 How can we provide a process and a selection and a conversation with a homeowner that they don't even want to go someplace else? Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everybody, welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am Zach Williams, alongside my co-host, Beth Poppeglove, and today's guest would probably agree 100% with our tagline, which is, your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am super excited about today's guest. We don't often get to talk to someone who is living the dream of bringing the e-com life to B2B and overcoming all of the hurdles and objections that we talk about rather regularly here, so we're extra excited today to be able to welcome CEO of DexDirect, Blair Budlong. Thanks so much for your time, Blair. Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. It was really fun. So, Blair, you and I met a few years ago, like, right before the pandemic. We actually hung out by an airport, right? Yeah. Yeah. You spoke at one of the conferences and kind of talked about how the building materials was the second worst industry for e-commerce adoption out of all the industries behind, I think it was industrial. Oh, jeez. And I was like, cool. I gotta go meet this guy. Well, it was neat because I think it was at ProSales, right, back in Dallas in 2020. And we connected, I think, at the event, and then we saw each other in the lounge or something like that and just grabbed a beer. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, so how in the world are you doing e-commerce in this industry? And you're like, well, let's grab a drink and I'll tell you about it. And your story, how you got into this is pretty interesting. Can you share a little bit about how in the world you got into this? I was an architect originally. And it was not an industry that I fit with perfectly. I really didn't have a lot of interest in commercial projects and the residential side of it was a tough market. So it led me towards products and building materials. And I ran a family business for a period of time that had to focus on decks. And through early 2000s, you talked to a lot of homeowners and they were always stumbling across. They couldn't find products that they saw in other people's decks or on TV or on magazine ads. And they didn't know where to get it. And fasteners were a big one at the time because the chemicals and the pressure treated was changing. And the consumer didn't want to walk in a lumber yard. And so we would talk to them and say, well, hey, go get this brand. Just go to a lumber yard and get them. And they're like, oh, OK, well, I'll just get the ones at home people. And it was frustrating to hear people have a desire to want more but an unwillingness to go get it. So it really kind of started with that mindset of there's a whole bunch of products and a whole bunch of really, really cool stuff out there that unless you're part of the industry or you're a contractor, nobody's going to bring that stuff to you. So lighting was another one where that wasn't something that you could go to a big box store or even a lumber yard and see a sample or see a concept of it. So we didn't really look at ourselves as e-commerce as much as we sold things over the internet in order to get people products they couldn't find locally, which is literally the definition of e-commerce. But we just looked at it as a business and it just happened to be on the internet. Well, didn't you start with, let's say, deck plans or something like that and then morphed into e-commerce? Am I right about that? Our previous business had a patent on a peer block that the avenue in order to sell that that product was to educate consumers on how to build a deck. And we had a website, deckplans.com, that we went out and marketed how to build a deck and here's the plans and everything you need is in this package and just go down to your home center and pick it up and you can build this weekend. So I started with just kind of the simple marketing online of advertised something and then you go buy it at the bricks and mortar, which is really, really good except for when the big box stores start to change their focus and you could no longer get the products that you couldn't walk into a home depot and get everything you needed to build a deck in an afternoon, the products were changing so much and they just didn't have shell space so then things became special order. So it just kind of morphed out of there. Yeah, that's my question is, is that how it started for you? Where you're like, okay, we keep recommending these products. They can't get it from the big box. Why don't we just sell it online? Like, because you're already in front of the customer. It was like that when a light bulb went off for you. Yeah, it's similar, I guess. But the big piece for me was marketing online gave us a direct conversation or communication with that homeowner and you got constant feedback, whether that was having somebody call you or email you or chat that you got to hear from that homeowner directly. And so you could identify needs and wants and pain points and adapt to it really, really quickly where when we were selling through retail stores, we never got that. And marketing online just allowed us to hear what was going on, see what was changing and adapt to it. And that was fun because it moves a lot faster than putting the other marketing plans and then rolling them out and waiting to see what the feedback is. And you can talk to somebody today and be like, God, it's the fourth conversation this week I've had on this. Maybe we should change. Is there an example you have Blair of hearing directly from homeowners about a pain point or a product that they want and then you guys being able to directly respond to that and any results you got from it? There's probably a hundred of them, but. Is there anything you can share publicly? At the beginning. This may be a better question. Back in probably 2008, 9-ish in that time period, we were selling a lot of balusters and lighting and post caps and smaller things that fit in boxes. And one of the feedbacks we kept getting was, do you have any muted type products? You have textured finishes. The majority of the products that were coming out