product design and R D services,Learn more at Team pipeline.us.
The podcast is also sponsored bythe wave, an online platform of
free tools, education andcommunity for engineers, Learn
more at the wave. Dot engineer,we are privileged to be speaking
with Jeffrey Hubert today. SoJeffrey, you started a couple of
(24:50):
businesses. Now tell me what areone or two things that you know
now that you wish you had knownbefore you started your first
business. Yes, I would
Unknown (25:01):
probably want to be warned how much of an animal
you're turning on when you turnthe lights on, you know, because
I think when you as me,personally, I always wanted to
be in business for myself. Inever really knew how I was
going to find a pathway there.
And it found me in a lot of wayssimilar. And as I mentioned to
you, when I when I took thatyear off out of the industry,
(25:22):
and I was working in the medicaldesign space, I ended up getting
thrust into a position of moreof a management position and
more of a business ownershipposition, because of some very
quick, I won't get into thedetails, but there were some
very quick administrativechanges in the at the company
that forced me to take much moreof a role than just the designer
(25:44):
aspect, which was a great thing.
It forced me to do a lot ofthings that I was afraid of,
like setting up payroll and, youknow, doing things that, like,
are just very, you know,innocuous, but they're, they're,
they're intimidating sometimes.
And, you know, I'm a little bitof like, I have a little bit of
a left and right brain thinggoing on between being an artist
and also, kind of being like aquasi engineer, you know. So,
(26:05):
oddly enough, the whole payrolland, like, you know, paperwork
side of business aspect thingsis, was not something that was
always I felt I was veryintimidated by that, for lack of
better terms, but baptism byfire, I was thrust into it. But
what I wasn't prepared for,though, is just how much, like,
once you dabble in the the ideaof owning your own business, I
was fascinated by, like, howmuch it takes control over you.
(26:26):
After you, after you turn it on,you're along for the ride more
than you are necessarily incontrol whether you are the head
of the business or not. Becauseas far as I'm concerned, every
one of my every one of myclients, is my boss. You know, I
so I have, I've got plenty ofbosses. I've got more bosses
than most people do, and I'mself employed in a lot of ways.
But look at it, I don't look atit that way, because I I look at
(26:48):
my clients as as my superiors. Ilook at them as, you know, the
paramount of making them happyand and that in and of itself,
that can be a lot of pressure attimes, you know. So the
scalability of your business asit grows is being being prepared
for that. Scaling is a trickything to prepare for, for lack
of better terms, I was, I wasunprepared for the scaling of
(27:11):
the business as things took off.
Just the amount of time and theamount of effort you got to put
in, not in a bad way, never gotaway from us or anything like
that. I just mean, you're youcan easily underestimate what
goes into making a successfulbusiness maintain its success,
because a lot of times specialsauce that got you to the dance
in the beginning slowly getsdistilled out as you grow. It's
(27:32):
important that you never forgetwhat got you to the game, and
that's the relationships withthe customers. It's your ability
to not just be a yes man. Youhave to be a yes, because, man,
you know, you got to show themwhy, even if you sometimes, you
have to deviate, you know, fromyour customers wants and your
needs. And that's not alwayseasy, but you have to have a
good way of communicating that,and just all of those things I
(27:54):
was, I think I was unpreparedfor, or I would have loved to
have been more prepared for thethe tiger by the tail nature of
running your own business theway that can be. I mean, it
sounds like you could probablyshare a similar story with me.
It seems,
Aaron Moncur (28:07):
well, the buck stops with you, right? As the
business owner. I mean, if, ifsomething, there's a problem and
it needs to be solved. I mean,we have a wonderful team here,
but, but the fact is, as anemployee, you can leave, right?
You can just go somewhere elseif you don't like what's
happening at a company, but ifyou're the owner, it's much,
much harder to do that right?
And some people might say, Well,I mean, if it's a really big
(28:28):
problem and you're reallyunhappy, just shut the business
down. Easier said than done,right? Shutting a business. I've
never shut a business down, butI've thought about right? I've
done just, uh, what's the word?
I'm looking for, thoughtexperiments, I guess. What would
that look like? And there's alot that goes into it, right?
(28:49):
That it's not as simple as justflicking a switch or something.
Anyway, the buck stops with you.
And there's just a lot ofresponsibility and pressure
there is to handle. There
Unknown (29:00):
is for sure, and, you know, and to speak to that, I
did, in fact, sell my businesssafety fab. I did sell my
business in 2022, to one of mylarger customers, and it's a
customer that I had been workingwith my entire career. I had
been, basically, he'd beenbuying equipment for me for my
entire career, and had beensupportive of everything I'd
ever done. You know, he'ssupportive when I started in the
(29:21):
customs business and helped getthe customs business off the
ground at that former employermany years ago. And then, you
know, continue to express andsell our equipment. You know, he
was basically reselling ourequipment. Did such a good job.
And then whenever I went off onmy own with my other former
business partner and let himknow that we were turning our
lights on, he immediatelysupported us. And so I knew in
the same thing, like, whenever Ileft that partnership and
(29:43):
started safety Fauci, not onlydid he show interest, but he
showed immediate interest inacquisition too, and I wasn't
the timing wasn't right, so Iran the business for about five
years independently, and then Iactually as part of a equity and
sale, I took a small ownershipstake in industrial products,
who's now the parent owner. Ofsafety fab, who I now run as a
division of industrial products.
So that helped, that helped me.
(30:05):
I was at the point where thescalability, I knew that I
needed some additional help fromthe resources a larger company.
And my colleague, his name isPhil summer narrow, phenomenal
guy. I also have more of asilent partner named Sam Saxton,
who's involved in the businessas well. Both phenomenal
business acumen. I feel veryblessed to be surrounded by
these guys. Sam's a littleyounger than me. Feels a little
bit older than me, so theseasoning and the blend that we
(30:28):
have, there's a lot of energybetween the two or the three
owners, rather, and it's just,it's been a really good
Aaron Moncur (30:33):
but you mentioned this, this big customer that you
had kind of throughout yourentire career. I think it's
super important for especiallysmall businesses, to have that
whale of a customer. Of course,it can be dangerous as well,
right? Because if they ever turnthings off, then you're really
in big trouble. But having a bigcustomer like that that just
sends repeat orders, you know,over and over and over is so
(30:57):
beneficial to growing abusiness. It makes it so much
easier than, you know, getting10% here and 5% there. And you
know, it
Unknown (31:05):
really is, and it's not just about the revenue either.
It's also the ability to pointto that customer and to leverage
that relationship and use themfor referrals to, you know, and
to use some of the equipment,you know, anything that we build
and design and sell, we try todocument as much as possible,
because we want to, like,leverage it to be able to sell
to other customers, you know, byby putting it up on the website
or sharing it with othercustomers during meetings, to
(31:26):
show them our capabilities.
Unfortunately, because a lot ofthe work that we do do is in, is
in the dark aerospace, you know,black projects and things. A lot
of times, we never get a chanceto see where this stuff goes.
And that's a that's a tragedy,but it's also fun. We know that
it's working around some reallycool stuff, and that's cool. We
don't get it. We don't get toleverage that for our business
(31:46):
operations as much as we'd liketo. And until, like, literally,
like, for instance, I wouldn'thave been able to even talk to
you about that ch 53 programthat I mentioned to you earlier,
a decade ago, when I was workingon the prototype stands. There's
NDAs in place, that sense, senseis all gone away, but that's the
type of thing where it can takeyears to before you can even
talk about some of the pieces ofequipment that you build or some
(32:08):
of the customers you work with.
So when you have a marqueeclient that you can really
leverage, it's really important,not just for the financial
stability, but also foroperational stuff.
Aaron Moncur (32:19):
One thing that we are learning right now, we're
very new to the product space.
