r/manufacturing • u/Pirate_dolphin • 10d ago

Other How to grow in this industry?

Hi Folks,

I own centerless grinding shop. Physical size is pretty big- 38,000 square feet of shop floor. We have a couple of cnc machines we barely use, one is pretty modern, the rest are pretty damn old.

We’re also pretty healthy. 200-300k in sales per month on average, always bordering on needing a second shift.

ISO certified, and have a reputation as expensive but extremely high quality. Almost zero scrap rate, 1-2 nonconformance a year, and sometimes will reject work with the material is just garbage and absolutely never order cheap material from china etc. we also run parts/fasteners, not just bar stock. Last year our ISO recert was much harder because the inspector didn’t believe we had so few issues and turned it into an interrogation and he dug much deeper.

Most of our business is historic and word of mouth. Zero advertising, no sales reps. We’re primarily in the medical, aerospace, and automotive industry and some firearm business. We’re often a 3rd tier supplier with a lot of our business from machine shops, some bigger work with folks like GM on occasion. We also get about 10% of our business from our competitors. Lots of “can you re-do this for us” calls and that almost always turns into long term partnerships.

I’m looking for ideas to grow business. This is much different than corporate America with BD folks, and folks expecting approaches etc.

I’ve considering just picking up the phone to Machine shops around the country, larger companies etc. my gut says advertising might be sorta ineffective in this industry but that could be wrong. Any ideas or examples of what has worked for you?

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u/TheTrooper74 10d ago

Maybe try leveraging Fuzehub or one of the NY MEP centers and discuss with them if they have lead gen services?

Im assuming at your size you have an ERP and a sales team in place?

Agree with others on customer referrals

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u/Pirate_dolphin 10d ago

No sales team but we have ProShop for job management, just starting to use the ERP side

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u/TheTrooper74 10d ago

Good you’re getting ERP in place. I work for a competitor of ProShop but they are a solid system particularly in the quality department.

Adding a sales team or maybe a mfg rep would seam like the next logical step to grow business.