How trial and error shaped The Catch-All

By Jenny Yu. 

Co-founders Heath Hicks and Eric McIntosh share how some failures can fuel innovation. 

In this Roofing Road Trips® episode, Karen Edwards spoke with Heath Hicks and Eric Mackintosh, co-founders of The Catch-All, about their company’s journey through experimentation, failure and refinement that eventually led them to success.  

As the Catch-All concept began to take form, Heath and Eric quickly realized that early designs created limitations. “We were a couple months in, and I felt like we were banging our heads against a brick wall trying to figure out how to make this better so it could be used everywhere,” Heath explained. Early versions relied on attaching to gutters or fascia, which varied widely from home to home and created new problems rather than solving them.  

“I wanted my jobs to be better, but I also knew that this could be a business that could help a lot of other people and could also build a business that would be good for our legacy as well,” Eric recalled. “I've always had this odd belief that I can do whatever I want to do, and I think Heath had it too.”  

The breakthrough came when they shifted their thinking away from attachment points entirely. “I think it was Eric’s idea to use the poles to lean it up against the house so that it didn't have to attach to the house at all,” Heath stated. That change in design allowed The Catch-All to work across nearly any structure and roofing style. 

Continuing to go back to the drawing board and collaborating on ideas, building off past mistakes led to their ultimate breakthrough. Eric recalled the mindset he had throughout the process. “We already figured out several ways that don’t work, so let’s keep trying and maybe we’ll find out a way that does work,” Eric remembered. “If we just try long enough, eventually we're going to get it right.” 

“We were just trying to build a system that worked,” Heath added. “We got so much energy from all that iteration, trying and failing and trying and failing and little improvement after a little improvement. It didn't even matter if the world knew or if it was going to make money or not. We knew we were making something better through all those rounds of process.” 

This mindset reflects the founders’ passion for uncharted territory. “I really like doing things that haven't been done before. That's a lot more exciting to me,” Heath expressed. “I like the path where there’s nobody to follow, nothing to emulate. You're making it up as you go along. That to me is particularly exciting — that blue ocean where there's nobody else out there.” 

"Our relationship was built on that [innovative mindset],” Eric recalled. “Back in college, we would invent a lot of crazy games together.” 

Today, those “crazy ideas” continue to fuel innovation, such as a new addition to the Catch-All product line: the LoadRunner, a wheelbarrow lift designed to transform debris removal on jobsites. “We really get energized when we're learning new things,” Heath expressed. “If I had a choice, I would rather learn new things than go back and master old things.” 

Read the first article in this series and Listen to the podcast to learn more about the evolution of The Catch-All.