I am your host, Katherine Seymour. This episode is brought to you by MacRAE’S, trusted by North American businesses for over 100 years. As a leader in B2B digital marketing, we help industrial and manufacturing companies struggling with stagnant growth or lead generation. By leveraging AI integrated and automation into our SEO and lead generation programs, we help you appear prominently on search and AI results like chat GPT.
This drives significantly more qualified leads and traffic to your website, resulting in stronger lead flow and increased revenue, crucial in today’s highly competitive digital landscape. Learn more at macraes.com today. Today I’m joined by Shane Araujo a co-founder and CEO of 3BG Supply Co., a technology-enabled distributor that’s transforming the way industrial buyers source, maintenance, repair, and operations.
MRO products.
3BG is known for simplifying and streamlining purchasing experiences, combining deep product expertise and digital first approach. By integrating modern technology, data-driven tools and automation into the industrial supply chain, they’re helping manufacturers, maintenance teams save time, reduce downtime, and make smarter buying decisions.
Shane, it’s so great to have you and welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Thank you so much. Shane, let’s get started. So 3BG supplies close history. What inspired you to start the company? How did your early vision shape the way it operates today?
⁓ know, I talk, I feel like I talk about this all the time. ⁓ you know, just to oversimplify it, you know, there was a, you know, there’s a lot of, ⁓ opportunity to disrupt the market, ⁓ from, where we thought we saw the, the puck was going where, ⁓ we wanted to pull together all the data for all of these products and put them in one place.
Sure, that could help some people, but there was no way to really make money there. So we did it through a distribution instead, and that’s what kind of forced us into the business.
Bye.
Amazing, amazing. So your company emphasizes speed, transparency, and efficiency, things that aren’t always common in traditional distribution. How do these values come to life in your operations and your team culture?
⁓ Well, speed, mean, speed is even the word like the most. You know, simplest form. If you have a purchasing person or a maintenance person that. Yeah, maybe they’re not even down, you know, maybe the production is not down, but they at least want to get something off of their desk. So it’s you know, it feels good to cross something off. So mean, that’s why speed is so important to. mean, obviously there’s the real.
obvious reasons around you know, getting a product to somebody in time. You know, to help protect downtime and product production. But I mean, that’s why speed has become so important. You know, just making sure that everyone but but really to this.
Right.
You just want to be fast. You want to get answers back to the customers quickly. You want to get problems to your customer quickly, know, because there needs to be a level of speed in all of the throughout the whole business. You know, there’s just you got to operate with urgency, you know.
Right, right,
makes sense, makes sense. For those who might not be familiar, can you break down exactly what 3BG does and how your model differs from traditional industrial distribution?
yeah, so I mean our main focus is the customers pain. You know, we want to solve as many headaches and pain points for our customers as possible. You know, so we have a great website that you know it’s that helps us introduce ourselves to a lot of our potential new customers and what you come into the system. You know, we have a large sales staff that focuses on identifying those those goals or those pain points that our customers may have and helping them achieve those goals or solving those pain points.
And so everything kind of just evolves around that really, you whether it’s product, you know, that they need a bearing, a motor, or maybe they’re trying to instill some preventative maintenance program, or they need, you know, some type of mill work or mill right work. We want to be able to help supply that as well. Just kind of depends on what the customer’s pains are and what their goals are and how we can get that person to their goal or solving that pain.
Right, so if I’m understanding correctly, you really just want to be a solution provider, somebody who can work with your clients to make their processes and operations the best that they can be. Is that correct?
I mean, yeah, but like honestly, we’re dealing with people. You know what I mean? Like I really don’t sometimes. Sometimes it’s hard for me to care a lot about, you know, all the shareholders, you know, these faceless shareholders of a company. What I do care about is, you know, Martha, the purchasing girl that leaves at five o’clock and misses her grandson’s baseball game every day, you know, ⁓ how can we get her? How can we help her?
Yeah.
Right.
become more efficient through the purchasing process? How can we take some of those hats off of our head and take on some of those roles here internally, right? It just kind of depends, like what do we need to do to help the customer get to where they’re trying to go?
Bye.
Amazing people first approach. like that.
Yeah, 100%.
