Special Report: Stuttgart 2025 With Craig Penland Of Eurolink

 

The world’s largest dedicated fastener show, Fastener Fair Global, took place in Stuttgart, Germany and Eurolink Fastener Supply Service founder and president Craig Penland was there. He reviews this year’s show as well as some of his adventures exploring various locations in Europe. He also shares a surprising take on the European view of the tariffs. Run time: 33:51

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Special Report: Stuttgart 2025 With Craig Penland Of Eurolink

Another special episode of the show. The Stuttgart Fastener Show took place in Stuttgart, Germany. Formally, the show is known as Fastener Fair Global. It happens every other year. Craig Penland with Eurolink Fastener Supply Service was there. Turns out there were quite a few people from the North American Fastener industry in attendance, but Craig was our on-the-scene reporter for this one.

This is a monster show. Officially, they reported somewhere around a thousand exhibitors from 40 or so countries. Craig says that the attendance was really strong. He talks about that during this conversation, as well as German beer and the adventures that he and Kim added to their journey out to Europe. Yes, he took the temperature on the European sentiment about the tariff situation, too. I hope you enjoy it.

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Craig & Kim’s European Adventure: Beyond the Fastener Fair

Craig Penland with Eurolink is with us. I think it’s your latest LinkedIn post here. It’s your vlog from Stuttgart, Germany. You were at Fastener Fair. Welcome back to the US. How are you doing, buddy?

Mr. Eric Dudas, I am well. I am tired, but I am well. Yes, just got back Monday evening late around 10:00 PM and just trying to play catch-up on sleep this week while getting back at it at the office. That vlog, I recorded that without Kim’s approval, and she didn’t get to hear it for the first time.

You’re assistant, you mean, right?

Yes, and that’s the part that got her, as we can all imagine. She heard it yesterday for the first time after it went live. It was just all in fun. I was just playing around as I was walking into the show both days, and I just thought it was a good play on words to treat her as my assistant. As everybody knows, she is my wife and we’ve been together for 35 years now.

You do a lot of traveling together, too, because every time you are there, Kim is also, which is very good to see.

That was actually intentional. Back in 2017, I made a decision that, whatever event I’m going to travel to, she’s going to go with me. Now it did make it easier when she became employed by Eurolink in 2018. We were going together as employees, but even prior to that, I had just made the decision. It was good to have her there. It’s just a personal decision for me, but it has really worked out.

I remember Robbie Gilchrist just giving me a bit of advice back in 2018, telling me, “This industry allows a lot of travel for people and a lot of new cities, a lot of new places, a lot of new memories, and you’ve got to take advantage of it.” That means go the weekend before or stay the weekend after, go see the cities, go see the sites, and make memories that are going to last a lifetime. We started doing that more and more back in 2018. We did it for the past ten days in Europe.

“This industry allows for a lot of travel, new cities, new places, new memories—and you've got to take advantage of it.” Share on X

I want to hear a little bit about that and the high-level details of what went on at the show. You presented during your vlog, but I hope you’ll recap them here for fully threaded listeners. I want to hear about this trip extension because you’re great at packing in those experiences.

Fastener Fair Global is located in Stuttgart, Germany. It’s held every two years, which is great. That’s plenty of events per year, so to speak. It doesn’t need to be done annually. There are four halls of exhibitors. When I say halls, I’m talking about like an entire hall from Vegas or Nashville. There are four of those. There were over 1100 companies representing more than 40 countries present at this show, which were displaying.

The attendance hasn’t been released yet, but I would say based on previous shows, because this is my fifth one that I’ve been to, I would say somewhere between 12 and 15,000 visitors attended this year’s which are numbers that it’s hard for American fastener distributors to even imagine because that’s nothing like what we have seen in say Vegas or Nashville, Cleveland, Detroit, wherever Fastener Fair might be here. It’s just an amazing show. The exhibits are huge. The giveaways are huge. Just everything about it is just absolutely on a much grander scale than what we’re used to here.

Four halls. Let me ask you this. Are they carpeted?

No, they were not.

Interesting.

I know that’s important to you. I made sure to take note of that. They were not. Another big change that I thought was interesting. I didn’t know this until I got in there. Are the hours of operation for the show? It’s from 9:00 until 6:00, day one, Tuesday, and day two, Wednesday, and then 9:00 until 4:00, day three. Even though it starts earlier than what we do here in the United States, it ends later than what we do here in the United States. There’s just a tremendous amount going on.

