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International
Mold Steel adds value
by providing solutions to customers |
 BY
LAUREN DUENSING
August 2008
Reprinted with permission from
Modern Metals® and Trend
Publishing.
PRICE.
It’s the main buzzword in the service center industry— at least
among companies that sell commodity products.
The employees at Florence, Ky.-based
International Mold Steel, however, aren’t concerned about price.
They’re concerned about solutions. “Everything we sell is more
expensive than the products we compete with,” says Thomas Schade,
executive vice president. “We don’t sell generic commodity
products like D2 cold work die steel.”
The company’s history goes all the
way back to 1975, when Daido Steel Ltd., Nagoya, Japan,
introduced NAK55 to the Japanese and southeast Asian plastics
mold market. “It quickly became the most popular pre-hardened
mold steel in those markets,” says Schade. “NAK was introduced
to the North American market by MetalSource [an Alco Standard
Co.] in 1982. In 1986, Alco sold MetalSource to U.S. Steel
Supply Co.”
 In
1991, the company was bankrupt, Schade notes. “At the time of
the bankruptcy, I was manager of marketing, specialty steels.
Daido asked how to keep the sales of NAK growing, and I sent a
business plan for IMS.”
International Mold Steel opened a
sales office in Houston in 1991 and moved to a 2,500-square-foot
facility in Erlanger, Ky., in 1993 after Okaya USA bought the
majority ownership. “We built our current 30,000-square-foot
facility and moved in June 1997,” Schade says. “Here we carry
all our own inventory and do all our own processing. The
original team consisted of four key MetalSource employees: Paul
Britton, who currently serves as national sales manager, mold
products; Russ Bowen, who spun off to his own business four
years ago, Molder’s World, which specializes in one of our
technical products, Porcerax; Ernie Beutel, who retired in 2003;
and myself.”
Starting out, International Mold
Steel focused its attention on the plastic and rubber mold
markets. “We carried only pre-heat treated grades in hardness
ranges of HRC 29 to 33 and 38 to 42,” says Schade. “We then
approached the cold work die steel market in 2001 with a single
grade of steel,DC53, that outperforms most, if not all, the
generic grades, such as A2,D2 andM2. This grade has succeeded
because it has allowed customers to reduce die fabrication time,
extend die life and simplify their lives by only having to buy
one grade of steel.” The company is also involved in the
aluminum die cast market with Toolox 44 for general applications
and “two grades from Daido [DH21 andDH31-S] that are used in
specialized applications requiring exceptional strength to avoid
cracking.”
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In-house knowledge
As the company grew, it discovered the most important part of
selling non-commodity mold and die steel is having the knowledge
to back up the product. “We sell on the service side and get
involved with the application,” says Britton. “We don’t just
take orders and sell steel—we sell mold and die solutions.”
“We’re a relatively small company in
personnel so it’s important that each person is technically up
to speed,” says Schade. “In the case of Paul, I’ll put him up
against almost any rubber mold engineer in the country. Nick
Tarkany [national sales manager, die products division] is the
chairman of the tool and die division of the Precision
Metalforming Association, and, again, when it comes to die
design, I’ll put him up against anyone in the country.” Another
member of the staff with a similar amount of expertise is Mike
Buckley, sales engineer. Schade notes, “He has years of
experience designing plastic injection molds, in addition to the
hot-runner business.”
The inside sales staff is equally
knowledgeable. “Most companies’ philosophy is that inside
salespeople wait for the phone to ring and take the order,”
Schade says. “Eighty percent of the technical questions that
come in never get past Colleen and her inside sales staff. They
answer them, and they answer them correctly.”
“We actually get involved with the
customer and get to know the customer and the application,” says
Colleen Corcoran, inside sales manager. “That helps us to move
the process along, but it also helps our outside sales, as well
as our managers, to be able to peg that as an important call.”
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INTERNATIONAL MOLD
STEEL’S INTERNATIONAL REACH MAKES ITS WEB SITE,
www.imsteel.com, an important resource for
customers. “We get inquiries from all over on a
regular basis,” says Thomas Schade, executive vice
president. “A lot of people lean on it as a
technical resource.”
The company’s Web site
also sells solutions by offering discussion forums
and a technical center, which provides answers to
commonly asked questions. Paul Britton, national
sales manager, mold products division, says the
discussion forums “get a lot of hits and are very
active. We try to update them on a weekly basis.
Most of the questions are answered, and they seem to
be well received.
“We don’t sell
commodities; we sell solutions,” he notes. “One of
our main solution drivers is the quality of our
steel. We try to teach people more about our steel.
It’s a learning experience for both our customers
and us, and that’s why we use the discussion forums
that way.”
Since their inception,
the forums have been an informal place for customers
to learn more about International Mold Steel’s
products. That’s still the case, but recently the
forums have received an upgrade, in addition to
better security. “These forums are relatively new,”
says Nick Tarkany, national sales manager, die
products division. “We’ve been using them off and
on, but we haven’t gone out full-fledged to
advertise them. We’re at the point now where we’re
ready to do that. Your questions are welcome, the
security is great and we’re moving forward.” |
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The staff’s knowledge is so
comprehensive that many customers consider the employees to be
an extension of their own company. “Paul coined the phrase, ‘We
don’t sell steel; we sell mold and die solutions,’” says Schade.
“Our sales effort starts with engineers, and one of our first
questions is: What are your problems? We then set out to solve
those problems. Of course, our goal is to solve the problem with
the proper application of one of our steels. But more than once,
if there’s another company’s grade that’s more appropriate for a
particular situation, we’ll recommend the grade and the source
to the customer. In addition to the grade, we also will work on
hardness selection, machining and heat treating.”