at the time were heavily like it was gloss black. That was 85% of the sale. And the consumers were looking for products that weren't gloss black. They wanted matte finishes and textured finishes. And we tried working with manufacturers for a while on like, hey, is there any chance we could get some new colors beyond black, bronze, white, and some like forest greens and some weird ones? And we didn't get much response to wanting to add a special color for an online company. So we went out and made our own for a while and had some really, really heavy success. And then ultimately, the industry started shifting to it. And I don't think they did it because of us. But we thought and could hear it first that there was a demand for things that for a different style and look and feel than what had been out there for the previous 10 years. That's awesome. It's awesome to be able to respond like that. Blair, I want to look at your website real quick if that's OK. Because I think there's a couple of things you guys do that are really, really smart. And I'm going to share my screen because I basically want to put you on the spot and have you talk us through your strategy because there's a couple of things. I just know because this is what we live and breathe. And so for our listeners, you're going to have to check this out on YouTube. But I'm looking at dexdirect.com. And there's two things that I think that are super, super smart that you do. Because if I'm a listener and I'm listening to you talk, I'm like, oh man, this is really cool. They sell directly to the consumer. But based on what I know, because I don't know if you know this, Blair. Actually, I sent you an email about this. Actually, I bought decking material through you guys last year. It was awesome. And I'll get to that in a minute, that story. But you guys do two things that are really smart. Number one, you've got a search bar right at the top says, what can we help you find? Not simply like, hey, search. It's like directly asking the question of, what is somebody looking for? And then, secondarily, you have this wonderful, very large phone number right here in the top right. And the reason why this is really smart, and I want to hear your take on it, too, is this is obviously you live and breathe this. But there's a lot of psychology and social triggers around. Once I see actual phone number, it legitimizes the fact that this organization is willing to help me answer my questions. Even if I'm making an e-commerce transaction, there's actually data that supports. Simply by adding a phone number, it increases your conversion rate. But you guys, you actually try to interface directly with consumers on the phone, even though you're doing e-commerce. Isn't that right? Yeah, oh, absolutely. Our goal is to talk to people as much as we possibly can. This is not a community project. OK, so that's really funny. Our goal is to talk to as many people as possible. I'm paraphrasing what you just said, because you think e-commerce, you're like, I don't want to talk to anybody. I want to scale this business to infinity. I don't want to talk to a single person. And you're like, no, I want to talk to everybody. Absolutely. Talk me through that. Building a deck from a consumer is not a very easy process. And it's becoming more and more difficult. The days of walking into a lumber yard and being like, I want to build a deck, and your option was brown or green, is gone. And the methods of building it are different. Building with composites is a different framing structure than what it used to be for wood. So you can't just call up your uncle and have him come over on Saturday and help you build a deck. There's weeks and weeks of planning and picking colors and picking options and planning it out that you get to a point of, at some point, you need somebody to just help you get through the process. What do I need? What color should I have? What faster should I use? What railing would look best here? And that's the stumbling block where most people hit it and either call a contractor or give up, that if we can be in the middle there and give somebody the confidence to install composite decking or to put on a cable railing system or to install low-voltage lighting, you know, one, they're going to have a way better deck. And two, we're going to capture that in a sale. And it's a lot more fun talking and being part of their project than just taking orders over the internet. That's really cool. So for the sake of the data nerd in me, what percentage of your customers actually call you? We have over 50% of our customers call us. Oh, wow. Okay. Or at least have some level of a touch within there. We do focus on it and like we continue to want to refine it. Like how can we provide, how can we provide a process and a selection and a conversation with a homeowner that they don't even want to go someplace else? And we're asking consumers to come in here and spend anywhere from $500 to $20,000 on products that is sight unseen from an internet company that's not known to them for a product that's going to be on their house for 25 years. Like that's really, really hard to do without a personal touch. Can I share my story of what it was like interfacing with your team? Are you okay with that? Sure. So for listeners, I'm going to get vulnerable, right? Like here, like music in the background. I'm just kidding. So for me, it was really neat because I obviously knew about you guys and I was working with a friend of mine who's a contractor. He had like a window of opportunity to help me with a deck last summer. And I was like, hey, where do you go to get materials? Just like talking to him, mostly because I'm interested in the industry. I want to learn how contractors think. He's like, well, I'm going to go to like Home Depot. And I was like, well, have you heard of Dex Direct? I feel like I was like an infomercial for you. I was like, have you heard of it? And so I reached out, I think I just called your 1-800 number. I knew what I wanted. And I was like, hey, I want this product. Can you guys help with this? And I forget the gentleman's name who helped me, but he was like, yeah, send me your plans. So I had my contractor, buddy, this guy named Preston, literally