The Mheda Journal

A few weeks ago, I posted a blog about the proliferation of major earthquakes and how the damage they cause is related to building codes. A recent Op-Ed piece in The New York Times illustrated a similar point. The piece of the article that jumped out to me most:

“…based on the kind of damage that buildings suffered in Chile, tall structures in the earthquake zones of the United States appear to be at much higher risk than we thought. This lesson should be of obvious concern to San Francisco and Los Angeles. But it is actually the Pacific Northwest that is most vulnerable to a mega-quake like Chile’s.”

A reader of mine commented on the original post that Chile has exacting building codes, some of the most stringent in the world. Some of those buildings still were decimated. Such a quake in the U.S. may or may not be catastrophic depending on where it hits.

It’s an important issue, and one that material handling distributors, particularly those who do storage and handling systems and large rack installations. According to at least  this author, we should expect those codes to change.

The article was in the Times on Sunday, March 28, and was written by Peter Yanev, a structural engineer. It’s an interesting read. I recommend it. 

One of my colleagues was out today, so I took over the duty of finding news headlines to post on wikiMHEDA (you do know what I’m talking about, right? Every day, we post three industry-related headlines on our wikiMHEDA site. Read today’s!) In searching through the dozens of news stories that feature words like “material handling,” I came across news about a member.

I elected not to post it on the headlines because it’s a few days old at this point, but I did find that it warranted a mention. Cat Lift Trucks is the official lift truck provider for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. As part of that, Cat hosted an event for the Big Brothers and Big Sisters. And a good time was had by all. Congrats to Cat for backing such a worthy cause.

My question: Can someone tell me what that mascot is supposed to be? Any help out there?

(The photo is from the blog at http://www.ultimatealdine.com.)

One of my loyal blog readers (thanks, Joshua) sent me a message yesterday asking an interesting question and I need everyone’s help out there to answer it. He asked, “With all this buzz on social media, the question that arises is how much time should one spend on social media? When is it too much? Can one lose focus in the mix of everything?”

OK, so I guess that’s technically more than one question, but I thought it was an interesting question. There’s been a lot of hype over the last couple of years about Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube and MySpace and Plaxo and Foursquare and the list goes on and on. With the explosion of such sites, for both personal and business purposes, it’s hard to know how much time to spend with them and how to spend that time.

Is it overkill to get involved too many, or is better to use as many services as possible? How can you avoid getting buried in an avalanche of social media updates? How can you make sure your message gets through the clutter?

I’m no expert, so let me open it up to the field out there. What advice to have for me and Josh?

Over the weekend, we passed the official first day of Spring (March 20). In addition to the long-awaited warmer weather and longer days, that also means it’s time for the Spring issue of The MHEDA Journal. It won’t be distributed until April 15, but we’re wrapping up production in the next few days and it’s fresh in my head.

This issue takes MHEDA’s Convention theme, “The Rules Have Changed” and runs with it. Eight distributors give in-depth descriptions of things they’re doing at their companies to illustrate how the Rules Have Changed and how they’re responding.

Bill Rowan of Sunbelt Industrial Trucks (Dallas, TX) talks about the tighter credit policies he’s implemented. Ken MacDonald of M&G Materials Handling (East Providence, RI) discusses the lean initiatives he’s installed at his company. Audie Burgan of J.M. Equipment (Manteca, CA) explains why they’ve decided to move into a larger facility in this economic environment. 

These are only a few of the headlines…keep reading the blog up through publication day to find out more ways that MHEDA Distributors are changing the standard rules of business.

Today is the first official day of March Madness, the annual three-week period when the NCAA crowns its men’s basketball national champion. It’s one of my favorite times of year, as office pools (if those were legal) come into vogue for the next few days and people talk about their brackets.

One of the things that gets the casual fan, not just the rabid college basketball follower, involved in March Madness is the expectation of “upsets” by the smaller, lesser-known schools and embracing the upheaval caused when these upsets occur.

