I love email and Google, but I have arrived at the conclusion that for almost everything else in my modern office the computer has ruined things. I am convinced that paper records and references are more reliable and accessible than computerized data for me. Let me give an example. At Graff-Pinkert & Co., our machinery trading firm, we have long kept a card file of machines bought and sold by brand and size. Since we have sold literally thousands of screw machines in the last 70 years, we have a dramatic trove of useful information that is easily accessible to…
Author: Lloyd Graff
Noah and I recently had the opportunity to interview Mark Mohr of DMG/Mori Seiki USA and Jim King of Okuma America Corp. Both men replaced entrenched, almost iconic, leaders at their companies in Thomas R. Dillon at DMG/Mori Seiki USA and Larry Schwartz at Okuma America. Mohr came up through the ranks, while King was a corporate soldier who marched through many jobs before settling in Charlotte to be groomed for Okuma’s top job in the U.S. Both men said business was thriving and their firms had completely come back from the dark days of 2009. Their approaches to IMTS…
Tim Lincecum, the “little pitcher that could” for the San Francisco Giants, now can’t. In his last 19 starts the Giants are 3-16. His Earned Run Average this year is 6.00, which is below mediocre. And Tim, once nicknamed “The Freak” in admiration for his powerful fastball yet small frame, has gone from winning the Cy Young (best pitcher) Award his first two seasons in the Majors, to barely being the fifth best starting pitcher on the team. Tim Lincecum is in a slump. The slump and the streak are longtime interests of mine. They fascinate me because they are…
On the last blog, I mentioned that I voted for Barack Obama partly because I wanted to see a black president during my lifetime. A lot of readers were bothered by this statement, so I would like to flesh out my rationale. Over the course of 50 years, I have seen racial relationships in America gradually evolve from hatred and fear towards tolerance and acceptance on both sides. Growing up in the 1950s on the segregated Chicago’s Southside, I was on the frontlines of racial confrontation. My public grammar school drew from an affluent white area and a predominantly black…
A little piece about politics today. This is a fun election coming up, because it’s going to be close and brutal. The Super PACs are going to chew up both sides and leave them for dead. Politics ain’t beanbag. The Presidential race is what I am wrestling with. I voted for Obama in 2008 because I wanted to see a black President in my lifetime and because McCain, who I preferred as a candidate, was stupid and desperate enough to pick Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Today, I am undecided. Obama’s record is a mixed bag, for sure.…
Noah and I had the opportunity to interview the Prince of Pipes, Piotr Galitzine, last week at the American offices of TMK IPSCO, a Russian owned American company with 11 (soon 12) plants in North America. Galitzine, a Prince who is a direct descendant of the Russian czars, was friendly and expansive as he gave us an insider’s view of the energy business where three quarters of IPSCO’s orders come from. Piotr wore the pinched collar shirt of a European nobleman, but talked like an American CEO, with a little bit of St. Petersburg in his voice. His father ended…
The world of auctions has always intrigued me, so when Roger Meyers alerted me to the coinciding events last week of Liquidity Services buying GoIndustry DoveBid, and Ritchie Bros. purchasing AssetNation I wanted to check it out. The buyout of Go was the most interesting because I am familiar with its history. Ross and Kirk Dove started DoveBid in 1999, though they had been in the dog eat dog auction business in the Bay area for many years. They saw the magnificent opportunity to roll up the fragmented business dominated by aggressive but small family businesses in America and Europe.…
If it’s a machine shop, the answer has typically been, “a business is worth the value of its physical assets, plus receivables less payables.” But the dynamic appears to be changing as the demand for American produced goods increases. I see companies paying for goodwill, but even more for the fluid organization of skills visible in seasoned viable businesses. Customers are transferable if the manufacturing skills can be proven and maintained. When new operators come in and fire everybody and then try to hire people back for less money, they are courting disaster. Even if the judgment they make is…
My 50th High School Reunion of the U-High class of 1962 is coming up at the end of May, but it really has already been happening over the last several months on the Web. A class of 100, which has dwindled to 80 with deaths and disappearances, has magically been brought together on the Internet with people sharing their stories, sometimes with amazing candor and sensitivity, like they never did in high school. Yesterday, the group received the awful news that the wife of a classmate had died of a heart attack over the weekend. The heartfelt condolences have been…
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers is involved in two significant high-profile strikes this week – at Caterpillar in Joliet, Illinois, and Hawker-Beechcraft in Wichita, Kansas. The situations are quite different, with Cat making record profits and Hawker on the cusp of bankruptcy with its finances controlled by a cadre of Hedge Funds – but the workers feel they are being abused in both places. Cat is asking for a 6-year wage freeze for the striking workers, who do not comprise a majority of the Joliet workforce. Caterpillar can keep the plant going without the striking workers. The…