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Thompson: It was cost. If you get product in and it's not the right product and you've got to send it back. A lot of problems that I see happening in China is the workforce is just not covering all of the companies over there. That’s causing delays and now you’ve got the shipping cost back and forth. Companies want to send their employees and engineers over there, so the back and forth of that is costly. That’s what we’ve been told from customers, that it’s just becoming too much of an expense and the quality is just not what it used to be.
Matties: Culturally, it’s just a different language.
Thompson: It’s difficult.
Judy Warner: Tell us a little bit about your 3D printing capabilities. That’s something you haven’t touched on and I know it’s your favorite toy.
Thompson: It’s my toy, especially with the new products that we’re building for customers. In fact, one of the really cool things that we’re building is for the police departments in Orange County and LA, where some officers came to us and said, “We have an idea for a product.” When there are car accidents—I didn’t know this—but it takes like two-and-a-half cases of those flares that they have to keep them lit up for a certain period of time. They have literally warehouses full of these flares, and the expense is enormous. They came up with building an LED strip which would take away all of the flares.
That’s what we’re doing right now. We wanted to give them better cost advantage on that, so we went ahead and we started our 3D printing side, we have an SLR printer in here as well, to try to give them a product without having the expense of sending it out and doing the small run prototypes. It’s been great. We’ve used it on so many various products here.
Matties: It really opens up a lot of opportunities, doesn’t it?
Thompson: It does. We saw the need and said, “Okay, let’s fix this and let’s bring it in.”
Matties: Where are they at in their product development cycle? Is this a product that they are currently using then?
Thompson: We’re finishing up. We’ve gone through a couple of phases already and we’re ready to actually start pre-production. It’s really cool, and the first run that we’re building for them is actually going to be for a consumer. They want to see how that works out. Not only will the police departments be using it, but you’re going to be able to go to say Pep Boys and buy one for your car. It’s really cool because I got to hear about some of the things that they require on this.
Matties: Robbin, is there anything that we haven't talked about that you would like to discuss?
Thompson: I just feel that, again, we’re not your typical CM.
Matties: I’m getting that (laughs).
Thompson: Yeah! Like our name implies, we want to be able to have an open door policy with our customers and have them come in. If they have a situation where they can’t come up with a solution, let us try. If we can build something, or if they want us to build a fixture, whatever it takes. We’ve got a small CNC shop back here as well, so whatever it takes to help customers troubleshoot their product or come up with a solution.
Matties: Well, great. Robbin, on behalf of Judy and myself, thank you very much!
Thompson: Thank you.
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