Manufacturers Supplies Co. Interview at FOAM Expo 2018

What brings you to the foam expo?

We’re here because we’re the largest supplier of converting machines in the United States. We supply a variety of die cutting, dieless cutting, slitting, and slitting rewinding machines all made in Italy. We consider ourselves the largest supplier of converting equipment in north america.

Is there anything new that you’re showcasing here, and is this the first time you’ve been here or the second time?

This is our second show. We were here for the first year. This year we brought new dieless cutting machines from Atom called the twins. This is the first dieless machine that can cut in two z axis mode. In other words you can use two tools in the same CAD file. There’s no other machine like it on the market right now.

What sort of people and connections are you hoping to make here at the show?

We are after the converting market. So we try and find customers that are converting for automotive, aerospace, medical, technical textile, packaging. All of these different industries have to convert their materials, and what we’re trying to supply them with is the latest technology to automate the converting process.

Why is attending this show in particular so important to you and have you made those connections here?

We have. We see not only attendees, but also exhibitors are a big part of our customer base. So it’s important for me to walk around also the show, because the people displaying their materials are the people that buy our machines to cut those materials. It’s kind of a win-win for us, because we have the attendees but we alsso have the exhibiotrs that, most of them are already our existing customers.

You’ve got a really good location here with a lot of things going on, which we’ll have a look at in a second.

I think I have the biggest booth in the whole hall. We brought 5 running pieces of equipment, because we have the opinion that when you do in a tradeshow and you’re in the machinery business you have to show the machines running. Anyone can visit my website, anyone can read a brochure, but when you see it, touch it, feel it, you understand how things work a lot better.

Can you tell me what you think a new trend is in the industry?

The trend and the demand that we get from our customers in converting right now is how can you automate the process? How can you handle the cut parts faster? Can you automatically package and take the parts off the machine without human interaction? We are working day and night for these different material handling solutions. Next year I think we’re going to have something in that respect that’s going to change the industry for die cutting and dieless cutting.

What challenges do you think the industry is facing at the moment?

As far as the foam industry, the challenges are competition from abroad for all of these foam converters. But what we do to try and help them with those challenges is to give them a machine that automates and produces parts in the most cost effective way. Lowering the cost per part. When you buy our equipment, that’s what you’re able to do.