Episode #200 - Being There

Fastener journeyman Don “The Amazing” Shan sees growth opportunities in value added strategies (1:39:05). Meanwhile, Brighton-Best and Parker Fasteners have teamed up to provide American made products to the market, as Rosa Hearn and Matt Boyd explain (13:18). Endries International CEO Michael Knight and Fastener Technology International editor Mike McNulty discuss growth in the spring as they reflect on a buoyant new FDI on the Fastener News Report (57:11). On the Fastener Training Minute, Carmen Vertullo examines blind rivet testing (1:31:09). BONUS: Würth Additive CEO AJ Strandquist details an all new digital inventory program, along with a major surprise announcement by the NFDA (41:44). Brian and Eric look back at their first podcast, and agree they’ve enjoyed being here.

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Being There

Introduction

What I think is the bigger macro trend, where if you are selling fasteners where 3D printing plays a bigger role, is in the reduction of overall fasteners. As people are designing A, B, and C components to use 3D printing, because when a part runs out, and you cannot find it, it is nice to have the file backup ready. That is where I see the bigger, if you want to call it a threat, but the bigger thing that is facing fasteners in general with 3D printing is that the whole point is to get rid of connection points.

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Coming to you since March of 2010, this is predominantly fastener-related talk radio. If you are in the fastener game, this is your podcast. Glad to have you aboard. Eric Dudas is with you. I am joined for this episode of the podcast, as always, with the hardest-working man in the online fastener data game, Brian Musker. Brian, are you doing all right?

I am fine. I am sure there is a lot more hard work people and I actually. We do stretch the predominantly, but a little thin in this one.

That is right. In our opening segment, we have got Rosa Hearn from Brighton and Matt Boyd of Parker to help us celebrate episode 200. It has been a long slog. Here we are. You are just back from some travels abroad, this time to Mexico. You spent a little extra time talking about your various adventures, did you not?

Yes, I did. I had a lot of fun. Lynn and I had a lot of fun.

We will launch into that right after our first break. It is a great segment, a great way to open up the episode. Hopefully, we will be publishing this one about May 16th, 2024, as we pack everything up, heading off to the Huntington Convention Center, downtown Cleveland, Ohio, for this year’s Fastener Fair. Looking forward to that, seeing a lot of folks out there.

I am too, because we will get to see and talk to our favorite fastener suppliers or our sponsors.

Just about all of them will be there. We will have several opportunities to talk to them. As usual, we will get a special report out after all that wraps up, and let you all know how it went. On this episode, I think we have done this milestone episode well with a very packed melange of fastener industry info from a cast of characters, as I said, Rosa Hearn and Matt Boyd kick it off for us. In the feature segment, we are joined by future fastener industry Hall of Famer Don “The amazing” Shan. He is in a bit of a reminiscent mood on this one, Bri.

I guess it is an appropriate time for that. He has very unique perspectives on the fastener industry. He is still out there hitting the street every day. Lots to cover on this one. On the Fastener News Report. It is the show within the show. Mike McNulty welcomes Endries International CEO, Michael Knight. They kick around the Fastener distributor index numbers. Pleasant surprise this month. Mike also channels Chauncey Gardner a little bit in this one, Brian. Really?

Yes, as he describes the economic outlook. I will tell you, this one delves a little bit away from purely FDI talk, and they speak about macroeconomic conditions a little bit as well. Michael Knight is very well-versed. It is the show within the show. Warming up the news report this time, we have AJ Strandquist. He is the CEO of the Würth additive group now. They just made a major announcement about a new program that they are offering. He gives some details about that announcement and also shares a big announcement about his father, Mark, that came from the NFDA.

That is AJ Strandquist. On the fastener training minute, Carmen Vertullo asks, what is your angle on blind rivet testing? They had a crazy one come in over at Carver Labs recently. He uses that to enlighten everybody. I could tell this one, Bri, he was digging deep because there is like an IFI page turn at every sentence. You can hear him researching as he is talking.

It is pretty good. Stick around to the end. If you are a fully threaded fan, long time or if you just joined us, we will take a look back at episode one of the podcast. I figured it out, Brian. This is the second episode of our fifteenth year. I guess it is appropriate. We should be entitled, but I put it at the end for just the real hardcore fans.

I am sure they will stick around.

I certainly hope so. I thank them for it. Also, thank our fine list of sponsors who make the podcast possible. Bri, that is your area. Let them rip.

It is. Now, the good thing about the show in Cleveland is that you will get to see most of these people who are our great sponsors. Since they help bring this whole podcast to you, make sure that if you are thinking about Fasteners, you think of them first. Just walk over to the booth. They will be happy to talk to you. They are great people, and we are very glad we have them as sponsors. The title sponsors of Fully Threaded Radio are Brighton-Best International, Goebel Fasteners, and Star Stainless Screw Company.

Brighton-Best International Tested, Tried, and True. Goebel Fasteners Quality the first time. Star Stainless Screw Company. Right off the shelf. Also sponsoring fully threaded radio are Buckeye Fasteners, BTM Manufacturing, Eurolink Fastener Supply Service, INxSQL Software, J.Lanfranco, 3Q Inc., Volt Industrial Plastics, Würth Industry North America, and Solution Industries, home of Solution Man.

Thank you, sir. Get with us anytime. The email address is FTR@FullyThreaded.com. Brian and I are also both active out there. I am active. Brian is present on LinkedIn, so you can reach out to us that way.

I am active occasionally. I do scan through it occasionally.

When you are in town.

Yes, actually.

Out of the server room. We have got a lot to cover and minimal Brian and Eric, but I do want to take a moment here at the top to recognize so many of the people who helped us along the way. 200 episodes is a milestone for us simply because we have been monthly for many years now. We started off, we were trying to do two a month, but we do not do a shorter podcast like a lot of shows do. We have stuck to a full-length variety show approach.

Maybe it is a testament to our overall view of the world, but it is old school. We like it that way, and so do a lot of people apparently. We do not do it alone. Mike McNulty and Carmen Vertullo are two mainstay supporting players in all of this. They have helped us out immensely over the years. Of course, behind the scenes all the time, the lovely and talented Lynn Dempsey is always out there doing stuff.

I am sure you will see her wandering around with a microphone next week.

That is true. Say hello if you do run into her. If she tracks you down, it’s probably a better way to say it. She is always helping us out, even if it is only to keep Harpo the African parrot quiet while we record sometimes. Right, Bri?

Yes. Like at this very moment.

I tell you, we had a fastener dog interruption moment on the news report this time. Michael Knight had a squirrel sighting over at his place. The Spaniel took notice of that. Normally, I cut these things out as best I can, but this one was just in such a place that I figured it was a little au natural. It is just part of the podcasting game in the modern world.

Everyone is working from home. I do not think it really surprises anybody. The other thing with the Michael Knight recording is that the audio got a little bubbly here and there because I believe we had some problems with his internet connection. It is completely audible, but you can hear a little chop in places. Might as well acknowledge that while we are talking about some of the realities of the show.

We have been facing realities for fifteen years. It is okay.

Yes, facing them, numbing them down.

Think of when we started, it was horrible. There is only one thing you could do that would allow you to telephone someone really from a computer, it was Skype, and it was a piece of rubbish really, but the only thing around.

It did not make it easy.

It was awful. We were having all these problems on the internet. It completely crashed the recording. It is awful. It is much easier now.

It also helps when you learn a few tricks. When you do not know what you are doing, it makes everything harder, but we picked up a lot, and we have also picked up a lot of good friends, and we have picked up a lot of audiences, and we sure do appreciate all that. Again, we will talk about episode one to close it out. I will not dwell on it too much here. There is a lot to get to. We will leave it right there. Thanks again for tuning in, everyone. We will be back in a minute to put a wrench to this one.

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It is amazing, isn’t it?

Celebrating Episode 200 With Industry Leaders, Partnership Updates, & Global Fastener Insights

Yes, we are going to bask in that as much as possible during the whole show. Here to join in with that basking. I decided to kick it off the right way, have some good friends with us, and that would be Rosa Hearn, Brighton-Best, Matt Boyd, and Parker Fasteners. Guys.

Hello and congratulations on your 200.

It sounds pretty amazing. Does it not? Think about it. When we started over and said, “No one is ever going to listen to a podcast.”

I remember just hearing you guys for the first time, and I said, “How do I get to know these guys?” That was like my first thought.

Did you know?

Now I ask myself, how do I not get to know these guys?

What do I have to do to distance myself a little bit?

Just kidding, of course.

I’m so glad you guys could make it on with us because we threatened to have you back several episodes ago when we had you on. We will get to that in a few minutes. Brian, glad you could join us too. You have been MIA for some of the segments lately, but you are back. We are all together.

The remote, the recent MIA, I went down to Mexico, actually to a city called Cuernavaca, for a wedding.

I love that place. Did you go into the caves? Did you see the stalactites and all that stuff?

No, I did not. We were on a stop. Apart from the wedding, it was way over the top. It was absolutely over the top. What I learned is that Mexicans drink a lot of tequila at weddings.

This was a surprise.

Only at weddings. We drink at lunchtime, we drink at dinner.

I was nominated, and Lynn and I were probably the only Americans at the wedding. We are at a table of people who spoke a little English, and with my Spanish, I learned Spanish like 45 years ago in Chile. What I found was that even though I have been a little disappointed in communicating with some other Hispanic neighbors, I found that the people in Mexico City speak a version of Spanish that is much closer to Castilian Spanish. I did pretty well. I was nominated as the table captain. That is right. The guy who has to carry around a bottle of tequila, pouring it down everyone’s throat with the explicit instructions that my job for the whole night was to make sure every single person at our table was completely drunk.

That was an honor, actually.

It was, but it was not really one I was expecting. It was wild. I went to see what is called the Palacio de Cortes. That was where Cortés lived. He did not live in Mexico City. He went up in the hills, and there is a huge set of murals painted by Diego Rivera in that building, which we went to see.

Are you talking about the castle that is on top of the hill surrounded by the park?

No, that is in Mexico City. That is Chapultepec Castle. That was the Emperor Maximilian’s. We went to see that as well. We did a lot of stuff, wandered around the original Templo Mayor, the major grand temple in downtown Mexico City. We did lots of stuff and went to the National Archaeological Museum, which is one of the most amazing museums I have ever seen in my life, which really has a section of each of the great civilizations of Mexico. I went up to just wander around the ruins of a place called Teotihuacan, which is about 50 miles north of Mexico City. There are two big pyramids, fifteen stories high, one of them, the Pyramid of the Sun, built in about 400 BC, running water, a quarter of a million people, and the second biggest city in the world.

I will just remind everybody you are listening to Fully Threaded Radio, your favorite predominantly fastener-related show. This is very much the predominant part.

It is amazing to wander around a group of structures built by very competent engineers who leave no record of them having a form of writing or fasteners.

It’s incredible to walk among structures built by highly skilled engineers, with no surviving record of writing or fasteners to explain how they were made. Share on X

Any fasteners?

No fasteners at all. This was a building held together by big stones, and they invented a form of plaster. It was held together with the squeezy stuff out of cactuses. It has been pretty good because these buildings have been there for 2000 years.

