Tricon Precast Gets a “Fighting Grade” Website from Barrett-Wehlmann.

When you pay any attention to it at all, it seems like “bricks and mortar” – the old infrastructure stuff. Precast concrete is nowhere compared to, say, tablet computers and social networks, or sex-appealing wind turbines.

In the NAICS 327390 world of “Other Concrete Product Manufacturing,” it’s an industry that makes its living manufacturing concrete products like barriers and bridges, sound walls and traffic dividers.

Except when highway construction interrupts your commute, though it is effectively invisible.

It’s no invisible business for Tricon Precast or for its web agency, Barrett-Wehlmann. Tricon Precast actively participates in precast concrete products. Its end-users are mainly infrastructure people, from state highway commissioners and roadway engineers to contractors of all sizes.

Whether the economy is hot or cold; whether civil engineering projects are shovel-ready or on hold, Tricon Precast works with professionals all over the region. Tricon Precast is rather like the man behind the man behind the gun and, as a result, its business is far more about technically rich information than brand presence.

That’s how Barrett-Wehlmann created the new fighting grade website for Tricon Precast. “Fighting grade” is a term not much used these days; but a few years back, it aptly described the roll-up-your-sleeves world of products and services whose benefits far outweighed the need for hype…quality-conscious and price-conscientious.

It ain’t fancy, this new website; it is tremendously functional. Barrett-Wehlmann principal Darrell Wehlmann, who’s also responsible for the SEO on this site, names the website attributes:

…in-depth information about its products and services...clear communication about the benefits of its precast concrete solutions….rich with content, technical data and downloads…easy to navigate and use.

On this project, James Grantham is the Creative Director; Carl Glatzel is the designer. Artist Mike Guillory created the 1950s-style illustrations on the HOME page, an excellent touch. And I wrote the copy – I’m always grateful to Barrett-Wehlmann for involving me in clients and projects that are just different enough from the everyday to be completely involving.

In Henry V, Shakespeare described what I take the Tricon Precast site to represent: “We are but warriors for the working-day.”

Thanks to clients B-W and Tricon Precast, I got to be this kind of warrior myself.

China Boys

When Sandy Levin, the founder and CEO of Import Traders, made his first trip to China in the very early ‘70s, he didn’t know the name of the hotel he’d be staying it – the Chinese wouldn’t tell him ‘til he got there.

“It was a totally different society…everyone carried Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book in their pocket and it was full of sayings, mostly anti-entrepreneurial, anti-American and anti-the-rest-of-the-world.”

One satisfaction of crafting fresh, contemporary copy for the revamped Import Traders website has been talking to Levin, who was also one of just 40 Americans invited to the ’74 Canton Fair. Another has been working with Barrett-Wehlmann, Import Traders’ Houston-based marcomms agency, as it developed the new company site.

Even today, it’s no simple matter for many American manufacturers who don’t have offices in China to have products sourced and manufactured there – then shipped over to the US for distribution and sale. So Import Traders has been building and maintaining relationships with factories in China for decades.

Having done business in developing areas of Eastern Europe, I knew going in that reliability is a key issue. Import Traders has solved that two ways. One, the company really does know the Chinese very well. And two, Import Traders guarantees the manufactures to its US customers’ satisfaction…pretty bold for a “simple middleman.”

Import Traders is more than a middleman. That made the difference clear enough for anyone (even me). Here’s a company that has solved a big problem in overseas manufacturing: The question of trust.

Since part of this assignment was to talk with satisfied Import Traders customers here in the US, I also had the chance to discuss specific challenges with manufacturing engineers, marketers and inventors...I had a chance to learn even more. Chinese manufacturing is not just for tchotchkes any more…hasn’t been for years. (That’s “trinkets,” in case your Yiddish isn’t working today.)

There’s still a save-you-money angle. But the real issue is trustworthiness. I think that’s what the website and the content convey, whether prospects are trying to source and produce picture frames or printed circuit boards.

So thanks to the “China Boys” at Barrett-Wehlmann for letting me work on this site, now a very effective combination of business-like and attractive. That’d be Carl Glatzel on art direction and Darrell Wehlmann on web build and search engine optimization. The Creative Director is James Grantham; the Management Super is Bill Barrett.

And thanks to Levin for the great conversation, too.