This is the short version of the story, as told on our ScaffoldMart Pattern (matches & stacks with BilJax) frames page. I promised the story on the home page, so I put this here as a place holder. The long version is in the works, and coming soon.
As a kid, my father (Grady Smith Sr.) was owner/operator of a five location rental company. I like to say I was a rental kid, I was regularly reprimanded for climbing on the leaning scaffolding frames in the yard of the building in which we are headquartered to this day.
My father ran that five store rental operation for over a decade, where he rented yellow scaffolding, which he bought from a company that at that time was the most common brand of scaffolding on jobsites across America. He bought them wholesale for years and made a fortune renting and selling them. He would set up a tower in front of our building and hang a banner that read, “We rent and sell scaffolding.” He would make sure to try and sell his older frames first, that way his stock was never worn past ‘lightly used’. Operating this way, he could make a slight markup or at least break even, eliminating running costs.
He did business this way for years until the other company was sold to foreign owners, and the relationship changed. The ammount the company was asking for the same products was outrageous, and my father was forced to turn elsewhere. He was on a mission to find a new supplier of the scaffolding that was making his rental operation so profitable, he did not know it was going to change his life.
He knew what made a quality frame, but he was going to become an expert comparing the different models available on the market at that time. A detail oriented person, he meticulously inspected each company’s frame, noting quality points or short comings along the way. He did this not just for scaffolding frames, but for their accessories as well. ScaffoldMart was forming as an organic offshoot of his rental operation.
What he found was that most frames had one feature or another, but none had everything you could ask in a scaffolding frame. He did the research and determined it was not a matter of cost that kept other manufacturers from building with this level of quality, it was lack of attention to detail. Our owner set about designing a line of scaffolding that would take all of the best features of all the most popular scaffolding components and combined them in one unit, in many cases in improved form, and the ScaffoldMart product line was born. My father continued renting equipment and selling scaffolding on the side until it progressed to selling scaffolding and renting equipment on the side. The most profound change occured when he harnessed the power of the internet, through eBay and Craigslist. ScaffoldMart.com was brought online not long thereafter, and eventually rental was phased out entirely. Today my father runs this company, overseeing daily operations and keeping us level and on course. I am the Director of Marketing here, also dabbling in sales. Gray Thomas, our Head of Sales, is my father’s first cousin with twins for mothers, making him my Uncle Gray. We have a group of associates here we are proud to have on the team, showing up daily to bring you the value we promise. We are excited about ScaffoldMart’s future, and grateful you visited the site.
Chase Smith
Director of Marketing, ScaffoldMart