Did you buy an obsidian statue?

No, I did not. Is that a trick question?

No, they are lined up with so many people selling little stuff.

I know. You go to Chapultepec Park, which is across the road from the National Museum of Archaeology. You are right, you walk through about five miles of people selling all this stuff you cannot possibly take home with you. I did not, and I did not buy the latest craze, which is like a monkey that sits on your head, either.

I do not even have words for that. I love my culture, and I love the traditions, and I think it is wonderful. Some of the stuff is just so scary to me. One of my adventures was when I went to the city of Puebla. So beautiful, so gorgeous. It is literally one of the highest-end cities that you will see, but it is next to an active volcano. You can actually see the smoke coming out of the volcano.

They have a pyramid that they let you walk through. It is an underground pyramid that you can walk through, and you are going into this tunnel, which is amazing. I got out of these tunnels, and I was asking them questions like, “How come some of the tunnels are blocked with gates?” They are like, “It is because we found chemical gas down there.” “How come these black containers are all over the walkway?” They are like, “It is because we have the huge rats down there.”

I would have gone if I knew giant rats.

The molten lava is only one of your problems.

Who cares about that? That is just for safety.

The culture, I remember walking into Frida Kahlo’s blue house. That was amazing. To see the tiny little bed, to see the tiny little pieces of furniture. It is amazing. How do people sleep in that? How do people live in that?

That is interesting, we went there too. My only real regret we ever had in the whole of Mexico City, we had a great time, and everything was cool. Everyone said not to eat in outside places. I ate all that. The only thing is to be careful and not drink the water. It does not necessarily come out of the taps clear, but we had a great time. It was easy to get taxis because if you are in a hotel, they are all lined up there.

It is a little harder when you are at Casa Azul to find a taxi to get back. We walked around for two and a half hours trying to catch a taxi. They all could not go into different regions of Mexico City. Everyone had warned me first, “Do not use an Uber.” I have no idea why, because in desperation, we used an Uber and it worked perfectly.

How often do you go down to Mexico Rosa? I used to go all the time. Actually, my family is going back in July to Cuernavaca, Ciudad de Mexico, because we are down. My dad lives probably two hours away from the city of Mexico, which is a place called Santa Cruz Atizapan, and they are going, but unfortunately, I am unable to go because I am in the middle of a move. I am actually moving from LA to Atlanta.

Big news. That is a fairly major move.

I am excited because I have been here my whole life. I have lived here my whole life. I have been a West Coast big participant of Pac-West, a big participant of everything that is done in the Southwest. Now I am able to actually do it on the East Coast. Hopefully, I can participate more in SEFA and participate more in anything that is in the Southeast. I am really excited.

How does Tom Stocking feel about this?

Tom Stocking moved to Atlanta, too. He went from Texas to Atlanta. We are going to do this together.

That is cool.

I like to think we are a good team. I get along well with Tom. I am excited to work with Tom. I am going to miss George Martinez here, but I am really excited to work with Tom because I really think that the Southeast is a big region, and everything is so sporadic. I figured if he goes one way, I go the other way, and then we will switch. It is going to work out really nicely.

Very cool. Thanks for sharing that big headline. That is a bonus headline on this episode. The big move of Rosa Hearn. I know a lot of people are going to be surprised when they hear that one because you are Miss West Coast.

Thank you. I hope to be Miss East Coast, too.

I do not put it past you. Believe me. Matt, you are in Phoenix, and that is heavily Mexican influence. The whole Southwest is really, but I have spent a lot of time in Arizona, and you get a lot of influence there. Do you ever make it down south of the border for any reason?

The closest place to the saltwater in Phoenix is actually a region that the Americans call Rocky Point.

Who calls it that?

Us gringos.

We probably ordered tomatoes on your tacos, too. I could go for a while on that.

It is a really neat little place. It is only like three to three and a half hours away from Phoenix, and we try to go once a year, and it is a really clean beach, really nice area, a lot of resorts right there on the water. It is between that and the more popular places like Cabo or Cancun that have really been my extent of Mexico.

One comment before you go back to fasteners is that in our area, where I live, there are quite a few Hispanic people. We have gotten to know them over the years. Actually, we have known them for 25 years, and they are very good at making tacos, I must say. We have been spoiled, but I truly did not find a taco I liked particularly in the places we stopped at in Mexico City. I am looking for tacos al pastor, and for a whole week, I never found one place selling tacos al pastor. They did not serve limes with them.

Did you ever encounter huaraches?

Only in terms of a museum, which was a war that some Olmec used to wage, apparently 2,000 or 3,000 years ago?

I was thinking of the namesake of that sandal, the actual fry bread with the refries and all the good ingredients on top. There is a ton of Mexican culture that is all across the South. That is everywhere, frankly, but we, in the Chicagoland area, I am a former Chicago guy, and we were treated to some of the best Mexican street cuisine ever because we just had the taco and burrito stands everywhere. I miss that a lot, being here in Cleveland these days. We do not have that here. What is your favorite menu item at Taco Bell, Matt? I am just trying to bring you into the conversation.

Can you possibly have a favorite menu?

I like the Mexican pizza.

Maybe we should change topics if that is the case.

Rosa, thank you. Thank you for taking the lead with this. I could tell right off the bat you are going to achieve your mission out there east. Since you are all full of good ideas, why do you not bring us up to date with this partnership with Brighton and Parker, because we announced it, I believe it was in October, with great fanfare? Everyone is excited. Two great companies are coming together and providing some domestic product. Give us the latest.

I am so excited about this partnership, and not just me, obviously, the whole company. We are fully stocked. It is open on the web. It is right there with all these sizes and descriptions. We are actually just already looking at seeing what we can reorder for them. I am really hoping that people are actually taking a look at it because we have been so excited about this product coming in.

We are doing a station, we are doing an open house for Fastener Fair that is on May 23rd between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM, and I am actually going to work the Parker station. We are going to have products there. I am going to talk about it. I am going to let you know where the stock is. I am really excited, and I am really happy that we have this partnership with Matt. Thank you, Parker. Thank you, Matt. This was a really good thing for us.

I have to give kudos to Brighton-Best and the entire team. Specifically, it starts at the top with Peggy, John, Rosa, and George. They have really done just a first-class job of marketing our product, really being a partner. They have come out three times, and we have met at our site. We have even been to their facilities a couple of times as well.

There is really a partnership. There is a vested interest on both sides to just use this as a launching point and to really look at growing the product family and really listening to the Brighton-Best customer needs and really just tackling it from there. They have been a first-class organization from the kickoff when we met their sales team and procurement people in Vegas last fall. They have just been really professional, and we have really enjoyed working with them, and we are excited to continue the growth of our product line with Brighton-Best.

I do not think some customers realize that lead times at domestic manufacturers can be anywhere between 6 to 8 weeks, 10 to 12 weeks, or even 14 to 16 weeks. To be able to stock this product, that is going to help so many customers. We are excited to be part of that. We really are.

Fully Threaded Radio | Being There — Being There: I don’t think many customers realize that lead times from domestic manufacturers can range anywhere from 6–8 weeks to 10–12 weeks, or even 14–16 weeks. Being able to stock this product helps so many customers, and we’re excited to be part of that.

They are packaging some of the product and then able to sell it in smaller quantities, which has always been our Achilles’ heel at Parker. We do have some finished goods, but as everyone in the fastener or the clearinghouse knows, sometimes it can be hard to get that one specific part that you need in smaller quantities from a manufacturer. Being able to have Brighton-Best offer the smaller quantities is the door that really opens up to many, many different opportunities in the US market. That is why we are so proud and honored to have the partnership.

It is a very cool thing, actually.

Rosa, as one of the premier distributors in the country, of course, are you continuing to see an increased demand from the market for domestic products?

Everything evolves, and everything changes. Depending on some projects, they want American-made. Depending on other items, they want a good quality product. We want to be able to accommodate every customer to fulfill whatever they need. If they are working on a state job, if they are working on a government job, or if they are working on projects that need American-made products, we want to be able to fulfill that. We are seeing the need that is coming through. We want to make the commitment. Actually, we are making the commitment to bring that product in.

There has been, as we see it, a movement really to buy more American-made fasteners. It is not always that easy. As you said, things are wild to ramp up to do all that, but there is no question that there has been a significant increase in interest in using American-manufactured fasteners.

Are you seeing it in the Fastener Clearinghouse as well?

I see it. We see the different trends and what people are trying to buy as well. When you look at what everyone has tried to buy in a month, you see that from month to month, it changes around. Matt Boyd with Parker Fasteners, you are obviously out there in the market, and you know what the competition is doing, too, or you have a sense of it. Do you feel this trend at all? Can you speak to it?

It has always been there. I would say when we even first started in 2012, there was still some pent-up demand for it. As we get through the teens and into the 2020s, right around 2020, during COVID, is when things really magnified. It went from more of a pipe dream, where a lot of people wanted to do it, but they did not really have the lead times built in or the costing available to do that. Since COVID happened, I really think that we are seeing a lot more companies making progress to do it.

Whether it be setting themselves up for costing or for the proper lead times to get our product, it has been just increasing ever more. We do commercial, aerospace, military, and some other per-print type items. That commercial demand has been upticking in quotes since COVID. Every year, we just seem to be getting a little bit more market share.

With some of the geopolitical tensions that we have been covering and talking about on this podcast for a few years now, what I tell people is you should always have a good backup plan, regardless of what is going on in the world. People are just taking it a lot more seriously in the market. The Brighton-Best Parker partnership is a really good way to get your entry into the domestic product and to set yourself up for success, no matter what happens globally between all the different wars and conflicts that are going on.

Good advice. What do audiences need to know about this partnership? How do they take advantage of it?

They can just go to BrightonBest.com and search for the item, and they will find it in stock.

If you do not see what you are looking for, give them feedback and let them know. We are definitely in the process of looking at expanding the offering as well. If you do not see something that you are looking for, let your Brighton-Best associates know that you work with them, and they will flow that information to Parker.

Sounds pretty easy, really.

That is what we wanted to do. We wanted to make it easy for everybody.

That is really the secret sauce of Brighton-Best, right?

They have had a pretty good website for a long time, actually, BBI.

Thank you.

Brighton has been right out front with that. Thanks, guys, for the update. I know a lot of people are listening. A lot of people are excited by this. Rosa, there is one other thing before we close out this segment. You dropped this on me before we turned the recorder on. We have the Vegas show coming up in a few short months. It is right around the corner when you think about it. You were invited to participate in a big way this year. You are going to be doing something special. Let us know what that is all about.

Yes. At IFE, the International Fastener Expo coming up in September, and it is going to be September 11th, I will be doing, along with Hali Gibson from Threaded Fasteners, a two-hour marketing workshop. This is going to be an interactive workshop. It is going to have courses. It is going to have actual materials, so you can actually do some homework. We are going to teach about marketing. The first session is going to be about beginners, someone who is just entering the market, or someone who does not really understand it.

They just got their foot in the door, or their company wants to do a marketing department. The second session is for people who are more advanced. Someone who wants to really step up their game, someone who really wants to progress in what they are trying to do. It is big for me to give back to the industry because after 32 plus years, I am really invested. This is my life. This is my career. All I want to do is just help it. I want to help the fastener industry. If this is a way I can help the fastener industry, then I am all for it. I am really grateful that Hali is joining me.

