In September, the shed industry gathered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the Shed Builder Expo.
With so many industry insiders in one place, it was the perfect time to talk to representatives from all areas—builders, dealers, haulers, and suppliers—to talk about what’s going on with shed businesses and what the next year might hold.
Five industry representatives sat down with Shed Business Journal for an inside discussion.
Tell the readers a little bit about your company and what you do.
Tyler Mayhan, general manager of Better Barns in Oklahoma: We are located in south-central Oklahoma about 60 miles or so south of Oklahoma City. It’s right on the I-35 corridor a couple hours north of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. We mostly service rural Oklahoma and the south- central part of the state.
We build sheds. We sell carports and weld up metal buildings, the red-iron stuff, along with shipping containers and safe rooms. Basically, anything a rural Oklahoman would need hopefully.
Charles Hutchins, president and CEO of Shed ‘N Carport Pro and Shed Coach in Radcliff, Kentucky: I’ve been fortunate and blessed. I’ve been in the business for 29 years come December.
And when I first started in this business, it was back when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth man, there was no rent to own, very few companies out there building sheds, and over the last 15 years, I’ve seen this industry explode and it’s just amazing what’s been going on.
Sam Byler, president and CEO of Shed Haulers Brotherhood in Williamston, South Carolina: I always like to talk about community, and to me, the Brotherhood is just an example of the shed industry and the community you can create.
Obviously, it was created because of needs, and it was like if we would have something that’s in place instead of always having to do it spur of the moment, and this industry is the best there is when a need is presented, they find a way to do it. We just kind of try to make it where we beat that.
It’s been a lot of fun. It’s hard to believe it’s been going for four years already. When we first presented it, everybody gets excited about it and comes on board. We kind of hit the lull that you always get from something new. Survive that, and now it’s just a community, and it’s a lot more than just haulers.
Matt Cook, vice president of specialty sales for Dairyman’s Supply Company in Kentucky: We’re coming up on our 100-year anniversary.
We’ve been in the wholesale building material business since 1925 and have been in the shed industry probably the last 20.
Mark Walker, president and CEO of Platinum Rental in Cunningham, Kentucky: Platinum Rental is your typical rent-to-own company, meaning a manufacturer builds the building, and when they sell it on the rent-to-own contract, we purchase the contract down. It’s that simple.
How has the past year been for your business?
MAYHAN: Overall, it was pretty tough. Sales were harder to come by than they have been in the past. Significantly harder.
The economy there in south- central Oklahoma, a lot of folks are waiting to make a big purchase like a shed, something that’s several
thousand dollars. Seems like we heard a lot of people this year who came to us wanting to buy, but were waiting, hoping the economy would pick up, interest rates would come down, some things like that.
It’s been not as good as most of the years we’ve had.
HUTCHINS: The past year has been excellent. I’d guess my past 10 or 15 years have been extraordinary.
There’s a lot of talk, when you’re in this business or any business, you hear a lot of talk about the downturn in the economy and things like that. I don’t pay any attention to the economy.
I really don’t, I just do my thing. The economy is mostly in people’s heads.
There are people who will spend the money right now. This is the matter: Do they like you enough to spend money with you? Are you going to do the best job for your customer? Are they seeing that in you? That’s what you have to work on, and that’s what we’re teaching are the skills where you can overcome those “it costs too much, is too expensive” objections.
BYLER: I was in this industry before we had the huge spurt, the growth spurt from COVID and all that. I still say that the reason we had that was because people were at home, they were with their families, they were
in their backyard, and they needed things to do. It was good, but it’s not our average. This year, I feel like I’m more back to 2017, 2018, 2019.
I would like to say that we’re not as busy, but we are because we stay as busy as we want to be. From that, it’s been good. Haulers, as a general rule, are pretty much the same as the industry. Everybody’s doing good. We’re just not near as crazy as we were. It’s pretty much the same way. Steady I think’s the word I would use.
COOK: It’s been steady. We’re up a little bit from last year. Business is a little tougher, little more competitive, but we’re pleased.
WALKER: It’s been a fine year. Platinum is a growing company, flourishing, and this past year has been great. We wondered how it would be.
At the beginning of the year, some of our manufacturers were telling us they had been slower and has been for them, and we hate it for them, for the manufacturer side of it.
Hopefully next year it’ll rebound, but for Platinum, it’s been a great year.
What have you done in the past year that you would say has been successful?
MAYHAN: A lot of times when you have a downturn like this, what you do is you look for ways to make it better. What we’ve done is we have started working some more on our team overall. We’ve tried to do some personal development-type things. We have changed some of our processes.
We have significantly increased the way that we follow up and pursue leads. In the past, we had enough leads. If you had a few of them get by, you could still pay the bills, but we’re far more intentional now with making sure that everybody who walks through the door, we make sure we treat them right. And we make sure we take care of them.
We’ve tried to plug the holes in our own organization where we weren’t living up to our own standards. It’s given us a lot of opportunities to work on some things that we need to do better. Downturns are not fun, but they do a lot of times lead to growth, and so I’m thankful for that.
