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Last Friday afternoon I wrote about people… specialty gas customers… not knowing about Air Liquide America Specialty Gases. Only a couple of days later I received a Google Alert about a blog post made by the editor of ICIS Chemical Business in which he states, “And how many industrial gases companies are out there of any size? In the US, you’re down to Air Products, Praxair and Airgas. Outside the US, there are France’s Air Liquide, Germany’s Linde and Japan’s Taiyo Nippon Sanso.”
Arrrghh!
That typo on ‘gases’ wasn’t the editor’s only error. (Me being a writer who repeatedly proves his inadequacy at proofreading his own work–happily I have a crackerjack project manager cum proofreader who saves my bacon every time–I’m willing to let the typo slide.)
Now, about that comment about being down to three players in the US gas marketplace: this makes it sound as if, assuming Air Products is successful with its uninvited offer to purchase Airgas, you’re pretty much gonna have to get your gas from AP or Prax. AS IF. Not by a long shot, a short shot or any other kind of shot.
Way back at the beginning of the year when the nasty business of the takeover began to cook, several members of the journalistic world speculated that (guess who) Air Liquide would be the only other gas company with the financial resources to possibly make a bid for Airgas. That’s not too bad for being a “hardly-worth-mentioning” supplier of industrial and specialty gases in the United States marketplace.
Air Liquide of course has passed on that opportunity. As our Chief Executive, Benoît Potier, stated back in February, “The question doesn’t really come up in the sense that our strategy is one of expansion in emerging countries and in new markets, or essentially in growing markets.”
One of the ways Air Liquide has grown the U.S. market was through acquisition of Scott Specialty Gases, which was the largest producer of EPA protocols and a well-known world supplier of other high-end specialty gases. These gas mixtures, still produced using original Scott technology, are being marketing under the SCOTT™ brand name in Europe, Asia and South America as well as in North America.
Another is the recent Air Liquide Large Industries U.S. LP acquisition of assets and business activities of Lion Copolymer Geismar Services (LCGS), an industrial utilities provider based in Louisiana’s Geismar basin, near Baton Rouge. This complements Air Liquide’s already strong presence in the Geismar basin, which is anchored by two large air separation units producing oxygen and nitrogen for supply via the company’s expansive Mississippi River Pipeline System.
I won’t get into how ALASG is part of a global team of some 43,000 members operating in over 70 countries. Regardless of how the Airgas/Air Products issue shakes out, Air Liquide IS and will remain a major world supplier of industrial and specialty gases for virtually any application imaginable, and that includes in the good ole USA.
P.S.I had submitted a comment regarding the post I mentioned above. Since writing this post, the editor accepted and published my comment, and indeed acknowledged Air Liquide’s large presence in the US. —THANK YOU, JOE!
Back in the day, when we were still Scott Specialty Gases, I answered to a VP who called a marketing meeting to discuss the growing power and economic possibilities of the still infant World Wide Web. When he’d finished putting his spin on how the Internet was already changing how consumers and businesses spend their money, he asked for our reactions. I couldn’t resist voicing my opinion.
“Actually, I think you’ve under rated the Internet’s economic power,” I commented. Then I went on to explain, “A couple of years ago I met a woman online. As a result, I’ve been driving two hundred and 40 miles round trip, two and three times a week. I’m pumping gallons more gasoline, paying interstate highway tolls to the states of Delaware and Maryland, drinking at least six extra cups of coffee each week, and generally reallocating to Maryland establishments, income dollars that would have been spent in my Pennsylvania stomping grounds.”
I’ve long since married that lady I met on America Online and have relocated to her home town of Baltimore. This means that PA businesses have literally lost out on collecting tens of thousands of my income dollars over the last 14 years. All due to the Internet. Every member of our Marketing Team had a good chuckle at my story during that meeting years ago, and while all heads were nodding in agreement at the burgeoning power of connectivity, I dare say that no one in the room could have envisioned what was to come.
I’d already been working with our IT people (we called them MIS in those days) to develop a website we called scottgas.com. Actually, I was fighting a string of tactical skirmishes with them: they saw the website as an MIS/IT function, while I saw it as a marketing function. Had we been developing a site for, say, a library, I might have agreed with their point of view. Clearly however, since our website represented a B-to-B enterprises whose charter was to make and sell high quality calibration gases and other cylinder gases, Marketing Communications trumped IT/MIS.
One of the banners from scottgas.com
That was also back in the day when businesses were expecting to sell tons of product online because it was a more efficient and economical way to do business–for both buyer and seller. For many, that became reality. For others, such as sellers of specialty gases, not so much. Many specialty gases are too complex to purchase easily online. They can also be pretty doggone expensive. As the only specialty gas supplier offering full-blown Internet-based ecommerce, we gave our customers every opportunity to buy their gases and equipment online.
In the end however, the majority of customers opted to order products the old fashioned way, through our 800-number and local sales representatives. That’s not surprising when you consider that one of market differentiators has always been our outstanding technical assistance and customer service. Who needs point and click when you have a friendly specialty gas expert as near as your telephone? That’s not to say our website isn’t useful. As a showcase for our products and services, and by accurately portraying us as a leader in the specialty gas industry, our outpost on the web is clearly one of the most important marketing tools we have.
