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Malcolm Lui:
Welcome to the High Value Sales Show of Eversprint.com. I'm Malcolm Lui, the Managing Member of Eversprint, and today we're speaking with Kyle Sharick, the Founder and CEO of TracksNTeeth, an online marketplace for aftermarket heavy construction equipment parts. Welcome to the show Kyle.

Kyle Sharick:
Hey thanks for having me MALCOLM

Malcolm Lui:
Kyle, you grew your company's revenue from $680,000 in 2014 to $2.2 million in 2017, a 224% increase, and in 2018 you hit around $2.4 million. Before we talk about how you grew your company so fast, can you briefly share what your company does beyond my quick intro, and how your company differs from the competition?

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah. Sure I can I can do that. So like you said tracks and teeth as an online marketplace for aftermarket heavy construction parts and basically what we do is we take vendors with inventory of aftermarket construction parts and connect them with customers who are looking to buy those parts. We're trying to create an e-commerce solution to make it easier faster and more efficient for customers to find and buy parts online. And we buy and ship direct from those vendors straight to our customers doors trying to make it just a whole lot simpler. So

Malcolm Lui:
And what before you came along. How else would people buy these parts

Kyle Sharick:
I mean really before we existed and there's a few companies kind of dabbling in some online stuff there's really the traditional channels been the OEM equipment dealers. So that's kind of been the main way that most customers would buy these parts.

Malcolm Lui:
Okay. So what you the value you're bringing to your customers are better selection easier ordering quicker ordering. What are the value proposition

Kyle Sharick:
Right yeah. On top of that on top of selection and ordering a lot of it is just kind of a focus on the traditional OEM equipment dealers are really disconnected and how they do their part sells there. They kind of focus on their OEM brands and the aftermarket is kind of just an afterthought. So when a customer comes in looking for parts they want to push and sell their OEM parts because that's what they're there OEMs want them to do. So what we're doing is creating an alternative purchase channel providing every option and making it easy on the customer to choose between price or brand or availability shipping time whatever is most important before it kind of varied on whoever they're talking to whoever that person decided they liked the most or knew that existed that's who they use. We bring in every vendor option and just let the customer choose

Malcolm Lui:
And so aftermarket parts right. Not necessarily

Kyle Sharick:
Right.

Malcolm Lui:
The parts made. Now is it because the original equipment manufacturers to sell direct themselves to their own channels. Is that why you don't sell their parts as well.

Kyle Sharick:
Right. The original OEM dealers are generally the only dealer allowed in their territory to sell parts for OEM equipment. So not only are they the only one allowed there. They're monopolizing that area. So creates this Need for another channel for people to purchase parts

Malcolm Lui:
And for those who aren't in the construction industry me included can you define what's meant by heavy construction

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah sure. So I mean our main customers are literally buying tracks for bulldozers and excavators. They're contractors developers people that are kind of putting up buildings builders stuff like that. It's anyone that uses large equipment like that cranes anything with tracks on it pretty much is really what our parts are geared at.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. So any vehicle that has a track on it you will sell parts for that vehicle that machine that machine.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah pretty generally Exactly

Malcolm Lui:
And now you're talking about really large heavy parts that have a real high ticket price to them or can of might be a smaller knob on a gear shift.

Kyle Sharick:
It can be all the above. We've we've done small nuts and bolts all the way up to tracks for the 11 bulldozer that weighed fifteen thousand pounds on each side and took a crane to load onto a truck and a creme de la float under a truck just to get it delivered.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. So conceptually Are you kind of like a drop shipper or do you actually own the inventory as well.

Kyle Sharick:
Now we're we're essentially kind of like a drop shipper where we're taking all these vendors who are not not actively online and not kind of going after online channels as was since the dealers aren't doing that we're trying to create another option to do that. So

Malcolm Lui:
Rights so it's almost conceptually speaking to make it easier for me and me others understand you're almost like a marketplace like how Amazon has a third party sellers that can list on their platform and that and it's just a listing service and the seller takes care of all the shipping

Kyle Sharick:
Exactly that's kind of that's actually the end goal. I mean our our end goal is to have every part available with every option for our customer to choose and kind of an online Amazon like experience. That's

Malcolm Lui:
Right.

Kyle Sharick:
That's the end goal. That's where we want to go. So

Malcolm Lui:
Got it. Now your business grew pretty fast six hundred eighty thousand in to 2014 and in four years later you're at two point forty two point four million a year almost 4 x your business. What were the drivers during those four years

Kyle Sharick:
The biggest driver by far was just continually reinvesting in our in our marketing and sales. We are targeted our targeted marketing was just online advertising through Google Yahoo and being. We wanted to find actively searching customers that we knew were looking for what we sold and try to see if we could convert those to prove a market strategy. And once we found that and some channels that worked in campaigns that worked and things like that we just started rapidly scaling those up. Then I think as everybody that owns one piece of equipment like a bulldozer usually owns more than one of them. So now about 17 percent of our sales actually come from repeat customers who are calling back to order other parts for other equipment they own or even for the same same equipment where something else needs to be repaired.

Malcolm Lui:
Right now they buy your product because it's cheaper or because they get it faster or a bit of both

Kyle Sharick:
It's a combination of both. But by leveraging every vendor option we can make it easy for the customer. We usually are giving them options. Most of the time it's going to be the fastest lowest cost and those things kind of collide especially with how heavy what we sell is our average order is a thousand pounds. So the farther you ship it the more it costs. But it's not always the case. Sometimes there's lower cost fenders that that have product farther away or vice versa. And by having every option there we we can really make it easy and make it convenient. You know some

Malcolm Lui:
Right.

Kyle Sharick:
Of our customers just like calling us because they can get for opt since we can say here's your fastest here's your cheapest here's a brand a brand B

Malcolm Lui:
Right

Kyle Sharick:
And let them. So.