We have this we have a fewproducts, but one in particular
that we're really pushing andtrying to get some traction
with, and we have had sometraction with it. This is
something that surprised me. Theeasy part was developing the
product. The hard part has beenselling that product. What? What
(32:41):
has been your experience in thatspace? What? What have you found
to be effective tools for forselling a product? And have you
found the same to be true, or,once you had your, you know,
first few SKUs designed was itpretty easy to start selling
them
Unknown (32:59):
so that that's that's an interesting it's an
interesting question, and it'san interesting answer, because
we really don't have SKUs, youknow, we have quote numbers.
Basically. Everything we do isstart from the scratch, only
recently, and we can get intothis, if you'd like, but only
recently do we start using someconfiguration based modeling,
where we're not starting from aclean sheet as much, because
there's some type form productsthat we make a lot of. One of
(33:22):
the things that we make, thingsthat we make a lot of, because
there's not a lot of customerswho are rather companies who do
is what's called a cantileverladder. And a cantilever ladder
is simply, it's a rollingstaircase. So you think of a
ladder as a 90 degree back, andthat's a staircase that comes
down, and that staircase rollsaround on wheels. There's
usually wheels down here. Well,a cantilever ladder has a
platform that hangs out the backso you can get over top of an
(33:42):
obstruction. Okay, sometimesthey're supported, where there's
legs that go underneath andsupport the load, and then
sometimes there's just a bigcounterweight back here. But
there's a lot of engineeringinvolved. I mean, there's not a
lot of engineering, but there'scompanies are like, we're not
doing that. That's tricky.
There's tipping moments, blah,blah, blah, like a local fab
shop would over engineersomething like that. We can
design it appropriately, but wedo a ton of those, and we've
(34:03):
designed a configurator for ourconfiguration, or configurable
cantilever ladders now, whereI'm not designing it from a
clean sheet anymore, I'mplugging in some, some, some,
you know, values, into a module,basically. And we're doing that
for a number of our type, formproducts, fixed ladders that go
outside of buildings. There's 90degree ladders. That's a real
basic dimension. How tall isyour building? And then code
(34:25):
figures everything else out, 12inch centers for rungs, 18 inch
wide rungs. Blah, blah, blah,so. But as far as like selling
for us, our selling tool hasbeen expediency. How quick can
we gather the customer inquireswith us? How quickly can we push
back a drawing and a quote frontof their face? Because most of
the time, by the time they foundus, somebody who could make
(34:45):
something that was a little bitone off, they've already beaten
the streets for a couple weeks,and they're out of time, you
know. So usually, expediency isour biggest quotient to be able
to help conversion. I. Yeah, youknow, because we don't sell
SKUs, we are, we're selling moreof an experience. So like our
website, we've had to break ourwebsite into kind of like
(35:07):
product families of like,cantilever ladders, fixed
ladders, dock stairs, you know,mobile platforms. We have a
whole space on our websitededicated to aviation
maintenance and that, wesegregate that into two groups,
rotorcraft. So that's anythinglike helicopters, for instance,
and then just fixed wingaircraft, because those are two
wildly different experienceswhen you're designing equipment,
(35:29):
largely because of the rotors.
The rotors want to interact witha lot of like the handrails and
guardrails. So you have to makehandrails and guardrails that
are dynamic and or talk aboutmoving the blade from the
aircraft and so forth. So youcan probably just hear the
nuance and like some of the waythat we're discussing this, the
sales tool is getting ourcustomer when they reach our
(35:51):
website, the comfort level andthat we know what we're doing
and that they came to the rightspot. And we found that we do
that through a variation of, youknow, both the appropriate that
language and verbiage lets themknow that we're using the right
keywords and we understand thesespaces, and then we do it
through leveraging as much ofthe design work that we've done
in the past visually on thewebsite, so they can see just
(36:11):
the litany of what we can do.
Because I could tell you untilI'm blue in the face, all the
different things we can design,and you'll be a skeleton and
bored when I'm done, but youdon't love to roll through a
whole gallery of these thingsand you can see them. Some of
them are there in theirapplication. Unfortunately, most
of what is on our website is, infact, renderings, because of the
nature of the proprietary natureof where a lot of these things
(36:32):
go, but there's a consistency toit, and there's a real good
feeling of like these guys knowwhat they're doing. And you can
the the imagery that we do havethat are photographs of our true
equipment. You can see that it'san 88 relationship. I mean,
there's no there's no differencethat we don't leave anything to
the imagination, from thepresentation to what we show you
to what you get on your stockwhen it gets, you know, arrived.
(36:52):
So that's pretty powerful,compelling story, but it's been,
it's taken years to aggregateall of that data and all of that
information and all thosecustomer experiences, we have
some case studies and thingslike that on the website that
are very helpful in helping totell a story from start to
finish about how we work withour customer base. So I mean,
we're a relatively small crew.
(37:14):
There's only three guys who arededicated to our division, and
then we have our fabricationshops that are actually out
there building it, all theequipment that we sell and so
forth. But with that small teamof multidisciplinary guys, you
know, we've been able to put abow on the the experience that
we provide to our customers, andwe kind of put it in the form of
the website effectively, andthat's really been our calling
(37:34):
card. What
Aaron Moncur (37:35):
advice would you give to young engineers who want
to develop a career in designingand developing hard goods
products? Yeah, I
Unknown (37:45):
would get involved in trying to gain some sort of
employment in a physical,tangible manufacturing space as
soon as you possibly can. Ilearned so much in what is
really a dirty industry. It wasjust a weld shop. That factory
that I worked at, that ladderfactory those weld shop. I mean,
they had a couple roboticwelding cells that barely worked
(38:05):
when they did, you know, but byand large it was, you know,
clenching, bending, bringing inraw material. And one built one
store, you know, one door of thebuilding and staking it through
the building and work inprogress, and learning about
walking times, learning aboutmanufacturing. I mean, I know
that a lot of that manufacturingtype is going to go away with
automation and so forth, butthere's still a lot of it out
(38:27):
there, and I feel like you canreally learn a lot about how
design products if youunderstand better about how
they're built. Because there's abig I've noticed there's always
a big deficit, specifically whenI was going to school, between
kids who would design things,and kids who could design things
that were actually buildable andcould actually be made in a kind
of cost effective manner andthings, and I noticed that chasm
(38:50):
got greatly shortened by any oneof those, basically people who
worked in manufacturing, as longas they got a job where they
were touching feeling somethingget built, They that would close
the loop, and that kid and thatstudent would become
lethal engineering space. Butboy, without it, you are really
floundering. I can tell you thatI went to school half and half.
(39:10):
I went to school not working atall in a manufacturing space and
then working in themanufacturing space
simultaneously. That's aphenomenal combination.
Aaron Moncur (39:21):
Yeah, yeah. I without naming any names. Of
course, I remember a youngengineer I worked with who did
not have any background, likehands on, working in a
manufacturing space, you know,building, I don't know, fixing
cars, fixing bikes, things likethat. That just wasn't his, his
background, which is fine,right? We all come from
different backgrounds. There wasa task I gave to this individual
(39:44):
and said, Hey, I need you todisassemble this, this product,
so we can do whatever it was wewere doing on the project. And
instead of, you know, findingsome precision tools and
carefully taking this thingapart. This. I remember hearing
in the shop, bang, bang, bang.
And I'm like, What is going onout there? And I walk out and
(40:06):
this individual literally has ahammer, and it's just Whack,
whack, pounding this thing, youknow? And I'm like, oh, man, I
did not even like, realize thatI would need to explain we don't
use hammers to take thingsapart,
Unknown (40:22):
yeah, for real.
