Compliments to the Chinese Tiger

Roy Phillips reckons his own company offers a good illustration of how UK design and manufacturing can still compete in commodity markets.

First things first: this article is not the standard whinge from a UK manufacturer decrying foreign (especially Chinese) competition, nor is it moaning about "lack of government support".

No; this article is about how a new manufacturer/designer in the electronics sector can succeed in the face of what are, admittedly, daunting odds.

The idea for Intelliconnect was hatched in late 2002 when, along with some industry colleagues I was bemoaning the demise of the UK coaxial connector manufacturing industry.

Amp (Macom/Greenpar) and Radiall (Transradio) - both former employers of mine - had retrenched to their home countries, Huber Suhner was closing its factories, Leetec had gone.

There simply was nobody significant left making 50ohm RF connectors; and more importantly, few providing a really effective technical support to users, particularly smaller users, in the UK.

A huge and (still) growing proportion of the market was now being supplied from the Far East.

Understandable when you consider that pricing was astonishingly low (GBP 0.09 for some BNC connectors), and many of the traditional concerns over quality were being overcome.

A plethora of former Sales people from European connector houses were setting up as importers of Far Eastern product and the European/US manufacturers themselves were opening factories to manufacture some of their products in China.

So, it was in this atmosphere of doom, in terms of UK RF/coaxial connector manufacturing that we decided to create Intelliconnect, an RF/coaxial connector manufacturer.

The business was born (in May 2003) with the ethos of innovative and responsive product design, prompt and sympathetic customer support, local procurement (90% of component parts are purchased in the UK) and a marketing campaign focused on customers, particularly engineers, who required an innovative, non-me-too approach.

We could not hope to compete with Far-Eastern or even European manufacturers in terms of bog standard connectors, so the focus would be on solutions not products.

In other words: "give the customers what they want rather than giving them what we do".

The difficulty for any coaxial connector manufacturer is that there are potentially several million different combinations of interface, gender, mounting, finish, style, cable size etc.

With each connector type having somewhere between four and 15 components, the logistical and inventory nightmare is not difficult to imagine.

The answer for Intelliconnect was, with certain strategic exceptions, to manufacture specifically to customer requirements.

And although this has limited our market, it has given us a huge advantage in terms of the agility and flexibility of design and product we have been able to bring to the market.

Intelliconnect was designed to be, is now, and always will be an engineering-focused business.

(60% of employees are engineers and the majority of the rest have some form of background in engineering).

In 2004 we acquired the assets of Select Connect in Tennessee and more importantly acquired the talents of one of the foremost design teams in the US connector industry.

From humble beginnings Intelliconnect is now recognised as one of the most innovative and well respected RF/coaxial/microwave connector designers in both Europe and the USA.

Supplying directly or indirectly into most of the major UK defence/aerospace/telecomms OEMs, Intelliconnect is now a leading supplier of triaxial product into the US medical market as well as a world leader in the manufacture of waterproof IP68 connectors for, among others, personal locator beacons and antenna applications.

I guess the purpose of this article (apart from the free plug) is to show what a couple of engineers with a dream, a little talent and an enormous amount of effort can achieve with the right mix of passion, innovative thinking and product 'solutions'.

It is also to point out that there is a future for UK design and manufacturing as long as we can differentiate, adapt and be agile.

So potential entrepreneurs out there: it can be done, it most definitely ain't easy, it is certainly stressful but the satisfaction of succeeding and doing your small part to "fight the good fight" for UK plc is beyond description.

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