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Firm taps the direct-to-consumer metal fabrication market

An entrepreneur tackles the direct-to-consumer market

Imagine you’re a do-it-yourselfer who needs a piece of sheet metal—not just any piece, but one cut and bent to a specific dimension. You go to your local hardware super store and pick up the sheet metal blank in stock, either in cold-rolled steel or aluminum, maybe stainless steel if you’re lucky. You may have a choice between a flat or tread surface, perhaps a mesh of various kinds, but that’s about it. Alternatively, you could go online and order metal that’s sheared to a rectangular dimension.

As a DIYer, you may have a welding machine in your toolroom, maybe an English wheel for forming curved contours, but you probably don’t have a leaf brake or other machine to form a tight-radius bend. So you probably improvise and saw off what you can, and then perhaps hammer the sheet over an anvil, work table, or other jerry-rigged setup.

Meanwhile, a few miles away in an industrial park, a custom fabricator is laser cutting a nest of different parts on a large sheet, one of similar grade and thickness to the workpiece you’re struggling to cut and bend in your garage.

Why couldn’t that custom fabricator serve that struggling DIYer directly? Well, in some cases, the fabricator does. Many small fab shops, particularly in rural communities, work with neighbors they know. But those DIYers aren’t the shop’s bread and butter, and for three big reasons.

First, the market is difficult to reach. Most DIYers probably don’t know a thing about laser cutting or punching; and when people say, “press brake,” they don’t think of a metal bending machine; they instead envision someone “pressing on the brake.” If a DIYer steps foot into a local fab shop and asks for help, he probably knows someone who knows someone in the fabrication business.

Second, metal fabrication has high capital equipment costs and a high barrier to entry. Launching a fabrication business primarily focused on the DIY market would be a very risky venture. Without any large orders to sustain the business, the shop’s expensive machines would probably sit idle for much of the time.

Third, prepping the job takes more time than the actual cutting and bending. The DIYer probably doesn’t have a CAD drawing, and even if he does have a drawing file that could be imported into CAD software, it most likely needs to be cleaned up. This takes time and (hence) money that could make the job a money loser, especially if the DIYer wants only one or a handful of pieces. A fab shop may do these jobs as favors, but they’re no way to build a business.

Or are they? Peter Keshishian thinks so.

The entrepreneur launched MetalsCut4U in 2015, and through its website the business processes more than 100 orders that come directly from consumers every month. Keshishian launched, built, and sold a similar business in Germany, and he’s hoping to replicate that success in the U.S.

So how is Keshishian overcoming the challenges behind business-to-consumer metal fabrication? First, he’s marketing his website so that DIYers looking for cut sheet metal can find him. Thanks to the internet, a DIYer no longer needs to know someone in fabrication to learn a thing or two about sheet metal cutting and bending. Still, Keshishian conceded that reaching the consumer market remains a challenge, and order growth has been slower than expected. “The internet is a competitive place,” he said.

Second, he’s contracted with software developers to build an ultra-simple configure-to-order platform that continues to evolve and offer more features. For instance, if a DIYer needs a sheet metal cut with an interior cutout, he now can specify the placement and basic dimensions. Other shapes, like semicircles and certain formed components, also are in the works.

The order process is simple, built for the average consumer and not the average engineer. Say you want to cut and bend a hat channel. On the interface, you choose the material (aluminum, stainless steel, or steel), surface type (mill finish or tread plate), thickness (0.125, 0.063, or 0.032 inch), then specify the dimensions for each leg. You choose the quantity, after which you get a price immediately.

Accept the order, and MetalsCut4U sends your order to a local custom fabricator in Florida, which within 15 business days will send your order (which has to be within certain size and weight limits) via UPS. If you don’t find the shape you’re looking for online, you can fill out a separate online form for custom orders.

“You can build your piece from scratch with unique, specific measurements,” Keshishian said. “That’s our unique position in the market.”

The company’s software basically automates order processing, which overcomes a big challenge behind the business model. He’s eliminated the tedious prep work behind every small job. The approach is entirely different from the web-based quoting platforms being developed in conventional business-to-business custom fabrication, offered either through third parties or proprietary systems developed and owned by the fabricators themselves. Those systems assume the user has some manufacturing experience and knows how to make a drawing in CAD. MetalsCut4U’s customer has a napkin sketch, if that.

MetalsCut4U doesn’t own laser cutting machines or press brakes but instead contracts with a local fabricator that processes these small direct-to-consumer orders alongside its bread-and-butter business-to-business orders. That said, would MetalsCut4U ever grow to the point where it would buy its own laser cutting machines and press brakes?

“No, that’s not the business model,” Keshishian said. “There are so many metal fabricators out there who try to optimize their equipment. And the metal fabricator I work with optimizes its equipment for the work I send.

“And that fabricator is completely locked in to my backend systems. The second I receive the order and confirm that it’s paid, the fabricator gets the same order confirmation and can start working on that order.”

MetalsCut4U and businesses like it could help fabricators reach a previously untapped, and potentially huge, DIY market. Considering how mature the metal fabrication business is, “untapped market” isn’t a phrase you hear very often.

MetalsCut4U, www.metalscut4u.com

About the Author
The Fabricator

Tim Heston

Senior Editor

2135 Point Blvd

Elgin, IL 60123

815-381-1314

Tim Heston, The Fabricator's senior editor, has covered the metal fabrication industry since 1998, starting his career at the American Welding Society's Welding Journal. Since then he has covered the full range of metal fabrication processes, from stamping, bending, and cutting to grinding and polishing. He joined The Fabricator's staff in October 2007.