COVID-19 Business Updates: Topper Industrial

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Founder & CEO Ed Brown of Topper Industrial, joins us again to discuss how COVID-19 has affected their company– not just for worse, but also for the better!

Danny:

Okay, welcome to today’s IndustrialSage episode. I have Ed Brown who is the CEO and founder of Topper Industrial, a manufacturer in Wisconsin. Ed, thank you so much for joining me today.

Ed:

My pleasure. Good afternoon.

Danny:

Good afternoon. So Ed, real quick, just wanted to sit down and have a chat with you just to get an understanding of how you guys are handling the whole COVID situation, what things look like on your end, but before we get into that, I kind of want to set the scene. For those who aren’t familiar with Topper, tell me what you guys do and where you guys are located specifically and all that good stuff.

Ed:

Well, thank you. Topper Industrial is a full-service steel fabricating company that about 20 years ago got involved in building industrial parts, and it’s kind of taken over our life. Our company is decent sized. We have about a hundred employees right now. We’re located about 20 miles south of Milwaukee, and we are one of, we consider us fortunate during this very difficult time. Not only has Topper not experienced any of the Coronavirus cases at our shop particularly, but even in our home community of Racine County, there’s not been a major outbreak. So we’re actually pretty lucky, and we’re still up and running with some changes.

Danny:

Sure. All right, for those that want to know, we had an interview with you, and that was released, I don’t know, probably a couple months ago, maybe January, February, so any viewers who’d like to go see that, we went in depth about, actually, a really interesting story about, was it your junior, your 11th grade or junior–

Ed:

Senior high school teacher.

Danny:

Senior high, yeah, so I don’t want to spoil the story. They’ll have to go watch that on the other episode, but I really enjoyed that. Okay, so you mentioned, you’ve obviously got some changes. What’s going on in your neck of the woods?

Ed:

Well, to try to keep our operation as safe as possible, my son has taken the company, and we normally are a one shift operation, he’s divided it into two. So about half of our people are on the second shift, and fortunately, I have two sons. One runs the second shift, one runs the first shift. We did that to keep our employees very far apart, probably 35 or 24 feet between all of my people working. We’ve rearranged our lunch room. We took out a bunch of tables, we put it down to 30 tables with one chair per table. And we split breaks. We split lunch so people are 15, 20 feet apart at all times. All of our office staff, except for a couple, we bought computers. Everybody’s working at home. I’m working at home.

The day that the gang came into my office and handed me a new computer and said, “Go home. We don’t want you here.” I almost cried ’cause I’d never been kicked out of my company. But they said I’m 71 years old, and this corona stuff is bad on the older people. So they said, “We’d feel a lot better if you’d just go home.” I thought it was going to be easier. It’s harder. I don’t have six fabulous designers at my disposal. I’m doing everything myself, and I’m not as good with a computer, although the last two weeks have been a learning experience, and here I’m operating with the famous Danny Gonzales all by myself. So we’re making headway.

Danny:

Oh, you’re making great headway. All that, you know. One of the things that people talk about, and we’ve talked to a lot of companies. You touched on a big thing there, that a lot of people said, “We’re kind of being forced to use new technology that we otherwise wouldn’t have done.” There is a learning curve. But what are some of those other learning curves that you’ve kind of had to go through from a technological standpoint?

Ed:

The thing is, Danny, I think it might affect the overall operations of the company moving forward. I never thought this many people could be as productive and effective working at home. It’s not 20 feet down the hall, so I could go talk to ’em. I talk to all of our people multiple times a day. We’re working on a number of projects. While the world has experienced this mess with corona, many of our customers are pushing hard for things that are going to happen yet this year, installations of equipment in the Summer, in the Fall, and before Christmas so that we’re very, very active. Surprisingly, I actually was so naive I thought I could go home and goof off half the day after I accepted the fact they didn’t want me down there. But it’s been worse. I’m working to 11 o’clock almost every night, trying to keep up with engineering and quotes.

There’s a lot going on, and I feel bad sometimes saying that ’cause I know friends of mine, their businesses are shut down and struggling. We are operating at a disadvantage. I would say we’ve lost 20 percent of our people to a variety of corona related problems. A number of our employees, their wives are nurses, and they have no childcare. So the employees, those fabricators, those welders, those painters are at home, just like I am, taking care of their children. The president, I think rightly so, has issued some kind of an order that you still have to pay them 75 percent of their regular wage, which is not a problem. We’re glad to do it. Money’s not the problem at all. But productivity is, and we’re probably 70, 75 percent of what we’re normally getting out because of the crazy arrangement. It’s not been a problem from customer satisfaction. All of our customers are very understanding, and everybody knows a couple of projects got pushed back a month because of it. But we’re surviving, and we’re getting along. It’s just a different time.

