Website MFGQUOTE.COM looks good?

[hershberger]

What do you think guys? is this worth pursuing?

[andre]

ray try reposting the link.
Ichecked it out . My motto is anything free is worth trying. Advertising any ways

[steve4460]

Hi Guys

you will not find much work for the shopbot there . This is for the big iron guys .
Paying $2000.00 a year is a bit much for my tast .
They will not let you cancel once you signed on the bottom line , and then you find out that there is not much for the bot.Be carefull most of the work on there is turning things anyway , and then you got to make the stuff for pennis and by the thousands .They don't have much in the woodworking category . Just my two cents.

[kevbo]

I will 2nd Stephan's Experience on this - MFQQuote is geared mostly toward metal working and high volume type production. Woodworking projects are few and far between.

The site is only free to buyers and for you to 'try' out. You can't actually use it to bid on projects for free.

The woodworking projects that show up are usually turnings (lathe type) or bending/veneer types, and CNC specific projects are extremely rare. Most of the buyers are looking for the cheapest bids only ie. Stephans' comment on making stuff for pennies by the thousands.

The site is free for the "buyers" and as such, MFQ does not control the quality of projects /buyers coming through there, or the type of information available. It could be a reputable, high profile company with realistic budgets and detailed shop drawings, or a basement woodworker looking to you to improve his projects and make products to sell on ebay with shoe string budgets, napkin sketches, and leave all the details for you to figure out. Then there are the "in between's" which I'm finding the most time consuming. This group tends to have some quality drawings or images, but you end up spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to do the actual project so you can put in an accurate bid.

Once you sign up (the free part) and before you commit, the sales folks will call you and do everything they can to get you to sign the dotted line. The fees they ask do not seem to be set in stone and will change daily. They seem to continually offer 'time limited' price points for you to start. One week they'll say they have a special offer for you but it is only good until friday, the next week it will be something else. At least it usually gets lower the longer you hold out.

It's not all negative however. I will say the following Positive comments about the site:

The service folks are quality people who will work with you and do the best they can to get you 'up to speed' and make you as marketable as possible. You will not be left hanging to figure out the site / process on your own once the sales team stops calling.
If you are lacking in a web presence and/or search engine and you consider some of the membership fee as advertising and web presence, you will get a personal page you can edit as you wish, add text and photographs, etc, and if done correctly, you can climb significantly high in some query results because the big engines crawl their site frequently.

The site is not commission based and as such, you can land a large project and pay the same membership fee to MFG. And because of that, they do not 'hide' the clients from you. You can establish a relationship with the client / potential client directly.

I think to sum it all up, I will say this: if you are a small business, and you have a budget for advertising and sales, make that work for MFG and *then* you'd have nothing to lose. And reality is this: if you manage to land 1 or 2 large projects with turnaround times you / your shop can handle, you could very quickly have stable work and potential for growth if you continue to land projects.

[jhicks]

I've been watching this site and getting teaser leads for over 3 years. Have been to their local meetings and agree the concept is good, people helpful and site is active. Unfortunately even after dialing in my profile with the account reps, the leads that I see are never anything I would make with rare exception and then vey low volume pilots. More metal machining and turning with some plastic but overall I have yet to see how I could justify even a $1,000.00 investment. Maybe others have a different view but I've hoped this resource could find and focus on wood, plastics, and light metals demand with tolerances that are achieveable but no luck to date.

[kevbo]

I finally got a result which verified what I *thought* was the case but could never actually verify or say anything because of NDA's on MFGquote.com website terms.
A recent project was awarded to a Chinese manufacturer on the MFGquote website for the cost of what the materials would have been to do the project in the US. And this it not an exaggeration. In the end,the buyer contacted me saying the Chinese company did not even have the equipment to do the job! So despite MFG having both a Europe and China 'version' of the website, they allow and do have plenty of Chinese manufactures involved in the US version of the site. In 2002, the CEO (current) Mitch Free wrote how he was sickened to see work go offshore and would do all that he can to protect US manufacturers. Now, from his offices in China (yes, it's true), his sickness is in remission from the billions of dollars his company has made.
Heed the warnings fellow small / mid size US woodworkers - Do not join MFGquote.com They will milk you out of your money, they have no early termination clauses in their contracts, and their numbers for the 'awarded' woodworking projects are not able to be backed up with any proof to you. MFGquote.com is geared to offshore manufacturers and large businesses only, and Mitch Free has stated that it is in his primary interest to keep Chinese manufacturers as his priority. Mitch and his company are a disgrace to the US manufacturer.

[myxpykalix]

As a casual observer, it only sounds reasonable that if some agency got me a mfg job they should be paid on a commission basis and you shouldn't have to pay "dues" to a club that you have no chance to get picked for a job due to the stacked deck.