Roundtable Conference: Waterjet TechnologyDimensional Stone - September, 1996Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 |
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It's such an exciting product when done well that it helps sell itself, not only with more work with that original client, but also with other clients who will see it. The other piece we submitted was a simple border done for Hatteras Yachts through forms & surfaces, one of our exclusive distributors. Along with tom, we also believe in the distribution process and view ourselves as manufacturers. We're currently in about 20 showrooms with a catalog grouping of about 40 items. By having a full array of products, waterjet supported, we're able to scale and change materials readily-and that's exactly what happened for Hatteras. They took a standard border pattern of ours and modified the materials, resealed it, took a 6" x 6" comer accent, blew it up to make a medallion. Waterjet just allows the distributor sales people to be highly flexible and highly confident that we can deliver the custom product not only with great accuracy but also on time. I think in the old days that's something that would always be met with trepidation by a distributor. There's a lot of concern about timelines and accuracy when dealing with the barriers of distance and so forth. So those two projects well represent the potential of the waterjet cutting trade, which is, in sum, a tremendous amount of customization for the client-especially the commercial client-and also a great degree of flexibility. Ward: There are really two main functions of our business. One is waterjet consulting and the other is water jet connection. On the consulting side, it's very interesting to see where our time is split. The industrial side of waterjet cutting is still very large, and we are consulting with companies in Las Vegas, San Diego, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Rochester, Miami and Tucson-and that's all on stone cutting. |
It's interesting to see the growing amount of people coming on-line, and we do our best to impart the standards that are being held by the industry and have been actually kept by the pioneers. When we first got into waterjet cutting as a business, one of the biggest barriers we had was that you'd call somebody to try and promote and educate people and they would say, "well we tried that and it didn't work." I’m sure that was probably one of Harri’s biggest factors when trying to actually pick up work from somebody else. I think, that to some degree, that is a thing of the past. With the standards that are being put up. When you take a look at Jonathan’s company and the kind of work intarsia is doing and how they have focused on presenting their products-and the same goes for everybody involved-those standards are what are being set and expected as normal. So we are really involved in helping businesses grow, keeping businesses growing and getting educated in their field. On the waterjet connection side, a large portion of that is aimed at advertising the industry as a whole. We have put substantial amounts of money into advertising, which is only going to increase the awareness and promote the industry, which in turn will generate work for everyone involved. I think that with different people advertising, water jet connection is going to be consistently advertised in a big way. It's just going to all add to the growth of the industry. A couple of people speaking have used the word "explosive," and I think that's what we're going to see, brought about by a contribution of everything put together and everybody working and really aiming toward the same goal, and that goal is to increase the standards and have more work out there, which is what's happening. DS |
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