Episode #202 - In Other News

Dramatic headlines abound across the country and around the world. This episode of Fully Threaded Radio avoids all of that, as Eurolink FSS president Craig Penland (15:44) and technologist Anders Green (2:00:31) provide various and informative takes on the industrial fastener industry from completely different angles. Huyett CEO Tim “Iron Butt” O’Keeffe joins newsman Mike McNulty on the Fastener News Report (1:05:56). Never hard up for topics, thread educator Carmen Vertullo compares macro and micro hardness testing on the Fastener Training Minute (1:44:48). International Fastener Expo show manager Morgan Wilson previews this year’s big show in Vegas (53:23). EXCLUSIVE BONUS: Bob “GQ” Baer and the lovely and talented Lynn Dempsey report from the first Naperville Fastener Association event of the season (39:13). Hosts Brian and Eric consider the lack of fasteners in Olmec heads.

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In Other News

Introduction

It is Fully Threaded Radio, the voice of the FCH sourcing network. If you buy, sell, manufacture, import, or distribute industrial threaded fasteners and you are tired of pretty much everything that is on the news or social media these days, well, this is the podcast for you. So glad you clicked in, everyone. Eric Dudas is with you here, and the cohost of Fully Threaded is with us as well. Equally as tired of virtually everything that is being said out there, aside from the fastener media that is. He is the hardest-working man in the online screwbiz. It is Brian Musker. Brian, are you doing all right?

I am, actually.

It is good to hear your voice because you were doing a little traveling, you and Lynn, and I know you caught a touch of the screwbola.

We both did, so we are, but it is all over now.

It messed up our recording schedule a little bit, but you are back now. You sound strong. I am, actually. Tons of walking where Lynn and I have been traipsing around different parts of Chicago looking for Olmec heads this year’s thing in Chicago. They are scattered all over Chicago.

I did not know that. Inspired, no doubt, by your recent travel down south of the border.

We went to see some of the original Olmec heads that are in the Museum of Anthropology. These are baby ones that are made so that different artists, both American and Mexican artists, can paint them.

Fully Threaded Radio | Fastener Industry News — Fastener Industry News: We visited the original Olmec heads at the Museum of Anthropology. These smaller versions are painted by American and Mexican artists. Back in 500 BC, there wasn’t a single fastener involved—just massive 20-ton basalt heads carved by hand.

500 BC or so, I am guessing there were no fasteners involved in that.

Not a single fastener, nothing. Just somehow, they chipped away these huge 20-ton round heads of basalt. I do not know how they did it.

I used to have a mini version in one of my fish tanks. No fasteners, though. Unlike this show, which is episode 202 of the show. This time we are publishing on July 19th, 2024. Once again, thanks for clicking in, everyone. Despite the rather disheveled recording schedule that we had for the feature material on this one, it is really a jammed episode. A lot to share with you. We will say right at the top, the main segments in this one were recorded before July 13th, 2024, which was our latest day that will live in infamy, Bri.

You are right.

None of that in this episode. You want that to get out there. It is all assassination all the time. This is Fully Threaded Radio. We are going to kick things off with a conversation with Craig Penland of Eurolink Fastener Supply Service. He is full of energy as well. He has some updates for us on what he is seeing in the European market. Of course, a lot of that eventually spills over into North America, and Craig is right in the thick of that market, as most of you know. Our feature segment is a conversation with Anders Green of Alox.

They are a relatively new technology provider in the fastener industry. If you are on LinkedIn, you have no doubt seen Anders because he is a very energetic poster out there. Always got a smile, full of energy, and a smart guy. This year, he will be presenting at the International Fastener Expo. We warm that up on this segment. It is too bad, Bri, that you were flat on your back for this one. You were recovering from the screwbola at the time. We are going to have him back because he has got a little bit of a citizenship surprise that I never would have guessed from his accent.

I have talked to him at the show for the last few shows, actually.

On the Fastener News Report. Fastener Technology International editor Mike McNulty welcomes Huyett CEO Tim “Iron Butt” O’Keeffe. Now we have a new nickname in the industry. He shares this one with us. As usual, Tim is very insightful as he reviews the FDI with Mike McNulty. A show within a show, and on Mike’s back page report, he has got this year’s MDM Top 206 Fastener distributors. He will share that list with us. Several names on that one that we know pretty well, Bri.

I would not be surprised at all.

Really, not a lot of surprises on that list, although the rankings are always fun to see. We have also had a conversation with International Fastener Expo Manager Morgan Wilson. He will lead us up to the news. It is shaping up to be another big event in Vegas this year, including another premier fastener golf event. If you have not signed up, make sure you do that. Morgan will underscore that idea. As part of the fun. Carmen Vertullo has the fastener training minute. This time, he asks the question, “What is the difference between macro and micro hardness testing when you are looking at your fasteners, and frankly, why should you care?” By the time you are done tuning into this one, you will have a definite opinion on that subject.

You will care a lot.

People in this audience certainly will. As if all that was not enough, a big bonus on this one. The Naperville Fastener Association recently held its first meeting of the season. Bob “GQ” Baer and the lovely and talented Lynn Dempsey were there, and they shared recording duties and picked up a few interviews to give you a little flavor of that one. Sounds like we have a few new members of the NFA, Bri.

I saw that, actually, I met them.

Of course, they are industry vets. One of them was about to retire, but that was the first time they showed up in Naperville. I was glad you guys got out there for that one. It is all coming at you. Disorganized, yes, but Fully Threaded. Absolutely. It is fully jammed with excellent partners as well. Bri, that is your department. Please shout them out.

It is my department, and I am glad it is because over the years we have made great friends of these people who are our sponsors, and you should think of them first when you think of screws and fasteners. The title sponsors are Fully Threaded Radio, 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, Wurth Industry North America, and Solution Industries, home of Solution Man.

Thanks to all our sponsors. Reach out to us anytime. We are always interested to hear what you think or to hear your questions. The email address is FTR@FullyThreaded.com. Brian and I are also available on LinkedIn. You can catch us that way as well. We turn up at many of the industry events and pretty much all the major trade shows. MWFA’s fastener week is coming up next month. I am heading out to your place. I’ll be hanging out with you, Lynn, and Harpo.

Yes, you will, and Sydney.

We are lining up a special lunchtime entertainment for the exhibitors during lunch. We should keep this on the reps a little bit, Bri, for the moment. Anyway, let’s put it this way. We are involved with something that is going to be a whole lot of fun. It is going to be for all the people who are involved in the tabletop at the MWFA, on Tuesday at lunchtime. We are still putting some of the details together, but let us just say we will fill in the blanks then. That is a clue to what we are doing.

Do not give too much away.

Think that was too close?

Yes.

I will give one more hint. I cannot resist. What do you think of when you think of Gene Rayburn, Bri? Do not say it.

I am not sure some of the younger people will have any idea what you are talking about, Eric.

They probably do not know anyway. That is as close as I am going to get. MWFA Fastener Week is coming up with all its amazing side events. We previewed that on episode 201. Go back and do a rewind if you need details. Before we cut to a quick message from our partners, I want to give a major hat tip to somebody in the fastener industry who is a mega veteran who is celebrating their 50th anniversary in the screw business. Brian, you and I started working with Dave Miller at Century Fastener Corp all the way back in 06 when we began FastenersClearingHouse.com. He has given us so many words of wisdom over the years. Lo and behold, here he is, 50 years old. What do you think?

That is pretty amazing, actually. I saw a post flash by on LinkedIn a couple of days ago. In part, it says, since joining Century in 1974, Dave Miller has played a critical role in our expansion and progress. He has not only mentored numerous long-standing branch managers, but also significantly contributed to the company’s advancement in aerospace sales, electronic products, and established the distributor sales strategy. Century has been very fortunate to have a wise old bird like Dave Miller on the staff. Congratulations. We could easily have added that he helped FCH along in many ways, too. Thanks, Dave.

I like many of our long-term members, actually.

We have picked up a lot of wisdom over the years from guys like Dave, although I do not know how many of them have reached the 50-year mark yet.

The one I have most recently communicated with was last night. Matt Boyd has definitely not reached the 50-year mark in the business thing, but I asked him a specific question about DFARs, and he replied immediately. It is very good. We are lucky to have such great friends like that.

Thank you, Matt. We also have friends at Link magazine. The new issue hit the streets, and Edson Manufacturing is on the cover. Might find a little something apropos from this podcast on page 28, especially if you were at the Rock Hall of Fame. Thanks to Leo and Tracy for publishing my story. I had a lot of fun writing that one. What I want to point out is that there is an announcement in the latest issue about Goebel’s World Rivet Congress.

We are going to close out this episode by discussing that a little bit. Goebel Fasteners is doing a big thing in Germany. They are inviting the industry to attend. That is happening in September. Again, we will close out this episode with that. You can always go back and see details in Link magazine. Let us cut now, Bri, for a quick message. Then we will say hi to your links, Craig Penland. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. We will be back in a minute to put a wrench to this one. It is Fully Threaded.

Right here.

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Fastener Industry Update with Eurolink’s Craig Penland

Bri, back with you, connecting the fastener industry, one podcast at a time.

More frequently, actually.

We do what we can, Bri. As you know, another guy who does what he can, he is making connections all over. Figured we would dive right into this episode with a visit from our good buddy from Eurolink Fastener Supply Service, Craig Penland.

Gentlemen, happy July. How are both of you and your summers going?

I am considering whether I am a gentleman or not, actually. It is very nice of you to suggest that.

I was paid to do that.

I like the direction you went with that, though, Bri, because I thought you were going to launch into this litany of complaints about all of the honeydews that you got served up with this summer. It seems like every time I call you, you are working on a home improvement project you did not ask for.

We have been through that.

At least it keeps Harpo occupied.

Is that the bird?

The star of episode 201.

I was thinking that that was true, but I just wanted to confirm. Where is the bird at right now?

The bird is outside, which is very good.

Which is where Eric wanted it in episode 201. He was inside.

It makes for a rather difficult recording in the winter.

Now I noticed you did not have any background parrot sounds while you were recording your latest vlog, Craig. I saw that out on LinkedIn a couple of days back, and congratulations. You are back on the air, vlog-wise, again.

It only took six months, but I am back. Just had a busy beginning to 2024 with knee surgery and all, and trying to get motivated to get back on screen and do these things. It took a little bit longer than it should have been. We finally got it recorded, and we got it out, and I hope everybody enjoys it.

Now it is not the same kind of video as we put out right before Fastener Fair, where it was me jumping around on stage, getting the crowd going for the new t-shirt giveaway, but hopefully people will enjoy this one.

That one turned out to be a pretty big hit. A lot bigger hit than I was really thinking it should have been. You should have seen when I showed it to Ms. Kim first. She just laughed and said, “Nobody will ever watch that.” I said, “We are going to give it a shot just to see what happens.”

She is good at so many things. That was pretty good. On this one, now I have got to ask you, you cannot drop a reference to South Carolina mustard sauce on a vlog and expect not to be asked about it when you come on Fully Threaded. Tell us all about it. That is a whole genre of barbecue that I know very little about, Craig.

While I was in Irving, Texas, for the NFDA event, my wife and I, the last night we decided to go to Hard Eight BBQ, which is a barbecue restaurant chain out of Austin, Texas. It was great. Do not get me wrong. I absolutely loved it. I loved the setup, the way that you got your orders and stuff like that. It’s very unusual, but I enjoyed it. As I left there, I got to thinking, I do not think it was heads and shoulders above South Carolina barbecue.

It was on the same level. I do not think I would say either one of them is better than the other, but the biggest difference is that they do not offer mustard sauce, the South Carolina mustard sauce. I thought I would throw that in there, especially given that I did not want stains on the new t-shirts given out. There is a whole background story to this mustard sauce. It all started with a family. I forgot their last name. The father started it.

There were two sons. One son was named Melvin, and the other son was named Marvin. When the father passed away, he gave each one of them the sauce, and they just went after each other. It was like they were worst enemies. One of them built restaurants in one half of the state, the other built restaurants in the other half of the state. They both claimed that they are the real South Carolina mustard sauce. Yet when you go to both restaurants, it tastes just the same to me, but it is an interesting story behind the two of them.

They would claim that you just do not have very well-developed taste buds.

Now this could be true.

I am going to have to try that because I do like to sample all the different local barbecue varieties, and that is one I have not gotten to yet.

