Established: 1991
Location: Dunedin
Contact Name: Kirsty Thomson and Mark Taylor
Website: www.tru-bilt.co.nz
Business mission and vision:
To make workplaces safer by protecting people against traffic and moving machinery.
“We manufacture and install quality steel traffic safety systems to make workplaces safer and save lives.”
We manufacture our products in our own factory in Dunedin, New Zealand (most of our competitors import goods from overseas, which are inferior quality to our NZ-made steel products). Our products are also impact-tested and certified to NZ/AU structural standards.
The business is family-owned and was built up by the parents of the current General Manager who followed in his father’s footsteps. The family and staff are all very innovative and wanted to be able to design their own brand of products, initially for the New Zealand market, with a view to take them further afield overseas as the business grows.
In the early days, Health & Safety was not a big focus in New Zealand workplaces, so we had to appeal to people’s ethical standpoint to ensure their staff would be protected from harm. Evolving H&S laws in New Zealand have helped bring more focus in this field. Also, being located in Dunedin, potential customers around the country and in Australia saw this as a long way away, so they thought supply would be difficult. However we have been able to refine transport and delivery methods to provide fast lead times and compete with others in the same field. Product pricing is always a challenge, there are ‘cheap imports’ on the market, so we have to prove the quality of our product against those and that the higher cost is worth it. This is a simple enough challenge, but unfortunately there are still some people and businesses that would prefer to go for the ‘cheap prices’ regardless. We try to stay focused on the positive fact that our products will actually save lives! Finally, reaching out to people to tell them about our superior products is an ongoing challenge, which is why we work with Web Genius to publish a high-quality, informative website that is easy to find on Google, whether that’s through SEO or Google Ads.
Over the years, our product range had become too big. We were also passionate about manufacturing industrial doors and loading dock stations as well as steel safety products. However, our focus was too wide and it became difficult to market, costly to produce, and contracts became complicated and drawn out (time-wise). In 2020, we made the difficult decision to sell the door and dock branches of the company and focus only on Tru-Gard steel safety products. We are glad we did, because now our vision is clearer, our target market is more refined, our marketing is easier, and the manufacturing is a simple, streamlined process. Around the same time, we changed our previously ‘unseen’ website to a Web Genius ‘dominator’ website and the sales leads have improved immensely. It has become far easier to get our message out and to promote our products. Our business strategy is so much simpler now and we are starting to fly!
It’s taken almost 30 years to build our business up to where it is now, like any small-medium sized business, this has taken a lot of perseverance. Adversity can come out of nowhere at any time, such as sharp supplier price rises, staffing shortages or difficulties, the economical collapse of key clients, and most recently, Covid lockdowns. We deal with every challenge in the best way we can and our ‘can do’ attitude helps us through every time.
We won a government grant (from a provisional growth fund) to purchase special machinery (a press brake, a band saw and a plasma cutter) for improving our manufacturing processes. It was a rigorous application system to seek this grant, but we were thrilled with our success and have put the funding to very good use. It has made our business process so much easier!
We have also recently been approved by the NZ Institute of Architects to provide accredited training to registered architects through their internal CPD system (Continual Professional Development). Our Tru-Gard safety presentation was signed off earlier this year and we are able to take part in an official training capacity. We have carried out several educational sessions already and consider it a great success for both ourselves and other businesses.
We make other people’s workplaces safer places to work, this includes saving lives in high-risk environments.
Installation technicians
For the staff members in the manufacturing workshop, we work with Competenz to provide engineering training and certification. For the staff members in the office, we work with sales & marketing consultants that provide training and mentoring, and we also engage in training courses for various software platforms that we use, such as CRM and accountancy platforms.
We collect great feedback from customers almost daily, however we have not published these in a formal way. It is on our list of things to do, with our new Web Genius website!
It’s a pleasure to work with a wonderful team of staff members every day. We’re very lucky to have a group of highly competent and passionate people working for us. We also enjoy meeting new clients, as you learn something new with every product request and application.
We are a corporate sponsor of NZISM (New Zealand Institute of Safety Management), a professional association and training & consultation service for health and safety practitioners. We also sponsor a range of Health & Safety industry events, such as conferences, summits and trade shows.
Also, in terms of community support – for the past two years we have employed a young man with a mental disability, through IHC Idea Services Otago, to give him work experience and life skills. He is on a short break now, but we have enjoyed having him on board so much over the past two years, that we’re hoping to get him back in the New Year.
We often have school children approach us for assistance with educational funding or charities asking for donations. We frequently support such requests on a case-by-case basis.
Our amazing staff are our most important resources. We have a monthly peer-driven reward system called Tru-Hero, where the staff members nominate others according to outstanding work ethic and ‘going the extra mile’. A panel of four (previous winners) will select a winner from the month’s nominations. The winner is awarded a Tru-Hero certificate, a 1/2 day leave, and a branded piece of clothing, such as a hoodie or a t-shirt. Their photo is put up on the Tru-Hero display board in our office.
We also find other ways to reward and staff and make them feel respected and appreciated. These include an extra day off for ‘Birthday Leave’, and regular on-site BBQs or recreational functions.
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