I asked her because I did not really want to do this alone. Stay tuned for more information because it is going to be on the IFE website. It is going to give you an outline of what we are going to go over, everything from branding to culture and ethics, product marketing, as well as your basic tactics and strategies. I am really excited. I really want to show the people what we can offer, and hopefully this will help everybody.

Outstanding. That is a two-hour marketing program that features Rosa and Haley from Threaded Fasteners?

Correct, she is from Threaded Fasteners. I do have to tell you, they are charging $39 for this course, and that is because they are going to bring in breakfast. I believe it is a continental breakfast and snacks. Your money is going towards that, not towards me.

It is going to be well worth it, podcasters, do not worry.

Lynn tells me that from going a couple of years ago to one of the other marketing things, you put on a terrific show.

I really like teaching. That is something I am really good at. I like to be prepared, and hopefully it comes across that way. They originally wanted to charge $50. I said, “As much as I like to think that people like me, I do not think they are going to pay $50.” They brought it down to $39. I thank you for giving me that discount because I like to think that it would be helpful.

That is about as reasonable a deal as you are going to find, folks. Good for you, Rosa, for putting it all out there. Thank you again for your contributions. Matt, you are no slouch out there either. You are doing your part. We thank both of you for being on the episode, episode 200. We could not think of a better way to launch it. I am sure we will be talking to you in the near future.

Thanks for having us on. It is our pleasure.

Thank you.

For allowing us to talk about Mexico and slightly about fasteners.

I am just glad you are back, Brian. It has been quite the hiatus.

It was. I kept mentioning to Eric, “How come Brian is not in this thing anymore? What is going on?” I really thought, “Did I offend him? Is it okay?”

No, we are good. Fear not. The fastener fiesta now continues. Rosa Hearn, Brighton-Best, Matt Boyd, Parker Fasteners. We will be right back, folks. It is Fully Threaded.

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Episode 200 News Segment: FDI Updates, Additive Manufacturing Breakthroughs, & Industry Honors

It is the news segment. McNulty will be joined by Endries International CEO, Michael Knight. They will be going over the FDI numbers. A little bit of a surprise this month. It is episode 200 still. Do not forget. Although the news segment has not been with us since the very beginning, it almost has. Volt Industrial Plastics has been there supporting it the whole time.

We sure do appreciate that. There was a major headline that splashed across LinkedIn. I thought we would jam that in before we get to McNulty. It has to do with the subject of additive manufacturing. That is something we have dealt with since the early episodes of the show. Here to explain what is going on, it is Würth Additive Group CEO, AJ Strandquist. AJ, it has been a while.

Eric, glad to have you on, and nice to talk again.

Digital inventory services. Big announcement with you. I want to talk to you about that. Before we get into it, how have you been? What have you been up to?

It takes a village, as they say. I might be the town crier, sometimes pulling the team together. We have just been so busy with the launch and pulling together to get our pilot customers on board. It has been a whirlwind these last couple of months. Honestly, looking at this new future of supporting our clients and their production, it is a lot of work. It can be a little hectic sometimes, but the impact and the customer feedback we have been getting are making it all worth it.

Your company, I am sensing a severe impact on your personal life at this point.

Never. Absolutely not. I am partying just as much as I used to.

It will all serve you well in the long run. You are doing a good job. How do you characterize the current state of additive manufacturing in industry these days? We will throw that at you before we get into the digital services announcement.

It ties together with why DIS, or digital inventory, is something that the Würth group invested in. Additive manufacturing is so vibrant, exciting, and growing. When we look at traditional manufacturing, it is growing at a great rate. It is a newer manufacturing technology where there are a lot of questions, and there are a lot of things to account for before parts coming off those machines go out into the world.

A big part of our manufacturing right now is that people see a benefit in producing these parts on demand or taking care of out-of-stock situations. The question becomes, How do you document it? “How do we control it like we do with every other article that we sell, fastener or tool or otherwise, because that is what people require to help keep people safe and put liability where it needs to be. Additive manufacturing is in this evolution phase, where now the technology can make repeatable parts, and it is not a complete headache to be able to get the machine running.

Additive manufacturing is in an evolution phase where the technology can now produce repeatable parts, and getting machines up and running is no longer a complete headache. Share on X

It becomes a little more, “If the machine is working great and it is making great parts, where is the batch control? Where are my quality control and quality assurance steps?” That is the biggest thing that we see as the maturation inside of 3D printing, really looking backwards in time, learning about those rules, regulations, and processes, and how to onboard them and fit in. Not for the manufacturing world to bend and make accommodations, but 3D printing, as a young and nimble technology, should be flexible to fit with traditional manufacturing needs. That is our biggest view of what is happening in 3D printing, and it is exciting to be right in the middle of it.

Since this is a predominantly fastener-related show, AJ, I have to ask you. Are there any areas that fastener distributors should be nervous about yet? Early on, we were wondering if you were going to come and eat up the market. What does that look like?

If fasteners are, as my old man used to say, the hex-headed bolts, the most popular fastener on the planet, it has been that way for a couple of hundred years. It is really mature. Those products and how they are made really have had many costs and efficiencies driven out of them. Where 3D printing might replace a fastener directly is in things like when it is on an aircraft carrier, on a forward outpost for an oil and gas company, or for the military.

That means fewer points of failure traditionally, fewer linkages, fewer parts to manage. When you look at things like relativity Space, where they 3D printed a rocket, they were able to print the entire body of the rocket, and there was not a fastener involved. To give one example, the same thing with Czinger Motors is that the amount of actual hardware going into that car is a fraction because they have huge single pieces with very dynamic linkages, and how it integrates into the frame just gets rid of bolts.

It is absolutely amazing what is happening. I’ll tell you, AJ, we need to have you and maybe one or two of your people on in the near future to expand on some of these examples because I do not know if your average fastener distributor is even aware of some of these things. It is unbelievable, really. Let us jump now to exactly what is happening with digital inventory services. This announcement came through. You are launching a new, streamlined program with Würth, and you are at the helm. What is it all about?

It is really as much fun as it can be. I am going to talk about quality control and quality assurance. When we entered the marketplace, if you wanted a part, let us say it was the right volume and the right criticality where you wanted to print it, even when you bought the part, there was no paperwork to go with it. There was no easy way for a standardized PPAP process to be documented and controlled. That is where we wanted to fill in the gap.

Our theory is that we used to have 50,000 pieces of something, and we would test whatever percentage of the lot, let us say 30 or 50 pieces. For the other 49,000, we gave a thumbs up for that technical data. We are not printing or making 40,000 at once in a single batch, where you might be making 40,000 individual parts. If you think about that from the manufacturing perspective, now we have to control a PPAP process 40,000 different times instead of once for a large production run.

With that came a lot of philosophical questions. If we have to have a QCQA report on each piece, it cannot be very expensive because if it is $500 to do a quality control and quality assurance step inside your company or control the documentation on a PPAP, you cannot multiply that by 40,000 and be looked at seriously. It has to be on a per-piece basis. We thought of it more like text messaging fees. If you want single, simple parts with not a ton of information, it is $0.50.

I will keep track of your manufacturing process and collect a quality report for you on a single part. If you have thousands of parts, or if you have really high-end parts that require a ton of data to go back and forth, that is where we would scale the cost of a QA report to better reflect it. Just like a PPAP, you do not want your super simple parts to be PPAP-controlled because that just bottlenecks you to suppliers, it makes it harder to get good pricing, and it is just more expensive to manage it.

If you can get by with a PPAP level two and there is really no hindrance or quality loss, it is less work for your company to manage. We look at it the same way with 3D printing. Not every part needs this gigantic process. Think of sticking a part in an MRI machine to get what we call a CT scan. You cannot do that on an automotive clip, as we have in one of our key cases. If every clip has to have that, we are sunk. What this will entail is that when someone invents a part, they will dictate a recipe.

What digital inventory does is when you purchase that part through your normal ERP system or website, it is going to launch an order to your printer or to your provider, and fulfill that part while capturing the quality. We tried to make a click-through Apple-like experience. Imagine a tool crib operator at a large automotive factory. That is a big business case for us: MRO inside factories. Those people are not trained in designing parts. They are not trained on operating the printers per se.

What the software does is when they get a little push notification on their tablet or phone, they carry with them at work, it is going to say, “Someone bought this part for your tool crib for your site. Log in and start the production process.” They get a click-through, which is very simple but allows them to capture that QAQC function, as well as keep track of things like licensing. If someone invents a part and they want to sell that digital file, we protect your IP as well as keep track of what royalties you are owed based on what you price it at.

This is a huge, huge thing that I was really not expecting.

I do not think a lot of people expect Würth to be the one explaining it either. It is a surprise to us sometimes, but I think it is a testament to the hardware industry and industrial distribution that we are so good at those little details. That is why I think our industry is set to excel in it because we are really, really good at keeping track of small details to make sure people are safe.

A hundred percent. At the same time, is Würth Additive providing service bureau-style services in some cases, too? Is that one of the offerings of this program?

That is not our core business, but what we found is that some customers want a third party to help manufacture the products. We do have what we call a boutique client, where essentially they rent the equipment or capacity. We will operate on their behalf, but that is a much smaller part. The bigger opportunity is for Würth to play their role as a key distributor, to work with those machine shops that are adopting additive, and to work with these service bureaus that are doing hundreds of thousands of pieces to make their operations more reliable and more traceable. Also, to open up commercial applications for everyone. Without this kind of iTunes platform, everybody is just doing what they want. When you download that file off of LimeWire, it might be the new Beyoncé CD, or it might be something pretty heinous. Regulation is a big part of it.

I see that clearly now. Wurth Additive is at the forefront of setting the standards and recognized processes that can be used. You are taking the lead and driving it that way. No wonder your social life is suffering, AJ. I am getting the picture.

It is not that I am boring at parties. The guy who is doing quality control for automotive clips that are 3D printed is definitely the fun guy at the party. We can have debates about how many tons of CO2 are saved when we switch to an additive from traditional. That is why I am not invited to parties.

That might get you kicked out of a few that I know of, but you are welcome here. AJ, we will talk about this more, I promise. I am intensely interested in this. We will leave that part of it there for the moment. Folks, as I said, the news is coming up in just a moment. The title sponsors of Fully Threaded Radio are Star Stainless, Goebel Fasteners, and Brighton-Best International. I have to say, AJ, before we wind up the segment, there is another huge headline that splashed across the fastener media. It is very appropriate that you are with us. Why do I not let you make the announcement? It came from the NFDA and a big headline.

I appreciate it, Eric. It is about my father, Mark Strandquist. Eric, you were great buddies, so I know he would be appreciative of you giving us some time to highlight it. For those who do not know, Mark was a sitting president for NFDA. He was really, really passionate about the fastener industry. There have been two things that have come up where it really humbled the family and made us be appreciative. One was that he was selected as the Fastener Professional of the Year. That is an honor for people in any circumstance, but I do not think there has ever been an occasion where they do it posthumously.

No, this is a first.

