Two decades ago, a cashmere sweater was a soft symbol of wealth and status warn by pipe smoking duffers at the club. Eventually women also wanted to wear the wool from the shaggy goat. The boosted demand beyond the capability of shepherds filled in the production shortfall. But the sharp folk in Bentonville Arkansas who run Wal-Mart believed that cashmere was not the exclusive wool for the rich, and decided cashmere sweaters should be brought to the masses. It was the perfect Christmas present. They asked the disintermediating question, “Why not sell a $49 cashmere women’s sweater, or a $39…
Author: Noah Graff
I see the Feds bagged some more bad dudes relating to the machining world. Zimmer, DePuy, Smith & Nephew, and Biomet owe $311 million in fines to the Federal Government to settle criminal and civil penalties stemming from kickbacks paid to surgeons doing orthopedic implant procedures. That’s a lot of bone screws. Zimmer Holdings alone is taking a $169 million write-off in the coming financial quarter. Stryker of Kalamazoo flipped for the prosecution to seal the deal in this case. Ex-Attorney General John Ashcroft will get in on the gravy train by being appointed the governance monitor for Zimmer. I…
Two young men still at the top of their games copped pleas on August 27, 2007. They will both be going to Federal Prison despite their fabulous wealth and instant name recognition. They gambled their freedom and careers with bizarre acts of recklessness abetted by cronies without the strength to say no to them. Gene Haas, the unlikely billionaire of American machine tools, and Michael Vick, the quarterback who redefined the position in the NFL, both saw their freedom slip away when their associates flipped to the prosecution. Even the shrewdest legal talent money could buy couldn’t keep them out…
The Gene Haas tax evasion trial is projected to begin in September. It has been stalled by continuances, but both sides evidently want it to happen now. Denis Dupuis who was Gene’s top deputy was indicted with him. Dupuis has made a deal with the Feds to testify for the prosecution. The Haas Automation company has attempted to distance itself from Gene’s travail and appears to be going strong. My dire predictions about the possible impact of the case on the Haas business have proved wrong to his point. My understanding is that Gene Haas still owns the Haas Automation…
I hear that Sprint has notified 1,000 of its customers that they are being terminated by the cell phone service provider. Sprint will get some momentary snickering PR, but frankly, I am sympathetic to the idea of dumping the nags. I believe that not all customers are worth the aggravation. A demanding but intrinsically fair client is a good thing because he or she forces you to raise your game, but some people just “drey your kop” (Yiddish for “play with your head”). Life is too short to diddle with such time wasters. The chronic malcontent customer is always worthy…
The labor shortage of skilled machinists is not a singular phenomenon. Heavy equipment operators who maneuver excavators, dozers, and cranes are also scarce. Power Equipment of Chattanooga, Tennessee, is doing something about it in its area. The company contributed $600,000 worth of Kubota machinery to Chattanooga State University to equip operator courses, according to Larry Moon of the company. He says that the classes have been oversubscribed every time they have been offered. This is a smart move for Power Equipment, which has several branches in the state. On the machine tool front, Haas Automation has been the most aggressive…
Several issues ago in Today’s Machining World, Robert Strauss wrote an in-depth story about Conserve School and its unusual relationship with steel distributing agent, Central Steel and Wire, of Chicago. James Lowenstine, son of the founder of the company, left this centi-million dollar estate to build an environmentalist’s dream of a prep school in rural Northern Wisconsin. The Trust which funded the school was endowed with Lowenstine’s stock in Central Steel, a beautifully run company doing $750 million a year in sales. Several board members of Central Steel also sat on the Conserve School’s Trust board. A clause in the…
“Rube Goldberg” is alive and well in Harry Potter’s neighborhood. Three blokes in their mid-twenties, graduates of elite Cambridge University, have developed fantastic mechanical chains of devices, like sliding chess pieces, dropping hammers, and perfectly aimed darts that keep the crazy sequence going on video. They reckon four to five million people have watched their clever automation process on screen. Their contraption videos are a brilliant effort to promote the young company of these clever mechanical engineers who specialize in manufacturing and design creativity. I urge every reader to go to their website, www.baynhamtyers.com to see their hard work. I…
Sometimes I have a day when everything comes together and I have to say, “Thank you, God, for allowing me to experience it.” I had one on May 7th. Noah and I had an interview scheduled with Eitan Wertheimer, Chairman of the Board of Iscar, the huge Israeli cutting tool firm that he and his father Stef built. They just sold 80 percent of the company to Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway for $4 billion. We got to the Standard Club in Chicago a half hour early, stepped into the elevator and Eitan introduced himself to us. He was ready to…
What do you do if you are an unknown pipsqueak company with a killer idea, going up against a giant with an almost unlimited marketing budget? On April 16th at the biggest running event of the year, the Boston Marathon, tiny Spira Shoe Company of El Paso, Texas, stole the show from Nike. For two thirds of the race, two unknown Kenyan runners led, wearing brilliant yellow Spira shoes. Spira shoes have a superior design to their competition aside from just their color. Tiny springs are put into the heel of the shoes. This idea is getting traction in the…