Three years ago, Jim Fiocchi walked the aisles of NPE2009 in Chicago trying to find potential customers for what he and his brother John thought could possibly become a China-based moldmaking business. This NPE in Orlando, Jim, John and 23 employees of their Feng Gang, China based company Feng Ping Tooling will have a booth of their own at the triennial show, investing a half a million dollars in a 40-by-40-ft stand, as they start a marketing push to find new customers and fuel what has been incendiary growth since the company's 2009 founding. [Ed. note, Injection Molding Magazine covered Feng Ping Tooling in a three-part 2011 series].

Feng Ping Tooling NPE booth

Show stand en route

John Fiocchi said planning for the show began 8 months ago, and on Jan. 2, two 40-ft containers holding Feng Ping's custom-built stand left its plant outside Shenzhen following a dry-run build out at Feng Ping, and are currently headed for Orlando and the Orange County Convention Center (OCCC).

Feng Ping has already secured visas for its workers that are headed to the show, with each unit within the company represented, including engineering, mold building and injection molding, in addition to multiple in-house translators.

"We will promote our company in a way that's different than any other China company can," John Fiocchi said, describing the outsized booth and numerous employees to man it. With plans to arrive March 28 prior to the show's start stay through April 10, allowing time for post-event meetings and a requisite Disney World trip for the employees. "We want to show our workers America," Fiocchi said.

A single, simple concept

John Fiocchi attributes the company's whirlwind success over the last two-and-a-half years, to one key factor. "It's a single concept: repeatability of process at China tooling prices," Fiocchi said. "Our customers businesses are growing, and that means our business is growing."

Feng Ping Tooling NPE booth

Prior to this, Feng Ping has only attended one other trade show, splitting a booth at a fair in Guangzhou in 2011, that John Fiocchi called a "complete failure/bust." Instead of the western customers that have built up the company's business, they only saw fellow China-based firms not interested in higher quality tooling, and probably looking for some foreigners themselves. Upon arriving at the event, John Fiocchi recalled surveying the show scene and immediately making a prediction to his six Feng Ping colleagues that made the trip. "'We're not going to see one American at this show,'" Fiocchi remembers saying, "and we didn't."

Feng Ping is hoping for a different show demographic, and results, in Orlando this April. "Last time at NPE in Chicago, we weren't officially selling molds," John Fiocchi said. "We didn't really know the direction of Feng Ping three years ago."