How we kept a sputtering target customer, even after it went out of business.

“How do I know you do good work?” That’s a question I was asked the other day from a potential customer. Since the majority of our customers come from referrals, I don’t get asked that very often.  The project we were discussing involved sputtering targets, so I started telling him about a sputtering targets customer we had for 10 years, but in several incarnations.

I explained that this company had been a customer of ours for about six years, which in itself, says something about the quality of our work. However, that wasn’t the best part of the story.

When we first started making sputtering targets for this company, we worked directly with their research engineer to develop their targets.  Through the years, they acquired a larger sputtering system, and we adapted to meet their changing requirements for larger sputtering targets.

After about six years, the company was sold to two different companies, one in the United States with a branch location in Thailand and one in Japan.

Does that sound like it’s the end of the story? Well, it’s not.

We continued supplying both the new foreign and domestic locations of the former company for another four years. In fact, I can honestly say we would probably still be working together but, as it often happens in business, technology changed and there was no longer demand for their product.

So how can a potential customer know we do good work? The best way I can answer that question is to tell him about all of the customers who have been with us for over 10 years.  Thinking back, that number is close to 20!