Malcolm Lui:
And I guess the beauty of it is that before these guys would have to create four accounts with four different vendors. Now in this particular case they just create one account on your platform and you just buy from whoever number you. However many different vendors you want

Kyle Sharick:
Right exactly. And a lot of times too most of our competition is a landing page with a phone number where we have thousands of makes and models and over a 100000 part number is represented on our website that customers can just shop online and an e-commerce experience on top of having customer support behind it. So

Malcolm Lui:
Right. So how do you handle the payment side of things. Are people just popping a thousand pound part of their credit card or

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah

Malcolm Lui:
Or did

Kyle Sharick:
For the most of the time it's kind of the most far. Ninety nine percent of our orders are paid for in advance either on a credit card by a wire transfer her bank transfer. We've started expanding into some wholesale and in that type of market to actually to some of the dealers that that also need help with parts. But the majority of our orders are paid for in advance and that's kind of what allowed our growth that was we weren't prohibited by cash flow or anything like that. Whenever a customer bought something they paid for it and we have those funds available to them in order directly from the vendors as well. So

Malcolm Lui:
Right. So that hasn't been a big issue in terms of your customers wanting to be sent an invoice and paying 90 days later

Kyle Sharick:
Not entirely. We have had one or two kind of larger things that we've decided to turn down because a customer wanted that long and kind of looked at it like if they don't want to pay that fast and save the savings that we were offering them that's their choice. But you know what we're not entirely in a position to start being everybody else's bank where we're trying to grow. I want to take capital off

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah. Exactly. And it sits as a headache having to chase these folks down if they don't pay on time. Right.

Kyle Sharick:
Exactly. Yeah.

Malcolm Lui:
So I hear you. I mean even for my own business you know I always take payment in advance because it just eliminates all the worries down the line.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah that's what we do even on. I mean we have orders where we build tracks and those can take a week or two to share but even to get those in line we tell the customer got to pay for it. That's how you tie your inventory. That's how you tie it up. Otherwise we might sell it to someone else or someone else might do so.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah

Kyle Sharick:
And

Malcolm Lui:
Definitely. Are No

Kyle Sharick:
Nobody really complains. You know we create that expectation right from the beginning of here's what we can do and here's how we take payment and here's how we do business. And you know that it's your choice how you want to do it. Now our customers have been pretty reacting pretty well to it. So

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah I am at the end of day it is their choice and it's how you do business and if you're not a good fit you're not a good fit. I can go direct to the aftermarket vendor and they'll give you a line of credit. I would

Kyle Sharick:
Exactly.

Malcolm Lui:
Be

Kyle Sharick:
And that is part of what we tell you we get. We try to differentiate ourselves and people my dealer will give me credit or these guys will give me terms like Great here's what we're doing that's different and here's how we're different and here's why we're different. And one of the things we do that's different is we make the customers pay for it. Just you know it's part of the necessity of doing business and a lot of the times our savings especially on an aftermarket part where 30 to 70 percent less than the OEM dealer. So if you want to pay double to the dealer and put it on your terms and get credit that's fine. Or you can pay after us and use your credit card.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah.

Kyle Sharick:
It's

Malcolm Lui:
What's the quality of aftermarket versus OEM in your opinion

Kyle Sharick:
I mean the quality I think is pretty good from what we see our customers come back and they're generally pretty pleased with it a lot. There are only so many factories making anything in India. Any industry in the world and a lot of the times some of the same the same factories that are producing and aftermarket with their own name on it. A lot of those are producing the branded stuff with the branded names on it similar to what we're seeing in other other categories. So most of the good ones there they're meeting and exceeding OEM spec. That's how our parts work. So

Malcolm Lui:
Right. So it sounds like the aftermarket market for industrial commercial parts is quite different from the aftermarket for consumer products than

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah I think so

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah I mean I've had my share of a known name branded stuff you buy and you save you save you know 10 20 30 percent but then you get into buying it again much more rapidly right.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah there's you know there's definitely some cases where the OEM makes sense some super you know we have high production customers that are doing super high volume mining or something like that and they only use OEM dealers and that's their choice and they can afford to do that. And they've tried other things and it just didn't work for their application being that what we're working with is so big and so heavy and steel on steel. There's some places where it definitely doesn't make sense. But the majority of our customers especially. It makes total sense for them there. They're not doing high production they're single owner operators smaller businesses trying to save money. So

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah

Kyle Sharick:
When

Malcolm Lui:
A make or break your business.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah

Malcolm Lui:
Ok so the first Ravi shared with me you you reinvested heavily in your marketing sales and sounds like you were using paper click ads to

Kyle Sharick:
Well

Malcolm Lui:
Generate your business. Cool.

Kyle Sharick:
We are.

Malcolm Lui:
How about How about drivers. Number two and number three

Kyle Sharick:
I mean the main the main driver has been that organic traffic. Definitely been. Been big for us. We we did a web site redesign in last some organic and finally got that back and we saw a huge kind of dip and then regain that's part of our twenty eighteen cells wasn't as big as it should have been.

Malcolm Lui:
Easy

Kyle Sharick:
But organic traffic has been a big to part of the reason we have 100000 part numbers as if somebody types a part number into an online Web site. Any search. We're one of the only ones to show up because we're one of the only ones listing all the available numbers we can get from our vendors online for sale. So that's another big driver for us. And then we get a lot of repeat referral business too. This is a small niche industry everybody talks to everybody. So we get people calling in all the time you know that you sold to my buddy are you sold to these guys and we do business with them. They are machine broken. They told us to call you on that. That makes it really easy to. So that's been a big driver to

Malcolm Lui:
Ok. So this recap the drivers two three and four and one you're getting organic traffic coming back to the site you have a wide inventory and you're getting referral business as well.