It was so much that on day one, I got stuck in just the first hall for about two-thirds of the day with just a small handful of my suppliers of mine, and then I realized that I was missing a lot of my German friends who were also Italian and were in hall three. After lunch, I recognized this, and I went over to hall three and then got stuck in two meetings for the rest of the day. When day two came around, I had to put on my running shoes because I had sixteen different suppliers that I needed to meet with on day two.

Did you get it all in?

I did. I ran as fast as I could, and I drank a lot less German beer on day two and took in a lot fewer snacks on day two than I did on day one, but I was able to get them all in.

Networking & Surprising Encounters At Fastener Fair Stuttgart

I’m sure you saw a lot of people that you knew there just for the sake of name-dropping.

The first night dinner, Monday night before the show even started, Kim and I were invited out to dinner by a friend and a supplier. We went to a restaurant called Carl’s Brauhaus, which was in the city of Stuttgart. While we were there eating and drinking, I saw Tim and Brian from Starwood walk out the door. This restaurant was absolutely slammed packed on a Monday night. What you have to understand is that it was nowhere close to the Fastener Fair.

It was a good 20 to 25-minute drive from the Fastener Fair. It was just that many people in town. I got to see Tim and Brian and speak with them. Day one, that morning, as we were walking down the hotel lobby to go get breakfast, we ran into Bobby from Beacon and then John and Peggy and Rosa Hearns with Brighton-Best. We’re just a few that we ran into that morning. Throughout the show, day one and day two, we got to run into a few others here from the United States.

That’s always fun when that happens, when you’re far away and you bump into people you know.

There were a couple of parties that happened inside the halls, that started around five 30, day one, or the night of day one, that were amazing. The one that we attended basically had all the drinks and food that one could handle. It had a DJ, and it had a saxophone player walking around. It was lively. It was great. There was so much to do, but about an hour into that party, we actually had a meeting with another supplier back at our hotel bar. We walked in. What you have to understand is that our hotel was only a five-minute walk from the show. We walked over to the bar, where we met with a supplier, and who did we run into there? We ran into our brothers and sisters from Canada, Hans and Karen Fuller. Even saw him at parties later on.

I ran into him at PacWest. He was really looking forward to this trip. I think that he did a Craig and Kim too. They extended their trip a little bit, if I remember correctly.

I’m not sure. We didn’t speak about that. We got called up in a conversation about the tariffs, and that took every bit of our time together. He was there meeting with people as well. I couldn’t hog all of his time. I had to let him go, but it was good to see them, because this talk or at least what we’ve seen on LinkedIn is that I don’t know if I’m going to get to see him at Fastener Fair or Vegas or anything, anywhere else this year, because I wasn’t able to make it out to PacWest event a couple of weeks back. I didn’t get to see him there either.

It was great to run into both him and Karen and see them for the first time this year. As I said, day two was busy for us. I put in over 16,500 steps that day, which I know that there’s a lot of people out there is a small amount of steps, but as somebody with a fake knee, that’s a lot of steps for me. That just meant that I had to take in a lot less German beer, and then Kim’s case, a lot less Prosecco at each booth that we went by, so that we could be a lot more productive that day.

Day two, we ended up going to an Italian restaurant, which is ironic because, as you’ve spoken about, we extend our trips, and this year’s extension went to Italy, but we went to a restaurant called La Conchalilla. Again, it was back downtown Stuttgart. I tell you what, the food and the company we had that evening were spectacular.

European Fastener Market Dynamics: Manufacturers, Distributors & End Users

More fastener memories. Very cool, Craig. You know how to do it. Getting back to the show now, here, the European model is a little different from that in the US. We don’t have the same master distribution happening there. Do you see that reflected in the show? In other words, is there a big separation between the manufacturers and distribution, or how do they have it all laid out?

From what I can tell, and the halls one and three, those are mostly, if not all, European suppliers. I don’t think they separate it by country. They just say, “This is a European supplier. This is where they’re going to go.” You get up to halls 5 and 7, and those are more international suppliers, including China and Taiwan and Vietnam, and India. A lot of Indian suppliers. They do keep them separate quite a bit.

As far as customers go, “Who’s there?” I would have a hard time telling you whether there are end users there, or just distributors only there. I think it’s a mix of everybody involved. At this particular event, we are the customer, myself representing Eurolink. I don’t get to stand at a booth and see everybody else’s name tag to see if they’re an end user or not. Between 12 and 15,000 people are there, I would say there’s a lot of distributors, end users, and everything in between.

I’ve heard that a lot more business gets done right on the show floor versus what happens at North American shows. Did you get that feeling?

