In my report on the recent winter PVF Roundtable meeting in Houston, Supply House Times columnist and ASA Industry Analyst Morrie Beschloss used the signature sign-on line from World War II-era radio commentator Gabriel Heatter to describe the outlook for the industrial PVF industry.
In this high-tech, hustle-and-bustle day and age, a phone call to businesses in many walks of life likely will include dealing with some form of nonhuman interaction.
There appears to be a prevailing preference among wholesale supply houses to favor the generating of additional sales, yet unnecessarily sacrifice a conservative approach to credit and the education of the credit and sales staff. An effort to implement conservative credit measures and educate the staff will be worthwhile in reducing uncollectible receivables.
One of my three beagle dogs recently lost a portion of her ear after an attack by a neighborhood dog. Fenway (my wife’s a huge Red Sox fan; we had another beagle named Boston) had to undergo emergency surgery to save/reconstruct the ear.
Bill Bootz, owner of Houston-based industrial PVF master distributor Team Alloys, didn’t know much about the business when he first started as an outside salesman back in the 1980s. “My first sales call to SMS of Texas was on Sept. 18, 1989,” he recalls in vivid detail. “They told me my price was higher than domestic. I said, ‘What’s domestic?’ I knew absolutely nothing about the business — completely zero.”
