Quick Clips | Tim Briggs | EP37

Quick Clips today with our returning guest, Tim Briggs of National Coatings & Supplies, Inc. (NCS) and the Owner Designer of Collision Edge.

Tim is an experienced Designer with a demonstrated history of working in the automotive industry.  Tim Briggs and his wife, Ginger, are the owners of Collision Edge and the inventors of many products, including The Tape Thing, The Dent Viewer, and The Estimating Kit. Tim entered the collision repair industry as a distributor/rep for Fowler Color Company in Atlanta, GA, in 1996 after working as a painter and airplane mechanic for many years. Tim is good at looking for solutions. Many of the tools he has created came about while he was looking for a better way of doing things when visiting shops.

Tim is also the Director of Strategic Development for National Coatings & Supplies, Inc. (NCS), where he works on numerous internal and external projects.

Listen to the FULL EPISODE 37 of this quick clips with Tim Briggs:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1895628/11774394


If you are interested in learning more about ClarityCoat, you can visit us here-

Website: https://claritycoat.com
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Transcript

 Hey guys, this is Adam from the podcast and you are listening to Quick Clips. Quick Clips are condensed versions from one of our previous podcast episodes featuring some of the interesting things our guests had to say. If you want to hear the full episode, we'll have it in the show notes below. And with that, let's start the show.

How did you, if you can quickly summarize, like why you started developing products for the industry, what inspired you to develop the products and, um, let's just kind of take one product at a. And talk about the genesis of it and the build of it and everything like that. And for anybody who's listening to this, we are going to have the video up on YouTube.

So if you want to see what these products are looking like and how they might be useful to you, go check it out on YouTube. Just check, um, search for the Autobody podcast. Um, and you'll find it there. So Tim, how did you get into this weird, wacky world of developing products? Well, um, you know, I'll probably play with Legos too much as a kid, I don't know.

But, uh, I've always enjoyed building things and building solutions. I think it takes a while for everybody to figure out what their purpose in life is, and mine is to basically help people solve problems. And, and I've gotten great satisfaction out of, you know, helping people, you know, solve problems. And for, as a sales rep, I guess what I figured out is, is that, that I, I kind of had a revelation one day that I woke up and, you know, I, I wasn't really, um, I figured out I had no value to my.

Because I was there every day to take their order, and I was there to talk about the football game and be the nice guy. And you know, it really came down to it through several different roles that I had looking at how jobbers relate to their customer. And I figured, and it just came very apparent to me that, that the job had lost their value.

So I set out on my quest, my personal quest to figure out how I could just make a difference. And that led me through a lot of paths. You know, helping customers do like, like pre uh, repair planning, things of that nature to help 'em get better and make cars move faster at that point, you know, Liam was the big buzzword in the industry and everybody was like, you gotta produce cars faster.

And I've learned a lot, uh, from a lot of guys out there in the industry that, you know, maybe being fast is not so good. Maybe being accurate is better. Right? So, you know, this whole, all the products that came from Collision Edge were developed on the shop. And they were developed for a very specific solution.

And we won't be a me too. Uh, I'll, I'll never have a product that says, oh yeah, I got one of those two. Everything we've done is super unique and, and honestly, if you buy it from me and you haven't paid for it within a week, uh, send it back. I'm gonna give you your money back because our products pay their own way.

Most of our products, they estimate products for. Typically pay for themselves the very first time you use 'em. What's so dive? The estimating product? What's the, what's the estimating product? So we've got a couple different estimating products. They're designed to help you, um, uh, uh, take better photos and that means that you can get more hours for your repair.

So we have a product called the Dent Viewer that basically uses a conspicuity film. That was a long, hard story I won't even get into on how we developed that. But basically it uses a combination of your. And the camera with no batteries, no nothing to give you this like, ridiculous image of the the dent.

We're just trying to figure out how to help customers, you know, make sure they maximize their profits. And again, as a distributor rep, if I can't help you maximize your profits, uh, you can't pay me. And if I can't help you maximize your profits, then you might as well be buying from Amazon because I served no purpose inside your building.

So we have a couple of things like that. The Dent viewer, the blend stick, the estimating sticks, those were designed to really just help. Uh, get better, better photos and give scale to damage so that it was easy to have a conversation with somebody 10 states away that said, Hey, this dent, I need five hours to repair this, and here's why.

So the estimating sticks are there and the blend stick. The blend stick is there because as a job rep, every Friday I'll get called to go to a shop and go, Hey, um, can you match this color for me? I'm like, why am I matching the color? Well, we didn't get paid to blend. Why didn't you get paid to? Well, because we didn't write it well.

Why didn't you write it? Well, because the estimator didn't think it was that serious. I said, well, let's talk to your estimator. So I'm the guy that I'll fix the color problem. I got really good at matching colors, but I'll fix the color problem. But I went to the estimator and I went, dude, why didn't you write to blend this?