Again, as the customer there and not an exhibitor, I got a lot more business done on the show floor. A lot of the exhibits will have private booth spaces in them, or private conference space is a better word to use in them, or seating areas that are well off the floor, so that you can have private conversations with the supplier that you’re meeting with. For me, it just allows me to be able to sit down with these vendors, these suppliers, and discuss some of the things that are going right and discuss some of the things that are going wrong and how we can improve on that. By the time I finished two days’ worth of the show, there was a lot of business that had gotten done for the benefit of Eurolink.

 

Good to hear. It was very productive for you.

I think that has to do with drawing people off the floor and into your booth. I see how important that aspect is of the shows over in Europe. They don’t want you to be standing on the aisle floor talking to somebody at a table or something like that.

They’re trying to get you in.

They want you inside their booth. As I said, either in a private conference room or a table out of the way, and then serving you drinks, serving you food, and then let’s meet. Let’s discuss business. Let’s see what we can do to increase business with one another.

Fastener Fair Goodies: What Were They Handing Out?

As you were having these conversations, I know that tariffs came up. You mentioned it when you were referring to your encounter with hands. Before we get to that, I have to ask you about something a little more frivolous. On your vlog, you said that Kim picked up at least two bags of goodies the way is on the floor. Tell me about it. What were they handing out over there?

You name it. Anything and everything. The ducks that Jeep Wrangler owners put on their dash. We had a couple of suppliers handing out ducks. There were teddy bears, hats.

Hang on a sec. They’re not giving them away for the Jeep notoriety?

No. He had no clue that my wife would be coming back, putting it on a dash of her Wrangler. No. He told us that that was the fifth one that they had done. It was just interesting, those kinds of giveaways, and of course, pads and paper. We had a vendor who gave away a small, yellow box. It couldn’t have been more than an inch in height, probably 4 inches in width, 3 inches in diameter, and it was an emergency kit.

I had no clue what was inside that until we were traveling over in Europe, and we were waiting on a train, I mean traveling over in Italy and we were waiting on a train, and I was about to starve, and I opened it up, and it had a protein bar in there and a piece of chocolate, and snacks in there. I was like, “Man, this was perfect.” Little interesting things like that are what they were getting salt and pepper shakers. It’s a very interesting giveaway, a whisk. We had one vendor that gave away a kitchen whisk and metal drinking straws. You name it. Those people over there were giving it away.

Metal straws. That sounds very European. You didn’t see any Vegemite, did you?

I did not, but there was a lot of food being given away. There are these crisp cookies that are very popular in the Netherlands that have like a caramel in between the cookie crust. I already know a couple of suppliers from the Netherlands that give those away, but there was a different supplier that I met this year that actually had a grill there, and they were making them fresh. I’d never seen that before. That was interesting in itself. Those things are so good, so addictive.

It sounds like it was a wonderful time. You had plenty of everything, business and fun. In the background, we’re going through this whole tariff situation. How did that bubble up at Fastener Fair?

In my conversations, I had a bunch, and I went out to dinner and lunch with quite a few suppliers. It wasn’t as big a conversation as I had expected it to be before going over there. It’s very funny in the past, when I spent time over there, the Europeans, especially the Germans, liked to refer to our president as your president. They would ask me, “What is your president doing over there?” Like Trump or Biden belongs to me specifically and nobody else, but that’s just the way they word things.

I didn’t get that a lot from over there. I had a few companies that asked in general, “Does America still want to do business with these other countries, Germany, Italy, Spain?” Those are just generalized questions. They weren’t asking me, “Does Eurolink want to still do business with them?” We would talk about the terrorists, and we would talk about how it was in every single country in the world. We got past it. It wasn’t part of the conversation any further.

The conversation was, “What do we need to do with say minimums or freight? How do we get your freight to you quicker? What other items do you guys want to start stocking at your length?” It just immediately went into business and got away from the tariffs. No, it’s definitely on their mind over there because they’re wondering if they’re going to lose business. I think that knowing that it’s in every country and not just say Germany or Italy or England or what have you out of Europe, then I think that made them feel a little bit better that they weren’t being singled out.

Tariffs are definitely on their mind over there in Europe because they're wondering if they're going to lose business. Share on X

Distributed misery.

Exactly.

European Sentiment: Germany Vs. Italy On Tariffs & The Future

Interesting. How do you read the sentiment in Europe these days?

