When people ask me why they should join the Steel Tube Institute, or for that matter, any trade association, I usually try and draw an analogy with professional sports. A trade association is like the league office. Its members are the teams in the league. Take the National Football League (NFL) in the USA for example. The teams are competitors, they focus their attention on the playing field. They compete head-to-head. The league office works for the betterment of the entire league. It negotiates television contracts, organizes committees that set or change the rules, generates statistics about the league's attendance and performance, promotes the league's progress and triumphs, helps develop, promote and market new ideas, and so forth.
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