He goes, well, look, I mean, it's just, it was, the dent was just this big when, when we wrote it and it ended up being this big, I'm like, well, you do realize that the dent is this big, but then you have to do filler and then primer. And sanding and feather edge and all that stuff. The dent is that big. And I need this much room for my paint to blend out.

So the blend stick was designed to just basically show that need, and it's a one click photo that gets you paid every time it, it's literally every time you take a picture with it, you pay for it again. Hey guys, Adam from the podcast. I hope you are enjoying today's episode. Just wanted to ask you a quick favor.

If the show has brought you value in some way, would you mind giving us a review and sharing the. It really helps the show get out there. Also, if you are looking to expand the services that your shop offers and you want to do more than collision work, you should really check out our company Clarity Coat.

Clarity Coat is a peelable paint that allows body shops to offer color changes cheaper than a repaint, while still looking like real paint. You can also offer clear protection that has no edges and is sprayed instead of laid. Unlike vinyl and ppf clarity coat can be sanded and polished so you can give your customer the exact look that they are.

If you are looking to expand your shop services, go to clarity code.com and fill out our, become an installer form. Alright, let's get back to the show. I love this, um, viewpoint of I see a problem and here I, I'm gonna create a solution to fix it because you might be able to blend really well, right? Like, you may be, you yourself might be able to walk into a shop and say, oh, the dent's only this big, but the actual repair area is like this big.

It, you can triple the size of your dent is, and that's your repair area, right? Um, but that's just you, you're a singular person. You can't, right. You can't do that for every single shop out there. So you develop a solution to something that many, many, many shops can replicate and use over and over again. I just, I absolutely love that whole philosophy and.

We just wanted to create a standard for the industry. And interestingly enough, within about six months or a year of us putting these products out in the market, uh, I found out that the, so in Canada, the I c bbc, that's the, their government insurance, uh, actually put a letter out that says, you need these tools in your shop to take photos for our, for our estimates.

And I went, wow. Right. I mean, that's a win we had, we had no thought that we, it would ever go that far, but we got like national organizations recommending our products. And it's really because it's just simple and it works and it gives a standard of the industry and, and, you know, the industry now can all, can all communicate and instead of arguing, instead of this fighting, it's more of a conversation that goes, Hey listen, this is why you can see here in the dent that there's a really tight, you know, uh, type dent here.

That's gonna be hard to get out. I'm, I'm gonna have to have extra time for that. We will never, ever, ever, Say that our product will estimate the time, the repair time, because that's totally about the oem, the specifications and all that stuff. All we do is we just present the facts and you couple those facts and those images with what the OEM say is the recommended standard and that's where you can get your time.

The estimating tools are kind of cool. We got a couple other little things. The mark safe arrows came up with cuz we got tired of seeing guys having to write on cars with a water marker. They were right on a scratch and the scratch turned into a tattoo. Then they repainted the quarter panel because they didn't realize it was a scratch in the quarter when they rodee over it and marking the cars and the codes and all that stuff.

So the, the mark safe pharaohs, uh, we, we got those as well. I'll send you a picture of those. And, um, there's a couple other little things, but really that's the main thing is our, our Dent viewer and our estimating kit and the, the, the, uh, blend stick. We are, we have sold a lot of those and we've helped a lot of people with 'em and it gives me great pleasure.

To know that we've been able to play a small part in those guys, you know, shops improving 'em all over the world. Moving forward with some of the other products that you have now, like, um, so do you wanna talk about the new one that you just came out with? Yeah, we can Absolutely. Um, are you familiar with the tape thing?

Um, why don't you go ahead and grab a tape thing, show it on the screen, and just kind of demonstrate all, everything. Yeah. Folks, the, um, we, we have this product that we invented called the Tape Thing, which is pretty. It's a, it's a little magnetic device, tape core device that snaps inside your tape core that, um, that basically makes your tape super easy to pull.

Um, when you snap it on there, you'll see, and there's a little ledge that you, you'll see here that is part of our patent, which we got three patents on this now, but this little ledge actually stops the tape edge from touching. This new product is really an extension of the old product. The tape thing is a very similar, uh, tool than, than you've, that you've seen in the past.

The skid pads on the back and you can stick it to the car, uh, while you're working or whatever. Well, the first guys, when I first launched the tape thing, and this was about the same time the F-150 came out, was all aluminum. These guys said, uh, well, that'll work great except for the, it won't stick on the F-150.

And I'm like, well, yeah, because it's magnetic and it's aluminum. But your booth wall and your toolbox and your prep cart, those are always gonna be metal. I, I mean, I'm thinking pretty much or plastic, but uh, your tape thing will stick right to that no issue. So anyway, we kept going and kept going and I said, you know what?

I've gotta build a solution that gives the painter everything they need right on their side. And so I started thinking about, cuz I used to paint, I used to prep. I used to think about the things that I needed. To have in my pocket, and I can't tell you the number of razor blades that I see behind a guy's ear in his mouth or in his pocket.

He runs his hand down in his pocket, cuts his finger, and people are crazy. But it happens. Same thing with a pin blower. And basically I saw every painter when he was getting ready to work, he had to shove his hands deep down in his pocket to grab something to do his job with a pocket. Whatever it was, he had to, he had to figure this out.