I think that our friends in Germany are really concerned about the future of their country. They gave their reasons, and I’m not going to go into that at this moment. This is their personal belief. I’m just going to leave it at that, but they’re very concerned with the future of their country and what it’s going to look like. You have other countries like Italy, where not only did I meet with many Italian suppliers, but that is where Kim and I spent our last weekend in Europe was in Italy. Their look towards the future came across as very bright.

They thought that their leaders and the relationship they have with the United States that it’s only going to get better in the future. It seems like they believe that, what’s the best way to put this, Italy seems to be stepping out and not just following the line of what the European Union says that needs to happen. Italy seems to be thinking out of the box, so to speak. I think that’s what has their country and their people. Intrigued by what the future is going to look like.

How important is the Italian market for Eurolink?

It’s very important. We have about six suppliers in Europe right now. We met with two new ones that we think are going to become part of our weekly shipment out of Europe. These other ones are just a hit and miss. We might place one order with them this week, but then two weeks from now, the second order type thing. It’s not every single day, but we’ve got a couple of new ones that we met with this year that I really believe are going to become everyday suppliers for us.

As I said, that is where Kim and I spent the second half of our trip. The first part of our trip, the first weekend prior to the show, we spent it in Munich, Germany. We got a chance to stay in the city center near the Plaza in the Market. On the Saturday that we were there prior to the show, it was 66 degrees, and people were out in t-shirts and shorts. It was absolutely packed. Everywhere, every restaurant, every store, the market itself, which is more or less a very large farmers’ market.

Just people everywhere. It was great to see. I just mentioned that because we had to fly back through Munich on our way home on Monday. As we got off the plane, it was sleeting, and it was only about 32 degrees on Monday. Huge difference between the first weekend with air and the second weekend. As I said, we finished out the trip. It was really fun. We ended up deciding not to do ten days, three of the show.

We’d gotten as much accomplished as we were going to get it accomplished on day three. We went down to Cure, Switzerland, for the evening. It’s just a beautiful little ski town that unfortunately closes up early on Thursdays for some reason. Nevertheless, we got up the next morning and we went to the train station, where we boarded a train called the Bernina Express. On this train, we traveled through the Swiss Alps, going through approximately 55 tunnels and over 196 bridges on our way from Cusio to a town in Northern Italy called Tirano.

Again, just another absolutely beautiful little ski town that we ended up having lunch in before boarding a final train that took us southwest to a city called Bergamo, depending on who you are actually speaking to. While we were in Bergamo, we ended up staying in what is referred to as the city Alta, which translates into the upper town or high city. The upper town is surrounded by this absolutely impressive Venetian wall that was built sometime between 1560 and 1590.

It’s about 3.5 miles long, and you can actually walk around a majority of the top of the wall around the city. I tell you what, the two things that really stood out to me as we had dinner in this region of Italy are that they love to add bacon to their dishes. As somebody who loves pork, I was a huge fan of that, but I’d never seen that before. I would say more than half of their dishes that they served, bacon was involved in it. I thought that was interesting. The other interesting part, I don’t know about you, but I’ll go to an Italian restaurant here in the States.

Anytime.

They always serve it with a spoon, and I realize that you’re supposed to use it with the fork and get it on the fork. Not an Italian restaurant I went to in Italy, brought me a spoon out. That must be an American thing that we’ve added to Italian dishes.

It is. It was surprising to me when I discovered that a long time ago, too, but I’m the guy who still uses a fork and a knife at a Chinese place, too.

Those two things stood out. I think the hardest part of the entire journey for us was going from Bergamo to Milan. There happened to be a parade, an annual parade downtown in Bergamo, and it had all the streets shut down, which prevented the bus that we were taking from making it to our pickup spot. We ended up having to take three different trains and then a taxi to leave Bergamo and go to Milan. It just made it for an absolutely horrendous Sunday afternoon of travel. I will follow that up, saying that once we got to the final spot and got settled into our hotel and went down for dinner, again, the service was amazing and the food was amazing. At the end of the day, it was all worth it.

Craig and Kim’s excellent European adventure.

It looked like that on a Sunday afternoon. I’ve got to admit that there were a lot of hiccups on that, but that’s part of the memory. That’s part of what you’re making there. That is something that we will never forget.

Hundred percent and all brought to you by the fastener industry.

That’s absolutely right.

Eurolink’s 25th Anniversary: NASCAR Simulator & Customer Service Focus

That’s a great story. Thanks for sharing all that. Of course, now you’re going to be going somewhere with its own flavor, and we’ve been there before, but it’s going to have its own new tales to tell after we get there. That’s Fastener Faire USA in Nashville in May. I know you’re going to be there as well.