“When a customer feels that you’re
an extension of their engineering staff, that’s high praise,”
says Britton. “There are times when a customer will call us
looking for a certain grade of steel, and we’ll send them in a
whole different direction.”
Britton says even if International
Mold Steel recommends a grade it doesn’t sell, the customer
“gets the information from us, they view us as the resource and
nine times out of 10, we’re the first phone call.”
 An international reach
And those phone calls are coming in from around the world. The
company’s close partnership with Daido gives it a leg up on the
international market, but as Schade notes, “We can walk into any
international company and solve any problem with our steel.
We’re close with our European and Japanese distributors, and
we’ll share information with those international companies . . .
If somebody calls us and has a problem in China, we can have
technical service in the language the people understand in a
matter of hours.”
Corcoran says the company also
receives “quite a few leads from Europe and India. We either
tackle that ourselves and ship from this location or we have a
European distributor that we work closely with. Between those
two, we’re extending ourselves in every direction.”
Another aspect of the company’s
international network comes through its partnerships. “Daido is
an equity partner in the company,” says Schade. “Our
relationship with SSAB [Oxelosund, Sweden] is rapidly becoming
closer than vendor-customer.” In addition, he says International
Mold Steel considers HE&M Saw a partner, as the company
exclusively uses its saws.
“As the volume forDC53 grew out of
our capacity, we partnered with Alro Steel [Jackson, Mich.] as
our first, and largest, distributor,” he says. “The customers in
the territories they serve benefit from their excellent service.
We supply Alro with technical support. We’ve entered into
similar relationships with Lindquist Steels in New England,
Southern Tool Steel in the South, Hudson Metals in the West and
Titus Steel in Canada.”
Cost savings
International Mold Steel is always looking for the next
solution, whether through an engineering discovery or a new
grade. “We select grades that Daido produces that become popular
in the Japanese market because they dramatically outperform the
generic grades,” says Schade. “We test the machining, grinding
and polishing extensively, both in-house and with selected
customers. When we’re comfortable that the new grade, even
though the initial acquisition cost of the metal is somewhat
higher than the grades we compete with, will, through reduced
machining and grinding time and extended tool life, reduce our
customers’ tooling cost per part, we introduce the grade. The
testing also allows us to be technically proficient and fully
capable of showing our customers how to benefit from the unique
features of the steel.”
Customers benefit from a one-source
supplier. “Our customers don’t have to worry about inconsistent
quality from multiple supplying mills,” Schade notes. “We
recently added our first two grades not produced by Daido. They
are Toolox 33 and Toolox 44, produced by SSAB. We put these
grades through the same extensive testing. When they surpassed
our expectations, we decided to carry them. Due to the unique
manner these steels are manufactured, only SSAB can make them.
Again, we have the advantage of single source reliability and
quality.”
The quality of International Mold
Steel’s products can result in enormous cost savings for
customers. “We had a rubber mold customer that was using a grade
of stainless for his mold cavity plates,” says Britton. “They
were cracking and breaking just about every week, and they were
costing him about $3,000 per week to replace. We switched him to
a DC53, and he actually paid 10 percent more than the 440
stainless.” Britton says that because the cavities stopped
breaking, the customer was able to use less rubber and hold
tighter tolerances, and his scrap went down. “Spending 10
percent more on steel for that one part saved him $1.2 million
in a year in tooling and scrapped parts.”
 That’s
not the only customer who’s saved a bundle. Another replaced a
blade that was being imported from China with a DC53 blade with
a coating on it. “They were paying $186 for this blade, and we
charged them$415,” Britton notes. “They said, ‘Accounting is
never going to go for this.’ Their production cycle on the
Chinese blade was lasting two hours, and then the blade would be
dull. Our blade lasted six days. It ended up saving them about
$53,000 per year in blades.”
What customers learn from working
with International Mold Steel is that the up-front cost of
material doesn’t need to be the deciding factor. “The key is
teaching customers not just to look at variables A, B and C but
to look at A through Z,” says Tarkany. “Look at the starting
cost and the bottom line. Our steel will save money on the
bottom line.”
And that bottom line is what matters
to customers. “I had a customer tell me yesterday, ‘That’s the
way we’ve done it for 80 years, and we need to change,’” says
Tarkany. And that customer has come to the right place looking
for a solution.
“We’ve found the people that we end
up doing the most business with are the forward- thinking
people, who are always looking for new and better ways to do
things,” says Schade. He notes that even in this tough economy,
“they’re all busy. The people who are beating their heads
against the wall saying, ‘We do it this way, we’ve always done
it this way, and we’re not about to change because we’re
comfortable’ are the people that are struggling.”
International Mold Steel Inc.,
Florence, Ky.,
Tel: 800/625-6653,
Fax: 859/342-6006,
Eeb: www.imsteel.com
E-mail: salesdesk@imsteel.com
About International Mold Steel,
Inc.
International Mold Steel, is a leading supplier of tool steels
uniquely designed to produce higher quality products (with greater
detail and definition) at less cost. This company has pioneered
steel solutions for a host of Fortune 500 companies in a variety of
industries. They provide: Matrix High Speed Steels and DC-53 for die
steel markets and supply these mold steels for plastics and rubber
markets: Porcerax II, NAK 55, NAK 80, DH2F, Premium H-13, PX5.
International Mold Steel Inc., is a global company headquartered in
the U.S.A., with sales/service throughout North America, Europe and
South America.
Thomas Schade is Executive Vice
President for International Mold Steel. He has held various
positions in the production and distribution of specialty steels
since 1966.
Contact
information
International Mold Steel Inc.
6796 Powerline Drive
Florence, KY 41042
Toll Free: 800-625-6653
Email: info@imsteel.com
Web: www.imsteel.com |
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International Mold Steel, Inc.