What can you tell us about the company’s new Power & Microwave Technologies group and its strategy to differentiate from the competition?
There are two main areas that differentiate us from the competition: (1) Focus – we have seen distributors continue to dilute their line card and suppliers are losing mindshare and not getting the attention they need; and 2) Investment – we are investing in power and microwave engineers to support our suppliers’ technologies in these niche markets, and we lead at being the best to bring new products and technologies to the market on a global basis.
Niche suppliers in the Power & Microwave market face a definite void of global distributors that are investing in key field engineers to bring these suppliers’ products to market. Richardson Electronics’ new Power & Microwave Technologies group intends to fill that void and is focusing on adding new suppliers and technologies to take advantage of high growth markets and to leverage our existing global infrastructure, including sales, marketing, engineering solutions and logistics, as well as our heavy investment in engineering capabilities both at the factory and in the field to support these customers’ needs.
Richardson Electronics has a long history in the RF & Microwave, power energy and industrial markets, with a solid customer base and highly technical sales and engineering teams. All of these factors are critical to solidifying partnerships with new suppliers who offer innovative products and technologies. I see our competitive advantage as this ability to offer superior, engineered solutions that simplify and expedite customer design cycles and pave the way for increased sales in high-growth markets.
What are the major industries and applications you are serving today?
Our manufacturers’ disruptive technologies drive customer solutions over a wide range of applications in the alternative energy, aviation, broadcast, and communications, industrial, marine, medical, military, and scientific markets. Within that, we can offer solutions and global design support for everything from advanced capacitor technology for wind turbines, to electric vehicles, to ultra-capacitors for electric vehicle applications, and resistive products for high current, sensing, high voltage, and high energy applications.
Richardson specializes in “engineered solutions” – can you explain what that means to the customer and the advantages over traditional distributors?
Our strategy of providing specialized technical expertise and “engineered solutions” is based on our core engineering and manufacturing capabilities. We provide solutions and add value through design-in support, systems integration, prototype design and manufacturing, testing, logistics, and aftermarket technical service and repair through our global infrastructure.
How is Richardson addressing the Power & Microwave industry’s current and future needs?
By providing new, disruptive technologies that enable higher power, greater efficiency and higher integration, we are helping engineers solve the design and applications challenges they face. We are building our line card with complementary lines that allow for a one-stop solution, and we couple this with our highly technical support to expedite the design-in cycle. We believe we offer a unique value—this combination of disruptive and complementary technologies that customers cannot get from other partners.
Our line card strategy ultimately maximizes block diagram selling opportunities to expedite the design cycle to meet today’s faster time-to-market demands. At the same time, we are continuing to invest in field engineering throughout the world and adding resources at our design and manufacturing sites.
Richardson has signed on several new suppliers recently, including power conversion suppliers. Where are your main areas of expansion in terms of growth markets, technologies and regions over the next couple of years?
Along with a foundation of established technologies like GaAs that address high volume RF & Microwave markets, we are rapidly expanding within several innovative technologies, including GaN, SiC, SiGe and CMOS. Our growing roster of innovative manufacturers offers solutions for many key and emerging markets and applications, from Unregulated Power Supplies, battery chargers, frequency converters and other power conversion applications, to millimeter-wave and Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) markets, and advanced capacitor technology for new applications.
How do you manage the supply chain to deliver the right products quickly to customers?
We offer a portfolio of services to help turn supply chain management into a competitive advantage for our suppliers. By outsourcing these critical services to us, suppliers can focus on their core competencies, reduce costs, and improve overall customer service.
We match our supply chain solutions to the specific requirements needed. The services we offer include Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), bar code labeling, kitting and worldwide logistics support. From our three main global hubs, we have the ability to ship any product, to any customer anywhere in the world, in 1-3 days.