The Stuttgart fastener show is taking place this week. I have never been to the show but I have heard a lot of people talk about it so I decided to dig in a little and find out a little bit more about it. I went to the Stuttgart Show website and did a little exploring. It was interesting.
If you were to look at the list of exhibitors, heck, you’d think the show was held in a foreign country or something. 🙂 I found only ten exhibitors listed as attending from the U.S. Of those, there were only two fastener suppliers – Alloy & Stainless and Elgin Fastener Group. There were two U.S. based fastener news agencies – Fastener Tech International and Global Fastener News. Several of the other U.S. based firms deal in tooling or inspection including Mectron Engineering, Phillips Screw, R.T.M.Products, Vlier Products and Wrenthan Tool Group. Last but not least, the NFDA is listed as an exhibitor for the show.
A couple familiar names on the list, Brighton Best and Earnest Machine, are represented by their UK branches and they are not registered as U.S. based companies.
I’m sure many other U.S. based companies are sending people over there to either explore the show or to visit or look for suppliers. Our friend Daniel Rivalin from Bazibaza has let us know via Twitter that he will be at the show and has promised to post a few reports. I’m sure John Wolz and Mike McNulty will be providing coverage through their trade magazines and social media sites. It still strikes me that U.S. based suppliers have challenges breaking into the European market or I think you would see more of them exhibiting there. Also, I imagine there are still a few barriers because of our continued use of inch product while I’m guessing just about everything in Europe is metric except maybe replacement parts on old machines.
There are numerous other fastener shows all over the world and I imagine the U.S. based suppliers are about equally involved in those shows. We have our shows like the Vegas Show, Fastener Tech’15, the All American Fastener Show and several regional table tops. Rather than travel overseas, I see more U.S. based suppliers participating in customer specific shows like the Fastenal trade show or those put on by Grainger or Endries. I understand why the customer based shows are popular and valuable but it still seems like it would be interesting to put up a booth in Stuttgart just even for one year. I hope someone attending the Stuttgart show can comment on whether or not there would be value to more U.S. based manufacturers making that trip and setting up a booth in Stuttgart. Maybe that is something the NFDA visitors are exploring and will be able to comment on.
You make some good points. I agree with your assessment of U.S. fastener manufacturers being hindered by using the Imperial measurement system. We are also limited by an adherence to a different group of standards in general, as compared to the rest of the world. In some cases even the fasteners made here to metric dimensions don’t meet foreign standards due to the types of metals we use. The only major industry, which I am aware, that has made a successful transition to the metric standard in the U.S. is the U.S. automotive industry. I think this is one of the key reasons we sell so many cars all over the world.
Our standards associations should come up with a plan to merge our standards, or even replace them with more, common international standards. Joe Greenslade was successful in spearheading the transition of ASME / ASTM metric standards into the ISO standard. Several years past, Salim Brahimi was instrumental in changing the SAE j429 spec to more closely resemble the ISO 898-1 spec after the H&T / Tycoons fiasco of 2008. I thank them both and wish this type of convergence would continue. Further reading : https://www.sfa-fastener.org/plugins/show_image.php?id=289
The Stuttgart fastener show has morphed from being a small show in the Netherlands into the biggest European show. Moving the show from Maastricht made it into a German show and the major development has been the addition of the major German players WASI, Wurth, Reyher, Schafer + Peters and Lederer who use the show for corporate entertainment; beer flows like water.
The down side is that with over 800 booths in four halls it is impossible to get round in three days and many companies come for one day only, adding the USA would exasperate the problem.
The show owners need to look at simplification, maybe all the German companies in two halls, separating sections by country or product type or separating wholesalers from manufacturers or service and machine tool suppliers. When Jerry Ramesdale owed the show you had a fastener man at the helm with Mack Brooks you have a corporate juggernaut with the power to take the show in any direction.
Fastener fair Stuttgart is a truly exceptional show and puts Vegas into the shadows, It will be interesting to see how it works out long term.