Fastenerblog.net

Per a request submitted to the fine people of Emerald Expositions, there will be televisions playing the World Series games at the show’s Welcome Reception on Tuesday night, October 25.

Also worth noting, at Senor Frogs on Wednesday, October 26th there will be no cover charge if you bring your show pass and the Open Bar Package is marked down to $30 (from $35) also if you show your show badge.

Thanks to Susan Hurley and Karalynn Sprouse for going to bat (pun intended) for all us baseball fans attending the Fastener Show.

TS –

Congratulations again on your ten years in the fastener blogging business! Hard to believe, but I have another decade milestone to announce, and that’s the launch of the FCH Sourcing Network. That’s right, Brian and I set out on our predominantly fastener-related journey ten years ago today.

Who would have thought it would take us where it has, much less coincide so closely with the launch of your blog? But it’s true.

We’d been in business together for about eight years, doing web application consulting work, and doing pretty well. We stumbled into a fastener project, thought our approach to presenting fastener data online could bring value to the industry, and the rest is history.

When the website, www.FastenersClearingHouse.com was first launched, it was dedicated to slow moving and odd-lot inventory. The scope quickly widened, and we re-branded it FCH Sourcing Network. Today, over 1.3 million listings from distributors across North America are available through FCH, and the network is accessed by over 12 hundred unique users every business day. We’ve gotten to know so many great people as a result of our business, and it’s become our main focus.

Again, who would have thunk it?

As I considered all of this and looked back at the News page on our website, I went all the way back to 2007 where there is a story that appeared in Link Magazine. It describes our vision at the time, and it’s encouraging to see how far we’ve come since then, and how much of our vision has come true.

You can see the story here:

http://www.fastenersclearinghouse.com/fch/main.nsf/link_fch_story.pdf?OpenFileResource

Many of your readers are frequent users, and network members. To them, Brian and I offer our great thanks and appreciation.

Like you, we feel grateful for the friends we’ve made and the experiences we’ve had as a result of our work in the fastener industry during the past ten years. We also look forward to the next stage of development of FCH. We have lots of big plans for the network, and we hope they make a positive impact on this industry that we’ve come to call home.

All the best to you and your readers,

Brian & Eric

FCH Sourcing Network

Today is the 10th anniversary of this blog site.  I should have prepared some kind of great historical post reminiscing about how things have changed over the last 10 years.  I should probably be dropping names (Andy Pels, Eric Dudas, Daniel, Rivalin, Mike McGuire) of people who supported my early efforts on this site, but I didn’t really prepare that either.  And I do not have a list of all the names of companies that were in the fastener business 10 year ago that no longer are in business today – but all those ideas did cross my mind.  No, instead I spent Sunday working in a booth at the Do-It-Best show with Ross Shepard and I got home late last night.  I did make one really good contact which I will write about soon, but otherwise I just got home and checked on my fantasy football team and went to bed.  However, today has been a productive day.  I finally delivered a good number of Hall of Fame bricks to the IFI building where Rob Harris has agreed to ship them out to the people or family members of several past HOF inductees.  Thank you Rob for doing that.

And thanks to anyone who has read this blog over the last 10 years.  Originally, I thought it might be a site where people respond and interact, but that has never really developed.  For the most part, I write something and nobody says anything much.  But I got past that several years ago and all is good.  On the other hand, I regularly get contacted by people from throughout the fastener industry who read the blog and seem to mostly enjoy it.

One request I have on this anniversary (if you have read this far) is please respond to this post with the city, state or country where you are located.      You don’t even have to use your real name.  Make one up or use your real name.  The day I post I get a lot of hits but then over the next week I see more and more people reading. Over the course of a week, the post gets read by quite a few people, depending upon the topic.   So, do me that small favor and feed my curiosity and let me know how far this reaches by posting your location.  And again, thanks for reading.

TS

I just read on Twitter…”Houston Wire & Cable Acquires Vertex Distribution”.  This was reported by Global Fastener News.  Funny, that’s how I hear big news these days…through Twitter.  Seems like a good time to post the following piece about communications within the fastener industry.

Next Monday will mark the 10 year anniversary of Fastenerblog.com.  I dug up the first post and it is shown below.  I’ve got to laugh as the first line discusses industry consolidation…and I just wrote about that two posts ago!  Either I’m just recycling old material or things haven’t changed all that much.  But they have.  More on that next time.  And, on a side note, I can no longer claim I have ANY kids under 20.  And, what happened to “My Space”?

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Fastener Industry Future

We have all seen consolidations, companies close their doors. We’ve seen an influx of fasteners from China and India and many other countries. We have seen online ordering, we see high tech warehousing all across the country. But…..where do we go to discuss the evolution of our industry with other people from our industry?? Welcome to Fastenerblog!

I’m not sure what this site can accomplish. Perhaps distributors across the country can discuss sources for products both domestic and overseas. Maybe someone moving across the country can do some job searching on the site. Maybe a company can discover some marketing insights by linking up with other bloggers. All I know is I have kids under the age of 20 and they all have blogs and “My Space” pages and “Face Book” accounts and I thought….why not us? The bolts and nuts people.

So, welcome the Fastenerblog. Please leave a note and let’s see where we go from here!

posted by Traveling Salesman @ 8:20 PM