The Mheda Journal

In my last post, I mentioned how mergers and acquisitions are impacting the material handling industry. Today I talked to another distributor who has been involved a large industry merger, Bob Schermer, COO of Equipment Depot (Houston, TX). As part of Pon North America, Equipment Depot is in the process of merging five companies (the former Portman Equipment, Levee Lift, Forklifts Inc., Material Handling Services and Equipment Depot Texas) under one corporate brand. I asked Bob how the company is combining the cultures. His response, I thought, was a good one:

“It is an evolutionary process that cannot be forced.  Best practices are shared, common operating systems and shared services are put into place.  We realize that their success has been built around their structure and culture.  To force immediate change can alienate the people and destroy the earning power of the acquired company. 

“We purchase a company to strengthen our position in the market, increasing our size which gives us the economy of scale to do bigger and better things in the area of employee opportunities, marketing, buying power and one voice to the OEM.  All of these are things the ‘acquired’ employee wants to hear and will get excited about.

“We walk into these situations with the feeling that the acquired company likely has some great practices that we can implement into our company.  This is why we focus on well-run, profitable businesses; they are typically good in many facets of their business.  We want to learn from them and put into place, what they do better than us.”

I think that’s a good point. Some people may think that the company who does the acquiring just comes in and cleans house, sets up shop and imposes their will on the acquired shop with a you-will-do-things-this-way-and-you-will-like-it attitude. (Many companies, in fact, do this; that’s why many acquisitions fail.) That’s why Bob’s answer was refreshing. It sounds like the early stages of their merger process are rooted in good intentions. With proper communication and continued open attitudes, long-term success should follow.

Thanks for your time, Bob, and good luck with the merger going forward. The Fourth Quarter issue of The MHEDA Journal will analyze the merger and acquisition process from the perspective of a couple of different members. In the meantime, if anyone has any comments, I’d love t hear them!

As is often the case these days, material handling played a role in two events I attended this weekend. Before I started writing for The MHEDA Journal, items like these would not have made an impression on me…now I notice them ever more frequently. I’m sure MHEDA’s Industry Advocacy Committee would be happy to hear that!

Friday night, I went to see the new animated movie Despicable Me. The main character, Mr. Gru, is intent on becoming the greatest villain of all time by stealing the moon. More than once in the film while devloping his plans, Gru ascends a scissor lift. I’m sure most people wouldn’t give it a second thought, but material handlers with children may want to give Despicable Me a view. It was a funny movie, and the aforementioned scissor lift scenes could be a nice teaching moment!

Then on Sunday, a local brewery held an anniversary party outside its facility. There was a good crowd on hand, and my group of friends carved out a spot near the brewery away from much of the crowd to chat in relative quiet. Every so often, a gentleman on a well-used Nissan forklift would go through the loading dock door and come back with two or three kegs of brew. Again, I doubt most people noticed how the material handling industry kept the party come off smoothly, but as we all know, material handling played a huge role!

A quick blog today, and it’s dedicated to everyone who thinks that social media, and Twitter in particular, are strictly a young person’s game. Earlier this week, Ivy Bean, considered to be the world’s oldest “Tweeter,” died in England at the age of 104. It’s safe to assume she didn’t come of age as a technological savant, so it goes to show that anybody can learn it. Granted, the benefits for business are still being debated, but the “I’m too old” excuse surely doesn’t work anymore thanks to Ms. Bean.

There are some reports that this account was a hoax perpetuated by the Geek Squad, but even if that’s true, the fastest-growing Facebook demographic these days is women over 55, thanks to tech-savvy ladies like Ms. Bean.

There are a lot of MHEDA Members on Twitter, but a lot more who aren’t. Don’t get left behind because you don’t understand Twitter!

By now, you’ve probably received your print copy of the Third Quarter issue of The MHEDA Journal. If so, I’m hoping that you also noticed a new feature that we implemented in this issue. I always feel a little uncomfortable tooting our own horn, but I’ll admit that it’s pretty cool.

Bar codes are pretty ubiquitous these days, and the latest trend in bar codes is the QR code, or “quick response” code. These can be placed on papers, posters and the like and anyone with an up-to-date mobile phone can read them. Throughout the 3rd quarter issue, you’ll notice a handful of ads with a QR code. If you have a smartphone, you can use a phone app to scan the code and be directed to the advertiser’s website. It’s the first way I know of to totally integrate print ads with online. See page 12 of the magazine  for instructions to make the QR codes work with each type of smartphone. Some tips are below.

• BlackBerry Messenger: You must have version 5.0 or later. If it’s not already installed, you can download it from the BlackBerry App World.
• Android: There are multiple apps that scan barcodes. Go to the Market and search for “QR code reader” to find one.
• iPhone: Again, several apps work. Go to the App Store and search for “QR code reader” to find one.

Happy scanning!

It’s a Summer Friday, so I thought I’d take a cue from my colleague Dan Vest and post something a little more fun today. Pallets have been in the news for many of the wrong reasons in recent weeks, but I ran across something that may help the wooden shipping pallet restore its image a bit.

Apparently, it’s common practice in Austin, Texas, to build houses out of shipping pallets. (See the photo, below left.) According to the website apartmentthearpy.com (that’s where the photos are from, too), these shipping-pallet houses were created by the architecture firm I-Beam, and “designed as temporary homes for refugees.” Advantages are they can be easily assembled and taken down and can be built with a wide array of features (see flower box in the second photo). I’m guessing price is also a huge advantage. Disadvantages include, well, living in a house made of shipping pallets. As the site says, “While a bit drafty in this incarnation, the houses can be made into more permanent dwellings using local materials like mud and adobe.” Good to know. 