Kyle Sharick:
Brett

Malcolm Lui:
Now what percentage of all the potential parts out there can I buy through your site

Kyle Sharick:
That's a good question. It's I mean it's kind of we're targeted in certain pieces so there's things we do really well and things we don't really get into. But it's you know it's probably maybe 10 or 15 percent or something maybe total of what's out there.

Malcolm Lui:
Ok.

Kyle Sharick:
But

Malcolm Lui:
And how many items is that

Kyle Sharick:
Like I said right now we're at one hundred and thirty thousand items on our website and we probably have access to closer to two hundred and fifty thousand different part numbers or something that we offer through vendors.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. So if you're guesstimating that you're you have 10 percent of all the parts out there it's kind of mind boggling that there might be 2.5 million different parts out there where

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah

Malcolm Lui:
You think that

Kyle Sharick:
That might

Malcolm Lui:
It.

Kyle Sharick:
Even be low because I've talked to vendors where they have a million part numbers by themselves but it's a

Malcolm Lui:
So now your system for tracking all the inventory is it is it homegrown or is this an off the shelf software you're able to buy and modify to help you do this

Kyle Sharick:
Now we I mean we looked at off the shelf systems and the end result was we basically built our own proprietary database and part of the reason we did that was because we're also dealing with all the part numbers and the fact that in aftermarket parts a single part number can point to five different aftermarket numbers and 10 different OEM part numbers. And then those all points different makes and models and machines. So we wanted to build something that would allow a customer to search and be able to find the stuff that way and let us leverage all the data we're aggregating. So we had to had to do that. So that's what we did.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. So when people are shopping for products it's a premise only one part that's available to meet their needs. Or do they have a choice of different rubber tracks that might work for their machine and then they will check out the reviews so that they were making a purchase.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah it's not really reviews. Yeah there's usually only kind of like one part number is the same across the board there's some different things like rubber tracks or some applications or even in steel tracks there's some different various things where based on an application usage like a forestry machine versus a bulldozer or an excavator that's out in the field might want wider tracks to be on a swamp versus an excavator in the forest wants narrower tracks to get between trees like there's a little bit of that. But in general it's kind of this one thing works and then here's all the vendors that you can pick from

Malcolm Lui:
All right. Interesting. Now what's the most interesting most unique most unusual product you sell from a layman's perspective.

Kyle Sharick:
I mean I think in general I think it's just the fact that we're selling tracks for bulldozers on the Internet is a pretty interesting thing. That's really how I describe it to most people.

Malcolm Lui:
It

Kyle Sharick:
You see

Malcolm Lui:
Is

Kyle Sharick:
People

Malcolm Lui:
Interesting.

Kyle Sharick:
Who drive down the road that track on their on both sides. That's the main thing we sell.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah

Kyle Sharick:
So you know it is kind of an interesting thing.

Malcolm Lui:
Is there a is there a particular type of track or particular application that's that most people even imagine that they even exist.

Kyle Sharick:
There's stuff that I had the most interesting or most oddball thing we were in and to as even the fact that like our tracks are used in conveyors that are used in manufacturing and they're used in equipment that's used in a lot of other places that we don't think about necessarily. So we'll get a call from someone out of the blue with a part number. You know they're buying something that we know goes on a bulldozer and they have some giant conveyor line and manufacturing they're using to automate a warehouse or something and it has these bulldozer parts as part of the bear. And

Malcolm Lui:
That's very

Kyle Sharick:
That's

Malcolm Lui:
Interesting.

Kyle Sharick:
Something we've tapped into but it's something we've started try and trying to figure out how we can get into those markets.

Malcolm Lui:
That's interesting. So someone

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah

Malcolm Lui:
Was this creative and said I need a conveyor belt and we need something as this is a hey you know this tractor is this tractor track will work for us. Is that how it came to be

Kyle Sharick:
Kind of yeah. You know they needed a way to make a conveyor system that does you know moves a bunch of stuff along some production line and it was like Well the easiest thing is there's these tracks for bulldozers already and you know we can make this thing that acts as a conveyor top and bolted to the use bulldozer tracks and just run them really far and all of a sudden you have this weird custom machine and now they're selling tons of them. But we started. It's it's interesting.

Malcolm Lui:
That is interesting. Now is there a standard for tracks where the gears and the sprockets are x distance apart so you could interchanged attracts relatively easily

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah there's I mean there's across the board there's a lot of different machines where parts entertains and that's part of the part of what's interesting about the database that we built is where we're making it easier to figure out like OK this part interchanges across these machines and now we're looking at what applications can we use that for. Because if an OEM dealer would know that they're branded part could fit on someone else's brand that machine they could then sell it to even though you know technically they may have that data with our database they'd be able to figure that out. So we're trying to figure out how to how to leverage that how to use that data how to get more of that type of data. So

Malcolm Lui:
Right. Very cool. Going back to your drivers a little bit. So you talk about reinvesting your marketing and sales so when you first got that started you were you really bootstrapping into hands of

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah

Malcolm Lui:
Ads and people we said Yeah I want to buy this track and then you want humanity manually went about finding a vendor and then getting it done.

Kyle Sharick:
Oh yeah 100 percent. I mean when I first started I probably was spending ten dollars a day on online advertising. I think I started the company with thousand dollars. I was all I had in the bank. That was that was my start up catalog. And we bootstrapped and cash flowed it to get to the point where we are. So at that point I think I was doing ten dollars a day in ads and were seven or eight hundred dollars a day now and ads. But you know we'd get a few phone calls and a few clicks and somebody looking for one thing and it kind of go out do we do it now only on a much smaller scale. And as we started converting that we just started kind of starting to ramp that up as capital became more available and we started realizing like if I invest in this the money is going to come back we're not going to you know we're not going to spend a bunch of money and not get anything from it. So

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah. Get you're going to why right to it.

