Final Thoughts

Today we are celebrating our 14th year of being in business. What began as an attempt to keep my steel-buying customers aware of the dynamics effecting steel prices and their mill orders morphed over the years into the Steel Market Update newsletter. I stopped selling steel during the first half 2008, and by early August Steel Market Update officially began publishing as a company.

It was a slog for the first year. I don’t recall taking a salary and lived off the commissions I had earned at Winner Steel just prior to being released by the new owners at the end of 2007. The Great Recession of 2008 proved to be both a blessing and curse for the newsletter. It wasn’t too long before the word got out that SMU was a newsletter unlike any other, and that our information and data was both different and relevant to a wide audience.