Cefla Industrious
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Vince: [00:00:00] Did answer my other question, which was how do you pronounce your last name? So when I'll do a quick intro and then I'll lead you into it. But yeah, I wanted to get your, the correct pronun pronunciation of your last name. We're good. Okay. Are we playing golf later today, by the way?

Marco: Unfortunately not today. I just

Vince: are you in Charlotte?

Marco: I'm in Charlotte. Yeah.

Vince: And the weather today in Charlotte is?

Marco: I'll be 70 today.

Vince: Yeah.

Marco: You could be playing golf if I had time, 

Vince: fuck off. It's not 70 here. It's 

Marco: I know

Vince: I don't know, maybe in Indy it's actually the temperature's not that bad, just cause the front hasn't come through, but it's supposed to storm all afternoon and then of course the temps will dive back into the forties and tomorrow it's

Marco: Oh

Vince: I don't know, high of 48 ish, which isn't awful, but like really windy.

So it'll probably feel a lot colder than it really.

Marco: That's good.

Vince: this is the time of year in Iowa's, probably somewhat similar. We get like little tastes, like all of a sudden you'll have a sunny 65 day and you're like, yes, it's spring, and then two days later you'll have snow [00:01:00] flurries. It's what? The,

Marco: Yeah. I was in Minnesota la the earlier this week. Last week, and it was like snowing, snowing, stolen. It's oh my God.

Vince: Yeah. It's still winter in Minnesota. They only have A month of spring, which is probably mid-May to mid-June. Then they have July and August and then it starts getting cold again. It just, it's Canada South

Marco: for sure. 

Chad: I'm in Denver this week and it's, it snowed one foot on Monday and I had a trial where it snowed a foot. I went there on Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock and there was no snow on the.

Vince: That's crazy.

Chad: That's how fast it, it melted. It went from 30, 30 or 29 degrees to 55. It 

Marco: was crazy gone.

Interesting. But that's Denver.

Vince: Yeah. And today it's probably sunny, right?

Marco: Oh, it's beautiful. Gorgeous out.

Vince: All right, cool. Let's get rolling. I'll start us off and then we'll just go from there.

Marco: Okay.[00:02:00] 

Vince: Hey guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Industrials podcast. Thank you all for joining us from wherever you get your podcast, or if you're watching us on theesa YouTube channel. Thank you for joining us there. Don't forget if you're on theesa YouTube channel and you haven't subscribed, hit that little subscription button, hit the little bell notification icon that can.

Alert you when new episodes like this one drop, we would greatly appreciate it, by the way. It is absolutely free. Doesn't cost you a dime to do that. So please consider doing so today. We have a new episode, new guest for you. We're all over the place. We've got me and Indy Chad out in Denver, and our guest Marco in Charlotte.

So anyway, without further ado, Marco Bolus from chla finishing. Marco, welcome to the Industrious podcast.

Marco: Thanks for having me. Appreciate being here.

Vince: Awesome. I think we already touched on this, but you got the Callaway cap on there is golf or is not golfing this afternoon?

Marco: I wish I was golf, but I got a 10 year old to take the football practice, so

Vince: football in the spring.[00:03:00] 

Marco: Yeah, this spring and fall

Vince: Really. Okay.

Marco: so

Vince: So is quick question there, is this like a club in the spring or is this like the school team in the.

Marco: No, it's all club team. So he is not they don't do school till middle school, so up and clear there. It's gotta be club,

Vince: What position does he play?

Marco: fullback, guard, linebacker, defensive end. So they switch him around a little bit at this age still, but he just, he loves it, man. Can't get enough.

Vince: Awesome. You don't hear full back very often anymore. . And so I'm old school. I like hearing that. It's tough. Nos like fullbacks can need to be a little bit different breed because they offense, you think of not being the aggressor, but mostly fullbacks. They're wanting to put the pads on someone.

Marco: Yeah. At 10 years old, we don't have, wouldn't have a Tom Brady back there yet. So it's a lot of old school smash mouth football. So

Vince: Cool.

Marco: back helps

Vince: Nice. Best of luck to him. Marco

Marco: Funny that, that's 

Chad: kind of funny that Vince, when you talk about fullback, [00:04:00] cuz you know that's Iowa was, that's their mo fullback.

We 

Marco: still have a fullback.

Vince: This is true.