I will tell you, my favorite one comes out of North Carolina, believe it or not. That is the Cheerwine sauce, the red Cheerwine sauce. If you have ever drank a Cheerwine, the soda soft drink, it was very popular back in the ‘80s and still put out, but they mixed it with a red sauce and it is a very sweet red sauce is what it is.

That sounds pretty good.

I know guys use all kinds of sweet liquids. I have heard of people using pineapple juice in their barbecue. Anything to get some sugar in there, but that is pretty cool. We could talk about barbecue for the entire episode, but keeping things predominantly fastener-related, Craig, I got a message from you right after our last episode, and it sounded like you identified a little bit with the Al Bay conversation on episode 201.

I did. First off, he has a voice for radio. I just listened to him, and he fit perfectly into your show. There were no hesitations. There is none of this stuff that I do. It was like he was reading from a script, and I know he was not, but that is what it sounded like. I just thought that he did a great job, props to him. I know that he is the general manager at All America Threaded Products, and I hope they are doing well. I love the first part of it as he was talking about the difference.

He and Brian were discussing the difference between distribution in Europe and distribution in the United States. There is just no separation among suppliers in Europe. For the most part, all distributors go after all customers. There is no hierarchy of distribution. If you want to sell to OEM, you sell to OEM. If you want to sell to distributors, you sell to distributors. No one gets mad.

It is just business, and everyone is just trying to grow their business as efficiently as possible. Yet here in the United States, it is the exact opposite. You are not supposed to sell to OEMs, or you are not supposed to sell to distributors. You have got to pick and choose which one, or you are going to really make half a population out there if you do not make the right choice.

It’s just business, and everyone is trying to grow as efficiently as possible. Share on X

You got that right. You are not going to be around long if you do that.

I thought he did a great job. The conversation about rugby was fun. What does Craig from South Carolina know about rugby? The answer is nothing. I have no clue how to play it and no clue when to cheer or when not to cheer. I was telling you guys earlier, my son actually played a little bit at Clemson when he was there on their club team.

I would go to the games to cheer for him, and he would actually get upset with me and tell me that I had no clue when to cheer and when not to cheer. He could hear me on the sidelines, and it was not the time to be cheering. I enjoyed it. I just could not understand the rules. As I was telling Brian, I am sure that there are people around the world who look at baseball’s infield fly rule and think that that is as crazy as it gets. I might even agree with them, but rugby rules are crazy.

Lots of people do not understand the rules, including many people who think the referee is. I was part of the game where Great Britain beat New Zealand, and I did not know the rules very well either. You are saying the NFL is not the only league with crappy officiating. Is that it, Brian?

It happens every week.

Craig, do not feel too bad because we know that you may not appreciate or you may not understand all of the fine points of rugby, which we will forgive you for, but you do know a lot about the fastener industry. I figured you would get off on that Al Bay conversation because you are focused on all things having to do with the European fastener business. That is your bailiwick. What are you seeing out there that you are looking at these days? What should we be aware of?

I have been speaking to quite a few people over in Europe lately about the economy. What I see is that Europe is way too busy drinking and watching the Euro championships right now to be concerned with the economy. In retrospect, maybe we should go ahead and start the college football season right now, and we might be able to take everybody’s mind off of it over here as well.

Europe is way too busy drinking and watching the Euro Championships right now to worry about the economy. Share on X

Have you guys seen the fans over there that have taken over Germany? The fans from the Netherlands are about as crazy as I have ever seen fans. There is a YouTube video out now showing every major city in Germany, just the other day, watching the games on big screens, and there are hundreds of thousands of people out there in the middle of the day watching these screens in every single city, as people from all over Europe have poured into that. That is fun to watch. Nevertheless, I digress. What I see is their inflation getting better. Back in Q3 of last year, it was sitting around 6%. In Q4, it dropped to around 3.5%. It is sitting at 2.4%. I definitely think that their inflation over there is headed in the right direction.

It seems to be that the European Union is expecting some slow growth, but positive growth between now and the end of 2024, which is good. It also seems like the growth is focused on Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, which is strange to me. I do not really understand the answers for that, but that seems to be where the growth is focused. Of course, they are having issues with port strikes both in France and Germany right now, which has led to congestion at the Italian ports.

These congestions just pour over. When they have congestion over there and issues over there, it delays shipments out of Europe, both air and sea freight. Luckily, we have the right freight forwarders involved, both sea and air, and it may only cost us a day or two. It has not cost us weeks, which is good.

You are lucky then.

We are. Obviously, we do not, as most people know, we do not buy directly from Asia. We hear that the container prices and the rate increases on containers are just astronomical right this moment, which is making space in containers an issue. I am being told that that is going to continue throughout October.

Whenever there are those kinds of rate increases on space issues, it starts to pour into the air freight, and what we are seeing right now is air freight rates spiking from just about every single country in the world right now. You are seeing both sea freight and air freight costs go up. As I said, it looks like it is going to continue into October. We will see where it goes from there, but that is what I am hearing out of Europe at this moment.

Last time you were on, we were speaking about several regulatory issues that were on the horizon coming from the EU. Any update on any of that?

It is only getting worse. Now the big talk, we have gotten past those other ones that I had brought up last time, and not that they are all working properly. Do not get me wrong, everybody is still up in the air about exactly what to do. Now the focus has become the CBAM. The carbon emissions ban that they are putting in place started in Q3 of 2023 as far as just a rollout, but is supposed to be fully implemented by 2025. It seems like there is nobody over in Europe who knows anything about this. If they do, then they do not know how to install it into their systems to make it work. That is the new talk around Europe is this whole CBAM issue or ban. As some European suppliers said, it is just another way to tax businesses, which is basically what it is for Europe.

It seems pretty transparent that that is the case, but it looks like, aside from ongoing confusion and prices creeping up, and a lot of that being affected by the logistics side of it, we are not seeing it spill over into the North American market yet, or am I reading that wrong?

We have seen short delays in our deliveries coming out of Europe, but not heavy delays. What we have seen is a lack of inventory on some items over in Europe, where they usually keep a tremendous amount of inventory in stock of those items. When we would normally log in and see 50,000 pieces in stock, and we are looking for 25,000 to get a distributor here in the United States out of trouble, now all of a sudden, we are seeing 2 to 3,000 pieces in stock of that particular item with a twelve-week lead time before it can get delivered. We are starting to see some inventory shortages over there.

Not too bad, not anything that we cannot work with, but that is what we are seeing. Here in the US, specifically for Eurolink, I cannot talk for every company out there, but for the first six months of 2024, we have been all over the place where our sales would be up one month. Maybe up the next, then down the following, and then right back up again, which is making it really hard to do monthly budgeting at the moment.

I would think so.

At the NFDA event, as I was sitting there listening to ITR do their presentation, there was one part of their presentation that just really blew me away. It was a tool called the rates of change tool. Maybe I am just behind the scenes and should have been using this tool for the last 24 years that we have been in business, but I have not.

I decided to sit down after I got back and plug in my numbers to see what it would look like because this rate of change tool is supposed to help you determine what the future market trends are for your company. I brought it back and plugged in my sales numbers since 2022. My conclusion this week has been that our sales have dipped a little bit over the last twelve months, but I also think that it is a correlation with the fact that the US inflation seems to be masking the economic contraction that we are seeing.

Maybe other people are having different results, but that is what I am seeing by us plugging in our numbers into this tool. No matter how much our sales numbers might be up one month to the next, if you are still paying $7 for a loaf of bread, we were used to paying $2.50 or $3 for that loaf, then this economy is still playing havoc on your personal budget. We are seeing everybody around the country right now.

That is one of the real evils of inflation. Not only that, Craig, but the loaf is smaller now.

Shrinkflation is what I hear that is. Instead of 12 ounces of potato chips, we get the same bag with six ounces of potato chips and double the price.

Shrinkflation is getting the same bag of potato chips with half the ounces and twice the price. Share on X

That’s an appropriate example, too, Craig. I think I came across a bag of chips the other day that was like three-quarters of an ounce. I could not believe it. There were like nine chips in it.

It is an appetizer. Not a meal.

It’s really weird. One thing that is not getting smaller is Eurolink Fastener Supply Service. That is the good news. Of course, we reported on your big expansion last year, and it is going nowhere but up. What is the latest?

Over the last year, since we moved into our new facility, we have been on a quest to add more product lines to stock. You might say, “Why is Eurolink, which has always been a JIT importer for hard-to-find metric fasteners, why are they putting anything in stock?” Earlier this year, we decided to do a customer survey, and we sent it out to more than 2,000 respondents. We got answers back, and I would say 99% of them were positive.

That was a fantastic response to our survey. The one thing that we kept hearing over and over again is “Can you guys carry more stock?” We sat down, and we thought about this, and we do not want to be a stocking distributor for those A and B items out there. That is not our niche in this industry. That is not what we are good at. We have decided to focus our stock on those hard-to-find items.

What I mean by that is that the first thing that we did was expand our A4-80 stainless steel line. We wanted to make sure that we had the largest stock in the country of A4-80 stainless steel as compared to A4-70. The next big line that we brought in was hot-dip galvanized structural bolts, nuts, and washers. We wanted to carry a full line of structural bolts or structural line.

We followed that up with a full line of hot-dip galvanized 8.8 hex head cap screws. We have gotten so many requests over the last few years. We just thought that would be a great line to put in stock. Everybody else does the plain zinc, yellow zinc type flavors. We wanted to go after the hot-dip galvanized. We put it in both ISO and DIN standards in stock, which leads me to our next line.

We followed that up by adding more flavors of the ISO 4017 and 4014 hex head cap screws. We wanted to be able to offer anything ISO is where it is headed. We did the ISO hex nuts, the ISO flat washers, both 200HV and 300HV. We have started just recently putting in all the ISO Torx drive socket cap screws, the different lines that ISO offers. Started out with A4-80, went into hot-dip galvanized, and now focused on ISO products.

Where do you think the demand or use of galvanized metric is coming from? I mean, this would normally be some guy sticking a new bolt on a gate in his farm or something hot-dip galvanized for me.

If you remember, maybe you do, maybe you do not, Brian from episode 201, you asked Al the exact same question about where these things go. I am going to give you the exact same answer. We sell to distributors. I am not really sure where the parts are ending up, but I will say this. I do know that hot-dip galvanized is used on buildings. It is used in the construction industry on bridges. It is used in the marine industry. Where we see a lot of it is with theme parks around the country. We get a lot of calls from distributors that have those theme park contracts and need those hot-dip galvanized items. They cannot be from specific manufacturers in Asia. That is the reason they come to us wanting us to get them out of Europe.

I would ask any of our listeners if they happen to know this. It just interests me that maybe some of the designs are switching to metric designs from traditional imperial designs. There has got to be some reason that we do not really understand.

I do know that a lot of the updated prints OEMs have with metric fasteners, a lot of them, when they are getting updated, they are moving away from DIN standards and moving into ISO standards. Not all of them. There is still a tremendous call for DIN, and there will always be a tremendous call for DIN. What we have noticed over the last eight to ten years is that the desire for more ISO items is just continuously growing here in the United States. We wanted to be at the very beginning of that growth and have these items in stock as people or as engineers continue to update their prints and drafts.

We notice that the frequency of searching for ISO has really increased. Four or five years ago, basically, it was hardly searched for at all. It was always DIN. Now it is probably half and half.

I would not even have given it 50/50. That is impressive to hear that it is in that market at this point.

It has gone up a lot.

Joe Greenslade would be so happy, Bri. I remember, like 10, 12 years ago, you guys had an ongoing argument over the eclipse of DIN for ISO that was ongoing. Folks, if you are looking for hot-dip galvanized metric or any other hard-to-find metric parts, you know where to go. That is Eurolink FSS, EurolinkFSS.com. Craig Penland, thanks for being here.

Thanks, guys. Have a wonderful end to your summer, and I will see you guys out in Vegas, maybe.

You will actually. That is a hundred percent. We will see you out there. We always enjoy talking to you. We are going to hand off now to another little industry event that took place. We have got a small package of sound that was recorded for us by Bob “GQ” Bear. That was out at the Naperville Fastener Association meeting. We announced this at the top of the show. We are going to plug that in now before we go off to break. Thanks again for being here, Craig.

Thanks, guys.

See you soon.

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Naperville Fastener Association Meeting Highlights

This is Bob Bear of Abbott Interfast, sometimes known as GQ in the Fully Threaded Radio world. At the very first Naperville Fastener Association meeting of the year, I just happened to be standing here with none other than one of the founding fathers of this unofficial association, Marty Nolan himself. Let us see what Marty has to say. How is the party going so far tonight?

