Welcome back to the martins podcast episode 14, we were just chatting about some of the beginnings of our company of my teams and some of the crazy stuff that we tried to do to start to make panels. So we’re going to continue that conversation about how we created martins, nobility crate, really cool modular stage backdrops within them. I’ve got my wonderful wife, sarah here she’s going to continue to help us tell that story. So sarah. Can you get that really brief synopsis of what we just went over in the previous episode that you were doing for a wedding in dallas and made some modular panels will actually a lot of modular panels for that kind of has a moment where you were like this is this is a very simple system that we could replicate and make available to churches. So we started with all of the researching and looking intocnc lathe cnc, cutting or different ways to cut the material and what kind of material to use in finally settled on a fire rated coroplast to begin with and tried hand cutting the patterns with razor knives exactos, which was cleaning up and not consistent enough, like the panels were not cleaning consistent, tried using a hand router to cut the panels, which was still not clean enough and not consistent enough, and all this was going on in our single car garage at our house, so happening maltese with create a while. I was working a full-time job at journey, church, teeth. Tv here in norman I was the production director lighting director and producer and director over there. So this was something that we I was doing in my off time and I are at that point. I was working about 60 hours a week. Soit was something that we created and really the whole reason we created, because I knew it would help us. It would help our church and the church to church the capital city church, to have margin to be able to praise stage backdrops stage designs, elements that were going to save time for the production teams. They were going to engage more people and they were going to be really really great stage elements such as well so yeah. So, let’s get back into a little bit about how so sarah talk about how I’m I had this hair-brained idea to to bypass newnan to buy a cnc I decided that I would buy a mechanical router. So this is something that I like you would use in a would, maybe like a wood shop or something and it’s a hand router. So you are a little one.
Car garagedrove, some drywall screws into the ceiling I got some thai line and tight it off and i. Have this little router suspended from the ceiling and it looked like so super got. It wasn’t even funny. I spent like an hour trying to figure out how I’m going to like, hang all this and make this work and whatnot. So our first panel angled the channel to the point where it look like i, was like it was awesome. It looks like I was making, so we actually usebut since that time we have on a cnc router. We use a specialized cutting bit. It actually does not spin like a typical router wood for cutting our coroplast. It does it’s a lot different in the way that operates based on spending the blade in order to spending more of a exact blade with how to explain it when it cuts it. It runs, it run the file and then it runs a secondary file that makes secondary cuts to finish it off without spending a bit his powers none-the-less. So what we were trying to find a simple easy way to make and do it from her garage very little expense?
Very little very low-cost is really what I was trying to do was dynapath we’re trying to figure out how to do it as cheaply as possible, because we want to be available to church as possible through a bunch of trial and error. We finally found that, realistically, it was not possible for us to create something as precise and duplicatable as we needed it for next to nothing when we start looking deeper into how we designed the product and how we enter the cost of materials and kind of realize that bought the expensive stage backdrops fire rated material that it was going to be. That’s a pretty significant cause pressure, and so we wanted to wear like if we’re going to do it. Let’s do it right, so we we were able to find a find it. We have a friend here in town who who owns the cnc. He does mostly does mostly work for four other clients, but he’s he’s in a little bit of work for us and he’s the one that helped us with the event down in dallas, and we, we least time on his cnc here and stuff for us, and obviously we paid him for that. You know to run that stuff in the fridge before we bought our cnc and we started everything out of our garage door. One car garage turned very quickly into the scenes in mecca yeah. It was great explain a little bit about what it look like whenever we first started last word and chloroplasts and then as we, we had to poke the the bolt holes out of all four corners of every panel right. So then it was like, like the walls are lined with cardboard and coroplast, and the floor was like these coroplast. Snow. Think about like 15 quarter, inch circle of coroplast just clearing the floors are there in the pockets of our clothes and for the record we did. We did once we could punch me punch a couple hundred at I’m. Typically, we go through and leave vacuum up and sweet, but it was like a it’s like sand or glitter glitter glitter, yeah yeah.
You were in fever in this eye, glitter herpes and in his early days we kind of like we really roped. Anybody and everybody like who wanted to be involved like into helping us I mean, like I said, would like when I was having play dates with some of my friends so I can they would bring their kids over to play and I’ll be like hey? What’s took out. We had a bunch of our volunteers from the church, help us a lot of them a lot of them. I paid, hey you there, for you, know like hey, you want to come, we’ll, go, get a nice and get a nice dinner and then we’ll come back and fold t-shirts, arts, gateway t-shirts at trader, joe’s or campbell tour. What are some ways that there’s a couple of volunteers even still to this day, help us at hannah’s one of those she’s she’s a rockstar. She helps all the time and obviously we pay her for her time but yeah. It’s it’s been really cool to have somebody good friends who helped us to to build this and grow this, knowing not so much that we’re building a business but more specifically, were building a company that serves a company that they create products. The stage backdrop, products, new custom, towers, custom and stock price, stuffed it super easy for the church to use ir projection screens, for example, things that are really good just to great atmosphere for worship. I mean that’s our heart. Behind everything we do is we want to create. Great atmosphere is a warship on, and obviously we have a lot of things that go into that. We reproduce album, really good customer service, but ultimately our goal is to just have different well and I mean that’s. So that’s a little bit about our humble beginnings. Sir, do you have any other any other thoughts you want to share about when we first started the company in kind of the craziness that was a there? Was our processes week. We’ve learned how to decorate a good product. To sum, the church well I’m getting samples of something or other different bolts, different wingnuts, different stage backdrops plastic samples. Different I mean it like on straps, when we were looking at options for the portable sad sad when you were trying to find a the white nylon option that would be affordable and different connectors and this constant influx and constant like packages all over like the front. Porch come home and there would be literally a wall of boxes across my front. Porch, like i, could not get grocery, send the front door until I move like 15 50 lb of boxes, the first year-and-a-half we ran everything out of my garage specifically because we didn’t want to.
We don’t want to create more overhead. That would makes a product more expensive. We wanted to still be affordable for church, so in that process a lot of what we did as we bought. We bought in bulk as much as we could just going to save on the per piece price sometime, meaning like yeah, so I think, probably probably the biggest order that I had shipped here at the 50 I shift a 50,000 one of her last words before the movie the shop. We now have somebody here in norman that we use, but I had 50,000 nylon, cap nuts, nuts in 50,000 nylon, bolts shipped to the house, and it was significantly lighter box. So that’s a little bit about a little bit more about I should say how we started. Mod seems a little bit of the experimentation in the the time. Do we spend to create the company from this that you know, as we’ve been like developing the company to make stage backdrops in production drops for, for churches in for corporate clients are goal with all of this with we were constantly improving what we’re doing and it doesn’t stop. Today we went to the since then we develop new products more geared towards the corporate brown. We developed new new systems for how we package and ship everything creating quick fulfillment with shipping as quick as same-day. Typically most order, shipping same-day actually interested in order to serve serve well. I’m continually improve to show our customers how much we care so I hope this been helpful and we look forward to chat with you in the next podcast buy
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