One among the many reasons why Bluff Manufacturing has been faring well in a still slow-moving economy is our commitment to networking and maintaining our presence at the many events and tradeshows around the country.
Networking has always been at the heart of Bluff’s business. It is Bluff’s loyal association of partners and distributors that are the driving force behind our success. Our network connects our customers with our products. At this year’s WERCouncil show, Bluff was represented by Sid and Cindy – two of Bluff’s best. With over 40 exhibitors and nearly 200 attendees, the 10th annual North Texas WERCouncil show (Warehousing Resource Council) on 12th October 2011 in Grapevine, TX was a great success for Bluff Manufacturing. Like all good shows with great attendance, WERC brings us face to face with our network – our distribution partners, customers, and even our competitors. Attendees included Operations Managers, Process Improvement Specialists, Warehouse & Distribution Managers and Engineers looking for new technologies, products and services. Bluff’s safety products (crash guard, rack guard, door guard) received a lot of attention. The WERC gave us the opportunity to update our distributors, on new Bluff products, and learn how we can better meet their needs and the needs of their customers.
Sid and Cindy not only met up with old friends – but also made new ones. Some of our distributors learned about our mezzanine products for the first time and were excited at the prospect of offering it to their customers. The Bluff representatives also met new distributors who were enthusiastic to meet with them and learn about Bluff’s offerings.
Not only did we meet our distributors, but we also made a few new connections. Meeting the users of our products allows us to develop better solutions to their challenges and helps us to understand which of our distribution partners they would be best partnered with to purchase Bluff products. Bluff also discovered many new opportunities. Meeting several attendees that were working at major companies, Sid and Cindy learned that these attendees had been given the green signal to proceed with projects that had earlier been put on hold.
For instance, one company was looking for a solution to protect their racks from damages that could rack up significant repair expenses. Investing in protecting their assets made more sense than spending on costly repairs. Another company required a crash guard to protect a long aisle that had heavy forklift traffic. A major communications company had a problem on route deliveries because their customers did not have dock plates to facilitate unloading. They wanted to provide their delivery personnel with dock plates on the trucks but had not found one light enough for their employees to safely use. When they saw the variety of solutions that Bluff has to offer and learned that we could design custom solutions, they were immediately interested in talking to Sid and learning more about Bluff. The Bluff team looks forward to working with these companies through our dealer network and outfitting them with unique solutions that solve all their docking and material handling problems.
The show’s highlight was the ingenious use of our mini-mezzanine, which we use to promote mezzanine products at different events. But at the WERCouncil show, the Convention Center dock door was too small to let our mezzanine pass through. So the Bluff team used their resourcefulness and with the approval of the event organizers, set up the demo-mezzanine outside of the main entrance. What better place to demo our not-so-mini-mezzanine than the show entrance? Who could miss a greeting banner hanging from our mezzanine asking guests to “Come up to Bluff”? Hope to see you at the next WERCouncil Show!