So far, we have a really good group, and more people are coming. We have about eight people. We have some stragglers who said they are going to be coming in. We have a good gathering, and we have a lot of preparation to do for some upcoming events. It is time for us to get together.

That is great. We are probably going to hit maybe between 15 and 20 people tonight. Not everyone is here yet, but there is already a lot of buzz about this year’s Form, Fit, and Function award. Fastener Week is coming up in Chicago in August. Traditionally, we give that award away. What do you hear about this year’s award?

We have done a lot of work preparing to get ready to look over the candidates for this year’s award. There were several different, really good nominations brought to us, some people’s very thoughtful suggestions, but I think we are narrowing it down. That is part of the reason for getting together tonight. We always like to do this in person so that we can go back and forth as much as possible, talking about the credentials, and really, we take it very seriously who we want to make this award to.

That is awesome, Marty. I am really excited to see the nominee list and go through it. It is a little birthday party going on in the background there, so we cannot really help that. We are out in the open air of beautiful Naperville, having a drink on the rooftop, so expect a little background noise.

Bob, just to review who has received it. Our initial recipient was Eric Dudas, followed by Rich Cavoto, and last year, Lynn Dempsey was the first woman to receive the award. That has been our recipients so far. We try to do it creatively to honor people who maybe are not recognized in other associations, but we find them very important in our industry.

That was Marty Nolan of R.L. English. I am moseying around the table and trying to pry somebody else away from their liquor and get another interview going here. Thanks, Marty. Here we are back at the Naperville Fastener Association’s first meeting of the year, and I am with the lovely and talented Lynn Dempsey, who also happens to be last year’s recipient of the Naperville Fastener Form, Fit, and Function Award. How is it going, Lynn?

It is going well, and I am happy to help you guys out and come again. Now Jackie is here, so there is another woman, but come on, ladies, we have to come out and help the guys here.

There you go, Lynn, calling all you women in the industry out, get to Naperville. Our next meeting will be in conjunction with the MWFA during Fastener week, Monday night at Lincolnshire. Lynn, you did a bunch of interviews in Cleveland, and you had a whole bunch of questions for everybody. If you had to interview yourself, what question would you ask?

Why are you doing this to me, Bob? I guess how I got started in doing the interview.

Great question. How did you get started?

That was Eric Dudas, “Just go out, do it.” I am like, “What?”

How long did it take you to get comfortable with that?

In the early days, nobody knew who Fully Threaded Radio was. It was hard to get anybody, especially when I put my phone up to their mouth. Nobody wanted to talk. Everybody was like, “No.” Now it is a lot easier for the next Fully Threaded Radio. It is easier to get people to talk. That is what I remember from the early days.

Everybody out there in the industry, be prepared when you see Lynn approaching, get ready to open your mouth and say a few words.

Yes, that is true. Thank you, Bob.

Thank you. Signing out again.

I know I do want to say that Bob was doing interviews here, and I had to take over. I do not know what Eric was thinking, but now I am here with another good friend, Cameron. Why are you here?

I am one of the charter members of the Naperville Fastener Association. I missed a few meetings, so I had to make sure I came down to this one when Marty came into town to get us all together. We solve all the fastener world problems here in the first ten minutes, and we get right down to the beer drinking.

That is true. I think we are at the beer drinking now. We are. Our problems were so immense.

All industry issues have been solved.

There you go. Drop the mic, right?

Mic drop.

I am over here at our Naperville party, and now I am here with The Naperville Fastener Association. Thank you, I have had a drink.

I am Matt Delawder from SWD and also from the Midwest Fastener Association.

Why are you late?

I was late because I had a church council meeting.

That is a good excuse.

I am having a beer to get over that.

Tell us, why are you here?

I am here for the networking at the Naperville Fastener Association. It is bar none of the best in the fastener industry, only to be outweighed by maybe the Midwest Fastener Association itself.

How about our ambiance here?

We are on the rooftop of Empire in downtown Naperville, a beautiful night, just people watching and having a great time.

That is true. Anything else you want to tell us?

You have got to use SWD for your black oxide. It is the only place to go. It is the best black oxide in the industry, and if you need magne, sorting, or anything else. No, but what I should tell you is that I love you. It is always good. I love to hear Fully Threaded Radio and talk to you guys. You guys know what is happening in the industry.

It is good to talk to you.

We are back, and we have such a great turnout in the Midwest, and our partnership with North Coast is so awesome. We have yet another North Coast Fastener Association member, not only a member, but a board member, attending the Naperville event tonight. None other than Jackie Ventura.

Bob, how are you?

Good. I was at the Fastener Fair Cleveland. I know you were on the board. It was a great turnout. What do you have to say about that boat event?

That was amazing. We had so much fun. That was like one of the best events of the fastener industry, I believe. More for checking in four hundred people in thirty minutes. That was like massive chaos, but once we are on the boat here, sailing it. I wish we could do it again next year and every year after that, but probably not going to happen at that cost.

Fastener Fair is going to Nashville next year. We will have to have a chat with them. The year after that, I headed back to Cleveland, but it was an awesome event. I was there. We took a few pictures of the sunset. If you did not know any better, you would have thought you were in Hawaii. It was awesome. This is what we are recording for Fully Threaded. We are at the top of the Empire Burger Bar in Naperville. Is there anything else you want to say before we cut this interview loose?

This is great. I just want to say kudos to Fully Threaded for being around for fifteen years, and they marked their 200th episode. This is just fabulous, and hats off to those guys. They have worked really hard, and I am really proud of them.

I agree 100%, and that is why they are Hall of Famers. Amen. Checking out. We are back to you from the Naperville Fastener Association meeting. I am standing here with not one, not two, but three new members tonight who have made their way to downtown Naperville to join our awesome group. They are Bill Stlaske with Chicago Rivet, Bob O’Brien with Certified Fasteners, and Mike Kane with Indusco Wire Rope and Fittings. Three more members of the fastener industry are joining us here. How is it going, guys? We are going to talk to Mike first because he is retiring in about a day and a half. We have to catch him before he goes. How is the party?

It has been a whirlwind tour for the past few weeks, and I cannot believe that it is here. My last day is Monday, the first of July. As I said, it has been a long time working up to this, been in this industry for over 40 years. I figured I would give it a shot in my new job of retirement. We will see what happens.

Compete by day, friends by night. You can’t beat it. Share on X

Good luck with that. What a way to end your career than to come to a Naperville Fastener Association meeting. Next, we have Bob O’Brien, Certified.

Thank you. It is an honor to be here with such an august group that just keeps on growing. The future for it is just limitless. Hopefully, Mike will make it back for a few. I know you may be moving out a bit, but it is great to be here. It’s very good indeed.

Thank you. Last but not least, we have Bill.

Guys, thanks for having me. Been in the fastener industry for 25 years, and you never stop meeting new people. That is what I love about it. Just a tight-knit group and some great people we got to talk to, and looking forward to having some future conversations down the road.

Thanks, guys.

I would like to add on to that because I have been involved in this group for many years, and it has got to be some of my best friends that I have got, and I am going to keep these relationships going because you have good friends, you do not want to just cut them off just because you are not working anymore. I am just so glad to hear that.

A couple of tears are being shed right now. Our industry is very unique. It is awesome. Compete by day, friends by night. Cannot beat it. Anyway, back to you, Eric and Brian.

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International Fastener Expo Preview With Morgan Wilson

It is the news segment. Brian, I did not hear you in any of those NFA interviews. I noticed that you got out of interview duty. GQ was going to track you down just like Lynn usually does with him.

When Bob was doing his recording, Lynn and I were just arriving there, actually.

I do not know if that’s believable, Bri, because Lynn picked up the mic after that, and she got on there.

That was for Lynn. Lynn was different from Bob’s recording.

You are here now.

That is right.

We have got Morgan Wilson coming up. When we recorded with him, we did not quite know where it was going to fit in the episode. We did it as a standalone. We are just going to jam that in right here. I want to point out that Volt Industrial Plastics has been the sponsor of the news segment for many years. We sure do appreciate that. We will see them out there at this year’s International Fastener Expo.

Morgan Wilson is the show manager over there. Let us run this. Then it will be time for the news. We’re heading into the early summer, and we are always just looking around the corner at the International Fastener Expo, the Vegas show. That is the big one in the fastener industry. This year, it is actually a little earlier than it has been traditionally. Morgan Wilson is the show manager. He is with us now.

Eric, how is it going? It is going wonderfully. It is very good to hear your voice. I saw you out there in Cleveland, but we did not get too much of a chance to talk. What have you been up to?

It was good to see you. That was a fun event. North Coast hit it out of the park, I think, with that boat ride. That was awesome. Otherwise, just staying busy with work. Nothing too exciting. No fishing yet. The season is just getting started over here. Looking forward to getting on a boat soon.

You are killing me in my soul right now, Morgan. I tell you, I have been so buried with fasteners and farm work that I have not even really thought about fishing this season. I am counting on you to really get some pictures over to me soon.

I’ll do my best.

You have been tearing it up on the golf course, though. I am sure at least at the fastener events, because I know you are a big participant in all those. You have got some golf lined up for Vegas this year, and you have got a whole bunch of other stuff. Why do we not start at the top? What is happening this year with IFE?

Let us start with the golf tournament. We are back at Bali Hai again. The same spot should be great. It will be a little warmer this year. Bring your shorts and your nice lightweight shirts, but that is filling up quickly. We only opened it up a couple of weeks ago, and we are already almost 110 golfers registered. We have got a little less than 40 spots left. If you are trying to get signed up for that, do that sooner rather than later. We come back, relax for a minute, maybe take a quick snooze, and hit the welcome reception.

The only change that I want to make note of for everyone is to make sure to bring your badges. We do have a new registration for that. There is a minimal $20 cost this year. That is something new that we have just added to help build the party. It has been growing every year. As we all know, Vegas is getting really expensive for all of us. With that said, just make sure everyone gets registered for that on the site and then brings their badges to the party.

Good to know. Vegas, like everywhere, has gotten a lot more expensive. Since we did say everything is happening a little earlier this year, we should say the exact dates. This year’s International Fastener Expo is happening out there at Mandalay Bay, September 9th through the 11th, 2024.

Vegas, like everywhere, has gotten a lot more expensive. Share on X

Thanks for noting that. Another Monday through Wednesday pattern. On Monday, we do not want to forget that we have the fastener training workshop that will be planned all day. If you are new to the industry or just trying to build your knowledge, that is always a great opportunity to do so.

Lots of educational opportunities at this one, as you have hinted. Of course, the Fastener Training Institute is also going to be showing up, right?

Yes. That was what I meant by the Fastener Training Institute. That is the full-day workshop that it starts about 8:00 AM and goes to about 4:00 on Monday.

This is what happens when I am watching the board too. One ear on you and the other one watching the board. That is cool. Because a lot of people do show up there for just that educational aspect of the fastener show. Of course, there are tons of networking, tons of information you are going to pick up everywhere, in addition to having a really great time. Lead us through this year’s event. Morgan, what do you have lined up for us?

We are continuing to try to build on the education and just bring more value to the overall event. We are always working on new topics, new relevant topics. There is a fun one, an interesting one I will say this year, it is going to be covering the risk of uncertified parts in the supply chain. We all know that it is a real hot topic in aerospace and in other industries as well. We have a new marketing workshop that will be a two-hour workshop, actually, and that is going to be held in one of the meeting rooms. Not on the session floor.

That is going to be led by Rosa Hearn from Brighton-Best and Haley Gibson from Threaded Fasteners Inc. We thought marketing was a key topic. Everyone is building their social channels and general marketing channels. We thought that would be a really good one to go in a little bit deeper than just your normal 30 or 40-minute session on the show floor. We moved it to a full two-hour workshop. If you are interested, get registered for that on the website, and we are going to include breakfast and coffee. Get over there, get your breakfast in, and learn a little something.

Thanks for plugging that one. We had Rosa on the podcast a couple of episodes ago, and she is super excited by that. Anybody who has ever attended anything that she does knows she puts her all into it. This will be a high-bandwidth experience. If you are looking for marketing acumen, Rosa and Haley will bring it, and the site is Fastenershows.com. You are going to want to get pre-registered for this stuff, folks.