draw out on like a piece of paper, like dimensions, height, how many like the support structure or whatever. It was like maybe one or two pieces of paper. And I think like a day or two later, I got like a full itemized list of every single material, screw, whatever I was going to need to build this deck. And I like, I was like, wow, that's really awesome. But like hearing my friend Preston, who's a contractor was like, wow, this is incredible. And then hearing him, because he went and he was like, okay, like I got a guy at Home Depot I work with. Let me go bring it to him. And like on top of the fact that you gave us the full list, you were gonna get us all the product in two weeks and like Home Depot was like eight weeks. And so he was like, of course, because we had really tight window to get it done. And so it was really, I mean, I'm not just saying this because you're on the podcast, you should totally use this in like your marketing collateral. This is a testimonial, but like it was really, really cool. I mean, it was awesome because the other thing too is we as we're building like, oh shoot, like we want to do this thing. And so I would just email the gentleman who was helping me. I'm like, hey, we want a gate or like we want to do this kind of like top on the railing. He's like, oh yeah, no big deal. Like here's a link, you can just buy it. There it is, boom. And so he would even then go like source material for me that maybe it wasn't on your site or something like that. I mean, hearing you talk about the fact that you've got an interface with people, I think the dream for a lot of manufacturers is like, I don't want to talk to anybody and hearing somebody who lives and breathes it is like, no, we won't talk to many people as possible because we know we've got a killer experience. So Blair, that's a pretty buttoned up process that Zach just talked us through. And I know you said one of the great things about what you do is you get to hear from homeowners and then basically iterate and enact change based on their direct feedback. So walk us through, how long did it take you to get to the system where I send you deck plans and you send me a complete list of everything that I need within 48 hours because for homeowners, that's a game changer. I think you mentioned when they work with you, they're about to quit basically, right? It's too much. So how did you get there and what have you learned along the way to be able to get you to do that? We're still figuring it out, but it took us for five, maybe six years before we realized that we're a sales organization and not a service company. And that the difference between service and sales is that you have processes in the sales, sales organization. And we needed to bring in people that could work a process to take customers that were coming in with ideas, with concepts, with problems that they didn't know how to find the solutions for and try to coach them through those processes. Like one of the things I kind of pride ourselves on is like we don't try to influence at one particular product over another that we're gonna try to find a product or a color or an option or a style that fits with the home and fits with the customer. And that's a pretty consultative type selling process. And we're just continually trying to refine that and some of it becomes in our system, some of it's in our process, some of it is for our people. But the best part is we're really just trying to help that customer get to the end. And I find it a lot of fun because we're aligned with the customer in that we're not trying to compete against somebody else through it. We're not trying to push something or upsell all the time. Like we're just, we're trying to get to the end of the project together so that they can have a barbecue. And that makes it a lot of fun. Well, I remember when I was talking to the gentleman on your team who was helping me make sure I had everything. And he was like, Hey, have you thought about using, I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna totally butcher this. So forgive me, you're gonna have to correct me here. He's like, Hey, have you thought about putting such and such tape on your balusters? And I don't forgive me, I don't know if it's called tape or balusters. Basically like this black, like anti-molding tape that you put on the wood that like runs horizontally or vertically on your deck to basically hold your deck up. So like as water drips through your deck, it doesn't create mold on the top of the wood. And I was like, well, number one, no, I didn't even know that existed. And number two, can I get it? Like, can you get it? And he's like, oh yeah, of course. Like it's not that, not that much, my blah, blah, blah. And forgive me, what's it called? You know what you know I'm referring, hopefully you know what I'm referring to. It's like G tape or, you know, Vicor. You're just putting a water protection tape. Yeah, water protection tape, yeah. So, but I'm just reiterating your point, like he heard what I was trying to do. I was like, I don't like, I want to ever have to think about this deck. I want like if there's an Armageddon moment in history, I want to like run underneath my deck, not run to my basement. Like I want this thing really built on. He's like, well, like here's all the things you need to think about. So I think it's an interesting switch to go where a sales organization, we're not a customer service, but like from my perspective as the person who bought, I'm like, oh, their service is awesome. I didn't feel like I got sold. I feel like I got a lot of help, which feels very intentional. That's part of our selling. It's a, it's a consultative piece that we can be aligned with so it's not heavy pressuring. It's not, you know, coming into a used car dealership where we feel the pressure of you could go someplace else and get it. That we want to build that relationship and have that conversation and understand what you're doing that you were obviously rebuilding an existing project or else he probably wouldn't have been talking about that tape. But unless you ask the right questions and understand what your needs are, you can't recommend the right products. And so you have to start from the