Another kind of marketing produces metalcasting success.

I feel that the comments on marketing in the June editorial ("Where is Your Casting of the Year?") were quite unfair.

In 2002, I developed a new marketing and sales technique which resulted in a 1,300% increase in traffic through our website, coupled with an innovative sales strategy yielding a 45% increase in business in two and a half years.

Two strategies are key to our success. First, if a customer doesn't know anything about castings, then you learn and speak the language they understand. Second, selling a service with a process, not a product, means that you're in the business of building parts the best way for the customer, not selling castings per se.

Your statement about closing the doors if you don't have casting of the year winners was way off base. It is not necessary to make a difficult casting to add value; it is necessary that the part be difficult to make by other means. Making prestigous castings will impress other casters; it won't mean much to a customer who doesn't know the process.

By the way, I did win an award from a Fortune 100 company for a successful casting that no one else would try. Providing what the customer wants in an expeditious manner while saving him or her money is what is required to retain business.

MARK BIELECKI, BECKER METAL WORKS INC., ST. CLAIR, MICH.