Shed Geek Podcast
The Shed Geek Podcast offers an in depth analysis of the ever growing and robust Shed Industry. Listeners will experience a variety of guests who identify or specialize in particular niche areas of the Shed Industry. You will be engaged as you hear amateur and professional personalities discuss topics such as: Shed hauling, sales, marketing, Rent to Own, shed history, shed faith, and much more. Host Shannon Latham is a self proclaimed "Shed Geek" who attempts to take you through discussions that are as exciting as the industry itself. Listeners of this podcast include those who play a role directly or indirectly with the Shed Industry itself.
Shed Geek Podcast
Thriving Through Market Waves: The Stoltzfus Brothers’ Journey in the Shed Industry PART 1
Ever wondered what it takes to thrive in the ever-evolving shed industry? This episode promises to unravel the incredible journeys of Merle and Marlin Stoltzfus, two brothers who have not only survived but thrived through market fluctuations and industry challenges. From Merle's start in 2008 with sales and deliveries to Marlin's extensive background in building and site preparation, their stories are full of rich experiences and invaluable insights. Discover how family support and adaptability have been the bedrock of their success as they expand into new services like Horse Barns, carports, and garages.
Curious about how the shed industry has navigated economic downturns and the pandemic rollercoaster? We reflect on market trends that shaped the industry from the 2008 housing collapse to the booming pandemic years of 2020-2022. Learn why shed sales often surge during tough times and how the industry is cautiously optimistic as it stabilizes in 2024. Despite current spending hesitancy, there's an abundance of opportunities awaiting those willing to adapt and innovate.
Last but not least, discover the power of collaboration over competition in achieving business success. From grueling long-distance deliveries to cooperative ventures among three shed businesses, hear firsthand how working together paved the way for mutual growth. We also unveil the development of the Shed Challenger concept, a testament to perseverance and innovation. From initial brainstorming to deployment, this project underscores the importance of patience and continuous improvement in bringing a vision to life. Don't miss out on these valuable lessons and inspiring stories from industry pioneers.
For more information or to know more about the Shed Geek Podcast visit us at our website.
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To suggest show topics or ask questions you want answered email us at info@shedgeek.com.
This episodes Sponsors:
Studio Sponsor: Union Grove Lumber
Cardinal Leasing
Shed Challenger
We want to welcome you to today's episode. All right, guys, welcome back to another episode of the Shed Geek podcast. This is the Friday fun day, with Sam Basseter version. You guys have probably never heard that before because we haven't aired any of these yet. I'm honored to be here today with Merle and Marlon, and I'm just going to let them do a quick introduction. We're here to basically get your story, find out what you guys are about, what makes you tick, and just be ready. Every one of these episodes has an aha moment when I'm like no kidding, that's what I mean. It always happens, so I've gotten used to it and I'm always looking. No kidding, that's what I mean. It always happens, so I've gotten used to it and I'm always looking for it. So I'll try to dig it out of you today. I already had one this morning that I'm curious if it comes back up again. So tell Merle, go ahead, tell me who you are.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:Yeah, my name is Merle Stoltzfus and I live in beautiful state of North Carolina and so been in the shed industry since 2008, and that's when we started up. So you know, in that economy you start at the bottom and you go up from there, and so it actually did us well. So we're very grateful.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:We've experienced many blessings, and just grateful for the favor of god, for sure, and it's it's been, uh, it's been a good ride and just yeah always trying to see what we can, what we can be of service and do it better and continue that so and marlin, are you related to this guy?
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:I am actually somehow. I'm at the top of the line. He's at the bottom in the family.
SAM BYLER:Yeah, okay, yeah, I wondered about that yeah, he's the youngest Marlin Stoltzfus boys.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:I'm the oldest of the boys and uh, yeah, my name is marlon stoltzfus and I live over in chucky, tennessee, just close to erwin down oh yeah chucky valley there, yep, greenville t, tennessee is our biggest town, nearby, not far from Johnson City and all those good places, but beautiful, beautiful place to live.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:And yeah, I've been involved in sheds for since about 98. Used to build sheds for a guy and then took a small break, did a few things on my own and then in 2000, I started building sheds and then in 2011, we got out of the sheds because we went to Kenya, africa, for five years and worked there and in 2006, I also started hauling sheds. And so from 2005, 2006-ish, for about six years I hauled sheds until we sold out that business to Nate Stoltz, who's over here in South Carolina.