Danny:

Yeah, absolutely. That’s certainly, yeah. This is a familiar challenge I think a lot of companies are going through from a labor standpoint, that maybe they don’t have coronavirus, but as you mentioned, there is effects of that. Obviously, you guys are very fortunate to be able to continue in operations. I think you had mentioned, it was either before we started recording or during, that in the state of Wisconsin you guys are deemed essential. You guys are a key supplier to several different customers, that, you know, they’re essential, and they’re for it.

Ed:

The interesting thing is some of the drawbacks. We recently bought a new tube laser. It’s a pretty expensive machine that about, oh, it’s been installed for probably two months, but about the time company was going to become connected, the corona thing broke out, and we have a piece of equipment we can’t even get up and running. We don’t know we’re going to get running. It’s affected some orders in that the equipment gives us capabilities we wouldn’t normally have without it. Up till now, only one customer has canceled on us. A fairly good order, but it’s canceled. I’m sure it’ll come back. Maybe for or five were put on hold, and we’ve got a number of them that we finished, but we have to warehouse them ’cause we’re not opening and receiving. So there are a variety of challenges you deal with. But in the scheme of things, Danny, it’s good. We’re surviving, and we’re looking forward to this mess being under control. Hopefully, we can find a vaccine so we can go back to whatever the new normal is, something better than this.

Danny:

Yeah, absolutely. Certainly hope we have a much better new normal than this. What has been sort of the morale of the company?

Ed:

Good. We’ve got a great group of people. There are a handful of people that are terribly more afraid of this than I am. Don’t get me wrong, I respect it. I’m doing my best. My wife and I are both senior citizens, and we don’t want to tempt the fact that our immune system can handle it or not. Some of the people just, they had to go home immediately. They had to quarantine. And that’s fine. We want them to feel safe. We all worry about the second phase of this mess, and I’m not sure where it’s going to go, but by and large, 80 percent of our people are happy, from my perspective. I go to the shop in the afternoons between shifts. I can visit my office and pick up on a few things they can’t take completely away. But I do wear a mask. I’m very careful. But I think, by and large, everybody’s pretty happy. Although, we’re all scared. I mean, you know. We’ve had in Racine, I know this sounds small compared to New York, I think we just had our ninth death over the weekend, a couple of our young people, 30, 35 years old. And it’s sickening, one of them, it’s so sad, he just got married and the darn virus has taken him away, and really disrupted a wonderful life. But I think the company’s adapting well.

Danny:

You know, so what are some of the things that, you mentioned one, as far as what are the things that you’ve learned through this, that you’ve picked up on. And one, I think you’ve mentioned was the remote work aspect, which seems to be something that comes up a lot. What else have you kind of, what have you seen through this?

Ed:

You know, the thing I found the most interesting in the first, well it’s been three weeks now, I used to do on average maybe one video conference call a day. I do four or five a day now. There’s a lot of things going on. We do ’em between ourselves. One of the new things that you may, this is probably so fundamental to people that are big on cellphones, smart phones, is that I never used to do video conferencing on my phones, and I do it all the time. I used to hate being on them. You know, I don’t have, I’m not a good looking guy like you, so–

Danny:

Oh, come on!

Ed:

It kind of bothered me. But I’ve adapted to that, and I actually enjoy it. From a technical end, I think that all of us, even my super IT people, have gotten well-versed on on doing Zoom. A month ago, I didn’t know what Zoom was, Danny. So the technical things have been awesome. I was talking to Donovan in your office earlier today, and we feel bad that I think the ol’ handshake might be disappearing. I’m going to miss that. I’ve always enjoyed shaking a man’s hand firmly, especially when you close a deal or you do a good job for ’em. It’s a term of like, affection or endearment that we may be losing. I think in general , I think we’re all going to be a cleaner nation. At our shop twice a day people disinfect doorknobs and bathroom knobs. I know this sounds a little bit risque, but our bathroom doors are now propped open to avoid people touching them. It’s not that horrible. I mean, we all know we have to go to the bathroom, but I’m surprised how we’ve learned to clean so much more carefully, and we’ve taken our immune system for granted, and I guess there’s things we really can’t handle.

But from a manufacturing end, we’re hoping that they will find a cure and that we can get back to where people can work five feet apart or 10 feet apart. It would be hard to run our company if we kept it, everybody right now’s 20, 30 feet apart, and it’s okay. But boy, it’s tough to be productive and be efficient when you have to work under those kind of conditions. I’m a little nervous of what the future’s going to be. I hope they don’t change it too much ’cause I liked the old one a lot. I don’t want it to get too different. I’m just blown away by the technical aspects of, you know, even today I’m in charge of a design, and the guys are having a problem with something, so they took their cellphone, they called me, and they showed me what the problem was so I could solve it from my kitchen table. I didn’t even have to get out of my chair and out of my desk and walk out.

