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I seem to do some of my best thinking while out mowing the lawn.  In July, I had to give the Father’s toast at my daughter’s wedding – the whole speech pretty much came to me while mowing the lawn.  Thank goodness the lawn has continued to grow and I have had to mow it or I’d have nothing to write.

So, this morning, I was thinking about the National Industrial Fastener Show which I usually refer to as the Vegas Show.  And for a lot of us we go year after year after year.  We work in booths, we have a few beers with industry friends, we meet customer for dinner or drinks and we catch up on what’s been going on lately.  We visit post-show receptions and, if we are not too tired, we wander over to the Bourbon Room for a little rock music, drinking and networking.  For certain, the opportunity to get out with customers and suppliers in a more casual setting than has a lot of appeal.  You can relax and sometimes speak more freely than you would in the office or in a “private” email.  Still, everything I just described is probably the same thing people do year after year after year.  In fact, I suspect some of us eat dinner, hang at bars or go gamble with the same exact people each year in Vegas.  I’m guilty of it.  Unless something comes up to interfere, I usually have lunch on Wednesday with a particular customer.  For the two of us, the fastener business is part job and part hobby.  Although slightly pathetic, we love the fastener industry and love talking shop and so we try to set aside some time in Vegas each year just to talk.  It is always time well spent.

While our lunch meeting might seem repetitive, our discussions are not.  My industry friend is constantly analyzing and reinventing his company.  He realizes there are things that his company needs to stop doing and things that they need to do more of and that’s the kind of stuff we enjoy talking about.  Analyzing and planning.  And I have some other industry friends like that.  They are always thinking and reanalyzing their businesses and their company growth is the result of the efforts they put into it.

So, a lot of us will be traveling to the Vegas Show next month.  For some, it will be “the tired old Vegas Show”.  Time to drag out the old tired booth and lay out the tired old literature and see the same people.  I’m often surprised when I encounter people who totally do not look forward to the show.  To some it is the “same old, same old”.  Me..I still feel like I’m an excitable kid.  I have sales calls I want to make before I go to Vegas so that I can build on them once I am out in Vegas.  I have people I want to introduce to other people when I am out there.  I like to think of myself as someone Malcolm Gladwell refers to as a “Connector” (http://gladwell.com/are-you-a-connector).  It’s like a puzzle and we are putting pieces in place to make next year better than last year.

As the year winds down, many of us will be in planning meetings for 2016.  They might be budgeting meetings or sales training or lunch and learns or technical training or whatever.  But companies will be planning and preparing to hopefully make 2016 better than 2015.  So, as you make your plane reservations and book your hotels for Vegas, what do you hope to accomplish while you are out there?  Why are you going out there?  Is it so see old customers?  Is it to find new ones?  Is it to visit existing suppliers or to find new ones?  Do you go to Vegas simply because you would be conspicuous by your absence??  Many companies will gather their employees together for meetings because that is when they are all in one place at the same time.  But, will you produce synergies by having them interacting and brainstorming or will you simply be telling them all the same thing at the same time…just like you could in a memo or email?  What can you do better by having them all in one place, interacting?  Why are you and they going to Vegas?

Certainly, writing all this is just a way of offering you some food for thought.  It’s not like I follow all my own suggestions.  Undoubtedly, some of you will catch me sitting at a slot machine or drinking a beer talking about my fantasy football team.  But I have good intentions of using the Vegas Show to make 2016 better than 2015.

Are you Vegas ready yet?  Next week is October and that is Vegas month.  I’ve made a list of the work days I have left before I leave for the show so I can see exactly how many days I have left to get the things done that I want to get done before the show.  Some people I want to see, some updates I’d like to get before I go to the show.  It is coming fast and furious.

Once again, I expect a lot of people will end up at the Bourbon Room on the Thursday evening after all the hospitality suites close down.  It is quite a competition that happens after the show on Thursday.  Several companies are trying to entice customers to come hang out with their staff, and consequently possibly avoiding other company’s overtures to those same distributors.  Kind of wish they’d all throw their money into a big pile and just have a great big old pool party or something.  STAFDA kind of has that down.  Charge a lot for the show but then throw a reception where everyone comes together.  Instead, fastener people kind of scatter to this party and that party and maybe to a dinner and then maybe head to the Bourbon Room if they have any energy left.

I’d like to come up with an alternative to the Bourbon Room in 2016.  While I like it well enough, the place is really loud, so much so that you can hardly talk.  Also, it is kind of jammed in there.  I still like the idea of a nice pool party.  And while I like classic rock music, we could probably use a change up on the music for a year.  Give it some thought and post some suggestions for 2016.

There have been several articles released recently suggesting that fastener sales have been flat or down recently.  The Fastener Distributor Index has had its lowest numbers in something like a year.  I wrote something similar a month or so ago based upon what I was seeing out on sales calls.  But, sometimes it is hard to generalize about a market because while middle America might be slow, the coasts might be booming because of strong aerospace business.  With some of the articles I have read, they refer to specific companies and their respective results.  Even the FDI is derived based upon the companies that respond and that number can change from month to month.

In my last post I mentioned that I enjoyed the All American Fastener Show because it enabled me to spend some quality time with people I do not get to talk to as much as I might like.  I spent some time with Brian Musker of Fully Threaded Radio and Fasteners Clearing House (FCH).  Brian explained to me that “drill downs” on FCH (the “S” is for scrubber) are down by 15% for the last four months, from May-August.  Brian explained that a “drill down” is when a user finds an item of interest on FCH and then ALSO clicks on the name of the person or company that is listing that particular item.  They are drilling down to see who actually has the item, which suggest they are truly looking for the item to see where they might get it.

