i had heard about sean davidson through the grapevine and i became more and more curious about his scrap pricing index as i began to dig for more accurate information in the process i got to meet sean and realize his passion for the scrap industry was genuine so i asked him to sit down and tell me the story on this podcast of the davis index enjoy all right guys another international uh a scrap live podcast another guy from canada my second one from canada via zoom my last one was brad rudover from detroit scrap i’m sitting here with sean davis the founder of the davis index and uh i’m excited about this one just because i think there’s a lot that we can talk about so welcome sean good to have you man hey thanks it’s quite funny that you consider canada to be international i know it is kind of like that’s like saying the world series you know and it’s only two countries yeah i know i know i know it is it is kind of uh it is kind of one we we view the canadians uh as kind of part of

us and really mexico for that matter but then again you got people trying to build walls and uh stop international travel so i guess yeah it is what it is fair enough i mean uh yeah so thanks for having me i really appreciate it uh just to clarify i know the thing that the companies call davis index but my surname is actually davidson yeah so you know i actually did i was trying very desperately to ensure that like you know the name’s not in the in the company name but unfortunately right it looks like we we weren’t able to do that but yeah well it’s i mean it’s close enough but it’s it’s it’s a it’s like a cousin right so it’s not yeah it causes a lot of confusion man it sucks but yeah you know well at first take you know on the davis index and i just kind of like to give people a little bit of background i mean um one thing i love about this industry we’re just talking about difference between canada and um the us or whatever we’re on the same continent but as a scrap industry

you know we’re all tied together like whether you’re in europe or you’re in mexico or canada or u.s or india or malaysia um the cool thing about our industry is is while it is a global worldwide industry it is still kind of tight niche um you know you it is still kind of a family deal where it’s people everybody knows everybody or at least most people know most people for the most part and that’s one thing i really like about this industry i mean genuinely it’s why i fell in love with the industry myself you know when i started off about 12 years ago um you know just attending these the small sort of industry meetings you know in in in different cities and obviously going to the big conventions later but you know it was fantastic because you would meet the same people and you know for the most part uh you know people were quite you know were quite willing to chat you know willing to to teach me different things and you know um and it’s just the you know the it’s quite familiar you know like you you make

really good friends you know and and uh and people will take the time out for you you know if like i can pick up the phone anytime i want and say hey listen you know i’m trying to understand what are skulls you know what is this you know and someone you know and people you know everyone’s trying to make money right everyone everyone’s busy at their at their yards and their mills but you know it’s it’s quite a supportive industry people will genuinely take out time to help you you know and that’s fantastic i mean you know the last 12 years i’ve hired many teams and you know how to train many people and obviously you know along that you know alongside that you’re having you know your own teams contact people in the industry and you’re eating into their time right and you’re saying hey listen you know can you help you know whatever brett or michael or you know uh you know this is someone new to the industry you know year end or two years in you know or maybe completely brand new can you teach them aluminum or scrap you

know here’s what we’ve been able to do so far and people do you know and that’s that’s really nice like i i mean i’m sure i miss those meetings you know go with sucks man like it’s that’s the great thing about this whole covert deal i mean there’s a lot of things that suck about don’t get me wrong but yeah one of the things that really sucks about the covid thing is just i mean the israeli conventions and the you know the brs brs and all the conventions that a guy has to miss out on um because one thing about our industry is it is so relationship focused i mean it’s still one of the relationships there’s still that touch feel component of shaking somebody’s hand that you do business with once or twice a year from across the from the globe you know or across the country or whatever you know i think there’s i do i mean because i’m a people person probably a lot like yourself like i do miss that component of being able to go to you know las vegas or wherever they think the next convention was going

to be in uh san diego or la i think la was the national convention for history this year and you know two years in a row now they’ve been canceled so i think 2022 they said back in vegas so across our fingers yeah but like you know more than the big ones i you know i think even the smaller ones right like i mean st louis is quite big obviously consumers died but i’m talking about like like you know mid-atlantic chapter and like you know these these smaller chapter meetings where you have 100 200 people i mean i you know i just relish the fact that you can talk to someone at night have drinks and still talk about the industry right and i mean not necessarily what markets but just in general hey what’s happening you know what’s happening what’s the latest tech out there what’s the latest equipment out there you know like just having general conversations to learn you know because like in our day-to-day uh roles as you know as observers of the market correct we’re always talking prices right but when you’re out of the when

you’re out of these industry meetings you get a chance to learn about the other aspects you know what what environmental regulations suck you know which which which cities or states just don’t understand what we’re doing right as an industry you know uh and and i think that you know though because that really helps get it you know helps one gain a fuller context of the industry we’re in and i miss that i really do you know yeah no i agree 100 there’s there’s there’s a lot more to it than uh than just what are you selling your scrap for right absolutely and i think that’s which is kind of what folds back into indy what you’re your component of the industry right now but like you’re you’re smart enough to realize that there’s a lot more to it than just the price you know and you know when i i said when you and i talked here the other day we sat down and kind of ran through the davis index and you kind of gave us kind of the uh the tour of the the site and the value and what it brings

i mean one of your questions to me which i really genuinely appreciate was you know how do you guys price your scrap to your say dealers or to your you know walk up customers you know just your traditional retail mom and pop customers and we kind of walked you through like how our price sheets go out to our different facilities and you were like hey what if we built you or what if we discussed how we could build you a some sort of component or some sort of uh i don’t know what remember what you call like a nodule or something that you could like plug into your system that would spit you pricing out based off you know whether it was the lme or the comax or whatever and help you with your date with your daily pricing which that’s that’s what i appreciate about you know about you and about the way you’re going about things is you’re not just trying to aggregate some big um some big complex number system and get the biggest players on board you really are trying to figure out how to help you know the mom

and pop operators you know like myself you know yeah i mean well you know i i think like you look i mean you know davis indexed at the end of the day was a marriage of technology and you know and and recycling industry and pricing i mean you know so when i when i left my role at august you know my initial focus two years ago was i just wanted to build tech solutions for the industry uh and then as i started as i started working on it you know a lot of you know how it is it’s all relationship based right so a lot of people like you know from the industry especially on the ferris side we’re like hey you know we’re just tired of paying thousands of dollars to these companies for information that’s you know often inaccurate we can barely use it you know so why don’t you do something for us and i figured you know let me let me have a think about this and i mean you know from that point it took us like a year to launch right like actually you went over that because

