It has been a great learning experience. It turns out that productions are very complicated, tedious and time consuming. Our team has shot hours of footage that they write, edit, rehearse, perform, re-perform, edit again and publish. This is definitely a program for a young, energetic team that does not realize how much is involved…sometimes ignorance is bliss!

We are very proud of the product of our Marketing team (and all of the newly found actors).  We think this series is slowly enhancing our industry by making typically boring manufacturing information interesting and adding the human element of “fiction imitating reality”.

Please go to Quickparts QuickFlix and check out this latest episode, learn something new about SLA and share with your family and friends.

Part of our culture is to always be changing and pushing the leading edge. Our marketing approaches follow the same stringent expectations of innovation.  I am proud to say we recently pushed the edge a bit more and tried something very “out of the box” for a company in our industry.

In the midwest US, we have placed two billboards outside the entrances of a very important and large customer. Turns out that such a simple and developed marketing approach could create some interesting questions for us. As an analytical company that depends on data and numbers to drive our business, we did not know we how we could justify the marketing ROI for a billboard. Of course we got the easy data, like number of cars per hour that pass the billboard, but how many of those were our prospects, would they see it, do they care, would it translate, how would they remember, what would we say?

So, for one of the few times in our history, we just “hoped” that they would work. So far, the assessment is still pending but the intangible experience of placing a billboard and seeing our brand in large form factor on the side of the road has been cool.

Now the question will become, where else should we place billboards?

Wanna see them??

Billboard-1

Billboard-2

We are very proud to have been able to support the development of the Robonaut 2. This is a very cool robot that is being developed to go deep in space so you don’t have to.  I was able to see the predecessor, Robonaut, and was very impressed.

Quickparts was the provider of the parts for the Mr. Robonaut 2.  We were able to leverage the right manufacturing processes to support the technical requirements, project lead times and tight budget.

Check out the article from FOXNews.com

http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/scitech/2010/02/04/nasa-unveils-robonaut?slide=2

I recently ran across the following quote or statement from Friedman that is appropriate to our time.

Friedman stated, “There are still two really important things that can’t be commoditized.  Fortunately, America still has one of them: imagination.  What your citizens imagine now matters more than ever because they can act on their own imaginations farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before- as individuals.  In such a world, societies that can nurture people with the ability to imagine and spin off new ideas will thrive.”

Being in the product development world for my entire career, I can appreciate his point more than most and confirm that he has this absolutely right!  Over the past 20 years, we have seen a complete transformation of the product development world that allows ideas to be created in hours instead of weeks.   At the end of the day, it comes down to the tools available to empower one to release his imagination and convert the imaginary into the reality.  There are 3 major tools that have evolved to make it easy for anyone to empower their imagination for the creation of something new.

1) CAD.  Some of the most powerful tools that have freed the imagination of man is CAD (Computer-Aided Design).  This is the canvas of creation. This is tool that allows a person to translate their thoughts and ideas into a representation of reality. Some 20 years ago, CAD was still an electronic version of paper and all ideas were broken into an archaic and difficult language of engineering drawings and 2-dimensional representations. Today, a guy in his underwear watching a ball game can load Google Sketch-up and design his idea in a 3-dimensional language that represents reality. If he designs a new, fancy cup to drink his coffee, then it will actually look like a cup, not a bunch lines to represent a cup.  These new CAD products are much easier to use, affordable, and very powerful.

2) Rapid Prototyping. Now you have a cool design that represents your imagination, what’s next? Again, some 20 years ago you were stuck. The option was to go to a model maker that would cost thousands and take weeks to turn your design into a prototype.  This is definitely not a way to free the masses to imagine and create, but to stifle creativity and leave it to the companies that have figured out how to make money with their product. Today, with the evolution of rapid prototyping, the world of design to reality is AMAZING! A design can be transformed from the electronic representation of a design to reality in a few hours for very little money.  This allows virtual products to be evaluated under the circumstances of physics, reality and usability. This allows the design to evolve very rapidly from an unproven concept to a real, functional and worthwhile product.  A designer can finish his cup design this afternoon, login to Quickparts.com to order his prototype and have it delivered tomorrow morning. From imagination to design to reality in day!

3) Low Cost Manufacturing.  Many times the purpose of imagination and development is to solve a problem of the world. In the case where the problem only exists for the one person that designs the solution, then a prototype may suffice. However, odds are high that a problem for one is a problem for many. So, there is a market of your design. Again, 20 years ago it would be very difficult to have your design manufactured cost effectively. You would have to invest huge dollars to get started. Today, the world is great. With the evolution of manufacturing technologies and the mass expansion of manufacturing capacity with countries like China being an email away, then a product can be setup and manufactured very cost-effectively.

