JULY 2017 CORPORATE PROFILE
DiamondBack Truck Covers
Ethan Wendle was a junior and Matt Chverchko a senior
at Penn State when they collaborated on a class
assignment to develop a product and pitch it for
investment.
Their
idea for a high-quality, load-bearing truck cover
has taken them from the classroom to a two-man garage
operation to, 13 years later, a new 38,000-square-foot
plant in Philipsburg, PA.
Wendle
is president and CEO, and Chverchko is chief of
engineering at DiamondBack Truck Covers, maker of
those truck bed covers in addition to loading ramps
and accessories. The company currently employs 45
and grosses more than $6 million a year.
Wendle
attributes their growth (29 percent a year for four
years and counting) to marketing, branding, online
advertising and a 2009 pivot to direct retail sales,
which today account for about 75 percent of DiamondBack’s
revenues.
“By
selling directly to our end user, we cut out the
middlemen and can bring those higher profits back
into the company,” he says. “This allows
us to thrive while paying higher-than-average wages.”
Direct-to-consumer
sales also make local manufacturing feasible.
“Our
products are large and require a ton of variability
for each truck make and model,” explains Wendle.
“This makes importing very difficult unless
the volume is massive. The way we’ve been
able to afford manufacturing locally is that we’ve
completely switched the script by selling direct
to our consumers. We believe this model will play
a major role in successful manufacturing in the
U.S.”
Adherence
to lean manufacturing principles is another factor.
“We’ve
reduced inventory and works-in-progress by almost
70 percent and that has increased our production
capacity significantly,” he adds. “A
focus on continuous improvement and single-piece
flow has been the most impactful."
Currently,
DiamondBack sells covers for less than .2 percent
of new truck sales in America, which means considerable
growth is possible.
“We
believe that we have a long way to grow by staying
focused on improving our core products and streamlining
our operations,” says Wendel. “We plan
on supplementing our offerings with new ‘add
ons,’ but for the most part we will be hyper-focused
on selling the toughest and most secure truck bed
covers on the market.”