Case 5: Fisk Alloy Wire, Inc. and Percon C-63chain; we’re not sure of the total percentage of Percon
that a plane contains. We think it’s somewhere between
5 and 10 percent.”
The older telecommunications applications of Fisk
Alloy’s shaped connector wire business had declined
due to both product change and the shift to offshore
manufacturing. The automotive market could replace this
sales volume, because automobiles had become increas-
ingly electronic. Current luxury cars contained, on aver-
age, 1,500 copper wires totaling about one mile in length.
To justify the use of copper alloy wire, shifting to a Percon-
type product would likely depend on new models with
high performance needs. General Motors was gearing up
to produce 30–60,000 Chevy Volt electric cars beginning
in 2010.^11 Toyota and Mitsubishi had also announced new
electric models. Fisk Alloy was already supplying major
automotive component programs with Percon wire.
In 2008, the earlier effort to qualify to supply the
military had resulted in Fisk Alloy receiving a DX order.
A DX order was an executive order from the White
House through the Department of Defense that stipu-
lated a supplier must fill the order on the highest pri-
ority basis. Fisk Alloy was required to produce copper
alloy wire for the actuators in the electronic door latches
for the armored Humvees used in Iraq at the expense of
other contracts.
Going Forward
Market potential looked positive for the immedi-
ate future. Brian Fisk forecasted that FAC would have
forty-nine refurbished stranders on line by 2010 and all
would be fully utilized by currently known demand. Eric
Fisk estimated the Percon 24 market alone at around
1.2 million pounds, or $30–$40 million dollars based
on known applications such as the Volt, the two major
aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus, as well asthe military. He felt it was “not big enough for the big
competitors, but large enough for the smaller specialty
players.” Brian noted that FAC was in a unique position:
We have to be careful what we wish for. Right now, we
don’t sell directly to commercial aerospace, but do we
really want to? They aren’t yet compelled to become cad-
mium free, but even if they were, with our current capacity,
if we landed the order we might not be able to fill it, and
that could actually be worse in the long term.
In addition, we have the attraction of being scarce.
Because our product is not readily available, there are
buyers who insist they want to buy from us. This sheer
lack of availability increases our attractiveness. That’s an
attractive position. It allows us to pick and choose in the
marketplace. No competitor thought it was worthwhile to
develop Percon 24, both due to the unknown market size
and the technical difficulty. Percon has met or exceeded
Phelps Dodge’s product and they don’t want to invest the
time and money to do what we have done. They have big-
ger fish to fry with volume copper.
Having a cadmium free product available when
RoHS hit made us look like boy geniuses, but it was really
a case of preparation meeting opportunity. We had ten
years of development in place when RoHS hit. And, while
some products might be exempt from RoHS, the WEEE
directive will drive manufacturing decisions for decades,
because the manufacturers will always be responsible
for product disposal, even years later, so the component
choices now are significant.
Qualified staffing was an issue, because according to
Brian, it took a full year for a machine operator to become
fully proficient. Finding machine operators with the abil-
ity to operate semi-automatic production machinery
with a high degree of accuracy was not easy. Fisk Alloy
hired machinists at $15 per hour in Oriskany and $20
per hour in Hawthorne. The difference was due to both
local employment conditions and the more highly skilled
workers available in New Jersey. Another potential prob-
lem the company foresaw was the need for knowledgeable
hands-on mechanics to rebuild and maintain machines.
Recently, Brian Fisk had to extensively rework a cus-
tom-ordered, nickel plating machine. Without Brian’s
knowledge and skill, the equipment would not work at
the required level. Finding skilled mechanics was a prob-
lem for such a mechanically-oriented, hands-on opera-
tion. Eric Fisk saw the biggest issue as not growing the
company, but how to grow Percon.
Our biggest problem will be managing growth for the next
five years. We’ve worked hard to create the opportunities
and now we need to manage them in accordance with ourExhibit 4 Airbus Orders and Deliveries 2000–2007^10YearAircraft
OrderedAircraft
DeliveredOrder
Backlog
2000 520 311 1,626
2001 375 325 1,575
2002 300 303 1,505
2003 284 305 1,454
2004 370 320 1,500
2005 1,111 378 2,177
2006 824 434 2,533
2007 1,458 453 3,538