Well, best wishes for your retirement Ketan.
Arc has been my goto supplier ever since buying my SC4 – prices are always good, quality can be depended upon, and helpful advice is always just a phone call away – you will be much missed.
I note that there has been some discussion concerning Sieg machine spares: a continuing supply may be to some extent contingent on sales of machines continuing – are there any plans for the continuation of the Sieg franchise by others (that is as Sieg as opposed to the ‘other-branded’ machines sold by others e.g., Axminster)?.
It depends… When we started selling SIEG machines in their original brand – around 2004, very few people were aware of it. They knew it as one of Micro-Mark, Grizzly, Harbor Freight, Clarke, Chester, Warco machines. (Chester now carries a limited range of SIEG made machines and Warco stopped selling SIEG machines around 15~18 years ago.).
Back then around 2004, Little Machine Shop (LMS) in the U.S. only had an agreement to sell spares for SIEG, and Frank Hoose did demos of SIEG mills and lathes on YT. SIEG didn’t want to rock the marketing boat with their existing customers, and ‘SIEG’ wasn’t really used as a marketing brand. ARC came on the seen and acted as a go between to get an agreement in place between LMS and SIEG to sell SIEG machines (be it as an LMS brand), and forming a closer relationship between SIEG and Frank Hoose to demo SIEG branded machines on YT. Once Axminster came on seen, they were encouraged to sell Axminster machines as Axminster-SIEG, as we ‘ARC’ had already established the SIEG name as a well known brand, by the marketing efforts made by us – directly and indirectly, via articles in MEW and YT with a lot of assistance from people like John Stevenson, David Fenner, David Clark, Neil Wyatt, Jason Ballamy, to name a few.
Today, SIEG is a well known brand around the world. Whilst I am trying my best to get someone appointed in the U.K. to continue the journey, if I fail, the availability of machines still continues through Axminster, Clarke, Draper in the U.K., with spares available through them, or other suppliers around the world with a bigger spares range, namely Little Machine Shop – now headed by Scott Mencken assisted by Chris Wood, and Ausee.com.au . Steven Tao of Ausee.com.au has been trained by ARC a while back, before he started Ausee.com.au. Outside of the U.K., both of these companies have a very close and strong working relationship with SIEG. Within Europe, there is sieg-machines.de and others who also sell SIEG machines and spares, with variable level of knowledge. As mentioned before, if anyone wishes to continue selling SIEG machines (or just the spares as a side business), they are welcome to contact me directly to discuss.
Ketan at ARC