Aaron Moncur (40:25):
But, yeah, that hands on experience is so
invaluable. All right, with justa few minutes left here, if
you're okay with this, let'ssee, if I'm not mistaken, you
have a hobby and bodybuilding,is that, right? Yeah,
Unknown (40:42):
I've been a little bit on the sidelines because I had a
neck injury that happened lastyear. Okay, Danny has put, yeah,
it's put me in a little bit of apickle there, but, but, yeah,
that was something that wasalways in the background. That
was something that I was alwaysinvolved in. I had played sports
when I was in high school and soforth, but when I knew I was
going to art school, I betyou're not surprised to hear
that the art school didn't haveany school sports, so I needed
(41:06):
to figure out something to keepme busy physically, because
that's always been a big aspectof my life. So I had always
reacted well to weights. I waskind of, like a late bloomer. So
when I was playing hockey, I hadto, like, build myself up with
weights, because I started,well, as you started to get into
contact. I took hockey to apretty, pretty deep level. I was
playing up into like, you know,bantams, did you Junior, stuff
like that. So there's prettyphysical presence in that sport
(41:26):
at that time. Yeah. So I gotinto bodybuilding after I quit
playing hockey, because I waslike, Alright, I'm always
lifting anyway, and I reactwell. So I always like to take
everything to the fur the sixstep. So basically that was
bodybuilding. So I did that for,like, for like 10 years. I did
like 15 shows. And I justwanted, I just wanted to win my
week. Yeah, it was, it was a, itwas a big Odyssey. It was fun
between the ages of, like, 17and 27 basically, okay, I did,
(41:50):
did bunch shows. I just alwayswanted to win my weight class in
an amateur contest. I finallydid that, and then I glad,
gladly retired, but I still, tothis day, I still train with
weights, you know, regularly andso forth. It's just a bit, it's
kind of like how it's like how Istart my day, and it provides
the scaffold for just the restof my life, effectively, just
gets my body working right,because my mind opportunity in
the morning just to get the dayset ahead, just almost a
(42:12):
meditative thing. To be honest.
Aaron Moncur (42:14):
I was just going to ask, do you find it to be
therapeutic? And sounds like,yes, absolutely,
Unknown (42:19):
yeah. I find that. I find that I'm a pretty energetic
person. I need to get extraenergy out of me, so me starting
empty in the tank first thing inthe morning allows me to be a
lot lower baselines for theremainder of my day. And I find
that putting myself throughwillful you know, trouble is
sometimes sometimes better.
Because if you if you putyourself through willful
hardships, sometimes the thingsthat come down, down the pathway
(42:40):
are not quite as hard. You know,it's true. It's true. I've
willfully put myself throughhard things.
Aaron Moncur (42:48):
That's right. You know, there's a part of the
brain that grows when you dohard things that you don't want
to do, but you force yourself todo them anyway, and non
preferred behavior, I believethey call that. Yes, there you
go. That's it. Yeah, right.
Okay, all right. Well, Jeffrey,what a pleasure it was speaking
with you. Thank you for takingus through your journey and
sharing some wisdom and insightswith the listeners here at the
being an engineer podcast. Howcan people get in touch with
(43:10):
you? Yeah, LinkedIn is the bestway to get
Unknown (43:14):
ahold of me. And obviously our website is www,
dot safety, fab.com, it's justthe way it sounds, S, A, F, E,
and then the letter, I'm sorry.
I mean, I'm gonna start overagain. Www. Dot S, A, F, E,
hyphen, the letter T, as in Tom,hyphen, and then F, A, b.com, so
safety, fab.com, and then ourparent website is industrial
products.com that's the theparent company who owns us, and
we're a large distributor of allsorts of construction, goods,
(43:37):
manufacturing, goods, productionequipment, things of that
nature.
Aaron Moncur (43:41):
Terrific. And we'll have those links in the
show notes as well. Jeffrey, isthere anything else that we
haven't talked about that you'dlike to bring up before we end?
Unknown (43:49):
I just really appreciate the opportunity to
speak with you and just kind ofshare it, whatever the story is
that I have on my side. It wasso it was real pleasure.
Aaron Moncur (43:55):
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Geoffrey Huber (43:56):
Yeah, take care.
Aaron Moncur (43:59):
I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and
engineering. If you liked whatyou heard today, please share
the episode to learn how yourteam can leverage our team's
expertise developing advancedmanufacturing processes,
automated machines and customfixtures, complemented with
product design and R and Dservices. Visit us at Team
(44:20):
pipeline.us to join. A vibrantcommunity of engineers online
visit the wave. Dot, engineer,thank you for listening. You.
Try to gain some sort of employment in a
physical, tangible manufacturingspace as soon as you possibly
can.
Aaron Moncur (00:07):
Hello and welcome to the being an engineer
Podcast. Today, we have thepleasure of speaking with
Jeffrey Huber, co owner andmanager of safety fab, a
(00:30):
division of industrial productslimited with a background in
industrial design. Jeffrey hasdedicated his career to
developing innovative safety andaccess solutions ensuring
workplaces are both efficientand secure. Jeffrey, thank you
so much for being on the podcasttoday. Thanks for having me. I
appreciate it.
Well, how did you decide to getinto the field of design and
Unknown (00:53):
You know, it kind of found me more than I found it,
engineering?
if you will. I actually, I wasalways involved in, very
interested in the arts ingeneral, lots of drawing and
tinkering and things that natureand I was always kind of like a
maker before a maker was athing. And that, like when I was
a kid, I was always justtinkering around and just
holding the flashlight from mydad, you know, that kind of
(01:14):
thing. And, yeah, while I was inwhile I was in school, the
closest outlet were the thingslike, you know, wood shop,
machine shop, you know. And thenso I gathered those up. I always
like to be interfacing andtouching feeling with my work
and so forth. So then I, then Iwent down some did a lot of art
school, really things as far asdrawing and painting and
sculpting and stuff while I wasin high school. And that
(01:35):
actually led me to getting ascholarship to the Heart
Institute of Pittsburgh while Iwas still in in high school, and
I I really gravitated toward theArt Institute because they had
industrial design, which isreally like that Tinker's kind
of curriculum, if you will. Imean, you're really kind of
creating and designing andinventing, you know, items or or
modulating and taking what anengineer has created that works
(01:58):
and then turning into somethingthat's a little bit easier to
interface with as a human being,you know, and making that
experience different. So that'sthe way I kind of, like, you
know, gradually, kind of like, Isay it kind of found me for lack
of better terms.
Aaron Moncur (02:10):
yeah, you put that very, very kindly, taking
something from an engineer, I, Iwould say, making it look like
an engineer didn't design thatthing, right? You industrial
designers just have a way ofmaking things look so beautiful.
And us engineers are, yeah, itworks, but it's like this boxy,
clunkyyeah, you put that thingthat looks awful.
Unknown (02:29):
It's funny that you mentioned it too, because i i
Actually I COVID that skill onboth ends of it. I'm fascinated
by the elegant, the elegance ina simple design as no you know,
esthetics to it at all, but justokay. I love the sparseness and
the, you know, something thatcan be a very spartan and basic
design. The beauty of it is howit works sometimes, but then,
(02:52):
you know, when you get into themore of the commercial
environment, where you need totake a piece of equipment and
and make it not only what willwork, but look nice too. That's,
I'm always fascinated by thecutting edge of the industrial
designer. Like you said, they'relike magicians. They can take
something that you would thinkhas nothing beautiful behind it
and turn it right, somethingelegant, you know. And I'll be
honest with you, I'm alwayschasing both of those aspects,
(03:13):
the elegant design and thebeautiful design, and they're
difficult to achieve.
Aaron Moncur (03:17):
Yeah, yeah. They are. Tell us a little bit about
your journey, your history. Soyour your co owner and manager
of safety fab right now, andmaybe tell us a little bit about
that. But also, where were youbefore safety? Fab, what were
you doing?
Unknown (03:32):
Yeah, so as I mentioned, I went to, I went to
the artists in Pittsburgh. Iliterally left high school, and
the next day after I graduated,I moved, just moved out to
Pittsburgh and startedimmediately, because I had a
year round curriculum. Had ayear round curriculum, and that
was very intriguing to me,because I didn't want to waste
any time. I wanted to get towork when I got to school, I had
to start, you know, figuring outhow to pay some bills and things
like that. So I got involved intrying to get in the jobs
(03:54):
placement program at school tosee that, see if I could use any
of the things I was learning atschool in the evenings, you
know, paying for schooleffectively. And I did just
that. Ended up getting not ascholarship, but I got some
internships and some things. Iworked at aluminum foundry for a
little while prior to 911because I went to, I started
school in 98 so I started towork a little bit in the
(04:16):
industry 99 2000 and I wasworking at the the aluminum
foundry. And then 911 happened.
