206: How this American Truck Bed Cover withstood 10 Years of Adversity | Ethan Wendle of DiamondBack

206: How this American Truck Bed Cover withstood 10 Years of Adversity | Ethan Wendle of DiamondBack

Background on Ethan Wendle of DiamondBack Truck Covers:

In 2003, Ethan Wendle was attending an Engineering Entrepreneurial class when he met Matt Chverchko. They partnered in a classroom project that grew from a garage operation to a real full-time enterprise. Thus, DiamondBack Truck Covers was born. Ethan attended Penn State University from 2000 to 2003 and took up Civil Engineering.

DiamondBack Truck Covers manufactures a unique line of durable metal covers for pickup truck beds. The main idea of their aluminum truck bed covers is to provide the needed protection weather and theft. They are also proud to be purely American-made since they are using metal, hardware, and welding supplies from local suppliers.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

[4:25] Ethan Wendle is the founder and CEO of DiamondBack Truck Covers, which is a manufacturing company that produces high-quality metal tonneau covers for pickup trucks.
[7:40] Theft and burglary were one of the main reasons why the concept of the DiamondBack truck cover was born.
[9:31] Ethan met his business partner when they were attending an Engineering Entrepreneurship class at Penn State University.
[14:55] For the first couple of months, Ethan and his business partner realized some of the problems they needed to solve in order to grow their company.
[16:14] When they started the business, Ethan knew he was not a truck guy and he didn’t know anything about the industry.
[23:28] Ethan emphasizes the importance of customer feedback.
[26:15] In 2003, they decided to take a bank loan that would allow them to buy their own metal fabrication equipment.
[29:16] For DiamondBack to start in their first year, Ethan had raised about $130,000.
[35:31] In the second year of DiamondBack, they decided to join this Eastern Outdoor and Sports Show, which would showcase their new product feature.
[39:49] In 2004 and 2005, they decided to sell their product through shows but it brought up a major issue that was totally unexpected for them.
[47:48] They were selling the product but still losing money.
[50:56] In 2005, they were able to get a loan from a state-run program, which greatly helped the business.
[53:01] In 2006, the price of aluminum increased dramatically, which made them lose a lot of money.
[58:18] For the first four years, Ethan’s average pay was about $10 per hour. He had almost nothing.
[59:56] With all the difficult challenges that he faced in the first few years of the business, Ethan had no choice but to survive and succeed.

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Fabulous 4 Questions:

📖📚 Favorite Books? Lean Startup, Goals by Bryan Tracy, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller, Endurance by Alfred Lansing
🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? Backpacking Tent & Wilderness Gear
🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? Google Organization/Drive, Trello, Freightview.com
💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Hiring and Training Employees Fast Enough to Keep Up.

Key Point from the Interview:

“If you think you have the best ideas in the world, you’re wrong. The best ideas and the hardest problems get solved by a group of smart people all of over the place, and so be very open to ideas, thoughts, criticisms, anything really, and gotta keep your ear to the ground, you gotta listen, you gotta be good at taking feedback and actually doing something with it.”

Resources Mentioned:

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