NEWS from NORM

It is with mixed emotions that we enter the final month of our fiscal year. We are thankful for the increase in sales but concerned about our rising cost of goods.  Everywhere we turn it seems as though we are hit with price increases.  This of course will force us to make some adjustments to our prices as well but it will be impossible for us to increase our prices at the same rate of increase as the price of aluminum.

The introduction of Asian OCTANORM® copies into the United States will certainly force us to absorb some of the increased costs, but it still remains to be seen what this will do to the cost of our product liability insurance.  We have already addressed one isolated incident whereby a customer attempted to save a few bucks by purchasing Chinese extrusions that were seemingly identical to OCTANORM®.  Since the Chinese system was limited to a small number of components our customer felt it was important to maintain their relationship with our company in order to access the large variety of accessories we offer.

On the advice of our attorneys we were forced to end our relationship with this customer for liability reasons.  While an extrusion may look similar, a close examination of the tolerances will show that it is a dangerous practice to mix OCTANORM® products with foreign copies.  Our quality control department works full time to examine every component that enters our building and you would be surprised to see the amount of product that gets rejected upon inspection. 

Guaranteed quality and fast delivery are advantages worth paying for.  There are costs associated with innovation and not with imitation.  Get the original advantage.  It’s worth it!  And thank you for your loyalty.

Norm Friedrich

President