it takes time right to build the right technology for sure but for us you know i mean the way i looked at it was access right and i felt look you know you you know no one wants another amm right or another whatever plaster i mean you know you don’t want more of the same right like you know so how do you how do you do things that are different and how do you do things that are better for the industry not so much different like the goal shouldn’t be different should be better you know yeah you want to differentiate your product from the existing products that are out there right but it has to be better right like i mean you know if i’m differentiating it for the sake of differentiating it and here you know here it is and you know i don’t know unicorn colors or whatever like i mean that that’s not differentiation right so you know so i looked at a couple of things you know one is if you look at how publications have traditionally done pricing till date you know how the rest of our uh our

industry does it you know you you have someone calling two or three people they get two or three numbers you know and then they kind of guess the range i mean you know they’ll call it fancy things like oh this is the repeatable level or this is the you know the whatever um representative level right but there’s very little effort actually going into qualifying the data um you know and saying hey listen you know what we actually need the volumes right attached to these uh attach these prices you know we want more information in terms of delivery to uh delivery time you know payment terms things like that because we want to actually you know produce an accurate number you know so what ends up happening is you end up seeing things like you know published like 50 you know a range of 50 cents to 55 cents for zorba i mean that’s absolute nonsense right yeah i mean tell me brett what’s your profit margin what’s your profit like is it one cent two cents per pound you know what yeah you have a 10 variable in the price because i mean yeah

and that’s and this is the published yeah exactly and that’s the published price can you imagine that like it’s just insane you know and this has gone on for too long and you know and and despite the fact that that exists i mean think about i mean you know turnings right so industrial accounts and publications and then you have you know publications you know publishing prices of like fifty dollars and seventy dollars for turnings when the actual market’s like 250 or 300 right i mean you know and yet these publications are every year you know they’ll increase their prices right so hey i’m charging you three thousand dollars this year how do i charge you four thousand dollars next year right yeah so it’s this you know so we are stuck in an industry where you know the the modus operandi is hey can i charge you more to be shittier each year you know like my information is going to be worse on accuracy but please pay me more for it right yeah i mean you know so so that was obviously the first hurdle that we wanted to you know we wanted

to i’ve not heard of but that was the first problem that we wanted to solve right and the second thing was access right i’m tired of seeing you know uh and it’s not just so much about small versus big but i think it’s also like people that are astute when it comes to spending right like if i’m a yacht that it’s not about whether i can afford a thousand dollars right it’s about whether i see value in it correct so you know if brett sitting in you know in the midwest says hey i don’t want to pay four thousand dollars for information or five thousand dollars for information right that’s a business decision it’s not about whether you can afford to or not right it’s what do you find value in it right but at the same time there are there are smaller manufacturers you know smaller stampers for example you know people that make fences and things like that right smaller yards maybe they’re collecting material selling it to a bigger you know a bigger scrapyard in their location you know they’ve never been able or they don’t want to pay 3000 4000

5000 for it right so you know where’s that service for them right i mean as smaller players right like we put in a lot of time and effort i mean we have to work really hard to to you know to make money to to serve our our our teams well right to put money on their tables and their family table away we put in a lot of hard work so why should we be at a disadvantage why should we not have access to the right information right it doesn’t make any sense so so for me it you know the other piece that i want to solve was can everyone access this information right so obviously access means it needs to be affordable right it has to be accurate because we want as many people in the in the industry as possible to be able to afford it and then technology to your point right like hey why am i giving you the information in a pdf or a website like i mean you’re on a phone why why doesn’t the information why isn’t the information delivered on an app right you use it to

do contracts you use it to calculate spreads why don’t you have those tools built for you to be able to use it this is madness how can you be billion dollar companies and not offer these basic services when it comes to delivering the information right so that’s what we’ve done right so we’ve you know we do only indexes we don’t do these stupid guesswork assessments you know our technology allows you to get it on any platform right we can deliver it into your erp software if you want through an api call right we you know and we don’t charge separate you know large license fees for any of this right the whole idea is hey here’s the information go use it make more money make better margins right as an industry that’s what we want to serve and as people make more money as people understand the value and they they say okay it’s going to be xyz amount per user for whatever you know however that works and each each company is different it still comes back down to value like you said can the small to medium-sized businesses afford it and

then just because you can afford it doesn’t mean that you it’s worth using and and there are some of these websites that came out there that are you know very like it’s almost like a you know like the inquirer um yeah like at the grocery store like it’s it’s i mean less and less about the hard numbers and how and the the information you need to run your business and more about just like the latest soap opera in gossip yeah and and to me that was what was for i where i was like okay i need to start finding better information so that when i go to make a sale i know that my numbers i know exactly what it should be i know what the numbers are out there and when when it’s time to negotiate i’ve got a very strong negotiation a position because i know the number and our business is not only about numbers it’s a lot of relationships that we referred to earlier so it’s not necessarily that you’re getting the last drip drop dollar out of the deal as much as you know where the number should be

and that you’re co and the people that you’re doing business with know that you know what it should be then you negotiate and then you find where does the relationship and the consistency and the volume and all those other things become become part of the deal but as long as everybody’s on the same page and everybody’s getting accurate information it takes the guesswork out of it and then it and it trickles back to the relationship like absolutely number but i know the number okay we’re good now let’s talk about volume let’s talk about freight let’s talk about all the stuff that goes right but but brett let me let me just let me just stop you there for one second right you have to remember right that as publications our role is to observe the market and then report it right so we’re bringing transparency to things that have already happened right so like you know for example like when we’re doing the monthly ferris trade we’re talking to mills and and sellers after they’ve traded correct so the number that we publish is is the culmination of that trade correct so we’re not

publishing a number ahead of the trade now unfortunately some publications do that right because you know whatever they’ve said some arbitrary deadline like oh we have to publish on the 10th right but guess what if you’re if you’re trying to publish on the 10th calendar date instead of the 10th business day things like this month happen a bulk of the trade happened over the weekend and on the 11th and 12th so if you publish a number before that you’ve published fiction right just because you set some arbitrary uh you know whatever methodology that doesn’t reflect the industry you know so you know what but for example if you’re in the midwest and just before you go into finalizing your deal right with that bill you want to know what’s happening in the markets around you right like hey what’s what’s influencing the market today right so okay if it’s ferris what did turkey do what are exporting containers doing what you know what’s the ohio valley doing what’s the southeast doing what’s the different market doing right if it’s non-ferrous again you know you want to you want to know what a fas

