Idec Electronics changes its route to market in the UK
The Japanese automation manufacturer, Idec Electronics, has changed the way that it goes to market in the UK. Following a restructuring of its European business last year – which included closing its direct UK operation – Idec is now being represented by a new company, Sys-Tek, set up by Idec UK’s former MD, Stephen Schiller.
Staffordshire-based Sys-Tek is now the exclusive sales agent for all of Idec’s industrial control and factory automation products in the UK and Ireland.
As part of the restructuring, Idec has centralised its European operation in Hamburg, which will act as its support centre and distribution hub. UK customers can get deliveries direct from Germany in about 48 hours – about a day longer than when Idec kept stock in the UK.
Stock is also held in the UK by a network of systems integration partners and distributors that Schiller set up while at Idec.
Schiller says that he can now focus on sales and finding new business, without having to worry about administrative tasks. “Having been an agent for seven months, it’s brilliant,” he reports, adding that sales so far this year are 6.5% higher than they were in 2015.
The new structure also means that Sys-Tek can also handle non-Idec products. For example, it is already distributing products from the Danish industrial communications and software specialist, Secomea. “We’re actively looking for complementary, non-competing lines,” says Schiller.
• Idec recently launched a series of micro-PLCs that, it claims, offer similar functions to PACs (see page 75).
