Online sales of special cutting tools growing

With e-commerce well established and growing, consumers can purchase just about anything online — and that includes special cutting tools.

Tungsten ToolWorks, Huntington Beach, Calif., together with the other four members of Tool Alliance Inc., created a Web-based process for end users to design and purchase application- specific cutting tools about 6 years ago. Since then, the www.tungstentoolworks. com Web site has steadily gained acceptance, according to John Forrest, vice president and sales manager for Tool Alliance, also based in Huntington Beach. “It is growing at a very robust, steady pace,” he said.

Even if a customer phones in his specifications, the resulting tool is likely to be generated through the site, which Forrest said enables a special to be designed and quoted in about a minute. “If somebody calls me and asks for a particular tool, I go to Tungsten ToolWorks and do it myself for them,” he said, adding that the site generates a tool rendering with the pertinent specifications, price and delivery date.

Forrest noted, though, that the site is geared primarily for designing modified standards, such as when a different diameter or cutting length is required. “A lot of these requests are for fairly simple tools,” he said. Those tools represent the bulk of specials through the metalworking industry.

On the other hand, complex specials that have, for example, a unique compound radius or a specific grind that’s called out in a blueprint need to be designed and quoted in the traditional manner. “There’s no way Tungsten ToolWorks can integrate that into its process,” Forrest said.

While online sales of special cutting tools is still a relatively new concept, other companies are starting to offer the service. According to Bill Greenleaf, marketing manager for Greenleaf Corp., Saegertown, Pa., the toolmaker is planning on offering a special-tool-ordering component in 2008 to its recently launched Global Support Center at www.greenleafglobalsupport.com. “It’s going to be more for modified standards than full-blown specials,” he said. “It’s an effort on our part to be able to offer as much as we can to our customers online so they can have a convenient and easy experience working with Greenleaf.”

Most toolmakers, however, will most likely continue to design and sell specials in the traditional way while providing customers the option of requesting quotes online, especially when not typically selling tools directly to customers. One such manufacturer is Lincoln, Calif.-based Robb-Jack Corp., which conducts “99.9 percent of our business through industrial distribution,” said Dave Baker, company president.

He noted that roughly 40 percent of its cutting tools are specials and about 10 percent of those are quoted using the company’s online RFQ form. When someone does request a quote through Robb-Jack’s Web site, the toolmaker provides the end user with a choice of distributors to buy from. “Most of our customers already buy our tools [and others’] through distributors,” Baker said. “We’re not unusual.”

—Alan Richter

(Originally published in the September 2007 issue of CUTTING TOOL ENGINEERING.)