And like that business really,really took a hit because it
was, it was primarily an importbusiness. Realistically, we
made, like, we made giftware,effectively, like wind chimes,
gauntlets, things that nature.
And it was really like oldschool. We were making sand
casted molds do all this. Oh,wow. So we were used, you know,
(04:37):
doing match plate making andthings of that nature. So it was
a really good hands onexperience again, while I was in
school, and actually hadn't beenexposed yet to the 3d side of
technology yet in my curriculumat school at that time, I was
still hands on, because myinitial time at school, I was
actually going down the specialeffects track for 3d movies.
(05:00):
Model making. And then I turnedmy course about a year and a
half into the curriculum, andthen started to focus more on
industrial design, largelybecause I felt a I had a certain
knack for it. And then the otherthing is, I just felt like it
was more marketable. I felt likeit was a lot, it would open me
up to larger opportunities thana little bit more of a pigeon
holed thing. Maybe I made theright the wrong decision. Who
(05:21):
knows, but at the end of theday, what that did lead me to
is, after I lost employment atthe aluminum foundry due to the
economical circumstances andwhatnot, I think we all
experienced things during thattime. I was able to gain
employment through a temp agencyoutside of school. It was
literally just me finding a jobat a factory. I wanted to work
(05:41):
at a place that made thingsbecause I knew that I could
figure out how to get myself tobe marketable. I could figure
out how to be make myself. Icould both market myself and I
could make myself valuable in aplace where they were making
things whether or not, whetherthey knew it or not,
effectively. So I took thatapproach, because I took a temp
job that was not engineeringbased. It was not design based.
(06:02):
I was literally filling out workorders, you know, for people.
And it was at a ladder factor.
That's the key. The that's thelong way to go around, is that
that's my first foray to workingin a manufacturer of climbing
and access equipmenteffectively. So interesting.
Yeah. So while I'm there, I'mworking, I'm learning about how
they make these ladders,literally at the baseline level
where, you know, Bob comes insays, Hey, Bob made 17 ladders
today, you know, on line numbertwo, and I plug it in. Learned a
(06:24):
lot about manufacturing, thoughit was, it was a really, really
nice way to learn about wereally were making bespoke
ladders. We're making thingshandmade effectively. You know,
hand bending tubing, weldingthings together, bringing in
some sub assemblies and soforth, but largely turning piles
of metal into completedproducts, or our customer base,
which their customer baselargely the company's name. I'll
(06:48):
leave it out of the equation fornow, but it's one of the large
manufacturers that makes rollingladders that you see at places
like Lowe's home, Home Depot,Walmart. They're not the ladders
that they sell, they actuallyuse them for like inter store
operations, such as stockingshelves, picking and pulling
pieces of equipment forcustomers, things of that
nature. But because they hadsuch a large footprint in the
(07:10):
ladder industry, they had a verylarge catalog with 1000s of SKUs
and things of that nature. Theby and large, you'd be amazed,
with 1000s of SKUs. There'salways a guy who wants something
that's not in a catalog. Andthey did have a small, small
quasi custom department that, ifthey were like, not busy or or
they got a really nice, juicyinquiry that they thought they
(07:31):
could turn into some money, theywould take it, and then they
would design a really, reallycustomized piece of equipment
for accessing a piece ofaerospace equipment, an
aircraft. It could be at spacecapsule. I know that we did
things for, like, we made abunch of custom movie
scaffolding for Burt Reynoldshome in, like, in the Palisades
or something like that. At onepoint in time, because he had,
(07:51):
like, a whole, like, movietheater. He wanted to have his
own, like, stainless steelscaffolding equipment. Oh, cool.
So, like, those are the type ofweird, unique, niche things that
we would get. And I was kind ofsitting on the sidelines as a
designer who wanted to designthings, but was filling out work
orders. It was a small enoughcompany that I could go and
knock on the owner's office andsay, Hey, I'd like to try to
(08:13):
design some of those things.
Because, like, they would turnthem away if they were busy, and
they would get an inquiry forsomething that was custom. They
would be like, Yeah, we don't dothat. And then next month, they
would get an inquiry and theyweren't busy, and they'd say,
Oh, yeah, we'll take that. And Ithought maybe some consistency
would make a little more sense.
So the Cliff's Notes are, isthat after about six or eight
months of me knocking on theowner's door and him finally
(08:34):
kind of saying, all right, youknow, shut up and go quote some
stuff, they gave me theopportunity to give it a shot.
And that was around the timethat I was starting to do some
3d modeling in college. So Ithink we were, at the time, we
were using a package. Mostpeople don't even know it's
called form C, so it's a really,really old school nerves type of
(08:54):
modeler is really bad, but it'swhat we had at the time, you
know. So what I started to do iseverything that they did the
factory when they would, infact, interact with customers,
quoting them custom pieces ofequipment would be through
AutoCAD, primarily. So Iobviously knew a little bit
AutoCAD and touched up myskills. But I started to bring
the 3d to work, and I started topresent my designs to customers
(09:19):
in ve and the conversion ratebetween quote to sale became
very, very high, because therewas no one in the industry that
was showing a piece of equipmentto this level of detail, okay,
prior to it existing, you know,it was all interesting. It was
all verbiage, quotes, maybe 2dline art drawings that not
(09:39):
everybody really understands,you know. So we were able to
transcend a communicationbarrier that really yielded in a
high sale result. And it turnedwhat was like a little bit of an
every once in a while, they takean order here and there, it
turned it into a we should focuson this. And then, amazingly.
The company and myself, and froma career and inflection points
(10:01):
perspective, the next crisisthat happened with 2008 2009 the
whole home crisis. And as Imentioned, that specific company
very tied into the retailbusiness, Lowe's Home Depot,
Walmart. These are all companiesthat, if they're not doing well,
our company is not doing well,and none of those companies were
doing well around the hominghome and housing crisis time.
(10:23):
Now, what was amazing, though,is that, remember, I started
working there in 2001 2002 ishright after 911 and I had had
about eight years to build upthat custom department. That
custom department had now takenover from a profitability
standpoint. So when the housingcrisis hit, and the rest of our
business fell out. That custombusiness had inflated. The
(10:43):
margins are higher. We didn'thave to push out as much volume,
and it helped save the business.
A lot of the bladder companieswent out of business during that
time frame or got really hurt.
We were able to sustain itthrough diversification. And it
really turned it turned my lightbulb on, is that, like, hey,
maybe I'm not, maybe I'm goingdown a good direction here. You
know, there's, there's a lot ofmerit to it,
Aaron Moncur (11:08):
that that is fascinating. So you said
something that strikes me asvery interesting, because I have
always assumed the opposite wasthe case. You mentioned that the
off the shelf ladders, the Iguess their margin was, you
know, whatever it was, but thesecustom ladders, the margins were
much better. Did I get thatright? Yeah, okay, yeah. So we
(11:29):
make custom equipment, and I cantell you that our margins are
not huge, and we just developeda product last year, and the
margins on the product are much,much better. So how was it that
the custom stuff you were doing,the margins were better than the
off the shelf products?
Unknown (11:47):
You know, I think it really comes down to a scarcity
equation effectively, becausethere's no one out there that
could do there's a smallcollection of manufacturers out
there who do what we do makemake custom fall protection
equipment that takes intoaccount code, human factors,
ergonomics, and do it well,package it up in a frame for a
(12:08):
customer that any one of yourcustomer bases can understand.