HUTCHINS: I’ll be honest, getting referrals from my customers. When things are a little bit tight, meaning not as many customers coming to your lot and calling you, I go back and I call my customers and ask for referrals, and that is a surefire way.
Every time, it drums up business for me. So, there are really no excuses to be slow in this business in this day and age.
BYLER: Positives are always the stories that come out of negatives. I love that, and maybe that’s why I always end up getting stuck doing what I do. My family at home, they’re like, when are you going to stop always being involved in all this stuff, and I think it’s literally the success I see come from ashes.
Whenever we have stories, they look like negative stories, you take those and turn them into positives, that’s what it’s all about for me.
Sometimes we create them ourselves. It’s not always a tragedy or an accident or something that creates it. Sometimes it’s stuff that we literally do ourselves, and as a Brotherhood, we even have to walk through that, you know, that guy made some bad decisions. Who am I to say who makes bad decisions? We all make bad decisions. Some of us get away with it. Other times we have to bow down and we grow from it.
I think that’s the highlight to me is to be able to help people in a time of need and be available to turn it from “they can’t see anything in the future” to make it into where they’re excited about the future again, to be able to do that. That might be through helping them with equipment tear down or it might be helping them with wanting to buy their own rig, whoever they were working for.
Those are my success stories this year, the number of company drivers who have gone on their own. Not because they really wanted to but because the people they were working for were going on to something else, and they wanted to keep hauling sheds. To be able to connect the dots, put them in touch with the right people to make it where they could afford to buy their own equipment, they have the work to do, and to go from being that company owner to a business owner.
That’s fun to be able to do that and to be able to walk through and mentor them through that. We’ve got guys in the industry in the Brotherhood that have been at this a long time, and to be able to get their stories and to share that with guys that need that, that’s good. I like that.
COOK: Our sales were up, which is positive. It feels slower because of the frenzy during the pandemic. I mean, business was just chaotic. Everybody was working double-time, and now it’s like calmed down and feels slower, but it’s still steady. We’re just really pleased.
WALKER: We’re a family-owned and -operated business, and so we brought on my brother-in-law. He’s kind of out there, and he’s a lot of fun, and he’s brought a lot of energy to our team.
That’s a very positive thing, and it’s allowed us to grow and meet new people, and it’s been easier on us this year.
Talk about a couple of challenges you faced and how you’ve overcome them in the past year.
MAYHAN: I would say, again, primarily the main thing that we find where we are in our market is that people just simply don’t have enough certainty about the economy to make a purchase the size of the kind of products that we sell. A lot of our sheds are five, six-thousand-dollar purchases. That’s a big purchase.
People don’t just make that lightly, and so we’ve dealt with a lot of uncertainty.
The other thing I would say, maybe to a lesser degree, but we have dealt with oversaturation in some respects, especially on the shed side.
It seems like there’s been some of that where there has been a lot, if you go on Facebook, there are actually some Facebook groups in our area that no longer allow shed sellers to post their sheds in their groups just because that has been so oversaturated. Folks have gone a little overboard.
HUTCHINS: As you know, there are always challenges. Jim Rohn said that we can gauge business in the future by opportunity mixed with difficulty. That’s what the future of our business looks like.
Some of my biggest challenges have been delivery timeframes, things like that. You know, deliveries three or four weeks out, and you have a customer needing one in a week. You try to twist some arms and do what you got to do to get them the building in a week. You just do what you can.
Here’s what you’ve got to understand. You want to try to get all the customers. You’re not going to get them all, though, so do exactly as much as you can for every one of your customers. Go the extra mile, and I think things are going to pay off for you in a big way.
BYLER: First of all, a challenge just means it’s something to overcome. I’m always up for that.
I did a Facebook Live a couple years ago about how we as humans, it seems like we’re either in a valley or we’re climbing a mountain or on top of the mountain. There’s no growth on top of the mountain. That’s where all the beautiful scenery is, but the rivers, the fish, the wildlife, the flowers, where are they? They’re in the valleys. They’re down in the bottom, so to be able to meet people in their valleys and walk them up through that, I guess that’s kind of what I feel like the highlight of it is.
And just to be able to help people, in general, is good.
COOK: Product is readily available. It’s more competitive. Our competitors have plenty of product. Prices are a little tighter. Margins are smaller. That’s probably been the biggest challenge.
WALKER: Platinum was founded in 2008, so we’ve been in this industry for a while. I worked with Derksen for quite a while. I’ve been doing this for some time now. We’ve been the manufacturers, we’ve been the sales reps, sold the buildings, been the dealers, delivered the buildings, and so we’ve faced challenges in this industry for a long time.
Through the years, I’ve watched it grow and change with media and different things and had to adjust to that. The Shed Builder Expo allows people who are new to this industry to learn so much just by the people you talk to.
We’ve overcome our adversities through fire. We had to find ways to figure out how to deal with them, and everybody out there will know what I’m talking about: fraudulent dealers and manufacturers, and they have, too. There are things in this industry that are challenging, but the good thing is, there are great people in this industry, and they will help you overcome your challenges.
