We grew from 2 people to 9. The shop still runs on KiwiDock.
KiwiDock did not start as a product. It started as the way KiwiMill runs a custom scale model shop in Williamson, New York.
Nine people. Everyone in the software. Twenty-three jobs in flight right now, forty-nine models actually being built. About thirty quotes go out in a typical month, and eight to ten jobs leave the shop. A job is two to four weeks of work, scheduled two to three months ahead so the bench is never a surprise.
That is not a demo tenant. That is Monday.
What we used before
Opportunities lived in email. The work lived on a printed paper traveler. Estimates were Word documents. Accounting was QuickBooks.
It worked when two people could hold the whole shop in their heads. It does not work when nine people need to know which job is whose, what got quoted, and what is due in October.
We built the first version for ourselves
About four years ago we wrote an app just for KiwiMill. This KiwiDock — the one other shops can sign up for — is a rewrite from a couple of months ago. It keeps the workflows that survived contact with real jobs and throws out the ones that did not.
In those four years, revenue is about six times what it was. In five years the shop went from two people to nine. The software is not the only reason. It is a critical piece of the workflow that made that growth possible. We could not have scheduled this many people the way we used to, on a whiteboard.
How the shop is set up
Sales works the pipeline. Engineering and the shop get the jobs. The owner does the billing. Each of those is a role in KiwiDock, with the access that job actually needs — not a generic “user seat.”
When a quote wins, it becomes a project. A project can have more than one deliverable, which is why 23 jobs is 49 models on the bench. Notes stay on the job. The week is on a schedule, not a wall.
“I don’t know how we could have done this on a whiteboard”
Devin Backus, Engineering Manager:
I love the Day Scheduler. It lets me easily and quickly schedule people to jobs. I don’t know how we could have done this with this many people the way we did before, on a whiteboard.
The work itself
KiwiMill builds custom scale models — one project at a time — for trade shows, industry, and defense. The portfolio is public: kiwimill.com. If you want to know whether a shop that talks like this actually ships work, look there.
If you run a shop like this
You do not need a consultant and you do not need to be us. Create a free account, put your first lead or job in, and run it through. We built this because we needed it. We still use it because it holds up.