SAM BYLER:Oh, okay.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:Yeah, sold that to him most of it. And in 2008, that's when Merle started working for me over here in Hendersonville I set up that sales lot and Merle worked there and then in 2012, he bought that business. So at that point I was out of sheds, totally Not involved in sheds. Today, more than doing site preps, build gravel sites, the premium sites, concrete we're still involved in doing support work for sheds, but not involved in building or delivering sheds at all.
SAM BYLER:So yeah, that's interesting. You're in the South and you're putting in pads, some, some.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:We're pushing it more and more. Yeah, I see it coming.
SAM BYLER:I'm a diehard block guy. I am. We've always blocked our sheds. I used to too. Most of our rent-to-own customers couldn't afford a pad, not unless you're going to put it on rent-to-own and you can't do that. There's no way. I mean, you just can't. So it's interesting to me to hear somebody from south of Maryland, ohio, talk about putting pads in. So do you guys build sheds or do you just sell sheds?
MERLE STOLTZFUS:We only sell and deliver. Sell and deliver. Okay, we have not stepped into the manufacturing.
SAM BYLER:Okay.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:That's something where we only have two out of the three pieces of the pie there.
SAM BYLER:Okay, how many do you have your Hendersonville own lots?
MERLE STOLTZFUS:We have two lots, okay yeah, hendersonville and Tryon. Okay, and so then we also get into Horse Barns is a big part of our product line as well.
SAM BYLER:Okay.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:So Horse Barns, sheds, carports, garages, those, would be the four main things that we've settled on.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:And Merle does his own in-house RTO. Now too. Okay, on what?
SAM BYLER:he's selling. Yes, very good, that's cool.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:So yeah, now I have moved home, I work from home and then the guys take care of the lots and have a driver full time.
SAM BYLER:So that's what we do.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:Why sheds. You just wake up one day and you're like Well, Sam, I'll tell you this. The generosity cycle is amazing to me because the guy sitting right beside me, Marlon. I, was quitting Gospel Express. I was a VS.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:There there's one aha moment. He was on the bus for how many years? Five years.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:I was with Gospel Express for three and a half, and then my wife was with the ministry in the same building. So I'm getting married and I knew we were quitting. So we quit in—here's how the timeline goes we quit our jobs, got married, started a new business all in the span of 30 days. Oh, that's a busy guy right there. And so in 2008, you had that on top of it.
SAM BYLER:Oh, yes, and.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:I'm this young husband trying to figure out like what in the world? How am I going to do this? Marlon comes along. I knew that I did not want to be. The only thing I knew I didn't want to be is a mason.
SAM BYLER:I know I'm not going to get out there in the sun.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:I out there in the sun, I'm not going to lay rocks, I'm not going to mix mud Right. Other than that, everything was open. So I knew I'm quitting. I knew, you know, getting married I'm like. I got to provide for the new bride, and so Marlon called me up and said hey, would you want?
MERLE STOLTZFUS:to sell sheds for me, and at that point I hadn't sold a thing in my life. I'm like I don't know how to do this. But so we tested that market and said, okay, if we can find a place, if we can, if everything continues to open up, if the doors continue to open up, I'm just going to keep walking. So that was something where there's more stories behind that. But the doors just opened up and we just kept walking and we are still walking. The doors are still open and we walked. So I consider myself an opportunist. The opportunity was there. I had never done it before and this guy here taught me pretty much everything I know in business. He was a huge mentor to me and was able to. Just his generosity to us is just, I'll never forget it. Just his generosity to us is just, I'll never forget it. And I'm very grateful for all that because, yeah, he taught me so much things in those first years.
SAM BYLER:How much age difference?
