CNC West Oct Nov Web

22 www.CNC-West.com CNC WEST October/November 2018 M atthew Monnig of Spyder Manufactur- ing was born into the landscape business. His family has owned B & M Lawn and Garden Center since the late 70’s. Like everyone with a family business as soon as he was old enough to be useful he was considered an employee. What began as a small lawnmower sales and service shop has flourished over the years to become a preeminent landscape center in the area. They supply tools for the Los Angeles An- gels’ grounds crew and even store the clay for the Halo’s pitching mound. Spyder Manufacturing was opened in the early 90’s as a way for B & M to market their own brand of lawn and garden tools. “We just fell into manufacturing,” tells Matt. “B & M was a distributor, and we would buy and sell different brands of equipment. We would grow a brand and then be cut out by companies selling direct or giving away distributorships to competitors a block away. The best way to avoid this was to market our own brand of equipment. By putting our name on it we had control of where and to whom it was sold. Along with selling product at our own store we set up a network of dealerships to promote and sell our brand.” In the be- ginning they didn’t manufacture, it was more assembly. They would combine a mixture of the best elements of a tool and put them together into a complete product. So XYZ company made the best fiberglass poles, but ABC’s shovel heads were great. So they combined all the neces- sary parts to be what we know as a shovel. Their sticker went on it as the house brand of tools. That changed in 2000 when they purchased an ail- ing lawn mower manufacturing plant. “The company had some very basic manufacturing tools,” details Matt. “The equipment was antiquated but functional, so we did a little retooling and re-r purposing and began sim- ple manufacturing.” Spyder Manufacturing notice that more and more lawn and garden stores were also selling tree climbing equipment. They saw it first hand at their own retail location. “It was a logical progression for us to add tree climbing equipment into our manufactur- ing,” describes Matt. “We couldn’t keep product in stock at our store so we branched out so to speak into that SPYDER MANUFACTURING PIERSON PRO PALLET SYSTEM HELPS TAKE TREE CLIMBING BRAND TO NEW HEIGHTS