Scottgas.com is still out there on the Internet. If you Google the key words, specialty gases, you’ll find Scott comes up number one or two in the search results. However, since becoming part of Air Liquide, it’s giving way to our new website, ALspecialtygases.com. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t know this quite yet. Air Liquide America Specialty Gases comes up below the top search positions… too far below to suite us.
And so now that our new website is largely complete, we’ll undertake the business of search engine optimization. I suspect that just about the time we accomplish SEO to our satisfaction, some new manner of web crawler will be launched. I’m getting the feeling that web maintenance will be never ending.
IGAL™ Insulated Window Filling System
I remember driving down Interstate 95 some years ago and seeing a billboard for a new computer called the iMac. Being a Mac kind of guy, there was no doubt in my mind that Apple was on the leading edge of personal computers, not only ease-of-use-operating-system-wise, but also in sheer attractive and sexy design. It got me to thinking… and right then and there I should have known better.
At that time, as Scott Specialty Gases, we were not only the largest supplier of EPA protocol gases, we were quite literally defining the leading edge in the production of high accuracy mixtures that virtually guaranteed accurate measurement of all that nasty effluent various industries emit into our atmosphere. Okay, so it isn’t the most glamorous way to make a buck, but hey, someone has to help keep our planet green. In addition to these protocol calibration gases, we had a really slick online supply management system called eScott™ that offered numerous real time, online tools to further help our customer comply with various environmental regulations.
Seeing that billboard, what suddenly crystallized in my mind was a unique “bundle” of environmental products and services that was just crying out to be marketed as iComply. And so I busily crafted persuasive copy presenting the Scott all-inclusive offer to acid rain utilities and various other industries. I had big plans for an extensive marketing campaign, complete with trade advertising, trade show graphics and assorted collateral materials. I even ordered giveaway trinkets emblazoned with an iComply logo. Oh, I tell you, for several days I could scarcely see my reflection in a mirror without seeing the word GENIUS stenciled on my forehead–right up to the time when the VP to whom I reported nixed my entire idea. He told me that iComply was a nonsensical name that no one would understand.
Look, sometimes you just know certain things. I knew… I KNEW… my boss was wrong. I knew he was DEAD wrong. I’m thinkin’ the creative folks in Cupertino would’ve enjoyed a pretty darn good belly laugh over his foolishness, especially when you consider it was the “Bondi Blue” iMac that ushered in a new era of profitability for Apple. Enlightened as I was at the time, even I didn’t realize just how wrong my boss was. I’ve learned to pick and choose the battles I fight in the work place. This wasn’t one of them, but in retrospect it should have been.
12 years later finds me finishing a datasheet for a product we call IGAL™. It’s a new and rather unique system that window manufacturers can use to fill insulated windows with pure krypton, xenon, argon or rare/noble* gas mixtures. IGAL’s major claim to fame is that it is substantially more efficient than other systems currently in use. It allows window manufacturers to save a great deal of rare gas during production–and since rare gases are quite pricey, that translates into BIG $$$ savings.
The product name refers to Insulated Glass and Air Liquide. (We really love acronyms here at Air Liquide.) And unlike some of our acronyms, it makes makes a lot of sense. There is also somewhat of a tie to the electronics “i-world” because it’s the electronics and operating system inside the IGAL box that give rise to the product’s efficiency. One minor problem: our company prefers the French pronunciation, so that ‘eye-gal’ comes out sounding ‘E-gal‘.
Arghhh, I can’t seem to win at this i-business. I know darn well that customers and prospective customers alike, with their iPhone in one hand and iPad or iPod in the other, are going to say iGal… just as naturally as they say iTunes… just as naturally as they would have said iComply. I’m just sayin’.
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*Noble gases are odorless and colorless and exhibit a very low level of chemical reactivity. The six noble gases that occur naturally are argon (Ar), helium (He), krypton (Kr), neon (Ne), radon (Rn) which is radioactive and xenon (Xe).
A revitalized logo dressed up with a trademark symbol; now representing our brand of mixtures instead of the company
Until a few years ago we were Scott Specialty Gases, and had been since the 60s. We were privately owned, about 500 people strong and had earned a reputation in the spec gas industry for making gas mixtures that were dead-on accurate. For those of you who aren’t completely sure of what people do with spec gas: they mostly calibrate instruments with them. That or make stuff, like semiconductors. Unless you know the EXACT composition of the gas mix you use to calibrate your instrument, you won’t be sure your instrument is giving you accurate readings. Make sense?
If you’re an Acid Rain utility calibrating a Continuous Emission Monitor (CEM) and your numbers are bogus, you risk serious fines levied by the EPA, not to mention really bad press and maybe even jail time. If you’re calibrating a detector used to detect toxic gas before entering a manhole (excuse me: personhole—old habits die hard), inaccurate calibration can quite literally be a matter of life and death. Thus, it’s why we at Scott took the makings of our spec gas VERY seriously, and why we enjoyed the reputation of being a (if not THE) world leader in specialty gases.
That’s also why when Air Liquide went into expansion mode, they set their sights on acquiring Scott. Eventually the timing became right. Park City ski slopes were calling our owner, who was already well into retirement age, and I guess the $$$ was right, and so a deal was cut. Mind you, I said we were less than 500 people strong in the US, UK and Netherlands. Air Liquide had at the time about 42,000 employees throughout over 70 countries. (Latest count is 43,000 in 75 countries.) Now I ask you, what would YOU think in this situation? Read the rest of this entry »
Bob
