It's more than 1,300 miles from Alamo Iron Works in San Antonio to Windsor Factory Supply in London, Ontario. But in the world of distributors specializing in pipe, valves and fittings, there's an almost next-door-neighbor feel when it comes to common concerns and industry-related issues.

Richard Ochoa is the vice president of purchasing and product sales for Alamo. Duncan Brown is president of Windsor. Both have some good news (construction) and bad news (steel). In construction, both Texas and Ontario have seen housing continue to do well, as companies move to those areas. A new Toyota plant is being built in San Antonio, Ochoa reports, while the Big Three auto makers have invested more in Canada, Brown says.

More than 125 years ago, Alamo started out as a steel foundry. Today, though, roughly half its business is from its industrial supply division, while the other half is steel fabrication. Ochoa cites an example of the price-supply tug of war he faces with steel.

"Because of the cost having doubled in some cases, the value of our inventory went up," he says. "But the actual [amount of steel] we have is only up slightly."

Concerns aside, Ochoa points out that the steel work Alamo offers helps its PVF sales.

"[Steel] helps our MRO products. Customers that buy steel also need [related] products," he says. "It's what we consider one of our unique selling opportunities. We can sell steel, but we can also sell the products that are used in the processing of that steel."

Windsor also has its steel concerns.

"We would only quote price for three or four days," Brown says, referring to 2004. "That was the longest we could hold pricing. It would change that fast on us."

Both companies had strong years in 2004, with Ochoa describing Alamo's as "excellent," but adding that "things slowed down a bit more than normal in December. And in January ('05), we didn't see the usual quick bounce back. So it's [been] a little softer than normal."

One thing Alamo did in '04 that worked well, Ochoa says, was to create "a separate sales force to attack larger corporations with our multi-state presence... We've tried to broaden our scope and get more into solution selling geared towards large corporate accounts."

In Canada, recent years haven't been quite as difficult as in the States, Brown says.

"We didn't see the troubled times they did in the U.S.," he says. "The manufacturing stayed remarkably steady. There wasn't a lot of growth in those two or three years, but there were a lot of plants being built in 2004 which should bear fruit in 2005 and 2006."

Both have other concerns, with Ochoa pointing to U.S. manufacturing.

"With regards to domestic manufacturers—there aren't any," he says, laughing slightly. "There used to be some real strong domestic players, but they're just not around anymore. It's a little scary."

While saying he's "quite positive for 2005," Brown has the Canadian dollar value, versus the American dollar, to watch. As of mid-January, he said, "about $1.17 Canadian would buy a U.S. dollar," adding that he has to be wary of "getting on a roll and then having the dollar go crazy on us."

jnowlan@reedbusiness.com