I know for a fact that he just appreciated so much, and he was never the guy to say, “What about me?” I know he would love being the Fastener Professional of the Year, but something that I know was close to his heart was the NFDA scholarship. To have his name be attached to it and be the namesake for the recipient, I know, is the thing that would resonate with him the most because he had so much passion for the industry and to educate and share his experience with people. I know that he would love the award, but I think he would love supporting a young professional even more. I cannot thank the NFDA enough. People attached to this who have reached out and said kind words. We really appreciate it. We know that Mark does as well.

I am just glad that you are here, AJ Strandquist. You are the CEO of Würth Additive, and you are also the son of a great fastener man whom a lot of people admire. This is a great way to carry on his legacy. Let us just say, because I think we missed it before, WurthIndustry.com is a place folks can go to get more info on the whole additive picture, as well as everything else Würth is involved in, until we get you back here, okay, AJ.

LinkedIn and all those good things. Especially inside the industrial distribution industry, we would love for the guys on the factory floor to help bring this technology into the mainstream. Do not have anyone hesitate to reach out. I have one last job to do on the show, Eric. That is to say, now with news about screws that you can use, here is Mike McNulty.

You took it away. Thanks.

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Thanks, AJ. This is Mike McNulty from Fastener Technology International Magazine, bringing you the Fastener News Report, which is sponsored by Volt Industrial Plastics, makers of the world’s finest plastic fasteners. Birth rates are plunging, permanent deficit spending is raging, asinine campus protests are fading, the great American tradition of the Boy Scouts of America is ending, but Fully Threaded Radio has hit the 200th episode milestone, so I am still focused on fasteners and ready to deliver this Fastener News Report.

In this episode, Endries International President and CEO Michael Knight joins us to reveal the latest results of the Fastener Distributor Index, also known as the FDI. Also in this broadcast, we have our top story from the National Fastener Distributors Association, as well as newsmaker headlines from Martin Supply, Lawson Products, Vegas Fastener, Valley Forge and Bolt, Würth Canada, Century Fasteners, Suncor Stainless, Fasco, and more. On the back page report, we are going to talk about the human factor. We will get to all of that and the latest FDI results right after this.

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FDI Softens Slightly As Outlook Stabilizes & Industry Leaders Weigh In On Demand, Inventory, & Growth Trend

The Seasonally Adjusted Fastener Distributor Index for April 2024 dipped slightly to 51.6 versus 53.0 in March. This was the second-highest FDI recorded since last November. The forward-looking indicator, also known as the FLI, was improved versus last month’s 47.3, and it reached the neutral result of 50.0, halting a streak of two sub-50 months in a row.

Fastener Distributor Index data is collected and analyzed by the FCH Sourcing Network and Baird. The FDI seeks to identify demand, pricing, and outlook trends within the American Fastener Distribution Industry. To get some insight into these results, we talked to Endries International President and CEO, Michael Knight. Hello, Michael. Thank you for joining us on the Fastener News Report.

Thanks for having me.

Last time you were here was in September of 2023, and I think we were both above 50 or at a decent level. What do you think about the results this time?

I like them better than the alternative, that is for sure. I am having a hard time putting a lot of stock in any of the leading indicators. They are bouncing around a lot like the PMI, which was positive in March, and then the manufacturing PMI went below water, below 50 in April. That jittery noise out of these indexes makes me wonder. At the end of the day, I think the comments from everybody are perhaps the more important part of the survey, to actually hear what people are thinking about today and tomorrow.

We will get to that pretty soon. Since you brought it up, there is a little bit of a mixture there, too. Explain some of the ups and downs of these indices.

There are a couple of things we have to remember when looking at whether it is the FDI or the PMI. First and foremost is inventory is still a problem. De-stocking is still going on. I think you see this in the FDI supplier inventories. Our inventories, the channel’s inventories, are still in expansion mode. I think it is good news that the customer inventories appear to be in contraction mode. Obviously, when the customer inventories get to where they need to be, what will end up happening is that they will go lower than where they need to be.

They will scramble.

We will see a surge of demand, and this has been true of every cycle we have been through. We overcut on the way down and overbuy on the way up. I think that the inventory situation, especially with the OEMs, is still confusing things, that muddles the picture quite a bit, and then it gives us our recent bias. When all of us who participate in these surveys are taking them, what has happened in the last 30 days is very much on our minds and reflected in our responses.

You mentioned the inventories; those numbers, the respondent inventories, are still in the low 60s. They did come down versus March a little bit, and they are down from the December high of almost 76 points. They are still well above the 50-point mark in the expansion area. The customer inventories are basically the same this month in April versus March, and are just hovering just below 50. Some of the other numbers. Sales dropped a little bit to 54.6. Employment went up. In fact, it was the only one that went up this month. Everything else went down. Pricing was down month to month and year to year. Everything was down except for employment and customer inventory, staying the same.

The employment one is also interesting. I personally believe that labor is going to be a long-term constraint for all industries, especially here in the US, and driven by an expansion in manufacturing that I think is also going to be a decent multi-year trend, driven by infrastructure spending and a lot of other things that are going on. We just had our big sales meeting at Endries, and we invited a lot of the North American suppliers to it.

I heard a lot of positive things about underlying demands and continued concerns about inventory. I asked a lot of questions about labor relative to where the market was heading. We are going to be talking about this for a while. The April numbers showed a slowing in productivity growth. I want to say it was less than half a percent, but wage growth in April in the US grew almost five percent. That is a double-edged sword.

People need more money, and there are not as many workers.

The flip side of all of this is that it has been good for the economy, but also contributed to inflation. The ten trillion in government stimulus money that has been injected into the economy over the last couple of years has increased the net worth of most households. You certainly see that in spending, especially in the service sector. You see it reflected in higher prices, which I think is the other side of the coin, Mike. Inflation is going to be here for a while. The fabled two percent is hard for me to imagine we are going to get back to that anytime soon.

It might be a long memory. I saw some numbers for money. You talk about the infrastructure spending and the money that was given to states. Some numbers showed 47% has not even been spent, the stuff that was earmarked three years ago. Maybe some states will not even spend it. There is still a lot of money that was promised that has not even been put to use yet.

Even the money that did make it out there, you know how it got used in some cases. It is questionable. It is a really inefficient system, which is why we end up over-stimulating to make sure that some of this ends up sticking to where we intended it to stick. At some point, that is going to catch up with us because the flip side of this is that at the end of 2023, our national debt reached 34 trillion.

It is not going down ever.

I hope it does. Otherwise, at some point, like the folks at ITR Economics are predicting, a depression will occur. I do not know how to avoid it. At the current rate of debt expansion, especially with higher interest rates on that debt, in 25 years, our debt is going to be like 200% of GDP debt, which is completely unsustainable.

You mentioned the ITR guys. I think they are right on target. The increased debt is just one of five factors that they cite that are going to lead to the 2030 depression. We will enjoy the 2020s until we get there, but it is going to crash. If you look at the budget forecasts of the federal government, they are budgeting for deficits every year and big ones.

I wish I could get away with that in my business.

You would not be from Endries. No. I would be on the market pretty fast. That is definitely in the background, and I think we are going to deal with that as we go forward. There still seems to be a lot of good going on in the industry, but some uncertainty for sure. Let us jump to the six-month outlook for April. We were talking about the six-month outlook, and it improved modestly from last month in March.

We had this oddly balanced one-third better, one-third the same, one-third worse result last month, and it improved this month. We still have one-third of the respondents expecting things to be better, 43% expecting them to be the same, and 23% expecting things to be worse. Ten percent of those people moved over to the same level. Together, we have 76% expecting things to be the same or better six months from now, which I think is a pretty good place to be. What do you think?

That is very encouraging. To put things in perspective, one of the things that concerns me about the forward-looking outlook, especially from the channel, is that we are the tip of the bullwhip. That is our point of view. On the one hand, when the channel is feeling pretty good, that is not bad, given that we are looking at it from the tip of the bullwhip. The amplitude of that bullwhip effect is another thing that creates a bit of a gap between what we are thinking and what actually turns up.

My point of view and customer experience are also pretty optimistic, mainly because this persistent high inventory is going to get resolved. It has to. It always does. That is going to come at some point this year. I am convinced of that. I thought it would actually be a second-quarter event, but I think it is going to show up more in the second half of the year. That is going to help. We are all going to get some lift as the inventory levels settle down.

That is a good point. It has to get resolved. The only question is when. Let us jump into some of the comments. Baird, in their report, said that the commentary was mixed. They said that it was hard to see a clear consensus forming this month on current trends and outlooks. Some people are saying things can be better.

The first comment is, “April was a very strong month, domestic and international demand continues to grow for us. We expect to return to our 2022 sales levels, which were a record year.” The second positive one was, “April continued with strong demand from our customers. American manufacturing demand continues to be strong during an election year, to our surprise.” Anything to add to those?

The election is very much on everybody’s mind, and then the impact of that. I will refer back to some other points that the folks at ITR make quite well. It almost does not matter which party is in control. During the Trump term, the economy grew 1.8%. During Biden’s term, it has grown like 1.8%. Before that, Obama was like 2%, and Bush was like 1.9%. You can see the pattern is that there is no pattern. I am not sure the election is going to really have that much of an effect, which is good because then I think what we have come down to is just what is going on in the economy and how our OEM customers are feeling.

The other thing is that geopolitical things probably have more of an impact. Both parties seem to be attached to spending money they do not have. Nobody wants to tell the retirees to stop being so comfortable.

One of the things that is getting started to be talked about, oddly, is that if we see increased tariffs, especially on parts that come out of China. There is a lot of talk about it. I do not think it really matters who wins the White House or who dominates Congress. It feels like we are going to see higher tariffs. Higher tariffs mean we are all paying higher prices for everything from that part of the world. That tends to get pushed through to the end customer. Weirdly, we should see a revenue boost if that happens.

Sales go up because of tariffs.

It is not going to help bottom lines necessarily.

It goes up for everybody in other things. Some of the weaker comments that came across, most notably coming from construction and OEM. The next comment was, “Continue to witness softness in the construction category with plant closings and staff reductions at OEMs.” Another downside is that “April inquiries from OEMs dropped significantly. Shipments have been holding steady, and overseas factories are hungry for business. Federal Reserve holding interest rates steady is very confusing given the status in the industrial world, with business slowing everywhere.” What do you think about those?

I was not quite sure how to interpret that last comment. I do not understand what hunch status means, but I do get it. We are all talking about what is going to happen with interest rates.

I do not think they are going down.

I do not either because the economy has been so persistently good. Ultimately, the best curb on inflation is a recession. I would rather have a recession than inflation. Recessions tend to be very quick. US recessions, on average, are six months in length. The interesting thing about a recession is it is self-healing. We come out of a recession stronger. We overreact on the way down. It creates some upside on the way out of it. Whereas inflation tends to be much more persistent, and it is the opposite of self-healing.

Inflation tends to be self-reinforcing. My view on all of this, really, since early last year, which I do not think was a very popular view, but maybe it makes some sense, is that I was rooting for the reset that everybody was predicting in 2023. Let us get it out of the way and get back to growth. It did not show up in 2023. It is unlikely to show up in 2024. We had a 1.6% read on GDP for the first quarter. That consensus forecast for the second quarter is 2.1% quarter on quarter.

