To help offset work lost to Chinese competition, Marlow Machining, a Germantown-based screw machine shop, is carving new business in the display and point-of-purchase (POP) display market.
Historically, the company has primarily sold machined components to customers who make power tools, coin-counting machines used in banks, and industrial cooling and ventilation products. However, one of the company’s large power tool clients moved its work to China about one year ago, and Marlow Machining needed to find ways to make up the lost work.
When its power tool customer moved work to China, Marlow Machining laid off about five workers. One year ago, it ran three shifts, seven days a week, with about 35 workers. Today, the company runs two shifts Monday through Friday, with about 30 employees.
“We were working for a couple of small marketing companies who made display and POP purchase displays,” said Steve Marlow, vice president of the company. “They were really nice people to work with and I thought ‘Let’s try this, take these components and see if we can’t expand this line.'”
Marlow Machining is now making several different wall mounts, spacers, caps and screws for the display industry. It is also working to create several new products for the market, Marlow said.
“We need other products and we need to get our name out there,” he said. “We can make 100,000 parts a day.”
While the results are early, it appears that display and POP sales could become a growth area for the company.
“It’s spotty – a little up and down because we just started in it,” he said. “April was fantastic – 50 percent (of our business). In January it was 30 percent. But in February it was only 10 percent and it was only 20 percent in March.”
The growth in display and POP work gives Marlow hope that his company might be able to bring back some of the laid off workers in the near future.
The company’s experiences in the POP and display business have been radically different than what it encountered in the power tool business, another reason why Marlow wants to find more work there.
“Every year they would put you in a room and ask you ‘OK, what are you going to do for us?'” Marlow said. “You can’t cheat the display guys, but they don’t demand that. They demand a good product at a good price, and that’s it.
“It’s not all about the money and profit margins. Someone last week called me to talk about how much he liked the products. No one in the job shop market has ever done that. I actually like my job again.”
For more about Marlow Machining, visit www.MarlowMachining.com.