It doesn't have to be anaeronautical engineer. If you're
working with NASA, can be asafety professional, our
specific and I think it wastwofold, to be honest with you,
I think that it was both the thethe way that we were willing to
offer some immersive designexperience to the customer base
up front. And then I also thinkthat the other thing that I
(12:28):
forgot to mention is that, as Ibuilt out the department, as you
can imagine, trying to scalethis, you know, you have to be
doing bespoke, one off designsfor more and more of your
clients. You need more you needmore designers. I went back to
the Art Institute and found moreand more of my former colleagues
that I either went to schoolwith or whether I knew them or
not. I knew that they had theappropriate pedigree, because
(12:49):
all of the things that I learnedwere I found essential to my day
to day operations. I need to beable to draw, I need to be able
to sketch. I need to be able tocommunicate my ideas to a
customer or a potentialcustomer, and I needed to do it
skillfully, not like not in away that they would be able to
understand. These are all thingsthat we learned to do while we
were in art school, because wewere largely responsible for
being our own advocates. In artschool, we had you come to art
(13:12):
school and design class. Yeah,you're bringing a design. You're
you're you can't cram, you can'tfake it. It either works or it
doesn't work. You know, iteither is doing what you're
supposed to do. If it wasdesigned where we were given a
parameter as a set of studentsand we had signed around it, you
either followed those rules oryou didn't, you know, and you
had to be able to communicatehow you followed those rules.
And I found that to be it gaveus any a phenomenal skill set
(13:35):
for that customer experiencevery different. And I think
that's the that's the way thatwe're able to ratchet those
margins, because that experiencebecomes much better, too. And
the other thing to keep in mindis that the general place where
customers were going before theyfound a specialized company who
really did it like we did, waslike a fab shop, you know, they
would go to, like a guy who had,like a pile of metal in the
back. He had welding torches,maybe a, you know, he had a
(13:58):
press break, a couple ironworkers, and he knew what he was
doing. And I have no doubt thoseguys are amazing. Those guys can
build anything. However, theydon't have any of any of the
certification behind it a lot oftimes, or any of the engineering
behind it. So we brought that tothis to the table as well. So a
lot of times, customers werestriking out. Going to a ladder
manufacturer, wouldn't do acustom piece of equipment. Then
(14:20):
they went to a local fab shop,and he couldn't do it because he
didn't have all the appropriateengineering certifications so
forth. And by the time they cometo us, we can embrace them,
bring them in, give them animmersive design experience,
give them the certificationsthat they need, give them the
accreditations that they needto, give them the confidence
that they know that they're inthe right spot. And I think all
of that lends itself to thatrecipe where you could actually,
(14:42):
you know, squeeze a little bitmore out of the deal, but
everybody's no one's gettinghosed here. I mean, the bottom
line is that, yeah, they haven'tfound any place you can do what
we do. And the reason why we dowhat we do is because we've
dedicated ourselves to it forthe last, you know, better part
of two decades, and now we knowhow to do something uniquely,
uniquely positive. For acustomer, our customer base,
it's a very niche thing. That'sthe important part. I mean, it's
(15:04):
not for everybody. There's, Iknow a customer who's calling
me, who they just want a ladderthat's a little bit taller than
a ladder they can get out of acatalog for 700 bucks or
something like that. I'm notyour guy, but if you're Blue
Origin, and you're looking for apiece of equipment that can
service a space vehicle inbetween turns, and you need to
do it in, you know, X amount ofhours, and this amount of time
(15:24):
with grounding lugs and all, youknow, all the other
accouterments that you can thinkof, power, near plump, the
system, led, lighting, thesetype of things. Now you've come
to the right spot, you know, andgranted, what I described were
of widely contrasted products.
Will we're happy to takeeverything in between what I
just described as well, and wecan support those. But there's a
there's a sweet spot for ourcustomer base, and there's a
(15:45):
time where we tell our customer,hey, listen, I think what you're
actually looking for issomething that you can get. We
can get them into somethingthat's that makes more sense for
them when we're not the rightsource for them. Yeah. Terrific.
Aaron Moncur (15:57):
Okay, well, tell us a little bit about safety.
Fab. At some point you you leftthat company, and I think there
may have been some othercompanies in between, but
eventually started safety fab.
Unknown (16:08):
Yeah, there was so yeah, the long, long, short of
it is that I had kind of hit myrunway where I was at the former
company. I left to go explore adifferent space. I actually got
involved in a small startupcompany. There were some medical
design, medical device involved,some medical device design
involved. And I was the designerwho was hired to micronize some
equipment that had already beenbenchmark created, make it so
(16:30):
that it was able to becommercially developed and then
sold off as technology. That'sthe Cliff Notes on and that's
effectively what happened. Thatwas about a year runway or pass.
Learned a lot during thatprocess as well. And then when
the the technology effectivelysold, and I was looking for what
was my next step going to be,and I decided that I wanted to
get back into the industry. AndI actually went into business
(16:52):
with what a former employee ofwhere I worked before we had a
great run for about three orfour years, and then just things
didn't work out. Personalities,you know, business, everybody's
got different ideas about wherethings are going. And I had a
different trajectory about wherethe business was going than
maybe he did. And, you know,long and short of it is, we
separated. Wasn't as wasn't aspleasant as you would have liked
(17:14):
it to be. But things happen. Andlong and short is, is that that
was the beginning of safety fab,basically. So safety fat was my
own personal venture in thisfall protection space,
leveraging all of my experienceover the years and bringing it
probably to the best form of itthat it is existed in this state
today.
Aaron Moncur (17:32):
Terrific. Okay, what are one or two products at
safety fab that your team hasdeveloped that you are most
proud of? You?
Have you ever wasted weeksfixing a design issue that could
have been caught early orstruggled to find real,
practical answers tomanufacturing or tolerant stack
(17:54):
up problems? PDX 2025 is notyour typical trade show. It's a
hands on engineering trainingevent built for problem solving.
Learn advanced CAD surfacemodeling, Gd and T, DFM,
adhesives and bondingtechniques, metrology and much,
(18:14):
much more directly from subjectmatter experts in the industry.
Bring your toughest engineeringchallenges, get live expert
advice and see real worldsolutions in action. PDX 2025 is
happening october 21 and 22nd inPhoenix, Arizona, walk away with
(18:34):
new skills that make you morevaluable help you grow your
career faster and even increaseyour earning potential. Spots
are limited. Sign up now at thewave.
Unknown (18:50):
Boy, we've, we've got a that's a great question, and
it's a harder one to answer thanyou would think. We build about
250 to 300 pieces of equipment ayear, okay? And they range in
size, scope, complexity. Thecustomer base is all over the
place too. I mean, I talk a lotabout aerospace, those are our
Meet marquee projects, andthat's really where we we get a
(19:13):
chance to use everything that weknow in our repertoire. But we
do things for like food serviceenvironments where they need to
have, you know, clean roomenvironments where you have to
design equipment in a certainway, where it can't proliferate
bacteria and things of thatnature. So there's, there's just
a litany of things that I couldsay I'm proud of that we worked
on, because there, every timethe customer calls, it truly is
(19:35):
a unique problem for us. Andthen we just use all of these
different solutions that we'veused over the years with other
places to massage them and bringthem up and distill them out to
see if they can be used andunearthed for, you know, today's
problem. Couple projects that Ithink I that I am really proud
of, that I can, you know, giveyou a little bit of background
on is amazingly when early on inmy career, I had designed some
(19:59):
preliminary. Area. Prototypestands for what's called the CH
53k heavy lift aircraft. It'sSikorsky now owned by Lockheed
airframe, but, um, it's a heavylift program. And back 20 years
ago, I was designing theprototype, stands for them to
make the first aircraft,basically. And that's when they
were tweaking the avionics onthat first one. And then all of
(20:20):
a sudden, there was two or threeairframes, and they needed to
get one more set of stands. Andwe're talking about stands that
are like, Oh, 20 foot to theplatform. They're approximately,
like, 40 foot long. And they goon either side of a heavy lift
rotor aircraft. And they haveall sorts of different features
and cutouts on the sides of thework surface of the platform so
they can fit close to theaircraft. There's bumpering and
(20:42):
tool trays and laptop stands.