MERLE STOLTZFUS:is there in between you, I want to say 12, 13 years.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:Yeah, okay, I'm a 70 here, 83,. Yeah, okay.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:All right, yeah, okay, I'm a 70 here. Yeah, 83, yeah, yeah, okay, all right, yeah, so he was. And from that moment on we've just always maintained we're so different, like he just moves and shakes and lets the pieces fly. I'm more of a calculated, I'm going to take a risk, but I'm going to know what my risk is, and so we work together well. Like that, we balance each other out pretty good. So from that moment it's just, you know, I knew.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:At that point I told my wife, I said we need to sell $30,000 worth of products in a month for us to be able to just pay our bills and live, and it's just, you know, the favor of God from that moment on has just been. I mean, it's incredible. So we're just very grateful.
SAM BYLER:I very well remember 2008.
SAM BYLER:I had 13 houses in the ground and I can still. I think I've actually shared this on one of my other podcasts, but it'll come up because it's a big moment in my life. I can still remember when I was sitting in the office the morning that the the two guys and the girl walked into, uh, freddie Mac Like I can picture the sidewalk, the turn in the sidewalk and walking in the front doors. When they walked into Freddie Mac and that started the whole effect of everything shutting down, um, people losing their 401ks, all that stuff.
SAM BYLER:and in south carolina, greenville, where I was building well, it's actually seneca area, it's a retirement area and most of those houses were being built off of 401ks people were retiring they were moving up their um 475 000 houses up to about 1.3 a lot of lake houses and they all came in and said we don't have any more money, um, so I went back to sheds. So that's. You know people, people get a little touchy about the economy right now and where we're at, you know about you. You see it I don't know if you're on the there's a shed sales professional page where, uh, a lot of the guys that sell sheds are on there and every couple weeks, at least twice a month, somebody always asks are you selling sheds? You know what are y'all doing, what's happening here and there?
SAM BYLER:you can tell there's a nervousness in the industry and and the fact is, we're back to normal.
SAM BYLER:It's not that it's that unusual, it's just normal we went 100, right, we went past normal for a couple years and nobody knew what to do with it. But I started and here's here's what I tell them. I said I started in the worst economy you could start in and we grew like crazy. When they can't afford to put that two-car garage on anymore, they'll buy a shed. When they can't afford to put grandma in her own house, they'll put her in a shed. We see that over and over again. You have to learn how to capitalize on it. And yeah, you have to go back to work. 2020, 21, 22,. We didn't even have to go back to work. Yeah, um 2020, 21, 22, we didn't even have to work. I mean, they just felt. But you know what I remember, um woody and you said you know woody from way back. So we had the bash planned for pennsylvania in march 2020 I was gonna be there yeah, and it ended up getting canceled.
SAM BYLER:But then some of us knuckleheads that just aren't going to bend, we decided we're going to get together anyway. And I remember I left home at 3.30 in the morning and my wife was worried I wasn't going to be able to cross state lines. That's how bad it was we did not know what was going to happen and everybody in the shed industry for about two weeks was freaked out because it was going to just be done. You were too. I remember that I know exactly that feeling.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:It's so hard exactly where I was when I, when I reckoned with that yeah, so it is so hard for me.
SAM BYLER:I was driving to pennsylvania in the middle of the night and there was no traffic. Yeah, it was dead. Yeah, um, and you know, we stayed there for a little while and then people are like, no, we're not doing this, and all of a sudden sales just went crazy, and you know, so now we're a little bit. Do you feel that, like, are you more back to what you consider normal?
MERLE STOLTZFUS:Yeah, you've said it very well, because the 2020, I looked at that 21, 22, I'm like, okay, what is our new normal? This is not sustainable. I don't think. But what I love about the set industry is that when one goes through it, we all go through it. So you talk about that little nervousness and all that kind of stuff, because it's not just when I have to, when we ebb and we flow. I look back and I say, okay, is it something I'm doing or do I need to? And I start reaching out and I'm like, okay, it's soft other places too. But I would now call what we're in now the new normal. I would call now it just feels soft, like it's not bad, it's not great, it's just soft.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:That's a good word.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:It is, it is like you know, it's, it's. We're continuing on and people are just a little bit. There's so much money out there. The money has not disappeared in this, in our economy right now. It's just people are not letting go of it. People are just scared to let go. But you get past the election.
