To buy or not to buy

By Emma Peterson. 

How to decide if your business is ready to buy new machinery or if leasing is a better option. 

In this episode of Roofing Road Trips®, Heidi J. Ellsworth spoke to Ken McLauchlan and Stephen Gosk from MetalForming about ways of bringing new machinery into your metal fabrication shop — primarily buying or leasing equipment. 

Ken is their vice president and works with their sales team directly. Through his role, he’s learned some of the best ways to determine whether a business owner should buy or lease new equipment. He explained, “The big thing is always looking at what the needs of the company and where the company's going.” There are three main ways to get new equipment, which include spending your own equity (cash), going to your bank for a loan and finding a private, outside loan. 

He explained a bit of the difference between the two types of loans, “Your lending institution is good because it's usually a lower rate than going to an outside one, but it ties up your line of credit, which with a lot of these contractors, their work's seasonal. We've had some of our partners, that do the lending, come up with some great incentives for our contractors, to where they had deferred payments that fit into their budget when they're doing extended periods of time.” 

Overall, the only way to know what the best option is for you is to look at how your business is structured. Making sure that professionals know that they have options is a part of MetalForming’s core values, as Stephen, the president of Metalforming, highlighted, “First and foremost, as a supplier, we need to be cognizant that our customers have different needs, and essentially offer up different pathways depending on what their business situation is.” 

Read the transcript or Listen to the recording to hear more about whether buying is the right step for your company.