Thank you. I am excited for that one. Of course, we just locked in the keynote. We will have another keynote this year. That will be on the show floor, and that will be with Beau Groover. He is the president of the Effective Syndicate. If you are not familiar with him, he has a really strong background in supply chain and manufacturing. We are looking forward to him delivering an insightful message for everyone. Do not miss that.

How does that keynote work? It seems to me that I remember last year, I really enjoyed the presentation you had for us last year, but it seemed like it was before the show floor actually opened, because I think there was mostly just exhibitors there. Is that for everybody, or how does it work?

It is open to everyone. It is interesting. We really wanted to maximize the opportunity for everyone to attend on that. The first year we did it, we had it in a meeting room upstairs, and you know how confusing Vegas gets sometimes, and I think we could have had better participation. What we did last year was move it to the show floor, and it was an hour, it is about an hour before the show floor actually opens. To re-explain that a little bit better, basically, we opened the section of the session stage since that is on the show floor. People can come into the show floor only to watch the keynote, which will be from 8:30 to 9:30. The actual expo hall, where you can visit the booths, will open at 9:30.

Got it, okay, that is a good clarification right there. Hopefully, we will get a lot more attendees in addition to the exhibitors. It is a great place just to hang out and have your breakfast. If you are getting a burrito or something, bring it in. That is what we did, and it was very informative. I am sure this year is going to be great as well.

We are looking forward to it. As you said, it is a great way to have your coffee and learn a little something as well.

Tell us a little bit about the footprint of the show this year. How is it shaping up?

It’s looking great. The show floor is filling up quickly. We still have people coming in. We brought in six companies just last week, four new ones. We are still coming along, and the international side as well. It should be a very strong year again, similar to last year, if not even bigger.

What should people do if they have not yet secured their booth space? Let me ask you this way because I am speaking from experience here now, Morgan. Are there any spots left that are not in the back of a pillar?

Yes. There are probably a couple, probably not too many. You are definitely looking a little more towards the middle back of the show floor. You never know. Sometimes things pop up, and we have a few cancellations for miscellaneous reasons. You never know when you can get a really good booth at the last minute. Please reach out to us. You can reach out to me or our account executive, Ali, and you can find all of our information online on FastenerShows.com. Go to the Why Exhibit page, and you can see all of our contact info, and we will get you set up.

You guys do a really good job of presenting yourselves online and on the socials. I see you all over LinkedIn, and congratulations also on a new look for the webpage this year. I was really happy, Morgan, because before we spoke, I fired it up, and one of the first slides that I saw featured Brian and Lynn, along with Rob and Tiffany. That was really cool. Was that last year’s pool party or a welcome bash by the pool?

Thank you. I am glad you noticed we have been putting some time and effort into that, and it is definitely coming along. We revamped our blog. We brought that back. We are shooting that out bi-weekly now. It was something we started a couple of years ago and faded away for a minute, but we have brought it back, and we are trying to build upon it again, going back to bringing more education to our audience and overall value. I hope you enjoy it.

Now those are the formal high points of what is going on. In years past, we have had certain individuals in the industry who have been very active in organizing after-hours events and things. Is anything percolating that we should know about this year, Morgan?

Not right now, but we are working on some things. We might have something to announce a little bit later on that will be outside of our normal Eye Candy Lounge networking hours. That is always a hotspot to find some colleagues and familiar faces. That will still be going for sure, but we are working on potentially some other networking opportunities as well. We will keep you posted.

The Fastener Show in Vegas is always a world of opportunities when it comes to industry, knowledge, networking, and just general fun. I am sure you are going to come through, and we will probably hear from you one more time before the big event arrives. It is great to talk to you as always, Morgan. I have to ask you before we wind this down, you cannot compete in golf in Vegas, of course, because you are one of the managers, but you have been really tearing it up around the industry in general. Do you have any favorites for this year?

I am a bit biased, but I really like to see the team that I usually play with at the other industry events take a win. I know they were really close last year. They lost it only by a stroke or two, but I would love to see them come through this year. I know they are going to be playing again. It will be AJ from Holo-Krome, Brian from Star, and Rob from INxSQL. I do not know if it is Mike from Star who is going to be their fourth this year, but they will have a pretty strong team. That will be a fun one to look out for. Those B and D guys, you always have to watch out for them. They got some players on that.

That is right. Plus an American Ring. Those guys are always a threat.

Those guys, too. Do not forget about them. They actually were in the top three last year.

We know who is going to be at the top, and I am, of course, always rooting for Big Country and the Star guys. For you who might not be anywhere near that part, we are going to pledge right now from Fully Threaded Radio that you are going to get a 30-pack of Busch Light, assuming I can obtain one in Vegas somewhere.

Yes, let us do it. I think we have to do that. It is a must now.

It is a beautiful thing. Morgan Wilson, you are the manager at the International Fastener Expo. That is the Vegas show. It is happening this year at Mandalay Bay, September 9th through the 11th. There are still chances to get yourself a decent booth. I am sure there are also some sponsorships available at FastenerShows.com.

Thanks for having me, Eric. I appreciate it.

Morgan Wilson. The title sponsors of Fully Threaded Radio are Brighton-Best, Goebel Fasteners, and Star Stainless. We will see all of them out there in Vegas. Right now, we are going to hear from Mike McNulty. He has Tim O’Keeffe with him this time. I guess I will handle it myself. Now for news about screws you can use, here is Mike McNulty.

—

Thanks, Eric. 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. We have officially entered the dog days of summer 2024. Even though the once-trusted governing bodies and the once-revered institutions of our great land of liberty have descended to new and unprecedented levels of incompetence, arrogance, stupidity, and dishonesty, being born an American or becoming a US citizen is still and has always been akin to winning the lottery of life.

I am still focused on Fasteners and ready to deliver this Fastener News Report. In this episode, Tim O’Keeffe, Chief Executive Officer at Huyett, joined 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 on Fastenal’s Holo-Krome subsidiary, as well as newsmaker headlines from Optimas, Smalley, Semblex, Würth Additive, AFC, Nord-Lock, Goebel Fasteners, Brighton-Best International, TFC, SPAX Engineered Fasteners, and more. On the back page report, we are going to talk about the top fastener distributors in the USA. We will get to all of that in the latest FDI results right after this.

—

This is Jake Davis with BTM Manufacturing, and for over 50 years, we have been a leading manufacturer of bent wire and threaded products, including U-bolts, single and double-end studs, anchor bolts, and many more per print items. Based in the heart of America, Kansas City, Missouri, BTM supports Fully Threaded Radio because they support our fastener industry. Being a part of FTR is almost as good as a hot cup of industry favorite, U-bolt blend coffee. If you still do not know how good that is, call BTM Manufacturing and find out for yourself. BTM Manufacturing, commitment to service.

—

Fastener Market Update: FDI Results And Industry News

The seasonally adjusted Fastener Distributor Index for June 2024 dipped slightly to 52.1 versus 52.9 in May. This was the fifth straight month of the FDI being above 50. The forward-looking indicator, also known as the FLI, had a bigger drop of two points to 50.9 versus 52.9 the previous month, but it was still the third straight month at 50 or above.

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 Tim O’Keeffe, Chief Executive Officer at Hewitt. Tim, thanks for joining us on the Fastener News Report.

Thanks for having me.

It is good to have you back. What do you think about the latest FDI results?

We do benchmark our own results against the FDI. We have been charting the FDI internally for probably ten years or so. We benchmarked the FDI along with our sales and bookings to the publicly reported sales for Fastenal, MSC, and Grainger. One of the things I always try to remember about these things is that it is an emotional index and not necessarily scientific. It is how people answer. A couple of things that jump out for me when you look at a greater trend. One month does not make a trend. It is interesting that almost always the FDI is better than the FLI.

If you go back and look, the FLI was actually higher in December of last year and January of this year. What that reinforces to me is the emotional nature of this, and that you have a year-end, you are looking forward to a new year, and people are going on the up and up. Their instincts are that it is going to be better than it really is, and then it is not. What I feel like right now is that there is a lot of softness out there.

What we see in the FDI right now it has been relatively flat, although above 50 is ideally on the expansion side, not the contraction side of everything. You seem to see when you start to square these emotional numbers with actual factual numbers, that it is probably pretty relevant. Fastenal’s average daily sales reported back in May, which is the most current version of it, showed their average sales were only up 1.5%, and their fastener business was actually down. MSC had a pretty disastrous sales report.

What I find interesting in looking at those two companies is on the Fastenal side, and their public reporting, their national accounts were actually a little better than their non-national accounts, which signifies that you have this OEM business that is chugging along, and it is everything else that is feeling hungover. Construction, commercial construction, that sort of thing. My sense of this whole thing is that we are just in a period of uncertainty now. We are going to probably continue to see these numbers be flat to soft as we move forward.

As you all know, as we speak here, there is a lot of provocative information going on with the presidential election right now. I always hate it when people say, “I am going to sit on my hands because there is a presidential election.” I think with two people in their 80s running against each other, there is probably a reason to sit here and hold our breath and wonder if somebody is going to die or somebody is going to drop out. I am not really sure. I think these numbers match up to reality right now.

Whereas usually, maybe they do not, I think they are pretty realistic right now. That is a good insight that you provided there that the FDI is usually over the FLI except for the end of the year and the beginning of the year. That is interesting. I never noticed that before. Good take on that. Tying it into the emotions, I definitely agree with that. The numbers that we actually have to report look like sales and employment were down slightly. Customer inventories and supplier deliveries were basically unchanged, with slight changes. Pricing and respondent inventories all rose. Is there anything that you draw out of that?

With our position in the channel, we are a master distributor. We do not really get a glimpse into our customers’ forecasting. As our distributor customers, they get a lot more forecasting. We are more reflective of a spot market. From a spot market standpoint, over probably the last eight months, a lot of the inventory correction that I think was going on has ceased. People largely have their inventories back in balance with where they want to be sales-wise. From our position in the channel, we are actually seeing real demand.

The real demand, I would say, over the last six months has changed somewhat. Six months ago, when we talked to our customers, I think that the softness was more sector-based. The agricultural people were really soft. Whereas now I feel like it is a little bit more of an overall industry. We are hearing soft, not recession, but low demand on the positive side. It is like a big hangover. The only difference is I think the real hangover was post-22 when a lot of people were really working off of inventory. It is not really like that. It is just like a light headache, maybe that’s how I characterize it out there.

The light headaches are easier to get over.

They are. I cannot see a basis to expect a change in this dynamic through at least the rest of this year. As I speak to you this morning, the Feds are hinting now at maybe a slight rate cut, but they are being really conservative about that. On the political side of things, there is not a lot to get excited about. Interest rate-wise, there is not a lot to get excited about. Really, for people in our industry, if you want to get more business, you are going to have to go get it from somebody else. It is not like we are going to sit as a rising tide lifting all ships. It is going to be more piracy and taking from somebody else.

A little hand-to-hand combat.

Probably so.

When we look at the report, it also shows the PMI is put up there. That has been below 50 for a long time. It had March where it just peaked its head above 50 at 50.3. Again, it is below 50. It has had three straight months of decline on the PMI and the purchasing managers’ index.

My instinct on that, Mike, is that it is not a really bad number yet. It is below 50, but barely. I think we will see it lightly slide down, not a lot, until there is really a reason for us to think there is going to be more demand out there. It is going to feel a little pessimistic right now. The PMI is an emotional index as well. Once again, national headlines right now are not the best. We have a weird political election. We have the war in Ukraine. We have got whatever China and Russia are up to. On top of that, not to get too worldly on you here, but when you look at the elections going on in France, there is just worldwide upheaval right now.

Same thing in the UK.

Actually, to some extent, even in India, with the Hindu Nationalist Party, there. There is just a lot of queasiness, and it is really going to be up to us to break ourselves out of this.

I was listening to a trends report from the people at ITR Economics. They are talking about manufacturing, and they are saying we are in mild contraction right now for the rest of the year, but then things are going to start to accelerate on the manufacturing side in 25 and 26, so you’d better be prepared.

I was out at the Tugboat Institute summit in Sun Valley here last week, and ITR was there. Once again, they restated their commitment to the 2030 depression. We all need to be ready for that. The one thing that surprised me is they said everything you just said, Mike, but they also noted that they are expecting inflation to go up in 25 and 26, and actually 26 and 27, even a little more so, which means if that is in fact the case, we cannot expect interest rates to go down. That is going to be more of a longer-term lingering cold blanket, wet blanket over the top for the time being.

Which makes sense with all the overspending and all the money just thrown into the system. There is no end in sight until that 2030 depression comes and knocks everything loose.