Marco: big 10 football baby. Yeah. All right, that's, 

Chad: I got my piece

Vince: I was gonna say, yeah Chad's little to-do list was mention Iowa, wherever I can. And there'll be one more because I, with the ladies final four coming up this, that'll be, This episode will release after that, but I'm sure there will be a mention there. So congratulations and you're welcome,

Marco: Thank you. Appreciate that

Vince: Hey Marco, why don't you give our listeners and viewers a little introduction and some background on yourself.

Marco: I've been in the industry almost about 20 years. Started off in delve Chlo. Delto was a company that Chla bought out in the mid two thousands, but started there in oh three. So it's approaching 20 years now. Fell into it was started off just working during the day, going to school at night, just as a job, and then just kept evolving and 20 years later y it's all you know how to do.

It's been been a crazy ride the past 20 years.

Vince: Yeah. Have you always been in sales or did you [00:05:00] start in a certain area, 

Marco: No, I started off in just in the parts cage then the spare parts manager manufacturing man, manager service, then off the sales engineering, and then been in sales probably, I don't know, eight, eight to the past eight to 10 years now or so in some kind of,

Vince: Looking back, would you say that, hindsight's 2020, of course, that you're happy, you're glad the way it's progressed. Unlike someone who maybe comes in straight into sales. You can probably talk about the process and the machine inside and out better than anyone.

Marco: Yeah, I think it's a blessing in disguise, right? When it's just grown up that way. Definitely gives you a lot of advantages talking about processes, talking about, seeing it from all different angles, right? So that's been a huge, I think, a huge part of my success and what I can bring to the customers.

Vince: Definitely. Why don't you tell us, or tell our listeners and viewers a little bit about chla in, in general and CHLA finishing. Who are, who is the [00:06:00] company and what do you guys do?

Marco: Yeah, so Shuffle Finish is one of the largest and oldest finishing companies in the world. Celebrated 90 years last year, but in the US market since the late seventies. As far as we. Are able to provide finishing solutions from small to large range customers and be, and one of the only suppliers that actually builds and supplies all the various parts that go into a finish line finishing line.

The only third party equipment you would see in our lines are sanding solutions, which we don't really focus on. But as far as the ovens, conveyors, spraying, machines, handling, and all this is all a chla. . So we're able to do, small shops, but also on the very high end automated lines.

Being able to supply the whole thing is a huge benefit.

Vince: Yeah. What have you seen be the, like the biggest advancements over the last five or 10 years?

Marco: that's definitely focused, I think, towards the small to medium [00:07:00] sized shops. That's really what our focus has been on. The past five to 10 years and really a big growth of what some of the growth we've experienced being able to bring the automation prices down. And now you're starting to see anywhere from three to four man Amish shops trying to Get into some automation and medium sized shops.

I, I would say that now that's easily 40 to 50% of our business is small to medium sized shops. And over the past five to 10 years, we're really focused on developing equipment just. To fit those needs. Bringing million dollar finishing lines into the hands of of medium sized shops at, half that entry cost point to be able to produce at a higher level, whether it's the quality the quantity, and everything that, that higher end lines can produce as.

Vince: Yeah, so that's a great point. We were, Chad and I were down and the rest of our team were down at I W F in Atlanta. So for any of our listeners or viewers don't know what I w F is, it's the International Woodworking [00:08:00] Fair. So it's a really large woodworking industry trade show in Atlanta that's every other year.

Everyone from those supplying the coatings to equipment manufacturers and everyone in between. It's a massive international show. Ran into a couple customers down there. The first one was a pretty big customer who has, multiple flat lines and all that, but they were there looking for additional automation equipment.

Not large lines, certain machines for certain sectors. . It wasn't surprising, but we, as we were talking to him, we're like, why? You've been looking at these for five or 10 years. Why are you finally pulling the trigger now? And he said two things. A, the prices come down where it makes it, almost a no-brainer.

And two, with the way employment is it just, again it's a no-brainer. The ROI is gonna be much, much quicker. They're having a hard time staffing up so they can get this machine that will potentially fill in for two or three. , it makes all the sense in the world. And so we actually followed him over to that manufacturer's booth [00:09:00] and ran into two other customers of ours who were much smaller.

And they were actually looking to your point, looking at the si similar types of equipment where, and they, I said it themselves, they said, look, normally we would never be here because this stuff. Mispriced out beyond our range, but now it just makes sense cuz they can't find people either.

