Super PVF rep expands his strainer business

BY MORRIS R. BESCHLOSS

PVF and economic analyst

Us Strainer Co was founded in 2005. The owner of the company, Ron Drews Sr., is a manufacturers’ rep first and foremost, in Chicago. That’s his first love and he intends to keep it that way. He still maintains that the rep business is about relationships -- and he did not and will not turn his back on the people and the relationships that have helped make him successful over the last 30 years. Those relationships are what triggered his desire to open the new master distributorship in the first place.

Drews represented valve and strainer lines for most of his career, some of which are considered the premier lines in the industry. He watched as certain companies got swallowed up in the mergers and acquisitions frenzy of the last decade. He watched customer service suffer, and in some cases recover, but rarely in the same format for the customer.

Drews explains his rationale as follows: “I think my valve manufacturers have recaptured their high level of customer satisfaction and on time deliveries but the strainer business is totally different. I was a rep for one strainer manufacturer for nearly 25 years and had a consigned inventory for most of those years. I was able to adjust my inventory levels as needed so very few of my customers ever felt the pain of a declining ability to satisfy the market. That changed when the consigned inventory went away. My customers started to feel the pain and so did I. I decided to rectify the problem myself.

“We made the decision to inventory only strainers from castings, no fabrications. The reason behind that is if a manufacturer has a rough casting, the delivery should be no more than two to three weeks. If they don’t have a rough casting, the delivery moves out to 14 to 16 weeks minimum. Our intention is to fill the three-month gap between the two options. In order to do that properly, you have keep in inventory what neither the manufacturer nor the distributor wants to stock. That is a huge percentage of the market. My experience tells me that if you are going to inventory so many odd items, you need a bigger playing field to reduce your risk of dead stock. That’s when we decided to advertise nationally as a way to get the word out.

“You would think that carrying stock of strainers is a simple enough task. The problems are confusing to most people however. Unlike valves, strainers do not have to comply with any ANSI or mss specs dimensionally. Face to face dimensions, screens perf sizes and so on are unique to each manufacturer. Therefore you can’t always substitute one brand for another. You also have several manufacturers that have gone out of business in the last 30 years, or changed designs. In those cases, real problems can surface. We know where most of these manufacturers went or exactly what they sold. We can usually, at the very least, offer something suitable in terms of fit, form and function.

“Few people possess that much knowledge so a lot of those problems end up finding us. What that means, however, is that we must inventory strainers from several manufacturers. This gets redundant and requires a lot more investment in terms of space and dollars to succeed. In order to keep good relations with the manufacturers, we knew that volume would be required. So far that has not been a big problem. Most of them look at us as a good customer and an asset to their business. A few suppliers have actually bought back some of their own items from us.

“We are happy to sell back to them at prices that help us maintain our good customer status. We have gotten a few curious looks from strainer reps around the country but we don’t intend to take any of their business. Our goal is simple; We want to be everybody’s number 1, number 2 guy. We don’t intend to be anyone’s primary supplier.

“We see ourselves as the clean-up guys. If manufacturer A and their rep are closing in on a $5,000 order but they can’t meet the delivery on $120 worth of that order, send the distributor to us. A few dollars on a handful of strainers is rarely a deal maker or breaker, but deliveries can mean everything. Manufacturer A and his rep are far better off having us complete the deal than they are forcing the customer into the hands of Manufacturer B. The manufacturers seem to get that but some of the reps don’t. They will eventually, which is why so many master distributors have sprouted up, successfully.

“The products we offer are simple, but we go a little to the extreme. In Y-strainers we can ship up to a 20 inches the same day if we have the order by 3:30 or 4:00. From our location in Chicago we can deliver to half the country within 48 hours and a lot of it overnight. Lots of people can ship quickly, but we can also ship high pressure butt-weld, wc6, Alloy 20 and even some rtj ends from time to time. It’s impossible for us to always have exactly what you need but we strive to have it a vast majority of the time. We have some customers with very specific needs and which we will inventory for them. It makes our inventory that much more diversified.”

It gives us great please to conduct this exclusive interview with well-known Midwest rep Ron Drews.

Beschloss: Tell us about your family’s generational commitment to flow control. What are your lines, and tell us about your approach to distribution as well as end user and specification work?

Drews: All the men in the Drews family came into the PVF industry from the foundry side. Our customers were all valve and or strainer manufacturers. That allowed us to understand the workings of a valve and its moving parts, as well as strainers, which had no moving parts but had no standard sizing or design features. We were actually a part of a manufacturer’s team that would analyze a problem with a valve. If a valve failed for any reason we would be a part of the process in determining what went wrong and how to fix it.

The experience we gained is appreciated and respected in the end user and specification area but our only path to a purchase order is and always will be through our stocking distributors. Crane Valve, for example, has products as simple as a 1⁄2-inch ball valve to some of the most highly designed and engineered valves in the world, and only our distributors can get us access to all of the markets we can serve.

The E&C’s can usually find us through the web but we need to keep the distributor involved.

Beschloss: Since you started the strainer master distribution business two years ago, what has been your reception by prospects and customers?

Drews: We have gotten a very positive reception. Even if in passing on a sales call you mention the company to a customer he ends up calling shortly thereafter. Sometimes it’s out of curiosity but more often it’s out of desperation. They will usually check the website while you are sitting there and that usually makes them believers.