By combining the independent power of these 3 tools, the world of imagination, innovation, problem solving, product development and creation are highly accessible to those in the US. We have been blessed to have access to such powerful resources as developers of tomorrow and consumers today. It is with these tools that the US can maintain our world-leader status as the innovators of the world as long as we are willing to accept the challenge of creation and not try to offshore it as well.

Imagination is the seed of creation.  Creation is as God-like as you can get.

It has been 10 years since the launch of Quickparts.com! It has been a decade in which the world shifted under the feet of the dinosaurs of the industry that believed that….

• Customers did not need the convenience of the Internet
• Engineers would not upload their data to a website
• It’s impossible to quote a part without a human expert
• Instant quoting would never stick
• My customers need my help in designing their stuff
• The files are too big to transfer
• Websites are not secure
• This Internet thing is just a fad that will pass
• My customers love me
• My customers are loyal to me and would never leave me for a website
• You can’t take the human element out of manufacturing sales

It has been a decade since Quickparts.com began the journey of making it easy for our customers to buy custom designed parts that meet their needs. We started with the focus being on the customer and have worked every day since to make the experience of the customer unlike any experience they have had in manufacturing and more like the experiences they expect from the retail stores they visit.

By executing on this focus of the customer, we have been able to disprove all the naysayers. After 10 years, our competitors have realized that we were right and for them to continue to exist; they must look more like Quickparts and less like themselves.

Over the decade, we have learned many things. One of them is that the challenging technologies of online instant quoting were not the really hard parts. It was the development of the rest of the technologies and systems that would allow us to handle over 12,000 customers buying over 500,000 custom parts.

It has been a great 10 years for Quickparts.com. We have been able to demonstrate what we believe to be the purpose of business, which is to serve their customers; build leaders; enhance their communities; and provide a return to the stakeholders.

As a founder of this great company, I personally express a sincere Thank You! to all of our customers, team members (past and present) and stake holders for allowing us to enjoy the journey.

Today, we are nearing the end of the 2010 planning season. We have our last 4 hour meeting to put the final review on the Functional Operating Plans, review the financial projections for 2010, assess company communication and rhythm strategies for the new year, and finalize on the company theme to drive our celebration.

While it takes much discipline and effort by all involved, we feel it forces a “refreshening” of all areas of the business to make us better and prepare us for the near future. It is amazing how so many businesses continue for years without ever assessing or challenging why they do the things they do. This can be as simple as the agenda for a management meeting.

Of course, as the CEO, the first element of success is to have a complete and cohesive team that can all lift their share and help the entire organization grow to the next level.

As for 2010 outlook, we are quite optimistic. The impact of 2009 was not a normal experience for Quickparts and really pissed us off. We are determined to recover and grow in 2010….we have the team, technology and competitive advantages to do it, we just need a market that is ready to start developing products again….let 2010 be the year!

I would love to hear how your organization develops their strategic plans…send me an email anytime at rhollis@quickparts.com

Interestingly, Quickparts is in the midst of our 2010 strategic planning and the discussion of values, alignment, culture, “we are NOT like we used to be”, etc was a common discussion. After further debate, we decided we had a “smart” business but had lost some of our “health”. After further discussion, we concluded the health of our company was the result of having a misalignment of the “values” of the team. Meaning, that some folks have different values than others, which creates the ultimate compromise for a company.

So, we then debated what values we think would make a great Quickparts. We defined a value as the personal belief or philosophy that drives a decision of a person on the behavior that will take. If a value is persistence, then a person would typically decide to continue charging ahead through adversity instead of quitting. After having over 40 values listed and debated, we were able to consolidate the values of a person that we all decided we wanted to work with. Incredibly, these values turned out to be the same ones that many of us pursue in the folks we hang out with in a non-professional environment. I guess it should NOT have been a surprise. Values are the core of a person’s character. They are what makes that person special and we humans typically seek those that are similar to us in our value set….religion is an example of this.

The Quickparts values that we are dedicated to being aligned with include:

• Hard Workers
• Passionate
• Success-driven
• Smart
• Positive Attitude

Now we are implementing the plan to ensure that everyone in the company is highly aligned to these values and those that are not will be give the option of CDE (career development elsewhere).

A business is all about the people within it and their values determine the foundation. In order for it to be great, then the foundation must be great.