The cost of the investment has come down and the ROI is now I think one of the guys said if it was under anything under three years, it was, it's just, it just, it's like a no-brainer. And so we've now started to see those, Chad's out in Denver today. Some of the shops that we were in out there recently are buying equipment to do just variety of different jobs, whatever it may be.

And it's. It's places that just normally wouldn't have done that in the past. And so it's cool to see, it's like the CD player when they first came out, right? We're all old enough to know with a CD player. Our younger viewers may not, but those things were like 500 bucks when they first come out now.

No one would ever even buy one just cuz it's been passed by. But what's the hot item today?

Marco: Oh the hottest item for [00:10:00] sure is there a new drying technology, which we called the Uni dry, and it's powered by sunspot technology. So we've partnered with sunspot on this oven which basically they're supplying a catalytic heating pad. That it can use natural gas or propane.

You talk about a running cost of 75 cents an hour yeah. But even more importantly, what does this technology really do for the customer? In traditional finishing lines in the past few years, you would have. The ovens were powered by hot air and then traditional infrared lamps, but hot air powered ovens would require a boiler system, right?

So it required an extra investment of any way, depending on the size of the ovens. Obviously, you're looking at an extra 50 to $150,000 investment to feed hot water to these machines, right? So that automatically a lot of the medium size shops it. That's just, we're looking to spend that on a machine, not on utility and building costs, et cetera, so that sunspot technology has basically [00:11:00] solved that problem.

right? So now you're able to get into a lineal 11 with sunspot technology for that under 150 grand, right? So for the cost of what it used to cost just to outfit your building, you can now get the drying system on top of that, th this type of medium wavelength that these plates produce.

Or he, putting the energy inside the coating, not in the part, and also more importantly, it's heating the coating from the bottom up. . So we're a lot of traditional, a lot of other heating methods are going from the top down. It reduces skimming in, in that of the coating. So it enables you to dry a lot quicker.

And the even better part is we make these in lineal ovens. We make we now got into making just batch ovens and also these plates can be bought just individually and put in a shop and open air to, to help reduce your rack time. We've eliminated all the possibilities of so of a shop to [00:12:00] say, oh man, I don't have room for a lineal line.

Not a problem. You can put a in an automated spray machine, and then you can put in a batch oven them, which gets you, get you to that same place where you need to be. Oh I don't have room for a batch of it and I'm not ready for that. Okay. You can go from an automated spray. Stand alone and put some of these sunspot units, off in a corner.

And then if eventually you want to sheet rocket into a room, you can do that or whatever. Or to say, okay even now, has put us in shops to where, okay, I'm not ready to automate the spraying yet. , but now we have some small entry level drying solutions that can still keep that rack time down and get your throughput so we're able to get in at every level of the customer's needs and help 'em grow that.

That's what's been I think the biggest change, at least from ache point of view in the past few years to where you. , we did a lot in medium size shop, so there was always still lineal flat lined. And then there were still some customers that were left out because of space, because of [00:13:00] price points, et cetera.

Now we have solutions where we're not leaving anybody out anymore. And as as they put in some stuff for drying eventually they, the sprayer can't keep up and then they automate that. So you can attack the problem from both sides of the aisle per se.

Vince: Yeah, that's good to know. Would you say that timing is absolutely key here in that you're starting to see more and more people to move over to water-based coatings, whether they're coating wood, glass, metal, doesn't really matter what the substrate is. Coatings are starting to evolve and go in that direction.

So to your point, the things like us on spot, et cetera are. Are really key in terms of how to best cure and dry out that water-based coating

Marco: Yeah, absolutely. Y a lot of the knocks on the water base was, oh, if my humidity changes, things change in my shop. Which now the, these sun spot units completely take it out. So you're able to get yourself I in a position to where all these factors don't matter anymore.

And still get all the great benefits of the water-based coating. So I think that's [00:14:00] been that's crucial, right? Gives 'em it gives them all the weapons they need to attack that.

Vince: Yeah. Where do you see, I know everyone's crystal ball is perfectly clear, but where do you see things continuing to evolve in the next, let's say, five?

Marco: So the trend that I see is that is that anytime you're walking into the shop, the finishing was always the last thing on people's minds, right? It was like, okay, I got these two guys been taking care of it forever. The problem with that is, is the knowledge to be able to do that right, at a high level.