price is at right so just whatever the you know what you know the other pieces of information that can help you understand uh where you sit right as a buyer as a seller before you go into the negotiation on that specific uh grade is extremely useful right and that’s and that’s the service we look to provide you know so i you know this this this this idea that like some publications want to basically create the price you know of course it doesn’t help when mills do tbd’s right and then expect publications to you know to come out like i’ve never understood that you know i mean it’s okay if a certain percentage of the volume is dvd but if like 95 or 100 of the volume is tv how can a publication come up with a number right because publications are publishing spot prices right so there needs to be spot transactions for it but outside that like and just to kind of speak to one of your points right there is and where i get nervous and it’s and it’s and it’s the same thing with politics right is where i get nervous

is when one player such as one of your big national brokerages or one of your big national steel mills has so much influence and so much power to where they can guide the price ahead of time when there really hasn’t been any sales that’s where i think that there is some um some cause for concern whereas yeah you know i don’t know right like i think probably i’m gonna have a slightly different view brand and you know you can give me as much as you want for this right but i think like you know when i’m looking at it for example like you know and of course we’re neutral observers right so we yeah we we very firmly stand with no bias on any of this right but i think like it’s very important to put yourself in the other person’s shoes right if you were managing the purchase for a big company right uh that’s that’s you know that’s spread across the country or you’re purchasing from multiple locations you’re going to have the ability to do certain things that work to your favor because i will do everything i can as you

know as the as the buyer and you know offer with a large footprint to improve my margin right now you and i both know that it doesn’t always work out i mean i can come and signal here i want the market down 50 and then every dealer can say hey why don’t you go you know sometimes it doesn’t work sometimes right and you know so you know but people love to hear on you know on the big player right like you know when you’re the largest when you’re the largest operator in a specific location for example this happens a lot right then you’re always accused of selling the market but guess what hey if i’m buying 70 of the volume in the city yeah my price is the price i mean you know i i don’t know why we don’t really fight here so here in so here’s my opinion on that and this is why i think it’s important for people to understand what the davis index provides right is this is why you this is why you don’t only read fox news this is why you don’t only read cnn news and

this is why you don’t only you should get your news and your pricing from a few different sources so in my opinion and this is you know if you can afford it if you find value in it yeah you should look at the davis index you should look at the amn you should look at these other publications and say okay and then come up and extrapolate the price on your own just like the news flow you know yeah i mean i would give you a good a good guy would i would say i would look okay i mean brett if you’re putting me on the spot there and saying you know which but i would say hey listen all day long you know plaques argus davis index these are three services that are going to provide you with very accurate information i would definitely not recommend the one that you recommended you know because the other one because like you know if you are if you are consistently for years having to do things like corrections and you know you have your publishing prices that are nowhere close to the actual market i mean

at some point it just has to stop right we as an industry just have to turn around and say you know what that’s it we’re done right like you know and then suddenly you know i don’t want to issue a correction so when the market goes up 40 dollars i publish a price that’s up 50 and then every dealer’s screwed you know and then some months you know i get bad information again and then you know i i actually publish the price lower than the actual market and now the industrials are screwed right like i mean what is this like why do i have to wake up every month and and wait to see hey did i get screwed this month or not right like you know i mean it’s it’s insane so i think that you know any any commodore any commodity for that matter right that is served by the likes of you know the you know applause or davis index or in august those are definitely better services than some of the others that are out there so here so i gotta so i and i agree like then that’s why

we are having this conversation but uh we’ve we’ve been frustrated for uh for a little too long with the way some of that that deal rolls out um because and and i’m speaking just for myself but i think that i mean the way we set up a lot of our industrial customers they are contract contractual their contracts based over a certain period of time with certain indicators on price um that are pulled from various publications right and to unwind that whole thing right when you have as many industrial customers as us or some of these other bigger outfits to be able to kind of make that switch and like to turn that ship it takes a little bit of time oh absolutely i mean honestly it’s going to take a long time right it’s not going to happen overnight and you know i think like also like let me ask you right how many of the industrials that you deal with have a dedicated person for scrap like whose job is only to manage the scrap program none exactly right so so think about it right so there’s a purchasing manager right through no

fault of his or hers right that goes hey you know i have this industrial contract and the person before me has always used ex publications so that’s what i’m going to use right they have no idea they have no idea if the publication price is right or wrong right uh you know many times i mean you know like any industry there are always a few you know bad practices let’s put that you know who will tell them no that’s the actual price even if you know they’re getting paid double in the in the real market you know yeah but i don’t i don’t fault them i don’t think it’s the manufacturers or the industrialists that are uh you know at fault here i think that the you know the if there’s anyone at fault it’s it’s the it’s the information right you know so you know we have to do our best to to uh you know to let the industrial you know i mean one third of our scrap supply in the u.s comes from that manufacturing sector right so it’s you know it’s our job to bring them the awareness that

hey maybe you want to look at a different information source to see you know and maybe it’s our job to help them right move their contracts because they don’t have dedicated people managing this and of course the recyclers also you know obviously the few recycling companies that have benefited right from that fictional pricing they’re not going to support a move to an accurate number right i think but that’s a short-term way of thinking and we’ve said that you know as far as if you if you oh yeah you’re you’re cutting a fat hog because that pricing is incorrect and you’re not correcting it on your own yeah and and i’ve always said that as a company like us we we take a lot of pride in our customer service because we are a customer service business just like you are and that’s why i appreciate it appreciate our when we sat down and had the conversation about hey how can we help you um and so when you when you take that amount of pride in making sure your customers paid correctly then you have to make sure your numbers are right and

i think but you’re doing that right because you care about your customers and that’s how you keep you retain customers and you’re winning those contracts every year right and you’re able to expand but you and i both know that there are at least a few people in every in you know in any industry right not just i’m not you know i’m not sitting here and i’m knocking the medals university i think this is true universally for anything right uh that don’t operate that way right right i know i know scrap companies that have industrial contracts based off their actual sales right you know where like the the the industrials have access to you know their company’s actual sales prices through a portal and then that’s how they’re you know they’re paid for their industrial scrap right so i think most companies get it and some don’t but guess what right the ones that don’t want it are the ones that usually make the loudest noise right uh so you know so we we do have a fight ahead of us you know uh you know there’s no doubt in my mind about it you

