Latest / Off Grid Down Under by MDC / EP 42 | The Road to 40,000+ Caravans: The Full MDC Story

Transcript

EP 42 | The Road to 40,000+ Caravans: The Full MDC Story · Off Grid Down Under by MDC

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Anything that's a hybrid coming out of China at the moment is actually a copy of a derivative of what we built back in the day.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Vaughan started this 20 years ago, but I think what excites me most is I still feel like we are only just getting started.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Steve sends me a message.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: I have this idea for masterclasses, and we're going to go make all these videos and we're going to teach the customers how to use the product.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_03: Watching the question curve, the complaint curve just plummet.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Mate, those uh owner manuals were so good that we found our competitors with them were still having the MDC name in them.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: Really, all you could buy was Australian-made camper trailers, which were so expensive it was not funny.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you a story.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: I've built caravans in Australia, and I will never do it ever again.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_03: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Off-Grid Down Under Podcast.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: Today we've got our team here.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: We've got Mr.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: Banks.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_03: Steve, how are you going?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: Good mate, yourself?
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: James Field.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: Hello, Steve.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone knows who James is, he's been here often enough.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, our fearless leader, Vaughan Hindley.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for having me back again, Steve.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: Mate, always a pleasure.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: And today is a very, very interesting topic, and I think it's a a story really worth telling.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: And it is the history of MDC.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: Now we'll get to live some of the highs and lows of the life of MDC over the last what 20 years now.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so much pressure.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess nothing's off the table, right?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, we'll try we'll try not to get in too deep, but when you started MDC, you started off with basically a laptop,$5,000, and a desire to do something for yourself.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: Tell us a little bit about how that started and how it progressed from humble beginnings.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, look, it all comes down to um 12-volt electric camping jugs.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's what it all comes from.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: In a set of 12 and a bulk lot on eBay.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so um just trolling eBay at the time and come across this and going, oh, these look pretty cool and pretty cheap as a group lot, and bought it and then resold each one individually on um eBay and made a profit, which was pretty cool.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then expanding it from there, what what was the next step in terms of the process was I guess um finding other bulk lots um on eBay and dividing them up and then finding out where those products come from, which was a company, a wholesaler down in Sydney.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um from there, we you know, I think it was around yeah, 2006, solar lights became a thing.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: We were buying solar lights from Crazy Clark, selling them on eBay in groups of six for like$150,$160, buying them for$10 each.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yeah, from there imported our first container, half container of solar lights out of China, out of Ningbo, China, um, to our small house at home and physically unloaded half a container and filled our house with solar lights and sold them on eBay.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's the short version.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, typically when we're around the campfire and someone asks a question, this goes on for hours and hours, but we've only got 45 minutes, so we'll get to it quick.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_03: So obviously, there was there was a leap uh where you got into the camping products, camper trailers, etc.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_03: etc.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_03: What what motivated you to back yourself?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I I know you well enough to know that you are a the horse to back, but how did that where did you get that from?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um look, I think it's just um just mindset, I guess, when I was a young fellow, I played a lot of sport and you know was a little bit successful playing soccer and team sport and just being committed to do things and I used to play goalkeeper, so you'd sort of organise the troops, I guess, um during the game, and just having the mindset that uh I guess never give up.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll talk about some of the things that have at MDC that have been difficult over the years and things we've had to overcome.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess it's just um having a crack and never give up, that's a secret.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: What he means, folks, he is a hyper competitor.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, for sure.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: And for those uh people in the uh import space going back 20 years, um, yeah, they know how competitive I am, I guess.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: So the direct to consumer model with camper trailers, uh we all remember the status quo back then.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: Really, all you could buy was Australian-made camper trailers, which were so expensive it was not funny.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_03: And the great majority of people who wanted to go out camping had a long wait for something secondhand that would be in their price range.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_03: And then you've gone into camper trailers with a director public.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_03: How did that come about?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'll go back a little bit.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um after the whole soloite experience, we sell it started selling um little generators, ATVs, go-karts, um, mini-bikes.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: So when minibikes were all the rage, we were actually a part of that.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um the pit bikes.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we were selling them out of our backyard on Gumtree at the time.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, um, not Gumtree trading post when it was still a paper.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that was huge for us.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then so we'd have a little ad, and then it was like a quarter page, half page.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, come across this fella in China, his name's Albert Wu.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, everybody here knows him.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he's been working with the company now around when I started around 22 years.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um one time he goes, Hey, we've I've seen these camper trailer tents around in my local city.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Would you like to have a look at one?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is it something you can sell in Australia?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And we said, Yeah, absolutely, let's have a look at it.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: So we imported a few tents and we literally bolted them on top of garden trailers.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: We were buying a 7x4 garden trailer from a trailer manufacturer um down the road here at Rockley, strapped that to the top, and that was our first one.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: So there was like no kitchen, no water tank, no nothing.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was literally a tent, little 12-foot tent bolted atop a trail, and that's where it started with a queen-sized bed in it, yes, and super popular, and we were selling them at$5,000 each, and the nearest um closest competitor was$12,000.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that was another thing too.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: We're actually selling them on eBay, yeah, and that's how we were sort of driving all the traffic.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then, you know, back in the early days, we were one of the largest eBay sellers, and so we that's sort of where it we got started and the momentum.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it was always like an online focus.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: And that opened up the camper trailer lifestyle to so many more people.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: It was something that the average person could afford.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: If you had half a dozen kids, a few stretcher beds, you had the box trailer big enough to put all that gear in, and then you had canvas shelter and everything to go.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: So I remember it took off a it was something that everyone with a four drive, especially if you had an 80 series or a or a GQ and and you had too many kids, everyone wanted one, and it was the cool thing to have.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: Now the next transition was to move from there into hard floors, which really I guess irritated is probably the nicest word I could say the the status quo in the industry.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: How how uh did you work that progression?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: Because that that is where things really started to take off was the move into hard floors.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um we built the first forward fold hard floor in China, um, and that's with the same factory that we're actually working with at the moment.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: So our exclusive supplier, we have a one-to-one relationship.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And over the you know, the past uh 15 years we've grown together.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess it's just a natural evolution.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: You went from a soft floor to a hard floor, from a hard floor to a hybrid 2013.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: We actually built the first hybrid caravan in China, and so anything that's a hybrid coming out of China at the moment is actually a copy of a derivative of what we built back in the day.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: And we actually had a four-year runway where we were the only hybrid caravan coming out of China, and now they're everywhere, right?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: Well, they are everywhere, and I do remember those early models, it did set the market on fire.