Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1037828
Summer 2018 57 Tom Sharp breaks his New Age career down into two eras: before China and after China. The before China period was a time when the primary competition came from other U.S. equipment manufacturers, and covers Sharps initial tenure at his father's company, New Age Industrial, and the 12 years he spent at an independent rep, begin- ning in 1986. He returned to the family business in 1998 after his father offered him an ownership stake and by then the shift to a more global mar- ket had already begun. "We had an economy bun pan rack and there were no racks coming from China," Sharp says of the market in the late 1990s. "Then, China got involved and all my competitors started import- ing." The racking market quickly moved from pro- duction in the United States to production over- seas, where materials and labor were significantly cheaper. China manufacturers were supplying finished racks to the American market at the same price as New Age Industrial was buying commodity aluminum. There was no way to stay competi- tive on costs alone so New Age faced a choice: Follow down the path of its competitors and begin importing from Asia, or double down on its own manufacturing? It chose the latter and now stands as one of the last remaining full-service aluminum material han- dling and storage product manufacturers in the U.S. "We just went a different direction and tried to get to the design-build orders, the specification products, and the high-quality products," says Sharp, now the company's executive vice presi- dent and one of its owners. While many competitors believed making deals with Chinese manufacturers to import products was the best way to survive in the changing cli- mate, New Age Industrial showed that there is still a place for American equipment producers. Since the trend toward importing began, it has tripled sales by focusing on custom racks, shelves, cabi- nets, pallets, and dollies. Its niche has become customers who want a less-than-container-load of a high-quality product—the types of items that aren't cost-effective to ship across the Pacific Ocean, such as a rack the size of a home fridge that would cost more to ship via ocean freighter than its $300 outlay to buy domestically. New Age Industrial is able to offer such a large amount of custom work because it is one of the few aluminum product manufacturers with its own extrusion press. "We have not found another com- pany that extrudes and manufactures in the same building," Sharp says. "We're the only one that does both." As a result, New Age Industrial can create alu- minum products of any shape and thickness while TOM SHARP New Age Industrial "We average over 300 new items per year and it's because of the extrusion press." By Tim O'Connor, Associate Editor tim@feda.com