know but we’ll fight the good fight right because we want to help the industry get access to better information you know we want everyone to make better margins not just you know recyclers of any size but a furnace of any size right and a manufacturer that’s generating strapper demo jobs right i mean you know so we’re working on technology tools where you know they will be you will be able to hedge any greater scrap not just the one or two that an exchange allows you because we’re working with decentralized exchanges you know things so we’re trying to bring solutions that really help the industry right you know in every aspect that we can serve and maybe tomorrow you come up with another idea and say hey sean you know have you thought about this and that’s something i do have a few i do have a few ideas for you we’re gonna we’re gonna talk we’re gonna talk let’s do it let’s talk now so so like to kind of rewind a little bit um i do want to give i do love to give people just like a little bit of history uh

like how you found your way into the scrap industry and kind of the road that you travel just because i think it lends like a a lot of context to you know what what i feel our podcast is about and that’s our industry and the people that are involved and kind of passionate they are about it oh yeah absolutely fair enough so yeah so you know i uh so i started off in this industry about 12 years ago i was in new york i had exited a start one of my own like i i had a startup that i exited it was sort of like in the uh in a in this it was social marketing back then i mean it was very different but i so i i exited that and you know so i just want you know i was young you know you know well not well i guess young is now you know it’s it’s something that you have to define but yeah you know i was you know uh in my early 30s and i just decided well actually late 20s when i was in new york and i

you know i i just want to live that single life and i said you know um i i’m just going to be in new york a bit longer before i go back to london um so why don’t i get a day job right and i i looked around and you know there was a job open at a m and i interviewed and i and i got it and when i started off there i was doing non-ferrous uh and i very quickly sort of realized right like you know that there was a huge sort of uh industry in in this recycling space that you know truly a lot of the people that weren’t really aware of how large it was you know they were more pandering to finished products rather than the recycling sector and you know i decided that you know i wanted to learn more about it and uh you know within six months i was hooked like you know meeting people i mean i was really really um blessed because when i and because when i started looking at ferris at that time you know i had people like author goldstein

who sadly passed away many years ago you know and and bill smile who’s who’s retired but he’s still you know like who you know who you know who guided me who taught me a lot who you know correct me when i made mistakes you know and i got things wrong because it’s it’s a lot to learn right but on the aluminum side people like rob carrey and you know uh gary stein and you know like just a lot of people that have been in industry a long time you know uh marty warlow you know like just like great people you know um who who took the time to teach me aluminum teach me you know so people on the copper side right like i learned so much and it was fantastic you know because i was able to because i was asking the questions hey why you know why are these prices here why aren’t they here right what do we need to do how does the industry trade you know things like that and you know so we put in a lot of work and then you know on the ferris side you

know as we would as we started publishing corrections you know i received death threats you know people that didn’t like the fact that you know the prices were not going to reflect the actual market you know things like that but you know it was it was a lot of work i mean you know uh it was rigorous it was strenuous extremely stressful when we started making those various changes but i really enjoyed it right like making you had an entrepreneurial yet entrepreneurial background having uh started a been part of another startup right so you kind of but for me it was always yeah it was always about the information right the information needs to be accurate especially if people are using it correct so you know like you know i was the first person to start confirming turkish bug deals you know at that time it was email you know we do it by email and then share the information with the industry right because that’s really important and then of course after that whatsapp started so we started you know whatsapp i mean that was uh that was me you know like today

it’s like oh yeah you know i mean do you know how difficult it was 10 years ago to get someone to confirm a price on emails i was like one of my big questions like how does that conversation go because people were very it’s just guarded about their pricing and yeah and i was i was i was curious like because that that is a i mean that’s an interesting conversation probably a whole nother podcast of how do you start a conversation with somebody and create this level of trust where you’re like hey you just bought 30 50 000 gross ton of hms and bonus and shred mixed and what does that price look like today you know because i need to publish it for people that know and maybe like there’s something i like it’s interesting that you use the word bonus right because that that great again that came from turkey you know like in the us we’ve always called it pns right like uh and now it’s like this is the vernacular is changing a little bit now right but like yeah i mean look the conversations are based on trucks right

like i took me a lot of time i had to meet a lot of companies and a lot of people that ran those programs very frequently for them to build trust in me to to recognize that i was actually trying to do the right thing correct like so i never published rumors and all that work so that would you know that just wasn’t my style you know it was more about hey let me understand the trade right let me see how i can help that was always the drive right i mean then i also i’m traveling did you travel a lot for that i i probably i travel like two or three weeks a month like i was just on the yeah you know a lot you know and and i think that you know so obviously like you know and we’re like davis index is the culmination of that journey right to say hey listen you know what uh we understand the trade i mean i have 55 people now on my team right like you know we have an office in canada in the us and mexico and singapore and india you

know we’re so we’re doing this not just for the u.s but also for canada right suddenly there are accurate prices for canada from mexico you know yeah for india you know for japan like you know germany uk i mean we’re in every market right every major market you know and and it’s built on that trust you know because people know that hey you know do you know that ten years ago i had to like say hey listen can i can i send you an email and can you confirm it because you know i’m trying to talk to as many people as possible and be like i’m not going to talk you know and i had to have these conversations with and some of them were great friends today right but i said man come on i can’t call 500 people in a day but i can send 500 emails right help me out here and this was every month for a year man like it was insane like you know you have to fight the good fight right yeah but today people are still like not finished you send someone a message boom

you have an email back here’s my pricing right uh-huh this definitely wasn’t happening 10 years ago you know so you know well nothing like one thing i’ve like i’ve kind of prided even myself on is telling people is here’s how we’re doing it like the the i lift the veil on the industry like from my standpoint there’s a lot of different ways people do they run their business a lot of different ways but my thing was is the internet has basically taken out all of the gray area and they’ve just basically said here’s what it is here’s what you’re doing so then i and i the reason i the reason i’m so willing to show people how my process and how i do stuff is because i think i’ll win on customer service i think i’ll win on having a long-term view of the industry and where you know i think i’ll win by hiring great people so i don’t as far as how we process copper wire or how we process aluminum turnings i don’t ever have a problem showing somebody what i’m doing because i don’t view that as my