Kyle Sharick:
That's right here.

Malcolm Lui:
It's logical to keep on ramping up until your eye gets set too low that's not worth it.

Kyle Sharick:
Exactly. And that's kind of what we did. So we started there and then slowly started ramping and we just kept kind of doing that.

Malcolm Lui:
So how do you get this idea of doing what you're doing it's I

Kyle Sharick:
And

Malcolm Lui:
Can see the opportunity there but I don't think I ever would thought of it.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah I. I actually worked for I worked from a manufacturer that was manufacturing flooring and they were all so that it was a China based company and I was their international sales rep for Europe and North America and I was selling stuff direct from the factory and volume container sales but they also had this they had inventory in a couple warehouses and they were running an online website drop shipping and drop shipping flooring from these to our warehouses as West Coast and East Coast all over the US. And I'd sit in their meetings and I just kind of started looking at someone should do this would part someone should do this with all these there's all these vendors out there there's all these options. I had a background in part sales before that I was a regional sales rep for a parts distributor and I was also a sales rep for a caterpillar dealer selling actual bulldozers to the customers. So I have a background in the industry and a background in manufacturing distribution retail and so on and I just kind of started going home and I started thinking about it and kind of put the idea together and that turned into me putting a few buy the domain put in a few website part numbers up and a few years later and decided to try and give it a go and started selling stuff.

Malcolm Lui:
So as it was a part time gig for you at the start that

Kyle Sharick:
At the start it was I was uncertain I didn't know you know I didn't know what was going to come of it it was an idea I had and I tried to tinker with a few other ones I had another business idea that didn't really work out and I always wanted to start my own company so the story is trying to find different things to try and different ways to maybe see if I can make something work in thing what this was I started turning things on and customer started converting fairly quickly and it was started it just clicked like Okay this is an idea that's obviously got some some lags behind it

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah definitely I mean it's a partnership is enormous and you're just a

Kyle Sharick:
Right.

Malcolm Lui:
I mean you're you're you're just a you're just a sprinkle right now. Right. Not even a drop. I think it must be you know hundreds of millions if not billions of annual sales of our time but imagine

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah. I mean just in I mean we just just to the vendors we have we know that the size of what we target is probably a five or six billion dollar industry in the US alone and then worldwide it's five to seven times that the same same type of networks exist. So it's a very large opportunity. And the OEM opportunity even bigger than that. So we kind of look at how can we leverage all these different things to try and see how much opportunity we can get.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah. Very cool. Now for your second driver about organic traffic how much of your business is coming from organic traffic versus your paid ad campaigns.

Kyle Sharick:
It's a good question. Something that's been tough to measure but you know I look at I mean I kind of look at overall business and I look at overall traffic and what we see is we see probably 30 or 40 percent of our traffic is organic. And we also know that an organic visitor converts at a much higher rate than a paid visitor because you know they're finding something super relevant to them and they're purposefully searching it too. So. And then we also saw what our website got rebuild so we lost a bunch of our traffic our traffic went down and sorted ourselves with a

Malcolm Lui:
He

Kyle Sharick:
Ramp nearly as quickly.

Malcolm Lui:
You think

Kyle Sharick:
So.

Malcolm Lui:
It is because I was there was a site down for some time and people just kind of lost trust in it. Or

Kyle Sharick:
Now we weren't down but we did a redesign and when we did that we kind of you know we lost a lot of the organic tools we had you know and then and then we had the secondary thing we had was Google also came out with that update that they came out with. I think it was in June or July where they started retooling how they treated 10 pages.

Malcolm Lui:
Like

Kyle Sharick:
And you know 100000 part number of pages that all kind of looked the same that it's

Malcolm Lui:
Yet.

Kyle Sharick:
A hard number with a description of cost a weight and the checkout. But that's about it. And you know because of most of our products are coming from vendors that we're not there we don't have the inventories so we don't photos or everything. So Google knocked out a lot of those two and that you know we saw the you saw that traffic declining as our sales were kind of ramping but then again it was going down at the same time. So it was a combination of those things.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. So has it come back to the pre what Web site redesign levels yet.

Kyle Sharick:
It's getting closer. We've started doing a lot and doing things to try and get Google area index pages and then all those kind of things and and doing that that's been ramping up our daily impressions and daily daily clicks and stuff and we're seeing that as well as a result and sales are sort of pacing to have a record month this month but most see if we get there was

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah. Can I see how you you mentioned how the organic traffic converts better than paper slick traffic. Oh I thought it's the other way around.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah there was something I heard from something that seemed like but.

Malcolm Lui:
Let me guess. Potentially unless you had the tracking technology installed potentially your organic traffic might be coming from previous people have found you through two campaigns to begin with. But it didn't buy at that time.

Kyle Sharick:
Right that's true.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah. So

Kyle Sharick:
Boys like that. Pay for him again to

Malcolm Lui:
That's true too. Are you doing a lot email marketing so that you can market to them again without paying for it

Kyle Sharick:
Where. Yeah we definitely. That's another thing we added. You know we we quote out probably five times plus what we close every month in terms of our revenue. So we're close maybe 15 or 20 percent of what we call it out. But one of the things I figured out real quick was we had to have some sort of software behind it. Just doing email drip so we added an email drip. That kind of goes automatic far far off our coding tool in that way. We have an extra kind of layer there behind our sales team of just hey we remember this we talk to you. Here's your thing. Try to you know buy from us. And we've seen some good uptick in that too because even if we're not in front of the customer we're still in front of the customer.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah.

Kyle Sharick:
Right.

