PlastiCert has a customer that moved their mold to a competitor. Now, a year later, they had it sent back to us.
They were a start-up in the beginning. One of those meetings with an entrepreneur who had an idea for a new physical therapy product. We helped him develop the molding portion of his design, offering insight and suggestions, resulting in being able to go directly to a production mold.
From the beginning we took our molded part and joined it with the other components, assembled the entire product for them into final packaging.
Almost 4 years after initial contact, we were informed the customer had gone price shopping. They needed to lower their standard cost. They had already started assembling the product themselves, but another molder promised lower prices. We wished them luck and shipped the mold off to the other molder.
A year later, we get the phone call asking, “Can we have the mold sent back to you?” It appears not only did the pricing not ring true, but there were quality issues.
“Certainly”, we said. “Send the mold back and we’ll take a look at it”. Upon receipt, there were some noticeable issues. Things that would have impeded processing. We got things taken care of, sampled the mold and are back in production.
We haven’t lost many customers over the years. Just a handful have gone off shore or out of business. Two have had us send molds to a competitor. In both cases their hopes of better pricing did not materialize. One chose to not change course, now the second has returned.
The more common scenario is for current customers to send us molds that were at one of their other sources. Typically there are processing issues more than cost issues, but better costing is a byproduct of consolidation as well. Quite often we hear, “they were having processing issues, we knew you would be able to make these right”.
It’s nice to feel needed.