competitive advantage right my advantage is going to be my willingness to go the extra mile for the customer my willing to hire great people and stick with them through nasty downturns in the industry like that’s where i’ve always kind of said and that’s where i like i said even with you i know for a fact how long it takes to build confidence and to build a relationship in a very guarded industry like the recycling industry especially on a scrap site especially when you’re talking about country to country you’re talking about multiple multiple million dollar ship loads of scrap there’s you know a the difference between a dollar a ton on 50 000 tons and that’s 50 000 i mean that’s what some brokers are making you know right so to me that obviously there’s there’s been a lot of trust placed in you yeah over the years by people like goldstein who has passed away you should be a schnitzer guy correct so all the bold cargos for schnitzer because i remember we were partners with schnitzer and i remember them discussing goldstein who they said was like a titan in the industry as

far as his knowledge and his contacts and just what the what he was able to do over the years um so i have a ton of respect for a guy like you only and as much because of what you’re doing today but more because i know how hard it is to get to develop those relationships you know that yeah i mean look to get it credit to to them right like you know look at at that time like let me explain to you that the the the time back then right so at that time the only time bug deals got reported in the u.s was six weeks later when the u.s census data came out and a reporter had to write about the census data that’s when they would make one call to some company and say hey you know what’s the you know what’s the latest price right in the meantime there were cargos being sold every day and they were you know no one was reporting it it was insane you know and it was affecting you have to remember it was absolutely impacting the exporters because you know think

about it right if six weeks if six weeks later i’m publishing a report you know on by the way on volume that is traded six weeks prior right a month and a half prior but i’m recording a price today and that price is higher than the actual market right because the market has since then dropped now suddenly the exporters are faced with this with dealers going them and saying oh well look this is the you know this is what publication said now this is the price we want on the dock but that you know but that wasn’t the case because the market had come off right so you know there was there was definitely an interest on their side to say hey no look you know we do need to have more current information so that you know and so they they understood it right so i mean i owe a lot to the people that helped me and and trust me you know in you know the rapport hasn’t you know the conversations haven’t always been like hey here’s the pattern you’re back or you know uh you know uh here you know

you know take three hours of my time today and learn everything right sometimes they’ve been very testy because you know as we grew and i you know as i was able to talk to more people there was more information coming in and sometimes it’s not the information you want to hear on the other side and sometimes i misunderstood things too right so you know so so but those you know i mean i learned so much from them on the ferris side aluminum side copper side you know lead zinc i mean gosh i mean the the conversations i’ve had on lead batteries electronics recycling right like when especially when those when the two organizations were were embroiled in this massive their first massive spat you know about eight years ago you know so it’s been it’s been a fascinating uh journey you know so far i’m only getting started you know i would just be still young like 10 12 years you’re still young about 50 more years ago right yeah so i was so i was thinking that’s got to be part of i mean your quote-unquote like sales pitch is the more

information you give me you know the more information i can put out there that’s going to help both sides on the negotiating right absolutely by everybody knowing the number going back to what we originally discussed like by everybody knowing the number or roughly then at least it gives us a starting point to negotiate and we’re not just you know where there’s not this big delta of well i think this and you think it’s worth that and there’s no ever way to find that middle ground yeah i mean i think like look you know uh yeah it’s interesting though because you know when you’re when you’re when you’re trading obviously you want to have all the information on your side that benefits you to be able to get that extra dollar and if you’re a buyer you want all the information that allows you to save that extra dollar right i mean it’s it’s quite clear i mean that’s that’s the way it should be as a buyer i should be fighting to buy it for a lower price and as a seller i should be finding a seller for a higher price right uh

you know where publications can help us give you all the accurate information right you know on all the surrounding markets that can help you you know you i mean you’re you’re going to you know translate that into whatever you know whichever way it suits you you know depending on what side of the of the negotiation you’re on right and that’s okay yeah because the fundamental use of publication data is in contracts right so contracts are you know are not involved in that direct transaction right contracts are based on you know what is the publication price and then i have a formula to that right so that’s basically post trade so what we can do as an industry is ensure that you know as much information as much accurate information as possible is available to the the you know the information that goes into those contracts right so that both sides you know people on both sides of that contract are performing well on the contract right so it’s ridiculous that and by the way this isn’t just crap bread it is every most commodities right so borrowing crude oil and nat gas and a

couple of others like electricity in the uk most commodities are priced with someone calling three people and then putting it in a little excel sheet a word document and and then publishing a number i mean that’s insane you know why aren’t the you know like so for example on our site we have we have a few mils and a few large companies you know on the on the on the sell side that understand what we’re trying to do and really support us you know and give us open information like you know hey yours are excellent with the buy program on the sell program where we have a detail hey you know these this was the price you know this was the volume or whatever right and you know through varying degrees of like how much information they’re willing to share but that’s how it should be right hey let me call your back office and just take the sheet from you or you know whichever way you want to share it and we’ll just so we don’t use excel sheets and word documents all that we use an actual software we’ll just feed it

in and let it do its job to normalize everything to a base pack right and then to publish a volume rated average that’s how we do it so what because maybe then you can use it to benchmark how is your how is your buyer doing right or how’s your seller doing right because it’s all actual data there’s you know there’s a company that does a small piece of this on the steel side but only for the mills right so only the puts like only mills can see it not every mill is a member of it and they charge them eighty thousand dollars or a hundred thousand dollars a year for that i mean that’s madness yeah right like i’m like hey man come on i’ll build that whole thing for you for free you know like yeah well i i liken it to like uh everybody’s probably familiar with now like kelly blue book price right for used car right right like you’re if if a 19 or 1999 tahoe is worth five thousand dollars according if it’s in good condition yada yada for uh today according to kelly blue book whatever that number

is it doesn’t mean that somebody’s gonna walk into your dealership and pay you five thousand dollars for the the tahoe if a guy really wants one he really likes that year and he really likes the body style he might give you six or sixty five hundred and if somebody and if the market is flooded with 99 tahoes then it might not realistically even though it’s kelly blue looked at five it might really only be worth four thousand so the index really is just giving you a guideline of where that number could be should be where it has been or it should say it has been it’s not could be it should be we’re never looking ahead you changed my opinion on this it gives you a number where it has already been correct and then then the relationship and the negotiation starts right where it was yesterday or a week ago exactly now you hit the right point right so what matters is like so us as information providers what we need to do where we need to do a better job is ensuring that the information is up to date correct so if

