Diesel Progress North American

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“This is co-development, not a joint venture. We’re not going to combine assets or comingle funds. We will both contribute what we know and we will both own the intellectual property 100%.”

— Tim Nerenz president, Oldenburg Group

we pay each other a reciprocal royalty
whatever we co-develop. Even if we
develop an aircraft carrier that turns
out to be wildly popular in China but
not so much in the U.S., I still get a
benefit from what I co-developed.”
Although hesitant to get into specif-
ics, Nerenz said the two companies
would also work on projects in mining
and construction.

“What we provide to them over
there is marketing expertise and
application strength,” he said. “We
understand mining because we’ve
been in it a long time and it’s fairly
new to them. We’ll keep the integrity
of the brands the way they are. When
they’re selling Oldenburg products
over there on our behalf, those will be
Oldenburg products.”
For Oldenburg, NDF offers a well-
positioned, well-connected and well-
respected partner in China, he said.

“They understand their country, they understand their markets, they understand their business conventions,” Nerenz said. “We’re gear guys, we like to build things and companies like us, big or small, tend to overlook how important it is to understand the business conventions, the culture in

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new markets. We all think that a bet-
ter mouse trap is all we need, but
there’s a lot more to it.”
Nerenz said the deal came about
simply because Oldenburg Group
was interested in developing prod-
ucts in new markets, particularly in
alternative energy. Last year, one
of Nerenz’s top lieutenants was at
a trade show for alternative energy
products where NDF happened to be
showing its windmill cranes — and
looking for a U.S. partner.

“As close as you can get to happen-
stance,” Nerenz said. “We were there
interested in expanding product lines
and markets. Right off the bat, there
was a match of mutual interest.”
Officials at the two companies spent
several months discussing the poten-
tial relationship and each company
had representatives visit the others’
manufacturing facilities. The agree-
ment was hammered out over 10 days
in August and signed in December.

“We are very careful who we do business with, and who we partner with, and who we distribute for and who we ask to distribute for us,” Nerenz said. “We’ve been on both sides of the OEM/ distributor model for many, many, many years, so we’ve learned a lot. We look for partners who are flexible, responsive and fiendishly customer focused.” Both companies produce equipment that is highly specialized and designed with a great deal of input from the customers making the purchase, Nerenz said. The agreement between Oldenburg and NDF needed to allow each company the flexibility to work with customers’ needs.

“We want to let the customer decide how we do business, not just what products we make for them,” he said. “For example, does the customer want us to be the OEM, do they want us as an agent, what do they want us to be? The agreement allows for all that flexibility. Customers have all kinds of preferences and biases for one thing or another, it’s a small industry and these are products that you spend months making a decision about so it’s not like anyone’s trying to fool people.”