Episode 30: An Interview With Rhonda Dibachi, CEO, HeyScottie

The past few years have radically changed the supply chain landscape and the way business is conducted. In the midst of this upheaval comes new opportunities for manufacturers who are seeking the right partners. In this installment of On the Line, Products Finishing talks with Rhonda Dibachi, founder and CEO of HeyScottie, a new AI-enabled, cloud-based marketplace for anodizing, powder coating and electroless nickel finishing services.

Stream the full interview.

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Read an excerpt from PF’s interview with Dibachi.

Tell us a bit about HeyScottie — how does this service work?

The way it works is simple. If you have a CAD drawing of something that you want coated, go to the website, share the CAD file, and within a minute, it will give you a price. I will give you a price for powder coating, I will give you a price for electroless nickel coating, and I can give you a price for anodizing. This is automatic pricing — and the goal is to simplify the RFQ (request for coat) process.

The RFQ process in many manufacturing disciplines — in most finishing disciplines — can be a long, drawn-out process. You go back and forth and back and forth. You call and you get a call back. Then you have to talk to your design engineers, and they have to talk to their procurement managers and so forth. Anyone who’s been in finishing knows this to be true.

And what this does is it puts a brake on innovation — it puts a brake on getting stuff done. If you have to get three or four conversations going before you actually even get a price (or even a ballpark price) — that’s going to slow you down. If you can get a ballpark price within the first minute of doing an investigation, you’re going to speed up all of your operations, you’re going to speed up all of your activities.

So HeyScottie is all about speed. I'm trying to make it easier for people to find the finishing services they want — and I want to make it easier for them to buy the finishing services they want.

Does HeyScottie include all finishers across the U.S.?

I want to enable manufacturers across the United States to have access to the finisher of their choice regardless of location. There is very little pricing visibility in finishing right now. It’s not easy to find out how much it costs to plate something like glasses or an aluminum can — it is very, very difficult.

Let me give you an example. If you take a look at minimum lot prices for powder coating, a standard black, glossy color across the United States, the minimum lot prices range from $1 to $875. If you are forced to only go to your local finisher, you obviously have a limited number of people who you can get services from. If, however, you come to HeyScottie, you’ll find access to finishing services from across the United States.

In the U.S., finishing services vary in cost across the different states, largely because some states have different regulations than others. For example, the West Coast is often more expensive than the East Coast or the Midwest. There are certain environmental laws that are going into effect in different states in different times that will make some finishing services a lot more expensive. If you come to HeyScottie, you can find the finishing service you need with a supplier that is as close to you as possible, but still giving you the quality and exactly the service that you want.

How do you think cloud-based solutions are changing the business landscape today?

If you have your product catalog in the cloud, you have the ability to be reached by so many more people than you ever had before. Every transaction, if it is in the cloud is a quicker transaction, than if it's done on paper, or on your own private ERP system. If you’re not in the cloud, you’re not in the 21st century digital marketplace — and you have to get there.

The first thing that you should do, if you haven’t, is to digitize your product catalog and get an online presence. And that will get you to the cloud. If you don’t want the hassle of an online presence, then get on a marketplace — like HeyScottie — so that somebody else has the hassle of putting the cloud stuff in place. But the cloud is number one — if you’re not on the cloud, that means you’re not digital, but you have to be digital in order to transact digitally.