I’m consistently amazed at the amount of e-mail we receive from legitimate B2B vendors who have not even bothered to do the slightest modicum of research before sending their sales pitches. Sometimes, I can’t help but hit back with a little acerbic humor. Today I received (with names removed to protect the innocent):

Subject: Question about BIBLIO.COM

Brendan,

We have worked with companies similar to yours to shave days off of lead time by manufacturing small, intricate parts directly from models.  We offer manual and CNC machining, wiring EDM, design and engineering, and parts repair as well.

Typically we work with engineering, project managers, maintenance managers, and buyers.  Could you let me know who the best person would be to speak with about your machined parts manufacturing needs?

Thanks for your help,

Real Guy
Real Company
Real Address and Website

To which I responded by requesting a quote on some work:

Real Guy,

At this time the primary thing we’re looking for is to mass produce the hardware shown on this product:

http://www.biblio.com/book/schatzbehalter-order-schrein-wahren-reichtumer-heils/d/606615344

As you can see, we’re selling this 500 year old book for over $250,000. We believe that the reason people are interested in buying this book at that price is for the fine work that produced the brass hardware (likely by some primitive monks who were half-cocked on Belgian beer – I’m certain modern machine technology could do a much better job).

So, our idea is to order 100 million sets of antique brass clasps and posts and put them on every one of our 100 million books so we can sell those for $250,000 as well. I’m sure you’ve already done the math, but we figure we’ll make at least $2.5e + 13 (even Google couldn’t calculate the amount of money we’re going to make!)

Of course, we have to keep our production costs down, so we’d want to pay no more than $50 per set of antique brass adornments. But, for you, that could mean a $5 billion order. Not bad for an e-mail just sent out of the blue with no research behind it first, I’d say!

Oh, finally, the product we want to achieve will look something like this (pretty great, huh?):

Let me know once your HR team has staffed up enough medieval monks to fill this order and we’ll get started.

Thanks, Brendan