Have a great weekend, everyone. Don’t forget to visit the new online home of The MHEDA Journal Online!

In preparing some headlines for wikiMHEDA today, I came across an interesting story from the Chinese website peopledaily.com. It is the online home of People’s Daily Online, whose tagline says, “Launched in January 1998, People’s Daily Online is a website built by People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China.” I say that to pre-emptively say that I’m not sure how reliable the information I’m about to share is. China is not known for its open journalism. 

That being said, the facts stated in the story are interesting and may have some impact on industrial truck distributors and suppliers in the United States. The lead of the article states, “Forklift sales in China more than doubled in the first half of the year and are poised for further growth in the full year, industry experts said on Monday [July 19]. China will continue to lead the global market and the gap with US, the next biggest player, is set to widen further, they said.

“During the first six months of the year, domestic forklift sales rose across the 90,000-unit barrier, up nearly 113 percent from a year earlier.”

Two things strike me about this. One, that’s a hefty boost in sales. The article says it’s “forklift sales in China,” but it’s not clear if that figure accounts for only Chinese-made forklifts or imports into China as well.  Either way, that’s a pretty quick recovery and upward trend.

Second, it says the gap between China and the U.S. is expected to widen. While that doesn’t come as much of a surprise at this point, I’m hoping that is not the case. Here’s wishing that our domestic industry can rebound quickly enough to remain competitive, at home and abroad. Any thoughts on this? I’d love to hear from someone with more knowledge on the situation.

This is the second case of material handling in China I’ve written about in the last week. Check out the newly improved website for The MHEDA Journal and an article discussing the antidumping duty saga regarding wire decks.

Now that the big website launch is past, it’s time to turn my attention to the Fourth Quarter issue of the magazine. In years past, the Fall issue has been a salute to sales. This year is no different, as we once again will be publishing a host of Sales Success Stories. These short pieces highlight a unique sale made by a distributor to an end-user with support from the manufacturer. These vignettes are written from the distributor’s perspective, walking through the intricacies of the sale—where the lead came from, how the product solution meets the customer need, dimensions, customer reaction and more. Read some examples from 2009, and if you think you have something that you’d like to share, I’d love to hear about it.

The distributor involved must be a MHEDA member, and the sale must have taken place within the last nine months (installed since October 2009). Otherwise, those are the only rules! I know our membership is involved in all kinds of unique things, so let me know and get your name in the magazine!

After talking about it for three months, the Summer 2010 issue of The MHEDA Journal is finally here. Learn secrets from distributors who earned Top Dealer status from their manufacturers. Two distributors speak out about company safety and how to develop a written policy for your employees. A profile of storage & handling dealer Bode Equipment Company, with questions asked to President Steve Fawcett from 2007 MHEDA President John Cosgrove is a real page-turner. Meet a young service manager in Chad Hines from Chula Vista, CA-based Quality Lift Trucks. A Marco Island Convention photo gallery is included, along with findings from this year’s Distributor Performance Benchmarking Report. All this and much more make this a full issue, so don’t miss it.

And while I’m here, let me first apologize for the lack of blog posts lately. It’s been a busy month of July putting the finishing touches on the new website that accompanies this issue of the magazine. Click the link above or go to www.themhedajournal.org after July 15 to see the new, revamped magazine home page. It will be updated more frequently, so come back often to read new articles and find out news about fellow MHEDA members. Reader interaction is encouraged…so leave a comment on an article and let us know what you think.

The Third Quarter issue of The MHEDA Journal is now at the printer! It’s been a long process of getting this issue together, but it’s also been a lot of fun. As in years past, we used our Summer issue to salute those MHEDA Members who received recognition from manufacturers. This year, though, we took it a step further by actuallyinterviewing 12 of those dealers and finding out how they were able to achieve such lofty goals despite what we all know was an economic stinker of a year in 2009. While all admit that the revenue wasn’t as high as years past, they still were able to make some sales and maintain profitability. I think many distibutors will find their strategies compelling.

Also in this issue are two safety articles. We haven’t covered safety from these angles before, and I really enjoyed learning a little more about the inner workings of a distributorship when it comes to making safety policy. Thanks to Wisconsin Lift Truck and Associated Material Handling for their help.

This is just a sampling of what’s in store in this issue. There are a few surprises, too, that I don’t want to spoil here just yet, but I’ll be looking forward to hear your reactions once you see the magazine on July 15! (For a sneak peek of one of the surprises, see today’s issue of MHEDA Edge.)

A while back, I posted an update on the state of the pending lawsuit regarding anti-dumping duties on imported Chinese wire decking.

More than a year ago, a group of wire decking manufacturers that included AWP Industries, ITC Manufacturing, J&L  Wire Cloth, Nashville Wire Products and Wireway Husky Corporation filed a petition with the International Trade Commission to institute antidumping duties because Chinese imports were priced so low that it was difficult for these U.S. manufacturers to compete. Last July 20, the Trade Commission made a preliminary ruling that there was “a reasonable indication of material injury to the U.S. industry producing wire decking caused by unfairly traded imports from China.”

Late last week, however, the Trade Commission did an about-face on this ruling, denying the Commerce Department the opportunity to enforce any duties at all. In its ruling on July 1, 2010, the ITC said manufacturers were “neither materially injured nor threatened with material injury” because of the imports. I don’t know enough about this to know what caused the difference in opinion and why this ruling was reversed, but I do know that it is a setback for the five suppliers. If anyone out there has more info, please let me know about it. What happens next?