That is correct. This is Eurolink’s 25th anniversary year. Our theme for this year is rock-solid service. We have a brand new booth that is currently being built, which is going to be exhibited in Nashville for the first time. Of course, we’re going to be giving out our very special 25th anniversary t-shirts. I think this makes t-shirt number thirteen. We actually came up with two different designs, and we had enough of both designs produced.

 

The customers will actually have their choice between each of the designs, where in the past it’s always just been one design. What we’re also excited about, on top of the booth itself and the new t-shirts, is that we are the platinum sponsor for the NASCAR simulator. We are super excited about that. We’re told the simulator is being, let’s just say, dressed up and Eurolink gear. We’re excited to see what that’s going to look like when it actually rolls out onto the floor.

We’re also excited that part of being the sponsor is that on day one, for a certain period of time, we get the simulator all to ourselves. We get a chance to bring in our guests, our customers, and they get the free experience in the middle of the day without having to wait in line. We’re super excited about that. If there are any customers out there that want to take part in that, please reach out to your salesperson here and make them aware you’re going to be in town and that you want to take part of that experience on day one, and we’ll get you on our list.

Very cool. Now, this simulator, how long actually is the experience? How long are you actually getting that feel of sitting in the cockpit?

My understanding is like 90 seconds up to two minutes is what I’ve been told. It’s not extremely long. I haven’t even seen a video to this point of what it actually looks like from inside the simulator. All I’ve seen to this point is pictures of the car itself, because it looks just like a NASCAR sitting there, and that you’re calling in through the window and getting in there. Maybe it’s a door. I don’t know, but you’re getting in there, and it looks like they’re strapping you in with the seat belts, and then it’s a computer screen in front of you, and you’re changing gears, and you’ve got a steering wheel and all that. To me, it’s going to be exciting just to watch the experience for everyone.

It’s going to be a lot of fun. That’s very cool. Looking forward to that. Aside from the huge 25th anniversary, congratulations on that, we’re celebrating that all year, but what’s the big push at Eurolink?

Eurolink’s Customer Service Initiatives & Record-Breaking Sales

Last year, we did a customer survey and we sent it out to more than 2,000 individuals. We got back a good amount of replies, and we’re I would say 95%, 96% of it was all positive, and what we do and what we try to do for our customers around the country. There were some things that people thought we could do a little bit better.

Our goal for this year was to increase the customer service experience. That’s where we came up with giving away a monthly gift from a drawing every single month for customers who spend $2,500 or more with us throughout the month. We just gave away our third gift package for the month of March. Also, we give away a free lunch to the company that does the most amount of sales with us per quarter.

We’ll give four of those away each year. With customers who want to open up terms of sale with us, we have created a welcoming basket for that as well. It includes a handwritten letter from me on the history of the company and why we’re here, and what we’re trying to accomplish by being here. We’ve made it a focus to increase the customer service in our company. To this point in 2025, it seems to be working.

 

I know that sales are tough all around. I know numerous companies out there have taken a hit and they’re struggling at this moment, the first quarter, but we actually had the very best first quarter that we’ve ever had in the history of the company. Our sales are at an time high right this moment. We’re super excited about what we’ve done three months into this year and what it looks like moving forward.

You’re going to be talking about that in Nashville at Fastener Fair USA and probably while you’re ushering people into the simulator. Is that about right?

That sounds right. I’m looking forward to it because not only are we presenting the new exhibit and the new t-shirts and the simulator, but I’m going to have more of my staff in town for this. Whereas normally it’s just either 2 or 3 of us, there’s actually going to be 7 or 8 of us at this show for the first time. I wanted other people in my company to be able to experience what a show is like. I felt that a better time to do it was at our 25th anniversary.

You’re growing Eurolink into a super powerhouse. The fastener industry has been great to you. Be a little part of it with you all these years.

You guys have been a huge part of it. You and Brian, and Lynn have been right there beside us for ten years, maybe something right in there. We’ve been a sponsor on Fully Threaded Radio, and we’ve been uploading our inventory, the Fastener Clearing House, for quite some time now. You guys have been a huge part of it with us, and we’re truly appreciative of everything that you guys do.

I appreciate you saying that, Craig. I appreciate you being on with us. You’re always welcome, and folks always seem to love to hear what you have to say. Appreciate that a lot.

Thank you. I appreciate you, Eric.

Craig Penland, Eurolink.

 

Important Links

• Craig Penland on LinkedIn
• Fastener Fair Global
• Eurolink Fastener Supply Service