Business View Magazine | Volume 8, Issue 12

35 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 8, ISSUE 12 in the field doing the installation of what we manufacture. “Whenever we open a franchise, they go through a sort of bootcamp training with our own trainers. It starts with a few days of the basics – all the details on the technical side that you would want to understand about how piles work, how to install them. They also go through sales training. And after bootcamp, which is the initial learn-about-the-product phase, there is about six months of hand holding by our experts.” BVM: What differentiates your products from others in the industry? Reusing: “When we bought the company, the first thing we did was hire a firm out of Montreal, which I’ve used before, to look at all the manufacturers of similar products around the world. Then, we changed and remodelled every single aspect of our piles to make sure we had one up on everybody out there. On top of that, we now have about 60 patents in pretty much every major country to cover ourselves, globally, because our intension is always to be a global franchisor. We did lots of patents, we have tons of proprietary technology, so we can protect our franchise chain with certain unique features. We are constantly looking for innovations; when something comes up that makes sense, we are always patenting new ideas. “As for the supply chain during the pandemic, steel stayed reasonably available until Nov/ Dec 2020, but we took a big risk and purchased almost a year forward worth of steel, because our lead time went from six weeks to six months. We have a huge stockpile of steel, right now. So we never missed an order, we’ve never been in a shortage situation. So operations are running pretty smooth, as far as that goes. We manufacture all our products internally. The only thing we need are the raw materials and GOL I ATHTECH INC .