the price changes every day i should have daily price indexes right if the price changes weekly for example spreadsheets weekly then that’s where i should be but but do you know that most information is provided on a weekly or a monthly basis like they won’t do daily because they don’t want to invest in those resources but for us we have ferris like bulk daily containers daily on the non-ferrous side and the ferrous side we’ve invested in those resources because those markets are daily you know so because we’re saying that we’re publishing where the market has been if i’m publishing where the market has been daily because that’s how accurate the market is then that’s something you can use in your trade correct but if i’m doing like you know bug i’m reporting a bulk deal six weeks later i mean what is the point yeah i mean that’s that’s that’s uh that’s old news but especially in today’s meeting where ever yeah today if you’re if you’re a day behind your day behind right like it’s i was telling i was talking to somebody the other day and we were talking about uh

you know it used to be you would sell your ferris scrap once a month that was the price for the whole month and everybody would lock it in it was what it was now you can still do that for most steel mills basically i’m going to sell you a thousand ton at 100 bucks a ton and that’s the price you know you know the contract is filled but anymore you know with shredders and everything else like you know you might get that mid-month two weeks in price is down price is up you know they’re pushing and pulling that number all over the place we’re used to being that’s the shredder doing it right it’s not the mill the mill is still buying on a monthly program 100 yes you know uh columbus tried it right back in the you know a couple of years ago where they tried to buy through the month and then all we you know the the team kind of changed and the company took a different view on how it wanted to so you know so one or two mills have tried but both cargos are still called

an individualized but see but again right so you know because turkey has to import right i mean they don’t have enough domestic scrap supply that’s why they have to import and you know so they’re importing you know through the week correct or booking cargos rather through the week right but like you know the the domestic market in europe the domestic market in the uk the domestic market in canada and the us uh you know uh those are monthly markets they really are right but like mexico is not you know uh asia is not you know so they’re the domestic markets in fact in india we publish daily prices for the domestic market right so there are you know so it does depend by region but um yeah i mean you know i think it works for the mills right like that 30-day uh purchasing in the u.s kind of works for the mill and i guess for the yard too right because you’ve got a 30-day delivery period now right like you can lock in a price and a margin right uh it makes logistics a lot easier correct uh this

brings some stability right to this to the supply chain um you know so i i it’s you know it is a conversation right that has come up with a lot more mills now right so mobiles are talking about is there another way to do this uh but i think we’re probably still a while away from like that changing you know especially in the us to you know mills here buying scrap more often in a month right like i you know exports will always happen there’s always an export price you know and that’s what the shredders by the way respond to mid month right like you know if they start seeing exports rise or exports go up they might change the scale prices correct like especially in the third or fourth week if a mill comes in everyone’s going to screw that mill right because the mill’s short right so i mean you never want to be a mill that’s short in this industry right and you and you’ve got good sales and and then and people recognize that anymore because you know but also like more plentiful information out there than there used to

be i mean you used to have to take a drive you used to have to go for a drive by the steel mill look at their pile and say are they short what do their sales look like anymore it really feels because the information is so free as far as i mean it’s out there and and if you’re and usually if you’re paying for it you’re probably getting a little bit better of information yeah you’re using some choice i mean you know and that’s yeah i mean that sucks doesn’t it i wish that someday we’re able to provide all the basic information that people need for free like genuinely right because i think that you know why should someone have to suffer with bad information just because they can’t afford it you know or they don’t want to pay for it for example right like i think like some of the basic stuff that helps the industry make better decisions like i really hope to be able to deliver that someday right uh that where we can say okay look you know here your chicago prices take it from you know like this is

accurate use it you know go use it we’re not going to charge you for it right because maybe we would have by that point uh found a different way to monetize some other service for example where we’re not charging for pricing we’re charging for something else for example right yeah because you know i mean look at you’ve been on linkedin i mean you’re very active only by the way i have to say brett i appreciate what you do on linkedin i think that you know you are a you know you bring so much positivity i’ve told you this in the past right like you know there are days when i’m struggling and i’m like you know i’m feeling demotivated and i’ll see you post something you know that’s very positive or adam you know adam is another person that’s quite quite active and you know i think the positive messages for our industry are you know i i appreciate them you know i don’t know about i enjoy what i do right i mean when you love what you do like i do i’m not every not everybody’s like 100 365 days a year

like you’re gonna have days you’re just like oh okay i’m good like i’m tired but yeah my days when you’re just pissed off at someone exactly how are you not seeing this man come on your copper copper drops 20 cents in a day and you’re like god damn it i see copper drops what he says in the day affects you different to how it affects us yeah exactly yeah but you know but my thing is i mean when i i love what i do i love who i get to do i mean a week two weeks ago if somebody would have said hey you’re gonna you’re gonna have the opportunity to sit down with sean davidson and discuss you know his index and his his entrepreneurial journey in the scrap industry i would have been like oh okay like i would it is what it is but you know we were able to put this thing together and now i mean now when i see you at izuri we sit down have a beer a drink whatever and we’ll have context we’ll have a relationship that we never would have had if i hadn’t

have done this or reached out to you or vice versa you reached out to me initially and we were able to connect and yep that’s what i i don’t when i think about all the good that comes out of what we do every day not just from the recycling and the green jobs and the sustainability and all the good things that we’re doing as an industry but just relationships is what makes it a positive so you brought up two things that i’m going to address very quickly but right so one is just to go back to the initial one about the conversations on linkedin right like i think that so you know i don’t get a lot of time right like i maybe i get like a couple of minutes each day or sometimes like after five days i’ve been able to go on linkedin but what i try to actively do is i look at the groups that are sharing bad information you know on because like a whole lot a bunch of people that can’t afford these publications right right now they don’t want to pay us 8.99 for example or

they’re not aware of us and we have to do a better job with our marketing you know whatever it is right the point is that you know uh when i see them circulating bad information i actually go into those forums and say hey hang on a second this is the accurate information right this is actually what’s happened you know so we try to do that a little bit you know as in where we spot it and you know linkedin has its own algorithm so you don’t see a lot of these discussions but we do we you know and i’ve told my entire team trying so we saw a lot of bad information going on at big iron last week so we published our entire big iron commentary on uh linkedin with all the prices right because we were like no hang on the market needs to see the actual information right so we are actively trying to help and you know so as you come across one of these photos where you think hey there’s a lot of bad information going on let us know right we’ll put someone on it to share actual

