Opinition Required!- LC supplies

[erraticbaseline]

hello all,

I am looking at starting a business makeing and selling items suck as LC fittings (zero dead vols. blanking nuts etc etc) any fittings for LC or GC which can be made out of Stainless steel, PEEK etc etc.

Also when looking at the cost of a dead volume for instance, the ave. price sems to be £20-25 ish, i can make the same quality and sell for £15, making good profit!!

So... my Q is:

How likely would you be to buy them from me (combined 60-70yrs engineering and LC experience between us) if i could offer an identical product for less than everyone else? If you already know of cheaper please let me know!

Id be looking to offer free samples to new customers etc and cam make any unusual parts or one offs to order.

Sorry for the HUGE post, this seems to be a good place to get an idea of the viability of my plan.

MANY THANKS![/b]

[Kostas Petritis]

How likely would you be to buy them from me (combined 60-70yrs engineering and LC experience between us) if i could offer an identical product for less than everyone else?

It won't be easy as you will have to compete with companies that have thousands years of combined engineering and LC experience between them

[erraticbaseline]

Im sure thats what many people told Branson when he was starting out...

all part of the game

[erraticbaseline]

P.S to all the people in the US (as this seems to be a mainly US site!) i would be shipping there too.

[Mattias]

One problem is that these items represent such a minute portion of the cost of an analysis. No one will look for cost savings in this field when the reference standards, labour costs, columns, instrument qualifications etc costs thousands times more...

I think you should aim to invent something new - something that can add value. I have no idea what though... PEEK connections that work for UPLC?

[erraticbaseline]

thanks for the reply.

you may have a point, however a company that doesnt save money where it can doesnt deserve to be in business in my opinion as in general: more money saved without loss in product quality=more profit for themselves..

the plan is to start with a low vol. of products such as the aforementioned, then expand into new areas/RnD, i have had good interest from local places but wwas wanting a more widespread view.

luckily i am in the position where low turn over @ startup can be afforded as the new venture would be an extension to a already existing large engineering Co

cheers

Any more replies welcome!

[lmh]

There are lots of difficulties you will have to overcome.
For instance, there is risk. If I need a zero dead volume union, I probably need it yesterday, and I need one that works. If I order it from my favourite company, I know it will arrive tomorrow, and it will be exactly like the last one I bought. If I order it from a company I have never heard of, it might be weird when it arrives, and I have no idea how long it will take.
Also, cost has to include postage and packing. Quite often this is half the price of buying something like a zero dead volume union, so financially it makes sense for me to buy it as part of an order for vials/columns etc. from a manufacturer who can sell me everything in one go.

Having said that, you are quite right, the price of simple LC supplies is scandalous. How can it cost that much to make a hole in a piece of plastic?

There are some gadgets where you might be more successful. I'd like to see the following:

(1) A low-cost "fuse" for hplc systems, that I can put just upstream of a fluorescence detector, so when something downstream of the detector gets blocked, it isn't the flow cell that bursts.

(2) A flow-splitter that costs less than a small car. Until someone makes one, I will continue to mess around with a tee-piece and a long bit of tubing.

Another area where smaller engineering companies have done well is supplying accessories compatible with existing equipment, for instance specialist spray chambers that fit on existing LC-MS systems.

[Kostas Petritis]

Let's say that I wouldn't quit my present job for such a venture. I am also not sure that you are factoring all the costs associated with the production of such pieces in terms of capital equipment required, a place to rent, catalogues, marketing costs (to pass the message around) etc. There are also risks of the competitors lowering their prices to match yours etc. Finally, your argument about companies need to use every way to save money in order to stay or be in business won't fly. Maybe you will be able to convince the penny-hunters but these parts are not capital equipment and it will be up to the individual researchers/techniciens to decide the source to buy these... and I can tell you that everybody value their time more than a few backs in savings...

One of my contacts in Upchurch (now IDEX) was telling me that now they have to compete with companies from China that started making fittings, PEEK tubing etc. It hadn't work up to now for them as the base materials they used to start had a lot of impurities and either leeched or didn't have the mechanical resistance required (these were not his exact words). These companies will get it right at the end, but just something more to factor in your calculations...

Mattias, there are peek connections/fittings rated up to 15,000 psi or so for capillary columns and 1/32 valves through Valco...

[erraticbaseline]

Cheers for the responses, as for costs for premises etc we already have an engineering company with space and all the machinery required etc- this would simply be a venture run on from that, hence the low costs possible, we would be the manufacturer and supplier. This would help cut costs compared to Waters etc as they buy from a manufacturer (already in China) and sell on. all the figures have already been triple checked.

as for the theory about saving costs not flying, im not being funny- but im guessing you dont run your own business, if you can save money and not have it affect your resultant service/product then why not? many major and minor companies have 6Sigma/LEAN systems in place so that the blue collar worker can suggest simple things to save money- all the little things add up. The best thing is, the average lab worker (as i was) gets looked upon well by the boss if he is proactive in this way.

And hopefully, after a free trial sample/s the trust can be gained that even though a new supplier our product is reliable. delivery isnt a problem either for tooling for engineering work it is common place to order it from a warehouse (in Germany!) at 4pm and have it for 6:30am the next morning.

these small hurdles should be easy to over come as we have the business as a whole set in place (infrastructure, delivery service, stock holding ability etc etc)

Cheers for the opinions guys, keep em coming!

[SIELC_Tech]

From my experience in big pharma – nobody cares about saving few dollars. In 13 years in largest pharma company I never checked pricing on any of the supplies (and I was not alone). Big and medium companies are your main customers. For small items you just go to stock room and order it from VWR or Fisher representative. If you are not a preferred supplier (like VWR, Fisher and others) for the company, purchasing people are not going to buy your product.
Big supply manufacturers have enough exposure, sales people and margins too win “price warâ€

[Kostas Petritis]

My expreriences are the same with SIELC_Tech. I never had problem to buy from whoever ferrules/fittings and other small items. And as Vlad mentions we also have our prefered suppliers through B to B and other over my head mechanisms.

On the other hand, in the case of capital equipment small companies can compete as there is a call for a product with a number of specifications. Sole source justifications make it even more difficult to buy from the big guys or from your favorite distributer. Sometimes you need to be pretty creative on your specifications if you want one kind of instrument over another.

I once thought that the amount of stationary phase that you put in a capillary column (whatever the size) is so small that it would cost nothing to pack them (I have the technical skills to do so), QA/QC them and sell them for a fraction of the price you get them elsewhere. But I didn't even go there for relevant reasons...

[Bruce Hamilton]

As noted above, there have been a whole lot of suppliers of alternative fittings to replace established, expensive suppliers, such as Swagelok, Waters, etc.

Most have disappeared from our market, not sure about other countries. In some cases it was because their designs were inferior - also remember that many of the major fittings designs are actively protected.

One company that has probably grown faster than the overall market growth is Upchurch, because they designed substitute fittings and tubing that are more versatile, convenient, and cheaper than those from instrument suppliers.

I highly recommend getting the Upchurch Booklet " All about Fittings " which, I think, is also a free download from their WWW site. Every Chromatographer that uses instruments from multiple vendors should have access to that booklet.

I wouldn't touch clone products from a new supplier, basically because they may nor correctly perform important steps ( such as surface finish, complete degreasing, and passivation of SS fittings ).

There are also some substitute PEEK fittings and Tube ( from Asia? - but they aren't much cheaper ) available from some chromatography supplier catalogues. My experience was that some fail after reusing a few times. The cost of just one failure is far greater than the initial savings.

If you want to get into the market, you initially should try to partner a related business, eg selling instruments or columns.

Bruce Hamilton