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: There was that period of suspicion, like this is new, this is from a source we've not seen before.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: But once people overcome that, it was was amazing.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like the first couple of years with the XT10 must have been an amazing time for you.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was really cool, and uh yes, certainly wasn't accepted by the market.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think in 2014, we actually built a 19-foot caravan and a 22-foot caravan.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: I remember, and it was totally not accepted.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: We couldn't sell any, they were too big, and now you know the 19s and the 22s are going crazy.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we actually turned them off, I think, in around 2016 and probably just brought them back four to five years ago, James.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, about that time, yeah, for sure.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I mean, you know, we built our first um camper trailer in 2005 and sorry, 2007, and you know, quite a small mum-dad company.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: And we still are, but quite a bigger team now.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: We have 180 people in Australia um working for the company and around 30 in the US.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, when you look at volume of products produced per year, um MDC is certainly in the top five with all the big boys, so we've sort of gone from zero to hero, which has been an amazing journey.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: So once uh getting beyond the scepticism of of the market, which you know is is typical of the Australian market, how do you think the XT range of caravans change things for MDC and the market in general?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's um it's like a natural evolution.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, myself, I started camping in a tent, and then obviously through MDC I can go camping in a camper trailer and then a hybrid caravan, and then from a hybrid caravan, you would never go back to a camper trailer because the camper trailer is made out of canvas.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh quite a can be a very I wouldn't even say long, it's a 10-minute process, but you know what we're like.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like now we have press a button, electric roof, and uh there you are.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Pull your kitchen out and you've got the five-star experience right there.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: Now, Mark, you had earlier MDCs.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: Where did it start for you?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: Which what was your first MDC?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so mine was uh uh HRT 17 um with the back at the back there, champagne colour.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um so I first came across that 2016 at the Redcliffe Show.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um I had seen the 10 somewhere else at a campground once and went, oh, this is alright.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_04: And then there was that period where all of a sudden there was a market was flooded by them, but it wasn't just MDC, it was all these other people trying to copy, and you could tell the ones that were copy copy.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: You could.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: So as a as a consumer, an avid camper, and an adventurer, how how did MDC making that kind of caravan available with at that standard at that price change life for you?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_04: So I went from a different brand caravan for family orientated, so mine used to be could sleep eight, um, and we took that around Australia in 2007.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_04: Um from there, um kids were staying outside, sleeping in swags because swags come along by that stage, and then I went, No, or something just for me and the wife.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_04: We saw the 17 at the show the second year at Redcliffe, and then I went down and hassled one of um Vaughan's original team members that used to play soccer with Mick Hammett.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hey Mick, yes.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, and um from there he convinced me to go over.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_04: Um and even um to that stage of he said don't use your all your money, come on to the finance journey.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um so we did 20,000 on finance and rest of that, and such an easy process back then.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um got that van, and then um I'm I'm not sure if it was him, there was someone else around MDC at the time that mentioned that you were going out to Birdsville, and that's when I decided that that I'm in doing it.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um it ticked all the boxes for me, like everything.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_04: Shout and tall inside, bed end didn't take very long, and it could do what I wanted.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_04: Because we had the on-road van, the off-road, um, and when I saw it and crawled underneath it for the umpteenth time, I knew it could do the thing that I wanted to do, and that was go every track that I could get to that when I did my lap around Australia I couldn't get to.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_04: So that's why we made that decision, and from that we've gone again.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um and I haven't broken one yet.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_03: So mate, the Yeah, how you say you crawled underneath it, that is one formidable van.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: When you get underneath it and you look at the chassis in the suspension, yeah, it says, I am tougher than you.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_03: I am tougher than you are game to take your vehicle and and caravan.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I've always been impressed with the the Tanamaxle 17s in the MDC range, have just looked like they are built to gobble up the output.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_04: I think it was 2020.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_04: I reckon I would have done 25,000 K travel that yeah.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_04: That's travel with a van on the back, not just your normal travel.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um that was and we're talking Matarenka across the rope of bar, um up to the Gulf Country, all through Birdsville, Idominka, or all through the backcountry, um, even down um Daily Waters and across through there.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_04: Um can't fault it, mate.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_04: Hasn't broke.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: And when we talk about robustness, you know, we do have James here, general manager of product and technical.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Mate, do you want to talk a little bit about what actually goes into designing the suspension and the chassis and the hoops you have to jump and the materials?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and first of all, obviously Banksy, I've known you for a little while now.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And when you say you crawl under a van and check absolutely everything, I know you absolutely do that, the kind of person you are, you are certainly checking the details.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: So even you know, back then we were looking at them, notwithstanding the products changed significantly over that time.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, even back then, MDC was leading the way in terms of that quality and that robustness.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I guess as it comes to the product and how we design it, how we do make it robust, it goes way back, and Vaughan was talking about his story of how we started, and part of that is around that exclusive manufacturing partnership and having that trust with our China partner there.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Vaughan Orson also, as we all know, very visionary in this stuff and invested very early and very heavily in the right people, well before my time in the business to go and work with our China team and let them understand what we needed.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we've been working with them well over 15 years.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're so receptive, they take on the feedback, we're always improving.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: But to that point, um, and for those of watched the China Made podcast that we've done um here a little while ago, um, Vaughan had for over 10 years a gentleman who was basically flying fly out of our China factory, I guess six months in China and six months in Australia, and that was so incredibly key in getting that foundation set up.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I guess to the point you were making, Vaughan, there there is so much behind the scenes that goes into model development and even in our current model range now around material selection, testing and certification, testing in both the FEA, which is finite element and analysis perspective, all of our suspension, all of our chassis are engineer certified by a qualified and uh certified engineer by the government here in Australia, as well as real-world testing, a real life testing.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And in particular, you three gentlemen probably do a lot of that heavy lifting still within the business and all of that stuff you feed back into our teams for continuous improvement.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: But to the to the point where our suspension arms, our chassis, we are sourcing steel from places that other factories don't even know exist, from reputable suppliers that have the correct certification.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: We have the mill certificates for everything we do, even to the point where our safety chains, we are batch testing them in Australia for every batch.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we go the extra mile because we want to be able to stand by our product from the very, very start.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: So when we're doing the chassis design, uh full off-road is a no-brainer for us.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: We have to be able to do full off-road for our off-road product.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're certifying it to that, we're selecting the materials, the correct grades, and we would run three or four different grave steels within one chassis.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's certainly not the most efficient way to build it, but it's the strongest and the best design that we can do.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: And unlocking a lot of other brands, they will standardize their chassis, standardize their chassis design to save cost on certification around things.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Every single one of our models has a unique chassis, and that's to maximise the design, obviously the wheel position, the strength.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't we we will do that to maximize the design for the capability, not just kind of do it whatever's the cheapest and direct path to do anything.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: I think that that puts a focus on the importance of the relationship that you built initially with the factory and to grow it into a one-to-one relationship.