beginning and find out, you know, what are you really doing? You know, what are you working on? What's this project look like? You know, oh, you're flipping a house. You're gonna be gone in six months? No, let's not put tape on it. It's fair. So you live and breathe e-commerce, even though, as you said, you speak to a lot of your customers. You've seen this probably massive arc that's happened in reference to e-commerce, not just in building products, but holistically over the last 10 years. I'm curious to hear Blair from your standpoint, what are you thinking about and what are you planning for? And like this next phase of e-commerce, because all the data says that we accelerated five years and basically five months in 2020 when it came to e-commerce. What are you doing to make sure you stay ahead? And like, what are the things that you're thinking about in your business to make sure that you know and you're ready and prepared for it? One, we're two years late. We had to be ready for it two years ago when the lockdowns occurred. We were presenting with a large amount of volume and opportunity that we had never even thought of or dreamed about. So we're just kind of picking up the pieces from that. We're focusing on our people. Like we're focusing on our talent. We're focusing on our phone processes. Like that's our first priority, but the biggest one is we have to be fast. And the expectations and the demands that are placed on anything that you're doing on the internet is almost unrealistic. It's attainable, but it's hard. So we have to have inventory on the ground. We have to be in control of that. We have to be able to get it out into your door really, really quick. You have to react to everything. And there's expectations set by Amazon and some of the other big players that you just have to keep up with. And when we've got such a high average order of value, that comes with a different level of trust that you have to build with customers that's beyond just going to Amazon and buying a $30 widget. And we've got to keep filling that gap of trust. I literally wrote down have to be fast. And I love that you're saying it's not unattainable, but it's pretty dang close. It's just next to it's unattainable adjacent, which is legit, that's totally legit. So Blair, there's no way we're gonna let you go without talking about channel conflict. I feel like people would riot in the streets if we have you here and we don't talk about it. And you won't be surprised to hear that anytime we talk about e-commerce, channel conflict is the number one thing that we hear from manufacturers. As I look at your site, I'm not gonna name names, but there's brands on there that we know are sold through dealers and distributors. And to be clear, we're dealer distributor fans. Nobody thinks in the Venvio world that we don't need them. But we also are e-commerce fans. You and I were talking about that as we were getting ready for the show. I was like, man, we need you on the podcast. We are e-com fans, not because we want to be, but because we think it's just necessary for the future of the industry. So I can only imagine you've overcome the channel conflict question maybe more than anybody else in the industry. I don't know if you wanna put that on your business card in the future, but I feel like that's legit. How are you answering that big question? We're not afraid of it. Like we're not afraid of the question. We're not afraid of, I guess I don't look at it as channel conflict. We want the brands to be as awesome as they can. In order for that to happen, they need to have really, really good channels of distribution. So if we can be part of the solution for the problem of people not recognizing consumers as viable customers and only focusing on contractors, that can help a brand. But we need retailers, we need distributors, and we need brands. And we wanna play a part of that, and we don't wanna break it. And you can see it in our prices, you can see it in our relationships with our vendors. We're not trying to break the system by any means. More times than not, we're trying to protect the system and protect the marketplace. So we work a lot with our vendors on trying to develop map programs or IMAP programs in order to regulate some of this stuff. Cause as soon as a manufacturer comes out and opens up a lot of people and it drives towards price, it just destroys it for everybody. And we wanna keep the prices up there so that we can build marketing programs and systems to help everybody and not have to be watching pennies. Cause if it gets into some of these marketplaces, it's lowest price wins. And at that point, it's only the marketplace that wins. It's not the brand or the retailer. So we don't really look at it as channel conflict at all. The bigger one is the customer conflict of, the customers really aren't being serviced very well. And we don't target and we don't market towards contractors. We service them and we help them and we sell to them, but we're their backup plan. And we know that our customer is that homeowner. It's the consumer. That's great. Man Blair, we can't thank you enough for coming on the show and just being, gosh, just super helpful and insightful about your business and congrats to you and all your growth. And I'm excited. Hopefully get to see each other again, another event here. Curious for our listeners, if they wanna connect with you, obviously if they wanna buy a deck, they go to directdirect.com, but if they wanna connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that? My email address is on there. It's Blair at directdirect.com. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm not super active on a bunch of the other social media stuff. Instagram, I keep for friends within the building material industry, so but I don't post a lot, just communicate. So you can find me. That's great. We'll make sure we link to that. I have a unique name. Blair is super easy to find. Well, for our listeners, if you enjoyed this content, make sure you check out bamboo.com slash podcast to subscribe and make it more. Hope you enjoyed this content. Make sure you give us a five star review on iTunes. Until next time, I am Zach Williams alongside Beth Hoppeglove. Thanks, everybody.