A lot of times companies don’t add new vendors to their line up because there’s a lot of work involved in getting set up to do business. The vendor requires paperwork, the customer requires paperwork, sales staff needs to be trained… and of course in the case of Arc-Zone.com® we need to add products to our website. Then there’s the “getting to know you” period when the vendor and the customer adapt to each other’s way of doing business.

Arc-Zone.com® just hooked up with Revco Industries to carry their line of high-quality safety apparel. From quality leather safety apparel and BSX Xteme protective wear with style and welding gloves galore, we’re adding to our webstore daily.

One of the most exciting lines is the Women’s Welding Wear, offering protective gear that is tailored for a woman’s body.

In addition to offering great quality welding safety products, and information about Leather Quality and finding your Glove size, Revco is easy to do business with!

When we placed our first order, within minutes we received a confirmation indicating availability and ship date. And the best part is, they delivered!

We hope our customers are as excited as we are about this new line of welding safety gear. Not only will you stay protected, you’ll look good.

I got a call the other day from a prospect who was researching the benefits of using a tungsten grinder verses a wheel grinder. He came across our site, read our tech articles and then called.

He said “We’re a couple of farmers that have been trying to do TIG welding for a couple years and have never gotten good at it.”

A friend told them about Arc-Zone.com and the Sharpie Tungsten Grinder.

He told me they had a little fabshop and a small dirt track in southern Indiana.

“What’s the name of the track?” I asked.

“You probably never heard of it– TriState Speedway,” he said.

(more…)

Is it me or are there more and more internet crooks out there? I’m not talking about phishing schemes to steal your personal information, or the technically savvy computer hackers, but I am talking specifically about companies — people — stealing copyrighted material from our website. And it’s frustrating.

In the last year we’ve had several companies grip pictures and copy — words written by our technicians — and claim the content as their own. It has cost us several thousand dollars, not to mention hours of our time, to have the stolen material removed from competitors’ websites.

The first time we found our copyrighted information on another company’s website (brwelder.com) I contacted the company president directly by letter. When I got no response, I called him up and asked him, as a fellow small business owner, to remove the copyrighted material. First he told me everything on the internet was free for the taking and when I informed him it was actually a violation of copyright laws, he said, “So what. Sue me.”

Suing, and paying hefty legal fees was not the route we wanted to go, so instead we filed a DMCA Copyright Infringement Claim with the major search engines and with his web host company. The result was his websites were banned. When he received the notifications from Google and Yahoo, he called me crying about how tough business is.

So tough apparently he couldn’t take the time to write his own copy or take photos of the products he sells.

Not too long ago we noticed that Weldingsupply.com gripped some pictures and copy. They didn’t even remove our custom logo from the part! Then they posted it on their own website with a prominent copyright disclaimer. Of course it’s listed for less than our selling price… but we actually had the part to shoot the picture in the first place!

Our most recent find was at the aglevtech.net website. You may be familiar with Aglevtech as a low cost eBay seller. The site features two pages of content written by our technical experts, including a list of links to professional welding associations and manufacturers around the world in addition to a list of links to online welding articles. Now I’m not saying they couldn’t have found that information, however, what they did was replicate, word for word, the descriptions and the links. They didn’t even try to hide it because they obviously don’t think they did anything wrong.

Companies like those listed above are not really competitors, more like followers that can’t think for themselves. I would not buy from any of those companies.

When you’re looking for a company to do business with, be sure to consider: is there a phone number on their website? An address? Will you know who to contact if you have questions before you make a purchase? How about if you ordered the wrong part? Or it’s defective? Are the warranty and exchange terms clearly stated? How do they handle shipping? Do they know anything about the parts they are selling? Do they even stock the parts they are selling?

Conducting business with integrity is part of the culture that we encourage at Arc-Zone.com. We may not always be perfect, but we are honest and we don’t steal. Arc-Zone.com®, has a prominent Contact Us form and our contact information is on EVERY page of our website, including a toll free number. And, our return policy and shipping terms can be easily found as well. To me the key to business is to have repeat customers — people that would refer their friends and co-workers.

