John Wolz

” A greater emphasis on training salespeople is needed. At some point a company must share the responsibility for profitability with the sales team and not just the purchasing group. Sometimes selling higher is the answer and not buying cheaper.
” Caution with regards to quality with imported products.
” Continued consolidation in the aerospace and industrial fastener market is expected, and makes a huge gap between the large entities (Alcoa, PCC, Acument) and most other manufacturers.
” Industry needs to expedite adoption of green finish technologies for RoHS compliance.
” Roughest conditions in many years: Price competition, steel increases, recessionary conditions and election year uncertainty
” Stop the imports & also exporting jobs.
” The industry needs a collating point, such as the NFDA, to help bring some consolidation to the industry regarding trade shows, education, training, and a voice in government.
” The landscape for the fastener manufacturer has definitely become a totally global arena. It is very difficult to sell value added services and be successful in product differentiation.
” The proliferation of large publicly-held competitors has made the market for smaller companies extremely unprofitable.
” Total lack of understanding on costs at most distributors.
” We are heading more and more toward big box & import-only distribution, which could seriously affect MRO sales.
” Importers should be paying a substantial percentage of costs such as health, unemployment insurance, workers compensation; so domestic producers have the same costs as the Asian manufacturers.
” We are seeing a big push for cost savings from the “national accounts” even though they seem to be aware that raw material costs are expected to be on the rise. The manufacturing sector has to be prepared to take a stand or the industry might experience a lot of attrition.
” What are we going to do about Fastenal?
” It is still a great industry in which to participate. \ �2008 FastenerNews.com