In April, we received an inquiry from Sammy on aluminum tool case. He sent photo of one of our tool cases. It was the most conventional product we could supply, I thought. There would be no problem. But Sammy told us he wanted simple and cheap case but with shiny surface inside such as stainless steel or tin.
My first response was,” oh, it is not the product what we can do. We can make it simple and cut some costs to make it relatively cheap, but our case can not be added tin or stainless steel surface inside.”
I searched from website to get a totally stainless steel tool box, it was with shiny surface both inside and outside. It was simple but the price was much higher than Sammy’s target price. Sammy told us to cut the cost but the cost of materials is fixed. Even we did not add any profit. There was still big difference from Sammy’s price.
I wanted to give up this project. I think it was beyond our business scope. At this time, our manager gave me idea that we could use shiny ABS surface to cover inside area and meet customer’s requirement, instead of stainless steel or tin. Our factory made it for other customer before. We sent photos and video to Sammy, he was glad to see it. And our price was favorable, very close to Sammy’s price. I also sent other shiny ABS surface material to Sammy. He could choose anyone he liked.
This order is still under confirmation. But I learned from this case that we should thnk more and should not limit to our own ideas. Give customers more choices, maybe another one is also the customer wants to buy. 
