Agility and innovation - it's a potent combination
Ascott Analytical is one of the world’s top five manufacturers of corrosion test equipment for the automotive, aerospace and coatings industries.
Exports to more than 50 countries account for 95 per cent of turnover, with China, India and the US being the biggest markets and the automotive sector generating the largest share of revenue.
The company employs 30 people and is based in Tamworth in Staffordshire. Chris Gates, its chairman, who founded the company in 1989, spells out his recipe for success – summed up as “innovate and export”.
Innovation:
My mantra for business is encapsulated in the expression “keep moving the goal posts”. Success in any endeavour can breed complacency. Complacency is the enemy of success. Rest on your reputation for just a moment and you will be going backwards, so keep moving. Be restless. Exploit the British tendency to be inventive. Design and develop – constantly. As a moving target you will leave your competitors struggling to keep up.
Protect your innovations where you can – for example, with trademarks or patents. But if your products do get copied, as ours have been (incredibly irritating and certainly not flattering) then channel this anger into ensuring a constant stream of product innovations. Deliver these to market quickly to differentiate your product and keep one step ahead of the competition. This will ultimately leave the copies looking like empty shadows of the real deal.
British manufacturing in 2018 is much less about large smokestack industries and more about less visible, highly specialised manufacturers like us who are good at exploiting manufacturing niches.
A smaller business has one key advantage over a bigger one – agility. Specifically, it has the ability to react to a changing market quickly and adapt accordingly. Agility coupled with innovation is a potent combination: two prongs of an attack that will help ensure a business prevails over its competitors.
Exporting:
In our field of corrosion test equipment, in what is globally a highly specialised niche market, there was never any question as to whether exporting was a good idea for us. It was vital. No single market could give us enough critical mass to support the investment required.
Our export performance was a significant factor in our winning The Manufacturers’ Organisation (EEF) 2017 National Exporter of the Year Award, in addition to two regional export awards also in 2017.
Too often exporting is seen as the icing on the cake by British business: I argue it should be the cake itself. The reasons should be obvious:
1. Exporting is a fantastic way to spread any risk of market/economic downturns. Our exports to China immunised us against the general economic downturn during and after the 2009 financial crisis.
2. Improved cash flow. Many are wary of payment delays or worse when dealing overseas, but in my experience this is not borne out by reality. Overseas payments can be very prompt, providing the right terms are agreed. There are a broad range of bank instruments that can also be used to secure prompt payment.
3. Extending product life. Almost all products have a life cycle, but this is rarely the same in all markets at the same time.
4. It’s great for Britain’s balance of payments.
My biggest tip for successful exporting is simple: try to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and think about all the extra reasons (compared with a UK customer) that they might choose not to buy from you. Address these issues, whatever they may be:
?Language
?Culture
?Understanding
?Currency/price stability
?Confidence/trust
?Technical variation
If you do this well, then they will buy from you. As a business we’ve been prepared to go the extra mile to develop globally. During the past 30 years we’ve created and now maintain catalogues in 20 languages. When we realised that the US preferred a slightly different size of catalogue, we created one to match their dimensions.
We now have over 20 individual language-specific websites hosted in the local market to maximise Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
Every year, we exhibit at major trade shows on different continents. In the past two years we’ve directly invested in shows in the US, China, India, South Korea and Germany, and support our distributors with their own exhibitions in dozens of countries annually.
Many of our distributors have been with us from the beginning – they are entrepreneurs who have built their business around our corrosion chambers and they are an integral part of the Ascott family.
Our future:
During the past decade our output has tripled and global recognition has brought us international partners: for example AkzoNobel now operates 30 Ascott chambers in 12 countries, from Brazil to Singapore. Among our customers we can count internationally recognised businesses such as Volkswagen, Daimler-Benz, Tesla, Airbus, Pratt & Whiney, Ford, Boeing, Safran, Panasonic, Jaguar Land Rover and Samsung. More than 50 per cent of total revenue comes from Asia.
The high growth we’ve achieved over the past couple of years has led to investment in people. A new facility that opened earlier this year has doubled capacity, and has provided greater focus on product development to ensure our business – which is now a rather large fish in a small pond – has the ability to adapt and continue its rate of expansion over the coming years.
With new products in the pipeline and a stronger management team, we’re looking forward to the future and have put challenging objectives in place.
We have a global brand to build on, new geographic markets still to exploit – including Latin America – and new products to strengthen our offering to our distribution network.
At Ascott, we believe our business embodies the spirit of British manufacturing in the modern age.
Innovative in everything we do, we are determined to show the rest of the world how it should be done.
*This is the full text from Ascott's inclusion in the 2018 Parliamentary Review. ?See the original document here https://www.theparliamentaryreview.co.uk/organisations/ascott-analytical