Beschloss: How did you allocate your family efforts between master distribution and servicing your valve line customers?

Drews: A short but benign answer to that question is easy. I thought of us Strainer and I paid for it. The real truth, however, is I have a more than capable son who has been able to take it from there. Ron Jr. has more or less grown up in the business and he learned about master distribution from a former partner of mine. He was a great teacher and Ron Jr. was a great student. He has taken the ball and run with it. He handles all the inventory, pricing, shipping and everything else required making the company successful. I stay out of it.

That answers the family allocation issue but that is the easy part. We’ve talked about how hard it is to get new talent into our industry. I think small businesses like mine bare a disproportionate share of that problem. We are always seeking help for both companies. We are willing to train someone from scratch if we can find anybody willing to give it a chance. At the same time, our customers are asking us if we know of anyone they can hire. It seems to be a universal problem. But I can understand that if a young man or woman comes out of college with $100,000 worth of student loans or with a huge obligation to mom and dad, saying they sell strainers for a living does not sound very prestigious. That’s why we have so many multi-generational companies in this industry. The kids see that dad has done very well for himself so following in is footsteps does not seem so bad.

Beschloss: Has your wide spectrum of customers and prospects generally accepted your bifurcated business approach?

Drews: That’s an easy one. For the last 30 years we have been involved in both valves and strainers. We are best known for our valve business but we also carried a small strainer inventory. It had been consigned to us, however. All our local customers came to rely on it.

Beschloss: Since your overall business is primarily in an intensively concentrated commercial and industrial sector, has most of your strainer business emanated from your traditional areas or the more thinly populated outer reaches?

Drews: If you are referring to geographical area, it’s coming from all four corners of the country, especially the more sparsely populated areas. If you are referring to industry segments, it’s almost all industrial.

Beschloss: With commercial and industrial business way up this year, while residential is down, how have your fared in this total picture?

Drews: If I had my way this total picture would never change. We are all about industrial spending whether it be new construction or mro. As a Crane Valve rep, residential spending does me no good. As for us Strainer, the maintenance side of the older plants is where we do a large business.

Beschloss: Have strainer distributors generally accepted your role as a supplementer of basic business?

Drews: I don’t promote the idea of being supplemental. As a rep I think to be successful you need to be a full partner with the distributor. Each partner has a clearly defined roll and the better you each perform your roll, the greater the reward. As a strainer distributor, I created the company not to be a partner, but to be a teammate. We have all heard that a team is only as good as its bench or that depth is required to succeed. I’m that bench player or depth if you will.

There are two things that are undeniable. Industrial end users are relying more than ever on the distributor for all their piping needs which includes their strainers. They don’t want to wait either. The second is that in 30-plus years I’ve never had a distributor say to me, “I would really like to increase my inventory dollars with more strainers, what would you suggest?” That’s why our company can be of help to all the players in this supply chain.

Beschloss: Has the unexpected sag in the residential sector slowed down your momentum, or has your “fill-in” approach actually been of benefit in today’s business climate?

Drews: Our approach is working out just fine under today’s business climate. The residential slow down has only hurt me in a personal way. I’m trying to sell my house.

Beschloss: What is your outlook for the strainer business in 2008?

Drews: We have tremendous expectations for growth. I read your article in the December issue of this magazine. You suggested we dismiss the macro-economists’ forecasts and that the market sectors that influence the success of the pvf industry should see sustained growth for the foreseeable future. I’m afraid that my son and I are going to have to hold you to that!

Beschloss: Speaking of your geographical area in general, please sum up your view of the business opportunities you will be facing in 2008.

Drews: I think we will benefit the most from increased spending in power generation, both fossil and nuclear. In our area, most of the plants have been woefully neglected and are in need of serious and costly maintenance. They are just now installing systems required for pollution controls which represents new capital spending. We are already feeling this demand. Refining will provide another big year of increases and chemical should be up somewhat. Commercial construction in Chicagoland seems to be holding steady despite reports to the contrary.

Beschloss: Some of the large distributors are importing strainers with their own brand name on them. Will that have a significant impact on you?

Drews: Not at all. Actually, it’s why we exist. They are only importing what is commercially available from Asian countries, which are the very high turnover items. Those are the very items we have little desire to sell. Our place in the market is in the lower turnover rate. We have no intention of bringing in anything with our name on it. Our business plan has always been to inventory only products made by reputable manufacturers. We do not want any liabilities other than to ship what we quoted, on time.

The only thing you will ever be able to get from us is new products from reputable manufacturers that stand behind and warrant their products.

Beschloss: Please let us know how prospects and customers can access your website.

Drews: The website, www.usstrainer.com, is proving beneficial. We can track all the activity and we know that engineers are using it most frequently. They come from everywhere, from Kansas City to Dubai. They like the cross reference chart that allows them to click on multiple manufacturers’ drawings from one place. That’s required a lot because of the dimensional issues.

We are trying to come up with more ways to make it distributor friendly but that’s still a work in process. We don’t know yet whether distributors need pricing or stock status or just general information. The stock status is a tough issue. If the customer checks with the manufacturer and finds they are 22 weeks on an item, they may check our website and see that we have none in stock. They would not know if we had 10 pieces coming into our stock the next day. As of now, direct contact is still recommended, but who knows what tomorrow brings.

Morris R. Beschloss, a 50-year veteran of the pipe, valve and fitting industry, is PVF and economic analyst for The Wholesaler.