Keeping track of things is difficult, especially where there are a lot of them and they all look the same. Never is this problem more acute than a construction supply chain. Drawing on experience in the US Marines, the team at BitRip have come up with an innovative solution for how to track and add key information to a potentially unlimited number of items. By creating a tape that, when cut at any length, creates "stickers" that act as QR codes, they give items a unique tag that they then connect to backend databases, available from any smart phone. CEO Nick Dimitruk and co-founder Catherine Chapman walk us through what they've built.
Check out Bitrip here: https://www.bitrip.com/
Follow Nick here
Follow Catherine here
Email Catherine here: catherine@bitrip.com
Hugh Seaton: Welcome to Constructive Futures. I'm Hugh Seaton. Today I'm here with Nick Dimitruk, CEO and co-founder Catherine Chapman, co-founder and VP of Sales of BitRip. Folks, welcome to the podcast.
Nicholas Dimitruk: Thanks, Hugh. It's great to be here.
Catherine Chapman: Thank you, Hugh.
Hugh Seaton: So let's start with what BitRip is, but before you do, I have to say that Nick and I spoke a while ago. I feel like it was a year ago, but who knows? And I was so intrigued by how smart this solution is, where you're taking what can often be a really hard problem and kind of dumbing down the local part, the onsite part. And I don't want to say dumbing down and be, you know, kind of negative, but, but really making it hyper simple.
And then in the back end, there's all this exciting analytics and other intelligence. I'd love for you to talk about what the product does.
Nicholas Dimitruk: That's exactly the sort of introduction that I want because my background as a United States Marine, We always valued the most simple, straightforward technology that got the job done.
So I take no offense by someone saying that our technology is extremely, for lack of a better term, streamlined or dumbed down to do exactly what you need it to do. My biggest nightmare is to have a very, very complicated enterprise level software where I only really used about a 10th of it. And so being a dumb down. Super streamlined software is, is a perfect way. It's a perfect description of how I want Bit Rep to be.
Hugh Seaton: And what specifically is it?
So now we've described it as simple and easy to use, but what is it?
Nicholas Dimitruk: So the best way I can describe BitRip is a democratized barcode. Basically taking this, the barcodes that you see on your Amazon delivery packages or the QR code. You see acting as a restaurant menu, taking that concept and building it into a very simple tool that you could use just like you would use a hammer or a wrench, something you could throw into your toolkit, and it perform a very simple function, and that function is to seamlessly connect anything digital to anything physical right then and there. So essentially it's what we've been called as a, either a democratized barcode or some people call us QR code 2.0. And so the idea came when I was in the Marine Corps, having to track a lot of stuff a lot of equipment, a lot of tools, a lot of materials.
And there never seemed to be anything out there that could fit the bill of exactly what I needed in a very, very simple fashion.
Hugh Seaton: That makes sense. And how did you solve that problem?
Nicholas Dimitruk: So the problem that we thought was out there was the fact that, I guess the most close cousin to BitRip out there would be a QR code.
And we did see that there was a lot of interest in a lot of different in. To employ QR code. But the issue that we found was how difficult it was to set up that kind of system and how difficult it was to maintain that system. And so right now, for instance, the way QR code works, it's essentially a pattern that the phone scans and translates to text.
And most commonly, it's used to be a shortcut to a web address like you see on a menu in a. And the issue is, is to create a QR code, you have to first build the digital content that's going to go on it or the digital address. You then have to translate that address into a QR code. You've got to organize them onto a piece of paper.
Make sure you put titles underneath the QR code so you know which QR code goes where. You've got to print them all off, cut them, laminate them, take a whole stack of labels, leave the office. Go out into the physical world and make those linkages happen manually. And then what's often in the construction industry or any kind of dynamic or dirty environment, those QR codes either get damaged, fall off or go missing.
And when that happens, you have to go back to the office and conduct all those steps again, the configuration to printing, the cutting, the laminating. And so the idea of QR code connecting digital to physical, it's fantastic. The concept is very, very good. But what Catherine and I figured out was the delivery mechanism was completely wrong.
All those steps in order to create a digital to physical connection could be reversed very slightly and undergo very subtle changes to make it way more practical to do. And so what we did was instead of creating a unique code, That is hardwired to one address. We created a unique code that isn't programmed to anything unless you tell it to go somewhere.
And we also pre-printed this code on a rugged roll of tape so that you could have hundreds and hundreds of these unique codes that are wrapped in a thing that fits in the palm of your hand. And so with those two subtle changes to QR code, Making it fluid and turning into tape. We figured out how to cut those steps by an inordinate amount of time, like 90%.