That would mean we would have to have a down quarter in the third quarter and then another down quarter in the fourth quarter in order to have a recession this year. It is hard to see that happening. In a weird way, I am a little disappointed because I do think we are going to need one to clean up the last of this COVID dividend that we have been enjoying.

You have to have the pruning to get more growth. If you keep avoiding it, you just slug along, and then something really bad happens.

I like that. I am going to use it. I may attribute it. I may not.

No problem. I got it from somebody else. Two more comments. One is on geographical trends, saying, “We are seeing some regional slowdown, particularly in the Western US. I am curious if others are experiencing the same trend.” Any regional insight?

From my perspective, a lot of our big OEMs have their businesses all over the place throughout North America. They export a lot. They manufacture in multiple sites across the US. I have not noticed a regional trend. The West Coast tends to be more tech-centric, and tech has contracted a little bit at least from a number of jobs point of view. Maybe that is it. I do not know. The softness that I am experiencing is unfortunately pretty uniform across North America.

The last comment we have is someone seeing improvement in the second half. They said, “Anticipation is the second half of quarter two, and quarter three will outpace quarter one.” This person is obviously in the bullish camp that things are going to be better going forward here.

I want that to be true. I thought Q1 was going to be an up quarter on Q4, and then we would see a small progression as we went through 2024. As we got closer to the end of 2024, it would start to ramp up. I still think that is the pattern. I just think I got the timing wrong, and I am not sure how much I have the timing wrong by. I could have it wrong by a couple of quarters, which would mean that the Q2 of 2024 is not going to be anything to celebrate relative to Q1.

It could be up a little bit, but I think the real surge is still a couple of quarters out. All of that said, one thing I do want to call attention to is that even if this year turns out to be flat or even slightly down relative to 2023, it is at a high watermark that is pretty phenomenal, given that in 2021 and 2022 most of us experienced that level of growth that would take ten years to achieve, and we are hanging on to it. I will take that front-end growth any day of the week rather than having to wait for it.

That is a good way to end the FDI analysis and hang on to the good foundation that we have enjoyed over the last couple of years. At this point, we would like to give you a chance to tell the audience what is going on at Endries. I know you have had a recent partnership and a couple of acquisitions since we last had you on the program. What can you tell the audience?

Since we last spoke, we have had a company named Viscan up in Canada that joined the family. Awesome business. Family-owned. Family is, and I mean this as a compliment, they are fastener geeks, just like everybody at Endries, so they fit well. At the end of February, a company named Ace, headquartered in Jackson, Mississippi, joined the team, along with an amazing group of people with a really cool business. That continues to be a part of the mix here. There is just a ton of stuff going on. I knew 2024 was going to be a bit rough, but in a weird way, I welcomed the slowdown a little bit because we had a lot of catching up to do from 2022 and 2023.

In 2021, it was all hands on deck just keeping up with customer demand. We got a little bit behind in our tech stack. 2024 is a big year of investment for us. We have got a lot of things going on in AI and robotic process automation. We have got a new industrial IoT solution for VMI that is in proof of concept right now, and a new website with an e-commerce component that will get launched this summer. There is a ton of stuff going on. We are really committed to preserving and then building strength to get ready for the next upcycle.

That is a smart thing to do is build all those improvements and be ready when things really take off. Good strategy. You also have a partnership with Penn Engineering.

This has been one that we have had our eye on for quite a while. As a fastener-first distributor, Penn is always in front of us. We see loads of opportunity for it in our customer base. If you know the company, it is a heck of a company with a long history.

It is famous.

There are a lot of things in terms of focus and culture at Penn that align really well with Endries. We are really pleased to officially be a Penn franchise distributor.

As long as I have been covering the industry, they just seem to be very active and very forward in the news.

They have got a lot of neat new products. Their engineers are very clever.

This is more fastener geeks. We hold everything together, right?

That is correct.

Anything else to add or wrap it up?

That covers it. We actually covered a lot of ground.

It is good to have you on the program again, providing your insight and a lot of good ways of looking at things. Thank you for joining us.

I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for having me.

That was Endries International President and CEO, Michael Knight. The FDI number for April 2024 was 51.6 versus 53 in March. Visit FDISurvey.com to participate in the process and get a detailed PDF copy of Baird’s monthly analysis. Now for this top story. The National Fastener Distributors Association, also known as the NFDA, announced that Mark Strandquist was posthumously named NFDA’s 2024 Fastener Professional of the Year. In his nomination of Mark, Doug Ruggles of Martin Supply stated, “I do not know anyone who has had a broader impact on the industry, driving professionalism, growth, and a commitment to giving back.

He was beloved by his team and customers because of his ability to connect with them and truly care for their goodwill.” Mark graduated from Southern Illinois University with a bachelor’s degree in 1984. He served in the US Army as an officer with 10 years in the National Guard and Army Reserves, serving in Operation Desert Storm at Fort Benning, Georgia. He retired as a captain. Mark began his fastener industry career as a salesman in 1986 and worked his way up to CEO of two different global fastener companies. Würth Industry North America and Optimas Solutions. He was in the fastener industry for 37 years in various roles, both in distribution and manufacturing.

During his career, he accomplished much and prided himself on creating positive work cultures and employee engagement. He helped craft some of the largest and most complex contracts in the fastener industry. His work in mergers and acquisitions added many strategic and synergistic companies to his management portfolio. Mark served as president of the NFDA in 2016 and 2017. The Mark Strandquist Memorial Scholarship Fund was created by the NFDA to honor Mark’s passion for education and mentorship.

Donation details can be found at www.NFDA-Fastener.org, and the full story can be found on page three of the May 20, 2024 Fastener News Report newsletter available online at FastenerTech.com. Next up today is Fastener Newsmaker headlines. In corporate news, Martin Supply acquired Trinity Hardware Headquarters. Mallard Manufacturing joined the MacLean-Fogg family of companies. Lawson Products completed the acquisition of S&S Automotive. Empyrean X and Vegas Fastener formed a partnership to co-produce titanium fasteners for the US Army.

Novaria Group acquired Anillo Industries. Audax Private Equity recapitalized FDH Aero. White Cap acquired Bend Construction Supply. Valley Forge and Bolt celebrated its Golden Jubilee anniversary. In personnel news, Würth Canada introduced Yana Popa as its new CEO. Century Fasteners promoted Christopher Hussey to General Manager, Southeast Sales, and it hired Michael Fanelli as Corporate Sales Training Manager. AeroMed Group appointed Todd Seidler as Executive Director of Strategic Sourcing.

Jergens hired Mike Barnes as General Manager of the Advanced Systems Group Division, also known as Juergens ASG. Nucor appointed Nicole B. Theophilus as Executive Vice President, Talent and Human Resources. Suncor Stainless announced Janelle Veiga as East Regional Sales Manager, Fasco welcomed Larry Manzo to its USA team, and Brandon Perlich officially assumed the role of Click Bond President.

You can get details on all of these stories and more in Fastener Technology International Magazine and the Fastener News Report monthly newsletter, both available online at FastenerTech.com. Now, let us turn to the back page to talk about the human factor. Last month on the Fastener News Report, I mentioned that I was headed to Düsseldorf, Germany, to enjoy some Altbier, pretzels, sausage, and the excellent fastener exhibits at the WIRE 2024 trade fair.

I realize not all Fastener News Report listeners are familiar with the details of fastener making and the world-famous companies such as National Machinery, Beneke Wire, SACMA, DyMac, Soling, Vitari Engineering, PTG, SASPI, Chun Zu, Can-Eng Furnaces, Wrentham Tool, RMG, and hundreds of others that supply fastener-making machines, materials, and accessories. Those of you who are probably aware that the fastener industry exhibits in Düsseldorf are numerous and world-class. My anticipation and expectations for the April staging of this show were pretty high.

I was looking forward to seeing and experiencing a record-breaking number of exhibits, but my overall enthusiasm was slightly tempered by what to expect in terms of visitor quality and quantity, and the actual level of busyness at the show. I am pleased to report that WIRE 2024 was simply excellent on all levels and that anyone that was there could attest to the massive scale and professionalism of this trade fair and health of the fastener and wire product industries, as well as to the incredible quality of technology products and services on display, not to mention the fantastic and attractive exhibits themselves and the knowledgeable and welcoming people on hand to greet and educate visitors.

As usual, the technical themes revolved around process and product innovation. This year, there was a strong emphasis on sustainability as well as robotic and AI solutions to overcome labor shortfalls and limitations. I was struck mostly by the human factor present everywhere at the show and in the city. This may have been more evident this year, as this is the first WIRE Düsseldorf fair in six years for many of the attendees and exhibitors. That aspect helped make the mood quite positive and direct.

I was keenly aware and impressed with the WIRE 2024 hospitality, greetings, and personal interactions on the show floor, as well as at the many off-site events, stand parties, and gatherings in the streets and the many Düsseldorf establishments. Some non-standard events that we enjoyed included the IWMA networking event, the WiX A Night Out in Germany, the Messe Düsseldorf Industrial Partners Dinner, and the Wafios Wittelsbach Dinner at Hausbrauerei Zum Schlussel.

You can see our complete report from the show on this event in the upcoming June/July 2024 issue of Fastener Technology International Magazine. Other excellent fastener events this year that are closer to home are Fastener Fair USA in Cleveland and the IFE in Las Vegas. My expectations for both of these are also high, and I am sure that the human factor will be prominently on display on the show floors, as well as in other hospitality events and in the city streets. This has been Mike McNulty of Fastener Technology International Magazine bringing you the Fastener News Report. Please send your news, pictures, comments, corrections, or complaints to me at McNulty@FastenerTech.com.

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Fastener Angles Explained: What Blind Rivets Reveal About Standards & Testing

This is Carmen Vertullo with your Fastener Training Minute coming to you from the Fastener Training Institute in Carver Labs in beautiful El Cajon, California. Just a point of order that we must recognize. I am sure you have heard this already on the show somewhere, but congratulations to Fully Threaded Radio for their 200th episode. I have been around for a little over a hundred of them, and I am so proud of Eric and the team at Fully Threaded, Brian.

All the people who contribute, and I am really happy, excited, and proud to be part of that team. Way to go, fully threaded radio. Our topic does not come from an email. It comes from something that actually happened right out in our lab, and it has to do with testing blind rivets. We were testing some blind rivets, and those blind rivets were what we call countersunk rivets. That is the terminology that we use when the rivet has a flat head. We discovered something about the angle on those countersunk rivet heads. As a result, we did some training in the shop.

I found out some of my guys know some stuff about angles when it comes to fasteners, not just rivets. It occurred to me that at one time, during one of our Faster Training Institute classes for the certified fastener specialist, I taught a class on the fastener map. I had a couple of slides dedicated to various angles that we run into in the fastener industry. I thought we would talk about angles. What is your angle? What matters to you? When we come back, I will tell you what we discovered about these flathead rivet angles and some other things.