Malcolm Lui:
Definitely

Kyle Sharick:
So that when we turn that on maybe a year and a half or two years ago and it wasn't super costly comparatively everything we were doing. But it definitely pays for itself every single month. You know

Malcolm Lui:
No. Yeah

Kyle Sharick:
So

Malcolm Lui:
Definitely.

Kyle Sharick:
That that's one of the things we've been doing and now we're actually trying to look at how can we get more. Not necessarily. How can we get more in front of our customer in a better way. And what can we do to make them convert at a higher percentage rate both on the website and through our quota. So those are some of the things we're tinkering with right now.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah. Yeah. One thing that we've done before for our clients. If they had a bit of excess inventory in something that they wanted to lighten up on. Right. And you'd probably do this as well. If you work with your vendors someone who's got too much of one particular part some sort. And if your list was targeted and segmented well enough by you can make a special offer to those people to help your vendor reduce their inventory and for you to do some transactions at the same time.

Kyle Sharick:
Right. Yeah. We've developed some tools to do that. And that's one of the things we're trying to you know we also built a fleet manager for our customers to add their equipment data and we have this method. We have this tool that maps parts to equipment models. So what we're trying to do now is figure out a way to get customers to adopt that so that we can start sending segmented email campaigns based on you know we know you on this machine because you either got a quarter buy parts for it here's everything else we sell for it because that's our biggest challenge is we have all this huge offering across a wide array of stuff and there's a lot of things we can't do because they're only available through the dealer. But how do we can be that massive star customer in a meaningful way. Make sure they know that hey if you're looking for these things you can definitely come to us.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah.

Kyle Sharick:
So

Malcolm Lui:
Now for these heavy industry heavy machinery you do have the numbers like a regular consumer car has and you fill up the van. You have all the details of the car

Kyle Sharick:
Kind of yeah. They have serial numbers but a lot of that data is really you know it's still so the equipment dealer the the specific dealer if it's a non Deere Caterpillar whoever it is they can do that and they can pull it up. You know it's it's harder for someone like us to do it.

Malcolm Lui:
It's not in their interest to share that database with you right.

Kyle Sharick:
Now you know we keep asking and they keep saying them

Malcolm Lui:
One day when you're a hundred times bigger they might change your mind. Yeah I think it might be a good idea for trucks tracks and stuff.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah

Malcolm Lui:
All right. For number three wide inventory. I know you said before that you're covering 10 to 15 percent of what's out there. How much do you want to ultimately have in your database.

Kyle Sharick:
I mean our goal we see a couple different opportunities. I mean the aftermarket parts in general is a big opportunity. The other thing we see is there's all these there's a ton of use passes and even bigger industry for us than that aftermarket would be for heavy equipment. People are always looking for especially larger ticket items they don't want to buy it new and they don't want to buy that new from the OEM or the aftermarket. They want to find a machine that caught on fire but the hydraulics are still good or this big cylinder is still good or whatever they're looking for. So we're trying to figure out ways to get all these other used equipment companies that are just a landing page with a phone number and let try to get them to come on our platform because then we can have every part offered for sale in one place and that's a way to expand our. Product offering and expand the inventory available without you know what. While while making a still a better experience for our customer.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah. That's a very interesting business I even thought about the used heavy machinery in the market there.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah it's it's big too so

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah

Kyle Sharick:
It's harder though because they those places they just they only have the time they don't even know what they have in their inventory they just know they tore a machine down 20 years ago and it's sitting out there and you send a request and some guy literally walks out and writes down Yeah we got that thing or no we don't know. So it's a challenge to try and make them go digital.

Malcolm Lui:
And I'm just going to imagine it might be a to get some inspiration some ideas which you can do from looking at the consumer market right now. Used car parts used cars too they can make coronaries that you can

Kyle Sharick:
That's

Malcolm Lui:
Transition

Kyle Sharick:
Exactly

Malcolm Lui:
Your market so

Kyle Sharick:
Yes that's exactly what we're kind of trying to do. We're looking in the streets like that. We're looking at things like anything where they've got parts and just in industries that are heavily heavy parts and service driven industries of how they're doing it in cars is the big one. So they've been one of you know we've been trying to see what other people are doing and trying to figure out how to How to leverage that.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah for your referral business. Are you doing anything proactively to get the referrals.

Kyle Sharick:
You know we've got part of that e-mail drip is kind of you know we send a we do send a request back out for like a customer and review just in general about us you know radar read our service. How good was our pricing how good was your shipping. How was your experience overall kind of thing. We're doing that to just try to get one reviews on the Web site reviews in an e-commerce partner use are tough for us because we'll sell somebody twenty thousand parts you know on an order. So might be hard for them to review every single

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah.

Kyle Sharick:
Item but you know they can at least review how their overall experience was and say this was a great experience and here's why I got my stuff that's it was a good deal and all that kind of thing. So we're trying to leverage those kind of things. So we sent out part of that e-mail drips that we're doing is somebody that does convert on an order hey you know who do you know recommend people to us you know we've been talking about trying to find new ways to try to try to generate more a referral type business and possibly even starting to do you know things that giving people credits for referrals or whatever it is to try and generate more of that. So

Malcolm Lui:
Good. Yeah. Referrals are. Fantastic right. Normally

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah

Malcolm Lui:
They're a convert really well in terms of a

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah they

Malcolm Lui:
Business.

Kyle Sharick:
Do. I think we I don't think we very often get some of the calls and said they had their buddy Tom because that doesn't end up ordering you know

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah.

Kyle Sharick:
Pretty much they you know they always end up converting. So

Malcolm Lui:
Yep

Kyle Sharick:
And a lot of times they end up preferring more people because they convert have a good experience and they're like well you know so

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah. I can really build on it. Especially in your market where finding the right parts can be challenging.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah yeah definitely.

