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CEO Perspectives: Manncorp's Henry Mann
December 31, 1969 |Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Manncorp began in the 1960s when Henry Mann went in business selling hand tools from a station wagon. During the thru-hole era, the company began marketing its component-processing and electronics production equipment through a catalog printed annually and mailed to thousands of firms. Today, the company distributes and supports a range of SMT equipment, tooling, and recently introduced consumables. The company's business model represents a modern strategy for penetrating the complex electronics manufacturing supply chain, using its Website as the primary source of product information, pricing, and customer contact. With a main customer base in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, Manncorp uses Web-based business and marketing techniques to remain cost-sensitive and to provide instantaneous product data. SMT spoke with CEO and founder Henry Mann about the American market, the power of internet salesmanship, and integrating personal and electronic support to maintain a customer's equipment.
SMT: What is your sense of the American electronics manufacturing market today, as opposed to when you began selling machines in this space?Mann: The North America market has changed drastically to smaller runs and price-consciousness when investing in equipment. China-based manufacturing has altered the EMS business as much as it's changed OEM sectors in the U.S. economy. There are customers here for pick-and-place systems, reflow ovens, wave solder machines, stencil printers, rework equipment, and the like; the U.S. still has a viable market for SMT equipment and materials, but you have to be clever to uncover it.
SMT: How has the customer changed?Mann: Our customers are, in large part, just like today's online consumers. That is to say they can remain "invisible" until they choose to reveal themselves. They are accustomed to virtual shopping, online, and expect a large amount of product data online, along with pricing. Prior to the Internet, prospects were known and identified through sales leads from advertising and direct inquiry.
The customer also needs a large variety of machines within each equipment area, to satisfy widely differing requirements and to provide a range of price points. Footprint and adaptability are other concerns for this customer base. Many North American EMS providers are built on quick turnaround, and any way that their tooling and materials supplier can reduce downtime and speed up the supply chain is significant.
SMT: How do you use the Internet to serve your business?Mann: Manncorp uses the Internet to host extensive product data, including photos and engineering specs, on the Website. We also provide an online quotation service, "InstaQuote," that allows Web-based consumers to configure machines, select options, and view price points. Customers can shop at any hour, and over any period of time, until they chose either one machine, or more likely some options that would fit their operations. We also put out a newsletter to keep customers and potential customers familiar with the company, and regularly email prospects and customers. We also rely on search-engine marketing and Web-optimization techniques to maximize Web-based traffic. We had a tie-in special promotion with a coffee chain, offering gift certificates in exchange for contacts. It bombed. Later in 2007, we launched a solder line, and, to promote it, offered solder samples to qualified Website visitors. This worked, allowing Manncorp to build our solder-paste business in a relatively short time. This is virtual modern interaction, and it's based on the consumer culture in North America.
SMT: What are the limitations with this approach, and how do you overcome them?Mann: When you bring the consumer mindset into an industrial setting, certain adjustments are required. Customers may not be comfortable with spending more than a few thousand dollars online, without a sales person. The benefit of using the Web as the first point of contact is that a prospective customer finds more information on our Website than at a tradeshow or during a sales call. This streamlines the purchasing process. When a customer does call us for sales or support, they always reach a person, not voicemail.
SMT: How do you support the "virtual shopper" post-sales?Mann: Successful business requires a mixture of Web, phone, and e-mail contact points. Technical support and personal relationships with the customer are vastly more important in industrial equipment than in consumer goods, so we deploy competent, well-trained technicians to install a system then train the user thoroughly in how to run it. The installing technician also remains a customer's technical support, so a relationship is established that helps reduce lead times on maintenance and repairs. Virtual technologies, remote help service, and teh ability to e-mail digital photographs of a machine issue keep technicians in contact with customers for instant diagnostics. Our company is based on the East and West Coasts, providing two hubs for on-site service and support.
SMT: Where do you see this approach changing the industry?Mann: The obvious change is that tradeshows have become passé. The time and travel expenditures of visiting a tradeshow to accomplish the same goal as virtual shopping machine and cost comparisons, obtaining company background information, and machine ordering make it a wasteful trip for companies exhibiting or attending. We can also connect with customers and track customer interest in products much more effectively with a Web-based sales and marketing schema. The main issues for North American EMS providers are cost and time pressures from all sides and adapting their lines to extremely-high-mix production. Streamlining product evaluations, pricing, installations, and support via Internet communications translates into lower costs for more-informed customers, and I see industrial suppliers moving to this virtual-consumer approach to stay in step with the domestic EMS market. SMT