SAM BYLER:You know like I think it'll change yeah, that's, that's the other thing we're in. So now we're, uh, post pandemic, but we're also in an election year and you can, I can, go back, so I still have all my. When I started back up, I actually went back to trucking for a while, did ice road trucking, did some other stuff and then got back into sheds, um, so I didn't really get going in sheds till about 2010, even though I was doing some stuff in the shed industry, um, but in 2010 is when I actually went back to selling and delivering. Same thing you did, um, and then, three years later, we started building. Four years later, we were building everything, um, and by 2016, we were running 11 lots in the upstate. Yeah, um, I did not have dealers, I had all my. We had our own company lots. We hired all our own sales guys, um, did everything that away, but it's it's uh, every time, like, I can go back in my records, and every time there's an election year, the sales are still there.
SAM BYLER:But it's exactly what you said. It's like people tend to sit on their money just a little bit tighter. The sad thing about this country is we elect people that are from the same bird. I'm not going to get political, but it's the left wing and the right wing of the same bird. But we get it in our heads that if our wing doesn't win we're going to lose something and it's just a given. We tighten up just a little bit. Stuff changes just a hair. I've got buddies that are in the buy here, pay here, car business that do all their own financing and stuff like that, and then they have their own finance companies. They say it's the same thing, it's the same thing across the board. I've got companies they say that it's the same thing, it's the same thing across the board. Um, I got a buddy that puts pools in and you know, even in the housing industry we used to watch that right election years are a little more soft yep
SAM BYLER:um. So it's. It's understandable that we're in that a little bit um what. What do you think affects? Like the area you're in?
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MERLE STOLTZFUS:I'm not sure how to answer that question. What do you mean?
SAM BYLER:So I see companies all across the board, like northern New York, all the way to southern Arizona, to middle of Missouri. How do you feel about the area that you sell in as far as is it a strong economy? Do you feel like it struggles more or what? What is this area like?
MERLE STOLTZFUS:yeah, good question. So we up in hendersonville is that area is where a lot of retirees come. They have a mountain home. There's a lot of florida people that have their second home, their mountain home, in that asheville hendersonville and so for that reason my client base up there is fantastic, like they are. You know they're great. On payments they're great. You know buyers they're solid.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:Because you know that's an older clientele the 45 to 60, you know those are great, solid people here in this county. It changes just a little bit, um, because we are in kind of a change, because this used to be one of the poorer counties of north carolina but then the equestrian center came in and now it's turning into this kind of horse mecca yeah and so we are now right in the middle of an equestrian area, so property values are going up and different people are coming in, and you know, then also it gives us an opportunity to get into our horse barns.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:So we kind of separate them out, because we do our sheds mostly up there in the Ashwa area and then the horse barns we do down here. So that's kind of how we, you know, we do all the products at every place, but, um, but yeah, this is a great area, you know it's mountains. People, a lot, a lot of florida people, like I said, are in this area. They come up here to cool off a little bit in the summertime, believe it or not our northern counties have that same thing.
SAM BYLER:um, it seemed so back when I was doing houses. It seemed like most of my customers were either from Florida or New York. Um, some of them were trying to get away from just ridiculous cost of living and others were trying to, yeah, find a little cooler place to hang out. They still keep their for-order places. Yeah, the interesting thing to me was the New York people sold out. They left. I probably built 30, 40 houses for people from New York, new Jersey, delaware up in that area and they would almost always sell out. And the crazy thing is some of them were building places for what they were paying in 10 years in taxes up there. Crazy, wow. So the reason I asked that question what, what is? Do you know what your like? Your most popular sales are sales are, you said you do horse barns. Do you do like is a lot.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:We at the beginning, uh, horse barns were about 60% of our, our sales and so we just kept on pushing sheds. Kept on pushing sheds because where we are up there in Hendersonville, that area thinks self-storage, and now we were one of the first shed companies in Hendersonville. There was one just outside of, but in order for people to think, oh, I can have something in my backyard versus going across town to the self-storage, that's interesting. It took a long time to see that culture change.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:And I'm going to say about 10 years, and then more competition started coming in, and then all those people realized that hey, I can get one of these. And from that moment our sheds overtook the horse barns.