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Welcome back to the Fastener Training Minute. This is Carmen Vertullo. We are talking about angles when it comes to fasteners. We are testing these blind rivets. It turned out this was an odd blind rivet for us. It is one that we had not seen before. It is called a pull-through blind rivet. It is from IFI 117. It looks just like a standard blind rivet, except the mandrel does not break. It pulls all the way through, basically leaving a hollow core in the rivet after it is set.

The IFI 114 standard, which covers the common blind rivets, all the ones that you buy normally without saying anything special, comes from IFI 114. Those blind rivets from IFI 114 have a 120-degree angle for the flathead. That is the included angle. We go into testing these pull-through rivets, and we have to make a special test fixture for them. We do a shear test and a, I guess you would call it, a tensile test, a pull apart test. We have to countersink the plate. It turns out that the pull-through rivets from IFI 117 have a 100-degree countersink, not a 120-degree countersink.

Because of that, I thought, “What do the other rivets have?” We are going to go down the list, and I am going to tell you, because they are not all the same. The IFI 116 multi-grip rivet has a 120-degree flathead. You need a 120-degree countersink. The IFI 119 structural rivet, which is like the monobolt, has a 100-degree head. The IFI 126 closed-end rivet has a 120-degree head. The IFI 130 structural splitting rivet has a 100-degree head. The IFI 123 drive pin rivet has a 100-degree head. Most aerospace fasteners have a 120-degree head.

Aerospace flathead rivet fasteners have a 120-degree head. I thought, “What about solid rivets?” There are a couple of solid rivet standards in the IFI book. I looked at two of them. One is ASME B18.1.1 for small solid rivets. Those are smaller than half an inch. They have a hundred-degree head. What about the larger ones, which come from ASME B18.1.2? Those have a 78-degree head. This is fastener trivia, more than training, but it was very interesting to me. I started wondering about what else we do not know about angles.

I was asking out in the shop because we have to have all these countersinks in order to make the tooling to test these rivets. I asked my guys, “What is the standard countersink for an inch faster?” They all knew 82 degrees was the standard. By the way, when you inspect these flat heads dimensionally, you look at the half angle. We are more concerned that half of the angle is 41 degrees than we are with the included angle being 82 degrees, because the head could be crooked. That is why we checked that.

They knew about the hundred-degree countersink that we can get with an inch fastener as well. Those are two choices, 82 degrees and a hundred degrees. A hundred degrees gives us a shorter head so we can use it in thinner materials. I asked, “What about metric?” They did not know. I knew anyway, most people who sell metric fasteners know that the flathead metric fasteners have a 90-degree angle. For our basic threaded fasteners, we have 82 degrees and 100 degrees for inches and 90 degrees for metric screws. I started thinking about some other angles, like threads, for example.

All of our threads in the inch world have a 60-degree included angle. This includes our space threads on our sheet metal screws and our standard machine screw threads that are on our screws and bolts. It turns out there are some other screws out there, large timber screws, for example, that may have a 45-degree included angle on them.

There are a couple of other weird angles out there that I am not going to go into, such as the notch angle on a Sharpie impact specimen or the notch angle on a hydrogen embrittlement test bar. What is your angle? You know a bunch of our angles now, and I thought it was very interesting to just chat about a few of the angles that we run into when we are testing and inspecting fasteners. That is your Fastener Training Minute. This was Carmen Virtulo. Thanks for tuning in.

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Inside The Fastener Industry: Don “The Amazing Shan” On 30+ Years of Stories, People, & Perspective

When you think of the ultimate fastener industry insider, at least in the Cleveland area, the Midwest part of the fastener industry, you think of Don, the amazing Shan. Brother.

Eric, how are you?

Never better. Thanks for hopping on with us. It has been a little while, and good to hear your voice.

It has not changed.

Still pounding the pavement out there. I would like to hear a little bit about what you are up to, but I know you have tons to share with us. Always good to hear your perspective on things because you are the ultimate insider. How long have you been in this industry? Remind everybody.

I stopped counting at 30. It is past 30 years. It has been a long time. You meet a lot of people along the way, and the guys who know me by different names scare me a little bit. It is like you are walking down the street, and somebody will mention a company, and I will turn around, and they would not understand who it was unless they knew the history. 30 years is a long time.

Who were you with for your first big stint?

The company is called Service Bolt and Nut. They were the largest distributor in the Cleveland area. Our big competitor was Ziegler Bolts, and Ziegler was still around back then. It was them and us. Out of the people who worked at Service Bolt and Nut, there are probably a good ten people in either ownership in this industry or in high positions that have been in this record as long as I have. It is fun. I never went to college, but if I did, these guys were like my guys. If you are a service bolt nut guy, you will always lean back on those friendships, which are forever in my mind. It is great.

You bonded as an alum, and I get that completely. There is a feeling like that, a vibe out there in the industry, also with Fastenal people. They are everywhere in the industry.

There are a lot of guys who will stay in Fastenal for 5 or 6 years and still have those connections with the Fastenal people. They are all young kids. That is what we were way back when, when we all started, we were 18, 19, 20 years old. To know those same people later, and they are still in this industry. It is incredible friendships that have developed within the industry. We have seen everything that the way it was 30 years ago and the way it is now is completely different.

Even the way we communicate is obviously completely different. I miss the ability to have said I went to college, and I had that experience because I think it would have been a phenomenal experience. That was my little college days. Four years in a warehouse, making fun of life and free as a bird as a service bolt and nut warehouse guy. Those were the days. I will go back in a heartbeat.

The Cleveland area certainly had its own vibe over the years. I have picked up a lot of those stories and had a feel to it. Who were some of the guys who were in your class? Did you meet Riddell back in those early days? Did he come up with you?

He did. We had our group, and then they brought him in, probably maybe five or six years after we were already solidified. The guys at Hercules fasteners, Mike Maglic, those guys, Ricky Fennell, who works at Auto Bolt right now, those guys were the guys with the heart and the soul of that place. It is sad because there was a mahogany row, and it was a two-story building, and all the management had their own separate offices. Sadly, most of them had passed away. There is only one left now. He is almost eighty years old, but we still stay in touch with all those guys. I love them to death. Riddell was in that mix. He was running the shop back then.

We had a cutoff machine shop there back in the days. I will bore you with a small story. Me, Rick Finau, and the guy who worked in the warehouse named Doug Helvax met for a pizza in Lakewood, Ohio, maybe about two months ago. They gave me photo albums, about twenty of them, of all the pictures. There was one single guy who took photographs of all of us when we were all little kids, twenty-year-old kids. To look back at them now is just incredible. You should post them somewhere.

Totally. We are in a social media world now, Don.

Most of the people who graduated from that class are not.

It is still a blacksmith industry, no matter how much we progress, that is for sure. That must have been an interesting comparison between then and now because quite a contrast in those photos, Don. I am imagining when you guys were out because there is Finow, and I am sure. You have noticed he has grown his locks quite long lately. On the other hand, there is you, and you went the Telly Savalas route. In the 70s, you guys had some pretty funny seventies hair, right? Some like Peter Frampton stuff is going.

All of it. That is what makes those pictures priceless. There were a lot of people that travel. I spent fifteen years there, just like everybody else. A lot of people came in. Worked for a year or two and went on for whatever reasons. There are a lot of memories of looking at, do you remember that guy? Do you remember that guy? It was just fun. The laughs are nonstop. You just never get over them. I personally enjoy talking to older gentlemen with regard to their histories and the history of the world, even way back when.

I am talking about guys now that are in their 80s and 90s, they just love to talk because they do not get to talk to many people all the time anymore. They just get pushed into a corner, and that, for me, is kind of sad. I love talking to those guys. They are beautiful. We did a thing one time back in my days in the solution days, where I was bringing somebody in to talk to the whole group with experiences on how to get better and what you can do to get better. Things of that nature by guys who have already been down the road. I leaned on a couple of the gentlemen who used to work at Service Bolton Nut, who were my mentors, who are now either passed away or 70 to 80 years old.

They came in and had a nice little speech to the troops. I do not know how many people grasp onto it or learn anything from it. If you get one or two guys who might be interested in seeing that you can actually make a living in this industry. You can make a good living in this industry, and it is more than just bolts and nuts. You tell somebody right now that you worked in a, what do you do for a living? I sell bolts and nuts. They think immediately, hardware store. This industry is so detailed.

Right now, it is ten times more detailed, more than that. It is a hundred times more detailed than it was back then. It was easier to open up your mom and pop shops back then. It was a lot easier than it is now. You literally have to have some background with the quality issues and the quality requirements to do things with businesses, some of the larger companies.

A hundred percent. What you were saying, it rings true to our previous episode, which was entitled A Great Industry To Be In. That stemmed from something Laurence Claus said during fastener training week. He gave the same message to the group there, and there is definitely a lot of room for good people and hardworking people to make a living. It is a good theme.

The other thing you were saying that rings back to something we heard recently was your idea of bringing some of the old school guys in to talk to the younger people and give them a flavor for what is possible. Tim Action Jackson was speaking about that very thing. He is trying to do that out on the West Coast. I think you are right, Don. If you do that, not everybody will grasp it, but there will be a handful who do absorb it. I think it is definitely a worthwhile thing to do.

You need to have an audience that wants to be involved in the industry. It is tough in this industry as it is in every other one. In my mind, you have to pay your dues. You have to be educated. I will give you a good example. You could take the education of the fastener industry. The faster training industry and get a ten-year head start from when I went through. I learned by mistake. If I had had that Institute to learn that training, it would have cut ten years out of my learning curve to figure out this industry.

Even in learning all the things that they learn in that Institute, they still need to have the experience of making mistakes and running into issues all the time, whether it be delivery or manufacturing, so that they know how to get around. I will give you an example. Ricky Fenell is my friend, a lifelong friend from Service Bolt. He has been in the bolt and nut business, but he gravitated a little bit to the domestic manufacturing side. He cut his teeth at Lake Erie Cab Screw. He would have stayed there his entire career if they had not moved or done what they have done.

They sold out, but he would have still been at Lake Erie. Spend another stint at Kerr Lakeside, and now he is at Ola Bolt. He likes the manufacturing angle on the manufacturing side of this industry. He is a lot more detailed in how the making of a part is done, so much so that if I ever hit a snag on a question or anything, I feel like I got a right-hand man in Fino, where I can call him and he can give me the inside scoop on. What I may do or may not be able to do to improve efficiencies to make a delivery from two weeks into one week.

You mean improve efficiencies, right, Don? Do not cut corners.

I would never cut corners. If the young kids today need to understand that, then they need to fight through the pay scale where they are. You do not make any money out of the gate in this industry. It is not like you are getting an expense account in a company car right out of the gate. I think some of the young kids, with the way the world is today, want instant success.

Young people today need to understand that you have to work your way through the pay scale—you don’t make real money right out of the gate in this industry. It’s not like you start with an expense account and a company car on day one. Share on X

If they can just fight through ten years of not so much struggle, but learning and moving up in a nice-sized company, they will find themselves in a very good situation, and they will still be 35 years old and have a good 30 years of fun in this industry if they can just last out the beginning. A lot of guys will bail because you are not going to get paid a ton of money right out of the gate.

You’ve got to strive to get to that Kevin Quinn level expense account.

That is another level that you have to have a couple of degrees of expense accounts to get into the Kevin Quinn world.

He is legendary.

