SHOW SUMMARYKeep your friends close and your enemies closer is the theme of this week’s epsiode of What the Duck?! Sarah Scudder, is joined by Emily French, otherwise known as “The Bulldog,” where they chat all about working with competitors to secure supply. You heard that right. Emily is an estimator Shermco Industries in Irving, Texas. She started out as a temp to help with inventory cleanup and was not promised a position. Through hard work and dedication, she showed she wanted to work at Shermco.  Show Highlights Starting off as a buyerGraduating preschool to procurement Shermco: not a cookie-cutter shop Differences between estimators and buyersLack of lubricantsGetting products from competitors Finding alternative suppliers MOMENTS TO DUCK AROUND EMILY: Working with Competitors “We’re all here to make money. We're all here to have a productive business, and the relationship with this particular vendor was actually already in place through the previous estimator that was here, and they had worked together for years, and I built a relationship with him as well. And there will be times that he reaches out to me because he needs a drive-in slinger that goes into the bearing compartment, and I'll have them manufactured, I'll ship it to him, and he'll pay it. I'll reach out to him and say, "Hey, I need this encoder like yesterday. Do you have it?" Because apparently, we're six months out. And because they're a bigger outfit than we are, so they have a larger inventory facility. He'll sell it to me. I mean, like I said, we're all out here to have a business that's thriving.” EMILY: Why the shortage in supply chain?“The short answer, and my favorite, is supply chain issues. So, I hate that phrase at this point. They're saying they just don't have the materials, and I guess these people that we found, nobody really knew about them. But now, we've, you know, our entire company uses them now, and they're perfect. I even have had to tell one of my bearing vendors once to say, "Hey, you know, these people are your competition when it comes to that." Some of the materials that go into the lubricant, the manufacturers are having trouble getting, so they don't even have a product to be able to produce enough to meet the demand. That's how it is coming across.” Connect with Emily and learn what she’s been duckin’ around with:LinkedIn |Shermco Industries Connect with Sarah and find out more about what the duck she’s up toLinkedIn |Twitter |SourceDay |SourceDay.com Had fun with the podcast? Leave us a like, share our content, and subscribe! See you soon on the next episode of What The Duck?!