And, I mean, it's a real pieceof equipment. It's like a
working environment, more thanjust a platform. And as those
aircraft started to roll outduring the prototyping phase,
they built about 18 of thembefore they went into
production, and we had about 12sets of stands that we built for
those prototypes reallyservicing that program. And the
where the pride comes in is nowthat piece of equipment is in
(21:05):
production, and they'rebuilding, they have the the
government has orders for 1000sof these aircrafts, you know, so
they're making them. And I don'tbelieve that they'll every one
of those sets of aircraft willget a set of stands that we
build, but I can tell you thatmost of them will, and I don't
know that we'll be able to buildthem all, to be completely
honest, because there's moreaircraft than I think that we
(21:26):
have a factory space to build,but I feel very, very happy to
be part of that program everytime I see one of those
aircrafts flying around. Alittle party. Feels like I kind
of helped, you know, keep thatthing up there, because all
those aviation maintenance techswho are up on our stands keeping
that aircraft checked out, and,you know, all up to snuff,
they're using our pieces ofequipment. So it's cool. That's
it gives you a little bit ofpride, I guess, what
Aaron Moncur (21:50):
a great feeling.
There really is something uniqueabout seeing your design, or
something that was, you know,associated with your design out
in the wild, right? Yeah. Imean, what a cool feeling. I
remember when our second childwas born. In fact, maybe it was
both our first and second child.
Anyway, we were at the hospital,and the nurses walked in and
(22:11):
they had this, this badge on,and it's called the Vocera
badge. I don't know why theycall it a badge. It's like an
electronic it's kind of like alittle telephone strapped to
your neck that that is always onspeakerphone, and, you know,
push a button and you page, dr,so and so, or nurse, so and so,
or whatever. It's acommunication device for medical
(22:33):
professionals at hospitals. Andthe nurses were all wearing
these, these Vocera badges. AndI was like, I designed, like I
can point right now to the partson that device that I designed,
and it's this part here, andthat part there in the back. And
it was so neat, right, seeingthat out in the wild, people
actually using it. So, yeah,
Unknown (22:52):
that's cool. I mean, we, for instance, we did, we did
a bunch of work for SouthwestAirlines many years ago, and we
allow into stands. We built atheir, they called it their
Provo stand, which, then it wasa, you know, abbreviation for
provision stand. So basically,their fleet was a 737,
basically, and they would bringthose in and their their their
claim to fame was turning andburning, getting those aircrafts
in and out as fast as possible.
So this provision stand was aspecific stand designed to go up
(23:14):
against the rear of theaircraft, where they bring in
all the ice, the pop, the soda,the water, all that stuff. And
then they also deplane all thatthe old garbage off the old
aircraft, so that the Provostand actually had, like, a
laundry chute designed into itso they could just throw all the
garbage down. And then, like,then had an elevator to bring
all the other stuff up in it.
(23:36):
And like, we were, like,responsible for helping
Southwest Airlines keep theirlike rates lower effectively,
because, like, we had designedequipment that allowed them to
turn their aircraft seven and ahalf minutes faster, you know,
or something like that, whichthat's big dollars in that
industry. You don't realizethat's an industry of dollars
and cents, but it's also anindustry of seconds, a lot of
ways. So, yeah, fun littlethings. And then, you know, when
(23:58):
you're at the airport and yousee these stands out there on
the right, being my factory, Iremember designing that wheel
and that tow bar.
Aaron Moncur (24:05):
How cool. How cool. Well, let me take a very
short break here and share withthe listeners that the being an
engineer podcast is brought toyou by pipeline design and
engineering, where we don'tdesign pipelines, but we do help
companies develop advancedmanufacturing processes,
automated machines and customfixtures, complemented with
(24:26):
product design and R D services,Learn more at Team pipeline.us.
The podcast is also sponsored bythe wave, an online platform of
free tools, education andcommunity for engineers, Learn
more at the wave. Dot engineer,we are privileged to be speaking
with Jeffrey Hubert today. SoJeffrey, you started a couple of
(24:50):
businesses. Now tell me what areone or two things that you know
now that you wish you had knownbefore you started your first
business. Yes, I would
Unknown (25:01):
probably want to be warned how much of an animal
you're turning on when you turnthe lights on, you know, because
I think when you as me,personally, I always wanted to
be in business for myself. Inever really knew how I was
going to find a pathway there.
And it found me in a lot of wayssimilar. And as I mentioned to
you, when I when I took thatyear off out of the industry,
(25:22):
and I was working in the medicaldesign space, I ended up getting
thrust into a position of moreof a management position and
more of a business ownershipposition, because of some very
quick, I won't get into thedetails, but there were some
very quick administrativechanges in the at the company
that forced me to take much moreof a role than just the designer
(25:44):
aspect, which was a great thing.
It forced me to do a lot ofthings that I was afraid of,
like setting up payroll and, youknow, doing things that, like,
are just very, you know,innocuous, but they're, they're,
they're intimidating sometimes.
And, you know, I'm a little bitof like, I have a little bit of
a left and right brain thinggoing on between being an artist
and also, kind of being like aquasi engineer, you know. So,
(26:05):
oddly enough, the whole payrolland, like, you know, paperwork
side of business aspect thingsis, was not something that was
always I felt I was veryintimidated by that, for lack of
better terms, but baptism byfire, I was thrust into it. But
what I wasn't prepared for,though, is just how much, like,
once you dabble in the the ideaof owning your own business, I
was fascinated by, like, howmuch it takes control over you.
(26:26):
After you, after you turn it on,you're along for the ride more
than you are necessarily incontrol whether you are the head
of the business or not. Becauseas far as I'm concerned, every
one of my every one of myclients, is my boss. You know, I
so I have, I've got plenty ofbosses. I've got more bosses
than most people do, and I'mself employed in a lot of ways.
But look at it, I don't look atit that way, because I I look at
(26:48):
my clients as as my superiors. Ilook at them as, you know, the
paramount of making them happyand and that in and of itself,
that can be a lot of pressure attimes, you know. So the
scalability of your business asit grows is being being prepared
for that. Scaling is a trickything to prepare for, for lack
of better terms, I was, I wasunprepared for the scaling of
(27:11):
the business as things took off.
Just the amount of time and theamount of effort you got to put
in, not in a bad way, never gotaway from us or anything like
that. I just mean, you're youcan easily underestimate what
goes into making a successfulbusiness maintain its success,
because a lot of times specialsauce that got you to the dance
in the beginning slowly getsdistilled out as you grow. It's
(27:32):
important that you never forgetwhat got you to the game, and
that's the relationships withthe customers. It's your ability
to not just be a yes man. Youhave to be a yes, because, man,
you know, you got to show themwhy, even if you sometimes, you
have to deviate, you know, fromyour customers wants and your
needs. And that's not alwayseasy, but you have to have a
good way of communicating that,and just all of those things I
(27:54):
was, I think I was unpreparedfor, or I would have loved to
have been more prepared for thethe tiger by the tail nature of
running your own business theway that can be. I mean, it
sounds like you could probablyshare a similar story with me.
It seems,
Aaron Moncur (28:07):
well, the buck stops with you, right? As the
business owner. I mean, if, ifsomething, there's a problem and
it needs to be solved. I mean,we have a wonderful team here,
but, but the fact is, as anemployee, you can leave, right?
You can just go somewhere elseif you don't like what's
happening at a company, but ifyou're the owner, it's much,
much harder to do that right?
And some people might say, Well,I mean, if it's a really big
(28:28):
problem and you're reallyunhappy, just shut the business
down. Easier said than done,right? Shutting a business. I've
never shut a business down, butI've thought about right? I've
done just, uh, what's the word?
I'm looking for, thoughtexperiments, I guess. What would
that look like? And there's alot that goes into it, right?