SAM BYLER:So you're doing more sheds now it's about 50-50. Okay.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:Possibly 55-45 the other way. But yeah, it's been fun to watch that happen. The sheds come up.
SAM BYLER:So when you started selling sheds, did you do your own deliveries?
MERLE STOLTZFUS:No.
SAM BYLER:You've always had somebody that's helped you do deliveries.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:Yeah, okay well, when we started, I was doing deliveries too oh, you were doing deliveries, I did deliveries for a number of years. Okay, and, like merle said, we started up there in henderson. Bill merle was working for me and so I was doing all the deliveries at that point. You were living in chucky and doing deliveries in henderson.
SAM BYLER:Yeah, I'd come over every week it's two hours.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:Yeah, it's nothing, it's two hours.
SAM BYLER:It's nothing, I would not. I wouldn't even go two hours from my lots, I mean like from so okay. So I mean I live in a unique area. In my opinion, there's almost not a better place in the us to live than greenville, south carolina. You're dead in the middle of atlanta and charlotte. Um you're it's beautiful area you place in the US to live than Greenville, south Carolina, beautiful.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:You're dead in the middle of Atlanta and Charlotte.
SAM BYLER:It's a beautiful area. You're in the foothills, we have gorgeous lakes, we have mountains, you can be in Gatlinburg in three hours, I mean, and you can be in the beach in four hours, yeah. So I was like why am I driving an hour and a half when I can drive 45 minutes? You don't do the same thing. So I was spoiled.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:I mean, I really was.
SAM BYLER:I had 11 lots and all of them were within 75 miles and they would all do over a million dollars a year, so there was no reason to go anywhere else. Now I went through a phase from 2014, no, no, no. 2013, 14, and 15, where I decided I was going to. So my goal was always to go from Montgomery, alabama, to Richmond, virginia, that's the whole 85 corridor. Um, I had a big dream. I was I was going to cover that whole area.
SAM BYLER:So along that route, I dropped off into Columbus, georgia, which ended up putting me a lot in Albany, georgia, which is nowhere close to 85. And so two days a week for three years I would get up Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'd get up at 2 am and I go to Columbus and do all my deliveries there, drive down to Albany, do all my deliveries there and then drive back home, and I get home anywhere from 11 o'clock to 1 o'clock that night and then up at 630 next morning, go do your local deliveries. And then one day I was like this is crazy deliveries. And then one day I was like this is crazy, I can sell those. I can put two lots in up here, just like those lots, and do the exact same thing, so I chunked those and came back home. I did all my own deliveries for almost five years. I hired sales guys and then, I did all the deliveries.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:That's the way I always was too, and so back to that. When we started, I was doing all the deliveries and then the distance started catching up with me because I'd run all the way down to Wagler's pick up horse barns and deliver for us, and also deliver for them at that time, like Florida and whatever, and it was getting so heavy.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:And them at that time like Florida and whatever, and it was getting so heavy. And so about that time Merle suggested why don't you get a driver and have him over here? And so at that point Nate Stolzfus needed a job, and so I put a truck over here and pretty soon I had a semi and a smaller rig. Then he was doing all my long runs and it was so nice because he could come over and pick up sheds over there in tennessee and if I needed he could help us deliver over there and come over here, so it started out as one day a week.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:Pretty soon it was two days a week and it wasn't long.
SAM BYLER:He was five days it was five every day. So you were, you were selling sheds in chucky too.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:Oh yeah, okay, yeah, there was three of us shed shops that work together okay, all right we had our different lines. Yeah, and you're talking about competition. How good that is. People don't like it always, but it worked so well we could. We all had our different lines. We would. We would go to virginia, we would go different places north carolina, and we'd set up a lot and we'd all three put our sheds there and have one sale no, no, yes, you can't do that in the shed industry.
SAM BYLER:It worked so great. Did nobody tell y'all?
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:Does nobody know about Synergy?
