I’m looking forward to the Fastener Fair USA show in Cleveland. It’s pretty much in my backyard so I’m very curious to see how it goes. I can report that almost every distributor I talk with in NE Ohio, and many from MI are attending. Doesn’t hurt that the reception at the end of day one is at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. If you’ve never been there, I think you’ll like it. Lots of cool stuff.
While traveling this week I was catching up on some Fully Threaded Radio episodes. Always great stuff on road trips. Just this morning I was listening to an interview with Charlie Kerr (Cleveland guy!) talking about tariffs. Charlie always has strong thoughts (don’t want to call them opinions) on topics, and the tariffs were do different. When he was asked how the tariffs will play out and how they will affect the fastener industry he acknowledged there is incomplete information and it is nearly impossible to predict what the affects will be. He said predicting how they will affect business would be like picking a perfect bracket in the NCAA tournament (by the way, kudos to John Butler who won the Fastenerblog Tournament Challenge).
Fastener Fair has a lot of different programs including one session talking specifically about the future of the fastener industry. Guessing maybe some of the panel participants might have a thing or two to say about tariffs and countless other unpredictable things going on today. But I got to wondering…what’ll we all be talking about in the aisles of the Fastener Fair show? What are the hot topics right now? Import prices going up? Are they stable yet? Who’s buying who? Just saw where Endries bought out my good friend Terry Delia when they acquired Branam Fastening. Any other acquisition chatter out there? How about personnel changes? Lots of recent changes lately from the very top positions at organizations as well as with purchasing, sourcing, sales people.
Each year as we are gearing up for the Vegas show you can almost anticipate what topics people will be talking about. By that time of year, you’d also have a pretty good idea of how the year had gone and might already be speculating about the next year. This April show might throw us off a bit but I’m sure the aisles will be buzzing. And then we get to hang out at the Rock Hall! No complaints with that. Heard there will be a band playing with some industry ties! Rock & Roll!
I hope you post a review of the show since I won’t have the opportunity to attend. The end user component to this show should be very interesting. I wonder if there will be less talk about import pricing and more information from the end users about anticpated demand. Additionally their concerns about tarrifs may be different than the fastener distributor or importer. They may use more import raw material that will be affected by the tarrifs in their products. I hope this show is different enough that it brings something new to our industry. We don’t need another Vegas Fastener Show, Midwest Fastener Show or any number of regional fastener shows. We could use a show with a different focus.
P.S. I really enjoy your blog. You bring up interesting aspects of our industry. Keep up the good work.
And as Neil Young once sang: “Hey hey my my Rock and Roll will never die.”
It’s better to burn out than it is to rust…..or suffer from hydrogen embrittlement.
Cool Blog lots of good info about fasteners will you be recording the show? I have a small fastener company out in New York https://www.fastenere.com/ what do you think will help grow my online store?
I imagine dropping your store name on social media sites like this is one place to start. I’ll give you a plug just cause you took a minute to write a comment. Recording the show?? That is a job for fullythreaded.com
TS – We’ll be there, of course, and we’ll be doing some recording as we usually do at the shows. FCH is in booth #444, so if your readers want to get in on the show recap episode of the Fully Threaded Radio podcast, that’s where to be.
We’re so pumped for FFUSA that we even built an all-new booth for the occasion.
To anyone promoting an online store in the fastener industry, come and talk to Brian and me at the show and we’d be glad to discuss it with you.
See you there.
Eric
I never knew about fullythreaded.com. It’s actually a very informative website. Thanks.
The podcasts are awesome. And their site is good about telling you who is on each one and the topic so you can even choose the ones of most interest. I try to listen to them all and am often surprised by guests I do not know. Good site, for sure.
I always enjoy your blogs!! Thank you
Thanks