Olympic Steel is a metals service center that buys steel and aluminum in bulk from mills and resells it to industrial manufacturers after cutting, slitting, bending, welding, and fabricating the metal to customer specifications. Customers — primarily manufacturers of heavy equipment, agricultural machinery, food service equipment, and truck trailers — buy from Olympic Steel rather than directly from mills because Olympic Steel handles small orders, performs intermediate processing, and delivers just-in-time, often within days. Most customers are located within 250 miles of an Olympic Steel facility. Olympic Steel operates three segments: Carbon Flat Products (the largest, focused on carbon and coated steel), Specialty Metals Flat Products (aluminum and stainless steel), and Tubular and Pipe Products (distribution and fabrication of tubing, pipe, and fittings). Beyond traditional distribution, Olympic Steel has been expanding into value-added fabrication and branded end-product manufacturing, including HVAC venting systems (Metal-Fab), industrial hoppers and hydraulic dump inserts (McCullough/EZ Dumper), stainless steel bollards (Shaw Stainless), and service station canopies and solar racking (Metal Works). These manufactured product businesses have a countercyclical margin profile — when metal prices fall, input costs drop while selling prices hold, partially offsetting pressure on the distribution business. Olympic Steel's core profitability is driven by the spread between mill purchase prices and customer selling prices, making earnings highly sensitive to metal price cycles. The company's strategy focuses on reducing that cyclicality through acquisitions of fabricators and end-product manufacturers, and organic investment in processing and fabrication capacity.