And it's difficult to find these people. That's where a lot of opportunities that have come up for us with kind of our prima, which is means first in Italian, right? Where we've taken. Just the manual spray booth and automated it on a simple, easy to use flat line. I think that the biggest future is in the automation of those departments because of labor force.

because of quality and consistency [00:15:00] and easiness of use in the long run and saying, okay, now I can count on that department. It's always on a set schedule versus having, to deal with, man, my best finisher's not there or I have to train somebody to finish, now trending somebody to, to stick apart on a flatbed machine and turn it on and have setting.

Is a lot easier than having somebody, teach somebody the ma the black magic of finishing. But the key point there is the price point is now for people to consider that and afford that. The lead times are correct because, we stock a lot of these first time products, right?

The prima, the sunspots. Somebody can have a big job coming up and can make a decision based on that, right? Because a lot of times these shops, they're not gonna be able to handle a six to nine month lead time on something because, okay, I'm making decisions cuz I've got these bunch of jobs coming up, it could pay for some equipment, but I gotta do it now.

I can't do it, at the end of next year, for example. So I think those are all the key factors there.

Vince: Yeah, for

Marco: But,[00:16:00] 

Vince: Would you say technology's also like anything else, playing a key role? . It used to be maybe the guns were fixated, but now you have much more and I'm probably saying this the wrong way cause I'm not an engineer, but don't have quite the robotic movements that you have today.

So it, they can, you have the ability to paint different size and different shaped objects where maybe before was more of a challenge.

Marco: Yes. So I think the gun technology's evolved. The capability the machines have gotten, to where, people think of a flat line that it just does flat parts, which that isn't the case anymore, right? You can get away with a lot of different parts on more entry level machines to where you don't need to go to the all out robotic systems yet to spend a lot of money.

So that's definitely helped out. and just being able to open the eyes. We use some of the same technologies in the glass, in the wood, in the metal that, and the machines don't really change much. They're all pretty much adaptable to all these different types of products.

Vince: . Chad, [00:17:00] what stood out to you when you were guys? Were out there doing that? Glass coating.

Marco: Yeah. The one, how. 

Chad: How fast we got things moving with the, as far as the team out there, when you give 'em a coding and you say, this is what you want to do. And they set the, that machine up exactly how you want it and you just start spraying parts. And we had a very successful trial.

We didn't have to really mess around with any settings, but but yeah, the capabilities out there to get exactly what you're gonna do in that, I felt you could replicate everything there. Right there on that line with drying, spraying tips, they have everything available. So that was probably the best part of that, about that trial with the glass for 

Marco: sure.

Vince: Look like you, you're about to ask a question. Go ahead 

Marco: I was gonna, I was gonna 

Chad: bring up when you were talking about the robotics side of it I was, I'm out in the wild here, as I say in Denver and I got to actually see one one of the IBOs machines the three dimensional. And I was just, I was amazed on how now, back, when I was doing flat lines in the nineties, it was basically [00:18:00] sides door, doors.

Marco: Cabinet frames and sides, boom. And just 

Chad: Going as fast as you can. And now, you do the charges. You can throw in drawer boxes, you can throw in core balls. You could throw in a lot of different things that you had to have a toe line for. It it speeds up everything.

Now with that that ability. I thought I didn't know how long that, 

Marco: how long has that technology been around? The di biotic has evolved from it's probably been around for about 10, 15 years. Okay. But the past few years, it's evolved greatly, right? To where that machine first got introduced for applying glues for thermo foil presses and things like that.

So essentially what would happen is, you'd want. On a flat line, if you put in a cabinet door, you'd get a hundred percent of the top 50% of the sides. You flip it, get a hundred percent of the back, and other 50% on the sides, you get a hundred percent all the way around. In the glue when you're going into these presses, you don't need to do the back.

So the first problem is, okay, I need more. Really, the sides are more important than.[00:19:00] So the robotic first was developed to have a robotic edge gun for a part to come in, have the edge gun go around the edges to get the desired quantity on there. Now then this machine has evolved in a lot of different product lines.

We have two R machines now we have a 3D reading system, so Essent. The parts can be you could have a charge of parts where, you have a half moon shaped part, you have a drawer box, you have a piece of molding, and you have a cabinet door, right? So you could have all that on the same charge, or 3D system would read all these parts and now the gun or the edge gun would you could go and re will go in reset mode, do all the edges and do everything you need it to do without.

