Procuring machining business on the internet

Anyone use services such as MFG Bid for Work.com or Thomas Regional in an attempt to procure work for your shop through the internet? Any successes or a pure waste of time? Looking for feedback.

I am always looking for mutually beneficial business relationships and would welcome any opportunity to look at manufacturing your parts on a subcontract basis.

Leave contact info if interested.
I can email my company website address explaining our services.

Thanks....Mike

This has been talked about before,see link below:
www.practicalmachinist.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000666.html
I do not like the idea of paying up front for the right to bid on work.
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As I posted in the past we were "sucked" in to paying for subscribing to a service in order to bid on work. Paid about $700.00 for a 6 month "trial", got tons of r.f.q."s but NO work, maybe due to the amount of people bidding, I personally know of people that work for very little just to have something to do. Anyway, maybe this type of service works for some people but I will never try this again. Probably your best bet is to make some sort of brochure describing your business, put some samples in your briefcase, and beat on some doors. Works for me. Good luck!

MAZAKMAN,
WE SUBSCRIBED TO MFG BID FOR WORK ONLINE & OUR EXPERIENCE WITH IT WAS ALOT OF QUOTING WITH NO RESULTS.I WOULD SAY THE ONLY PEOPLE MAKING MONEY WITH IT IS THE PEOPLE WHO RUN THE SERVICE

Any success stories in relation to MFGquote?
Like to here about it..

I can give you guys some insight on why after all those quotes, you didn't see any jobs out of it.

Even though they send out the RFQ's, in many cases one company already knows they will get the job. They are the ones who successfully bid the job years ago and are tooled up for it.

I did a job this week where we ran some military parts. The print was drawn in 1943 and we have been making them for many years. The quantity was not large and we have the tooling sitting on the shelf ready to go. Do you think you'll underbid me when the cost to make the tooling would be at least 5-7,000 dollars? There is no way.

I'm not saying it is a total waste of time to bid those things. They may be a new part, or the company that was making them may have gone out of business. It is just that is a tough way to find jobs to keep you going.
We regularly get calls from our customers to quote these things. Some we do quote mainly as a favor to our customer. Most often, we respectfully refuse to waste the hours needed to quote them.
Les

Originally posted by Mazakman:
Anyone use services such as MFG Bid for Work.com or Thomas Regional in an attempt to procure work for your shop through the internet? Any successes or a pure waste of time? Looking for feedback.

I am always looking for mutually beneficial business relationships and would welcome any opportunity to look at manufacturing your parts on a subcontract basis.

Leave contact info if interested.
I can email my company website address explaining our services.

Thanks....Mike

Click to expand...

Mike I was one of the first users in the Thomas Regional Quote program. Lets put i this way.
After my first year of use, I recieved no work, researched all quotes after relaesed, and could not for the life of me secure even one. It seemed to me that the only persons who benefit from the process are the buyers.
They receive our quotes at no cost and may recieve as many as 75 at a time, and most always choose the cheapest one. There were times that I was not even able to purchase materials for the cost of the job. I admit is was a cheap price to pay for a sales rep however, there was no recovery for the many hours I spent quoting, or the 1700.00 I spent for the service. Maybe things have changed since 2 years ago. GOOD LUCK

E.Zielinski