I am not really seeing anybody talking about cutting the deficit on either side right now. It is either tax cuts or increased spending, but no one is talking about the deficit. That is what they say and probably what I would agree to. I actually had an economics degree, although I am not going to proclaim I am an economist.

You have got common sense.

When you spend like we are, at some point, it just runs out.

Let us jump into the six-month outlook. That was slightly improved. We had 45% of respondents, almost half, expecting things to be better six months from now, which will be the beginning of 2025. 35% expected it to be the same, and 19% expected it to be worse. That is a little bit better than May. May was 39% expecting it better and 18% expecting it worse. A few people moved over to the better side, and a few moved over to the worse side, but overall bullish.

Again, it is emotional. Looking from one month to the next is a little hard. That is exactly what I was going to say. I think it is more hopeful because, really, there is nothing that I can see to think that you are going to get a big tailwind, at least through the end of the year. I hate to say it, but because of the election, there is just a lot of uncertainty. There does not look like there is any relief from rates or relief on the politics side.

There is no good outcome there.

There is not. The reality is that my sense is that next year is going to feel quite a bit like this year. We are not going to have the boost. We will probably be dealing with high interest rates, and we could have a shock to the system of some type. Some hostile move, warlike move, terrorist deal, who knows what. I am sorry to be Mr. Negatory here. I am trying to do my appointed role here to read the tea leaves. We all have our own individual programs and things that we are doing to execute. It is not like we sit around here at Huyett and cry in our beer and wish about old times. We are out there busting our butts, and I am sure everybody else in our industry is as well. Sometimes you get a tailwind, and life is a little easier. I do not think it is going to be that way for a while.

You have got to prepare for the storms, too. Good advice. Let us jump into the comments, which this time were fairly mixed and divergent. The first few here are on the positive side. The first one is a quote. “After a great year, followed by one bad month in May, June looked good again.” The next one is, “June was a brisk month of activity, still hoping that it continues as we inch closer to the election.” Another positive one, “June was a good month for both incoming orders and shipments. We are a bit worried about Q3 and Q4, but remain optimistic.” Listening to the whispers, business seems to be slowing everywhere in our industry.

That last comment almost sounds like I said it, though I did not. One of the things that is interesting in reading those comments, Mike, is that a lot of people have reported bigger swings month to month. One month things are good, the next month things seem to back off. Again, it just reflects that we are in a choppy time right now. There are going to be pockets of opportunities and advantages to take, and then there are going to be other situations where you are going to have surprises and issues. I think we are going to see that.

One of the things that we could start to see a little bit, we have not really seen it much, is more bankruptcy-type situations. Our bad debt experience still remains extremely good. I am sure there are companies out there that are struggling because maybe they have a large customer that is a big part of their business. They are in one of those parts of the economy, agriculture again being one example, where it is just slow to recover, and they just cannot wait it out. They spent too much in 22 or 23 ramping up their investments, and now they are going to struggle. I could start to see an incident or two like that.

The next three comments are on the opposite side. First one of this group is, “We are seeing a noticeable slowdown all of a sudden. Some of it is pre-election jitters. Neither guy is going to do our industry any favors, plus the start of the summer vacation rush is always slow.” The next one. “Incoming order rate in June was lower than previous months, the lowest this year, with the exception of January. We are hoping this is not a trend.” The third one in this group. “More sales orders, but fewer sales dollars, working harder for less.”

Those comments seem to align with me in that, as we approach the summer now, if you are an OEM and your order backlog is low, if you normally take two weeks off and the plant shuts down for two weeks for the 4th of July holiday, maybe you are going to make that three weeks or four weeks. These comments align with the dynamics that we have been talking about here. I could see the summer being a little softer because if you are a manufacturer of something and your order backlog is down low, this would be the time to say, “Let us lay everybody off for an extra couple of weeks here and take a breather and let our backlog catch back up.” These comments seem to be pretty poignant to what we are hearing out there.

This next one is the longest one that we have, and it says, “Customer activity continues to be a mixed bag. Regardless of up, down, or flat, most are feeling okay about their business outlook, and some are preparing for a tightening supply chain going into 2025. Where things are sluggish, inventory overhang is a common theme. The de-stocking trend that began in earnest in 2024 is taking longer than most of us expected, but it will finish, and some lift in demand for components will occur, which is going to be a contributing factor for stronger sales in calendar year 2025.”

I talked a little bit about de-stocking earlier. Most of our distributor customers have got their inventories back to where they want to be. That part of this surprises me, but obviously, there are going to be different rates of consumption of that inventory. I do not see supply chain issues for next year. There are some shipment delays. The container people are trying to fix pricing, and so we are seeing delays in containers coming from Asia, but that is not the same as an inability to get product.

It is just a little bit longer lead time. I just do not see the demand out there. The only way I would see a major issue would be if China attacks Taiwan or blocks Taiwan. I am not seeing the supply chain issues. I do not think I could agree with that particular comment here. I could see a little longer lead times because of the cartels that are trying to control pricing with containers, slowing some things down on the logistics side, but I do not see any supply chain issues.

That is good. The last comment also touches on the de-stocking subject, “Business in the first half could have been per plan, should have been better, but also could have been worse. Customers are reporting a stable demand environment and real progress on de-stocking. It feels like the stage is set for this to be the floor of this cycle.”

I concur. That would be almost as if I wrote that. I concur with that. I feel like we are on the floor from that standpoint.

The floor is not so bad. We are still in decent shape then.

Yes, absolutely.

Is there anything else you want to add on the FDI or FLI before we move on to let you tell the audience about what is going on at Huyett?

I do not think so. I just feel that we are in a place right now where we really have to take care of business ourselves. You are trying not to look at the newspaper to make decisions on how to effectively manage and lead our enterprises. It is really about what you can do to sweeten your value proposition and win more business out there. The last couple of years, we have had a pretty nice tailwind, and now we are not going to have that. It is up to us.

That is what I would say given that backdrop. We have had a lot going on at Huyett. We have made two acquisitions in the last year. Last December 1st, we purchased a company down in Houston, Texas. It has allowed us to expand into about 60,000 more SKUs, mostly around threaded products. We are going to offer a full line of bolts, nuts, screws, and washers. Our traditional product mix has been less conventional. In March, we purchased an adhesive company in Florida. We are working on the development of user-applied thread lockers and adhesives.

In terms of Loctite-type products or super glues. We feel that it is just another product that our distributor customers can put in their baskets. We are looking forward to doing a private label program on the adhesives. We will have very good pricing and order rules. A lot of the manufacturers in that business now are a lot bigger and have a lot more substantive, onerous ordering rules and pricing structures. We are going to be a lot easier to do business with. We are looking forward to it, and we are going to be out here fighting the fight and trying not to read the newspaper. We are going to worry about what we are doing and not worry about what everybody else is doing.

It seems like you guys have been doing a lot of good things for a long time. I see that you are into your fourth decade, which is good. One thing I just wanted to bring up caught me a little bit by surprise. You dropped the GL back in 2022 to just Huyett, like a rebranding there. The first time I was writing a story about it, I was wondering where the GL was.

It caught me by surprise, but our marketing people think the GL is spurious. I am going to go with them.

It is easier to say.

I think some people shorten it and call us that. The whole idea of dropping the GL was a marketing move. They deemed it spurious. You were asking about me being in this business for a long time. One of the things that we have made a commitment to here in the last two years is that we do want to remain as a private, family-owned company in this industry. It is an industry that is currently being conquered by private equity.

One of the things we have been working on a lot is succession planning and culture strategy, and that has worked out really well for us. We really care about our stakeholders, which includes our customers and our suppliers. We are going to run this business like a family caring business. That bodes well for us with respect to being lined up out there against private equity companies, in which, if you are an employee, you are not much more than a Social Security number.

In our company, you are somebody special. We are looking forward to leveraging that. While I have the mic, I am going to do a shout-out to Dan Herger. Many of you know Dan Herger. He is our Vice President of Sales, and Dan is retiring from the industry after over 40 years. He wants to go win a family golf tournament. Dave Audie is going to be our new Vice President of Sales. We made that appointment recently.

Dan has been a true, kind, caring servant leader and nation-building manager. He has really done the job for us. We are one of the few companies in the industry that has a direct sales force. Dan has built that, and he has hand-developed Dave Audie, and we are excited about it. If you get a chance, you might send Dan an email or a greeting and wish him well in the golf tournament. I think we are going to make him so nervous over Labor Day weekend that he probably will suck. Anyway, Dan has been a great guy, and we are going to miss him.

I saw your LinkedIn post about that, and there is a quote that says, “He built the best sales force in our industry.” I thought that was a nice compliment that ties in with your culture of excellence. There is also a picture of Dan at one of the tabletop trade shows and a picture of the guys at a baseball game in Cleveland, of all places.

We had a sales meeting there, and it gave the guys a tearful way to send Dan off. He is a great human being. We are going to miss him.

I mentioned culture, and I think you have been doing a good job with the culture there and with the people’s side of it. You do not neglect the technical side either. If you look at the blog page on your website, it has got a lot of good technical information there on the different products and things like that. As usual, great graphics that you guys create.

We are a manufacturer as well. One of the things we have been really successful with in the last year is that we have put in a Swiss lathe, and we have actually filled those up to capacity. We are currently expanding that. What that does is it requires us to have an engineering function. When our team members run into issues that distributors are having out there in applications or designs, we have the insights as a manufacturer to help support solutions. We do have a technical focus, Mike, and that is something that we want to continue to focus on. It is a lot to think about. Let us just put it that way. We have got a lot going on.

You guys are doing a good job looking at it from the outside. I always have a good impression. I think Hewitt is easier to say. I often would stumble on the first two letters. It was probably a good move.

You are welcome to come visit us any time you want. Driving across Kansas on your way to snow skiing or whatever it is you do, if you fall asleep at the wheel and wheel off the road as they did in Christmas Vacation, you might end up in our front yard, and we will hand you a cold one.

What is summer like in Kansas?

So far this year, it has been pretty good. They said it was going to be hotter than heck, but it is warm on the prairie. The wind blows here now and then. Two weeks ago, I received my Iron Butt certification. What that is, is I ride a motorcycle a thousand miles in a day. I rode from Idaho Springs, Colorado, to Grass Valley, California, in one day through US Highway 50 across Nevada, which is also known as the loneliest highway in the US.

I had a number of adventures out that way, which are probably too long for the show here, but it was quite the journey and made me appreciate the United States of America. I did continue up and wind myself up to the Oregon coast around the Olympic Peninsula, back down through the Columbia River Gorge to my Tugboat meeting in Sun Valley. I had quite the experience.

Were you in a group or by yourself?

I was by myself.

A lot of time for contemplation.

There was one safety incident, and I was in Nevada at the Nevada-Utah border, and I was going around this corner, and there was what I thought was mud, but they were crawling, and it was a Mormon cricket migration. There were so many cricket guts on the road that I actually started to slide, so I had to straighten the bike up, and I slid right through the corner. I was only going about 25 miles an hour because it is a mountain area. I was desperate for gas. I mean, I was desperate, and I saw a pump in front of a bar that looked like a Wild West place in a place called Middlegate.

I go in there, and there are all these drunk Air Corps men. I wonder, “What is going on?” I go into the bathroom, and there are all these patches of Army, Navy, and Air Force aviators. There was a photograph on the wall of a MiG flying over this bar, taken by another MIG. What I figured out was that it’s where America’s Top Gun is. That is where the Top Gun pilots go. I ended up in the officers’ club of Top Gun searching for gas in the middle of nowhere in Nevada.

Did it match the movie portrayal?

They started singing Great Balls of Fire when I was there, as a matter of fact.

What kind of motorcycle do you have?

I rode a BMW for this one. It is a GS off-road bike, but it was a great adventure.

It sounds like a great American story and experience that you had there.

If I see you in the industry, you guys can call me Mr. Iron Butt.

Got to use the proper title.

That’s right.

Anything else you want to catch up with?

I appreciate what you guys do and your contribution to the industry. I look forward to seeing you at industry events, and I am glad to be part of the great American industrial machine.

Thanks again for joining us and for your insight, and we will look forward to seeing you and talking to you down the road. Thanks for joining us, Tim. That was Tim O’Keeffe. He is the Chief Executive Officer at Huyett. The FDI number for June 2024 was 52.1 versus 52.9 in May. Visit FDISurvey.com to participate in the process and get a detailed PDF copy of Baird’s monthly analysis. Now for the top story. Holo-Krome, a subsidiary of Fastenal, hosted a 95th-anniversary celebration to honor its staff on July 10, 2024, at its facility in Wallingford, Connecticut.