What are the most common pain points that you’re seeing among manufacturing clients? And why are they reaching out to you to help source your parts and products?
Yeah, I think there’s, you know, I think there’s a gigantic exodus recently of a lot of product knowledge and plant maintenance knowledge from our industry. And I think a lot of the younger people that are coming into the industry don’t have, you know, 30 years under the machine to understand what is needed. And so, you know, we we get a lot of we have a lot of those types of conversations, you know, we do a lot of teaching, a lot of coaching to our own customers. Or it’s, you know,
Yeah.
As you see ⁓ automation takeover and robotics, you see these maintenance teams dwindle down where there’s like one or two guys that are managing multiple locations. And so they’re wearing multiple hats. And so we’re helping a lot of our customers that are wearing multiple hats doing a lot of different things throughout the day that need that type of support and help as
Yeah.
With labor constraints and supply chain distributions continuing to impact the industry, how have clients’ needs changed and how is 3BG evolving to meet those needs?
I think one of the biggest things that has changed recently was the strictness from the engineering staff. know, engineers say, hey, this is the type of product that needs to go on this machine. That’s the only product we’ll take. You know, we’re not going to accept anything else, you know. And so over the last few years between COVID and tariffs, you know, that you had to learn how to become a little bit more flexible, you know, in that process. And so
Yeah.
I think you’re going see that even more now with the tariffs and the inconsistency with some of the pricing. A lot of people were really quick to update their pricing and send it out from a manufacturing standpoint. And some of those countries ended up being OK with the tariff percentage. But they still are asking for an extra 8 and 1 points from the distribution team. So I think for us, we’re going to just keep focusing on the customer.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
You know, if we have the ability to provide more and more value when there is all this inconsistency out in the market, I think that’s what we’re trying
Amazing. Amazing. A big part of your model seems to be leveraging data and technology. How has that helped you respond faster and provide better service to legacy distributors?
⁓ so the biggest, there’s a lot of reason. I mean, we talked about this for hours if we wanted to, but I think the main thing is, is equipping our salespeople with product and, ⁓ not just products, product information at their fingertips, ⁓ literally their ability to solve problems and troubleshoot issues on the, on the phone. we use AI and technology to help feed that information to the salespeople.
⁓ So, you you might only be talking to a person that’s been in the PT world for a year or two, but, you know, their knowledge base might feel more like somebody that’s been around for 10 years. And that’s a lot of because we’re feeding them the questions and the answers and the things to be looking for during the call.
me.
It helps with the learning curve too. The more resources they have to them, the more they’ll be experienced to respond to answers.
Yeah,
I look at it like kind of it reminds me of like when you’re a kid, you know, like you print off the lyrics to a song and then listen to the song at the same time, right? It’s kind of like what we’re doing to help teach them and get them scaled faster.
Yeah.
Amazing. Let’s shift to growth. How does 3BG typically attract and acquire new clients? Are the referrals the major driving factor or are you learning to move more through digital channels?
Yeah, we’ve always been more using digital channels to bring in more customers. We do a lot through our website and then the second level down from the website is our referral process as well. You’re going to start to see, you know, one of the things that’s starting to grow for us right now is our social media. We’re launching a whole new campaign, two different campaigns in July. So I’m really excited to kind of introduce that to our market. And I think people will really be able to relate to it.
amazing.
So in the MRO space, hasn’t always been known for digital innovation. And you mentioned that you do a lot of work on your website. How has this helped you with your content strategy or your digital marketing or just e-commerce growth in general?
I mean, everybody’s using every department using it their own way. You know, I use it myself on all of our all my businesses across the different verticals. ⁓ Obviously, like I said, I think the biggest use of it is with our sales staff, feeding them the the date, the product data and product troubleshooting information. ⁓ Besides that, everybody’s using their own way. You know, I think if you’re not using it. Right now, I mean, you’re.
going to be slower than the people that are. So you better get with it or get behind.
sure, for sure. If you had the ability to supercharge one part of your sales or marketing funnel overnight, whether it be awareness, engagement, conversions, or even retention, where would your focus be?
⁓ me personally, or like the company?
Both, if you wouldn’t mind sharing, that would be great.
