1130 Lower your Supply Cost with John Shaw, Founder of maxill : Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran

John Shaw is the founder and current General Manager of maxill inc. There are no “C” titles at maxill. John grew up as a kid around farming, dairy, retailing and packaged ice cream operations that his senior family members owned at that time. John accredits this environment of being around and selling packaged consumer goods ( ice cream and dairy products ) via the family’s own retailer network ( Shaw’s Dairy Stores ) since birth, as a natural path to an interest in packaged consumer goods, design, market pricing, satisfaction and supply chain. People always need food and we sold food. John completed high school in 1981 with a Grade 12 and subsequent classes and programs at Hard Knocks University from which he has not yet received his “know it all diploma” despite it being almost 40 years later. John’s employment history is newspaper boy, truck driver, toothbrush sales person and then being his own guy. Being a newspaper boy taught the importance of customer service, cash flow, collections and being on time with no excuses. No matter the weather, the newspaper had better be there on time.  John, the Sparta newspaper baron upsold his customers with Greeting cards, newspaper subscriptions.  John in time was also able to create a newspaper monopoly in the village of 500 by delivering the morning Free Press and the afternoon Times Journal. John’s first sales position post family employment as a truck driver for the dairy business was a 1099 sales person for the M+C Schiffer Company of Germany selling toothbrushes.  Mainly Private label toothbrushes for several retail chains in the early 1980’s. A sales and experience gained hold, the current day maxill inc. was established in 1987 on just 2 items. The 330 and 440 toothbrushes which are still a part of the product lineup today. Building and molding maxill to where it is today exposed John to dealing with near ( but not ) insolvency, penny stock promoters, banks, venture capitalists, angels, private equity, legals, patents, trademarks, employment, foreign ownership, exporting, importing, manufacturing and a list of business skills and acumen too many to list here. John’s full-time job is overseeing privately owned maxill which has revenue in the mid to high 8 digits, has over 150+ employees, operates directly in 3 countries and exports to dozens more. The dental industry, to which John sort of, by rear entrance accident method entered into, has been very good to John and seems impression proof. maxill experiences double digit annual growth and by far, the best is yet to come. John’s favorite lines about maxill and dental are; I have not worked a single day in over 30 years. It does well in good times and does even better during hard times.