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Import Polishing Holds No Grit To Affilaited Steel & Tubes PolishingMediocrity is no longer an accepted practice among many end users of stainless steel tubing, especially when it comes to tube polishing. Sure, going off shore can save you a few bucks in the short run on the raw material, but how about over time? Sacrificing quality with your customers or end users can hurt your bottom line and with today's economic uncertainty, none of us can afford to feel the pain. If you've been in the metal industry for some time like me, you already know that the quality of import steel is very different than that of domestic stainless steel. And what's more, the polishing...well we'll just say, it lacks the quality one would expect, but we have gotten use to it since the "price" was right...cheap. I recently had a customer provided me with what his importer called a 180 grit polished finish. The quality was more along the lines of a mill finish (no polish at all - see the image below). He seemed a bit frustrated, not originally over the quality of the polish but that his product was suffering sales and a large part was due to his decision to save a few dollars by "going" cheap on the polishing from his offshore supplier. Now, if you have any insight as to what 180 grit is or looks like you'll quickly see that the import looks much duller and less polished. If you're not sure, then you will want to see the example on the left. The 180 grit finish should be "gritty", yet have a polished look. In order to salvage this customers product and help him boost his sales, we where able to provide him with a true 180 grit finsih to his stainless steel tubing. In the end, the customer not only learned a valuable lesson; going cheap in the short run does not mean greater profits down the road, but that import polishing does not match what we can accomplish domestically.
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Moving Excess Mill Finished Stainless Steel Tubing Inventory While the price of nickel is dropping, this is resulting in a rapid decrease in stainless steel prices. Some stainless steel distributors may find themselves a little heavy on inventory when it comes to mill finished stainless steel tubing. After all, you requisition your offshore container purchases and in the midst of it’s journey across the Pacific, you find the price has dropped, leaving you no choice but to either sit on the material in hopes of a price increase in the future or selling it at a lesser price than what you purchased it for. But for now, you find yourself with an excess of mill finished material collecting dust in your warehouse. However, there is a solution that can help you move your inventory a little faster and help save you a little money in the meantime. It actually might make you a few extra bucks in the process. Consider taking your mill finished tubing and having it polished to a P&B or 180 grit finish. Traditionally, polished stainless steel tubing moves better than a mill finish product. Thereby having your mill finished tubes polished, you can probably unload some of that excess inventory. And don’t worry, if you already have stainless that’s a P&B finish and it’s sitting collecting dust as well, consider a 180 grit finish. You’ll not only find that the polished tubes moves faster, but you can offer your customers a one stop solution to their metal buying needs by saving them time and few extra man hours (which translates into dollars) when it comes to creating a new p.o. and hassle of locating a metal polisher. What’s more, you can make a few extra dollars yourself by marking-up the product as you increase the value of the stainless steel tube. This is what we like to call a win-win solution at Affiliated Steel & Tube; everyone ends up a winner! For information on stainless steel tube polishing, please visit www.affiliatedsteel.com. |
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