I like, you know, we’re making, we’ve been making more and more acquisitions. So we’re not just growing naturally through our, you know, our sales team, but also through acquisition. So I like spending my time in the acquisition space as well as the top of the funnel. ⁓ you know, helping with the creation of the videos and some of the social aspect of it’s usually where I like to spend most of my time. I think our business though, right now is just.
Bye.
figuring just continuously sharpening the sword on how do we support these customers as efficiently and as effectively as possible. So as long as that’s always the main focus for us, then I will always stress that the team’s moving in the right direction.
Cool.
You’ve clearly built a forward thinking and agile team. How do you maintain that energy for innovations as a company scales?
Well, one is like giving a shit about it first of and foremost. You know, some companies could care less, I believe, or they or they pretend like they care. ⁓ I always thought, you know, as long as I can create value for somebody else, money does actually grow on trees. And so, ⁓ you know, with our staff, especially, you just have to be innovative. You have to be ⁓ someone that they look up to, someone that they want to
⁓ be around and then once that’s established, it’s like how can you help change the mindset, especially with the younger staff that’s coming in that’s never been in sales before, it’s never been in marketing before, those types of things. It’s like, you know, how are they handling the workforce? How are they handling the workload? You know, ⁓ and just being very cognizant of how people are and how they’re growing and pour into these people.
You know, some people don’t like to pour in because it does take energy from yourself. But ⁓ I’ve never seen the universe not give that back to me in some type of way.
For
sure. That makes sense. Can you share a customer story or an internal win that captures your, I guess, your focus as a company and maybe a moment where you can approach that really saved the day?
Yeah, I know I’ve shared this on a different podcast, but we had a really great opportunity with one of our manufacturers on saving them almost $2 million in chain spend. ⁓ And doing everything from identifying the reason why the chain was. Screwing up ⁓ adding the tag out lockouts on the machines to just to create a process and procedure for the maintenance team to follow. That’s a big one. I know it talks about that a lot on the pod.
I’d say one of my favorite things is it’s not necessarily a customer story. One of our top salespeople is a single mom. She used to work three jobs when we hired her. I told her, you know, what are, asked her, what are some of your goals? You know, she wanted to be able to spend more time with your child and be home more and live a normal life and not just working to live. And she’s on vacation today. She has one job. She works for us only. She quit all the other things.
Amazing.
And she took her and her son out west. I think they’re in California or something sitting at the pool having a good time. And you know, that’s a really good example of what we’re trying to do with this business isn’t just like take care of the customers, also take care of these employees and make some actual impactful change on people’s lives instead of just. You know, trying to turn a profit for everything. I think if you. Consistently try to do the best thing for the customer and the best thing for the employees. I think everything else simply can take care of itself.
That’s amazing. That’s a really good story to share. Thank you so much. Looking ahead on the horizon, what do you see in the next 5, 10 years for the company? Are there new tech investments that you’re looking at or strategic shifts that you’re excited about?
I think the acquisitions are going to bring a lot of fun conversation. Being able to have access to different services that are out there in this in our market in our space. ⁓ Access to new markets period. You know, once that you know we’ve always been really good at. You know, working throughout the whole US, but there’s some areas that we would like to focus on. So like driving some type of. ⁓ Territorial focus will be fun.
At the same time, doing that strategically as we find the right services, service-based companies that can help support our business. So that’ll be a big focus for us over the next five, 10 years.
Well, Shane, thank you so much for joining us today and giving us some great behind the scenes look at your company. Your approach for combining industrial know-how and technology is a great example of how legacy challenges can be solved with fresh thinking, as well as your impactful sources and stories about your team members and how you treat your clients with the people first approach. I’m sure our listeners are leaving with plenty of actionable ideas on how to future proof their operations and scale smarter.
Thanks again for being here and to everyone listening. We’ll see you on the next episode of Growth Challenges for Manufacturers. So thank you so much, Shane. That was amazing. And I have to say, I love your artwork behind you. I kept on looking at it the whole time. It’s really amazing. Really into that.
Appreciate it. Thank you. ⁓
It’s good talk. Thank you. Have a good one. Bye
Yes, awesome. Appreciate you. Thank you.
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