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| Reprinted from June, 2000 issue of PC Fab Magazine |
From Marketing to PCBs:
A PR firm finds itself on the other side: as a PCB supplier. |
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Realizing the ever-changing business cycles that are continually shortened by Internet time, many companies are discovering that a knowledge framework can provide a critical backbone to give shape to the amorphous yet immediate world of e-business. Building up such a roaring head of steam, e-business is being touted as the solution for every industry's problems, including industries and problems that haven't even been invented.
Many companies that previously offered enterprise products and services have been quick to relabel their expertise as something like "e-business provider." This Internet integration into the way we do business today can shift the winds of success from one company to another with just a mouse click. This new way of doing business is quickly becoming essential to enterprises not only looking to sell, but to supply, to market, to inform, to track, and to link all parties that are involved in these activities.
"The key is to give your clients what they want," says Jerry A. Grunor, president of Global Communications, "and give it to them with speed and accuracy. To be in the game, you must learn to e-power your business by getting information into the hands of your customers at the right time, efficiently, and competitively priced. No more, no less. This is the path to e-business success."
FROM 0 TO 50 ($MILLION)
What Grunor has learned in his 30 years of marketing is that creating a business strategy on the fly is a necessity in this changing world. Who could have correctly forecast even five years ago the impact the Internet would have on the success or failure of business today? Internet strategy is about balancing the value of strategic certainty versus time-to-market and that it can eventually be an effective part of over 80 percent of the success of a growing business.
This is a story of how one man used his knowledge in public relations, advertising, direct mail, Web site design, development and programming, and basic marketing to build a company that in two years went from ground zero to one that exceeds $50 million in sales.
In 1996, Global Communications, a marketing, advertising, and PR agency in Southern California found itself with a new client from China, a PCB manufacturer that wanted to make an entry into the North American market. Working with Global Communications, the company made inroads; within one year its southern California sales office had reached nearly $5 million in sales. The following year, however, the company closed its manufacturing facilities, located in Guangzhou, China, and called on its personnel in the California office to return to China. Grunor, having seen the potential of purchasing boards offshore, hired the Chinese engineers, traveled to China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, and signed exclusive agreements with ten major PCB manufacturers there. Using his marketing experience, Grunor began to promote his newly organized PCB company under the banner of Global Communications and ultimately took over the customers of the defunct Chinese supplier.
This new supplier of PCBs has already set projections of nearly $40 to $50 million by the end of this year, with customers throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe. They handle data transferred by e-mail, hard copy drawings by fax, and quotation forms are submitted via the Internet.
One reason why Global Communications has been effective is that it has chosen the right partners. All ten manufacturers are ISO 9001:2000 certified, UL94V-0 approved, and two are QS-9000 certified (the only ones in China meeting the automotive standard, according to Grunor). The companies build to IPC, IEC, and military standards.
"There is a need for PCBs that have the same quality as those made in the U.S., that are competitively priced, and built by PCB manufacturers with all of the ISO standards and UL approvals," notes Grunor.
The partners are capable of handling multilayer boards up to 38 layers. For quick turnaround jobs, GFPC, located in Guangzhou, China, offers lead times of eight workdays for double-sided boards, 10 workdays for three- to six-layer boards and 13 workdays for seven- to 10-layer boards (for prototypes and small quantities up to 350 sq. ft. per shipment). If the customer requires a larger quantity of the same part number at a later date, tooling is sent to another PCB manufacturer and the customer is not assessed additional charges.
Most of the manufacturers have the capabilities to build PCBs with varied types of gold plating, including:
 Selective soft-gold and hard-gold plating.
Whole-panel immersion gold.
Hard-gold plating for connector tabs.
Blind and buried vias, heat sinks, and stiffeners.
Nickel/gold plating.
The stable of companies can also build controlled impedance and Teflon boards and they have capacities from 200,000 to over 1 million sq. ft. of production per month, serving the electronics, automotive, aerospace, and medical markets. Global Communications now counts between 75 to 100 contract manufacturers and OEMs as customers; its boards are used by Hewlett-Packard, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Motorola, K-Byte, General Motors, Tyco Electronics, Superior Manufacturing, Cal Quality, Comtel, Interconnect Systems, Mercury Security, and Telebyte, among others.
The Internet, according to Grunor, is playing an every-increasing part in this business. More than 80 percent of the sales are done over the Internet, either through e-mail or its Web site. With customers worldwide, project engineers, sales and marketing personnel, quality and analysis personnel, and operational teams spend many hours on the Internet.
One area where the payoff is evident is in data transfer. In the past, customers would mail schematics. Now, data can be condensed into Gerber data files and sent by e-mail. Customer requests for pricing and quotations are responded to within 12 to 24 hours.
Large Gerber data files with fab drawings, which could take an hour or more to transmit to China through regular telephone lines, were once a roadblock. To counter this, Global Communications selected operations set up in areas that have cable modem service, cutting transmission times to 15 seconds. "This has provided the growth of many new business relationships as well as solidifying the trust of present ones," Grunor says. The quick service has attracted new customers too.
"The bottom line is that the business would not have grown as well and as fast as it did in the two years that we've been in the PCB business if it were not for the Internet. E-mail gives our customers and our manufacturers immediate 'one-on-one' communication capability," says Grunor. "Whether quoting prices, setting lead times, changing panelization drawings [or] silk screen dimensions, or making revisions, [it all happens] as fast as the customer can say, 'How soon?'"
As production started to increase, contract manufacturers approached Global Communications with their needs for wire harness and cable assemblies, labels for all types of packaging, plus static control products and electrostatic discharge flooring, with particular emphasis on retrofitting old floors. Grunor once again spied a need for products that tie-in with the PCB industry and, after interviewing several companies, formed partnerships to supply other products and services as well.
Says Grunor, "Within the market, there is a solution to every problem, once you have that formula."
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Jerry A. Grunor
President
Global Communications
Div. of Global Communications 2000, Inc.
32545 B Golden Lantern, #283
Dana Point, CA 92629
Tel: (949) 248-7815
Fax: (949) 248-7819
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