Edition: July 2011

Letter from the President:


General Steel continues to be committed to educating our customers, and prospective customers, to make their building project a true success. Throughout recent decades General Steel has been the dominating force in the steel building industry, supplying our customers with the best buildings on the market and services second to none. We have developed programs to help our customers in every phase of their projects from inception to completion. General Steel has teams of professionals to meet your building needs no matter how large or small.

Over the years I have seen many competitors come and go and try to imitate General Steel. Can you blame them? There is nothing wrong with striving to try to be like the industry leader. In fact, healthy competition always works out best for the customer. However, I have witnessed how the internet has greatly changed the dynamics in the industry. I feel an obligation to prospective buyers to speak out on this topic. I have seen and heard too many horror stories of how people just like you, fell victim to the “internet”. Now I am not suggesting that the internet itself is bad. The internet can be a wonderful tool for many things. However, there are two major pitfalls it has created in the steel building industry.

The first problem is that it makes everybody look the same! That gives customers a false sense of security. When all of the websites look relatively the same you should just be able to shop for the cheapest price, right? Well the answer is a resounding NO! Why you ask? Well I will cut right to the chase; most of those websites are just that - only websites! On the other end you have nothing more than a couple of guys and a computer. When you don’t have a legitimate company with true professionals backing you up, you can only imagine the catastrophic results that can happen. Unfortunately, we receive countless phone calls at General Steel with the stories of how different people thought they found a great deal on the internet and now “they can’t get a returned call”; or “the website is no longer there”; or “they changed the price on me”! The list goes on and on from there. My hope is that I can keep this from happening to you. You have to ask yourself, “have I ever heard of this company”? “Will they be there to help me when I need it”? When it comes to a building project, it is not worth taking chances. You need the strength of a company you know and can trust. General Steel’s thousands of satisfied customers can attest to that.

The second problem I have seen develop is that people can post anything they want on the internet regardless of whether it is true or not. What’s worse is that websites post these disparagements without vetting them for accuracy. I know that is probably not new information for you, but we have found that competitors are sinking to new lows in these tough times. We have been finding that since they cannot compete, our competitors will try to play dirty. They have even gone as far as pretending to be customers of General Steel and posting false complaints on the internet. They do this in hopes to scare customers away from doing business with General Steel, opening up the chance for them to make a sale. There really are people out there that go to those kinds of measures. I thought that I should clear the air on this subject. Despite anything that you may find on the internet, General Steel has a complaint ratio that is unprecedentedly low in the industry. We will go to the most extreme lengths to make sure that our customers are taken care of.

So for any potential customers that are still skeptics, I want to tell you about our “see for yourself” guarantee that we have at General Steel. We are so confident that we can service your building needs better than anyone else that we invite you to fly out and meet our team of professionals. After you see the company first hand, you will not want to risk going with any one else. If you choose a different company after meeting with us, we will pay you back for the flight. It is a guarantee that no other company would risk offering!

I hope that your project is a great success! And remember if you need to build, you need the General!


Jeff Knight
President and CEO