SAM BYLER:Yeah, for real.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:It's so beautiful it works powerful, yeah, so we would go in and drop 30 sheds at one place and just start selling sheds, yes, and I would deliver all three. So it's like, well, how do you deliver your competition sheds? I'm like you pick it up, set it on the trailer and you take it out. It's beautiful, it works so nice, it's powerful. I, I got to experience it over and over. Yeah, and yeah, sometimes I would lose a sale because somebody would opt for another one.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:but totally fine, it goes the other way it goes the other way too, and so that whole thing started growing pretty soon. I had different trucks and I had Nate over here working, and then in 2011 is when we went to Kenya and then, I sold half of the trucks to Nate and half of them stayed over there and then Nate was hauling for Merle at that time and then some years later Merle got his own rig, so it just kept growing.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:and, yeah, the working together friendly competition thing is is one of the biggest things that people can learn in business and it's so beneficial oh, I agree wholeheartedly it's not like hey, I'm, I'm, and now we do excavating, and I feel it sometimes like well, I ain't gonna get you to help me, because you're my competition. I'm like get over it. Yeah, yeah, we can help each other, I have no problem. You help me, I help you.
SAM BYLER:It's yeah, there's nothing like it in business you just reminded me of when we lived in missouri and moved to kentucky. When we lived in missouri, it was a whole lot more small. Well, I mean, it was a more agriculture area, and you had to concentrate and focus on working with others, because you weren't going to make it any other way. Everybody worked together all the time, and then, when we moved to Kentucky, it was right the opposite. There was work for everybody everywhere, and don't you?
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:You stay over there and I stay over there.
SAM BYLER:I told you guys before we started that I love, I thrive on competition. I love to win. That's why I finally quit playing softball, because it was just too. It was like you know what I'm, just to the point I got to get out. I love playing all sports, but softball you're not going to win. That's just the way it is, you know. And for me, competition is. I want you to have all the same resources I do, and then I want to beat you.
SAM BYLER:I posted a story on Facebook a couple weeks ago and I don't even remember what country the runners were now, but there was a country that had a couple. I guess they were at the Olympics or something and they were doing a marathon and the guy that was way in the lead got up close to the finish line and he got confused by the signs and he quit. He wasn't across the finish line yet, wow. And the guy coming up behind him grabs him and pushes and shoves him across the finish line in front of him and the whole. It's a fairly long story, but the whole point of the story for the guy in second place that grabbed him and pushed him across says I want to beat him at his best. That's the way I am.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:Yeah, that's very well.
SAM BYLER:And the crazy thing about that is when I give you all my resources, we become friends and then I don't even care anymore. It's like let's both win. You know, uh, we talk about there's win-wins. Well, there's win-win-wins, you know, when everybody wins. You know, and you're even your customers. Um, when you start working together with others in your area, it bleeds into every part of your business there is. It bleeds into your employees and all your salespeople, your haulers, your drivers, your builders, and it bleeds over into your customers. I know areas where it works like that. And then when you go into other areas that I I'm being sarcastic when I said you know you can't put three different companies on the same lot, because there are literally a bunch of shed companies out there that would never let you sell somebody else's shed with theirs. In fact, shed Gal and I right now are in the middle of putting in mega lots and that was one of the things we wanted to do. We wanted to have seven to eight different manufacturers on the same lot, and it's interesting how my friends receive that as manufacturers. Some of them are like, oh whoa. I mean like, uh, how's that gonna work? I'm like you. You just set your sheds out there. You deliver them like you normally do. I'll sell them for you and you know his sheds are over there and it's interesting to see those who open up to that and those who don't. All right, that was a rabbit trail.
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SAM BYLER:The reason I wanted to ask you about did you do your own hauling or not? So we're going to switch a little bit. Yeah, you guys are on to something. You're on to something new. I don't think anybody really knows that it's y'all. James has kind of stuck his neck out there a little bit. I'm just assuming you were dragging a shed up a hill one day with your pickup truck and you're like there's got to be a better way to do this. So let's get into the story of why you're building a shed mover. And you're not just building a shed mover, but you want to build a business of shed movers. I can understand the out-of-the-box thinking. I do it all the I can. I can understand the out of the box thinking I'm doing. I do it all the time I'm in the middle of building something.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:That's like crazy yeah, that's awesome, so take it away well, the story is, I would say, two pronged. Uh, one is again. Marlon had the original idea and you produced a couple of these, what we now know as a shed boss. Uh, james builds a shed boss I don't know if you're familiar with that, so that came
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:through you too, that was actually marlin's idea then but james did the r&d yeah okay, I said, I want something yeah, I don't know.
