Farnell looking to convert 3,500 prospects this year in India!

Now that’s what I call aggression!

Last July, I had the pleasure of meeting Ms Harriet Green, CEO, Farnell Electronics, a part of the Premier Farnell group of companies. It is soon going to be a year since the company set up presence in India. Farnell has aggressive plans for India, with the company likely to look at converting at least 3,500 prospects this year.

I met up with Nader Tadros, Commercial Marketing Director APAC, Premier Farnell (see picture here), and Navin Honnavar, marketing manager, Farnell Electronics India Pvt. Ltd to get an update on Farnell.

According to Tadros, Farnell is said to be the number 1 small-order high service multi-channel distributor in the world. “We carry obver 3,500 leading suppliers and 450,000 product stocks globally. We have 36 transactional websites in 23 languages,” he added.

Farnell currently has six warehouses — one in America, and two in Europe and three in Asia — Sydney, Shanghai and Singapore. In India, it now has nine branch offices, and one contact center and one global tech center (GTC) — in Bangalore. The GTC provides live chat and board level support, which also translates into global support.

Tadros said that Farnell is aggressively are supporting the EDE (electronic design engineers) community and MRO (maintenance, repair, operatoinal) marketplace. “We have taken particular focus on developing the EDE space, providing support, services and relevant products. We want to make sure the value proposition is mapped on to the EDE needs,” he said. Elaborating on the value proposition, he cited an example of x-ray machine manufacturers.

Global business strategy
Farnell has a four-pronged global business strategy. This includes:
* Focusing on global EDE customer segment.
* Increase business via the Web.
* Internationalization
* Continue to develop profitable MRO business.

Tadros believes that the power of the Web is tremendous. “It is very useful for customers to search and transact. Another area is customer demand. They are looking for efficiencies,” he added. “An important aspect that can help us is that we are able to understand customers; needs. The data that the web search is able to provide gives us the critical information. If a customer searches for a part, and we track that, we are able to service their needs better.”

Hasn’t Farnell been affected by the recession? Tadros said: “We are not immune to the recession. The volatlity is higher, and it is also at the customer level.” Honnavar added: “Our strategy seems to be working for us. We are maintaining our base in the MRO space. We are still pulling in customer requests and still growing.”

So, what else is Farnell doing, besides these activities? Well, it has adopted a multichannel approach for the Asia Pacific region. It has 154 staff in eight call centers, besides being involved in direct and e-marketing. The company has nine local websites — simplified chinese for China, thai for Thailand, and English for India, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Philippines, Australia and New Zealand. Besides, it has 103 field sales engineers in 29 sales offices.

Aggressive plans
I started this post by saying I liked Farnell’s aggressive plans. It currently has 2,500 active customers and 9,000 prospects in India alone. The company has a target to reach $25 mn by 2010. It is also a walue added distributor offering products to leading suppliers such as Texas Instruments, Molex, and 3,500 other leading brands.

Touching on Farnell’s clients in India, Honnavar said: “We have independent design houses, resellers, R&D centers, educational centers, government organizations (such as BEL, HAL), etc., among our customers. The prospects includes a huge list of people. We have touched the top layers in tier 2 cities — such as Coimbatore and Ahmedabad. We are looking at converting 3,500 prospects this year.”

More focus on components, SMEs
The components industry isn’t exactly in the pink of health right now. Giving his views on the electronics and components space, Tadros said: “Customers themselves are not able to anticipate the demand for the next quarter or periods. We are seeing that there is still growth in the EDE space and inquiries are still coming in. During a recession, you have an opportunity to distinguish yourself from competition. There is pressure on teams as they have to continually innovate. Customers require more even support, more technical documentation, and look for faster turnaround times.”

Farnell is in a position to help those SMEs who are in the electronics and components spaces. Tadros said that the company can support such SMEs by helping them to build their markets in a timely fashion.