What have you noticed going on or trending, overall, in the shed industry?
MAYHAN: First of all, I want to say I love the shed industry. This is a great group of people. I’ve been walking around the floor for a few hours and there are just some amazing people here. I think it’s a great group of people.
I was just visiting a few booths over and he was saying the same thing. It just seems like it’s good people, and I think the values that the people here espouse have created an industry that’s successful because of the character of the people.
When I first started back in ’03, there really wasn’t a quote-unquote industry, at least in our area. There may have been more back East, but in Oklahoma, it wasn’t an industry, per se. There were a few lumberyards that built a junkie shed out of some cull lumber, but that was all there was as far as a shed industry where we were.
There are a lot more suppliers now. Over the past five to 10 years, it seems like there has been an explosion of technology in our industry. Ten years ago, we were selling sheds using a handwritten PDF, and we were kind of ahead of the time for some of the people.
Now, you’ve got the 3D shed builders and the things like that that people are using. They’re just amazing tools. I feel like the industry is growing. I don’t think it is mature, yet, fully, but I feel like it’s still got some growth and so I’m excited about the future.
HUTCHINS: Overall, I’m seeing a trend I don’t like. I keep hearing about all these discounts and things like that. I think when you do that, it’s a race to the bottom, and I’m hearing people talking about it.
I don’t particularly like doing discounts. I think there are ways around it like when you add value to what you’re doing, build value in the mind of the customer, I think you can overcome that “it’s too expensive” objection. You just have to continually add value and get better at what you do.
BYLER: We are overcomers. I almost said survivors, but survivor sounds a little weak, I guess. Overcomers in the fact that we’ve had to create, we’ve had to rebrand, we’ve had to remarket, we’ve had to learn how to sell again.
I talked to Jason Graber with ShedSuite about, for a period there, all you had to know how to do was write orders. Anybody could sell a shed because the people came in and they wanted a shed. Now, we have to go back to marketing it. We have to go back to selling it, and I think for me, overcomers is a good word because it’s still there. You just have to learn how to work it a little better.
COOK: There’s a lot of consolidation going on. The big boys are getting bigger. It’s important to have relationships with those guys. They’re getting stronger.
WALKER: It used to be it was the 10 by 16. Then it was the 10 by 20. Now, it’s tiny homes. And what I see is everybody who wasn’t thinking tiny homes at some point is starting to think, the industry is down, depending on who you are, 15-20-30 percent of your sales.
Now, you’re looking for other ways to have more sales, and more and more people are thinking about tiny homes, and that would have never been thought about just a few years ago for some of these people. You know, a $100,000 building? That’s just where it’s going.
What do you think’s going to happen in the industry in the next year?
MAYHAN: I expect it to be better than it was in 2024 or has been in 2024. I really do. I expect it to be better in ’25.
I think it’s going to be better regardless of which way the election goes. I think a lot of the uncertainty in the air just has to do with people being uncertain about which way the future is going to be and want to see what happens with the election. Whichever way it goes, I think it will put some of that to rest.
The interest rates were cut recently. I expect the economy will probably at least slightly rebound, and I think the shed market will have a significant rebound in ’25. That’s my prediction, for what it’s worth.
HUTCHINS: I think we’re in the midst of a golden age in the shed industry. I think it’s going to keep getting bigger and bigger.
I think more companies are going to pop up. I also think there’s going to be some fat trimmed across the industry. I think there’s a little saturation right now.
For example, my hometown of Campbellsville, Kentucky, I think it has four or five big time dealerships there. That’s a lot for a small town, but they all seem to be thriving. That’s a good thing.
I think we’re going to see a steady increase in business.
BYLER: If I had that answer, I probably wouldn’t have to do what I do. I still think the future is bright.
I ask guys all the time, where are you at compared to a year ago, where are you at compared to five years ago, and sure I hear a lot of guys that say, we’re actually having kind of a bad month right now. But then there’s so many guys that are like, this month is better than last month.
There were actually a couple guys that told me their numbers, like they’re doing better this year than last year. You see some of this, and you’re like, we don’t hear much of that. Most of them would say they’re down this year from last year, but there are guys who I’m sure if we sat down and we asked the guy who’s not doing so good versus the guy who’s doing better, what are they doing?
Look around here. You have so many tools available to you to do anything you want to do. There’s everything here to haul. You want to build? Everything here to build. You want to sell? Rent-to-own. It’s all here. You just have to learn which tools fit you the best and use those tools.
I guess what I’m saying is if you prepare yourself, you get the right tools, you put in the effort, the next year looks pretty good.
COOK: I feel like it’s going to be good. The shed industry seems to be recession-proof. The economy, whatever it’s done, it stays steady, so we’re bullish.
WALKER: I think next year is going to be just fine. It’s hard to say that it’s going to rebound that much. I don’t think it is. COVID spoiled us, we all know that, but we’re going back to normal. And I think this is more like normal.
I think there may be a 5 or 10 percent increase in sales. This is just my thought, but I don’t think we’re going to see a 20 percent increase.