Malcolm Lui:
So looking a bit forward for 2019 save we're talking a year from now a year later. What in your mind has to have happened for you to be happy with the results. Maybe you start with the challenges and obstacles. What challenges obstacles problems have you saw if you eliminate over the past year that makes you happy.

Kyle Sharick:
You know some of the some of the main ones have been just being able to make a make out because site experience better you know for the longest time we were just a landing page too. I mean we had the parts no search you could put a number in but 90 percent of our customers done all of our numbers and they might know what equipment model they own would be like searching for parts for your car you know what car you own

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah.

Kyle Sharick:
But you probably don't you don't know the part number for this. You hit me on this knob. Right. So. So we tried to improve that by adding tools for chatting and tools for you know we we extended every make and model we could find out there and then we extended all of our categories out there made. So the customer could at least find a category and click on it and it'll automatically pop up a chart that says hey I'm looking for this part number for this machine from this category. And then we can chat with get the info they need.

Malcolm Lui:
Right.

Kyle Sharick:
And that was that was a huge challenge because what we found was people would go to our Web site and spouts off right. Because like anything if you can't find what you need you click around a little bit and you're like OK having to go somewhere else. So.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah.

Kyle Sharick:
So for us that was a big. That was a huge one where I think we doubled the number of quotes since we started doing that.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah

Kyle Sharick:
You know losing our organic search was plus was big for me and now that we've son now that we've now we started to fix that. I think we've seen like 30 or 40 percent increase in our online ordering. And so that makes me that makes me feel better. We don't have too many people that put their credit card in for 15 thousand dollars where the parts of our website. But we do get you know we do get orders that are pretty substantial and we do have people that search for stuff and just place orders and we're trying to make it more convenient and more easy as our competition makes it harder. So

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah. People placing orders over the phone with you then instead of doing it online

Kyle Sharick:
A lot of it is you know a lot of it's kind of that online. They they they come to us online they're searching around they see like Hey this place looks like they might have what I need. And we're trying to make it easy as is we can for them to either if they want to shop on their own shop on their own but there's kind of assistance behind that and customer service find that if they can't find it

Malcolm Lui:
Ok.

Kyle Sharick:
Because well you don't know. So it's a lot of it is converting over the phone but we're trying. And that's been one of the big challenges as we try to scale and ramp more you know if we 10 or 20 times our sales. I can't have you know every single order being a manual online over the phone thing is definitely going to continue to figure out ways to ramp that because it's that's super. You know it's it's just a lot slower process otherwise. So

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah. So I mean you have the capability now to place orders online or do they meet based

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah.

Malcolm Lui:
On all your teeth.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah we do now. And now we've added. So we've the thing. Some of the things we've added there. You know the ability for us to send a convertible quote or we send a quote to the customer and just click on and check out online. You know before we were just sending a PBF and that was that. Now they can actually go. They can look for their code on the website and just convert it

Malcolm Lui:
Right. You can

Kyle Sharick:
Like

Malcolm Lui:
Just do

Kyle Sharick:
That.

Malcolm Lui:
The transaction.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah. So we've seen a bump in our in our conversion rates since we started doing that.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah. Makes sense. Anything that makes it easier right.

Kyle Sharick:
And that's exactly it. You know

Malcolm Lui:
In probably over time they get more comfortable doing transactions without having to contact your team

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah I think so too. You know people we still see if they have hard numbers they just convert. And those are usually smaller ones which make sense. I mean somebody's buying a three or four hundred dollar item online that you know it gets there. That's right. And they're probably maybe maybe they'll try next time but you know if they're spending fifteen thousand dollars and their whole machine's going to come down for a week and they're to a scheduled service and take something that makes them a lot of money down they want to they want to know they're finding a company that's reputable that's going to deliver in the timeframe and the parts are going to actually get there and you know. So we're trying to give the best front end experience that way

Malcolm Lui:
Right.

Kyle Sharick:
And make it most convenient.

Malcolm Lui:
So suddenly your biggest challenge is improving the user experience and make it easier for them to buy and make them easier for them to buy without human interaction.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah yeah that's been the a lot of the focus.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah. Now how about in terms of getting more people to your site. Is that a big challenge for you.

Kyle Sharick:
It is. And part of the challenge with that is the fact that the industry's just so it's such an old school kind of an industry you know they don't even think a lot of our customers don't even think about going online to buy parts for four machines. You know we get calls all the time where people call us and I'm looking for this. They found us online. Yeah. Here we've got it. It's here it's this price that can have a few that and you just ship that to me. Yeah. You do with milk and bread. Why can't you do it with you know tracks for your excavator. It's the same thing.

Malcolm Lui:
Right

Kyle Sharick:
I mean it's not but it is for us. You know we you know we're set up to do that. So that's the biggest thing is just conveying that it can be done and getting that customer to find us. We're finding you know we're definitely converting the online customer and now we're trying to figure out how do we get the ninety nine percent of the customers that exist out there that aren't online yet or

Malcolm Lui:
Right.

Kyle Sharick:
I don't think about shopping online. So that's the next challenge.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. Is it an age thing. You think

Kyle Sharick:
I think that's part of it. You know I mean we're starting to see as our customer base gets you know a lot of it is is family run businesses and things like that. And as our customer base starts to get a little older and the younger generation start to take over we're definitely seeing more online shopping more online ordering you know a lot of our customers are calling and if they're you know someone that's got a little more wisdom in their years most of the time they found us because their friend's son or their neighbor son or their grandson or something like that found that line and gave our input to that.

Malcolm Lui:
I

Kyle Sharick:
So

Malcolm Lui:
I like how you put that a little bit more wisdom in there years.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah

Malcolm Lui:
So yeah get to describe myself as becoming more wise going forward

Kyle Sharick:
Exactly.

Malcolm Lui:
Now.

