Every contractor has an incentive to make site cleanups easier, and every contractor has a motivation to find an alternative use for excess gypsum, which some trash dumps are threatening to stop accepting. As much as 300 million pounds of scrap drywall is hauled off to dumps every month in the United States, and gypsum board is barred at a number of sites because it can create hydrogen sulfide when mixed with garbage.
Despite the vast domestic market, Turner and his team suspect that European and Asian markets will take to the product faster than the U.S. market will. Part of that suspicion is calculated. "Recycling has much more appeal overseas," Mallory says. "The international market accepts innovations much better than the U.S. market. Their pollution and trash problems are magnified because of limited land space." Part of that suspicion is documented: National Gyp-Chipper's machines received a solid reception early on in foreign markets. Demand was generated by trade shows, stories and advertising in industry journals, and a report on Cable News Network. "We didn't realize how strong the market would be overseas until we started getting all the calls," says Turner.
As foreign demand began to bubble up, the company began to fear it would get ripped off if it wasn't the first to export. "Someone can buy a Gyp Chipper in California and ship it to Japan, and I can't control that," says Turner. "Therefore, I had better protect myself today -- get in front of the wagon and pull it, rather than try to catch on to it later."
True, the people at National Gyp-Chipper would have preferred to wait a little longer -- even six months -- but they felt an urgency when evaluating the options. "They're forcing us to do it," Turner says of buyers abroad. "When they spend their money to fly out here from Japan or England to meet us, that means they want our product. We knew we never could turn the business down. There's a need for what we are doing." And it's a need, he's convinced, that someone else will meet if National Gyp-Chipper doesn't.
Now What?
"At night I'd walk up and down the streets and say, Well, what do I do?" reflects Turner. "It's serious. There's many an hour of thinking about it, wondering, How do you protect yourself? Are you sure you're going the right way? And who do you ask?"
That's the big one. With a number -- though certainly not all -- of those sleepless nights behind him, Turner sits today in a high-backed swivel chair behind a desk covered with purchase orders, message slips, and company brochures, and emphasizes those words slowly, one by one: "Who . . . do . . . you . . . ask?"
Government offices, he says, were no help. Better sources were other manufacturers doing business overseas already and local acquaintances whom he pumped for information about what they looked for in a good patent, how they found distributors, and who the best lawyers in town were.
One option for National Gyp-Chipper was to seek out a much larger associate that would sell the product on its behalf. The company kind of fell into that type of relationship with Domtar Gypsum, an Ann Arbor, Mich., subsidiary of Domtar Inc., a $2.5-billion Canadian paper and construction-materials manufacturer. Through a longtime contact in the industry -- Domtar's director of technical services, Jim Houser -- the partners at National Gyp-Chipper put together a deal that turned exclusive marketing rights for North America over to Domtar in return for a prepaid order for 50 machines. That gave National Gyp-Chipper a much-needed $238,000 to acquire the manufacturing rights to the machine. Up to that point, the company had been solely a marketer of the new product.
Unfortunately, the relationship didn't work the way the folks at National Gyp-Chipper had hoped, either domestically or internationally. Sales were slower than anticipated because Domtar's sales staff wasn't used to having to push something new to its customers; moreover, says Turner, some of Domtar's salespeople wouldn't sell to one of its Canadian competitors that was pressuring him for the product. National Gyp-Chipper eventually bought its way out of the exclusive contract, trading back $60,000 for unsold merchandise.
As all that was going on, another strategy for pursuing global markets was presenting itself to the company. It was, perhaps, the most obvious method of expansion: one of its domestic distributors wanted to sell Gyp Chippers abroad. Executives from Straeker Construction Ltd., a $35-million construction company in London, saw a Gyp Chipper during a visit to Chicago; they then called one of the distributors, Nelson King, and asked to purchase some machines.
"The disposal costs for construction waste are extremely high in the United Kingdom because landfills are so far away from the city," says King. "With the Gyp Chipper they can condense the material by 60% -- and they can sell the powder to gypsum mills in the city." National Gyp-Chipper agreed to let King buy rights to distribute the machine in Britain, for an up-front, prepaid order -- this time for 20 machines for about $100,000.
The relationship hasn't proved complicated for National Gyp-Chipper. All its British negotiations have been through King, although it does drop-ship the product directly to Straeker. Straeker, meanwhile, recently signed on to help market the product in Britain and has already sold several machines to other companies there. National Gyp-Chipper will have a Straeker technician visit its Cedar Park, Tex., assembly shop or will send a technician to Britain to make sure the London company will be able to service machines on that side of the Atlantic.