So now instead of having to preconfigure print, cut laminate, and then travel from office to field, you simply take a roll tape, you rip it, you stick it to whatever you. Scan over it and then you just link it right there. You could link it to a web address, you could leave a voice memo on it. Photographs PDF documents, safety data, data sheets, you name it.
You can take cloud-based information and link it to the code right there without any of those previous steps. If that code goes missing, you just rip a new piece of tape, find whatever it is in your, in the cloud and relink it right then and there. So essentially what we've done is we've made that digital to physical connection way more streamlined, way more easy to use.
And originally we had targeted to the military, given my background as we started building out this product and putting it in customer's hands and getting feedback. We very quickly went or got pulled into the direction of construction who had been playing around with QR codes, but never had really taken the dive dove to the deep end using QR on a day to day basis and said, you know what?
This tool is just the tool. We need to connect a lot of digital with the physical world that we live in.
Hugh Seaton: So if I can play that back you've got, you know, Fred walking down the street or walking on the job site, he's got to roll a tape with him and he needs to be able to register that pillar or that item, whatever the item is.
Let's say it's a bag of concrete. All he's got to do is, is rip a couple inches of this off, pop it on the, on the bag of concrete, and now he can pull up his app and train the app basically to recognize that and connect it to something, whatever else he wants, whether it's inventory numbers or whatever else.
But as simple as that, he's taken his duct tape. It isn't really duct tape, it's BitRip tape, but it acts like, looks like duct tape with cool pictures. He zips it off, you know, and pops it on, trains the system that, that's the thing. I mean, when I say bag of concrete, is that right?
Nicholas Dimitruk: Exactly. as soon as they scan that tape, yeah. Essentially they've created a Dropbox of, of information and they can just drop anything in there. And now anytime anyone scans over that piece of tape, they get access to that Dropbox if they have the permissions. And so really it's, it's kind of Dropbox built for the physical world. There's a couple other things that it does too, obviously, because we all carry a smartphone around us, which is the, the greatest piece of equipment that you could ever have on your person because it does so many things when you scan it, it automatically does things in, in the background.
So a great example of this is when that individual scans that bag of concrete. That sticker absorbs the GPS location instantaneously from that phone. And so now you have a sticker that essentially tracks its GPS position every time it gets scanned.
Hugh Seaton: That's really interesting how you're linking what is, again, there's no intelligence on that tape. But it's, it's tying that asset to a record. So that, and it's, it's, the record is getting updated every time it gets pinged to say, I'm here, where am I? Oh, okay. Save where I am to my record for me. So you've really abstracted away all of the intelligence away from what is in the dirty, messy, often doesn't have wifi field, is that right?
Nicholas Dimitruk: Exactly. And that was the key is a lot of these, we want to keep it as simple as possible. So all really BitRip is. Physical perspective is it's a forever, continuously changing unique code, and that's it. It's just a unique pattern. It looks the same. A lot of people say, Hey, the code doesn't change, but it actually does.
Every inch of every role is a one of a kind pattern, and all it is is a fingerprint between you and the cloud and that physical object.
Hugh Seaton: This is so cool. I mean, again, I thought it was cool when you told me about it, a bunch of months ago.
So Katherine, how do you find customers are using this and when you're out there selling this, you know, what value are they, you know what I mean?
Like what itch is this scratching?
Catherine Chapman: Yeah, absolutely. Hugh, that's a great question and it's something that Nicholas and I have. We've, it's a benefit that you can use. BitRip in so many ways, but it's also been a challenge because we really have to focus on where the most value can be for, for customers.
So there's a couple areas that I'll kind of talk about. The first one is one that we discovered through interactions with our clients and all of the features that we've built on the BitRip app have been based upon feedback. So we're huge on that. But the first way is, is really pretty simple.
It's just a material tracking system. So we find a lot of subcontractors have lots of assets and materials that they are responsible for both before they get to the job site. And then once they're on the job site, and just like you were talking about tracking a, a bag of concrete, we start to add some color to that tracking process.
So one of our, our customers who is an electrical contractor helping to build the the Tesla Giga factory in Austin. They started using BitRip for material tracking. Anything that came onto the job site that they were responsible for, got a piece of BitRip on it. When you scanned the piece of BitRip, it gave you that GPS location, so it showed you exactly where that material was dropped off and who received it.
And then in addition to that, they took a picture of it. So they would know exactly what the material looked like. That picture also gave them some context onto where on the job site that material was dropped and communicated that across the job site and back in the office. So there was no longer this dispute of, Hey, did the material get dropped off?