I loved him. Everybody had fun times with Kevin.

What story did you hear about the size of his expense account?

I did not, but I contributed to putting it that way. I do not know if it was the couple of Bloody Marys before golf or at the turn.

He always had a well-stocked golf bag. That is for sure. Actually speaking about contributing, I recall the first time that I hung out with you. Do you know when that was?

It was in Chicago. Was it not?

No, it was in Columbus. It was like the third to the final Columbus show. I did not know anybody. I went down there by myself. Somehow, I got invited to a dinner after the first night of the show, and we were all at the steakhouse. We had a private room, and you were there with Jackie.

I know exactly where it was because Rich Cavoto was there.

Cavoto was at the head of the table. Rob Lucas was there. The traveling salesman, or who would become the traveling salesman, was there. Rob’s partner, Larry, at the time. Business partner, that is. It was a long table of people. What I remember the most was that the bottles of wine were flowing, and this was not a cheap steakhouse either. I remember there was an enormous seafood tower at either end of the table.

What were you thinking about the industry at that point?

I was thinking I am just trying to start a business here. I do not even really have a very big credit limit on this credit card, and the dinner alone would have knocked me out. Watching these bottles of wine, it was like Cavoto would just wave the waiter over again, and two more bottles would show up, and that went on all night.

I remember that. We had walked out because we were across the street. You guys told us where we were at. We walked out of the bar we were at and took a left instead of a right. If we took a right, your restaurant was right there. We took a left and walked for about half a mile before we realized that the place was right to the right-hand side of us. That was Columbus. It was the first time. That was crazy. That was fun though.

You stumbled in a little late because you were lost, and you stumbled out at the end for a completely different reason.

Still lost.

The climax of that night came when about nine credit cards got slapped down on the table, and I have no idea who paid for all of it. All I know is I did not. Pay a nickel, and I could not believe it. Nobody even asked me.

I do not even know what that tab was. I cannot remember that far back. It is one you want to forget.

We needed Kevin at that table for sure.

We would still be there.

It got covered, and that is just one of my early fastener party memories. We’ve got a big party coming up now. It may rival those early days with this NCFA thing. Are you taking this boat ride?

I am. When I sent in all my people, we have six people going on that event. I told them, “Who came up with this idea to put 200 fastener people on a boat?” I hope there are a lot of life preservers on that boat. I guess there are two or three floors. It should be a good time.

I do not know where you heard 200, because I think the number is way north of that.

I did not know that.

This boat, the capacity is like 700 or something, but I think Mike Robinson, president over there at NCFA, told me that it is 500 with the tickets. That could even be wrong. It seems like it is a number in flux. Anyway, refresh our memory. What are you doing these days? You said you got six people coming, coming from where?

Fastener Solutions, which is based in Jersey. They have a branch here, close and not so much close, but in Salem, Ohio. We got some guys coming in from Jersey, and then we have people coming from Salem that are newbies, two or three-year guys, and then a couple of rookies. This will be their inoculation into the North Coast. To start off, learning about the industry on the biggest party boat will be interesting because everything goes downhill from there. We will see how that works. I am excited for some of them because I remember when I was a kid, learning and just meeting people, it was incredible. Especially the stories as you grow older, but there should be a lot of good people there. That is not even counting the people from Chicago. There will be a lot of people from Chicago there.

The NCFA social is always a Cleveland and Chicago event with guys from out East, but this one is going to be huge in comparison, I think. It was smart of the NCFA to shift the date. The way they did to warm up for Fastener Fair. It is going to be a great event, I think. We are just praying for good weather and all that. Let me ask you this, with all this partying the Fastener industry does, is there any notable giant business deal that you think you got because of one of these? Were you at a cocktail party or some kind of a bash, and the next day you had a meeting as a result of that, and you did a really nice piece of business out of it?

Networking through all of these events is incredible because they will give you leads, not so much because these people are doing business with the same people you are, but they will help you along the way on who to contact, who to play with, and how to understand the dynamics of each and every one of those companies. They all run differently, and you have to have the ability to have the right people in your corner. Most of the guys that it is a traveling band of gypsies. That is basically what all these associations are. They all know everybody, and they are all well connected, and they will all help you any way they possibly can. For me, for what I have done in my career, that has always been so. I am so grateful for all their help along the way.

Very cool. You are a fastener gypsy or a vagabond.

It is sad to say, but when you’re getting into this for a while, you’ve got to call yourself something. At this point in my career, I just enjoy the friendships. I do not get overly excited about whatever you want to call me. You are going to meet some people like you. Some people do not. It does not matter. There are enough people who are fair in our world. I do not know that there would be another industry that is as fair or friendly or as friendly as our industry, to be quite honest. Look at you. You are ten years into learning the industry, have never sold a bolt or nut, and you are in the hall of fame. How does that happen?

Ironic, isn’t it? You got a couple of those details a little bit off, but I get the gist of what you are saying, Don. Anyway, it is a wonderful industry. No matter what they call you, I still call you the amazing Shan. With all your perspective, you have a lot of understanding about what is going on out there. I wanted to ask you a question about the prevailing outlook of the FDI index. I know you follow that at least casually and the trend has basically been, this last month is a little bit of a departure, but the trend has been that the number itself is above 50, but our outlook for the next six months has been on the pessimistic side. Do you think people are worried? Do you feel people panicking out there? What is your take on the market?

Everybody plays a little bit close to the vest as far as customers are concerned. VMI programs are playing close to the vest a little bit. Throw in a little bit of an election year. I do not know if that has a lot to do with it, but it always seemed to me that over the years in election years was a little squirrely. I personally think I am so optimistic about it is just going to grow at a slower pace than what we hoped. I personally think that I see enough inquiries in action, but a lot of people are a little shy about pulling the trigger. I think that it has a lot to do with where we are at. Let us get over the hump. Let us get Trump in there and end this thing already.

That is where you are falling on all that. It seems like there has got to be more to it, though. Are you seeing any activity from OEMs getting a little wobbly or manufacturing?

I am working with a lot of distributors, all distributors, and all the big guys that have solidified VMI contracts, and because of our value-added services, I am more on the specials end of what they do. These distributors will call me and take advantage of the value-added items that we can offer. I do not so much see the day-to-day activity on the A and B items that are flowing, but I would guess that that is probably a little on the slower end. I still think that a lot of me is, it is hard for me to focus on anything that is pessimistic.

No matter what the conditions are, I am one of those guys always figuring out that there has got to be a way to grab a hold and kick something forward. Sometimes a little bit more difficult. I do not really see a lot of it, so it is hard for me to comment on some of those big manufacturing plants on the A and B items, only because I do not see them too much. I could tell you that our business as a whole is doing well and well-forecasted, moving forward to have another good growth year. It is set up right now. We are going to get a low here in the next two or three months because of the summer months, but hopefully it finishes with a flurry. It might flatten out until this election.

Always coming back to this election. I tell you, these FDI comments are rife with them, and I do not know what to say. The analysts tell us that there is no correlation, really, between the business cycle, yet everybody talks about it. That is the word on the street, and I guess we just have to go with it.

Who are you going to believe, the street or the analyst?

It depends on whether you’re heavily invested in publicly traded stocks. What else is going on? What do you have your eye on these days? Where is the next piece of business that you are going to conquer?

Conquering, I have been doing that for years. What we are doing right now is consolidating a little bit to a larger facility in the PA area, New Castle, PA, which will allow us to open up our value add, and our manufacturing capacity will increase. We are putting our packaging equipment in our packaging area, which will be able to be in the same building. Tons of capacity there also. Adding a couple of pieces of machinery, some Landis threads, which are impossible to find anymore, but they are good for what we do.

Cutting threads or specials, CNC machines, or any exotic materials have been really good for what we can do in the stud world. Having everything under one roof will increase our efficiency, and we should be able to not only turn quotes quicker, but also be a little bit more competitive number-wise. I do think that part of what we do, our company, although based in New Jersey, is a company that you want to get involved with, only because of the people that are within. They are based all over. It really is a company that will give you a lot of value added.

Having everything under one roof will improve our efficiency. We’ll not only turn quotes around faster, but also become more competitive on pricing. Share on X

The company culture is a direct influence on how we operate along the way. I was one of those firm believers, and you already know this, but if you get a company culture where you are involved, I always thought that talent and passion in what you do will win eventually. You just got to work it. You have to be invested in getting the talent and the passion of people where we are at right now. We have people where you can actually get in, and you can work. They will pay people to work in a small office or from their home.

If they feel they can add some added value, or they feel it is almost as if you can have a company that you can effectively operate as if you are running your own business, but still have the infrastructure and support of being part of a larger company. That is a good portion or a good idea, as far as growth is concerned. In starting the businesses I have been involved with, the thought pattern was always, “Let us think out of the box. Let us think about how we can do it differently. Let us think about how we can service people that we, our customers that we service, knowing that our business model has the same industrial-based distributor.”

In conversations that I have always had, I have always thought the communication process, if you could compete against yourself, and then realize where your shortcomings are, and fix those shortcomings, and put people in place to close that gap and add products. After closing that gap, you are going to grow. After that, if you have the passion and the company values that you have access to, there is no reason other than laziness or lack of aggressiveness that you will not be successful. It might not be overnight, but a lot of this business is relationship-based.

Staying power.

You’ve got to just hang around. You have to be around, and that is what we are trying to do now in helping to grow this area.

You’ve got to just keep going.

That is it. Every day, one step ahead is better than doing nothing. I have always said the same thing. If you are not growing or attempting to grow, then you are dying. It is one of the two. 02:05:54

Your culture is very important. Your people are very important. You have got an elaborate formula. You simplified it there, but there are a lot of moving pieces to that. That is why not everybody succeeds. You are on a successful path, and you have a really great inside crew. It sounds like the inside people are really one of the keys to it. Are they?

They are the total keys to it. I have always said that there are hundreds and thousands of inside people who get no credit in this industry. They work harder than the outside people do. They get no accolades as far as who they are and what they do. The outside guy might get a little bit more of a handshake, how are you, luncheon? Without the inside people, you are done. Without that support group and the inside people working as well as they do, you are not going to get it. You are just not going to get forward. That is the sad part about it. You had mentioned that you think there should be a wing in the Hall of Fame. You already created the wing for what it would be. You got the reps in the hall of fame.

The conventional threaderati, the bloviators of the industry.

We should call it exactly that.

Not speaking for everybody, of course. There are some solid people in there, but I get what you are saying. It is sort of a separate division. The IFI has got their Soaring Eagle Award. I do not know. They have got three different groupings, I think, for the different areas of manufacturing and distribution primarily. I get what you are saying. These are unsung heroes, and they should be celebrated. They are the kinds of people you do not see at the bashes. You normally do not see them at the social events or at the association events, and so forth. How do you find them? How do you recognize them? How do you get to know them?

That is the tough part in my mind. I do most of our business with those inside people. Even though we start at the bottom, you work with the inside people, developing their trust. After that, it snowballs into the guy in front of them, the guy in front of them. You are starting from the bottom and moving up as opposed to starting from the president and moving down. It is easier. It is more fruitful if you start at the bottom and get to know those people.