Honnavar added that Farnell is focusing on building a product and purchasing team, sitting out of Singapore and Hong Kong. “Moving forward, you will probably get to see more buying happening in the Asia Pacific region. Going ahead, a lot of sourcing will also be done from India.” The company intends to be extremely close to suppliers, especially in the Greater China region.

Time for solid polymer capacitors!

Well, aluminum electrolytic capacitors may sound boring to many… but the level of expertise that goes into producing one, rather, developing a new technology, is fascinating. However, components as a subject is quite tough, and not many are willing to write on it, or even keen on doing interviews. Even I struggle at times, to be honest.

Some of the leading makers in Hong Kong, which is also home to Man Yue, the seventh largest maker in the world, are actually quite good at aluminum electrolytic capacitors, and now, the solid polymer capacitors.

Man Yue has been working jointly with one of Mainland China’s most prestigious universities, the Tsinghua University, Beijing, to set up a research institute in Shenzhen focusing on chemical technology and material science.

Man Yue is offering conductive polymer aluminum solid capacitors under X-Con brand name. These are suitable for computer motherboards and other high-end circuit boards. X-Con conductive polymer aluminum solid capacitors are suitable for all LCD/PDP control panel, high-end video card, sound card, peripherals, electronic devices in cars, etc. Man Yue launched the X-Con series in 2006, in partnership with Tsinghua University.

The X-Con comes in three series – general-type, low ESR and surface-mount. Man Yue expects demand to pick up, mainly for motherboards, graphic cards, high-end circuit boards, etc.

The best thing about conductive polymer aluminum solid capacitors is that the electrolyte would not leak out as it is solid and there will be no explosions. The characteristics of the conductive polymer aluminum solid capacitors include very low ESR and very high ripple current.

I remember Stanley Wong, business development director, Man Yue, mentioning that plasma TV makers were thinking of switching from electrolytic to solid capacitors. Prices of conductive polymer aluminum solid capacitors are said to be about five to 10 times higher than electrolytic type aluminum capacitors.

Man Yue is also working on the R&D for high-end capacitors, which are useful for alternate energy applications, called super capacitors. Some friends of mine from Taiwan and Korea would be more than willing to add their observations on super capacitors, I’m sure.

Man Yue has ISO9001:2000 and ISO14001 certifications. It would be certified ISO/TS16949 by Q2-07. It has been RoHS compliant since Q2-2004. Wong said it had placed orders for ICPE-9000 machine, which was scheduled for delivery by end of 2006.

“This machine grinds the capacitor into powder and checks for banned substances,” he added. “We have the RoHS lab as well.” Man Yue has four XRF machines. It is planning to purchase the GCMS-QP2010 Plus, another high-end testing machine, which checks for banned substances. It will purchase the UVmini-1240 machine as well. Goodness me! So much of sophistication is required, which makes me believe that not all folks would be able to offer such products. Would be interesting to see.

According to Raymond Lee, sales manager, Fujicon, another leading maker from Hong Kong, most customers request for RoHS products. Fujicon produces PET (6P) aluminum electrolytic capacitors. Some specific Japanese customers request these products.

Lee said: “For the RoHS requirements, we call it 3P. PET meets the 6P standard. This is currently applicable in Japan. Soon, it would become the requested standard globally.”

According to him, PVC was not environment friendly. Lee added that soon, all toy products would also require 6P products. Fujicon can offer both 3P and 6P aluminum electrolytic capacitors. It assigns testing of product samples to companies such as SGS in Hong Kong.

Fujicon has developed a new series of V-chip capacitors for high voltage. Regarding the use of electrolyte, Lee said, there had been several developments to improve the electrolyte that would make capacitors safer, with lower ESR.

Fujicon is collaborating with some other aluminum electrolytic capacitors to produce solid polymer capacitors. Lee said these capacitors can function better, having characteristics such as very low ESR and impedance, at high frequency.

Ok, over to my friends for more on this subject.