Who received it? Where is it? Which before BitRip, there were hours spent and thousands upon thousands of dollars spent trying to figure out where this material was and if it was missing, having to send more material. So it was really costly. For this electrical contractor, Alman Electric. And we're really seeing that start to grow across subcontracts that, that just have so much material.
So huge cost savings and time savings there when you're not wanting your labor to be walking around a lay down yard looking for material. So that's kind of one of the first ways. And then I think the second way is, Is in safety and, and BitRip is not limited to these two. But we do see a lot of safety managers kind of drawn to BitRip because they have so much documentation that they're responsible for, whether it's certifications or inspections or reports.
They just have a lot of paperwork that they have to do. And so BitRip is, is sort of simplifying that process. It could start as every employee that goes through safety orientation training. At the beginning of the job, they get a piece of BitRip on their hard hat and all of their certifications, emergency contacts, and even emergent allergies can be loaded onto that tape.
So if OSHA comes to the job site, You have all of that information readily available. It's in a centralized location and you can show osha, Hey, we have a working safety program going on. And then something that we're working on right now and we're really excited about is trying to digitize the daily inspection process.
Whether this is on a piece of machinery or on a harness or some other asset on the job site, we find that a lot of those inspections are still done on a piece of paper. So we're working on building a forms feature into BitRip to try and digitize that process for some of our customers.
Hugh Seaton: How interesting.
You know, you see maintenance and cleaning and various other functions where there are checklists to say, yes, I, I clean the bathroom, I'm taking a bad example. And what you're saying is, is, you know, that's easy when it's one or two things, but when it gets complicated to really know that you've inspected things or you've looked to make sure that they're up to code from a safety standpoint, keeping track of that's got to become really messy.
So that's, that's sort of some of what you're saying. Yeah.
Catherine Chapman: Yeah. Absolutely. Hugh, there's just a, a ton of information and thousands of assets and we're trying to give some better accountability and, and visibility into.
Hugh Seaton: So your first example was a little more on the supply chain side.
How do you find you are integrating into the supply chain at like more deeply? Is it, is it primarily on lay down yards, or are you getting deeper into it where people are using it? From the warehouse or from from, you know, earlier in the, in the supply chain.
Catherine Chapman: Yeah, great question Hugh. So we did start out where we were kind of on the job site, but a big part of material that we track are prefabricated materials.
And so that all starts back at the warehouse. And so we are starting to try and push our process further up the supply chain so that you get more tracking earlier on. And I was just in a conversation this morning with one of our customers and we've been working with the warehouse, but we're now going to start working with the division that builds out all this prefabricated material so that they can, as soon as they get that order for that material, they use a system called Smartsheets, and that order goes through Smartsheets.
Then from Smartsheets, it'll push into BitRip and create a label for that order. And then, Label can be copied onto a piece of BitRip tape, so you immediately get tracking as soon as that material is ready to go. And so just moving back, you're exactly right. It's, it's how far back can we get information so that you can inform the people on the job site better and they can work their schedule based upon the real time activities that are going on in a manufacturing facility.
Hugh Seaton: Yeah, I love that. And again, the simplicity of it is so cool. So guys, what often happens when you get into a process is as human-centric, complex, and kind of long as construction is, you can be surprised by what's important and what's difficult. An example that that a friend of mine gave me once is how hard it is to keep track of doors.
When they're made specifically for parts of the building, but they all look more or less the same. And, and he laughs Cause I've referenced this more than once on podcasts because I just find it so fascinating that something people take for granted. In reality is actually quite complex because you want the doors to fit well and they're, they're, you know, they're professionally fabricated or whatever.
So, you know, he was saying is that we very often are, are we have some extra doors lying around because we weren't sure where they went and we had to make new ones. You hear that kind of thing a lot that. We, we weren't sure where it was and it would've cost more time in man hours than it would to just redo the thing.
Have you been surprised by, by some things that, have shown up?
Nicholas Dimitruk: No. I'm, I'm going to I'm going to completely let Catherine field this question. She laughed several times while you were describing that because this is probably the most universally talked about thing in construction, doors, frames, and hardware.
And our very first pilot we ever did with Bit Rep back in 2020 was with a Turner SBO tracking doors, frames, and hardware. And for some reason, that problem Hugh is like every single general contractor reads off the same script and so we do that day in and day out. That's why Catherine and I laugh because I, I feel like six out of six of the general contractors we've talked to said doors, frames, and hardware.
This could be used to track doors, frames, and hardware. It's the, the number one thing that gets. That is basically the headache for them.
Hugh Seaton: It's got to drive them nuts. Right? It's like, come on, these are doors. Yes. But they all, they all fit just right. Or they're this, or they're, whatever it is.
