All Converters Not Created Equal

Recently I came across an entry on another blog where a question was posed to RFID label converters about whether or not they consider themselves manufacturers or service providers. According the author the vast majority of RFID label converters consider themselves manufacturers only and he didn’t understand why. I think I can help shed some light on the subject. All converters are not created equal - it is very difficult to so narrowly define oneself as simply either a manufacturer or a service provider when there are so many different types of both kinds of companies. For example, there are custom label manufacturers (such as Metalcraft) and there are manufacturers of stock or off-the-shelf label products. The difference is that we pay very close attention to the specific application and the environment in which it will be placed - chemical exposure, temperature, type of surface it will be applied to, etc. - and tailor our products to that application instead of producing the same product regardless of the application. We take a lot of pride in the customization of our products and because of that fact we consider ourselves a “value-added converter” with nearly 60 years of label converting experience going into each and every label order. We even customize a lot of the equipment used to convert our label products as seen in this image of our one-of-a-kind RFID converting machine.

In the same way not all service providers are created equal. I suppose the knowledge and experience we provide our customers can be considered a consultancy service so in that way we could also be considered a service provider. However, we don’t consider ourselves a service provider because we do not offer the entire package – hardware, software, etc. Instead we have an established network of integrators with whom we work with to be able to provide the total solution to the end user. We feel this enables us to provide the greatest amount of flexibility to our potential customers.

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