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: Because we are talking about large amounts of money invested into research and development.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason we can and do do that is because it's exclusive.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: We invest all that time, people, money in a product that only MDC gets.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: We don't have to share that because the factory's got ten other customers that they want to impress and you lose all your IP.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: And that, in my opinion, is one of the most visionary things in the import market that makes MDC such standware.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um we're the only brand in Australia that I know of um working with an international um supplier company that is a one-to-one relationship.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we're the under guys that do it exclusively.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, one of the tricks, and for anyone who wants to have a crack at it, you need to make sure that your partner in China is actually making a profit.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: And you you have to give them the profit that they need, otherwise they're just going to skimp on materials.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they'll they will start thinning things out, they'll use a different grade.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: For instance, when we talk about our chassis, and this is interesting, right?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've just come back from the Adelaide show and um we had a competitor that was talking about our product, and they're like, Well, the MDC product is um is not good because it only has a three mil thickness in their in their drawbar.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, Yeah, but we're using Q460 steel, we only have to be three mil, they have to be five mil because they're only using a cheaper grade steel, a Q345, which is you have to use a thicker steel, it's going to be heavier.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're trying to make strong lightweight off-road chassis, right?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas they've got it about face.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: But what's that all about?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's about them saving some costs, and also their salesperson who is just a rig-in for that particular show, not actually knowing the product.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_03: Or worse still, or being in one.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: Or worse still specifying a thicker material because they can't trust their factory to use the right grade.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: And the Q460 is a lot more expensive, but also it's a lot harder to work with, it's a lot harder to cut.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: It is, and I guess, and then we go back to investment in equipment in our factory to be able to cut it and do everything right and do it efficiently.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you a story.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: I've built caravans in Australia, and I will never do it ever again.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've been there, done that.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: In 2016, I had an idea, there's a lot of these import companies copying what I do.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: I will go build caravans in Australia and let's see if they follow me, do that.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: And they didn't.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we had our manager general manager for production there was Kevin Edwards, um, very famous in the industry.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: He was actually the production manager at Jaco down in Melbourne for 20 years before he came to us, and we created our brand Os RV, and we were making caravans here in Australia for two years, and I had to turn it off.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's a tough geek.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't making a profit, it couldn't stand on its own two feet, and it was actually the MDC brand that was holding up the Oz RV brand.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so at that point we made a decision, as sad as it was, um, we had to offshore that product, and that's what we did.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: Now, offshoring that product, obviously there's there's fiscal advantages in building offshore in a country like China.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: But what other factors would you consider important?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: Would it be their ability to adapt and do a quality product when that is what's required and What was the driver there?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: If you absolutely align yourself with the right partner that has the right thinking, and which I've been lucky enough to do, they have control of the whole production from the nuts and bolts all the way through to the final product.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: And when I say absolute control, when I was making caravans in Australia here, it was very similar to what goes on in Campbellfield, right?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: You outsource your chassis to a third-party manufacturer, you outsource your galvanizing to a third-party galvaniser, you have a third party building your furniture, your cabinetry is another third party building that.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas in China, the supply chain is all together.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: In our factory, we are it's just raw materials.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we have the aluminium sheeting, the composite panel, the RHS steel, everything is raw, it is cut, laser cut.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: We have you know 3D laser cutters to cut all the all the um RHS and um all that equipment's actually in-house.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: The powder coating's done in-house, the painting, the assembly.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um the only thing we're not doing is specialized parts, so maybe like a handbrake cable and assembly that's done outside.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um we don't make the rims, we don't make the tyres, but the majority of the product is made in-house, and so we control the materials and the quality from the very start through to the end.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's our competitive advantage.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: And it's also consistency.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_03: The consistency and degree of quality that we get out of the factory now is is amazing.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's just boom boom boom, one after the other, great product, and also because we can react so quickly, real time, each day, make changes and improvements the same day we think of them.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: Now, of of course there's a paperwork process in that, but that's just an amazing thing to do when you consider the distance and and all the rest of it.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and um I think one of our powerful things, and it's here for us in MDC and with our corporation factory in China, is team retention.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so they have a set amount of team, which is around about 500 people.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: The management team are always there, the team leaders have always been there.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: I remember when this factory first started, they were renting a factory and everyone was on mopeds.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's how they got to work.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now they have their through our investment, they actually have their own factory and everyone's driving cars, and you know, they look after their people like we look after them, like we look after our team in MDC.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we have a lot of people that have been working our business ten plus years.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Steve, you'll be one of them soon.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're up to eight years now, you're not far away.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: Eight years on getting there, yeah.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_04: Well that's an age to day, mate.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, you said adapting.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_04: I I remember meeting you two in Birdsville.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you were both um not well.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yes, we were dying max.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_04: And um I was sort of talking to you about dust getting into electric step because when I got my van, I ordered electric step to go with mine.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_04: Didn't come with it at the time.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: And I just did a little mod at home, and then you asked me if I could send you what I did, some photos and that sort of stuff, and I sent it to you.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_04: And it would have been 11 weeks, 12 weeks later, I saw a van that had that on it, and you made those couple of changes.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so it's crazy.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Banksy was our free RD department back then.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's like Banksy, you got another idea that we can implement.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: Something I want to touch on, which I think is really clever given my experience in the industry, going back in you know, 2010, 2012, there anyone that was uh an importer and was doing finance was using whoever as a broker to do their finance, so it was stuff out of your control.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: So in oh what year was it, 2013 you started MDF Market Direct Finance, yes, and I thought that was brilliant.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: You you took the control away from people who weren't really answerable to you and brought it in-house almost like your own brokerage.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: How did that come about?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was about a smooth customer experience, so it's like a one-stop shop.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: So someone comes into your dealership, they want to buy a caravan, we can offer the finance, we can offer the insurance.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that way we control the process from go to woe.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because it just makes it a smoother experience for the customer.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: If they've having to deal with someone external, there could be different conversations.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: Quite often our team, our finance team actually gets asked about, oh yeah, so can my caravan have this, can it do that?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um and because they work within the business day to day and they're only working on MDC products and MDC finance, it just makes it a better experience for everyone.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I th I thought that was absolutely uh a brilliant move in the industry.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: And uh it's not the first time I'll was looking at MDC saying, yeah, that's how that's the future, that's how you do things.