The traditional type of programming that would be required for a robotic arm is done automatically. So yeah, I mean that, that's one of the most versatile machines that we offer. On a flat line cuz you can reset, you can do edges, you can do 3D shapes all these different types of things [00:20:00] without having to specifically call up a recipe for each individual part, we do that automat. Sure. So that's, that, that's at the higher end technology for the higher end customers that, that have all those different types of needs.

Vince: Yeah. But I could see that need obviously transcending across the spectrum and then, at some point, pretty much we will become a standard adoption, I would think.

Marco: Yeah, I obviously even, once people see that edge gun and see what's capable of doing then, some of those guys it would be hard to live without anymore. So hopefully as time goes on, the cost of this technology comes down as other technologies have, because I think everybody would have a need for that.

Vince: Yep. For sure. Cool. We would appreciate your assistance on that that coding trial that they were on out there for the the glass piece you seen any trends at all in terms of I guess maybe who has the highest demand? Not to pit the wood side versus glass versus [00:21:00] metal, but you seen any real trends amongst the specific industries in terms of applic?

Marco: So the wood is still the highest demand, and I think within that it's really the medium, the small size shops seem to have. An extreme high demand lately. And then some of the higher end manufacturers are really starting to ramp up production and really, that have been quiet for the past years, have really started pinning up demand too.

The glass projects this year have been pretty well. It's a smaller industry, but, we've done two, three projects already this year, which is, which is a good number for that size industry. And metal is growing year after year whether it's piping tube, whether it's metal sheets and things like that.

So that's it's been growing as a lot of these companies are going more to liquid coatings versus the traditional powder coatings, then that, that's opened up a lot of opportunities for us.

Vince: Yeah. That's good to hear. We like hearing that Awesome. [00:22:00] Chad, do you have anything? Anything else to offer us?

Marco: no, I. 

Chad: Like I said the that three dimensional pa arm is pretty is pretty neat. And that booth that you have out there in the lab there is as big as a cruise ship I think is a massive unit. And I've seen it downscale too, to just maybe just a little bit bigger than the prima.

And it, it can work in a small shop as well and there's some benefits to it. It's pretty 

Marco: neat, pretty neat te. Yeah. And then IBO comes in a lot of different formations, right? We go as small as a one arm IBO key that's made just for smaller shops all the way, to paper belt machines, recovery belt machines, one arm, two arm, short bench, long bench.

So that product line's really evolved into trying to fit a lot of different spaces. Absolutely.

Vince: Yeah. One, one size does not fit all as we know, and that's good that you guys have the ability to modify accordingly. So if anybody ha out there has any finishing needs, any line needs, et cetera, Hook up with Marco, with shuffle and be happy to talk to you [00:23:00] about what solutions they may have to fit your need.

Any parting words of wisdom, Marco?

Marco: I just wanted to just put it out there that from the April 19th, the 21st, we have our our annual shuffle live. So we have all these machines and equipment we've talked about. I'll be running with all different coatings all day. We'll have some guest speakers. Some customers and guest speakers.

I think it's a good opportunity to see a lot of these different technologies, whether it's dbo, whether it's the Prima, the uni drive, the the the prima, the lineal machines, while have all those technologies running.

Vince: Yeah, I was actually at Chapel Live last year. And to your point, yeah, to be able to see it all at the same time and actually not just sitting there, but actually running parts was very valuable. So I look forward to doing that again this year. Hey Marco, we appreciate your time this morning.

Thanks for except for joining us on the Industrials podcast. Good luck with the golf. Good luck with football practice this afternoon,

Marco: Yeah.

Vince: And tell your son to to lay some [00:24:00] wood on the opposing D as they try to take down, take on the fullback.

Marco: Yeah. He loves it, man. And I appreciate you guys having me on. Hopefully it's the first time, the many and like what you guys are doing.

Vince: Awesome. Thank you and thank all of you guys out there for tuning in to the Indus Podcast. Whether you're listening to wherever you get your podcast or you're tuning on Thea YouTube channel, thank you for doing so. Again, hit that subscription button, hit the little bell notification icon so you can be alerted when new episodes drop.

Thanks again for tuning in and don't forget, be Industrious all.