Another revenue stream for welders TG Weld It | Customer success
Add an additional revenue stream for welders like TG Weld It. With the BOApod, they are able to give more service to their customers and are able to have additional revenue. They are the leading supplier and installer of hydraulic fittings in New Zealand, proudly servicing clients throughout the greater Auckland area from North Rodney to South Auckland.
"Right from the start my new hose business fed straight off the welding side - so it’s been fantastic. BOA has made it easy and simple to get set up... everything is working in our favour." Learn how Terry Green, Owner of the welding business TG Weld It, engaged with BOA Hydraulics to establish a successful additional service for customers.
Q: As a welder, how is your experience working with BOA Hydraulics?
Great. Fantastic. They’ve been a huge help. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without having the support and the backing. Especially getting into a brand new business and something we haven’t done before. The support through BOA has been fantastic for us. For instance, the other day Oscar went out with one of our guys to meet potential new clients and try to drum up new business for us.
We couldn’t be happier. Hence the reason why we want to [get] a second BOApod and keep building on that relationship.
Setting up with the BOApod gives opportunities for both sides of my business. Welding and hose-making both feed off each other; they complement each other. Hopefully we can secure a couple of big customers, which won’t take much [effort], and then we will be away.
Q: Tell us your thoughts on hiring someone dedicated to hydraulic repairs, versus a welder doing hydraulics part-time
I want one guy in the truck dedicated to hose making in order to build that relationship with the client. It's hard to do that when you are 'chopping and changing' guys out of the truck. If the guys are out welding, and you send someone else, then the client gets someone new – which they can always get a bit funny about. We’ve found that over 7 years on the welding side, customers prefer to work with one guy. They prefer to have the same guy come out.
It’s quite a bit of a leap to do something like this, but it all comes hand in hand. With mechanical - especially engineering - there’s always a hydraulic hose they are working around which they could replace while they are there. And then they might pick up a new hydraulic guy, and suddenly they have 300 trucks that need servicing as well. Companies prefer to deal with suppliers who can do multiple things, rather than several different suppliers doing only one thing.
Q: How are you finding making hoses with the BOApod?
The processes are quite simple, especially with the app and the coding. Even people that haven’t dealt with hosing before have been able to pick it up quite easy. You can just type into the app to get the equivalent code. From there it’s just the crimping side, and that is pretty self-explanatory. The BOApod has everything that you need. We find its more the mechanical side and getting to the hoses most the time that is the main issue. Because we’ve had a bit to do with machinery, we know how to take things apart to get to hoses. 90% of the problem is actually removing the hose.
We’ve been finding that a lot of the time the actual machine operators onsite are actually taking the hose off for the other mobile hose guys - because they won’t take it off. They put it in the too hard basket, or don’t know how to get to it, or don’t have the tools to get to it. Whereas with us, we are usually stripping stuff off all the time and putting things back - so it's just what we have been doing anyway. That’s half the battle.
Q: How many hoses are you doing per day?
It probably equates to about 4 hoses a day at the moment if you even it out across the board, which is going to cover us financially. Our first month was $9,500 turnover, which is really good for something that just started out.
It's only going to take one big customer to come on board, and which everyone knows you just have to hang in there until you get that one job. Once we get that, we are going to be way too busy for one truck. And we are even getting multiple calls at the moment. The truck could be down in South Auckland and we get a call in the forestry, and we don’t have the truck available... I’ve got 100% confidence that it is going to keep growing and growing and growing. And it’s showing that in our accounts side, so we are more than happy to keep moving forward.
In the first month, 100% of your hydraulic hose repairer wages wouldn’t have gone all to your hydraulic hose side?
Yes, exactly. He is doing other stuff as well, so he is jumping between both trucks. So, you know all the other time he is on the welding machine and earning on-site welding. He’s just not sitting on that truck.
Our turnover was actually very good because we haven’t got our guy sitting in the truck waiting for calls to fix hoses. We are spreading ourselves across it all, but it is getting to the point now where we need to get a guy focusing on hosing all the time.
What has been the hardest part of the transition to adding another revenue stream?
The only thing that’s been hard is getting a foot in the door to these bigger customers. So it’s really a boot on the ground, going out and seeing them, and continuing to call in. That would be the hardest part. We’ve had a lot of work from people that were using us already, plus some new guys that pretty much came straight over. But the bigger guys take more time to get to. It’s just one of those things.
The smaller clients you won straight away, were they reasonably easy to win over?
Yes. Easy to approach. Usually the main guy is the guy on-site because they are only a smaller company. The bigger companies have someone at head office somewhere. And to them it’s paperwork, and it gets put in the too-hard basket... instead of changing accounts and changing everything round.
So it is just a matter of keeping on calling in and trying to build that relationship, and we are lucky that we can say we can supply the welding side as well. So you know, two things for one. And it’s just keeping going at them until you can get them across the line.
What could BOA do better?
I haven’t had any bad experiences or anything like that yet. We’re always hoping BOA can spend more time going out, doing what Oscar did the other day. But logistically there is lots of people and I’m busy as well. Everything - the way the pod operates or getting parts, all that kind of stuff - I have no complaints, hence why we are looking at wanting to go ahead with the second one and get it rolling. We appreciate it. Being a small company, we are keen to grow and we see massive potential in it.
Add an additional revenue stream to your services
At BOA Hydraulics, we're helping companies reduce hydraulic downtime for themselves and for their clients. For more information about how BOA Hydraulics can help you provide new service offerings to your clients, contact a member of our team today.