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's how we looked at each other back in the day, Steve, because we were competitors, right?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like anything.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, you work out who the smart people are in the industry and you talk to them even if they're not on your team and you try and learn things.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's how it works.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's true.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and then part of the growth, your first um branch outside of of CoinZone was Perth.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_03: What inspired that?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Perth is um I think the lifestyle is exactly the same as Brisbane, so it made made sense to me.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh they do what we do, and I guess that's important.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um whereas I feel that um Sydney Melbourne's a little bit different.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: It is, it's well cold.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's more uh urban.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um people are traditionally in in those jobs, but you know, Perth, uh which I guess worked out at a later date, is so full of mining money and they're all looking to get out for that two weeks or week in between their rostered on working.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_03: So I guess the lifestyle is an absolute match.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think one thing I do say a lot in people within my team here is that I've always been a lucky guy, so I can't say that that was part of my thinking when we went there.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: But um, yeah, Perth is certainly a very good market for the product we see.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's been great, and yeah, it is it is a real lifestyle thing.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: So by 2018, branches everywhere Newcastle, Cabulcha, Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, and it's a growing company.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: We've got more people in production, more people out in the showroom.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: And as you grow a company, something that often gets left behind is culture.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I've always believed that MDC has had the best culture amongst employees of any place they've ever worked.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: How do how do you maintain that?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_03: Where's where's that?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I think um it's been part of the team, and like just coming out of uh the Adelaide show that I was just with last weekend, um, we bumped out of that show on Sunday and we actually reset the whole Adelaide showroom on Monday.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I was there doing it, um, so was Anya, and so was some of the management team.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: We had um one employee halfway through the show that decided they didn't want to work for MDC anymore in Adelaide, and that left the Adelaide branch manager short.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so we stayed on for an extra day to make sure that Fred could reset his showroom, ready for customers come Tuesday.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess it's about being hands-on and being prepared to do anything that you ask your team to do that you're prepared to do it yourself, and I think that's my mantra, and maybe that's helped.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm not sure.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: I think it is, it's always felt like team.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, team.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: And having grown up in team sports, I appreciate that.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_03: I want to know that everyone's on the same page and supporting each other.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_03: Now, James, with with growth, expansion, new branches, new models and everything, how does that look from where you sit in your position?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, really.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of moving parts in that.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think about I guess the last 12 months from memory, we've added another three uh locations to Market Direct Group.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot behind the scenes for that.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: And back to Vaughan's point, it's about having the right people in the right positions, the team working to together, the trust, the communication, but also we've got such good systems and processes set up behind the scenes that as this kind of sounds like we're downplaying it, but it is somewhat rinse and repeat.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you've set up, whilst the location changes and the personnel changes, we're still setting up the showroom that has our products, uh, our systems.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just redeploying that in a new location.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it I guess the reason it's it's more rinse and repeat than you'd expect is because everything's systemised, so we've got uh custom software solutions for this or for that, and the team will then go and implement, and then we've got some training around that for the teams.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, part of that obviously ISO 9000 for us, which we've I think from memory windowed market direct group get that 2020?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: In 2020, uh Market Direct got ISO 9001, which is quality management system certification, and that's not easy to get, and that helps settle your brain.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: That is true, that's a different discussion.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems absolutely sets that culture and the framework up in the business, and through getting that certification, that's where a lot of those things became more professional as a business, and still to this day, every year we get audited, uh, usually at the end of each year, and throughout the year we're doing our internal audits and continually maintaining and updating that.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely a living beast.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it's never completely done, things are always changing, but having that framework makes these scenes easier than just deciding tomorrow let's open up for in Packenham, for example, and hoping for the best.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's all very well planned out in the background.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's the only way to go.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I say that I've always sort of been a lucky guy, and I have, and I mean, just to we're becoming the employer of choice in this demographic, right?
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I have to say, um uh that sort of comes down to the sort of a people we attract within our business in the leadership team.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you know, James, before you worked at MDC, you were the chief technical officer at the um Caravan Industry Association of Australia, um, and you would audit us.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that Steve's like, you know, ISO 9001 is easier than R V Map because you were doing our R V Map, right?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you were doing all the inspections, and we know how big those hurdles are to jump.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: And yourself, Steve, like you've been sort of a known personality around this industry for a very long time, for at least 15 years that I know of.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: But and we talk about Packingham.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so we go, hey, we're gonna open up a Packingham store, and we we're looking for a branch manager.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: And and Luke, who you used to work with back in the day, and I've known myself for around 15 years, and I'm like, you know, hey Luke, we want to open up a store, what do you think?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and it's even though those guys are working elsewhere, we keep it friendly, we keep it professional, but also having people of your caliber within our business helps us attract great talent.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we've got people that have come out of uh, you know, businesses of J.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: Co, New Age, you know, all the store wards from back in the day that were, you know, were way bigger than us back then.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we are attracting good people.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: I think the culture and and being able to do the job you're given is a big thing in culture.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: And for me, the I had worked elsewhere and some of the ideas that I I brought to MDC in 2018, uh, like the masterclass, reshooting all the videos and doing everything in detail, and the owner manuals were knocked on the head elsewhere.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_03: No one was interested in doing it.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, sure, the it costs money, there's production costs and everything like that.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: But you jumped on it like I jump on cake.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's like that's one of those things, right?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's like Steve sends me a message and he goes, uh, I'm free to do things, and I'm like, oh, okay, let's talk.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: Get on the phone, all right, mate.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, what are we gonna do?
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: What's the plan?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was on a plane next morning.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and it was um I have this idea for master classes, and we're gonna go make all these videos and we're gonna teach the customers how to use the product.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, this is great because a lot of our product, because it's um we got entry level through to the expensive stuff, we'll talk about that later.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's the first time a customer has actually used that product, and so you can break things unintentionally and have a bad experience um because you don't know how to use it.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: So we actually saved a bucket load of money when it came to warranty and customer dissatisfaction because we actually showed them how to use the product properly.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was six hundred thousand dollars we saved in canvas repairs just showing people don't stretch your canvas and don't overstretch your seams.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_03: That was in one year.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that was one of the first masterclasses we released.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_03: But but that was the joy for me.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: I I I like to share information, I like to educate, and you know, previous roles had um like even a sales rep were consultative roles where I'd be dealing with Telstra or something like that.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_03: So that that was my makeup to do that, and to be given the opportunity to do it and left alone to sit down and write manuals for four months, no one looking over my shoulder, no one saying, when is this going to happen?
