Specialists should have a broad outlook despite their generally narrow product focus — and a broad-based clientele to match. For instance, selling adhesives is both a multi-industry business and a niche-product activity. It demands attention to detail and an affinity for experimentation. You have to be faster and smarter than the competition. How often, after all, is there a truly new glue?

Quite often, as it turns out, says the management team at Applied Products, Inc., in Minnetonka, Minn. New products and improvements to old ones comprise a healthy portion of the business at the adhesive systems and equipment distributor. A distributor that can fill the need for faster and less expensive bonding, and solve adhesion problems from scratch, will quickly get a faithful following.

The science of adhesion is growing as more customers look for ways to bond dissimilar materials, make longer lasting bonds and reduce the time needed to do so, according to president Skip Jewett. Of course, they also want to bond materials at a lower cost per unit than ever before. Requests come in for adhesives that remain bonded in high heat, and resist water and pressure.

"Mainly, we're a solutions company," Jewett says. "Customers want process engineering and manufacturing engineering. We have a very technical sales staff that most often thinks in terms of total systems."

Like most distributors around the country, Applied Products must continually prove its value and remove costs from the supply chain where possible, Jewett says.

"We have to raise our effectiveness while reducing customers' transactional costs and product costs. So, our value must be in efficiency as well as product expertise. It all counts toward our viability," he says.

The company is now researching e-commerce systems and realizes that EDI, a mainstay for supply chain electronics for many years, is no longer the answer, Jewett says.

"Where is this hub that will allow transactions between all customers and suppliers? It's not a reality," he says.

Vice president Bob Houston anticipates a breakout in supply chain technology that will utilize the Internet and allow software products to communicate with each other. Automotive companies who spearheaded EDI systems will probably lead this, he says.

"We think we have the details worked out about selecting a system that will solve our problems and customers' problems, but then a situation comes up that the software won't fulfill," Houston says. "So, we look at other choices and, it seems, we start over again."

Jewett knows customers and other distributors in the same situation: sitting in anticipation of the solution that will take care of all their online needs. And like others, he doesn't want to choose solutions only to find he needs additional equipment and support shortly thereafter. Even in the best of economic times, a full system will be an expensive investment and one that must be as complete as possible, Jewett says.

Production applications for adhesives become plant systems in themselves, says Jewett. Bonding depends on many different variables, including ambient temperature and humidity, so some processes are done in controlled environments, automated so people never touch the adhesive containers, machinery or finished products.

Packaging is the largest segment of industrial adhesive sales, he says. Sophisticated automatic systems that seal packages of many different materials require engineered solutions and technical repair and maintenance capabilities. Those functions are two of the company's specialties.

Testing and experimentation are also functions required by adhesives customers. Applied Products has set up a laboratory for adhesives testing. It is used for setting up customer applications and testing adhesives under controlled conditions, Jewett says. The lab can perform destructive and non-destructive testing of adhesive bonds.

Adhesives do much more than stick things together, says Dan Horner, adhesives division manager at Applied Products. The structure of the materials being bonded and the environmental conditions in which they must work are two of a dozen or more considerations for adhesive applications.

"In many cases materials must adhere without showing the bond line," Horner says.

They must be efficient, holding as well as or better than conventional fasteners in applications like bonding fiberglass in recreational vehicle bodies or marine products. Production personnel must be able to use them confidently and easily. Adhesives have some preferred characteristics for doing holding and sealing jobs on a number of materials.

"One of the best selling points of adhesives is they add nearly no weight to finished products, while mechanical fasteners add bulk and weight," Horner says. "New adhesives, hybrids like modified silicones, urethanes and epoxies, add structural strength and last virtually forever."

According to Loctite Corp.'s manager of OEM marketing, Mike Shannahan, distributors like Applied Products are ideal sites for equipment showrooms. Twenty-two distributors around the country have dedicated warehouse space for demonstrating Loctite's adhesive equipment and systems to their customers.

The room is part laboratory, part hands-on demonstration area, Shannahan says. Customers can bring in parts that need adhesion and Applied Products' personnel will experiment to find the best products for the purpose.

"A distribution professional trains to be the dedicated Loctite expert at the location," Shannahan says. "Distributors purchase the equipment and we provide the training."

The showroom program puts some of the kind of equipment Loctite has at its Rocky Hill, Conn., headquarters into customers' local areas.

Applied Products' new adhesive systems showroom went online this past summer, Horner says. The 20 x 20 showroom area has operating equipment from simple hot melt guns to an automated, UV conveyor system.

"We bring prospective customers in to actually try adhesives on their substrates, to see what materials work best," he says.

The room is also a materials laboratory where experiments determine the best system for the customer, he adds. There are hot glue formulas and liquid dispensing processes. One fiberoptic maker used the facility to determine the best way to adhere chip wafers.

Applied Products also has stocking locations in Kansas City, Mo., and Rancho Dominquez, Calif. Traveling between branches keeps Horner on the road much of the time, he says.

The company's equipment division offers automated solutions to problems from assembly to fluid handling to plant maintenance, including systems for protection from freezing and leaking of tanks and pipes, process controls, thermal control, and exterior building maintenance. The company's expertise in product assembly has a natural partner in pneumatic and hydraulic work holding and automation hardware, Houston says

"We have been working with this type of equipment since the early '70's. Valves and cylinders, other fluid power items and hot melt adhesives were all added to the mix in the '70's. We've been working on systems for a long time," Houston says.

Being a "specialty distributor of solutions" puts Applied Products in the enviable position of having a focus into the future based on a narrowly defined and acutely studied past, he says.

"We are not a general-line distributor or integrator. Our goal is to help customers make better products more efficiently," he says.

Jewett agrees.

"We go in on a plant audit and usually find a better way of doing things. Consulting, recommending, training — that process can't really be beat," he says.

Issues like ergonomics, speed and reliability of processes, workstation set-up and working safety are all taken into account, says Houston.

Big projects have rapidly become a large part of the company's engineering-propelled business. One of Applied Products' best customers, Larson Boats based of Minneapolis, is now making boats using a whole new method, Houston says.

"They have been a customer since 1971, but here they needed equipment from the manufacturing floor up," he says.

The process of making boats completely changed. Applied Products helped them build ergonomic work stations, bulk storage tanks and pumping equipment stations, and supplied torque-controlled air tools.

Pete Larsen, supervisor of maintenance and compliance at Larson Boats, said that ergonomics and environmental protection are aspects of all the purchasing the plant does.

Applied Products was very helpful in the area of torque tools and workstations. Larsen has had a working relationship with the company for about 25 years.

"Those workstations were brand new areas for us," Larsen says. "Boat building is a very old-fashioned business, with a lot of manual labor. We had to replace some of that labor with more help designed to be automated."

Larsen continues to buy structural adhesives and equipment from stock.

Applied Products can fill his needs when other projects come up, whether large or small, using its flexibility and project planning capabilities, he says.

The Larson Boat project involved the kind of planning management that Applied Products wants to become known for, Houston says. Projects like this can bring together six to eight vendors and a number of sub-assembly engineers, safety experts and adhesives experts like Horner, he says.

With all the emphasis on systems sales, Jewett and Houston are determined to be their suppliers' complete solution for product sales.

"We have told our suppliers we will sell all their products to all potential customers in all of our geography," Houston says.

That's a big challenge in an industry where product lines are constantly growing, but Applied Products is taking it on — of course — systematically.