I recently joined a small family manufacturing business, moving away from my previous position as an EIT at an MEP firm. My main focus here will be to increase sales, network, and look for ways of optimizing any/all of our processes from quoting to manufacturing. Currently the airline seating industry makes up roughly 50% of our sales, which is currently hurting the business. I'm going to be trying multiple strategies from reconnecting with old customers, checking up on current customers, and meeting potential customers, and seeing what results we get using different methods of approaching customers. I'll also be networking as much as possible to just get our company's name out there. The company is 35 years old and is well respected, but unfortunately many of our loyal customers are getting bought out, or those who knew us and what we could do are retiring. We specialize in prototyping, fast turn around, and complex wire forms, but can struggle to compete in price on large scale production of simple coil springs. Due to the type of equipment we have, we can only
The reason I'm posting all this on /r/engineering, is because I could use some direction as far as what industries to look at targeting. Right now our customers that are not aerospace range from medical device to food production to agriculture. Some questions I have for anyone that may have an answer:
- If you specify springs or wireforms in your design, how do you decide on a manufacturer?
- If you were in my shoes and trying to obtain new customers, how would you reach out to new customers? (cold call, email, invite to lunch, etc.)
- Do you know of any industries that use springs/wireforms with designs that are often revised?
- What are some mechanical devices that are produced on a large scale that require springs? (such as PRVs)
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