Nicholas Dimitruk: Different interventions, different safety specs, different locking mechanisms.
It's whether they swing to or fro, there's so many idiosyncrasies behind each door that tracking is an absolute nightmare.
Hugh Seaton: And they're all the same color.
Nicholas Dimitruk: Exactly.
Catherine Chapman: Yeah.
Hugh Seaton: So Catherine, what Nick was suggesting you might have some flavor on that one.
Catherine Chapman: Like Nick said, this was one of our very first use cases and, and gave us a lot of insight into which features we needed to build out.
So there's a self performed division of Turner Construction. And we find that when we're working with a gc, if they have a self performed division, that's one of our favorite places to get started. And they were doing a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, and they were just having a huge problem between understanding how many doors were ready to be installed.
So again, they could, they could plan that schedule for the. And what we did is, is I went down to Atlanta and just started labeling doors with a project manager there. And so we'd label all the doors, we'd put all the hardware in there. And not only did that give visibility to a superintendent trying to understand what he wanted to do the next day. It also allowed them to track progress. So they'd say, okay, we have 10 doors ready to be ready to be delivered, and they're in the warehouse. Let's deliver those 10 doors and then let's swing 'em. And this is just an example. But they would understand. How many doors were ready so they knew what they needed to plan for the next day.
And then they could track their productivity. They could see, okay, we swung 40 doors today and we only swung 10 today. What happened? Why were we not as productive? And it's one of my favorite use cases because I don't look at a door the same way anymore. I, I think about all of the complexities of a door and you know, which kind of way does it swing?
It's a big deal. And so that, that's something that was one of our very first use cases for BitRip and just kind of goes into the material tracking and how important it is to, to understand where your materials are, what's ready, so that you can stay on time in a, in a job.
Hugh Seaton: That's really great. So one of the questions I would immediately ask then is if the tape is durable enough to, you know, survive on a, on a job site, how do you take it off?
So when you think about adhesives, I mean that sounds like a really pedestrian question, but that's probably one of the first things people think is if I going to have that gook on it afterwards, or is it, is it pretty easy to peel off or do you provide a way to get it on and off? That kinda satisfies both.
Nicholas Dimitruk: So we we actually discovered Catherine and I while we built this out, how complex tape adhesive are. You don't really kind of respect it until you start actually manufacturing it and how many different types of tape there are and what different qualities they have to have in order to function.
And so when we first built this tape, being a Marine, the first tape I went to was obviously duct tape. I was like why wouldn't we want to have an intelligent duct tape? The most hardcore. Adhesive possible outdoor can mend a jet and save the world. So it was always duct tape until we started doing these doors, frames and hardware and the potential to do punch listing.
And the first thing people said was, well, I don't want this tape to to rip the drywall down when I take it down, so, Before we even delved into duct tape, we immediately said, this has to be masking tape. Our first product has to be masking tape because we have to be able to cleanly remove the tape when the project's done, especially with drywall.
And so all of this tape technology, Catherine and I, it wasn't our background. And so we actually went to a company called Sure Tape Technologies. Which if you go into any Home Depot, Lowe's or, or Walmart, you'll basically see their tape on every aisle. So it's Duct Tape painters mate t-Rex Tape.
They own all those brands. And so we went to them and said, look, we're in the business of making an intelligent tape. Would you like to help us out? And they gladly did. It was a very innovative idea and they jumped on it. And so they helped us make our very first masking tape. And ever since then, we've kind of gone into lots of different types of SKUs.
We have, you know, obviously the masking tape, we have labels, indoor labels, outdoor labels, plastic tags, and we are building the duct tape that we originally wanted to build. Mm-hmm. . And so what we've, what we discovered is, you know, ideally would've had just. one label for bit rep. But because there are so many different use cases with so many different requirements as to how they hold up in the elements and whether they can be taken down without leaving any residue, we've discovered that we've had to at least expand to Five or six SKUs.
They all do the same, but they just have different capabilities.
Hugh Seaton: That makes sense. So I'm looking on your website and you've got, you know, a tag that people can grab. It's just, it's already there. You've got a roll that people can get you, you call a starter roll, as well as this just in duct tape, wraparound labels.
So you're already there, man. Yeah. Back to back to your marine roots.
Nicholas Dimitruk: Exactly. I'm, and I'm very glad. And soon, so we're actually going through an interesting transition where Sure Tape technologies will be taking over the physical product itself. So we'll be just software focused and they will actually be the real tape experts.
This should have been done many, many years ago. The real tape experts will be taking over the physical product and they'll actually be calling it BR Code.
Hugh Seaton: That's great. Good for you. Abstracting away the hardware is always a good idea for a business if you can get away with it.
