Manufacturing Talks

Send us Fan Mail Here's an educational one for our manufacturing audience. Aimee Ridella, in her previous job with Weber Shandwick, was the best PR partner I had in helping me find great stories for some of my earliest Forbes articles. Now doing internal communications work at DTE Energy, she came on to help teach us what people in manufacturing should be thinking about when it comes to PR, a...

Send us Fan Mail The lumber commodities market can be tough to negotiate, especially for smaller companies. Getting price transparency for buyers and dealing with credit risks for sellers were always a problem, even before today's crazy marketplace conditions. Mike Wisnefski had been trading lumber since the 1990s, and back in 2009 he saw an opportunity when the CME Group started trading lumb...

Send us Fan Mail Back before the pandemic, Mike co-founded his company, Veryable, which introduced an app and other innovations to provide on-demand labor for manufacturing and supply chain companies looking for better way to right-size their workforces. Then came Covid, and what Mike says was a deliberate attack on small business that's hit manufacturers particularly hard. Tune in and hear a...

Send us Fan Mail Chip and Cory happened on a rather large "barn find" piece of American industrial history, and, taking the bull by the horns, they've now established an exhibit in Pittsburgh of the most amazing handcrafted wooden patterns for steel casting, and thousands of associated drawings. What brought this steel plant scrapper and oil painter together to accomplish such an am...

Send us Fan Mail Back in the mid-1970s, a guy named Michael John Stevenson got fed up with labels not sticking to plastic. So he came up with a solution: make the graphics part of the plastic itself! So were born Mold In Graphic Systems (MIGS) and Polyfuze, the companies Stevenson founded to sell his labeling solutions. Now Jason Brownell works with customers on those very same solutions, while al...

Send us Fan Mail For the first episode of 2022, I had a great time talking to Jake Hall, The Manufacturing Millennial. By day, Jake is a Business Development Manager for Feyen Zylstra. But in his social media presence, his passion is to work with manufactures, integrators and end-users to share his knowledge around automation, robotics, and Industry 4.0. His passion for automation and high-tech ma...

Send us Fan Mail Gretchen is one of the most-recognized advocates of American industry around. She's President of her own manufacturing technology solutions company, Magenta Technologies, established 2015 after she'd done several stints in telecomms and media. She's also founder of her made-in-America manufacturing advocacy organization, USA LOVES MFG. Tune in to hear her whole stor...

Send us Fan Mail When West Point graduate and former US Army helicopter pilot discovered that just 3% of apparel purchased in the USA is made in America, he set out to change that. His company, Authentically American, sells casual business attire and leisure wear. It's high-quality apparel made in 12 different states by American workers. Tune in to hear his whole story!

Send us Fan Mail Tom Sega had a travel bag fail him long ago in his former life as a sales guy. A friend recommended he get a new one from Duluth Pack, a maker of high-end duffels and bags right there in his own hometown of Duluth, Minnesota. Tom did and became a huge fan. When the company hit on hard times, he heard about it, bought them, and brought them back. Then he did it all over again with...

Send us Fan Mail Ben Findlay is the founder and CEO of Machine Compare, where he's created an online marketplace for buying and selling manufacturing spare parts. Companies anywhere with obsolete or excess parts can list them on the Marketplace, and people who need obscure and hard to get items can search and find them there. As said in my Forbes headline when I wrote about Ben, he's mad...

Send us Fan Mail The story of Stormy Kromer, maker of iconic winter hats and so much more, is one of my favorite ones in manufacturing. Since they're located in my little Upper Peninsula of Michigan hometown of Ironwood, it involved old family friends, along with that unique brand of upper Midwest can-do attitude. Here's CEO and owner Bob Jacquart to tell you all about it!

Send us Fan Mail Titan Gilroy is CEO of Titans of CNC, a Texas machine shop, and creator of his own reality TV show and the Titans of CNC Academy, which provides low-cost education in CNC programming. His own troubled past inspired him to provide a positive outlet for others who might be looking for a better path. Tune in to listen to this inspiring manufacturing icon!

Send us Fan Mail Amy Robbins is CEO of Alexo Athletica, maker of concealed carry workout gear. A former model, she started the company after a harrowing personal experience while training for a marathon. Tune in and learn about that, as well as her ups and downs as an entrepreneur!