For instance, already today, in the first four games of this year’s tournament, the underdog won two games, and the other two games went to overtime before the favored team won. You never know what to expect.

In some ways, “You never know what to expect” has been the prevailing attitude in the business world for the last 18-24 months. Since the recession started back in 2008, what used to be commonplace is no longer, and vice versa. Customers that have been counted on for years may now be closing their doors. “Madness” has not only been a figurative turn of phrase for some people during the last several months, unfortunately.

The good news is, the upheaval in March Madness is usually short-lived. Eventually, many of the teams that are expected to be around at the end will survive to make it there. Let’s hope the same holds true for those in the material handling industry in particular, and the business world in general. Let’s hope those who struggled to survive the early rounds of this recession are still around at the end.

During the course of working on this issue (April) of The MHEDA Journal, a common element that kept coming up was the importance of customer service. To be sure, customer service has always been a hot topic of conversation among MHEDA members. They know the value of the service they provide and its importance in separating themselves from the competition.

As MHEDA focuses on how “The Rules Have Changed” during their 2010 Convention, it’s interesting that quality customer service is one thing that isn’t changing. Time and again, MHEDA members are telling me that “we’ll still provide the same service” or “servicing the customer is more important than ever” or “they’re not buying, so it’s important to focus on servicing what they’ve already got.” Comments like these have been common during our 2010 Industry Forecast and since.

As one distributor says in repsonse to the question of whether the explosion of Internet selling is bad for distributor relationships, “We are not burying our heads in the sand and are using the internet more and more frequently to market our goods and services. contracts will be tested, but customer service disappears with low margins and value can still be sold.”

Today I received a newsletter from a consultant who bemoaned the state of customer service from his newspaper delivery person: “I haven’t seen my paper on my porch in years.” Fixing that is a small step in fixing the newspaper industry’s struggles in general, he argues.

It’s a lesser example, but I keep seeing it all around. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Is it just me, or has their been an inordinate number of earthquakes lately? A 7.0 in Haiti on January 12, the 8.8 monster in Chile on February 27, the what-would-normally-be-considered large 5.5 in Turkey on March 8, and then another 7.0 rocker in Chile today. The devastation and despair these have caused have been well-documented and I don’t want to go into detail about that here. (Though I would be remiss not to once again mention the American Logistics Aid Network, of which MHEDA is a major contributor. Click the link above to learn more.)

I’m thinking about it more in terms of building codes. A colleague of mine mentioned earlier today how it’s times like these when those annoying building codes that sometimes seem so frivolous don’t seem so bad after all. Hearing the stories of crumbling, cheaply made buildings in some of these places makes you glad, at least for the short-term, that we have codes and requirements in place.

Now, I don’t know what sort of building codes, if any, are in place in Chile, Haiti and Turkey. Maybe the damage would have been the same — granted, an 8.8-magnitude quake would likely do pretty severe damage even to a strong, secure building. But it does make one realize that those codes are there for a reason. Up here in usually-earthquake-free upstate New York , here’s hoping that I don’t need to ever find out.

For more info on building codes in material handling, read this archived article in The MHEDA Journal Online.

photo courtesy of Plug Power Inc.

I had the pleasure to interview Warren Brower, product marketing manager at Plug Power Inc., a Latham, NY-based manufacturer of hydrogen fuel cells, last week. Mr. Brower was fomerly the marketing manager at Raymond Corporation and joined Plug Power in 2007.

I knew a little bit about hydrogen fuel cells before speaking to Mr. Brower, but now I feel like almost as much of an expert as he is. (I’m not, though…not even close.)

One of the things I found interestng was the go-to-market strategy for his company:

Our intention is not to go out and replace every lead-acid battery out there. We understand that a hydrogen fuel cell is not for every application. The key with fuel cells is to focus on specific applications and specific opportunities in high-volume and high-throughput applications.

