May 19, 2026 · 17 min · 7 segments
Luke Orszag, President of Firstar Precision, returns to Empowered Owners to recap a year he describes as "a tale of two halves." The first six months saw demand almost disappear entirely, then…
Do you think, and I'm imagining in the industry, especially in your customer industries that have the certifications and the, you know, those types of hoops that have to get kind of jumped through.
the business can get pretty sticky once a company has earned a particular, you know, product that it can be hard to switch or, you know, a company may choose not to switch because it's too much of a hassle unless they have to.
So I guess what ultimately do you think drives the opportunities more? Is it switching of things and kind of cost, you know, looking for better cost? Or do you think more opportunity will come from companies that are maybe doing something new, like they're building a new product and they want to diversify their supply chain or find someone that fits a new product that they're working on.
We want to position ourselves as experts, as partners for our customers that they know that we're going to be here for them and we're going to help them solve issues and help them move their own mission forward, whatever that may be.
So when we have a potential customer that seems very focused on price, it's typically not a customer that's going to work well for Firstar because we're not building that partnership.
They're only looking at that cost per unit and we're not helping them solve issues.
Obviously, there's different things we can do with that to help them with that, but that's not what we're targeting.
We're helping companies move things forward, and we're not trying to do that through costs.
So that could be an existing product line for them that someone else is doing the work, but they're probably experiencing some challenge with that if they're open to it.
They want some help to figure out something that's not working is what I'm hearing.
Most typically for us is we'll have a customer come to us and say, hey, I cannot find a supplier for this.
Something unique about the part, the material, the geometry, tolerances, whatever it might be, but they're having an issue finding a supplier for it.
is we can come in and help them kind of remove that thorn in their side to start.
And so you ask, what else could be out there? And sometimes they'll offer it up.
Do you think, and I'm imagining in the industry, especially in your customer industries that have the certifications and the, you know, those types of hoops that have to get kind of jumped through.
the business can get pretty sticky once a company has earned a particular, you know, product that it can be hard to switch or, you know, a company may choose not to switch because it's too much of a hassle unless they have to.
So I guess what ultimately do you think drives the opportunities more? Is it switching of things and kind of cost, you know, looking for better cost? Or do you think more opportunity will come from companies that are maybe doing something new, like they're building a new product and they want to diversify their supply chain or find someone that fits a new product that they're working on.
We want to position ourselves as experts, as partners for our customers that they know that we're going to be here for them and we're going to help them solve issues and help them move their own mission forward, whatever that may be.
So when we have a potential customer that seems very focused on price, it's typically not a customer that's going to work well for Firstar because we're not building that partnership.
They're only looking at that cost per unit and we're not helping them solve issues.
Obviously, there's different things we can do with that to help them with that, but that's not what we're targeting.
We're helping companies move things forward, and we're not trying to do that through costs.
So that could be an existing product line for them that someone else is doing the work, but they're probably experiencing some challenge with that if they're open to it.
They want some help to figure out something that's not working is what I'm hearing.
Most typically for us is we'll have a customer come to us and say, hey, I cannot find a supplier for this.
Something unique about the part, the material, the geometry, tolerances, whatever it might be, but they're having an issue finding a supplier for it.
is we can come in and help them kind of remove that thorn in their side to start.
And so you ask, what else could be out there? And sometimes they'll offer it up.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.