Combustion equipment is an integral part of heat treating. So, when parts need to be replaced — and replaced quickly — heat treaters need to know where to get those essential parts they depend on as efficiently as possible.
Whether it’s replacement parts for existing equipment or even heat treaters in search of brand-new equipment, Olsträd has been servicing the heat-treating market successfully for years.
“There are several facets to our company and this business: Certainly, we help people who want new equipment, whether they need a new furnace or they need to retrofit an existing furnace,” said Clint Hall, VP of marketing at Olsträd. “But also, we’re a stocking distributor representing several manufacturers overseas. We stock an array of spare parts here, and we offer many of those parts for sale online.”
Combustion 911
Boasting a large parts inventory, this service evolved into Olsträd’s e-commerce platform for combustion parts, called “Combustion 911,” according to Hall.
“In 2009, we had the idea that we wanted to start an e-commerce platform for combustion parts,” he said. “Our idea initially was that there were all these maintenance guys out there who have a purchasing card and who know what they need, and if they could just go online and buy it, there’d be no need for paperwork, no need to involve purchasing. We believed it so much that we didn’t even list a phone number at the beginning. We just had the website. You could buy off the site. We had pictures and literature and a shopping cart.”
As it turned out, Olsträd discovered that adding a phone number contact would be key to taking the company’s e-commerce platform to the next level of success.
“People needed to call us; we found that out really, really fast,” he said. “You’ve got to have a phone number because, unfortunately, the maintenance guys or the operators or the purchasing people are not that confident that what they’re buying is the right thing. They need to be able to talk to you, they need some reassurance.”
Starting with Kromschröder
In the beginning, that meant Olsträd offered mostly Kromschröder parts, since the origins of Olsträd were the result of Kromschröder’s U.S. location closing its doors, according to Hall.
“We started out as Kromschröder guys, and we still know a whole lot about that product line,” he said. “As far as I know, I think ours was the first e-commerce business to sell combustion parts.”
So, at the launch of the e-commerce platform, the website contained almost exclusively Kromschröder parts, according to Hall.
“We listed all the Kromschröder parts, and we made sure to keep the literature up to date,” he said. “We got a lot of compliments from people looking for that literature. They felt it was easier to get it from our site than to get it from the Kromschröder sites.”
With challenges resulting in changes to the global market, Olsträd made the decision to expand and search for alternative manufacturing partners, according to Hall.
“Today, we are the representation for a handful of Italian manufacturers here in the U.S. (such as ESA and Elektrogas),” he said. “We worked with a few other companies before we settled with our current partners. We’ve been with Elektrogas the whole time, since 2015.”
Keeping legacy customers happy
And although customers currently won’t find as many Kromschröder parts in stock on Combustion 911, Hall said the company continues to keep the literature on Kromschröder parts up to date.
“We know the brand because we’ve sold so much of it, and because we have so many legacy customers that are still using the products we sold,” he said. “And because we support the systems that we sell for life, we want people to be able to find that literature very easily. There are Kromschröder products that we still offer for sale online, typically those products that don’t have an analog from another manufacturer. For example, we continue to sell Kromschröder UV sensors because you can’t use another company’s UV sensor. It’s manufacturer specific. If you have a Kromschröder flame safeguard and you want to use UV, you must use a Kromschröder UV.”
Alternative offerings
However, Olsträd offers many analogous parts that work just as well as those from the original manufacturer, according to Hall.
“We specialize in offering alternatives,” he said. “We are often approached by people who say, ‘I’ve got this part, but I can’t find it in stock in the U.S., and the lead time’s going to be longer than I can wait. Do I have any options?’ And we’ll say, ‘Yeah, 100 percent, I’ve got something on the shelf. The form factor is a little bit different. You might have to do a little re-piping, but it’ll get you out of trouble. You’ll be able to get back up and running quickly.’”
But there’s more to Olsträd than the sum of its parts line.
“We like to describe ourselves as system integrators,” Hall said. “We design, build, and implement combustion systems and control panels. We’re also an automation shop. That started out as a value add for our control panels and combustion systems. If a customer asks, ‘Can you also control the door?’ ‘Can you also control the conveyor?’ we can. Our principal and several of the engineers who’ve worked with us over the years started in or spent time in automation. That experience has proven extremely valuable, and over time we started to get opportunities for automation projects that didn’t have anything to do with combustion. Today, we have a group within our company that offers automation services specializing in helping smaller companies utilize automation to keep up with their competition or maybe punch above their weight. We believe in automation for all.”