I worked fifteen years in this industry before you would go out and meet somebody that you have talked to for fifteen years, and you have never put a face to a voice. That is not right, but it is weird when it happens, and there is a connection, and there is some help when you get to know somebody like that. When you get the phone call or the email, you are not talking to a computer. You are talking to a human who has the same responsibilities that you do, and we are fighting the same struggles, whether it be delivery struggles or work struggles.

It is knowing those inside people and getting to know them all the time. It is hard. It is not an easy thing. They still pick up, might be a little bit easier for a guy from the bright and best of the world because they have a name, and they are already selling a base product. I am not selling a base product. I am selling a relationship. Selling a relationship takes a lot more time, and in trying to let them understand the value you bring to their organization, so that when they think of something, they are going to call you. It is not an easy function.

You just have to keep on plugging away. That is where it comes back to taking one step at a time, moving one step forward every day, and you will get a little bit better. You need to do that. When I grew up, the inside guys turned into outside guys. The outside guys may turn into a national sales manager, or the inside guys might rotate into an operational or general manager type of thing. A lot of people are not outside people who like to be on the road, and others just like the inside and the security of going to the same place to work, working it through.

I like both of them. The inside guys definitely do not get any recognition in this industry, and they have not for years. There was a nice gentleman, George Tice was his name, and he worked at Ernest’s machine for 30 years. He went to a doctor one day, had a heart attack, and fell over in the waiting room. Thirty years invested in the industry. People knew him when they called him. He could recognize voices. He knew the product, but he was an unsung hero his whole life. He is never going to open up a company.

He is never going to have a lot of accolades, but in my mind, he probably should. It would have been great to see those guys like that come into this industry, work it for 30 years. At the end of the year, not only have a chance to attend a retirement party at their company, but also a chance to maybe go to a Vegas hall of fame dinner and say, “Here is our inside guy of the year. We are going to have a wing and put them in there.” I will tell you what, it will make that person proud and think about what it will do for his family.

It is a little bit of a morbid story that you just told Don, but I totally get your point. It is kind of like I am thinking almost like a Willie Lohman story here. I will tell you, Brighton does a good job with their high-five award of recognizing their inside people, and they plaster it all over social media. Other companies do that as well. Your point is well taken, and the inside people are the ones who really keep this screw turning. We should not hat tip them. We should do a better job on the podcast of talking with those folks because they are so important. Maybe we have been overlooking.

You are a little intimidating, though. For the first guys that come on your show, it is intimidating.

How so?

You go over it. “This is how we are to do. Get your mic right so you can hear everything set up.” Bright lights come on, and you start talking, and the guys on the other end get nervous.

Sometimes. Some guys clam up.

Sometimes you are a little intimidating. Now, with your Hall of Fame recognition, you are really intimidating.

You keep harping on that, Don. Is your nomination coming through this year? You are definitely destined. That is the last person I am to nominate.

The amazing Shan, you got a brick up there for sure, brother. There is no justice if that does not happen.

It is funny. We did not mention it, but you were on episode 100 of the show. Now fast forward, here we are at 200. I am so glad that you are able to come on. I could not think of a better voice to have.

I will tell you a small, funny story. One of those Vegas shows, I unfortunately had an episode where I needed to be in the hospital. You knew that, and some of the locals, close friends, knew that. You sent me a text because I was just taking a walk after my episode, and you actually sent me a text that said, “You should just come right directly to the show with your little gown on because now that it would be the first time you could tell the industry to kiss your ass.” Which was funny as hell.

Right on. Thanks for remembering that. Knowing you, you considered doing that for just a second, didn’t you?

Just for a second.

That is great. Thanks for helping us go out with a laugh, and it has been great to talk to you again. I look forward to seeing you out there on the boat.

We will be there.

It is Don@ShanFastener.com, right? Fastener with no S?

No, it is not ShanFastener anymore. It is DShan@FastenerSolutionsGroup.com.

Since I screwed that up, why don’t you roll that out one more time so everybody has got it? DShan@FastenerSolutionsGroup.com Solutions with an S.

This time it is with an S. Brother. That is too confusing. Talk to Don on the boat at the NCFA social coming up on May 21st. That is right around the corner. Most of you probably heard this after that. Don “The Amazing” Shan. Thanks for joining us.

We will talk.

—

Episode 200 Wrap-Up: Reflections, Early Memories, Industry Insights, & Thanks To Our Community

I cannot imagine what Don Shan would look like with a Peter Frampton haircut.

I know. Yes. When you look at him today, it is a far cry, and Telly Savalas was actually the first name I could come up with, but I might have been able to come up with something better for the younger folks in the audience. What do you think?

Most of the younger folks would have no idea who Peter Frampton or Telly Savalas was.

It is probably true. For the younger people tuning in, Telly Savalas was like one of the first guys who was bald, who made it cool. It was still a novelty. Now, everybody is bald, Joe Rogan, pretty much most of the NBA.

It is just a thing now. It was not a thing back in the late ‘60s, I guess, Telly Savalas.

Anyway, Don “The Amazing” Shan looks good any way you slice it to me. He has a lot of fastener knowledge and a big heart. I would like to thank him for appearing with us on episode 200 of the show. He was a very early supporter of this podcast.

He was.

We really appreciate that. Thanks also to Rosa Hearn of Brighton-Best International and Matt Boyd of Parker Fasteners. Looking forward to hearing great things about that partnership, guys. We are. Keep us in the loop. Fastener Technology International editor Mike McNulty welcomed. Endrie’s CEO, Michael Knight. What an economics conversation, guys. Thanks for sharing that. Michael, glad you were here for a little bit of a rebound. I know you are ever the optimist. AJ Stranquist with Worth Additive was with us.

Carmen Vertullo of Carver Labs and the Fastener Training Institute had the Fastener Training Minute. Well done as always. The title sponsors of fully threaded radio are Star Stainless, right off the shelf. It is STAR, Goebel Fasteners, Quality the first time, Go Goble, and Brighton-Best International. Tested, tried, true, Brighton-Best.

Fully threaded radio is also sponsored by Buckeye Fasteners, BTM Manufacturing, Eurolink, Fastener Supply Service, Fastener Technology International, INxSQL Software, the International Fastener Expo, J.Lanfranco, Solution Industries, 3Q Inc., Volt Industrial Plastics, and Worth Industry North America. On this milestone episode, Brian, I will also add that we have had a variety of partners and sponsors over the years that have helped us along.

I appreciate all their support, too. In the Fastener media game, you’ve got to play your hands when you get them, and we appreciate being part of your game, everybody. Get with us whenever you can. The email address is FTR@FullyThreaded.com. If you have an idea for us or if you are looking to join us as a partner, we have had some amazing communications over the years. You never know where they will come from, and we never know what to expect.

It would be a very interesting episode we could make from the things that went on after we stopped recording. Those have been some extraordinarily interesting conversations.

Like an outtakes reel or a bloopers reel, almost.

It would be so interesting.

Fully threaded raw.

All the things people are really terrified to say on the radio, that is what they are thinking.

We have gone back and forth on that over the years, and we have just kept it straight. Of course, we have always preserved people’s confidence. We do not want to make anybody sound professional, unless of course it has been tongue in cheek or they have permitted us, but you’ve got to be really careful. This show is what it is.

We have not always been entirely amazingly careful, as Eric and I know very well, in our rather outspoken stage, when the whole buy America thing needed to be advertised widely. The net result of that was that within a period of about one week, the whole litmus ship in China completely stopped dead, and was cut off.

That was a few years back.

It was very noticeable.

People cautioned us because a lot of our business partners are importers, and that is just the way it is in the fastener industry. They respect that we have always tried to play it straight and bring reality to the audience. We are all playing in this world, where there is, deep down, an objective truth that we are all striving for. While we are out there doing our best to promote everybody’s business interests, that includes the distributors who are the guys really turning the wheel out there.

That is true. I do not want to be speaking Chinese anytime soon.

Do not worry. Sometimes we really get our points crossed, Brian, but yours is well taken at this moment. I tell you the interesting thing, over all the years of walking a fine line, we crossed a few times just on politically incorrect topics. The only time I recall really getting some sort of threatening to cancel us type email was from an environmental alarmist, I guess I will call them politely, who was upset about some comment or other that one of us made about CO2 in the environment. They did not like that. I forgot exactly what we said, but this is going back a few years, and they were quite cross with us, shall we say.

Nice wording.

You’ve got to hand it to the fastener industry, though, because in a lot of other venues, this would just degrade into really crappy behavior, but nobody in this industry behaves that way, and it is a testament to everybody. Rolling back to episode one, we will just mention it briefly here, the details of it, since it is episode 200, and we are winding this one down. It was published on March 18th, 2010. Again, we are in our fifteenth year. This is the second episode of our 15th year. That is a long time back. The episode was a little over an hour long. The first guest was Mike McGuire from the American Fastener Journal.

The promoter with Mr. Bannister of the International Fastener Expo. It was not called that then.

Those guys started NIFS. As we called it when we started in this game, the National Industrial Fastener Show. Pretty sure he is still out there lurking in the dark recesses of the fastener industry. I have not talked to Mike in a couple of years, but he did reach out and congratulate us last summer. Also appearing on episode one was Andy Pels. He is another guy we have not talked to in quite a while, Bri.

He is.

He gave us a lot of good ideas in the early days, and he is the guy actually who brought 3D printing to my attention. We were talking in the early episodes, in general, of the podcast about iPhones and smartphones, and that is when all that was blossoming, and he was right on board with all that, too. Topping it all off, we had Rob Lucas and Larry Thomas, who were partners in Fidelis Fasteners at the time, and they called in from Shanghai.

It would have been pretty wild for us in our first episode.

We had very ambitious expectations even then, despite everyone telling us no one would ever listen to a podcast. A few did say that. No sponsorship, of course, for those first early episodes. We did not even attempt it because we knew we would have to establish some level of credibility, which is somewhat laughable. Nevertheless, we seem to have achieved it. I tell you, overall, in terms of the technical quality of the thing, I have a hard time listening to it. The sound is just not good.

I know, but you are your own worst critic in terms of sound quality. It makes it hard to strive for, given the uncertainties that you could not even rely on the internet to work properly, fifteen years ago, for an hour at a time.

We had a lot of dropouts. I could have done a lot better with that sound quality. Anyway, I learned on the job, and maybe episode a hundred or so, it started to sound somewhat okay. That is my take on it. Hopefully, it is good enough to keep you around, folks, for episode 201, which will come out after a special report that we intend to publish shortly after Fastener Fair, which we are packing up for right now. I will see you in person very soon, Brian.

Yes, you will. Extremely soon, actually. I am just getting all of my stuff ready.

Brian has a giant box of pens and makes sure that when he is looking the other way, if you come by our booth, you steal one or two. You know how he is with giving those things away.

They hide behind the screen. These are much more valuable a giveaway than our fridge magnets. I have to guard them very carefully.

I am going to bring one of those legendary refrigerator magnets with me, Brian, just to have some fun with it. If anybody asks, I will have one in my pocket. With that, we are going to put this episode of the show in the can. For Brian Musker, this is Eric Dudas. Get out there, sell some screws, and we will talk to you next time.

Thanks for tuning in for fifteen years.