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_03: Then release them and then spend 12 months reshooting every single video with every single little detail in it, was just amazing.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_03: And watching the question curve, the complaint curve just plummet to near zero was pretty much the one of the most satisfying things I've ever done in terms of getting up and going to work each day.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: Those uh owner manuals were so good that we found our competitors with them were still having the MDC name in them.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: How'd that work out?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, it's just like the product, um, all the owner manuals you see are a copy or derivative of what Steve created back in the day.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_03: It it is a bit like that, and and I am very proud of it, and it'll never be perfect.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_03: There'll always be a as much as we everything we do and all our education-based content, we try and make it as layman as possible.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_03: And even to the point of there is education in our trips, you and I banks here, we educate people at at the musters, and it's good we can do it hands-on there.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_04: It's because everyone's got slightly different learning curve.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_04: And some are not a watcher, they've got to be a doer.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um so that's why.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_03: But but that was a that was a big evolution in the industry for MDC to do that.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, like I say Well, it lifts the standard, doesn't it?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well so if if other products similar to ours want to compete, then they've got to lift their standard as well.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_03: Well, this this is the thing.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_03: I think MDC was the first to just bail out on the race to the bottom based on price and who could supply the cheapest product.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I I remember that the turning where you just started making a better product than everyone else.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, you had implemented the the structure with the factory to do that and to develop the product.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_03: But I remember coming from from one brand to to work in an MDC showroom, and I was pulling a kitchen out, and I was being careful not to slice my fingers to pieces, and I went, oh, this doesn't have any sharp edges.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and do you know how difficult it was to find and day a deburring tool in China?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_03: But it was night and day.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_03: It just everything works so much better.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_03: And that to me, that's vision.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_03: That's risk, that's real risk to break from what the norm is in your market segment and say, well, no, buggy a lot, I'm gonna make a better product than you, I'm gonna sell it for what it's worth, and I'll either win or lose.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and but also you win on the back end because you've got happier customers, they're talking to their friends and going, Hey, I've had a good experience with this product.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you should consider that if you're gonna buy a caravan.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um It's just the way we do things, I guess.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it is.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_03: And again, it boils down to culture.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I've always known you to be out using the product, and nowadays we've which we've put out on video, done some amazing extended trips out and about in the product.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_03: Where did that side of things start for you?
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: Mate, it's part of the fun.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um I like getting out there and using the product and hanging out with the team, and you know, Anya and Oliver they love camping and caravaning, so we get to do that lifestyle as a job.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, when people think it's uh a burden and a difficult job, it's not real difficult.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like we've seen some amazing places like all over Australia, but also in the US, um, in Canada.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we get the opportunity to travel to amazing places and say that's our job.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_03: It is, and it's hands-on use of the product.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I I remember vividly when we were over in South Australia back in the day, and it was the release of the uh the first XT14, which became the 17.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and we had the 200 series, got that flat in the middle of the desert, and people are going nuts.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_03: And but I remember the real-time conversations via Skype, etc., with the factory, because it was the prototype, and it was like, don't like this, change it to this, change it to that.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: I think over the course of about a week there was 150 items of feedback or something back to the factory in terms of improvement.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: And um I probably haven't done any of that in the last six years because that's all James and his team now, and he has a team of uh is it five or six at the moment?
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh six six people that are doing all that work.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: So back in the day, yeah, it was me.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but uh not anymore.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that allows us to move so much quicker.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_03: It does, and now the the trips away, it's more becoming very much more engagement with with customers, customers that are close to MDC staff and have some fun creating some content.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, and it's all about feedback, like um sitting around the fire after a few sherbits, they're not shy and telling you where things are going wrong.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like this, I don't enjoy that, you should do this better.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: And it's exactly you do not get that sitting behind a desk.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's just yeah, unbeatable.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_03: So here we are now come to a point where we've just released some of the most, well probably the most advanced products in our segment in the Mark IVs.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: How proud must you be of that product?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_03: Because I've seen it and I'm just blown away.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: We've been working with Projector now with our power systems more than 10 years, and uh the opportunity became available that they would be exclusively supplying this product uh to us um directly to our uh factory in China um till the end of this year, 2026, which gave us a competitive advantage, we could get to the market quicker.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and James and his team have done an extraordinary job on that.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, being able to convert a product from 12 volt to 48 volt with all those improvements and then changing layouts and you know, decor, it's uh almost a completely different looking beast.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: But it could have taken us to the next stage in evolution, and um couldn't be prouder of the job that James and his team's done.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, oh absolutely.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's just such good things.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_03: But uh let's talk about the American market.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_03: Where did that start?
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_03: How did you uh get into or just make that decision or become coerced into supply that market?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um we get invited on industry trips where we go with other um uh colleagues or competitors, and it's organized by the Caravan Industry Association Australia, which James was a part of back then, and it was a um trip to the US for their RVIA conference, or they called it RVX, depending.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: First one I went to was in Kentucky in 2018, um, and then the second one was in Salt Lake City in 2019, and what it is, it's um it's a group of people from Australia, and quite often, you know, every year there's a trip to Düsseldorf, and back then there was a trip to the US, and you would go to their industry big show where all the suppliers would be exhibiting their product um for their dealers to have a look at the place orders for the next season, and so it was a supplier based show where we could actually um go and learn things.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: So being part of the Queensland Association, you get opportunities, being part of the national body, you get these opportunities to explore other markets, and typically the aesthetics in the Australian caravan market come out of um Europe, whatever you see in.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Europe now is the next thing there's a tip for you, people that want to copy.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: You can get on the front foot on this one.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_03: Excellent.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_03: And how's uh how's America going now?
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: I from where I sit, it looks amazing.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_03: And the feedback from the the punters in America is that we're now supplying the best quality caravans over there.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's turned on its head.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um over here we're seen as um, I guess cheap and cheerful and entry-level.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: In the US, they're pretty good at making their products very cheap, and so they are very tinny, um, sort of stick and tin, and they're there for their mass production.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you get five years out of them, you're lucky.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they are a disposable item, they are.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: We're the other end of the spectrum, so we're seen as a premium product over there.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: And um premium product means you're expensive, the volumes aren't real big, but um, you know, it it gives us an international footprint.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: Through that, also, we get opportunities.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: For instance, the um suppliers that James talks to, you know, Demetic, they are a global group.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that food, they're a global group.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: So there's opportunities in Truma.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's opportunities there because we are international, that um they supply product both the Australian market and US market, and there's synergies.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, James is a very famous person and very good at screwing them down on price, so exactly.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_03: And also that would be such a a difficult thing to manage.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like if ever there was a period of time where you and your team are essential, it is that crossover going into Amer into the US market and managing everything.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_03: What what was that like?
