Platinum Tooling has partnered with a new sales representative firm, Technical Tool & Gage. What made this partnership a good fit?
They’re proven winners. They know the marketplace, and they know where to take our product, and they understand where it goes. And with a rep group like that, it’s pretty important that they know all aspects of the marketplace because they have to call on the end users that are using the product. They need to call on the industrial supply companies that are selling to these end users, and they need to call on the machine tool people directly. Those various companies all take a different approach, and so, we need a company that is able to understand the different ways to bring our product to market, and Technical Tool & Gage gets it because they’ve been there, and they’ve been in machining a long time.
Can you talk about more about what types of industries Technical Tool & Gage serves?
The market out in the southwest corner of the country — Southern California, Arizona, that kind of thing — there’s a pretty heavy aerospace-related business there, so it’s something they’re very good at. It’s a diverse market, but if there’s anything that really jumps out at me in that territory, it is the aerospace business.
What makes that a good fit?
There are so many aspects to manufacturing in aerospace from small to large, and just like the little stuff, connectors, for example. They’re very special, but they’re not easy to make. We have a lot of great products that help manufacture connectors and missile cones. It requires special tools for a lot of parts of aerospace, and it’s something we’re very good at. We can design and build basically anything anybody needs.
You mentioned the Southwest part of the U.S. Are there any other parts of the U.S. this partnership is going to help?
They’re strictly in Southern California. That is their main target, and then Arizona and Colorado and New Mexico. Colorado is a little bit different. There’s maybe a little more diversity there. There’s some medical manufacturing in Colorado that we’re having some success with, too.
How will Technical Tool & Gage’s ability to work closely with the CNC machine shops and aerospace manufacturers benefit Platinum Tooling?
In general, what we need from reps is somebody that can go and represent us. If they do a good job of showing the customer base what we’re all about, then the business will come from that. They’re the feet on the ground that are in the local markets. We can only see so many people ourselves. We’re not that big of a company. We need companies like them in all the marketplaces around the country that are going on a day-to-day basis into the shops and talking about our product. When they do that, then the opportunities come up, and we benefit from that.
What do you expect the industry response to be to this partnership? When did it come about? And are you seeing some good results from it?
Yeah, we’re tickled to death with what’s going on. We can tell that it’s a good partnership, and long-term it’s going to be really beneficial for us. They’re pretty well-accepted in the marketplace, and we can tell from the day-to-day communication that we have with them that they’re bringing us opportunities that we never had before.
They’ve committed to coming with us to Germany for training. We have a bunch of our reps going to two or three different factories in Germany.
To make that kind of commitment as a group is pretty big, and I appreciate the fact that they would do that.
Is there anything else you’d like to mention that we didn’t talk about?
We’re working closely with them, and we see that we’re probably just scratching the surface there, honestly, because they’re fairly new and we have high hopes. We think the future’s pretty bright with them.
More info: platinumtooling.com