Nicholas Dimitruk: Yeah, stick to software for us.
Hugh Seaton: So let's talk a little bit about how people do business with you. So how does somebody start using BitRip usually?
Nicholas Dimitruk: So yeah, the very first thing we do, So, so we do a lot of customer reach out initially because it's a brand new technology and a lot of people don't know we exist, so they don't know that we're there to solve their problem.
But what we like to think about ourselves is we want to be as easy a software to adopt as possible. One thing I mean, I have, I have my own feelings about this, but a lot of the softwares out there require people to really have to kind of jump in the deep end and sign a very expensive contract. They might be able to try it out for free for a little bit, but it gets very expensive very quickly.
Whereas we were very adamant on saying, you know what, let's keep the software, the mobile software free and always free and let's keep it so there's unlimited data, there's no roadblocks. Anyone can pick up a phone download bit rep and get and and join in. And we took all the cost and put it in the actual tape.
And so it's a very easy way for someone to buy a roll of tape, start using it. Invite all their colleagues into the system for free, no barriers to entry, and then just create essentially a, a communication system that is fundamentally linked to the physical world. And so we wanted to make, and, when you use a mobile app, you don't even need an email technically.
You can actually sign in as an anonymous user. So what we tried to do was say, you know what? These subcontractors, they, they have a lot on their mind. The last thing you want to do is have them scratching their head and figuring, trying to figure out why am I spending a bunch of money up front for something that I've yet to discover?
So we wanted to make it so it really the only thing that you needed was to buy a roll tape, and that's it. You're in. And then if you need more tape, you buy more tape, and you have complete fundamental cost control so that you can really sort of validate why you're using the tape each and every day.
Hugh Seaton: That's really cool. So one of the things I noticed on your website also is someone can go to Amazon and buy this and start playing around with it pretty fast. And I love that cause it's almost like sampling, right? I made it so that if someone's curious, they can say, you know what? I'm going to play around with this and use it for my kids' toys for a minute and just see.
That's just really cool for a technology like yours that can be used in so many ways, but is pretty easy to get your head around early.
Nicholas Dimitruk: That's exactly how we've been used in the past. So one of our very first partners was Ram Tool construction supply. So, funny enough, we're a software that gets sold as a hardware which is, puts us in a very unique position because now, you know, some of our partners down the road will be White Cap or, or Ferguson or someone like that.
We're kind of that hardware, software combo. And a lot of these sales reps, they actually buy the tape themselves. They use it for their own use. A very common one is organizing their storage facility by just sticking tape and taking pictures of what's inside the box and being able to track location of a lot of their storage stuff.
The sales reps use it themselves. They figure out all the cool ways to use it, and then they educate themselves and then they pass it on to the customer. And sell it and say, look, this is how I used it. So it, it's almost like the, the tape kind of goes into your personal life as well as into your work life.
It could be, be used for both. But we've had some wild use cases out there. We get some of the, we have a great example of someone had their cows and they had these plastic tags on their cow's ears and they basically attached BitRip to the plastic tags. This was a RAM tool sales rep by the way.
He happened to have a cow farm and he put the BitRip label on that plastic tag on the cow's ear and up and put their shot records. And all the medical data of the cow onto the the plastic label so that anytime they wanted to like, you know, cow came through the gate, they scan over and know that that cow has got all the up to date shots.
So we've been used in, in a lot of different ways. And it's great because Catherine always tries to reach out to them and learn more about, you know, what is that golden use case for our tape, because obviously it's as a connection between digital and physical, it really doesn't have any limitations.
Hugh Seaton: Well, listen guys, I I, I was excited about this when I first heard about it, and I, I still think it's just amazing. So thank you for coming on the podcast and talking about what you guys have built here and, and how you're continuing to make it more and more useful for customers.
How should people reach out to you?
Nicholas Dimitruk: That's a great that's a great question. I think the best way is, is go to the website, but I would. The number one person to reach out to is Catherine. Her email is catherine@BitRip.com. And basically what we like to do is. We're less in a selling phase Hugh and more in a learning phase. We just want to reach out and talk to people and learn and 90% of the time we're just sitting there listening and listening.
And so that's kind of the best way is being able to figure out what your problems are and if there's at all a fit for BitRip to plug in and see if it can and solve that solve that problem. So email is probably the absolute best way.
Hugh Seaton: That sounds great.
Catherine Chapman: Absolutely .
Hugh Seaton: So in the show notes, I will have catherine's email and how to follow you both and obviously the website as well. Well, thank you both for being on the podcast. This has been great.
Nicholas Dimitruk: Thank you. Thank.