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think so.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: Back to the whole US thing.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um from memory, and I could be could be wrong here, I think MDC would have been one of the first, or certainly in the first few groups of Australian brands, to try out the US market.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we've been there now six years, and the amount of things that we've learnt as a company over that time.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: We spoke about the US product, not only is it is it built differently and for a different, you know, different price point, I guess.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um you could get fancy box trailers over there from Australia at one stage.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um I guess the reason our product over there, MDC USA, resonates is it is genuine off-road and genuine off-grid.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: And there's not many other American brands that can genuinely stand by their product and get a give a lifetime chassis and drawbar warranty on that and back it to be able to go anywhere that that uh that vehicle goes.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that's certainly been an edge for us.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: Off-grid over there used to mean it had a wood fired stove for winter.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, yeah, you're right.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um how was it for the US product range?
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: It certainly is completely different.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're using different suppliers, there's different rules, uh, the customer wants different things.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're thinking about uh temperature and climate control in a completely different way.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we've learned a lot of that over that period.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: I've spent a fair bit of time in the US in the early days learning that and doing my own study tours and learning from our suppliers and aligning with the right people.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but also, again, a credit to Vaughan in his vision and and knowing that we need to know the right people and and contribute and be uh reinvesting back in industry.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: We are RVIA certified, we're part of the National Association of Trailer Manufacturers, uh, we're with another organization that does certification, and we do that also because they critique us, they're continually auditing us, we're improving where we can, and we're learning those things.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it's interesting.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've watched a lot of other brands, Australian brands in the last 12, 18 months um start to enter the US market.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: Some have gone to SEMA, which we did, I think back in I worked at the SEMA show, it would have been 2023, I reckon, from memory.
• 47:52
  unknown: Yeah.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: And um, like we had a display there, very, very beneficial for us.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, again, two or three years before some of our competitors have decided to do it.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: But it's fascinating watching their journey and the original products they're putting in.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can still see Australian appliances in there and lights in the wrong positions, and clearly have no idea about the compliance, and it just it fascinates me how they have the ability to supply that into that market.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, at the end of the day, what they do isn't really our concern, but uh to your point, we've learnt so much over the journey.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_03: And all all this toil and working hard in excess of 40,000 MDC products out on the roads.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's been 40,000 for a few years, and the marketing team brings it up and it's like, well, you know, we're just gonna sit on that number because we don't really want people to know how many and uh what models are popular and all that sort of stuff, because that's sort of your your IP, right?
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, that's a big number and that's big enough for us, and at some point we'll say what the real number is.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, one day.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_03: Not at the moment.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_03: One day.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_03: So but yeah, that is a lot of MDCs, and and it's good that the company caters to them in terms of spare parts and all that sort of thing, so you can buy an MDC and down the track still get parts for it.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_03: And that is something that changed things uh a big way, because in the dark days you had companies, and some companies still do it where they'll buy off three or four different factories, and it wasn't uncommon for those factories to fall over and disappear, and you couldn't get any parts anymore.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and if you're factory hopping, that is gonna be a problem because like um if you decide that you're gonna work with another supplier, this one's gonna get his nose out of shape and gonna go, well, you know, if you need spare parts, too bad, mate, you're not buying from me anymore.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_03: Or they're gonna be exorbitant in price.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, they'll probably just say too bad.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sorry, mate.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: You've moved on over here, we're not gonna help you.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we don't have that problem.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: We have exclusive relationship and it's actually we don't need different sets of spare parts, it's all been the same.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_03: You can wander through the MDC showroom and the VIN prefixes are all the same.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the giveaway.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_03: If they've all got the same VIN prefix, they're all coming from the one factory, it's consistent, and which is we know better than anyone, consistency and loyalty is key to those dealings.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_03: But you walk into other places, you might see three, four, or five different prefixes indicating that not everything comes from the same place.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_03: And you can't have that many loyalties, let's face it.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_03: So that that is a very, very strong legacy of the MDC brand, in my opinion.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_03: Very much so.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, our factory is famous in the world.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um particularly when it comes, and James, you'll know this, um, suppliers to our factory will actually go around to other places and go, hey, I supply MDC, and automatically they know the quality of that product is spot on.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because James and his team have done their due diligence, and we won't work with um inferior parts.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_03: And and that's it.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_03: You your relationships with your vendors, you know, strong business partnerships has been a strength of MDC and loyalty.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_03: So they'll that will always reward you.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_03: What I want to touch on the 15-year anniversary models, that was a bit of a game changer.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_03: Now, was that just an evolution, or was advertising as the 15-year anniversary models that was that a statement?
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: I would like to hear James James's version on what he thinks.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: No, uh, yeah, that's a good point.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let me let me recall how I I remember this played out.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, this was fairly early up when I joined Market Direct Group, and I think from memory it was a Saturday morning, and I think Vaughan gave me a call, and um and we were we we would always talk around technical improvements and just to provide some context too in 2021 and 2022 in industry not just for Market Direct Group but across the whole of the Australian caravan industry, there were so many significant regulatory changes across gas, electrical, and and road vehicle regulations.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was a busier time in the business.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I I vividly remember it was a Saturday morning Vaughan and I were talking and we got into the subject of lithium battery power and lithium.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then Vaughan and I were talking and got to the point where basically before for June show 2022, we wanted to have the entire MDC range transitioned as standard to lithium batteries.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then as part of that, we wanted to couple it into a broader project, and that's where the 15-year anniversary project came up.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not as easy as just putting a lithium battery in, unfortunately.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you've got to change all your battery charges to to match the chemistry, and then we wanted to match it with some other key safety features as well.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if that's how you remember how it uh how it played out.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter to me, mate, it matters what you remember.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean that was yes, that was an absolutely critical part there.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like that was a real transition for us to get into that space, and then from there, I guess that was our first from my perspective.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: We'd done a full range upgrade and executed it all at one go and then marketed it all together, and that kind of set the scene and the precedent for how now we've operated doing that with our ranges and have scheduled updates, whether that's yearly or as as fast as we can get them done to keep the market interested and keep the product uh at that top level.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we spoke about the Mark IV project with a 48-volt electrical system.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: That has been in the in the back of our minds for for two years, and these things take a long lot of time.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of orchestration in the background, but um 15-year anniversary range was certainly, I guess, the start of that for us.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_03: Now, on that, when we look at our ability to to launch new product uh and innovate those products and we're there's few that can do it with s the smooth process and speed with which we did it.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_03: So while all this is going on, what do we do next?
