Lenexa, Kansas, W+D North America is pleased to announce a new long-term strategic relationship with Marathon Cutting Die and Tool of Chicago, IL. Under the terms of the agreement, Marathon will now manufacture all fabricated FL Smithe machine parts for W+D to W+D FL Smith original OEM factory drawing specifications.

As part of the new agreed working relationship Marathon and W+D have identified approximately 2,400 parts that are common for the complete base of FL Smithe machines, and these parts will become part of a new W+D FL Smithe catalog of parts that will have new, more competitive pricing as well as a full stocking of these 2,400 parts at the Marathon manufacturing facility in Chicago, IL for quick delivery. Therefore, starting on November 1, 2021, all orders for FL Smith parts will now need to be placed with W+D North America, who will handle the order input and tracking with Marathon and all customer service tracking with our customers.

Michal Ring, Managing Director-President of W+D North America, commented, “we have been listening to our FL Smithe customer base, and it is evident they wanted W+D to do more to better support the over 400 FL Smithe envelope machines still in operation in North America. As a result, we identified Marathon as the manufacture of a part that can fully support the needs of our market. By now supplying Marathon with access to all of our OEM parts drawing specifications, setting new in-stock parts levels and new more competitive pricing levels for these fully inspected OEM tolerance parts, we see this as a significant improvement for our base; of FL Smith machine users.”

Mike Bauer, President of Marathon, said, “it has been my long-term vision to have this type of OEM relationship with W+D, and this is a classic example of the saying 1+1 =3. In this partnership, there are three winners, Marathon Tool, W+D, and the entire envelope manufacturing market. Our team at Marathon sees so much new potential coming out of this partnership with W+D.”