Started Mid-Career, Grew to $38m in 3 Years

That's a good question. So from a capital expenditure perspective, I'm thinking of like machinery, heavy equipment. I'm not putting inventory and people in that capex category.

Those are more reoccurring, you know, expenses. And so, you know, with Mitten, you know, we spent about 1.2, 1.3 million in inventory, you know, when we bought the business.

And so Mitten as a, as an organization was very OEM focused. OEM original equipment manufacturer. So they, they were getting their product specked in to mass production of, you know, trains and braking systems and you know, power plants, turbines, things like that.

But they were stepping over, you know, the hose that exploded on the assembly line. And so I wanted to, you know, sort of further diversify the business and not forget about the OEM business, but add in and balance out the MRO business, maintenance, repair operation. So the only way to be a value added resource on the MRO side is to have the inventory because it's, you know, the hoses are…

And, and so we needed to make that investment whereas most owners, you know, build up that inventory over, over a much longer period of time. And so I guess you could look at that as a CAPEX investment, but it was, it was more an investment in the business to get it to, to where we could be a value add resource to, you know, to our customers in a better way than, than just working with them more…

Great. And one thing that you'd said to me in our pre call is that how did you put it? Distribution businesses or sales engines. Does that sound familiar?

And, and we also just heard you say, in fact, I think the very first thing that you said that you've done at Mitten or you did admitton was invest in, in more sales. So expand on that and that that insight about distribution businesses being sales engines.

So one of the things that I looked for was, was, were companies that, that didn't have a sales strategy. And, and you know, I always say a lot of business owners do a great job of working in their business, but they don't do that great of a job working on their business. And so that sales strategy was lacking, you know, at Mitten and the other companies that we've looked at.

And so, you know, by coming in and having a much deeper focus on growth and on sales and on growing revenue was a little bit different than what at least Minton Fluid Power had been used to. And so a lot of owners are focused on other things other than sales, surprisingly, when it comes to these distribution businesses.

And so, so we made that focus day one when we bought the company, and it's paid off the other piece where I think a lot of the larger distribution firms where they, at least in our space, where they forget that we're a local business. Localness is something that I always remember. And so being where your customers are is vital in the world that we live in, because again, they're not going to…

Every minute that they're down, they're losing money. And so if we're not where our customers are, we're missing a huge opportunity. And so, as I mentioned, we opened up another location when we bought Mitten.