Steel City Tool Works trims product line
Leaders from Steel City Tool Works made several announcements about the machinery manufacturer’s new direction at IWF 2014 in Atlanta, starting with the addition of Todd Damon, co-owner of Wood…
Leaders from Steel City Tool Works made several announcements about the machinery manufacturer’s new direction at IWF 2014 in Atlanta, starting with the addition of Todd Damon, co-owner of Wood Werks Supply in Columbus, Ohio, as a managing partner.
Steel City also formed a partnership with Axiom Precision, a CNC router supplier, to create the Axiom Tool Group, which will focus on product innovation.
Steel City presented a pared-down offering of its conventional woodworking machinery at IWF.
“We’ve trimmed our line from over 45 different products down to 21. There were too many options making it confusing for our distributers to sell our products,” says David Campagna, also a managing partner.
For example, Steel City had table saws with different motor configurations, table options and fence lengths, requiring distributors to carry eight models.
“It was a nightmare,” Campagna says. “We’ve pared that down to three table saws with different fence lengths available. Now, every one of our 21 products is class-leading with the best quality-to-value ratio in the industry.”
Steel City will continue to promote granite as its preferred tabletop material. “Being the first that came out with that type of top five years ago, it’s been a tremendous success and we want to press forward with that material because we believe it’s better and more stable than cast iron,” Campagna says.
Ultimately, the company’s goal is to keep ahead of the competition by launching new products.
“In the future we are going to be adding a lot more technology to our tools as well. We really just kind of want to revitalize an industry where the machines have existed since the post-war era. They haven’t really had any changes to them mechanically inside. So we’re looking forward at developing new products in the future and we have a lot on the drawing board,” Campagna says.
Contact: Steel City Tool Works. Tel: 630-812-1647. www.steelcitytoolworks.com.
This article originally appeared in the October 2014 issue.