(28:49):
That it's not as simple as justflicking a switch or something.
Anyway, the buck stops with you.
And there's just a lot ofresponsibility and pressure
there is to handle. There
Unknown (29:00):
is for sure, and, you know, and to speak to that, I
did, in fact, sell my businesssafety fab. I did sell my
business in 2022, to one of mylarger customers, and it's a
customer that I had been workingwith my entire career. I had
been, basically, he'd beenbuying equipment for me for my
entire career, and had beensupportive of everything I'd
ever done. You know, he'ssupportive when I started in the
(29:21):
customs business and helped getthe customs business off the
ground at that former employermany years ago. And then, you
know, continue to express andsell our equipment. You know, he
was basically reselling ourequipment. Did such a good job.
And then whenever I went off onmy own with my other former
business partner and let himknow that we were turning our
lights on, he immediatelysupported us. And so I knew in
the same thing, like, whenever Ileft that partnership and
(29:43):
started safety Fauci, not onlydid he show interest, but he
showed immediate interest inacquisition too, and I wasn't
the timing wasn't right, so Iran the business for about five
years independently, and then Iactually as part of a equity and
sale, I took a small ownershipstake in industrial products,
who's now the parent owner. Ofsafety fab, who I now run as a
division of industrial products.
So that helped, that helped me.
(30:05):
I was at the point where thescalability, I knew that I
needed some additional help fromthe resources a larger company.
And my colleague, his name isPhil summer narrow, phenomenal
guy. I also have more of asilent partner named Sam Saxton,
who's involved in the businessas well. Both phenomenal
business acumen. I feel veryblessed to be surrounded by
these guys. Sam's a littleyounger than me. Feels a little
bit older than me, so theseasoning and the blend that we
(30:28):
have, there's a lot of energybetween the two or the three
owners, rather, and it's just,it's been a really good
Aaron Moncur (30:33):
but you mentioned this, this big customer that you
had kind of throughout yourentire career. I think it's
super important for especiallysmall businesses, to have that
whale of a customer. Of course,it can be dangerous as well,
right? Because if they ever turnthings off, then you're really
in big trouble. But having a bigcustomer like that that just
sends repeat orders, you know,over and over and over is so
(30:57):
beneficial to growing abusiness. It makes it so much
easier than, you know, getting10% here and 5% there. And you
know, it
Unknown (31:05):
really is, and it's not just about the revenue either.
It's also the ability to pointto that customer and to leverage
that relationship and use themfor referrals to, you know, and
to use some of the equipment,you know, anything that we build
and design and sell, we try todocument as much as possible,
because we want to, like,leverage it to be able to sell
to other customers, you know, byby putting it up on the website
or sharing it with othercustomers during meetings, to
(31:26):
show them our capabilities.
Unfortunately, because a lot ofthe work that we do do is in, is
in the dark aerospace, you know,black projects and things. A lot
of times, we never get a chanceto see where this stuff goes.
And that's a that's a tragedy,but it's also fun. We know that
it's working around some reallycool stuff, and that's cool. We
don't get it. We don't get toleverage that for our business
(31:46):
operations as much as we'd liketo. And until, like, literally,
like, for instance, I wouldn'thave been able to even talk to
you about that ch 53 programthat I mentioned to you earlier,
a decade ago, when I was workingon the prototype stands. There's
NDAs in place, that sense, senseis all gone away, but that's the
type of thing where it can takeyears to before you can even
talk about some of the pieces ofequipment that you build or some
(32:08):
of the customers you work with.
So when you have a marqueeclient that you can really
leverage, it's really important,not just for the financial
stability, but also foroperational stuff.
Aaron Moncur (32:19):
One thing that we are learning right now, we're
very new to the product space.
We have this we have a fewproducts, but one in particular
that we're really pushing andtrying to get some traction
with, and we have had sometraction with it. This is
something that surprised me. Theeasy part was developing the
product. The hard part has beenselling that product. What? What
(32:41):
has been your experience in thatspace? What? What have you found
to be effective tools for forselling a product? And have you
found the same to be true, or,once you had your, you know,
first few SKUs designed was itpretty easy to start selling
them
Unknown (32:59):
so that that's that's an interesting it's an
interesting question, and it'san interesting answer, because
we really don't have SKUs, youknow, we have quote numbers.
Basically. Everything we do isstart from the scratch, only
recently, and we can get intothis, if you'd like, but only
recently do we start using someconfiguration based modeling,
where we're not starting from aclean sheet as much, because
there's some type form productsthat we make a lot of. One of
(33:22):
the things that we make, thingsthat we make a lot of, because
there's not a lot of customerswho are rather companies who do
is what's called a cantileverladder. And a cantilever ladder
is simply, it's a rollingstaircase. So you think of a
ladder as a 90 degree back, andthat's a staircase that comes
down, and that staircase rollsaround on wheels. There's
usually wheels down here. Well,a cantilever ladder has a
platform that hangs out the backso you can get over top of an
(33:42):
obstruction. Okay, sometimesthey're supported, where there's
legs that go underneath andsupport the load, and then
sometimes there's just a bigcounterweight back here. But
there's a lot of engineeringinvolved. I mean, there's not a
lot of engineering, but there'scompanies are like, we're not
doing that. That's tricky.
There's tipping moments, blah,blah, blah, like a local fab
shop would over engineersomething like that. We can
design it appropriately, but wedo a ton of those, and we've
(34:03):
designed a configurator for ourconfiguration, or configurable
cantilever ladders now, whereI'm not designing it from a
clean sheet anymore, I'mplugging in some, some, some,
you know, values, into a module,basically. And we're doing that
for a number of our type, formproducts, fixed ladders that go
outside of buildings. There's 90degree ladders. That's a real
basic dimension. How tall isyour building? And then code
(34:25):
figures everything else out, 12inch centers for rungs, 18 inch
wide rungs. Blah, blah, blah,so. But as far as like selling
for us, our selling tool hasbeen expediency. How quick can
we gather the customer inquireswith us? How quickly can we push
back a drawing and a quote frontof their face? Because most of
the time, by the time they foundus, somebody who could make
(34:45):
something that was a little bitone off, they've already beaten
the streets for a couple weeks,and they're out of time, you
know. So usually, expediency isour biggest quotient to be able
to help conversion. I. Yeah, youknow, because we don't sell
SKUs, we are, we're selling moreof an experience. So like our
website, we've had to break ourwebsite into kind of like
(35:07):
product families of like,cantilever ladders, fixed
ladders, dock stairs, you know,mobile platforms. We have a
whole space on our websitededicated to aviation
maintenance and that, wesegregate that into two groups,
rotorcraft. So that's anythinglike helicopters, for instance,
and then just fixed wingaircraft, because those are two
wildly different experienceswhen you're designing equipment,
(35:29):
largely because of the rotors.
The rotors want to interact witha lot of like the handrails and
guardrails. So you have to makehandrails and guardrails that
are dynamic and or talk aboutmoving the blade from the
aircraft and so forth. So youcan probably just hear the
nuance and like some of the waythat we're discussing this, the
sales tool is getting ourcustomer when they reach our
(35:51):
website, the comfort level andthat we know what we're doing
and that they came to the rightspot. And we found that we do
that through a variation of, youknow, both the appropriate that
language and verbiage lets themknow that we're using the right
keywords and we understand thesespaces, and then we do it
through leveraging as much ofthe design work that we've done
in the past visually on thewebsite, so they can see just
(36:11):
the litany of what we can do.
Because I could tell you untilI'm blue in the face, all the
different things we can design,and you'll be a skeleton and
bored when I'm done, but youdon't love to roll through a
whole gallery of these thingsand you can see them. Some of
them are there in theirapplication. Unfortunately, most
of what is on our website is, infact, renderings, because of the
nature of the proprietary natureof where a lot of these things
(36:32):
go, but there's a consistency toit, and there's a real good
feeling of like these guys knowwhat they're doing. And you can
the the imagery that we do havethat are photographs of our true
equipment. You can see that it'san 88 relationship. I mean,
there's no there's no differencethat we don't leave anything to
the imagination, from thepresentation to what we show you
to what you get on your stockwhen it gets, you know, arrived.
