The Traveling Salesman Spends 10 Minutes with…
The fastener industry relies heavily on multi-million dollar manufacturers and master importers that supply the majority of the parts that customers demand. But, just about every fastener distributor I have ever called on, from coast to coast, has some small machine shop or a guy in a garage that does specialty parts or secondary operations that help to support their customer base. Fairly often, a buyer will ask me if I know anyone that does some weird part or secondary. Often, it goes like this – “Yeah, I’ve had a guy who’s done this for me for 20 years and he just told me he is shutting down.” Those secret sources! Those diamonds in the rough that keep our supply chain going.
The following are interviews with a couple of those suppliers that do a lot of work for fastener distributors: Grady Bailey and Ed Schroeder. For me, they are representative of the hundreds of similar suppliers I suspect support our industry from coast to coast.