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                                    NCFA Distributor Social and Fastener Summit

On May 14, 2015 the North Coast Fastener Association will hold its 7^th annual Distributor Social at the Crowne Plaza Hotel located in Independence, Ohio.  This year, in addition to the Distributor Social, they are planning to hold an“NCFA Fastener Summit”, with a day full of fastener related events leading up to the Distributor Social in the evening.

10:00 am

ND Industries, a national supplier of patching and adhesive products, will be conducting a plant tour of their newly renovated Twinsburg (Cleveland) facility.  This event will be open to all fastener industry members.

12:00 am

Element Materials Technology will be conducting a “lunch and learn” presentation on “Failure Analysis and Consultancy” to be held at the IFI classroom located about a mile from the Distributor Social location.  This program will be limited to 35 people due to classroom space.

1:30 pm

There will be a gathering of Fastener Association Board Members to exchange programming ideas and to network with other association members.  If you happen to be a board member of any regional or national fastener association, you are invited to join this informal Fastener Association Networking Session!

3:00 pm

The NFDA will share the results of their 2014 Profit Report Benchmarking Study comparing financial and operating characteristics of 30 Fastener Distributors that participated in this study.  Business owners will not want to miss this in depth analysis of the critical profit variables (CPVs) including sales per employee, gross margin percentage, operating expense percentage, inventory turnover and average collection period.

Then, Ryan Kertis, President of the Young Fastener Professionals, will briefly discuss their ongoing survey “How to Attract and Retain Millennial Employees within the Fastener Industry” and explain how members of the industry can support their research efforts.

4:00 pm

Eric Dudas of Fully Threaded Radio will host and moderate a panel discussion titled “Three on Three – Three Unique Perspectives on the Latest Fastener Industry Trends”. This panel discussion will be a fast-paced, lightning round style discussion as three of the fastener industry’s more innovative thinkers share their thoughts on a variety of topics from fasteners to technology to emerging industry challenges and trends.

5:00 pm

7^th Annual NCFA Distributor Social hosted by the NCFA!!

Last year, over 250 people attended this event.

With the additional programming, the NCFA looks forward to attracting even more local and out of town distributor guests this year.  Any company that sells fasteners or related products to distributors should not miss this event.

If you sell to distributors and you do not participate in this event, you need to ask your sales manager why you are missing out on this valuable networking opportunity.  The NCFA appreciates its past support and hopes its sponsors will once again support this event.  Supplier registration forms and additional information can be obtained by contacting the NCFA office or visiting them online at www.NCFAonline.com.   All registration forms will be available in early April.

It is that time of year again.  Time for March Madness.  But this year, I have something absolutely unmatchable to offer to you faithful readers of Fastener Talk.  Due to the tremendous generosity of Brian and Eric at Fully Threaded Radio and Fasteners Clearing House (“the ‘S’ is for scrubber), I am able to offer the following outstanding prizes to the two top bracket winners.

First Prize – a Fully Threaded Radio coffee mug AND a 30 pack of Busch Light beer (cup can be mailed, 30 pack only available for pick up at the Fastener Tech ’15 show in June)

Second Prize – a Fully Threaded Coffee mug

We graciously welcome any other prize contributions any Fastener Talk readers or FTR listeners would wish to make.  Clearly, we already have these outstanding prizes and anything you offer will pale in comparison, but we still welcome all random acts of kindness and generosity.

So, copy and paste the link below.  Click where it says “Bracket Challenge” and when it asks for the bracket name just type in “fastenerblog”.  If you are asked for a password use “fullythreaded” and let this overwhelming flood of basketball fun come crashing down upon you.

http://fastenerblog.mayhem.cbssports.com/e?ttag=BPM15_paste_cbsinv

So, get ready to fill out your bracket Sunday night after the brackets have been set.  You should receive an email with your empty bracket after Sunday evening.

Must admit, I have not searched through all these but when I stumbled upon this list I thought it might be interesting to some of you.

http://www.sellingfearlessly.com/2015/03/11/the-top-50-blogs-at-top-sales-world/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

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.

and Cardinal Fasteners shutting down….the Vegas Show booth layout is going to look a bit different.

And it’s only early March.

I was trying watch LeBron James and Steph Curry as the Cleveland Cavaliers played the Golden State Warriors, when my wife asked me, “what color is this dress”?

“What?”

“What colors do you see in this picture?  What color is the dress?”

“Gold and white.  Why?”

“You see gold and white?  I see blue and….”

So it went.  My wife told me later I that I snapped at her for interrupting the game (and, I might have) but I had no idea why she was asking me about some dress.  Next day, the news, Twitter, Facebook, you name it…they were all talking about the color of some striped dress.  I still don’t get it, really.  But, once I realized how quickly this phenomenon spread, I quickly thought, “Wow, think of the publicity for the company or website that sells this dress???”  Why was this dress thing so popular?

Why was the ice bucket challenge so popular?  I get that it was for a really good cause, but how on earth did that whole thing just take off like wildfire?  There was not anything really fantastic about either the dress or the ice bucket drop, so why did those particular things catch people’s attention?

And then, almost immediately, I thought, “Can you imagine how much it would cost to try to pay for this kind of advertising?”

Somehow I stumbled across an article on the Huffington Post by Andy Campbell regarding the striped dress.  According to this article, this image was originally posted by a 21 year old singer named Caitlin McNeill who was arguing with friends about whether it was gold and white or blue and black.  I read down, and found that the dress is by Roman Originals, and, according to the article, the company DOES know its garment is now famous.  You think this has been good for their business??  I would think so.

These types of stories that go viral can appeal to just about anyone on social media.  Trying to sell products into the industrial marketplace, it would seem much more difficult to capture the attention of a target audience.  But, what if you could come up with a way to get a bunch of people to your website by having a story go viral.  Nucor or Ifastgroupe should have taken pictures of hex cap screws and asked, “what color are the threads?”  Threads look like stripes.  Imagine if a creative distributor came up with and ad or picture that would draw millions of people to their website.  Want to tap into foreign markets?  Don’t hire a consultant, come up with logo that goes viral.

Send me your ideas, I’ll get them posted and let’s see if we can get something to go Fastener Viral.