This means that, over the years, Olsträd has continued to expand its offerings that assist heat treaters across the U.S., according to Hall.
“We’re proud to represent several manufacturers of combustion equipment and stock their products in Kent, Ohio, so, as far as the heat-treat industry goes, heat-treat shops contact us for spare parts or for new combustion or automation projects,” he said. “We have a heat-treat automation project in the queue right now. We’re helping them with pick and place for a specific recurring product that they’re asked to heat treat. You might have a job shop, where the parts are always different, but you might also have a customer who regularly sends you the same widgets for heat treating. This is one way to help them handle that volume efficiently.”
Making sure customers get the best service
Olsträd’s ability to provide its customers with the best products and service is a point of pride for Hall.
“We want to be the best vendor to our customers, and we want to be the best customer to our vendors; we take customer service very, very seriously, and unfortunately, anyone can say that they have great customer service; you have to back it up,” he said. “Unfortunate outcomes are a fact of life. You can’t hide from them. We go out of our way to stay in contact with the customer when there’s an unfortunate outcome, keep them up to date on their options, give them the status of our efforts, whatever the situation might be. We don’t have an automated answering service on our phone. It’s always a real person answering. We don’t shut the phones off for lunch. We try to maintain that personal touch, which can be difficult when somebody’s really upset about something. But we feel it’s extremely important to be available for the customer.”
Community involvement
Although Olsträd’s Combustion 911 e-commerce platform is definitely a highlight of what the company can offer, Hall revealed that Olsträd also is heavily involved with the community in Kent, Ohio, the city it calls home.
In 2012, a team from Olsträd had the opportunity to redesign the Super Kids carts. Super Kids is a go-kart race at Akron, Ohio’s Derby Downs for special-needs children.
“These cars have to be different because these kids can’t steer the cars, and they can’t control the cars, so you build a two-seater,” Hall said. “We didn’t know anything about forming fiberglass. This was a big project. This was us biting off more than we could chew, really. But we handled it, and we redesigned and built a fleet of cars for the Super Kids organization, and then we volunteered to be there on site to make sure that everything worked well the first time they ran them, and as far as I know, they’re still running them. It was a success.”
In 2022, Olsträd hosted Ohio’s Lt. Gov. Jon Husted at its facility when he toured the state, promoting the TechCred program, which allows companies to apply for reimbursement when employees engage in paid, credentialed training.
And in 2023, Olsträd co-sponsored an event called “Saturdays are for STEM Girls” designed to encourage young women to get more involved in STEM fields by inviting them to Kent State University for a series of classes.
In addition to those examples, Hall also said Olsträd has close ties with the local high school as well as Kent State University.
“We try to give the high school kids who participate in work/study programs an opportunity to come and work in our shop or do programming or something like that,” he said. “We look for interns throughout the year, not always from KSU, but from local schools. We have close ties with a few professors who know what we’re looking for, and what an internship here means. We try to make internships really matter. We try to make them intensive. We’ll give a kid a portion of an active project, and that’s their responsibility. They get to provide input, test things out, and make it work.”
An eye on the future
Olsträd has proven itself over the years to be a multilayered company with a deep understanding of what it means to serve its customers and its community, but that doesn’t mean the company is not keeping an eye on what might be coming next, according to Hall.
“We’ve been paying very, very close attention to decarbonization initiatives and the shift away from fossil fuels,” he said. “As a company that sells services, systems, and products for gas-fired processes, it’s our responsibility to stay on top of new developments, so we don’t get caught with our pants down, certainly, but also, we want to be the source of information for the customer so they’re aware of their options. To be clear, we are not interested in fighting these initiatives. Electrification is on the horizon, and we could waste time ignoring it or lamenting it, or we could look for opportunities to become a part of it. You don’t get very far swimming against the current. Within 10 years, the projects made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act and other programs will be complete, and they’ll be producing.”
But even with advances and alternatives for heat treating on the horizon, Hall emphasized that, ultimately, it won’t change Olsträd’s mission for its customers.
“Combustion is likely to have a place in the industry for a long, long time, and I think we’ll continue to serve those customers,” he said. “But I also think that we’ll be helping some customers manage a transition away from fossil fuels, whether it be through engineering support, or research and consultation regarding likely alternatives, or as a manufacturer’s rep for one or a handful of fledgling partners. I’m looking for ways I can help customers that already trust me and know me make smart decisions as they seek decarbonization options.”
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