Husqvarna
has acquired Soff-Cut.
Soff-Cut Acquires Superior Power
Trowels, Inc.
On January 8, 2007, Soff-Cut, the manufacturer of Ultra
Early Entry concrete cutting products, announced its acquisition of Superior
Power Trowels.
Soff- Cut Named Manufacturer to Watch by Concrete Construction
Magazine
Soff-Cut was named as a manufacturer to watch by Concrete
Construction Magazine.
Soff-Cut Wins Hub Vendor of the Year
Award
Hub Awards their prestigious Vendor of the Year Award to Soff-Cut.
Soff-Cut Brings THE SOLUTION to the
2006 WOC Show
The Solution was presented at the 2006 World of Concrete Show in Las Vegas.
Soff-Cut Introduces New Job Site Dust Collection System
Soff-Cut has now introduced the latest innovation in job site collection systems,
the V-1000 Soff-Vac.
SAW-CUT MASTER: A Decorative Concrete Contractor Armed with Soff-Cut ® Saw
and Beveled Blade!
Before the cracks are there, you make the cut. You bevel edges, round corners,
and achieve the perfect–well, close to perfect– “Tooled Joint” look!
You create grids, curved designs, edgings, graphics, and wonder where there
are additional places to use that saw!
Soff-Cut Saws Are Necessary
For Hot Weather Concrete Applications
Summer is here and contractors should be prepared to handle faster setting
concrete.
Soff-Cut Cures Contractors' Headaches
Despite the rugged nature of the job, concrete cutting has always been a delicate
business.
Exciting New Product in 2005
Soff-Cut, the developer and manufacturer of the ultra early
entry concrete cutting system of saws and blades with skid plates, has introduced
several new products this year.
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Soff-Cut Named Manufacturer
to Watch by Concrete Construction Magazine
Editor in Chief Bill Palmer talks with an important industry supplier.
Bill Palmer: When you took over at Soff-Cut, things weren’t good. What
was wrong?
Don Hinshaw: We both got there at the end of 2001. The owners weren’t pleased
with the financial trend of the company. So the first thing we did was hit the
road for 30 to 45 days to visit our major customers, talk to our key employees,
travel with our sales reps, and do what we call “the gap analysis.” That
meant figuring out where the company was, then getting a handle on the market
and where it was going, and then seeing how well we were doing as a company against
where the market was and where we needed to be. That gap may be broad or not.
In the case of Soff-Cut, the gap was rather broad.
Steve Chamberlain: Almost everything was wrong except the performance of the
equipment. Soff-Cut saws do exactly what they are supposed to do. But the culture
of the company was poor. It was as if the contractor and the dealer were enemies.
DH: Although I’m not a fan of buttons and banners, one of the things we
did was make big banners that said “The customer fills out our report card;
find a way to say yes.” Not just say yes, but find a way to say yes. This
was a major change. Also, we had a weak dealer program. I came back at the end
of that first month of traveling and told our people that if I were a dealer,
Soff-Cut would not be high on my agenda given the dealer programs. We needed
to wake up to that. These were people who literally said we hate your company.
SC: We don’t make any money on your product and we think you are [expletive
deleted].
DH: We later held a dealer council, and in order to gain some credibility, I
told them the things we had heard during our travels. From that moment on, we
had some credibility. That’s when the fixing started. You can’t just
come into a company and start changing things. It’s like having a car that’s
not running well and getting a 9⁄16-inch wrench and start turning bolts—no,
first you try to figure out what’s wrong, and then you fix it. That sounds
like common sense, but when a company’s not working well, a lot of people
will immediately start changing things.
BP: How did the employees receive all this?
DH: When you come into a company, you have to know that the employees are worried.
Is this going to be good for me or bad? So the first thing is to calm everyone
down, get everyone to think that this guy is OK. I had a meeting with the employees
on the first day, and other meetings during the time I was traveling, to tell
them the things I was hearing. I told them that here’s what our customers
are saying about us, and we can’t kid ourselves.
And we had to start changing out some people who were part of the problem although
most got on board with the new direction.
BP: So you saw that what Soff-Cut was providing was not what the market needed?
SC: There were holes. First of all there was no small gas-powered saw. That was
huge. That is far and away the best-selling product the company has now. But
we also found that there were lots of potential customers who couldn’t
afford to buy a saw. So we created the other new part of our product line, the
big saws that cost a lot less. Over 60% of our sales last year were from products
we introduced in the last three years.
DH: Soff-Cut hadn’t done a lot of innovation in recent years and some of
the things that needed to be done were the hard things. The kind of things that
one could easily be convinced couldn’t be done. So we had to break that
whole mind set that it couldn’t be done.
SC: Now everyone is part of new product development. We have innovation meetings,
and the factory people are there, sales is there, finance is there, marketing
is there, even the accounts receivable person is there.
DH: We start with a blank sheet of paper and everyone is there, as Steve said,
I’m there, even the sales managers are there. So as we build this thing;
everyone knows as much about it as the next guy. We don’t get to the end
and have someone come in and say we can’t sell this.
BP: How do you avoid employees feeling that they can’t disagree with you?
SC: Because they can disagree, and they know it. Don and I have a rule that as
long as we are in this room, we expect you to disagree sometimes because if you
don’t, then you probably aren’t trying or don’t care.
DH: To prevent such a problem we still work off an old-fashioned easel, and we
list pluses and minuses. And we start with minuses, all the things that are wrong
with this idea. If you’re in the group, then you have to participate. We
get those listed, and then we list the pluses, and this keeps us on the straight
and narrow. If no one has any negatives, I will start by listing some myself,
and that gets it started. But one of the ways we as a company hold ourselves
accountable to the market is to continually go out in the field. Because if I’m
out there talking to contractors and dealers and they tell us we’ve screwed
up, then we’ll either have to fix it or stop going out there. When I go
out and meet with a contractor and ask how we are doing, he will tell me. And
then we get it fixed.
BP: What happens when the patent on the Soff-Cut saw runs out?
DH: We are always getting new patents, so it’s hard to say when that day
will come. But still that’s why we work on making our brand strong and
being easy to do business with.
SC: We feel that we are really meeting the needs of the market now, breaking
in with residential contractors, decorative contractors, and paving contractors
in addition to our core customers. Our demonstration-to-sell
ratio is about 80%. We show our products to contractors, and they want it.
DH: We truly work backwards in the market. Some of it is just common sense. It
doesn’t matter if I don’t like the product. What matters is if the
customer likes it.
BP: What do you see as the most important trends in the concrete industry
today?
SC: The biggest trend I see is the continuing demand for higher quality in the
concrete product. And the other is decorative—it’s going to grow
and grow—and that requires quality.
DH: Consolidation on the distributor side will continue. That doesn’t bother
us; we’re used to dealing with big distributors.
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