Glad I used MFG
Good for you. The rest of us haven't.
I've been a member of MFG Quote since 2005. There are definitely pros and cons. I can say I've done an extreme amount of quoting with little or no reward. I will also say, that if I hadn't done it I wouldn't have the business I have today. I'm not an MFG rep or anything like that, just a small job shop owner trying to create a shop I'm proud of right here in NH. Any doubt that I'm a sales guy, by all means look me up jcbperformance.com and give me a call. If this post is really asking the question is MFG a scam, I'll take some time to share my history with the company.
I signed up on MFG in 05, my shop consisted of me, an old Mazak SQT18M, and my wife doing the books part time. As I said, I quoted plenty, got little work, and bitched about it A LOT! I won a couple small jobs here and there but certainly not enough to justify the cost, especially considering how "competitive" I had to be to get them. I spent a lot of time experimenting with "how low could I go".
In 2005, I won a job for something like 1000 polished bushings out of Ft Worth, TX. When I quoted it, I contacted the customer. It was a small Ma/Pa type business, and they were so concerned about the finish on the outside of the bushings. Talked to them about how we could polish them after machine, etc, etc. I re-did the napkin equivalent of a drawing they had in Solidworks and put some real specs on the drawing. They were happy and we ultimately started dealing direct with each other. Come to find out, they had quite a few other parts that were a good fit. As of today, they have done $162,076 of business with me.
In 2006, I got an order from a Houston based company. They were very happy with the quality of the job, and we were able to build a good relationship. I quoted a few more jobs for them on MFG with success, until finally we would just deal direct with each other. They grew through the years and today they are our largest customer with $3,404,305 total sales
Still doing business with another customer I found through an RFQ on MFG out of Plato, TX. They've done about $35k with us and still going.
Over the years, I had pretty much stopped quoting MFG because quite frankly the award ratio to the amount of quoting needed wasn't really working, and we were fortunately busy enough not to rely on it. I kept the service and I'd spend 30 seconds a day breezing through the emails they send out looking for anything that was a perfect fit... complex stuff, tight tolerances, tougher materials, that type of stuff. I would totally stay away from the "washers" or stuff were you could tell there really wasn't going to be some form of quality control scrutiny. I felt we needed to be quoting that type of work to justify the $85 - $100/hr I was quoting with.
In 2012, a part on MFG caught my eye. +/-.001 tolerances, 16Ra's, 316L SS, it was a valve body type of part similar to a lot of stuff we'd been doing. Customer out of Louisiana had 4 or 5 parts listed. I quoted them all and contacted the customer to just let them know its right up our alley and they will be very happy with what they get. I also mentioned that we wouldn't be the cheapest quote they got and that we'd probably be higher than the average quote. Well, we didn't get all 5, but they did award one to us. And we were slightly under the average regarding pricing. They were very happy with the parts. It was like a 50pc job we quoted at $4600. Again after that, they began dealing direct with us. I'm looking at the QuickBooks and see they've done just over $100k with me since that first order in 2012. I've actually got their most recent order in progress that is not included in that sum, 3 parts, 500pcs each, job total is just over $40k.
These are the bigger examples of how I can't exactly bash MFG Quote too much. There are other jobs from other customers that have come and gone, $1000, $4000, $10,000 here and there. Just weren't able to establish a long term connection with some.
To be fair, I pulled up the vendor side of QB to see how much MFG has cost me over the years. Since 11/25/2005 we have paid them a total of $34,750.
My total sales since starting this business in 2003 has been $6,559,309. Of that the total sales from customers discovered through MFG Quote is $3,653,702.
Today we are still a small job shop. I have 6 employees, have 5 CNC's including a Mazak Integrex i200ST I bought new last year, and am expecting delivery of another new Mazak due in February. My biggest daily challenges are managing employees (a job in itself), and trying to figure out how to reel in our lead time on a couple machines that are booked into March next year.
So those have been some of my experiences with the website. There are my numbers related to the MFG service. Judge for yourself if MFG is a scam. Everyone has there own "secret to success", and MFG might not work for everyone, but I think it has been a useful tool for me and my little shop. Personally, I think the more people that think its a scam or waste of money is great for people using it, because the competition is already kind of ridiculous on there. But I will still give an honest assessment of what I think of the service.