Kyle Sharick:
Well you are

Malcolm Lui:
That's true. How about in terms of opportunities you talked about a few opportunities already that in two dozen 19 or 20 in particular you want to really capture like the used car one. That's something that you think you might do in 2018 or the longer term opportunity.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah. I think that one's longer term you know immediate opportunities where we're trying to kind of develop an outbound strategy that combined with our with our incoming online advertising you know trying to target kind of more than medium large or what you call like an enterprise type customer you know finding you know getting data we have access to data sources that tell us come you know companies that have bought equipment and how much equipment they bought when they buy things like that. And so we can see this company owns these machines and how many of each. And so now it's like OK we have this great lead list so let's start targeting some of these larger medium opportunities similar to like a enterprise type approach. So we're trying to do that now. The other thing we're doing is 35 percent of our orders actually come from the wholesale part of the business and that's like basically the dealers that we compete against a lot of them end up using us because we're more convenient

Malcolm Lui:
How

Kyle Sharick:
Or

Malcolm Lui:
Really

Kyle Sharick:
That you know they don't know who to call they search online they find us. We sent him a call and they despise. So

Malcolm Lui:
Interesting

Kyle Sharick:
We're like yeah. So there's this huge wholesale opportunity with our marketplace and they're the ones that already have the customer and the customer relationship and the outside sales teams we can leverage so of the other thing that's one of the other initiatives we have right now is trying to find strategic partnerships and ways that we can leverage what we do well this is our e-commerce and our and our online shopping and our fulfillment and maybe couple that with the dealers that already have access to the customers know who they are have the relationships you

Malcolm Lui:
Yet

Kyle Sharick:
Know they try to mirror those for a lot faster more rapid expansion. So that's we're testing that out actually with testing a few different things with a few different strategic partners on that to

Malcolm Lui:
Now these wholesaler dealers that they are wholesale they're buying from you wholesale and they are selling aftermarket parts themselves. They do

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah I mean a lot of us now as well. So really what these are is these are the these are the John Deere and Caterpillar and commodity dealers that traditionally we would technically be competing against but they still have challenges to you know they a lot of the times they don't even have their own e-commerce part solution where the customer can just shop online on their Web site. So some of that's provided by some of the caterpillar does that but not all the other equipment manufacturers do. And

Malcolm Lui:
Like

Kyle Sharick:
Even Caterpillar says we want to get out of there. You know we want to get out of the kind of technology business we just want to build bulldozers and send those to the dealers. So dealers are starting to see they need the kind of band together and find their own things that they can do to to leverage and grow their businesses so

Malcolm Lui:
Right.

Kyle Sharick:
They

Malcolm Lui:
Okay. So these so these these OEM dealers their customers sometimes need parts and they may want a less expensive alternative and they'll go to you to help with that.

Kyle Sharick:
Right exactly. Or even you know sometimes it's less expensive. Also sometimes the competing brands. You know a lot of times these dealerships might have one or two brands of equipment they can sell parts for. But then all the other ones that they're not they're not an OEM for. So they're in the same boat as everybody else that isn't though yet. So

Malcolm Lui:
Right

Kyle Sharick:
They could still offer service and they can still help that customer and a lot of that relationship is a lot of that business is relationship built. They like doing business with this dealer that dealer whoever it is or they just you know they have credit or there's some something going on that makes them want to choose to use that over somebody else.

Malcolm Lui:
Right.

Kyle Sharick:
And what we're seeing is part of the part of the reason we can exist is because the challenges these dealers have. But as we're selling end user customers we're actually solving a lot of the challenges that dealers have to.

Malcolm Lui:
Yes

Kyle Sharick:
Out. Can we scale faster at maybe lower overall margin but a quicker less costly scaling solution by partnering with them.

Malcolm Lui:
Right.

Kyle Sharick:
You know we're kind

Malcolm Lui:
And

Kyle Sharick:
Of hoping that

Malcolm Lui:
And plus by increasing your volume it helps you build up your database. Right. And

Kyle Sharick:
Alpha also still their database that helps us drive down pricing from our vendors. You know it helps us get new access to new vendors because they see the volumes that we're doing and the types of volumes we can get. You know if we had every dealer on our network it's really easy to go to a new vendor and go Look you come to us. You have a thousand dealers who you know place 5000 orders a day on our marketplace kind of the thing that would be real you know someone saying no to that would probably not really understand what we're doing. But

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah

Kyle Sharick:
So

Malcolm Lui:
Pretty

Kyle Sharick:
That's kind

Malcolm Lui:
Cool.

Kyle Sharick:
Of what the

Malcolm Lui:
How about some strengths that your business has now that you would like to leverage further over the next year.

Kyle Sharick:
I mean our our biggest our biggest strength is still just it's really the fact that we've kind of figured out our e-commerce and so that's some of the stuff we're exploring too. You know we're we're exploring strategic partnerships with other industry type companies that maybe aren't doing parts but other things and taking our e-commerce experience and extending it to them. That's another way to look at trying to grow and get access to new customer bases new markets because our biggest strengths is the the way that we're online already the database we've developed and things like that. So we're looking at how to turn those into more valuable resources for us and how to turn those into more more more margin and more volume for the bottom line.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah. From what you shared so far I think one of your strengths your company's strength is this willingness to test and try to fit things as well

Kyle Sharick:
Certainly is. I'm not I'm definitely not scared to do that. You know we we did get lucky and we raised a nice investment round which helps about a year ago and one of the things they were interested in and thought was interesting about us is the fact that I kind of we'll test different things I'm not scared to try anything at least for a little while and see if it works but I'm also not scared to just squash it immediately if it doesn't look like it's worthwhile or why isn't there you know because that's the only way you're going to figure out things that work or don't work. You know

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah. So why did you decide to raise capital a year ago.

