Focus on Customer’s Needs & Problems and How It Helped Sells Yard Sign Stakes

Our podcast on Delighting Your Customers and how focusing on Customer’s Needs & Problems Helps Sells Yard Sign Stakes is an inspiration discussion about growing a business and surviving the COVID pandemic and supply chain disruptions.

Jon Gainer is the President and owner of Stake World a manufacturer of lawn sign stakes. Most of us would think, what difference could there be in a wire frame that you stick in the ground to hold a sign up. But Jon saw that his customers had needs and problems and how by making products that make them successful helped not only to grow is business but develop long term relationships and many repeat customers.

The podcast talks about how designs and materials were researched and developed because many of his original customers had problems and needed solutions. We also talk about not giving in to using foreign suppliers to try and keep manufacturing costs down and how by sticking to your guns helps retain current customers and win over new customers.

Many Thanks To: Jon Gainer, President and Owner: StakeWorld - https://www.stakeworld.com/

Monetizing TIF

The podcast Monetizing Tax Incremental Financing for Municipalities and Developers not only explains how TIF can be used as a tool to fund and encourage redevelopment in cities but also how it can help with unexpected costs not originally identified in the development agreement the city can use TIFF as a tool to reimburse back the developer some of those additional costs.

What's New

What untamed equity is doing is to come in and monetize those future increment cash flows that we know are coming in as a reimbursement back to the developer. And generally, those are in the form of the reimbursement of property taxes that are paid by the developer. And then we look at the net present value cash flow stream and offer a lump sum loan amount based on a marginal of that net present value cash flow stream.

What Monetizing TIF Loans is really doing is adding that additional value to those payments by offering those payments to be reimbursed to the developer up front so we can fund that gap equity. It turns out to be gap equity that comes into the project because at the end of the day, we all want to get that project finished. But there are ways to obviously fund that upfront that we provide rather than having the city do it.

Many Thanks to: Emily Blaylock, President of Untamed Equity

Solving a Supply Chain Problem for Casting

Even before the challenges brough on by supply chain disruptions, Dean and Andrew Sonquist of Plas-Tech Tooling have been working with companies who are converting cast parts and components into machined ones. The current supply chain disruption is more far reaching and causing serious problems for a significant number of manufacturers across the country. Dean explains that they have had several companies recently contact them to see if it was feasible to convert several cast parts into machined parts to fill some orders.

What The Podcast Covers

The podcast explains how the process works and more importantly what factors make the process financially beneficial to a company. There are several considerations one has to look at before making the jump to machined parts over cast parts. Aesthetics, weight, and costs are primary reasons to go or not go with conversions.

What to Ask - How to Work with Your Production Maching Source

The program also explains the type of questions you need to be asking a production machining company to see if the process is the right move as well as the importance of good communications between companies so that the goals, requirements, and concerns are all covered before production begins. The process is fairly quick to set up and some prototypes can be created with a few days which means the conversion can be done relatively quickly. Some buyers are taking the opportunity to make modifications to the parts because changing a machined part is more cost effective than changing the mold for a cast part.

Many Thanks to Dean and Andrew Sonquist | Plas-Tech Tooling | www.plastechtooling.com 

What Advantages Can Zinc offer over Other Metals or Plastics?

Zinc is an element that has certain characteristics that when refined and processed is an excellent choice for making castings and coatings. Zinc offers many benefits that lend themselves to the die casting industry. Zinc is lighter in weight, offers significant reduction in wear and tear to the molds used which extends the life of the casting mold, the material itself is more cost-effective in specific applications as compared to aluminum, plastic, or most cast irons.

Zinc material is categorized by a series of alloys that when used in die casting offer an exceedingly high strength which means thinner Parts can be thinner walls on the castings can be produced. zinc also melts at a lower temperature which makes the liquid form of the metal more vicious and enables it to better fill smaller details with the mold cavity meaning it can go into tighter corners and more details compared to other materials. because zinc melts at a lower temperature it also solidifies at a much faster rate than other metals this helps reduce production time and enables more products to be made in a shorter amount of time than other metals.

Because zinc produces a better net shaped product details like threading can be directly cast into the product and thus reduce secondary operations like machining or even assembly, this helps reduce overall manufacturing costs and production time.

Zinc also offers a longer to life for the molds used in the casting in fact a typical zinc mold can last 10 times longer than an aluminum mold because zinc has fewer abrasive qualities and a lower melting temperature which does less damage to the tooling enabling it to last for a longer life cycle and reduces mold replacement costs.

When to Consider Using Zinc?

The materials used for developing a new product are selected at the design phase. This is where zinc should be considered as the material for use in manufacturing the product.

Zinc is not perfect for all applications, but it is well worth the investigation to see if it can reduce cost or improve quality or reduce the amount of secondary operations in producing a new product. The podcast is an interview with Dave Magner from DECO products (a leading zinc die caster in Iowa) that explains the advantages of zinc die casting in the manufacturing process and the types of products that zinc is best suited for. 

Many Thanks to Dave Magner | Deco Products - https://decoprod.com/

What do Metal Fabricators Do and How to Choose One!

Metal fabrication is the business of producing metal parts, components, and products out of metal. In business and manufacturing it is sometimes better to subcontract part of your work to a company that can more affordably produce the part or product you need. Small businesses may find they made need a shelf, rack, or cart to better run their operations and many find that generic standard products don’t solve their problem.

Enter the contract metal fabricator turning sheet metal into usable products not only requires the right set of tools and equipment but employees skilled and experienced in how to combine various operations and processes into a finished quality product. There are many factors in metal fabrication that most of us are not aware of and don’t realize the impact the create. Good metal fabricators take the time to understand not only the product you need made but how you are going to use it and make recommendations on how to best produce the item.

Some of the processes metal fabricators use include:

• Metal Cutting or Shearing
• Laser Cutting for thinner materials and Plasma Cutting for thicker materials
• Bending (using a brake press) or Stamping (a hydraulic or mechanical press that shapes metal)
• Machining (Typically CNC Machining) which removes material to make the shape or dimension accurate to the print.Painting and Powder Coating provides a protective and attractive finish to the final product.

How to Choose a Good Metal Fabricator!

As John Nelson from NSMC points out in our pod cast, you need to do your homework. Go to their websites, look up reviews on Google, and look at testimonial of clients who use them and contact them. Another key element that shows documented quality is an ISO 9001 2015 certification certificate. These certificates document that the certified company not only has met all the required quality certificates but is continually audited by an independent auditor to ensure their processes, inspections and documentation all meet the certification requirements. It’s a standard that is recognized throughout the industry and demonstrates a high level of commitment in process improvement.

A good metal fabricator should also ask you questions about what you want done, they should be able to provide an estimate and timeline for the work requested and may even offer recommended options or modifications to improve your part or product. Most contract metal fabricators employee a team of estimators who can work out all the details prior to your acceptance of the quote.

A good fabricator will also know when to say, “that’s not something we produce” and be upfront and honest. Great fabricators will understand what you need and offer alternative metal fabricators that may specialize in the process or part you are looking to have made.

Many Thanks to John Nelson, President Nelson Sales & Marketing: https://nsmc-steel-racks.com/index.html