Hopefully you won’t have the same problems we have had, but in case you do, here are some links to resources so you can protect yourself:

United States Copyright Office.
Copyright Law of the European Union
World Intellectual Property Organization
Filing a DMCA Copyright Infringement Claim with Google
Filing a DMCA Copyright Infringement Claim with Yahoo
Chilling Effects Clearinghouse

More and more consumers are looking to do business with companies that are environmentally responsible. This article from the LA Times (free registration required to read the whole thing) points out some of the difficulties consumers have in choosing companies that are responsible.

It’s not easy being a green consumer: With no unified product standard, what constitutes ‘nature-friendly’ depends on the group doing the certifying. Buyers can be fooled.

By Abigail Goldman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 5, 2007

Reliable household products get the Good Housekeeping seal of
approval. Safe electronics earn Underwriters Laboratories’ UL mark.

But consumers and investors looking for environmentally responsible
products and services have to trudge through a swamp of seals,
claims and certifications — only some of which designate
independent, verified environmental accomplishments….read more..

Even though we are a California company, as a welding supplier, Arc-Zone doesn’t offer any certified organic products… There are, however, several things that we do that we hope makes a difference.

1. We recycle.
Sounds simple enough, but believe it or not, like in many business districts, recycling is not mandatory as it is for residential zones. Our building does not offer recycling, but we don’t let that stop us. Our company founder Jim Watson, aka Joe Welder, actually collects all the plastics and cans from the warehouse and even from our lunchroom and hauls it home. We’ve even seen him picking through the trash. For every recycled item found in the trash the guilty party has to pony up a dollar for the office kitty.

2. Re Purposing.
Also known as re-using. I can’t tell you how old some of our file folders are! I swear some of the folder labels are layered an inch thick! And the scrap paper we generate…. We shred it and use it for packing material.

3. The Internet.
Our website is our catalog. I don’t know why more people don’t use online catalogs. We can update information- including pricing– regularly, and we can add an element of interactivity (audio, video) that you just can’t get in a print catalog.

To showcase our efforts, we made a company video– thanks to Filmmaker Manny Manatad, our new “Shipping Guy.” We’ve entered the video into the Ecospot contest over at Current TV. We’ll keep you posted if we make the finals!

Arc-Zone.com was fortunate to be selected by the Cal State San Marcos Business School to work with two teams of their best and brightest graduating seniors on two vital areas of our business –

Marketing: What our customers think of our service to date, and where the growth opportunities are, and

Operations: Internal processes and procedures

Jim Hamerly, the professor overseeing the marketing project, came into the Zone first for a visit – He is awesome – his educational background includes extensive study in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science– BS from MIT, MS from UC Berkeley and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon! His impressive in-the-field training includes stints at Xerox, Netscape, AOL to name a few.

Our student team is an impressive group as well, bright and professional. They enthusiastically jumped in and began an analysis of our current customer base, and a survey! So don’t be surprised if you get a call.

Our Operations Team is headed up by Professor Gary Oddou. His education includes a BA in French, an MA in English as a Second Language and a PhD in Organizational Behavior from Brigham Young University. He also has an impressive academic background, which includes a long list of publications and honors.

The student team, another group of eager professionals, has been in our office interviewing us and culling through our in-house how-to manuals with the goal of helping us formalize our procedures.

We’re very excited about working with these groups. Continuous improvement is important to the culture at Arc-Zone.

This blog offers a fresh and brutally honest perspective on welding industry news, reviews of innovative companies and products, and profiles of those who are making an impact in the metal fabrication industry.

What we hope you’ll find: tips, tidbits, perspectives you won’t find elsewhere, as well as insights, original interviews and more that should be of interest to the metal fabrication market worldwide. We promise to keep the content fresh, and interesting.

This Blog is primarily written by Jim Watson (aka Joe Welder), a master fabricator, welding equipment designer, industry professional, online distributor, and owner of Arc-Zone.com, Inc.

Contact us with your suggestions, comments, corrections, errors, praise or flames. We will be editing comments for SPAM, and inappropriate content (you know what that means!)