Our plant isn’t huge. It’s a 100,000 square feet, but it can take you 10 minutes to walk from one end to the other. I think you’re going to see a little more of that utilized. Maybe we’re old-fashioned and not thinking in terms of being efficient, but I’m just blown away how the technology has, we’re still functioning, once the corona’s out of our hair, I think we’ll go back to actually a better normal in many respects, you know? I will tell you that I can’t imagine the people that have lost their lives to this mess when we were looking forward to a really special Summer, and now we don’t know what we’ve got.

Danny:

Yeah, that’s a good point. You know, it’s funny that you mentioned about the handshake thing because I know you guys were at MODEX. I was at MODEX. Actually, I kept trying to, I came to your booth probably like, four times ’cause I wanted to say hello, and every time I made it over there it was too late or whatever. So anyways, but you know. I’m sorry about that. I wanted to say hello. And actually, I wanted it, well I guess we couldn’t shake hands then.

Ed:

We were already fist bumping then.

Danny:

Give you a little elbow.

Ed:

It was, I don’t want you to feel bad, Danny, but I was looking forward to have a superstar in my booth, but maybe next year. We’ll see you in Chicago.

Danny:

Next year for sure. But yeah, that was an interesting thing there because at MODEX, that was like, everyone was like, “Don’t shake hands.” I think for me anyways I think that was the first time that it was like, “Oh, we’ve got to actually do this,” and it felt really weird.

Ed:

It did. And in fact, there are some times it’s impossible to not, it’s like, when you want to hug your wife or whatever. It’s an automatic response. The funny thing is a couple of the people in our booths were nervous, and I said to ’em, “If you want to go home, go to the airport, you do not have to stay here. This is not that important.” You know, if they really–

(loud barking)

My dog wants some food.

Danny:

That’s okay. I get like that when I get hungry, too. It’s fine.

Ed:

That’s my wife, that’s not my dog.

Danny:

I have no responsibility.

Ed:

I’m kidding!

Danny:

I’m just–

Ed:

She’s over there giving me a hand signal.

(both laugh)

Danny:

That’s funny. No, but yeah. It was very, very interesting. But yeah, the whole no shaking hands thing and being freaked out about everything.

Ed:

You know, I was actually pleased that we got it in. I was afraid they were going to shut it down and kick us out, and you know, we all spent a fair amount of money and time getting ready for that. We had a pretty productive show. So we were pleased with the outcome, and I’m glad they stuck it in ’cause our life changed the week after that. It was all over.

Danny:

Yeah, exactly. One of the things that we heard from a lot of people there at the show, almost overwhelming, but yes, attendance was way low, but that the people that actually were there, a lot of the conversations were a lot more meaningful. There were a lot less tire kickers and more people that were, did you have that experience?

Ed:

We had a half a dozen awesome meetings. We actually combined the opportunity, our major caster supplier is a company called Blickle, and they were able to do a hospitality night at their facility which was right outside. That worked out really well. A number of projects that were in the works, people came, so it was a productive show, not like we’d hoped, but we were pleased with it. We felt we got our money’s worth out of the money and the time we spent preparing for it. I’m just glad they pulled it off. If this corona thing had started a week or two earlier they would’ve canceled it, and you know, I don’t know what would have happened. There’s a lot of money goes in that show. Hate to see it wasted.

Danny:

So do you guys typically do a lot of trade shows throughout the year or is MODEX–

Ed:

Nope! Just the two major, we used to do about 10 a year and do local ones, but it’s a lot of work, and it didn’t deliver the results. You know, the truth is between the internet, the shows are kind of icing on the cake, and I think that social media and everything else we’re doing is really where 90 percent of efforts, the show is just a once a year deal that we do to kind of spearhead all those marketing efforts we’re doing. The world’s out there . All you do is just turn on your computer.

Danny:

Yeah, exactly. That’s interesting there. Moving forward, crystal ball, all right? When we get out of this thing, and we’re looking at the new normal, whatever that is, what are some of the changes that you see in the industry? Maybe not just for, I mean, it could be for Topper specific, but just in the industry in general, do you see any changes that are going to happen because of this?