Kyle Sharick:
We just we have a couple reasons the biggest reason was that we're a we're real good at sales and technology we need some help with. So my thing is do what you're strong at and find people that can help you with what you're not so strong. So we knew we were needed. We knew we needed help and technology. We knew we had this great idea and this vision of what we wanted to build. I'm not an engineer and neither are anybody else here. So we we went out to try to find some capital to help us develop the back end and develop the database that would drive kind of what our vision is going forward for the company. And we knew it would take some capital to do that. So we knew it was a good time to do that because we were starting to grow and we're trending really well. So it just kind of made sense to. Okay let's go out and try to kind of push this up to the next level. So that's why we did that

Malcolm Lui:
Make sense I mean you have an opportunity there and you have competitors out there right. If you don't grab it someone else possibly can and you lose out on the opportunity

Kyle Sharick:
Right. Well exactly. And we we also knew we would only go so far you know and unkind of bootstrap technology from non technical backgrounds. And

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah

Kyle Sharick:
I can I can string together a basic Web site and they can do a lot of different things and I've learned a ton about paperclip and running and advertising that way and gotten pretty good at that side of it. But from a development standpoint you know eventually we wanted to build a platform that's going to need to run our business. And that definitely was a need. And so that's that's why.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah makes sense. Definitely a three last question for you if tracks and teeth were to have a billboard On a freeway somewhere out there what would your billboard message be. And keep in mind that typically people only see a billboard for six seconds before they drive by. So what's your sixth second billboard message.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah I mean I think it's really ah it's really a combination of our are exactly what we do or you know tracks in these online marketplace for aftermarket parts. I mean we would have something like that and then we kind of have a bit of a catch phrase the right part at the right price every day you know. So we kind of said we know we're going to get either right thing. We know it's going to be a good test and whether you come today or tomorrow we're going to be able to help you with that. So that's kind of been our strategy and our motto and kind of something we've had on our Web site since day one because that's where there's somebody just landed there will click a laugh. That's what I want them to remember is like we've got you know we've got parts we've got what you're looking for and we'll get it right and get it to you. So

Malcolm Lui:
And makes sense especially in your market where it's hard to find parts at a decent price. So

Kyle Sharick:
Can be a

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah tough questions for you. Who are your ideal customers and what's the best way for them to contact your company or to check out your site and see what's available

Kyle Sharick:
Yes are ideal customer is really anyone that owns and operates heavy equipment. If it's a contractor or a developer or a landowner and anyone with a bulldozer excavator whether it's compact or mini or anything like that if it has steel or rubber tracks on it we probably offer parts for it. The easiest way to find us is on our Web site at tracks and to Satcom or or even art sales at tracks and emails and other way to do it. But both those waves are good ways to find this

Malcolm Lui:
Ok you like to spell out your website

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah. So it's where tracks. T R A C K S the letter N like November and the word ts t e t h subtracts and T's dot com.

Malcolm Lui:
All right. In your sales e-mail is it simply sales at tracks and datacom

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah you got it. And they can even call r r we've got a local number that we use and everybody has a long distance on their cell phones and everything now. Sorry. You can also call us at 2 0 6 4 8 6 4 9 9 5 and one of my cell seen or even me will probably pick that phone up pretty quickly.

Malcolm Lui:
All right. Sadly yes. Choose the name tracks and teeth tracks and teeth.

Kyle Sharick:
I wanted to be real obvious about what we sell. And so I've talked about selling tracks a lot. Teeth are kind of interesting but teeth are essentially for people that don't go on an on the end of an excavator they have a bucket that's what digs and the part that hits the ground and breaks it. It's called a tooth or teeth. So there anything that there's a whole category of where parts called Grand engaging and it's bucket to use and edges on bulldozers motor graders and other things like that. So we kind of wanted to convey that the main stuff that we sell and the main types of parts

Malcolm Lui:
All

Kyle Sharick:
Make

Malcolm Lui:
Right

Kyle Sharick:
It

Malcolm Lui:
Make sense

Kyle Sharick:
Here. Yeah.

Malcolm Lui:
If you ever use these heavy machinery yourself. Are you an expert at handling them

Kyle Sharick:
I can I can get one. Turn it on and run around a little bit. I did. And like I said I spent two years right after I graduated from college I graduated from college with green mathematics which is real helpful when you're trying to run a bulldozer

Malcolm Lui:
Ever

Kyle Sharick:
But

Malcolm Lui:
At a construction site. Fucking some guy I'm not sure what kind of machine lessons at a meeting like you talked about the excavator or the bucket to the end of teeth and man those guys is like an extension of their arm at their hand. They're just so accurate and graceful but they're doing right is like so confident just grab stuff moved from one place to another just like that. It's amazing

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah

Malcolm Lui:
That they are

Kyle Sharick:
Now it certainly is. I mean they got so like when I was an equipment sales rep they kind of you know they did kind of like a one to one crash course on here's how you turn it on and move it around and you know I'd have some of my customers and I'd go to a job site to do a demo that. Yeah. Show me how to use it and I'd look I might go here you take the keys you show me how to use it. You're the guy. Well you. Know. But I mean yeah second run it a little bit but they definitely don't want me trying to great a job site or dig out a trench or anything like that because that's that's you know I could do it but they would not look pretty

Malcolm Lui:
Won't be too

Kyle Sharick:
Now.

Malcolm Lui:
Even there. Kyle it's an awesome having you on my show today. I really enjoyed hearing how you grew your company so fast.

Kyle Sharick:
Yeah I appreciate the time Malcolm.

Malcolm Lui:
We've been speaking with Kyle Sharick, the Founder and CEO of TracksNTeeth, about his company's rapid growth. For interviews with other fast growing, high value sales companies, or to learn how we can accelerate your firm's high value sales through automation, visit Eversprint.com.

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