Attending were Paul Lavoie, Connecticut Chief Manufacturing Officer, Vincent Cervoni, Wallingford Mayor, John Byros, small and minority business liaison from Senator Blumenthal’s office, and members of the Greater New Haven and Quinnipiac Chambers of Commerce. Founded in 1929 in Hartford, Connecticut, Holo-Krome pioneered the cold-forming process of mass-producing fasteners with great structural integrity and less material waste. The Holo-Krome brand is now synonymous with premium quality socket head products for critical applications, all made in the USA.

When the fastener manufacturing industry was largely offshore in the 1970s and 1980s, Holo-Krome stayed true to its roots, employees, and community. Fastenal acquired Holo-Krome in 2009, kept the team intact, and invested in a new 200,000-square-foot site in Wallingford. Ongoing investments in technology and job training continue to make Holo-Krome a fastener industry leader. Recent improvements include three advanced cold-forming headers and bolt makers. You can see a couple of accompanying images to this story on the cover page of the July 15, 2024, issue of the Fastener News Report newsletter available online at FastenerTech.com.

Next up on Fastener Newsmaker headlines. In corporate news, Lehman’s acquired Aug Industrial Fasteners. Optimus Solutions completed an equipment investment in its UK manufacturing facility. GM gave quality awards to Smalley and Semblix. Bossard acquired Dejond Fastening, Würth Additive Group, Raise3D, and Henkel initiated a collaborative venture. AFC Industries acquired Circle Bolt & Nut. Nord-Lock Group established a regional office in Malaysia. Staffa expanded its product range with fasteners from Lubo International.

Threaded Fasteners acquired Rico Fasteners. Bulten partnered with FNsteel for climate-smart fastener production. Goebel Fasteners introduced new high-strength structural double-locking blind rivets, and TFC acquired Forward Industrial Products. In personnel news, Bulten Nut Manufacturing appointed James Hobbs as Production Director. Advanced Components promoted Matt Loftus to Director of Strategic Accounts.

Brighton-Best International appointed Alvaro Najera as Regional Warehouse Manager in Chicago. Adventist Aerospace welcomed Justin Tucker as its new CFO. SPAX Engineered Fasteners, a brand of Altenloh, Brinck & Co. US, added Jim Nicholson as Territory Representative, Hayden Dorman as Digital Marketing Content Specialist, and Stephanie Fayen as E-Commerce Manager. The NFDA elected Scott McDaniel of Martin Fastening as its 2024-2025 President, Ed Smith of Würth Revcar as VP, Christian Reich of Goebel Fasteners as Associate Chair, and Jim Degnan of S.W. Anderson as Immediate Past 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 top Fastener distributors in the USA. Modern Distribution Management, also known as MDM, reports that the 2024 top distributors directory, now in its 15th year, is MDM’s annual ranking of the top 200 North American industrial construction and commercial product distribution companies by revenue across twenty discrete product category sectors.

After riding the inflation wave of 2021 and 2022, distributors found 2023 to be less advantageous from an economic tailwind perspective. While inflation persisted throughout 2023 and has since, it leveled out throughout the year and led to far tougher year-over-year financial comparables. The US wholesale distribution sector finished 2023 with annual revenues of $7.9 trillion, down 1.8% from the previous year, after soaring 14.8% and 20.5% in 2022 and 2021, respectively. MDM’s top fastener distributor companies, one of the twenty sectors in the MDM directory, are as follows.

Number one, Fastenal Company. Number two, Würth Industry North America. Number three, McMaster-Carr. Number four, MSC Industrial Supply. Number five, the Hillman Group. Coming in positions 6 through 10 are Boeing Distribution, Optimus, AFC Industries, Endries International, and Bossard. Finishing 11 through 15 are Applied Industrial Technologies, Distribution Solutions Group, EFC International, W. W. Grainger, and Copper State Bolt & Nut. Ranking out the top 20 in positions 16 through 20 are Motion, Field Fastener, Incora, Bisco Industries, and Kimball Midwest.

You can find information on MDM’s other 19 sectors of distribution coverage, as well as details on its ranking methodology at www.MDM.com. Congratulations to the companies that made the MDM top 20 in the fastener industry, as well as those smaller ones still flying under the radar, always keeping in mind the old adage, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

This has been Mike McNulty of Fastener Technology International 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 Training Minute: Macro Vs Micro Hardness Testing

Everyone, this is Carmen Vertullo with the Fastener Training Minute coming to you from the Fastener Training Institute and Carver Labs in beautiful El Cajon, California. Our topic, as usual, comes from a question from one of my students this time in a class that we taught in beautiful Vancouver, BC, just a few weeks ago at the beautiful facility of Fuller Metric. We had a small class, and it was fairly intensely technical, and we talked about tensile strength and hardness.

One of the general questions that was asked was why do we use macro hardness and why do we use micro hardness when testing hardness in fasteners? What is the difference between the two? It was an excellent question and got us down a couple of really good rabbit holes. When I come back, I will give you a brief explanation about the difference between macro hardness and micro hardness when testing fasteners.

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Welcome back, everybody. We are talking on the Fastener Training Minute about hardness testing of fasteners and specifically the difference between macro hardness and micro hardness. Let us start with macro hardness. You all heard the term Rockwell hardness testing. That is generally going to be what we consider to be macro hardness, a large-scale hardness. What that means is we have a very large load, we have an indenter, we are going to push it into the material, we are going to measure the depth of the penetration, and that is going to give us an indication of the hardness of the material.

These tests are required by virtually every fastener standard, for example, SAE J429, where grades 2, 5, and 8 come from, and ISO 898 part 1, where our property classes 8.8, 10.9, and 12.9 come from. Sometimes they refer to other standards to do the test. SAE J429 sends us to ASTM F606, the Fastener Testing Standard, to tell us where on the part we do the test. F606 sends us to a standard called ASTM E8 that tells us how to actually do the hardness test and so on. In any case, we have to understand what is going on with the Rockwell hardness test.

First off, there are several different scales. The two that matter most to us are the C scale and the B scale. The C scale is for harder materials, such as alloy steel socket screws in 12.9 and grade 8 bolts. The B scale is for the softer materials, such as brass and grade 2 and A307, anything that is not heat-treated. Probably grade 5 is in there a little bit because it crosses the boundary between the two scales, which, by the way, do not overlap and cannot be converted one to another.

Some fastener test scales can be converted from one to another, but not B and C, except at a really small area where the hardness of the C is really low, and the hardness of the B is really high. That is not important. The C scale uses a diamond indenter. It is a little thing that looks like the end of a pen. It is a conical-shaped diamond. We conduct a test on some machines that are typically going to be automated and digital, or if you have an older style, or actually, they still make them, a manual machine. Those are also very good, less expensive.

The machine, regardless of whether it is automatic or manual, does most of the work for you. You, in essence, put the specimen once it has been properly prepared. That means you have to have flat and parallel surfaces, top and bottom. The surface that you test on must be clean and free of debris, plating, and paint, and relatively smooth. Grind it smooth. Do not overheat it when you grind it. We apply a load, or the machine applies a load on the indenter. It is called the minor load. In the case of the Rockwell C scale, that is only 10 kilograms. That finds zero. It is a way to settle everything out.

The machine, whether automatic or manual, does most of the work for you. You essentially just place the specimen once it has been properly prepared. Share on X

Now we have a starting point. Once the machine has applied the minor load, it then applies the major load, which is 150 kilograms, and that drives the indenter deep into the material. By deep, it is not that deep. It is a few thousandths of an inch. After that, it dwells for some time, and then the load is released, and the machine with the precision micrometer measures the depth of the penetration between that minor load and the major load. The problem with that is that the deeper the penetrator goes into the material, the softer the material is.

However, the Rockwell hardness number as the material gets softer gets smaller. How do you go from a large number for soft to a small number for soft? How they do it is they have a formula, they run it through, it gets subtracted from another number, and that is how we end up having a deep indentation, giving us a smaller final result. The Rockwell C scale numbers start around C25 at the low end and go up to about C70 for the high end. A high-end would be very hard, like carbide drill bits, stuff like that. Our fasteners are generally going to be in the 28 to 44 range for Rockwell hardness.

Dowel pins may be up in the HRC 50. That is how we say HRC 50 Rockwell, HRC 43 Rockwell, or 43 HRC Rockwell. Now, the other scale is the B scale, and it does not use a diamond indenter, though the principle is the same. It uses an indenter that is a very small ball. It is a sixteenth of an inch diameter carbide ball. Sometimes you will hear HRB called HRBW on the B scale, and the W just stands for tungsten. It is a tungsten carbide ball. Same exact principle, except the major load is lower. It is only a hundred kilograms. Everything else is exactly the same.

Of course, that indentation, instead of looking like a little volcano as in the C scale, just looks like a little ball had bounced off or hit the material. Generally, we take more than one reading. Three readings, for example, would be averaged. There is a test called an arbitration test, where if we have any controversy, we would slice the end of the fastener off and do the test mid-radius on the end that we sliced off, and we do four readings and average those. Generally, you can take the test anywhere on the fastener that you have access to.

The side of the head, the top of the head, and even the round surface. If we are going to do it on a round cylindrical surface, there is a correction factor we use for that because that can affect the results, especially on very small diameters. That is the Rockwell B and C scale, and that is mostly what we use for testing fasteners. Now there is another fastener test called the Vickers hardness test, and it is called micro hardness testing. It is much more sophisticated, much more expensive, and takes a lot more time to conduct because the preparation of the sample is intense.

The Vickers hardness test also uses a diamond indenter, but it is very small and it is pyramid-shaped. The loads are very small, and there are multiple loads, but it is the same scale from 10 kilograms up to a whole kilogram for the Vickers scale. It is used when our specimens are very small or when we need to look very closely at the material. Let us say, for example, we needed to do a micro hardness test on a number four split lock washer. That is much too small to fit the Rockwell hardness test. We have to take that sample of that little lock washer, and we mount it in plastic in a machine called a mounter.

We polish that sample down until we can see a mirror finish of that little lock washer, take it to the machine, and the machine is totally automated. There is nothing a human can do in terms of applying the load. We have a microscope on that machine, and we have a measuring method in it. Some are manual for the measuring, some are automated. I prefer the automated one. That is what we have here at Carver Labs. The load is applied and removed, and we see an indentation that looks like a diamond because, imagine you took a pyramid and mashed it into something soft, it leaves behind a diamond impression.

We measure the distance between the corners of the diamond. The bigger the distance, the deeper the penetrator went, and thus the softer the material. If we have very large parts, there is also a test called a macro Vickers. We do not do that very often here, but we can use a higher load. The micro Vickers is the most common. It is used to test very small parts, but it is also used to test one other thing, which is very important. That is the surface condition.

If we wanted to know what the hardness was at the very edge of the surface of a part, we would mount and polish that again, put it under the microscope, and we could get very close to the edge of the part with that. We can see what the hardness is at the surface, because surface hardness is an important thing that we measure for tapping screws, for example, or any case-hardened part. We do not only want to know what the surface hardness is, but we also want to know how deep it goes. Because these indentations are so small, you cannot see them with the naked eye.

Sometimes, if you hold the mount angle just right in the sunlight, you might see little reflections, but they are so small you cannot see them. We back off from the surface a few thousandths of an inch at a time, and we continue to measure the hardness until the hardness stops dropping. At some point, we are at the core hardness, and that is how we can know how deep the case depth is. That is a very important test for tapping screws as well. I am going to go back to Rockwell hardness here just for a minute because there are a couple of other scales that are useful in the Rockwell scale and the Rockwell hardness test regimen.

There is an A scale, which we never see in fastener standards, but it is a scale that completely covers all of the C and the B scales. It is a very large scale, but it is not very accurate. It is only a 60-kilogram load. Because of the fact that it is on such a large scale, the resolution is only about half of the B and C scale, but it is useful sometimes. We have a scale called the N scale, and there are actually three N scales, 15, 30, and 45. Those are just like the C scale with the diamond indenter, except they use a very small load. The 15 means 15 kilograms, the 30 is 30 kilograms, and 45 is 45 kilograms.

