WILWOOD BRINGS TYPE III MILITARY-SPEC HARD ANODIZING HOME
found out that we do our own E-coat in-house and approached us to E-coat for them. But that would quickly turn us into a job shop and knock down quality control of our own product, and we already have so much product to keep ourselves busy. This facility was set up to cater to our own needs, not anyone else’s.
How difficult was it to pass all of the tough regulatory standards put forth by state of California with regard to chemical use?
When it came to anodizing, I think the popular answer would be to say “yes, the state of California drove us nuts,” but they really didn’t. The metal refinishing industry has grown so much and so quickly, that today’s practices and machinery make it much easier to conform to environmental guidelines. I think it was a bit different when it came to the E-coat, just because a lot of the inspectors weren’t too familiar with the process, and we were able to familiarize a couple of them with it.
A big question on a lot of minds is the retail number on the calipers that feature the Type III Mil-spec hard anodizing. Will there be a noticeable increase in price over the Type II calipers?
That’s not on my side, maybe Mike can chime in on this. I can say that when we were going through the process of setting everything up, the cost to run Type II and Type III were just about the same. We might spend a little bit more on our utility bills, but we are saving so much time and money not having to outsource these parts anymore. It really is just an added value to the customer that has been passed on by Wilwood.
From another process that we use on our racing caliper line called Quicksilver or nickel finish, now that we’ve brought those same calipers over to the in-house hard-anodize department, the caliper retail costs have gone down. This value that Phil mentioned just isn’t being passed on to our race customers, but to our street performance customers as well. So even though this is race technology, all of our customers are getting it at the same cost.
That’s awesome. Sounds like a huge bonus to your customers. Can these calipers with the hard anodizing be ordered now, or will they be available in the near future?
We’re full bore on these, and they are ready now. We may still have some old Type II stock in our inventory, but I don’t think we’ve paid anybody else to anodize anything Type II in nearly eight months.
I was actually thinking it’s been closer to a year. I would like to say our inventory is now sitting at about 80% new stock, with the other 20% being low-number calipers that we are somehow looking to reuse or discount, so we can turn that stuff over to customers who need them.
With show season and SEMA quickly approaching, I’m sure there will be a lot of truck builders looking forward to incorporating Wilwood calipers into their projects. Is there anything else that you guys would like to add?
One thing that has been great about getting the in-house anodizing up and going here at Wilwood is setting one single set of standards for both the race and street calipers. In the anodize department, it has been so much easier and efficient to keep everyone involved in the production at the same high level, instead of going between two different quality levels like other places I have worked with. It’s great to ship the same high-quality product out to racing fans and street performance enthusiasts alike.
Here at Wilwood we pride ourselves on educating our customers on why our products are going to work for them, and we’re happy to have found an opportunity to deliver race-quality calipers to our street performance customers without a price increase.
Sounds like it’s a win/win all the way around. Looking forward to seeing the new calipers at the shows and in the streets. Thanks for your time, guys.