SAM BYLER:How did you get to know james back up a little bit here. Is that who you were buying trailers through?
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:right, yeah, so it goes back further than that. Um, he married my sister, our sister our oldest sister.
SAM BYLER:You're kinfolk, right?
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:oh, okay he married our oldest sister and I married his sister. So we've been.
SAM BYLER:Oh no, we've we're old, on, we're kinfolk twice over. Yeah, we're thick, so your kids have that double cousin thing going on.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:Yeah, okay, very good, so we don't go to family gardens without the other one always being there.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:Yeah, sure Somewhere.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:So yeah, we went to school together, yeah long time, so you would have obviously known James when he bought that business from PD. Absolutely Okay.
SAM BYLER:Oh yes, he's done.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:Well done he used to work for danny troyer which came up with that side shift tail and pd took it. James took it until yeah, it's been a good bit and I used to. I used to buy all my shed trailers from james. I've never had a pine hill and uh always, like james's trailer, bought a new one every year because I had three or four and and then I'd just cycle them.
SAM BYLER:Yep.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:So yeah, it goes way back there and anyway. So I did not want to, I was just, I guess I like new things, but I don't like to spend a lot of money for new things.
SAM BYLER:Yeah.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:You know, just because it's there, I'm just not going to go buy it. Yeah, and so I told James one day. I said I need something that's cheaper, simple. I'm not looking to move big sheds around, because we delivered everything with trailers back in the day yeah. Yeah, I had never owned a mule and so we did everything with trailers. But I had fancy trailers. It had all the stuff on it.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:Oh yeah, you could get everything that James would make, make and um. So we worked hard, did a lot of deliveries. I love deliveries. I really did I when I started merle. I said merle, I I can't do what you do in the office. I don't want to do it yeah, he said I don't want to do what you do either.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:You couldn't pay me to do what you guys are doing. You couldn't pay me the sum of the month.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:The world to do that. So that's why we were such a good fit, because I would not make it in an office sitting behind a desk. I can't do that. I could, but I wouldn't thrive.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:It's not who I am.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:But put me behind a truck somewhere delivering something. Give me a challenge. I always say give me a Styx or a steering wheel. I'm totally happy and so good, yeah. And so I told James, make me something. And I said that what I want is something that simply picks up the shed and transfers the weight back. So that's the beginning, uh-huh. And from there, and then I had a couple of those shed bosses and James has built them over the years, just here and there for some.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:But the interesting thing about the Shed Boss, though, is it kind of you made what two or three, maybe four of them and sold a little bit here and there it died off. It just kind of like went to nothing.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:Right and then, all of a sudden, james, he started saying hey, I think this Shed Boss is on to something a little bit. And so then he resurrected it on his own. But in the middle of all that in 2017, we go to a family gathering. And before the family gathering, I woke up one morning with a dream, just saying I saw the concept for what Marlin's we're doing now and I'm saying we need to perfect what you started with the shed boss, like here's how I think it can be perfected. And so we sat around that.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:I still remember I could take you to that spot I could do that right out there yeah and we sat down with some paper and we scratched out some stuff and so from there the concept was, was made or came up with saying okay, we need to, we can perfect what we, what they've started with yeah so it started with the shed boss, and from there it's um marlon's son, his oldest son.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:um man, he spent hours just thinking this thing through, thinking this thing, through thinking, through laying in bed, thinking, thinking it through laying in bed, thinking about it, and what would come up? What he came up with was that double mast thing that you saw. And it's just simply a way to put a foot down, transfer the weight back over and now you've got the weight, you can do whatever you want.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:And so that's how the concept came about, and so, man, you still take it from that notepad paper in 2017 to you know, just trial and error and making this thing work, and it was maybe 18. It was March of 19, 2019, when we loaded that thing on the truck for the first time.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:The first prototype.