We use this when we want to know something only about the surface or superficial hardness of the part. This can help us to find problems with the fastener, such as carburization or decarburization. Vickers hardness is also a way to check for decarburization. That would indicate a very soft material close to the surface. Back to the N scale. I do not see the requirement for superficial hardness and fastener standards very much, but we do see it in SAE J429. It is a requirement for grade five and grade eight fasteners. Finally, there is another scale similar to the N scale, and it is called the T scale.

It uses the same sixteenth-inch ball as the B scale does in the same 15, 30, and 45 loads that the N scale uses. It helps us when we have small thin parts, or we just want to see what is going on on the surface. Finally, I would just say that with all hardness testing, preparation is absolutely key. You have to prep the sample well. Knowing that your readings are accurate is key. The way we know that our readings are accurate is that we always, before we use the machine, put what is called a certified test block in it of a known hardness.

That way, we can rest assured that our machine is accurate and hopefully our setup is good. I hope you learned a few things about the difference between macro hardness and micro hardness when it comes to testing fasteners, and we do all of that stuff here at Carver Labs. If you hear this, if you call me up or send me an email, we will give you a free hardness test of any type that you want here at Carver Labs, even if you want us to do it just for fun. This has been Carmen Vertullo with your Fastener Training Minute. Thanks for tuning in.

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International Fastener Expo Tech Preview: Anders Green On AI And Distribution Technology

It is feature segment time. If you have been listening to the whole episode, you did not just dive in here. You would have heard of Morgan Wilson, the show manager for International Fastener Expo. He was warming us up for this year’s big event out there in Vegas. Lo and behold, we already had Anders Green scheduled. I saw this morning on LinkedIn that he has been announced as a headliner. He is going to be doing an educational presentation addressing the wide world of tech that might impact distribution. Anders, welcome to the show.

Mr. Dudas, how are you?

Never better. It has been a while since we have been threatening to do this, and of all things, we got you on a day when Brian at the last minute had to cancel out. I am glad we are still doing it, though, because this is great news. I am so glad that we are going to get to hear you expound on a subject that you are very adept at.

First, I need to lodge an immediate complaint. I have heard nothing about a southern chapter of Naperville being announced. I demand some resolution, and I hear you are the person to talk to.

Let us hear the proposal.

I am not the boss of these things. We are certainly missing the camaraderie and hangouts. That has been clustered up in the Midwest part of the country. We need some of those down here in the Southeast.

We opened the show with a little vignette of the Naperville Fastener Association. It is no wonder that a lot of people want in on that little treasure. We will see what we can do, and I will talk to you out in Vegas. How about that?

We will line something up. I hope we will also see something at the MWFA Fastener Week coming up.

What am I thinking? Sure. You got it. I am glad you will be out there, too. I was going to ask you about that. Let us wind back here for a moment. For folks who have not met you yet, you are the proprietor of a little technology company called Alox, relatively new on the fastener scene. You can update us all about that. Before we dive into a preview of what you are going to present out there in Vegas, tell us a little bit about Alox. What are you all about, Anders?

Alox is a full cloud solution for accounting and inventory. The distinction that we really make is that we recognize that manufacturing is an entirely specialized and more complicated operation. We have intentionally said we are going to leave that to some of the bigger players, like SAP or Oracle NetSuite. We are going to leave manufacturing to them and focus just on distribution.

What we see is that there is a need within the space where you have independent distributors who need to have real inventory accuracy, but they are not going to have a whole IT department sitting in-house. They need a solution that works without having to have an accountant running every single screen that they are operating on. It is really more efficient and an attitude that goes with getting things done and being fully distributed out there on the cloud.

You obviously have a technology background, and what is that background? How did you roll all that into this Alox project?

My training was in electrical engineering with a focus on microcontrollers. All the way back, I was writing software for the very lowest levels of technology, building technology for cell phones and digital cameras, all the way down to writing drivers for the silicon for that stuff, and I worked for companies like IBM. Hewlett-Packard, we built some cameras for them with the custom Silicon that we built for our digital image processors. Way back, I did that for about fifteen years, all kinds of technology and coding with that stuff.

Was this the eighties ‘90s?

I got out of college in the early ‘90s. I spent about fifteen years doing that stuff. You are an extremely youthful guy. I am 52, 53, 50-something. I am all vim and vigor, spitting vinegar. After a while, I wanted to get out of that stuff and to get into something a little bit more concrete and not sit at a desk all day. I bought a supply house. We sold fasteners, mostly to construction people. I was quite happy doing that for 10 or 15 years again. I decided I was looking for new software. I said, “Anders, go find some new stuff.”

It was like 2017, 2018, and I could not find software that I really liked that fit what was modern at the time, which is not surprising. There are a lot of very good, very correct software packages out there that were built in the 80s and 90s and have been expanded on, but I wanted to run my location with something that was fully modern. When I could not find that, I decided I was going to build it. COVID happened literally two weeks later. It was a good time to hunker down and get back into writing code.

This is another one of these byproducts of the whole COVID experience stories. I have heard so many of them. A lot of entrepreneurs made big changes during that time. That explains a lot. I had never heard that story, and it brings us up to speed on how you came to get this position at this year’s IFE. Tell us a little bit about what you have planned.

We should just continue that battle. You say IFE, and I will say IFE. I just like it. I spoke there last year, and last year the topic was three sci-fi technologies that are ready for distributors now. We talked about AI, 3D, and remote sensing. They must have enjoyed that because they have decided to have me back this year.

Always a good sign.

Morgan is a great dude. We have got Ali Gonzalez, who does all the getting the booths all squared away. Madeline does all of the speaker arrangements and stuff. A great team that they have put together. This year, the topic is which hyped tech is actually useful for distributors? What I want to touch on there is a pile of technology that has come through the headlines in the last 3, 4, or 5 years. AI is certainly one of them. What happened to some of the rest?

Did they become useful, or did we toss them away? Some of those are going to be like the Internet of Things, blockchain, or cloud. Are there tools that use those? Did those become things that became mature, and we should look into getting them as distributors, or were they tossed out as unusable or not really solving as strong a problem as they were initially hyped for? It is going to be a little bit of a survey course touching on several different pieces of technology.

I saw in the write-up on LinkedIn that you refer to the Gartner Group cycle of hype. I love that. Where does AI sit in that cycle right now, according to your way of thinking?

My personal opinion, and we will not know for several years. It is only with hindsight that they will be able to pin it down. I think we are still on the upswing. The hype level is above what is actually being accomplished, which is saying something about the level of hype because what is actually being accomplished is pretty impressive. I think there is still a little bit of a reckoning to come with where we are ultimately going to land on the capability that is useful in a day-to-day distributorship operation.

Just for folks who might not recall or have not yet heard of it, review that cycle really quickly because it is very useful in looking at new technology and understanding that when you see one of these headline-grabbing technologies come along and you are scratching your head over it, there is a very well-understood process that it goes through.

There is a fairly standard way to look at talking about hype and the expectations of what we have. Without using their jargon, we get super excited, then we get disappointed, and then we acquiesce to a level of acceptance. They call it the peak of inflated expectations, which is the beginning of it. Things plummet down into the trough of disillusionment.

There’s a fairly standard way to describe hype and expectations: we get overly excited, then disappointed, and eventually settle into acceptance. It’s called the “peak of inflated expectations,” followed by the “trough of disillusionment.” Share on X

I love that.

You slowly rise up the slope of enlightenment, and then you reach the plateau of productivity. That is more verbal decoration than excitement, disappointment, and acceptance. That is the swing, and it is not surprising. Anytime you see any new gizmo, you have probably personally had experience with it. I saw this thing, and it is going to be amazing. My new cell phone is going to be incredible. This new iWatch is going to be so fantastic.

You get it, and you are like, “Crap, the battery just runs out, or it cannot measure this.” I thought it was going to do this, but sometimes it does not. You finally come down to, yes, it does keep time, and it does give me my notifications, and it does do some cool GPS, and it does record my heart rate, and I find that useful. It is less than you initially thought it was going to be, but it is more than your day four disappointment.

That is the hype cycle. What it is useful for is taking a look at the maturity of these technologies as far as their adoption in the marketplace. You can tell if everyone is hyping it up, but no one has actually built anything, versus when you get to the end, where there are usually several vendors to pick from that are offering these things. It is available now, not in six months from now. It is a much more capable product at what it has finally been used for.

During your presentation, you are obviously going to be including AI and looking at it through that lens. What other technologies are you going to look at? Is 3D going to make a comeback in blockchain? What else?

Blockchain is a very interesting one. When that was at its peak of excitement, people thought blockchain was going to literally destroy the financial institutions of the planet and replace them with Bitcoin and various other similar cryptocurrencies. That is no longer an expectation of people.

Are we in the trough of disillusionment at this point? Is that where you put it?

We are actually a little bit further along on the slope of enlightenment because it turns out that blockchain has become useful. Crypto is crypto, and there is still a lot of speculation there. In some other areas of finance, when it comes to actual database transactions and managing and verifying the existence of particular events as they occur in various accounts, it turns out that that is a really good application of blockchain technology. That is not a thing that is flashy or makes exciting news. It is a really good technical solution to what you hope will never be a real problem for yourself. Unnamed, unverified withdrawals from my accounts were made, and I cannot track them down. You are like, blockchain is a good way to come at that problem.

With that particular one, we are headed towards productivity without excessive hype at this point.

I have often thought when thinking about the financial system and how, at one point, it is slower than we would have expected it to be adopted. Maybe they do not want a real immutable ledger out there. I do not know. Maybe that is just my suspicious mind at play there. We could put on like seven layers of tin foil in our hats. If we wanted to discuss that, my assumption, with no real pieces of information that I can concretely cite, is that there are people with very large amounts of money who have an interest and influence and have an opinion on whether these cryptocurrencies should succeed. I would be surprised if they were making no effort to influence with all of their resources. I will just leave it there.

We are basically on the same page on that. That is probably an offline conversation, but people are going to get the idea here that if nothing else, technologies do frequently come out of the gate, at least in the media headlines, with a whole bundle of promises. As time goes on, some of them pan out, some of them do not. That goes for the upsides and the downsides we should add, because there are a lot of naysayers with every one of these as well. It is going to take over the world, or it will never work, or whatever. We talked a little bit about blockchain. Anything else? Where are you going to go with this presentation?

Cloud by itself is an interesting technology to look at. What has happened there is that even in that space, there are a lot of great uses for clouds. Alox, we use the cloud for some of its strengths. What we have also seen lately in the last year or eighteen months is some computer-heavy operations where those guys have pulled out of the cloud. One really great thing about the cloud is that it has two things that are really excellent with it.

The cloud offers three major advantages. First, it provides access to vast computing power. Second, it enables dynamic scaling. Third, it allows for frequent updates without requiring customers to do anything, since everything is managed on the backend… Share on X

If you need vast computing access, that is one thing. You need to access many terabytes all at the same time. Also, if you have the need to dynamically scale what you are doing. You have a hundred people tuning in, but then Anders and Eric say something amazing, and suddenly we have 400,000 people tuning in to this show, and you need to spin up a bunch of extra servers. The cloud is also great for that.

The third thing that cloud is really good for, and this is why we like it at Alox, is if you want to have something where it is updated super regularly without the customers needing to do anything, and you can manage that all on the backend instead of on their PCs, it is super good for that. Missing in all of that, and this is why we have seen some movement in this space, is that if you are doing stuff like AI training or super-compute heavy calculations.

It turns out that cloud is an expensive way to get that done, and having your own hardware can be a better solution. Even within the cloud, there is a little bit of bifurcation on where we are settling, and it is not necessarily that every single item will be cloud in the future. It has turned out to be a little more nuanced. That is really saying that we are approaching this endgame, this plateau of productivity, where people can view cloud offerings without being so blown away by the hype that you have to be there just because everybody else is.

We have established that you have a pedigree in the fastener industry and also in technology. That answers a lot of questions for people who are just becoming acquainted with you, Anders Green. Your presentation at this year’s International Fastener Expo takes place on Tuesday, September 10th. That is at 1:00 PM. There is pre-registration. Is it required or just suggested?

As far as I know, it is going to be on the expo floor. They have one of their speaking stages on the floor. You do not have to come get my permission. You can just roll in, have a seat, and we will start the fireworks and get everything going.

I saw on the LinkedIn post that there is something about adding it to your agenda and registering. I was not clear, so thank you for that. It is one of the session presentations available to everybody on the show floor. Let us talk a little bit more about cloud and Alox because, as a fastener guy and a technologist, you have come to this particular formulation in your journey in life with Alox just a couple of years ago, right after COVID.