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_03: We launch gold-class caravans.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_03: As if we've got not enough to do already.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: Gold class caravans was June, June last year.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um and again, this is something that we'd had in the background for a long, long time.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: It uh our competitors are obviously surprised when these comes out, these things come out, but we're always planning in the background as as far in front as we can.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so the gold class project came up in a number of ways.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: We wanted to further diversify our footprint in the market, uh, and we wanted to have a premium offering and also be able to offer it to third-party dealers who had historically wanted to work with us, but MDC was built on the whole market direct premise, so it didn't really fit well with what we were trying to achieve.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: So gold class really ticked that box for us.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: It also presented an opportunity, and Vaughan talked before about uh attracting good people and getting good people in the business.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a gentleman, um, his name's Adrian, you guys have probably seen him on some videos before, particularly around gold class.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: But um, Adrian had been with uh New Age for 20 years.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there'd been some change at New Age.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: I knew what Adrian was capable of, I think from memory, he was like employee number one at New Age and was very much the architect of the success of that business in their heyday.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd known some things had been happening, always stayed in contact with Adrian, and Gold Class was a perfect fit as a foundation project for for Adrian to work on.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: But we wanted him to make sure he was comfortable to come on board, and I still remember Vaughan and I flew down to Melbourne to meet with him and we said come an hour earlier than the interview and go through our showroom, don't tell anyone who you are, crawl under the vans like Banksy likes to, and uh have a five a good look.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're happy with what you see, uh, because he hadn't worked with an international product or brand before, um, if you are comfortable with what you see there, then let's have a chat and see what we can do.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, now we can see that he was more than happy there.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so funny now he travels often with me to China on our projects and model development, and he still gets excited and surprised at the level of quality professionalism and the execution of our China manufacturing partner because all he's done historic to that was Australian manufacturing, and again, Australian manufacturing is fantastic, but he was genuinely surprised of the the capability of our China factory.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: So um I guess that's gold class.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we've done so many new things, I guess, in the last two years.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's been a real uh we've I guess hit the afterburn as we've done gold class.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: We did the uh on-road series for the first time in 2024.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: So Ford SR series, up until that point, Vaughn had never built specifically for the on-road or touring.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_03: I tried to talk him into it once.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he laughed at me.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_03: I was at that conversation actually at Birdsville.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_04: Why don't you ever have one?
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: He's like I guess I guess what we found is we kind of flipped it on its head.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: Many of these other caravan brands start in that on-road space and then find over time they need to add off-road in to appeal to more of the market.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas Vaughan started in that off-road space, and we almost had to like reverse engineer what we'd learnt to lose weight, lose specification, and obviously get the value proposition up there.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that was part of the Ford SR series, and I think we can all agree now we're already into our secondary iteration, series two launched at uh April Rose Hill Super Show.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um we're already at that secondary iteration, it is certainly a larger portion of our business these days, which is great.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_03: I think the going from series one to series two in the Fort is one of the most mind-blowing cha you know, outfit changes I've ever seen.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_03: And just in specification, in every conceivable way, they are chalk and cheese.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_03: That is just an enormous leap.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_03: And the popularity seems to have come with it.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's um yeah.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_03: So it went from nah never gonna do that to actually quite a good part of the business.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you know, this is um post-COVID, so you know, everyone had a good time during COVID.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you could supply a product to the market, you had a good time.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_01: And because we had our one run one-to-one relationship um with our cooperation factory in China, we we grew very quickly.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: When that market started to cool down, then you start looking at other segments in the market um where you can pick that, get that volume back up so we can keep our size of the team consistent and the profitability of the companies consistent.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: One thing James won't stand for, and he'll have one foot out the door if we were to do it, is he's not doing motorised.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, sorry, competitors out there, we're doing motorized, we're gonna do motorhomes.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: Comes out with three months.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: You guys should jump on it right now.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, that is true.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I look, I have just been fortunate enough to see so much of the evolution of the business and and all that sort of stuff.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_03: Now, here we are in 2026.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_03: Where are we going?
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_03: What's ne of course, you know, there's some secret squirrel projects and things coming on, like the motorised motorhomes, but it's the uh 20-year anniversary.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um what have we got cooking, James?
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we need another Saturday morning conversation.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: We do.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: Do we throw in Sarah's uh 17 pop up?
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's difficult, you've got to put wheels in there somewhere, Banksy.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've um I've said this in a few podcasts before, and uh people hear me say this all the time in the in the business, but I think what excites me most is I still feel like we are only just getting started.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: Vaughn started this 20 years ago, and I still look at our series twos and our Mark IVs and love what we've done there, but I just see, and so does the rest of my team, we just see so much opportunity and potential of what's next and what we can still be doing better.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think as long as we continue to have that mentality and have someone like Vaughan still leading the team, where unlike a lot of the top five, top ten other brands in our market, where I don't think any of those have even stepped inside or lived in a caravan in the last 10 years, I could be wrong, but um you know, having that hands-on uh leadership, but also still that drive.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_00: Vaughan comes and still gets excited, I'm assuming the same level of excitement as you had 20 years ago, you still get coming to the China factory, seeing those first prototypes.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that drives all of us to go forward.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: So what's next?
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh oh mate, I'd I'm so excited.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_03: There's plenty going.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_03: But but let's flash back to to the COVID period because that was that was a difficult period to manage.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_03: We were we were in a position where we had plenty of stock because we enjoyed short delivery times, etc.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_03: etc.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_03: And then COVID came and I think most of our oppositions cancelled orders.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, it's it's about being a decent person, right?
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: So at the start of COVID, we're a month in, people are cancelling orders left, right, and centre.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um the government is giving us a$700 allowance to pay for team members to live at home.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of other businesses would send people home and say, Okay, you're gonna work for$700 per week and you're gonna do 38 hours for the business.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: What we said to our team is okay, we have to go home, whatever your hourly rate is, divide that 700 divided by your hourly rate, that's how many hours we'd like you to do.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: Be nice.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so we didn't lose anyone during that month of working from home, right?
