Tim Haendle was pleased with himself when I talked to him Wednesday. He had bought 100 carbide inserts – used of course – for a hundred bucks at a Hoff Online Auctions Internet sale of a screw machine shop in St. Paul, Minnesota. He’ll regrind them for use on one of the 22 National Acmes he runs in his shop, buried in a forest in Mendocino County, 100 miles north of San Francisco.
I love the used machinery business because it is a competitive treasure hunt every day. It asks us for impossible calculations about realizable values for illiquid, flawed, sometimes rickety, filthy objects that often have little tangible worth when we are asked to buy them.
Here’s an example of the type of situation we consider at my company Graff-Pinkert every day. A firm has a 25-year-old screw machine or rotary transfer machine that it does not need at the moment. It has long been written off the financial statements, yet the potential seller feels it still has value but doesn’t know how much. He calls dealers for comps, checks eBay for similar machines, and considers whether he may use it again soon himself. He advertises it or calls us and probes for an offer. We feel the piece may have enough potential value that would make it a worthwhile addition to our stock, but we need to determine whether it is badly worn and will require substantial expensive refurbishing, or if it can be sold in its present state, which usually means full of oily chips, a nasty appearance, and out of production.
If by chance the machine shows well and is still running good parts, it becomes inviting for our broker competition, which hopes to turn it quickly for a modest but quick profit, without doing any of the difficult work of returning it to its original state of productivity.
I bought out my brother Jim’s interest in Graff-Pinkert six months ago. I promised him that I would not write about the breakup, but I want to take a few lines to describe how the post breakup is going for me.
The day after our deal closed I was vacationing with my wife, my sister and brother-in-law at the Chautauqua Institution near Jamestown, New York. (We had planned this trip a while before with my sister. That the breakup with Jim culminated at the same time was an odd coincidence.) The four of us were having lunch on the grounds when my iPhone rang and Jim’s name came up. I gulped, walked outside and took the call.
Jim quickly got to the point. There was a deal available with Wickmans and Hydromats. He had already looked at it. He wanted to know if I was interested in buying it. My head spun. Was this déjà vu? Was it 2012 or 2011? We had just broken up a 40-year relationship and now he was calling me to work on a deal?
“Well, uh, yes,” I stammered back. “Sure.” It was a pretty short conversation. This was not exactly how I expected my first day of solo ownership of the family business to go.
Multi-spindle screw machine plant closed in company consolidiation. Many machines with .001 end toolslide to stem readings! 1" to 4" capacity. 6- and 8-spindles. Well maintained, nicely tooled, priced to sell quickly!
The dilemma of the lonely machine tool dealer is the common denominator of most businesses and occupations. The clients want to buy something tailored to their needs. The seller wants to sell them what they have, at a premium price. The tug of war today is over the cost of the tailoring.
We know that many manufacturers in the turned-parts community have been devastated by Hurricane Sandy. Graff-Pinkert is offering its knowledge of America's supplier base to match up companies who are hobbled by the storm with shops who have extra capacity. Call us and ask for Lloyd if you are down from the disaster. He's a good matchmaker and the fee is gratis.
Lloyd Graff recently purchased Jim Graff’s interest in Graff Pinkert & Co., and he felt it was time for a redo of the company’s Website and logo. Today’s Machining World, our Web magazine about the precision machining industry, also changed its logo five years ago and redesigned its Website last year. Its important to stay current in business, and periodically refreshing marketing and advertising is a way to do it. I was in charge of coming up with the logo and it was a tough gig because we really had no idea what we wanted.