I have been studying the process of buying and selling machining businesses for the past year. Companies have approached me to advise them on what to ask for their companies and others have called to find viable options to purchase. Our machinery business, Graff-Pinkert, has helped facilitate many transactions through the years and with baby boomers looking to cash out and other firms anxious to add sales and expertise, the demand for advice is growing briskly. In this article I’ll give you a taste of what I’ve gleaned. The market for small businesses, machining and otherwise, is extremely fragmented. Even…
Author: Lloyd Graff
At the beginning of September I spent some time traveling in Europe in search of lucrative machine tools, good salsa dancing and inspiration for an enlightening blog. These days the flavor of Europe has a bit of Middle Eastern spice thrown in, giving it a richer color and diverse tastes. The following account will give you a brief sample of the Middle Eastern spice that I encountered on my journey while in Denmark and Germany. I arrived in Copenhagen on a grey day. I caught a taxi at the airport with a grouchy driver from Macedonia. He told me he…
This American Life on NPR routinely does amazing stories on radio. The program, hosted by Ira Glass, recently had this piece that really struck me. In 2010 a man named Itaru from the town of Otsuchi, Japan, was having a hard time dealing with the loss of his cousin. He decided to install a phone booth with an old rotary dial phone on the grass in his backyard where he could go to communicate with his dead cousin. Most Japanese are Buddhist and generally believe that when people die they don’t instantly get to go to heaven and leave all…
If 2012 and 2014 IMTS shows were about the arrival of 3D printing, 2016 was the year of the robot. It seemed like everybody was talking about automation and robotics. Prices are coming down and ease of use is advancing. I had the opportunity to interview Esben Østergaard, the head of Universal Robots of Denmark. The company was sold last year to Teradyne, a technology heavyweight in America, which so far is adding marketing muscle but not interfering with the creativity that made the company. Mr. Østergaardis is now a very rich guy after the firm was sold for $285…
The Chicago Cubs, my favorite team, and Casablanca, one of my all-time favorite movies, share so many common threads. One could say they are cut from the same cloth. Strangely enough, they really are. The movie’s screenplay was written by twin brothers Phillip and Julius Epstein. Cubs president, and chief architect, Theo Epstein is the grandson of Phillip Epstein. The Epsteins did not create the script for the movie, it was an adaptation of an unpublished play written in 1939. Theo Epstein did not create the Chicago Cubs, he took an organization that was going nowhere in 2012 when he…
On Wednesday I went to IMTS. It was going to be a 16-hour marathon because we were taking folks out to dinner after the business day, and had a 30-mile drive each way in bumper-to-bumper Chicago traffic. Emily Halgrimson, my associate at Today’s Machining World, drove, which eased my apprehension about the day. But for somebody who has had a lot of health issues, at 71, a 16-hour day in the endless din of McCormick Place is a challenge to negotiate. I framed it in my head before I left my house. “I get to do this,” I said to…
Beverly Sills, the wonderful soprano opera singer, was on one of her “if it’s Thursday it must be Seattle” concert tours. She had her routine publicity meeting with the local press. A columnist asked her if she hated to have to do the grind of eight concerts in seven days. She answered him abruptly, “I don’t have to do this, I get to do this.” She had framed her work in a way that transformed it from a “grind” to a “joy” in her language and her mind. Our choice of words to ourselves and others is crucial to our…
The Chicago Cubs have two superb leaders, Anthony Rizzo, who is a contender for National League Most Valuable Player, and Jon Lester, whose 15-4 record makes him a solid possibility for the Cy Young award. Both men are terrific team players and lead by example, but they share another attribute that sets them apart from their peers. Both are cancer survivors, diagnosed while playing, taking a year off for chemotherapy, and coming back to play much better than before being diagnosed. They share something else. Both give of their time, notoriety and money to support cancer research and patients. Rizzo…
About two months ago I finally accepted that I was in a prolonged funk. I was not profoundly depressed. I could laugh and have fun. I wasn’t hopelessly bogged down, but I was mentally and physically sluggish. Television was my primary recreation. I looked forward to weekends, yet I barely got out of the house. Exercise was a chore. Many mornings I dreaded leaving for work. My interest in intimacy was a memory. I often woke up at 3:00 a.m. wallowing in a soup of futility. I relied on my wife Risa more than I wanted to just get through. I…
I like baseball. I’m not one of those folks who keep box scores or who can tell you offhand a pitcher’s earned run average, but I enjoy the subtleties of the game and the tension that builds in the park in the bottom of the ninth with the winning run at the plate. If only I could watch it from my $39 seats! My complaint isn’t about the sight lines or an obstructed view. I usually score lower deck seats just outside the first base line that provide a great view of the infield and the action at first. But…