CHICAGO (June 27, 11:25 a.m. EDT) — Atlanta's Quality Production International Inc., which sets up North American customers with toolmakers and custom injection molders in China, considers its competition to be Chinese firms, as represented at NPE by more than 50 Chinese mold-making exhibitors.
QPI General Manager Patrick Hunter said the company has a couple local manufacturing partners in southern China, in addition to offices in Atlanta and Panyu, China.
Among the products QPI outsources, injection molds account for 85-90 percent, and the rest are molded parts.
“Tooling is where our strength is,” Hunter said.
Consumer, industrial and medical tooling and parts are QPI's major markets.
“We are paying a lot of attention to quality control. That is No. 1,” Hunter said. The 12-employee company has engineers on the ground working with the Chinese partners.
He projects the company will generate just under $5 million in sales this year, and he said the company is growing 77 percent annually.
The 1-year-old firm said 40 percent of its customers are original equipment manufacturers, and 60 percent are custom molders.
QPI is a sister company to Quickparts Inc. of Atlanta, which provides prototyping and low-volume manufacturing. Quickparts, which employs 60, also operates an online quoting system, according to marketing director Sameer Vachani.
“After years of watching our customers struggle to take their projects offshore [when they needed to start high-volume production], Quickparts assembled a team of manufacturing professionals to form QPI.” said Ron Hollis, president and chief executive officer of Quickparts, in a news release.
“We accept competition from Chinese companies, but we can meet customers' needs more directly,” Hunter said.
QPI is looking to hire 10 U.S.-based sales engineers and project managers.