I understand from listening to Fully Threaded discussions that there are over a million items listed on Fasteners Clearing House.  The number of users and the number of drill downs are substantial.  I told Brian that I think their tracking of “drill downs” might just be the most accurate indicator of overall commercial activity in the fastener marketplace.  While I think Brian was kind of flattered by my suggestion, he pondered it for a moment and offered, “I think you could be right”.

I’ve suggested before that Brian and Eric (Dudas) should present their drill down information as an indicator of fastener activity on Fully Threaded Radio.  My personal feeling is they have the best data available due to their extensive network of users.  So, the good news is as of the All American Show, Brian said the September numbers looked a little bit stronger.  Just a bit.  But that was early in the month.  Check back later cause those numbers might just be the best thing going.

I just returned from the All American Fastener Show held in Nashville and will report that, although small, the show was terrific.  Really, it was.  Heidi Voltrauer of Volt Plastics does a great job hosting this show and the exhibitors at the show love being there.  What the show lacks in size it makes up in…hmm…let’s call it intimacy.  It boils down to a two or three day event and because it is not a huge show the attendees get a lot of time to spend together.  I know that may sound like an apology for the size of the show, but it should not.  Exhibitors and attendees have time to actually spend time discussing business in a bit more detail. Heidi has a strong core group of exhibitors that support the show and were actively discussing with her where she will hold the next All American Show.  I had never spent time in Nashville till the show and I would be glad to go back and spend more time there again sometime.  But, I’ll just wait and see what Heidi comes up with next.  And, I truly think the show paid for itself which, in the end, is what you hope for from a trade show.

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The tough and ugly streets of the fastener industry always love acquisition rumors.  Kind of like sports junkies look forward to trade deadlines or draft day.  Who’s getting who?  Over the last several years, a few companies have stood out as newsmakers in the mergers and acquisitions area.  You got Brighton Best, Wurth, the Elgin Group, just to name a few.  People are always wondering what those companies are doing next.  Many companies are very direct about their intent to grow, and grow quickly, and acquisitions are often the only way to make that happen.  Quietly we have seen Fastenal gobble up a couple manufacturers including Holokrom and Cardinal Fasteners (via Wurth).  Lindstrom acquired Titan, and there are others.

Last week, one particular acquisition caught my eye…the Berkshire Hathaway acquisition of Precision Castparts.  Certainly, that acquisition involves a lot more companies than just fastener companies.  And, PCC (Precision Castparts) might be a name better known to those in the aerospace industry.  But, just in case you missed this, the sale was for $37.2 billion cash. Yes, billion…in cash!!  Can you imagine the companies you could buy in the fastener industry with $37.2 billion in cash??  Heck, with that kind of money you might be able to get Solution Industries or maybe even the Fully Threaded Radio franchise.

In case you have forgotten, this is not Berkshire Hathaway’s fist dabbling in the fastener industry.  A few years ago they purchased the Marmon Group which netted them Nylok, Pan American Screw and Atlas Bolt & Screw.  With the acquisition of PCC they add AVK Industrial Products, Cherry Aerospace, Avibank, SPS Technologies, SPS – Greer Locknut, Shur-Lok International, and several other aerospace related fastener companies.  Those are some good, longstanding fastener companies.  Lots of history there.  Again, the folks at Berkshire Hathaway (did I mention a guy named Warren Buffet works there) do not seem to be gravitating towards the commodity, imported keg product but rather towards the higher end, engineered parts.  But they have made enough acquisitions to make you realize they know a thing or two about the fastener market and certainly have their eye on us.

Wonder if we could get Warren Buffet to speak at the Vegas Fastener Show?

Mike McGuire kindly copied me on his press release you can read below.  Mike has certainly made an impact on the fastener industry and continues to do so with his work with Jim Bannister on the Vegas Fastener Show and in many other ways.  I’m sure it is hard to let go of some things but good for the industry that succession plans are put in place.  It sounds like he is handing off the AFJ into capable, experienced hands.

American Fastener Journal and Fastener Store acquired

Scottsdale, Arizona; September 1, 2015

Mike McGuire, President of McGuire Fasteners, Inc. announced today that the American Fastener Journal trade magazine and the Fastener Journal Store have been acquired by Tom Massar.   McGuire stated, “I am very pleased that Tom, my sales manager for 25 years, has acquired these properties and will continue their operations in Columbus, Ohio. With 25 years of experience with the AFJ, Tom has hundreds of contacts and the support of numerous advertisers to continue to make the AFJ the leading source of information for fastener professionals.”

Cyndi Daines, well known as the AFJ graphic designer, will continue with the design and layout of the publication. Jennifer Judy will handle the Editorial position and will work to continue to reach the goals the AFJ are known for and that are technical and educational fastener articles, fastener company profiles, economic, imported fasteners and publicly traded fastener stocks reports.

The Fastener Store, known for its wide selection of thread gauges, fastener training posters and fastener reference books will also be headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.

The transition is already taking place and is ahead of schedule. The September/October issue is schedule for mailing in mid-September and will include all the information and registration information for the up-coming National Industrial Fastener and Mill Supply Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada, October 21-23, 2015.