So we built the, the tape caddy originally, and, uh, it was, it was ugly. We, um, we, we sold a bunch of them. I think we sold, I don't know, five or 10,000 of them. Um, and, uh, I always knew that I wanted to do it different. I wanted to do it a little better, a little easier to make a little everything about it. I wanna make better and all.

The comments from the people. The people, the haters are the guys that I love. Because if you're a hater and you tell me you hate my product, that I'm gonna listen to you before I listen to a guy that, you know, goes always the greatest thing ever. Cuz you know, uh, I think you can always improve something.

So the haters told me it was, it was too big, too bulky, too busy, uh, you know, didn't do the right thing. So I said, okay, cool. So we spent the last, honestly, the last four years, uh, developing this new, um, And it's, it's pretty cool. Um, it holds a lot of the things that you commonly use. Uh, you'll see, so the Sharpies is there.

It'll hold a sharpie and a pencil. Uh, the razor blade piece is handled because, you know, these guys, like I say, they use a razor blade in their mouth or behind their ear. There's a slide there that says that no, if it's reversed or not, that says razor blade. It goes in there and it's not gonna fall out.

Nice. It's, it's just there, right? So it holds your razor. Um, and then we have these other two little magnets here for some other things like we're trying to break over into the home business. But this'll actually hold a, um, uh, anything metal, it'll hold a paintbrush. So if you're trimming out with, if you're painting a house, it'll actually hold a paintbrush.

So anyway, that's the caddy. We have the, the, the little hooks here. I wish I had one. You could snap a rag in it that will hold the rag on your side. So you always got a rag there. And, uh, basically, obviously. The tape is always on your side and you can pull from your side. Maybe we'll show some pictures of that, but you can pull right from your side, uh, as well.

Now. Um, so we had to redo the molds for the tape thing and the caddy because we had a big order that was getting ready to go out and we figured out that our, our manufacturer had vaporized on us. So we were, we're outta luck. So again, we spent the last four years rebuilding this whole thing, doing brand new molds, doing brand new everything.

And while we were there, I told my wife, You know, tell me a tape dispenser that doesn't have a cutter on it. Name one, name, one tape dispenser you've ever seen that doesn't have a way to cut the tape. Because right now when you pull a tape, what you're getting is pull the tape and you rip it and you end up with this, this gnarly, nasty edge that is never square and you're having to use a razor blade to trim and whatever.

So we came up with, actually, while we were doing the molds, I, I knocked this out. This is the cutter. So the cutter slides in the top, just press fits in. Super simple. Mm-hmm. And what it does, I just loaded it backwards, so let me tapes loaded it backwards. Tape the tape thing is right and left-handed. So depend on which way you turn.

The tape on the roll is typically how you use it. So righties wanna do it this way. So that is the, the, the cutter combo. And so when you're ta, when you're cutting, basically you've never been able to. Tape Edge Square ever before and nobody ever has. So that's what we're doing when we're grabbing it.

There's a little part of the design here is able to lift it up off, it doesn't touch anywhere and it cuts nice. So that was piece one. Now you can always get a square tape edge. You've got tape that's that, that's clean and it's handy. It's, it's on the caddy, so you can do this from your side as well. So you said you're trying to break into the home like DIY type market is.

Any manufacturers or companies or anything like that that you talked to? I, I realize you probably can't say much, but I'm just asking if like Yeah, we have, we have talked to a pile of them and, uh, I hope we're gonna, you know, figure out how to make this work. I don't know. We'll, uh, we, we will see, but we definitely had a ton of interest.

I've been getting calls from distributors all over the world, um, to says, Hey, you know, how can I get ahold of this? And we're a little overwhelmed right now, but, um, it's. It's fun. Is there any other products or anything else like that, that you wanted to talk about? Um, or really anything else that you wanted to talk about?

No, I mean, I, I, I just wanna thank you for having me on here and, and I wanna thank the industry for, you know, supporting us and loving us when we have guys like literally all over the place that are sharing our products. And it's a great testament to us when we have a customer that'll go online and somebody makes a comment and they go, listen, if you don't like it, send it to me and I'll buy it from you.

I mean, I. It brings a tear to my eye. Right. To be able to be able to do that. So it's, um, it's, it's really cool. And we, we appreciate you and we love the industry and we'll continue to help. And we're not done. I can promise you we're not done. Uh, I've got a list of, there's a little box over here called My Crazy Ideas, um, that stays full.

And, um, you know, if, if we did everything that we wanted to do, we'd be broke. Yeah. So we had to be careful cuz we're all self-funded and we're not, you know, we literally, this is our house. We don't have corporate money behind us, so, uh, we just do it as we can do it and we pay cash for everything. So.

Alright, that does it for today's Quick Clips. If this episode has brought you value, would you mind giving us a review? Also, if you would like to learn more about Clarity Coat and what it can do for your business, please visit us@claritycoat.com. See you on the next one.