Benjamin Franklin once said “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten”.
I know you would agree with this, as I'm sure all of us have experienced the disappointment of cheap and nasty products before.
When talking about creating quality products for your customers… you guessed it, you need quality tools. And if you can use those tools to make the process quicker and more efficient, it’s a bonus.
We spent some time with Richard Hayward from Monaro Timber recently. Richard runs a timber yard, accompanied by a large running workshop where his team creates custom timber products. There is also a Showroom and Monaro also provides tools and products to local tradespeople in Canberra. Richard was interested in Mirka products, but needed proof that Mirka was the real deal.
We gave Richard some tools and abrasives to try out. In conducting his independent testing, Richard’s goals were clear. “The big thing that we looked for was to have a product that I could back and support in my own workshop before we sold it to our clients”.
If Richard could save time and money in his workshop, he could confidently recommend these products to his customers, ensuring his customer’s satisfaction.
We asked Richard what the conclusion was after 3 months of testing - “We halved our throughput time on our products, and we dramatically reduced the number of consumables we needed to use”.
Mounting waste has been an issue for many businesses in recent years, each wanting to reduce their environmental footprint. As this concern continues to grow, lowering waste is an important factor, just as much as reducing time and cost.
“One of the big differences we found between Mirka and the other products we were using in the past is the cost of the product. We are currently using the Galaxy range, the price point where that one lands in, we get a dramatically improved performance compared to what we were using previously.”
Mirka Galaxy was launched by Mirka in 2022, and since then has become a favourite to many of our customers - not only because of the lower cost, but also because of the technology that has gone into it.
“The ceramic technology is infinitely better than what we were using before, we are far more efficient with our processes and our labour is right down, costs are down as well.” Richard’s satisfaction with Mirka Galaxy is evident.
Galaxy is a new self-sharpening abrasive, is fast cutting and much like the classic Abranet, is long-lasting because of its regenerative grains.
The testing was an important part of Richard’s decision making process. “Before we started to put the Mirka range on to market, we spent a couple of months testing the product in our shop, we went through our processes and compared the old product with the new one, and did some head-to-head comparisons, what we found is that we had a 5 grit system which we cut down to a 2 grit system, so straight away there’s three-fifths of the consumables eliminated and then the labour included with that. We dropped a dramatic amount of time out of the process and saved some serious money.”
Richard was not only impressed with Mirka abrasives, he also found a lot of value with Mirka’s brushless sanders - “When we first started using Mirka tools, and we were comparing them with some of the tools that we used in the past, those old sanders now stay on the shelf and we use Mirka exclusively in the shop now.”
It was a pleasure to visit Monaro Timber and see their sizable workshop and timber yard. We are always glad to assist customers in improving their efficiency and profit margins, and to also help add value to retailers wanting to provide quality products to their customers.