SAM BYLER:Do you guys understand how often we sit around at family get-togethers and we talk about ideas and stuff and nothing ever happens? Well, you know what I'm saying. I can so identify with what you're talking about. Just because I remember when my brother and I, you know, we were young squirts and Dad had us build miter saw tables and then DeWalt stole that idea and built exactly what we were doing. Oh wow, and we talked about that and we came up with our own system and used it. But the extra push that it takes to go from an idea to putting it in place and then to turn around and actually move forward.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:It takes time, money and belief.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:Yeah.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:I mean you put those three together, you put some patience with it.
MARLIN STOLTZFUS:Oh, you lost me, stick it out.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:I have zero patience, but I'm just saying, from that concept to now. We're seven years later and we have a prototype that I feel is still can be, you know, bettered. But my goodness how far we've come, you know, in those seven years. But that prototype, one that we came up with was embarrassing to look at. I mean, one guy looked at that and said, you know, he wants to puke, you know, after he sees that it's just a tank of a machine, right. But all we had to do was prove a concept, and then we had to all just refine it from there.
SAM BYLER:And you're still talking about that, like you guys have still, you still see stuff that you want to change, make better, do different. Yeah, there will be. That's all part of the process of it, and we should always be getting better at whatever we're doing. So you end up with your first one like this You've been running this one. You said four years.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:Prototype 1, we've been running since 2019. Okay.
SAM BYLER:Oh, almost five years 19, 20, 21, 22.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:And yeah, we did pick this one up until a year ago, so we've been running it for five years 19, 20, 21, 22. And yeah, we did pick this one up until a year ago, so we've been running it for five years, okay.
SAM BYLER:And then you've been running this one a little over a year. That's correct. Okay, prototype two what's your goal as far as? How far do you have to go Like? You're running this one on your own driver's rig. That's correct. What's the goal look like? As far as? When do you get comfortable that you think you can build one for somebody else? What does that look like?
MERLE STOLTZFUS:This fall. This fall, we are in production right now.
SAM BYLER:Okay.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:So the way that looks is we put the teaser out there. I say we, James did.
SAM BYLER:Yeah, James.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:With the Creekside there, so he put the teaser out there. Or I say we, james, did you know, with the creek side there, so he put the teasers out there. And you know, just, you get all the feedback. You know it's, oh yeah, six of one half does the other you know, yeah and, but what all we needed to do was get some idea out there saying, hey, there could actually be a different way of doing it right you know there could, there might be a different way of moving that shed.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:There might be a way of, you know, instead of pushing in gable walls, hey, there's a different way of doing it right. You know, instead of laying over in somebody's back, there's a different way of doing it Right. And so just, we all, it's all we wanted to do was just put the thought out there, just plant that, seed that, hey, there is a different way, just hold on a little bit. We seed that, hey, there is a different way, just hold on a little bit. We're getting there. But from that, what I found incredibly interesting, sam, is that people are putting orders in having never seen the machine except through videos and photos, and they don't even know the exact final cost yet. And because we're still developing it the prototype too.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:Yeah, yeah, and because we're still developing it, you know the prototype two, which you know you have the cell phone technology. Of all that, like the costs to develop that were really high on this machine.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:So, we can't go off of these prices because it's just we price ourselves out of the market. Yes, so right now we're working on bringing those costs down. We're working on, you know, refining that manufacturing process. But we have a 10K machine and a 15K machine being built right now, and so we will hopefully display both of those at the Shed Expo.
SAM BYLER:At the Shed Expo At the Shed Expo in Michigan.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:Okay.
SAM BYLER:I was going to ask you if you're coming to the Expo. We are reserved, yeah.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:So we will have at least one machine um. We're doing our absolute best to get two machines um displayed there. That way you can.
MERLE STOLTZFUS:The customer can see the 10 and the 15k yes and I think they're going to be some sweet machines that come out of the, because we're just going to continue to refine them yeah and we've come up with something that we're I mean I'm 95 happy with, like there's come up with something that we're I mean I'm 95% happy with, Like there's just a couple things that we want to change, but it's come a long way.
SAM BYLER:Thank you all for listening to today's episode. This was part one of a two-part episode, so be sure to listen next week to finish today's podcast.