VIDEO: TOOLING UP – Industrial Power Cleaning Solutions

Narrator: This video is brought to you by Kimberly-Clark Professional, creating exceptional workspaces. If you're looking for real world insights, tips from leading industry experts, the latest trends in products and technology, you've come to the right place. From MSC Industrial Supply, this is Tooling Up.

TONI NEARY: Hello and thank you for tuning in to Tooling Up. I'm your host, Toni Neary, and we're so happy that you're here with us on the MSC channel. If you're new, make sure to click that subscribe button and like this episode for us as well. I am so excited for today's guest, Kara Walker. She's the product marketing manager at Kimberly-Clark Professional.

Kara, thank you for joining us today.

KARA WALKER: Hi, Toni. Great. So glad to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Really looking forward to today's episode.

TONI NEARY: I know. I think this is going to be a lot of fun. And I have to say, I always love to know, what did your journey look like? Tell us about starting with Kimberly-Clark Professional and what your career there has looked like.

KARA WALKER: Yeah, absolutely. So I've actually been here for a really long time at this point. Maybe what some people would call a long time KCer, which is a little bit different in the millennial world these days, but I was recruited directly out of college to start at Kimberly-Clark as an intern. So I've been here for 12 years, had multiple cross-functional roles within the organization.

Most recently I started in product supply, and then I had the opportunity to move into sales and now on the category management team managing our WypAll brand.

TONI NEARY: I love the fact that you were hired right out of college and you're still a part of the KCP family. I have to ask like, what has kept you there for that long and tell me a little bit about KCP and what it means to you to be an employee there.

KARA WALKER: So there's a lot of things about KC that I've become fond of and come to love, but I think for me it always goes back to the people and the culture. So we play, we work really hard and we also play really hard. So for 12 years here, we've been through a lot of ups and downs, both professionally and personally.

But it means a lot to me that I've been able to grow with the company and within each new role really been able to leverage the skill set that I've built in the previous role, being able to continue on my career journey.

TONI NEARY: Awesome. And I know that we've had Kimberly-Clark on the show before, on Tooling Up, and we talked a lot about PPE and the safety equipment. But today we're going to look at a different side of the business other than that and that's wiping products. Could you tell me a little bit more about some of the wiping products that you offer?

KARA WALKER: Yeah, of course. Our portfolio is actually organized into three separate cleaning solutions, general cleaning, power cleaning and critical cleaning, and we offer a range of effective solutions to help customers identify just the best solution for their specific need by task within each of those portfolios.

TONI NEARY: Now, when I hear power cleaning, I picture myself running around my house like a mad woman doing that quick clean before you have unexpected visitors on their way, but I'd have to imagine that looks a little bit different in the industrial space. Tell us a little bit about your power cleaning solutions.

KARA WALKER: So for us at KC, it's all about productivity. So that ability to increase worker efficiency, the consistency around delivering the same reliable wiper every time, and then the safety for protecting the process integrity of the workers and the WypAll brand is actually the number one disposable wiper in the market. So we've created a lot of brand loyalty around our products.

TONI NEARY: Kara, I think it's important to point out safety is so important in these environments, and I know that we've talked a little bit about keeping workspaces clean and really using rags. So I would love to talk a little bit about the difference and kind of the benefits of not using rags.

KARA WALKER: Okay, great. So we could just start by showing like probably the most utilized tool in these industries, which is rags. So I just want you to know and just show you this, this is a 10 lb. box of rags. So as we dump this out on the table, you can tell we have an assortment of different materials. There's no consistency in any type of these products.

Like, this could easily be some underwear. I see some buttons, some zippers. I mean, we just have all kinds of materials here. And then notice how bulky these are and how much space this takes up. And again, this is just with 10 lbs. of rags. So I want to introduce our X80 jumbo roll. This sku lives within our power clean pillar.

It has three-in-one technology. It is durable, versatile and very absorbing. It's less lint left behind and it wipes up lots of various materials. So, we love to put this up to our competitors of rags simply because one jumbo roll replaces up to 75 lbs. of rags.

TONI NEARY: Wait, did you say 75 lbs.?

KARA WALKER: You heard it. 75 lbs. of rags. So we'll just show you what that looks like.

TONI NEARY: And that's not just using the rags, right? You've got to keep them clean. You've got to launder them. There's probably contamination. Is there any regulation on rags?

KARA WALKER: There's no regulation. And obviously there's costs associated with all of the things that you just mentioned, like laundering. There’s sort of sustainability things like any type of power, electricity, all the things that go along with laundering that are sometimes just hidden costs that people don't recognize.

TONI NEARY: That's amazing. So how strong is the product?

KARA WALKER: Right. So let's do a little demo. So what I want to do first is take two of our wipers and we're going to submerge them and get them completely wet, really saturated. Wring out the excess here.

TONI NEARY: Now, this is normally when a product like this would be weaker, right? When it's wet and it's been maybe used?

KARA WALKER: Correct. While we do have strength with our dry product, we'll see the most performance come out of our wet product. Which to your point, something like a towel, paper towel, would literally just dissolve in your hand. These products are made to be wet and continue to absorb as well. So the first thing I'd like to show is, I have a little assistant here, but we're going to demo just how strength is a key priority for this product.

So we have a little tug of war we’ll do here. So again, completely wet and we'll pull as hard as we can on these and notice that there's no give in this product right now.

Yeah, yeah. We see absolutely no give. So that is a key attribute for us. And then on top of that is the reusability. So again, remember that this towel is completely wet and we will submerge it again and wring it out just so you know, And then what I'm going to do is pour water on this table here and we can show that although fully saturated, this product will continue to absorb and fully pick up our large spill.

And so it's important to know that with the reusability, it's not just for water, although we could absorb water, liquid, oils and grease with this, but also you'll notice that as I absorb everything here, we could absorb multiple different types of surfaces, things like metal parts, metal shavings that come up when we're looking at any type of machine part wiping, or specialty processes within the industrial environment.

TONI NEARY: And for somebody that needs help, I believe you also have a selector tool available.

KARA WALKER: Yes, absolutely. So we have our product organized by task. So in order to help our customers utilize the actual exact right wipe for their task, we have it organized in a way that's very easy to select based on the task and environment that you are looking to clean.

TONI NEARY: Thank you so much for coming and joining us today and doing this amazing demo. It’s so different to see it firsthand than it is to just have the conversation about it. So Kara, thank you so much for joining us today.

KARA WALKER: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me and spotlighting our products.

TONI NEARY: It was so great having Kara on the show today and hearing all about the applications for these KCP wiping products. If you want to make sure that you don't miss any of our other discussions, go ahead and subscribe to our channel and click the like button. If you would like to find more information about Kimberly-Clark Professional and their full line of products, please go to www.mscdirect.com/wypall.

That's W-Y-P-A-L-L. Thanks so much and we'll see you next time.

Narrator: Want more insights and ideas to improve the efficiency and productivity of your operations? Check out the MSC Tooling Up video playlist to hear tips that can take your company to the next level. And subscribe to our channel so you won't miss out.