You have got a fresh perspective on all this. Do you see the resistance to cloud solutions just in general, as you talk to distributors for the first time? I am asking you that because as somebody who has been promoting various technologies to the fastener industry since 2006, we have come a long way. When NetSuite first hit the street, a couple of different VARs attempted to crack into fasteners. Always at the time, big pushback. What do you see these days?

There is still some pushback on full cloud that we have seen from people who have some government contract stuff. They obviously have some military data requirements and contracts, some of which have explicitly prohibited them from doing cloud operations. There is no way around that. I cannot tell you exactly what they are making. We can assume that there are certainly some small industries in the government sector that are going to be difficult with the cloud.

In general, what I have found is a rapidly shifting level of acceptance, even over the last four years. I feel like, since the first expo that we went to, which was back in 2022. Even then, there were a couple of people who wanted local setups. Since the first part of 2022, that has almost disappeared. The COVID setup, everyone being home and everyone finally learning to use video conferencing, really changed what people were. I am going to avoid the word comfortable with and instead use just the word accustomed to it.

It was not necessarily that everyone sat down and objectively analyzed the benefits of doing things in the cloud versus having it on their own server. It really was much more a case that people just got used to it because you had to, and that is where it was. I did not decide that getting my gas and using the tap to scan versus the swipe was better. It was just there all the time, and I just became used to it.

Now I prefer tap to scan because it is there. I did not have to dig into the protocol and do a security analysis to have that happen. People have just gotten used to the idea that yes, so much of what you use on a daily basis is already fully cloud-hosted. It is almost a little weird to have this one holdout. Wait a minute.

All of our email, all our video hosting, all of our advertising, all of our marketing, all of our networking, all of our sales CRM, all of the stuff is in the cloud, and we want to have our ERP and accounting sitting in the closet where the janitor can knock it with the broom when they are taking the trash out. “Guys, what are we doing?” It has just become the last holdout. It is tipped. People are now comfortable with that last piece of technology being cloud-hosted because they do not want to host servers for anything else either.

That is a pretty fair read on it. You still have your holdouts, but that is the way the world is going. Looking at the Alox website, that is Alox4.com.

You can go to Alox4.com or Alox4.online. Technically, the company is Alox Supply, and the product is Alox4. Googling Alox will get you there. We have had people ask us what Alox stands for. It is a name that was very available to register. It is not that we previously were shipping aluminum oxide. It has a nice ring to it, and I liked it.

Plus INxSQL was taken. I did not want to step on any toes. Believe me, you are not stepping on any toes. It is a wide-open market. The thing that I took away from your website right off the bat, I noticed you have got a call right there for all the P21 users, and then right below it, there is a callout to all the folks who are still using QuickBooks. You are shooting high, and you are shooting low. I think I understand your reasoning for both of those plays. There are a lot of P21 people probably in the listening audience that are out there scratching their heads, saying, “Tell me more about this Alox.”

I used to be one of those P21 people. We used that for more than ten years, and it is certainly a capable piece of software. I am not going to get too deep into that. After a good chunk of time, there were some issues that I wanted to address that did not seem like they could be within that ecosystem. There are certainly some similarities there where you have rigorous accounting, costing of inventory on a lot basis. A lot of what P21 has is what distributors need. There is no surprise that we have plenty of folks in the fastener distribution industry who use that. In my store, Alox has completely replaced Profit21, and my guys are super happy. The end result has been good there.

Talking to the whole other end of the market, the folks who are still using QuickBooks to manage everything.

I like to say that QuickBooks is a fantastic piece of software if you are selling knit caps on Etsy.

It is great. You have been to a few trade shows, have you not?

In my opinion, where QuickBooks falls down is when you need multi-user, multi-site, and rigorous inventory. Any of those three can be a real bottleneck for QuickBooks. Anyone who has been deep into QuickBooks with other people has gone through the frustration of yelling through the door, “Can you close out of QuickBooks so that I can get in?” That is a problem that some people have. I was talking to some people at the most recent trade show who were on QuickBooks, and they had two different locations, one at each end of the city.

The implementation people said what you are going to need to do is have literally two different part numbers because we cannot track inventory at two locations. You would need to have a 20 millimeter bolt A, a 20 millimeter bolt B, but it is really the same part. How could you possibly then do any of your predictions and all of your analysis on that? Here is what makes QuickBooks so great. It will just let you delete anything. You make a mistake, you can just delete it. You could also literally have one of your employees write a check, print it out, and then they delete it from the system and walk out the door with a paper check to a vendor that they just created and then deleted.

Some folks are probably thinking that is a good feature.

If you are just one person, if it is just you and your pile of knit caps, you can trust yourself. It is when you get to multiple people, and you get to multiple sites, and you get to real inventory. That was not what QuickBooks’ strength was ever supposed to be. It is very natural to jump onto QuickBooks as you are getting started, then later realize that these problems are now big enough problems that you need to jump to a system with more rigor. You would look out for something like Alox or some of the other folks that we also see exhibit at the Fastener Fair and International Fastener Expo. That is the step up when they reach that level.

Have you deployed AI behind any portion of Alox yet? Are you using it to bring value in any way you want to talk about?

Not yet. Here is my problem. As an engineer, I have difficulty with the statement because I have a high level of what I would consider artificial intelligence. We have a section within Alox that we call just intelligence. We are building some more pieces there every day. There are things like customer segmentation. You can do that using a cosine similarity analysis and then regression and grouping. Is that AI?

No, it is not even really neural networks. Will other people market that as AI? They will. All the time, we are looking at what is out there and how we might want to put it in. The most useful stuff these days, I think, is the invoice mapping. Some tools are using this now. This is the idea that you can receive an email that has a purchase order, and AI will automatically parse that and find all of the existing fields that it is expecting.

The total, who it is from, when it is needed, what the terms are, what the part numbers are, and then map that and put it straight into your ERP. That is the AI that is the most useful that is out there right now. It is not just ERPs. SmartCert is using that same technology to pull their certs into their stuff. That is another example of hooray for the fastener industry, because they are getting on board with some of that processing. I think there is a high bar for Anders to say we are using AI. That is just my opinion.

Your opinion is well-informed, and people are obviously going to be listening to you on September 10th in Vegas at the International Fastener Expo. Since we mentioned INxSQL earlier, they have some email parsing AI technology at work in that platform too. It is something that is beyond bleeding edge now, and it is out there to be competitive. You have got to start being aware of these tools and figuring out where you are going to deploy them in your organization. Anders, you are a guy who could help distributors figure some of that out.

At the end of the day, we are in distribution. It is buying something here and selling something there. It turns out that that is actually complicated. There are a lot of steps that go into that. Most of us are working on our jobs all day and not reading research papers. There just is not the time for every distributor out there to also go get a master’s degree in data engineering. That is not practical.

That is why these expos like IFE and Fastener Fair are such great places to come and get a breakdown on what is the latest on these technologies and what is happening with this, that, and the other thing that you have heard about, and go to the educational sessions. I am sure the MWFA Fastener Week has a bunch of training sessions, also. I do not know. Do they have any that are super technologically focused? I have not gone through that training session. Have you, Eric?

They have different presentations. We did one last year, generally speaking about AI and where it is hitting the industry. They do what they can, but I would not say that it is anything hard-hitting like you are going to be presenting. We will be looking forward to seeing you out there in Chicago and again in Vegas.

Next time that we talk, I want to have you back on the podcast after you give your presentation because Brian was not here. We have got a whole lot of fun stuff to talk about, everything from guacamole to fastener dogs to your true Australian heritage, which I have got to find out more about, Anders. I appreciate you being with us, even though we had to mix things up at the last minute.

The Australian passport is one of my three passports that is currently active.

You are a guy who has a lot to talk about for sure. I enjoy your posts all the time on LinkedIn. I appreciate you being on. Alox4.online. It is Fully Threaded Radio. We will be back in just a minute. Brian will be back, I hope, to wrap this one up.

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Episode Wrap-Up

That was a lot of fun with Anders, but next time you have to be there, Brian, because he had a couple of things he wanted to kick around with you. We played this one straight. He was talking about the cloud, and he was talking about Alox and all that, and what he is going to do in Vegas. We have some fun stuff to cover next time he is on, too, because he is a fun guy. Anders Green, Alox. We will get him back here. Thanks to him and all the guests, including Craig Penland with Eurolink and Tim O’Keeffe with Huyett.

He sat in with Mike McNulty from Fastener Technology International on the news, and that FDI keeps jamming along. Not sure if it is going to hold through July, especially in view of all this stuff. In other news, Morgan Wilson with the International Fastener Expo and everybody who joined us for those Naperville Fastener Association interviews, including the lovely and talented Lynn Dempsey and Bob GQ Bear, our co-interviewer. I wonder if we can recruit him for Vegas this year.

He probably could talk to our guys from Cambridge because Vic usually shrinks or hides the moment he sees Lynn in the distance.

He learned. Wrapping it up, we had Carmen Vertullo on the Fastener Training Minute. It will be hard to beat that one, Carmen. No pun intended. Thanks to all the guests and thanks to our fine list of partners. The title sponsors of Fully Threaded Radio are Brighton-Best International, tested, tried, and true. Brighton-Best, Goebel Fasteners, quality the first time. Star Stainless, right off the shelf, it is Star.

Fully Threaded 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 Würth Industry North America, who was right up there at number two on the MDM distribution list. Congratulations, Würth. Thanks for everything you do for the industry. The email address here is FTR@FullyThreaded.com.

Let us know what you think, or if you have suggestions, we will take those too. As mentioned, when we close this one down, the new Link magazine has a one-page story about Goebel Fasteners and their World Riveting Congress that is being held in Dusseldorf or actually just outside of Düsseldorf, Germany, September 26th through the 28th. This is described as a very robust couple of days of information. They have some fun things lined up, too, but there are a lot of educational seminars, some of them specific to Goebel, but a lot of them are just really good general information and cutting-edge stuff, too, both on the application and the manufacturing side.

This is really where anyone who wants to learn about rivets or learn more about rivets should really be.

A hundred percent, and as an added enticement, Marcel and the Goebel team are picking up the cost of this thing. You have got to get yourself there, but once you arrive, they are covering it. It says that it is limited space, so my guess is you are going to have to jump in there if you want to take advantage of it. Goebel Fasteners’ World Riveting Congress. I do not know if you had a chance to zoom in on this yet, but one thing I noticed was that they have got a Kenworth truck that is going to be on display during the Congress, and it is going to be festooned with all kinds of the latest Goebel rivets and lock nuts. Did you get wind of this?

No, but I am still surprised it is not one of the Dutch or German-made trucks. That was exactly why I wanted to ask you about that, because Kenworth is an esteemed name in the US, and I did not know it was that well-known outside North America. Maybe they have got it there as a novelty because that is about as Americana as you can get. The old CBers, they used to call them K-Woppers.

I never saw them. You have the big Scania and the Volvo, and the Dutch make a big truck too. The Germans make big trucks, too.

The way the world is going, who knows what we’ll be dealing with next time around—but we’re here now. Get out there, sell some screws, and maybe even some rivets if you can. Share on X

No K-Woppers flying down the Autobahn?

Not that I ever saw, but then again, I did not spend a lot of time on the Autobahns. It is a way of decreasing your life.

Not if the whole thing is put together with Goebel Fasteners. That is for sure. Do not blame it on them.

I was more thinking of nervous exhaustion rather than whether the car or the truck is going to fall apart.

It is a pretty safe bet that this is going to be a fantastic event. Of course, it happens right after IFE. You will be able to talk to the Goebel team either way. Take a look at Link Magazine for that. As if that was not good enough, in the next episode of the show, we will be talking with Sam Underwood. He is the new National Sales Manager for Goebel. He is going to get with us and bring us up to speed with all their latest programs.

I am sure if there are any late-breaking developments on the World Riveting Congress, he will have them then. Sam Underwood. I hope you will all join us for that one. With that, we are going to put this episode of the show in the can. I sure do appreciate you joining us, everyone. If nothing else, it was a nice diversion from all the assassinations all the time. Of course, the way the world is going, Bri, who knows what we are going to be dealing with in the next go-round, but we are here now.

Taking a breather.

I will just say for Brian Musker, this is Eric Dudas. Get out there, sell some screws, and this time some rivets too, if you can.

Take a deep breath.

That is right, and we will talk to you next time.

See you next time.