information because we want everyone to do better right like to make to make the right decisions right i mean they’ll choose to make whatever decisions they want but at least use the right information right what you’re doing right now i’ll cut you off real quick what you’re doing is the right way because what you’re doing is you’re bringing people value and but if you bring value which in which is in your case is information our 2ks are different i try and bring people value in our processing and how we do things that way if they can learn something great right you bring people value by saying hey the number you read is like whatever they’re telling you and that gives people context be like i’m telling you it’s because i know like i’m i’m not just guessing where it could be should be like i’m telling you i know the answer this question here’s the answer take it for what it is and that value eventually is what helps you win in the last yeah i mean it’s not just me of course right look i mean i you know when we started this

journey right like i am like i can’t tell you how blessed i feel right like i had the best teachers from the industry teaching me and you know i work with the team that is equally passionate about this right like you talk to anyone on our team anywhere right like wherever they’re located and you’ll see this passion right you know we don’t have people that are just calling in to do their day job right like oh i’ll get three numbers i’ll publish a commentary screw it you know my day is over right you will see that there’s a dedication everyone’s passionately trying to get accurate information right to publish you know the whole drive is accuracy and access and that bleeds so i’m bl i mean i can’t even tell you how grateful i am to the team that i work with right like you know i don’t think i tell them enough you know uh but it’s that team that’s going out there every day and getting that information that we have access to so you know so when we’re posting on linkedin and saying hey hang on you know that’s not me

right i can’t say it’s i it’s the team and my team is actually look at it as i look at it as they as davis index is providing oh yeah fair enough okay yeah you know i just wanted to clarify i mean i have a lot of people that helped me on linkedin and yeah i look at it as like you know united metals you know we’re providing we’re providing value not necessarily like i have some side commentary like my personal opinion on sometimes people agree to disagree and i’m right but i like i think that as a company we’re providing value precisely and just like you i look at it as davis index is providing value to people out there so they know they know what they’re talking about at least they have an accurate representation of the numbers yeah and the thing is that you find that you know like let’s say that we’ve heard something different to what you’ve actually done for example right so like you know you call us and say hey you know uh zerba993 you guys published whatever you know a dollar per pound but i just

sold it a dollar three that’s a conversation that we want to have with you right because we’ll say hey obviously we will never reveal where we got information from you know you know the strict confidentiality there but we will say hey look the dollar that you know that we’ve heard is you know it represents this kind of volume or into this into this board and this delivery or whatever right but you’re 103. where’s that coming from right like what does the delivery look like and whatever so maybe it meets the same spec and then we’ve got an update right and you know we will try to validate that from the buyers side obviously and you know try to gather more data but we’d be the first to go in and then update it right so you know so i think that as long we we definitely you know we gather a lot of like a lot more than i think most of our competitors do you know but we are also very very uh aware of the fact that we’re not getting a hundred percent of the volume right so we know that there

are definitely things that we’re not hearing or we’re not receiving and you know we’re open to that i mean we don’t sit here and and take this view that oh we know everything because we don’t i mean there’s no there’s no way that we could ever you know let’s be very real here you know we can do our best to try and bring as much transparency as possible you know but we’re never going to be you know we’re never going to know every deal that’s never going to happen you know so i got two questions two questions for you and then i’ll let everybody we’ll wrap this up so two questions is when did you uh what year did you start um the davis index so we’ve we’ve we formerly launched about a year ago basically jan 2020. so yeah launch feb 2020 was the official launch actually we launched it history st louis that was our community so do you has it been uh more rewarding challenging what would you talk about the first year of your uh oh yeah it’s been everything right i mean you know meant that it also brought

in the other side right but i look i mean i for me challenges are rewarding so i’ve learned so much right i think the covet challenge really helped me learn you know i had to go and study aspects of our industry that i you know and when i say our industry i mean like you know things like you have to learn the sales and marketing side new technology solutions for how we deliver you know like things like that right which i probably would not have ever known so i’m really grateful to that i mean it’s look i’m not gonna lie it’s been a pain in the ass right like it’s been very very hard you know but you know our customers love us we’re you know every quarter we’re growing rapidly right like you know so what i mean brett you should you know i mean like it kind of like you know kind of like your response to the demo right when people see it they just i mean they’re like holy i can’t believe this exists this is amazing right when they see our platform and the little tools that we’ve built

you know for contracts and for spread calculations and you know like uh like it’s just i love that right that’s why i love giving as many of the demos as i can like joining my sales team for those demos because like that just makes everything worthwhile right it’s like when you’re running a restaurant right it’s a thankless job right your customers are constantly complaining your staff is constantly complaining your windows are constantly screwing you you know like and but when someone eats your food and just says that was awesome like that that that feels great you know that’s for us that’s like you know when people see the dem one you know and they have that response to what we’re doing it’s it’s fantastic um you know yeah i mean we want to work well i think uh one of the things that we discussed uh you know uh during our last conversation and you kind of you kind of mentioned that earlier when you’re talking about linkedin right like you said oh yeah you know yes we’re green and we’re sustainable and you know and then you dismissed and then you went on

right but i think like that’s really important i wish that we as an industry did a better job about talking about what we do to our like to people outside our industry right because this this notion that like like our our cities don’t want us in their neighborhoods you know our our own friends don’t get what we do they just see scrap or something bad or you know like it’s it’s horrible you know and we we need to we need to have better conversations you know and i don’t think we do a good job and i feel like if these social platforms that you know like the people like you and adam and you know are active on if we’re able to find ways to grow it from just talking to our industry to talking to other people you know whether it’s through facebook or twitter just broader platforms like instagram i know that you’re active on instagram you know the point is that you know i think that like when i get new young people in and i i love working with i mean that’s you know that’s a that’s a that’s a

