1/5/2015 7:49:00 PM
HEADLINES
2014 Quips of the Year

“When they train thoroughbreds, they don’t walk them around the track,” Skip Gallo of Next Level Partners pointed out during a National Fastener Distributors Association discussion on dealing with upwardly mobile, anxious, motivated millennial employees.

“Here’s my brain,” Joe Greenslade of the Industrial Fasteners Institute said as he showed off the IFI’s new 9th edition, 1,214-page Fastener Standards to the Southwestern Fastener Association.

What words do you use to fire an employee? “Here’s your alumni t-shirt,” quipped Pacific-West Fastener Association speaker James Alberson of Top Tier Training & Development.

Jim Derry of Field Fastener Supply and Jim Ruetz of All Integrated Solutions recalled their involvement in the process of buying and selling fastener companies for an NFDA conference session on acquisitions.  At one point during negotiations, Derry noted a difference in time motivation: “I’m looking at my watch. He’s looking at his calendar.”

Ruetz explained why he minimized the role of attorneys in his negotiation process: “You can always tell a lawyer.  You just can’t tell them much.”

Later Derry asked participants what is most important in the deal. “Cash is king,” Robbie Gilchrist piped up.  Gilchrist sold his Capital Fasteners Inc. to Questron Technologies in 1999. By early 2002, Questron declared bankruptcy.

Kirk Zehnder of Earnest Machine Products explained why acquiring a business can be difficult: “It is like asking to buy someone’s child.”

Two Pac-West members each shared very similar stories about a past problem employee.  Then Seattle distributor Rick Peterson of All-West Components & Fasteners – looking quizzical, turned to Seattle distributor Mark Beaty of Beawest Fasteners and asked, “What was her name?” 

“People who can’t do math, can still count dollars,” Carmen Vertullo of CarVer Engineering mused during the Pac-West summer conference.

Panel moderator Andy Cohn of Southern California-based Duncan Bolt, welcomed NFDA members of the “100 Degree Club” at the February 2014 meeting in Palm Springs where the temperature was 89 degrees.  Many distributors coming from the Midwest had been hit by temperatures well below zero and could qualify for membership.   

“When someone starts snoring, we’ll go home,” Dr. Louis Raymond opened his presentation at the National Industrial Fastener & Mill Supply Expo.

Later Raymond commented on various regulations: “Someone always finds a reason why good stuff can’t be used.”

No fastener recycling? The “floating house” temporary structure in the downtown Flint, Michigan, that won an international design contest was torn down using a method to save materials for reuse by Habitat for Humanity. But fasteners didn’t get saved.

“If you had a four by eight sheet of plywood with fasteners on the end, they’ll cut off the fasteners and reuse the sheet. So instead of a four-by-eight you might have a four-by-seven sheet of plywood,” architect Shannon Easter White told MLive.com. “We won’t have the time or manpower to go through and unscrew everything.”