Ed:

The business that we do was changing in terms of, our industrial carts are pulled primarily by a tugger. But there’s been a huge push to go with AGVs, and I have more projects now with AVGs than we do with tuggers. I don’t know if it was timing, but it just seems like that’s the way of the future across the board in terms of product and what we’ll be doing. We’ll still do the old, I mean, there are a lot of smaller operations that diversify and don’t need the AGV. But I can’t keep up with quotes, and the development of what we’re doing is really fun. Topper Industrial is looking for people, and I’m not talking, for maybe for the last year we couldn’t find welders to save our life. We were actually setting up a second operation in a second building, and we just had rented the building, and the corona thing broke out. Once they put a stay at home, it’s virtually impossible to find people.

We’re looking for a couple of engineers, electrical people, and so forth, and all that’s being done on a video conference like you and I are doing right now. It’s kind of nice because it wasn’t long before this that we would pay them to get on a plane and come to Topper, and I’m still more comfortable doing that, I won’t kid ya, to shake a man’s hand or a woman’s hand, to look ’em in the eye. There’s still a lot of value there for me. I think, you know, Topper was about to put an addition on the shop. Nothing big. About 25,000 square feet. We’ve kind of put that on the back burner just to be sure that things are going to be back to a busy normal not a slow normal. But Danny, I really can’t gauge what the new normal’s going to be for us as a business or a customer, but I can tell you this. We’re prepared, we’re confident, we think we have the ability no matter what it is, that we will be able to respond and provide good service, and hopefully get things back opened up and back to where we were. We liked the old normal.

Danny:

Yeah, yeah. Well, on that note, I have one last question. Have there been any new things that you’ve picked up not work related? Maybe a new hobby, or I don’t know, reading? Is there something new that you’ve picked up?

Ed:

Yeah. One of my granddaughters turned 13 about a month ago, and we bought her a horse.

Danny:

Uh-oh. Okay.

Ed:

And the horse is in my backyard.

(both laugh)

Danny:

Okay, so you just got a new pet. All right. Okay.

Ed:

Can you imagine all the kids are out of school for the rest of the year, I have three granddaughters that all love horses, one’s 11, two are 13, and they’re out there right now, and I’ll go out there and check on ’em, I mean, they’re very capable young people. I also am a car nut, and I’ve been restoring a car. I actually thought I could take advantage of my new norm where I’m kicked out of my own office to get something done on my car, although the car’s almost done. And I know this is going to sound silly, but I’m afraid to drive it around the block because I know that other people don’t have it as good as I do in that they’re experiencing real problems, and until the travel order is lifted and we can go back to the norm, I don’t want to drive the car and seem flamboyant or any kind of thing bad. Yeah, I’m looking forward to some, when things get poor I can, you know, quit working in this kitchen at four or five and go goof off a little bit. I’m looking forward to it. There’s plenty out there to do when you’re on a farm between the, we don’t have any animals except those horses, but there’s plenty to do.

Danny:

Well, it sounds like you’ve been keeping yourself very busy. And you know what, Ed? You are a great man and a great leader. I just, you know, the fact that what you said there, your sentiments there about with the car thing I mean, that’s awesome. That shows that you really have a deep empathy, and I imagine that your company loves their leader. Thank you for sharing with me, and everyone else here at IndustrialSage, a little bit more about what you guys are doing, more about you. I think it’s valuable. I think it’s important to share what other people are doing so maybe we can learn from each other.

Ed:

Well, I hope it helped. We’re just trying to adapt to whatever they throw at us. If you don’t, there’s no other options. You have to, I guess. We’re chugging along. Always good to talk to you, Danny, share what we’re doing. We’re proud of what we’re doing. We’ll be glad to share it any time we can.

Danny:

Ed, I really appreciate it. Thank you again so much for the time. And for anyone who is interested and they want to check you guys out more, you can go to topperindustrial.com. Is that the website?

Ed:

That is correct. Topperindustrial.com.

Danny:

Perfect. All right. Well Ed, thank you so much. Have a great day. Enjoy the horses and the grandkids.

Ed:

And you guys stay safe. Take care.

Danny:

I sure will. Thanks. All right, bye.

Ed:

Bye-bye.

Danny:

There you go. That’s today’s episode of IndustrialSage with Ed Topper who is the CEO and founder of Topper Industrial, a manufacturing company in Wisconsin, just kind of sharing their experiences and what they’re going through and the things they’re learning through. If you haven’t, Ed has been a veteran here at IndustrialSage, so we interviewed him back in January or so, so you can go check out his episode and learn a little bit more about them, what they do. He has a pretty cool backstory. A great guy. Thank you so much for watching or listening to today’s episode. I’m Danny Gonzales. I’ll be back next week or next time. It might be sooner than that. I’ll be back with more content from IndustrialSage. Thanks for watching.

 

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