(36:52):
So that's pretty powerful,compelling story, but it's been,
it's taken years to aggregateall of that data and all of that
information and all thosecustomer experiences, we have
some case studies and thingslike that on the website that
are very helpful in helping totell a story from start to
finish about how we work withour customer base. So I mean,
we're a relatively small crew.
(37:14):
There's only three guys who arededicated to our division, and
then we have our fabricationshops that are actually out
there building it, all theequipment that we sell and so
forth. But with that small teamof multidisciplinary guys, you
know, we've been able to put abow on the the experience that
we provide to our customers, andwe kind of put it in the form of
the website effectively, andthat's really been our calling
(37:34):
card. What
Aaron Moncur (37:35):
advice would you give to young engineers who want
to develop a career in designingand developing hard goods
products? Yeah, I
Unknown (37:45):
would get involved in trying to gain some sort of
employment in a physical,tangible manufacturing space as
soon as you possibly can. Ilearned so much in what is
really a dirty industry. It wasjust a weld shop. That factory
that I worked at, that ladderfactory those weld shop. I mean,
they had a couple roboticwelding cells that barely worked
(38:05):
when they did, you know, but byand large it was, you know,
clenching, bending, bringing inraw material. And one built one
store, you know, one door of thebuilding and staking it through
the building and work inprogress, and learning about
walking times, learning aboutmanufacturing. I mean, I know
that a lot of that manufacturingtype is going to go away with
automation and so forth, butthere's still a lot of it out
(38:27):
there, and I feel like you canreally learn a lot about how
design products if youunderstand better about how
they're built. Because there's abig I've noticed there's always
a big deficit, specifically whenI was going to school, between
kids who would design things,and kids who could design things
that were actually buildable andcould actually be made in a kind
of cost effective manner andthings, and I noticed that chasm
(38:50):
got greatly shortened by any oneof those, basically people who
worked in manufacturing, as longas they got a job where they
were touching feeling somethingget built, They that would close
the loop, and that kid and thatstudent would become
lethal engineering space. Butboy, without it, you are really
floundering. I can tell you thatI went to school half and half.
(39:10):
I went to school not working atall in a manufacturing space and
then working in themanufacturing space
simultaneously. That's aphenomenal combination.
Aaron Moncur (39:21):
Yeah, yeah. I without naming any names. Of
course, I remember a youngengineer I worked with who did
not have any background, likehands on, working in a
manufacturing space, you know,building, I don't know, fixing
cars, fixing bikes, things likethat. That just wasn't his, his
background, which is fine,right? We all come from
different backgrounds. There wasa task I gave to this individual
(39:44):
and said, Hey, I need you todisassemble this, this product,
so we can do whatever it was wewere doing on the project. And
instead of, you know, findingsome precision tools and
carefully taking this thingapart. This. I remember hearing
in the shop, bang, bang, bang.
And I'm like, What is going onout there? And I walk out and
(40:06):
this individual literally has ahammer, and it's just Whack,
whack, pounding this thing, youknow? And I'm like, oh, man, I
did not even like, realize thatI would need to explain we don't
use hammers to take thingsapart,
Unknown (40:22):
yeah, for real.
Aaron Moncur (40:25):
But, yeah, that hands on experience is so
invaluable. All right, with justa few minutes left here, if
you're okay with this, let'ssee, if I'm not mistaken, you
have a hobby and bodybuilding,is that, right? Yeah,
Unknown (40:42):
I've been a little bit on the sidelines because I had a
neck injury that happened lastyear. Okay, Danny has put, yeah,
it's put me in a little bit of apickle there, but, but, yeah,
that was something that wasalways in the background. That
was something that I was alwaysinvolved in. I had played sports
when I was in high school and soforth, but when I knew I was
going to art school, I betyou're not surprised to hear
that the art school didn't haveany school sports, so I needed
(41:06):
to figure out something to keepme busy physically, because
that's always been a big aspectof my life. So I had always
reacted well to weights. I waskind of, like a late bloomer. So
when I was playing hockey, I hadto, like, build myself up with
weights, because I started,well, as you started to get into
contact. I took hockey to apretty, pretty deep level. I was
playing up into like, you know,bantams, did you Junior, stuff
like that. So there's prettyphysical presence in that sport
(41:26):
at that time. Yeah. So I gotinto bodybuilding after I quit
playing hockey, because I waslike, Alright, I'm always
lifting anyway, and I reactwell. So I always like to take
everything to the fur the sixstep. So basically that was
bodybuilding. So I did that for,like, for like 10 years. I did
like 15 shows. And I justwanted, I just wanted to win my
week. Yeah, it was, it was a, itwas a big Odyssey. It was fun
between the ages of, like, 17and 27 basically, okay, I did,
(41:50):
did bunch shows. I just alwayswanted to win my weight class in
an amateur contest. I finallydid that, and then I glad,
gladly retired, but I still, tothis day, I still train with
weights, you know, regularly andso forth. It's just a bit, it's
kind of like how it's like how Istart my day, and it provides
the scaffold for just the restof my life, effectively, just
gets my body working right,because my mind opportunity in
the morning just to get the dayset ahead, just almost a
(42:12):
meditative thing. To be honest.
Aaron Moncur (42:14):
I was just going to ask, do you find it to be
therapeutic? And sounds like,yes, absolutely,
Unknown (42:19):
yeah. I find that. I find that I'm a pretty energetic
person. I need to get extraenergy out of me, so me starting
empty in the tank first thing inthe morning allows me to be a
lot lower baselines for theremainder of my day. And I find
that putting myself throughwillful you know, trouble is
sometimes sometimes better.
Because if you if you putyourself through willful
hardships, sometimes the thingsthat come down, down the pathway
(42:40):
are not quite as hard. You know,it's true. It's true. I've
willfully put myself throughhard things.
Aaron Moncur (42:48):
That's right. You know, there's a part of the
brain that grows when you dohard things that you don't want
to do, but you force yourself todo them anyway, and non
preferred behavior, I believethey call that. Yes, there you
go. That's it. Yeah, right.
Okay, all right. Well, Jeffrey,what a pleasure it was speaking
with you. Thank you for takingus through your journey and
sharing some wisdom and insightswith the listeners here at the
being an engineer podcast. Howcan people get in touch with
(43:10):
you? Yeah, LinkedIn is the bestway to get
Unknown (43:14):
ahold of me. And obviously our website is www,
dot safety, fab.com, it's justthe way it sounds, S, A, F, E,
and then the letter, I'm sorry.
I mean, I'm gonna start overagain. Www. Dot S, A, F, E,
hyphen, the letter T, as in Tom,hyphen, and then F, A, b.com, so
safety, fab.com, and then ourparent website is industrial
products.com that's the theparent company who owns us, and
we're a large distributor of allsorts of construction, goods,
(43:37):
manufacturing, goods, productionequipment, things of that
nature.
Aaron Moncur (43:41):
Terrific. And we'll have those links in the
show notes as well. Jeffrey, isthere anything else that we
haven't talked about that you'dlike to bring up before we end?
Unknown (43:49):
I just really appreciate the opportunity to
speak with you and just kind ofshare it, whatever the story is
that I have on my side. It wasso it was real pleasure.
Aaron Moncur (43:55):
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Geoffrey Huber (43:56):
Yeah, take care.
Aaron Moncur (43:59):
I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and
engineering. If you liked whatyou heard today, please share
the episode to learn how yourteam can leverage our team's
expertise developing advancedmanufacturing processes,
automated machines and customfixtures, complemented with
product design and R and Dservices. Visit us at Team
(44:20):
pipeline.us to join. A vibrantcommunity of engineers online
visit the wave. Dot, engineer,thank you for listening. You.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.