Such a strategy is important for distributors to know. Do you have customers out there who are eyeing this technology? Do they fit the “high-throughput” description. If not, they may not be a good candidate for hydrogen fuel cell forklifts.

Another interesting excerpt from our interview:

You’re going to see other applications start to surface where fuel cells make sense instead of using diesel generators, backup lead-acid batteries or whatever. So I think in the next couple to three years, you’re going to see a major push within this field.

So, apparently we’re just scratching the surface with this technology. Although it’s been “a few years out” for more than a few years now, it’s something to continue to keep an eye on.

Anybody out there doing anything interesting with fuel cells? I’d love to hear about it!

In my last post, I told you about a MHEDA Convention speaker who will be talking about promoting your dealership. Well, that’s only one of many topcis that will be covered at this year’s Convention, taking place May 1-5 in Marco Island, Florida. It’s still two months away, but I wanted to let folks know some more about it to allow ample time to make travel arrangements if you desire.

One of this year’s keynote speakers will be Peter McLaughlin, whose speech is title “Break Through The Monkey Traps.” If you’re like me, that title confused you at first. But let me clear things up for you. In the upcoming issue of The MHEDA Journal, McLaughlin writes in an article of the same title about the value of thinking creatively to break through the “monkey traps” that businesses get caught in.

Statements like, “There’s not much we can do until the economy turns around,” and “That’s not the way we do things around here,” are monkey-trap phrases. Often, we’re in a rut and don’t know it. A rut is just like a monkey trap—nothing is keeping us stuck except our inability to recognize that we’ve trapped ourselves. To change, we must start with ourselves. As Pogo once said in the famous comic, “We have met the enemy, and they are us.”

Still confused? Here’s some context:

In Southeast Asia, the natives have concocted a rather ingenious way of capturing monkeys, according to author Robert Persig in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. “A monkey trap consists of a hollowed-out coconut chained to a stake. The coconut has some rice inside, which can be grabbed through a small hole. The hole is big enough so the monkey’s hand can go in, but too small for his fist with rice to come out. The monkey reaches in and is suddenly trapped—by nothing more than his own rigidity. He can’t revalue the rice. He cannot see that freedom without rice is more valuable than capture with it.”

In other words, in business, as with the monkeys, it pays to see things beyond the short-term. The reward does not always outweigh the risk.  

It’s a bit abstract, but I, for one, am looking forward to hearing more from Mr. McLaughlin at the MHEDA Convention. Hope you’re there to join me.

In the next issue of The MHEDA Journal, we feature several articles from speakers at the upcoming MHEDA Convention (May 1-5 in Marco Island, FL). One such article is from MHEDA Member Barry Lauterwasser, president of Symbion Marketing, who has some interesting ideas about promoting of small distribution companies. Lauterwasser previously worked at a forklift distributor before venturing out on his own, and has some pretty interesting ideas about how to market a small business.

He says:

Often times, promotion has been viewed as an expense—some would say, “I spent $5,000 on a direct mail program and nothing happened.” That’s the equivalent of spending a day in the gym and assuming exercise is a waste of time because you didn’t lose weight. Products in our business are bought, not sold. You have to be there when a product or service is needed, or at least close to being needed. No one buys a lift truck simply because you have it on sale. There has to be a need for one, and if you’re continually pounding your messages home, you are much more likely to get that call, that opportunity, once the need arises (the payback).

To me, this was interesting. “Nobody buys a lift truck just because you have it on sale.” I’m guessing the same is true with any similar large capital investment, i.e. a conveyor system or large racking installation. That’s why marketing is more important than ever. You want to be on the tip of the buyer’s tongue as the go-to provider of a certain product.

Over the years, I’ve talked to many distributors who struggle with this issue. What is the right marketing mix? How much should they spend? What media is the best? What’s a good ROI? I certainly don’t know the answers to these questions, but you can find out at the MHEDA Convention.