The business started with a lot of hopes and dreams, but basically no customers. Tony states “Just so that everyone knows, starting a business from nothing is WAY more work than you would ever imagine (but if you knew then what you know now, you’d never do it either – so Ignorance is a bliss sometimes). The ball got rolling and it took a little time, but we welcomed our first customer and still work with this customer to this day. The first couple of years we were building up some steam and making progress until the bottom fell out of the economy toward the end of 2006 which lasted a couple of years. During that time period it was a challenge, but we got through it somehow!!!”
During 2008-2009 Ai2 Products came along and the whole Kubota BX product line began. Tony sort of fell into the Kubota BX product line more my accident that anything. A friend of his had a Kubota BX2350 and wanted a set of forks for it made and this friend knew Tony had built stuff for John Deere tractors on and off but nothing for Kubota. Tony and his brother Andy sat down to figure out what to do with that BX. Good thing Tony’s brother Andy was a designer and knew how to model things up. Andy went to work and designed up the very first pallet forks for the Kubota BX. They were just designed to pin directly to the loader and there wasn’t any sort of quick attach of any kind on the market for the Kubota BX. So they looked into it further and asked if they should come up with a quick attach as well. Andy quickly went to work and came up a with a design that was a little more tricky to get dialed in but was accomplished. Although Tony figured he would never build another one of these things again, he and his future wife Angela made a video showing the whole system and put it on Youtube. It was free to do and didn’t think anyone would care or even watch the thing. Well, that became a very popular video and he began to sell many sets of these things and decided that he needed to start a product side to the business, which became Ai2 Products. Ai2 Products stands for is Ashwill industries 2.
Ai2 Products was started along with Ashwill Industries, but only as a side thing for the most part since it only had the quick attach and pallet forks nothing else. Slowly other accessories started to get worked on and the product line started to grow. Tony was trying to do the Job Shop work with Ashwill Industries so in about 2010 a deal was put together with Jari USA out of (at that time) Mankato, MN. They would take over production and marketing of the of the current product line and Tony would continue working on coming up with new products to add. The deal wasn’t very successful so AI2 Products cut ties with Jari and was out of the Kubota BX products for about 4 years. Due to contractual agreements he could not produce anything for the Kubota BX. Around 2012 Jari USA was sold to another gentleman and Tony was able to retain the rights to his Kubota BX product line back. (So for those of you that knew about Jari USA you now know what the connection was with Tony and Ai2 Products. One of those lessons learned deals.)
