EONEWS: What are your opinions regarding the major trends for this market (slowing, growing, booming…)?
BRABHAM: The domestic Italian economy has been uncertain, and has slowed considerably. Several of our customers in Italy are reliant on Government-funded programs in transportation and healthcare, and we have seen a dramatic cutback in business. However many of our Italian customers have been focused on export markets in healthcare, defense and broadcast electronics and they have seen growth in the last 12 months. We have also seen several international companies transferring production to Italy attracted by the high level of local skills and competitive cost base which makes it easier to do business than moving production to Asia.
EONEWS: What are the key strategies adopted by your company in the short/medium period to address (or to better address) the needs of the market?
BRABHAM: Our strategy implemented in 2012 was to complete the acquisition of our distributor and bring it into the XP Power group as a wholly owned subsidiary. This has also enabled us to hire more staff that provide better direct support to our customers. Also our local Italian office is part of our global SAP system that gives them instant access to worldwide inventory and real time updates from our factories in China and Vietnam. Many customers have complimented us on our high levels of support in Italy.
EONEWS: What are you doing in order to implement your strategies (partnership/agreements, new acquisitions, investments in activities like R&D, people….)?
BRABHAM: Our most exciting activities now are the release of several new high efficiency power supply platforms that are over 96% efficient which means they waste less energy than our previous generation products. From an engineering point of view this means the critical components within the system run cooler, require less cooling, use less energy and therefore increase MTBF significantly. The new product release has been fueled by an R&D spend of approx. 8% of revenue ensuring our customers are getting access to the newest technology. We also have a partnership with Premier Farnell that gives customers the option of purchasing low volumes of products for prototyping.
EONEWS: What are the most important application?
BRABHAM: Our primary focus has been healthcare, broadcasting, communication and specalist industry.
EONEWS: Which are the key factors that set your company apart from the competition?
BRABHAM: XP Power is very different from the majority of power supply companies in Italy as we have our own office and own support people. This has enabled us to form direct relationships with design engineers, quality engineers and supply chain professionals. This enables us to provide superior technical support and service that can decrease our customer’s time to market and competitiveness. With this close collaboration we are able to modify our standard products to make them easier to integrate into the customers end equipment.
EONEWS: And in the middle/long term (if you have a crystal ball!)?
BRABHAM: Our recent investment in Italy has enabled us to become approved at many new customers and bring more value to our existing Italian customers. We are starting to see an increase in our Italian revenues and also multiple new design wins that will fuel future growth. For the Italian market in general there is an established engineering base and a range of companies with world leading technology being manufactured in a relatively low cost market (relative to UK or Germany). This is a good combination for companies that are focused on lucrative export markets.
The italian version on EONews 565-June 2013