very important uh thing for me you know um is bringing in a lot of young talent it’s the first conversation i have with them i’m like you don’t want to scrap a scrap yard in your backyard but yet you want to be a hipster you want to be you know a millennial that cares about all these things in your work but guess what if you didn’t have a scrap year in university everything would be going to landfill you know now what right you know like just basic things like that because it you know because like i love the fact that youngsters want to have a a connection to what they do i think that’s really awesome right they want if they wanted to mean something right and this is the meaning right like yeah okay fine every day you’ve got to go to the yard you’ve got to go to the mill and it’s a hot you know it’s a hot environment right but uh but look at what it’s doing yeah right like it’s so meaningful and i don’t know what we need to do as an industry to curate maybe we create

content together right that there’s all the ones that are talking about i think you you’re right you just keep talking about all the good stuff you’re doing i mean and i think that’s why staying positive is important as a person as a business whatever it’s the same with your industry i mean that never discount all the good stuff that you’re doing um and it’s it’s a matter of changing the image and changing the uh and just changing the way you just you talk about it i mean i’ve heard a lot of people say like i don’t necessarily want to call it you know scrap it should be like a recyclable or whatever it is which me is i’m not going to do that i’m not going to commit to that but i am going to i am going to commit to discussing the good that we’re doing now i am going to commit to discussing all the positives that the industry brings you know because i think um scrap is what it is everything every there’s a lot every manufacturing facility out there is creating some sort of scrap waste product what you do

with it is the differentiator what do you do with the scrap that’s being created whether it’s plastic or steel or aluminum and the processes that you’re undertaking to produce produce that and reproduce it into a new good is is very important keep it out of the landfill so and people don’t realize how much technology goes into it i mean look at the eddy current system i mean that’s technology i mean you know oh yeah instead of off setup you know the shutter feed uh i you know sorry the senate product i mean that’s you know like the advanced high stand stills and things that are going into like uh you know additives and things but i mean like there’s so much technology and so much cool stuff that goes on in our industry you know so from a technology side we have so much going on on the hardware side right software unfortunately we’ve been way behind and i am personally trying to to change that you know and bring in those solutions um you know but i think also you might that might lead into my last question for you so where so

this is where do you see what are your uh um growth opportunities and where do you see dave davis index going i mean where in a perfect world like where do you where are you trying to get to well okay i can answer the second piece easy look our whole goal is that we want anyone in the recycling industry right that’s at any point in the supply chain any kind of stakeholder to at some point or the other be accessing you know davidson next information right and you know uh so that’s our whole mission right we will make it available to you know so eventually we’ll have services that that you know that offer information to you know peddlers and you know uh car wreckers and things like you know we’ll we’ll go the entire budget but not just in metals we will also be in other commodities you know so because think about it right like you know here’s a little scrap publication right that’s doing indexes not assessments you know so you know we’ve we’ve changed the game on how price publications in general should be structured you know in terms of

the accuracy of prices and how they you know so we will take that to other commodities right so i think like you know from that perspective so we will launch like plastics and paper and you know like all of the stuff that’s related to our industry right but also other commodities like we want people in all countries in all stages of our you know recycling and manufacturing supply chain to have access to good information so in an iu world you know hopefully that’s what we deliver right yeah um and then uh your first piece i think it was related to you said like other products uh outside information yeah i think i it’s it’s you know it’s it’s it’s quite a blank slate isn’t it when you look at like software right for our industry i mean there’s not a whole lot out there so we are definitely looking at a bunch of different things we will collaborate you know we will invest in others you know we you know so we will grow that in whichever direction you know we we can so where we think we’re equipped we have a very large

tech team by the way our own in-house tech team that develops stuff for us but if you know like for example red if you you know if you’re like a wizard at yard operations and you collaborate with someone to come up with a yard erp for example that’s scalable like to load easy to use you know things like that we might invest in that and say okay fine here let’s go and release it to the industry right you know what i mean like not and again not to monetize it but to make it available see there’s the difference right so you know again it’s about access to you know to information and that’s information right like you know so um i mean if you look at how we communicate as an industry right like we communicate via email or whatsapp groups i think that requires uh you know a second look at you know i think there’s a lot and i don’t want to reveal a lot we have a lot in the pipeline i can appreciate that but i guess the biggest thing i want to end on it is that you’re

committed i mean you’re committed and you i mean you have a you have a a great appreciation for it and what goes into it and yeah i was one of the you know i love the industry i don’t want to be anywhere people just like that yeah you’re not a national big publication guy trying to to a get rich quick scheme and i oh god no look we’re definitely the smaller player let’s let’s be very real here you know you know we’re definitely the other dog but also we’re that’s and also like just the way we like look at our business model right because the fact that we have priced uh so low means that our margins are very slim right so we need scale it’s going to be a while before you know uh you know before we you know someone can even accuse us of being big right like you know it’s going to go really long and that’s definitely not our goal right look i you know i came from a very simple background and i live a very simple life you know i definitely don’t have aspirations of you know

big houses and fancy cars like i just couldn’t get two shits about any of that right like for me it’s like hey man i’m passionate about solving problems in our in our industry you know in our recycling industry a couple of the big problems apart from like public facing side right i want to work on policy and help government sometimes you know i mean how ridiculous is it that as an industry we have to fight to say hey we’re essential in some states and some that’s up like it doesn’t make any sense you know so i want to contribute to that side of it right but also like the technology solutions for us and access to information i mean this is my this is these are things that are going to be lifelong obsessions for me yeah and that that’s to me like where i that’s where i want to end and i want people to understand that is that this isn’t a job for you there’s a passion this is this is this is the real deal and if i’m going to ever bet on anybody i’m going to bet on the underdog

thanks man please do you know we could definitely do with the support you know ben i really appreciate this you know this is very kind i know you’re busy man so i just thank you for taking the time out and uh just talking about talking about the scrap business with me man yeah maybe we’ll do another session on public policy and things like that because yeah i’m in maybe get another couple of people on right and just figure out i think what do we do as an industry to address that right to make it to make our industry actually shine in the public light as it should because we do awesome stuff as an industry and people just don’t understand it but they want to be work and hey here’s my tote bag and i recycled my you know yeah i mean yeah you don’t want my facility in your in your neighborhood but you want to sit there and talk like you know like you get what no you know we have and that’s our that’s our fault is industry i don’t think we’ve done enough to you know to bring that awareness

but we but we’re on it we’re gonna work on it now yeah we should we must we must you know and i’m happy to join any effort that does that we have to well thank you sean i appreciate the time man and will stay in touch all right take care