Digi-Key is planning a move into the short-order production distribution market, which will see it competing directly with volume order specialists Arrow and Avnet.
“We have decided to take advantage of our inventory and move into the low volume high product mix production area,” Mark Larson, president of Digi-Key told Electronics Weekly.
“The big challengers are Arrow, Avnet and Future,” said Larson.
“But they may be vulnerable because they do not have the breadth of product or the balance of product we have,” said Larson.
“I believe we can sell short-order off-the-shelf. With our business model demand looks predictable enough to do this,” said Larson.
The distributor is already developing its customer base in the manufacturing sector in the US and it plans to bring this to Europe next year.
Larson is quick to say the company is not going head-to-head with the broadliners in their core manufacturing business. But there is an intention to win short-order business from Arrow and Avnet.
“We have mindshare in the production market, we have not fully monetized this yet,” said Larson.
“We are not in the one million piece order business, but 5,000 and 20,000 piece orders for a range of say 100 different products, we are right there,” said Larson.
“We could even be supplying 50,000 to 80,000 piece orders depending on the product mix and the size of the customer,” said Larson.
He says the strategy will not only be there for smaller companies. “Even large companies have short production runs,” said Larson.
Larson said this strategy will be rolled out in Europe as well as the US. He believes it will provide new growth for the distributor in the current market conditions.
“This is fuelling our growth,” said Larson. “Even if the market is flat we will have a very good year next year.”
www.digikey.co.uk