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_03: I still work full days.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, we didn't ask you to, that was your choice.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_03: Just wanted to go to work.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh but um after a month, everyone gets called back in the work, caravan business is going crazy, and we're like, everyone come in.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think some of our competitors lost half their team because they were not nice to them.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_03: And then they didn't manage the price rises.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_03: We saw very early that raw materials steel, everything associated with building anything, yeah, started on a pretty steep incline, and all of a sudden we were like 18 to 22 percent increase in most of the stuff.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_03: And we managed that.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: We had shipping containers go from$4,000 to$15,000 per container.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_03: And when we decided, well, we can't discount, we're not gonna discount because these costs are going to go up, and and we managed our budget and did things sensibly.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_03: Where there was many out there that just thought, well, MDC aren't prepared to discount, fill our order books.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_03: So they took so many orders, but by the time it came to pay for their caravans, their caravans were 18, 20, 25 percent dearer.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_03: So they got into that trap where they had to sell what they had before they could pay for what they wanted to bring in, and then the prices started coming up.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_03: So I thought that was some of the best m business management I've ever seen in my life, the way we navigated through that COVID period.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's not my doing, that's just having the right people in place.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the CFO saying, hey mate, your costs are going up, you need to raise your prices.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_01: And um that's just doing normal business, right?
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, but we have to know that if there's going to be hiccups in the business, we have to identify them and how do we react to them now until wait until it's too late and you can't pay your bills and then you've got to shut up shop.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_01: Which has happened a little bit lately, right?
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, lately.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_03: And and w we're seeing now the the fear in consumers in worrying about the security of deposits and things like that.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_03: Now it's all right for us.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_03: We we know our fiscal position, we're like blah, blah.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's like I said to one customer, I says, I will personally guarantee your caravan.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_03: If you lose your deposit cup seeming, mate, I'll get it, give it to you.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_03: Because I know.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_03: But that is something that really more and more consumers are looking at that as strength.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_03: And when you've been around for 20 years and and you're doing things consistently, you're bringing out new models, opening new showrooms, and it's strong, consistent growth.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_03: That is that is sending the right signals.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's something people can rely on.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_03: I feel every day I'm come to work confident that hey, my job's going to be there.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_03: If if it's not there, it's because I've done something, it's not because the company's disappeared or or got problems.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_03: And that's something I've always admired and has given me comfort in my role at MDC, is you having the right people to manage the dollars and cents while you work on the business, and we work in the business and and do our job.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_03: And how how did you grow into that balance?
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_03: Because you never owned a business until you started MDC.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_03: This is the only business you've owned and the majority of your adult working life.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_03: Where's where's that knowledge or understanding come from?
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_01: Two things.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_01: First thing, I've always been a lucky guy.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone hears me say it all the time.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, second thing, most important thing I do is import is to employ people smarter than myself.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if there's something that I'm not an expert in or I don't quite understand.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Understand or I don't want to do, like I don't want to count the numbers.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: I leave that to the CFO, right?
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_01: He can look at those things.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: I want to do the fun stuff.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_01: I want to get out there, you know, build new products with James, use the products with Banksy, you know, go on trips with yourself.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I want to do all that fun stuff now.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I don't have to do all those long hours, and I don't work as hard as I used to.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we have a good team and we're set up for success.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so if I fell off the pedestal tomorrow, we would still run.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_03: There would.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_03: There'd be succession.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's succession built in.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_03: And and people dedicated to wanting it to continue and and continue growing.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I do remember I've been around long enough to remember your 16-hour days and getting up in the middle of the night and all the rest of the people who get emails at 2 a.m.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I I I found that you always listen.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_04: So when I got my second van, this was before the anniversary vans.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, um, I come to you and said, um, and I only just bumped into you at the showroom and I said, I want lithium.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_04: And you went, Oh, we don't do lithium.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_04: And he goes, Leave it with me.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_04: And then That's probably where that conversation with James started.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_04: Everything starts with bank systems.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_04: And then all of a sudden I had a van um equipped with lithium before the even the anniversary models come out.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um still performs faultlessly.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um and it wasn't uh for you, it wasn't no, I'll just get it.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_04: And I said I got a price, oh, it'll be around that.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, and then you just got it done.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_04: And even with other ideas I've come to you with you you've just gone, oh yeah, that's good, I'll I'll send that off and it's all happened.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_03: It is.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_03: And look, I I don't know of uh a CEO anywhere in any industry that has the level of engagement with both staff and and the buyers, the customers.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_03: And and it works, it's great.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_03: I think you've probably got more people like you than like me now.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's not possible.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, dunno.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_03: So tell us about opportunities because we're growing, we're always looking for people.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_03: I know we're looking for uh you know a few gifted people at the moment.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_03: People should get on seek if they want to change m work for a company that lives the lifestyle of the industry they're in.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, or if you're an industry and you know you're pretty good at what you do and you're looking for something else, um, you know, send myself or James a message on LinkedIn.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_01: Quite often conversations start there.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's it.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_03: So if you don't feel appreciated, if you think you've got more to offer than what you're being allowed to do, check us out on Seek or send us a message, make contact, and we'd be glad to talk to you.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_03: So, anything else, gentlemen?
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_03: I think that we've pretty much covered the MDC story.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_03: There's some few dark corners we won't enter that you know, with the nights on the Canadian clubs and things like that of the past, but uh there's stuff that's stuff we share around.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_04: I did go past the warehouse one day and there was a couple in there.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that was back in the day, that was Oz RV.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_01: We actually bought um Mazda sprints, weren't they?
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_01: No, four Rivecos, actually, I think.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_03: And LDV things, weren't they?
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there was a little LDV we built.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_03: And um that still gets out and around.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_03: I've seen that.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: We had to turn them off because James said he wouldn't come otherwise.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_03: That's fair enough.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's it.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_03: I've really enjoyed this one.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_03: It was great to relive and explore the history of MDC and how we became who we are today.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_03: And thank you for watching.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_03: And get on our YouTube channel if you own an MDC or you're thinking about buying an MDC, have a look at our content on setting up, packing up everything you need to know about your MDC camper or caravan is on our YouTube channel.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_03: You'll find owner manuals on our website, and they do date back.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_03: So if you've got an older one, everything we have is on our website in terms of owner manual.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_03: So check it out, get educated on your product.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_03: And if you've got any questions, remember we have a hotline for technical advice, and the owner groups are one of the greatest resources of knowledge about the product.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_03: So thanks for watching, and we'll look forward to seeing you on our next podcast.