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Business Smarts

How to Buy Your Next Coating

Whether you are shopping for a new coating, evaluating a coating you have in use or on the brink of ditching your current coating, three factors should be considered: Service and Support (50%) Product Quality (35%) Product Cost (15%) How people measure the importance of each factor is typically how they fail in the decision-making process. Based on my decades of experience in this indus...
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Who Wants to Tighten Up Cash Flow?

Charles “Red” Scott is credited with saying, no doubt in his signature Texas drawl, “Cash ain’t cash until it’s cash.” The famous corporate leader, who died in 2013, was talking about cash flow. Staying competitive and excelling in your industry require a strong cash flow system. Without one, you are at risk of unnecessarily spending money on things that aren’t critical or urgent. With a sy...
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Sales Are Up! 4 Ways to Ensure Your Finishing Line Keeps Up

With the upsurge in the economy, our customers have recently experienced steady sales growth. Generally, a rise in sales equates to positive gains. However, attaining higher production targets on the finishing line can lead to changes and disruptions that hurt the bottom line. Here are 4 ways you can routinely evaluate your finishing line design plan to help maintain your business objectives. 1. ...
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2015 Trends: Color & Cabinetry

Get this year’s top design styles, with a focus on wood. When consumers start asking for it, you will be ready. (Download a PDF of the trends here.) 2015 COLOR OF THE YEAR: CORAL Coral Reef, a vivacious hue, is AcromaPro’s Color of the Year 2015. Upbeat and optimistic, Coral Reef celebrates a time for renewal and is the perfect mélange of pink, orange and red that can be used to liven up any sp...
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2014 Recap: 4 Topics to Promote 2015 Finishing Excellence

The last six months of Accessa’s blog focused on getting your finishing business ready for 2015. Here are eight of the best stories, organized by topic, and summarized for your browsing pleasure. Four of the most important high-level topics any finisher needs. It’s finishing wisdom from the Accessa Coating Solutions blog. Get caught up— begin 2015 with a great finish. Topic 1—STRATEGIC ALLIANCES ...
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Colorful Outlook Improves for Finishers

The future looks bright for the coatings industry. There appears to be plenty of opportunity for finishers ready to make the leap. As I write this post, a very positive November jobs report was released. Another indication we’re getting the economy back on track. More than a half million jobs were added in the past two months alone. This is more than the estimated 200,000 a month needed to keep...
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Cost & Delivery: Opportunity for Finishers

Finishers focus on quality, cost and delivery—“QCD”—for good reason. It’s a popular metric and, if you can do it efficiently, it keeps customers happy. Trouble is, from a management point of view, “quality” always seems to trump cost and delivery. It’s probably because poor quality is so unacceptable. Well, I agree with the latter, but not so fast. Here’s the problem: There’s more potential fo...
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Forecasting 2015 Manufacturing Costs for Coatings Industry

People who seem to make the smartest long-term buying decisions in the coatings industry and basic materials industry aren’t lucky or smarter than everyone else. They are more likely diligent forecasters in tune with the market and how it’s affecting costs. STABILITY FOR NOW Right now, and in particularly in the last 12-24 months, manufacturing costs and related costs have stabilized somewhat in...
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3 Better Questions to Ask Industrial Coatings Vendors

When it comes to evaluating finishes and vendors of industrial coatings, it’s not necessarily what you ask. It’s how you ask it. Most purchasers, finishing managers and others whose daily lives on the job can be affected—negatively or positively—by the coating they are using are concerned with how well a product is going to perform, how much it’s going to cost and the quality of the vendor’s s...
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Customized Solutions, One Customer at a Time

The very notion of a “solution” has become overused and overpromised, like “quality” and “service.” As a result, “customer solutions” echo will-fit parts. Sure it’s gonna-kinda fit, but will it work? Will it solve your immediate problem and get you the results you need? Is there anybody assuring you that it will? Do you feel important, or are you all alone on this one? True customized solut...
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