Publication date: 20 July 2010
In the first half of 2010, Mouser had already far exceeded its entire 2009 European sales turnover and achieved a growth of 225% over the same period in 2009. This is not a reflection on poor 2009 performance since last year was also a record year for the company at more than doubling the business in a market recession.. This year, Mouser expects to achieve sales figures in Europe in excess of $70M. With just under 40% of the company’s worldwide sales now outside of the USA, the company is developing product policies in line with this expansion, and is now bringing more European-focussed parts to its customer base. However the company’s prime focus is global – to have available the “newest parts for the newest designs”.
Although many distributors are seeing a significant upturn in business on what was for most (but not Mouser) a poor year in 2009 - as economies worldwide slowly move out of recession - Mouser’s growth is outstripping most of its competitors. What is driving this?
Unlike most distributors which focus on volume, Mouser’s prime objective is to deliver the newest technologies and the highest levels of service to customers of all sizes. This concentration on supporting design engineers as they develop their new products by giving them access to the latest semiconductors and other components is crucial to seeding the electronics market. When a new product moves out of the pilot phase or initial low production run, Mouser expects orders to shift to other distributors who are set up to cater for large production runs, or even to go direct to the manufacturer of the part.
Why is this? Mark Burr-Lonnon, Mouser’s vice president of Europe and Asia explains that it is not possible to do a good job for the development and production stages. “Some while ago”, he comments, “Mouser tried to be all things to all men. But we found that we were not serving either side of the market well, so stopped trying to address the volume production sector, and focused on customers at the early stage of a product lifecycle. Since then we have seen our business grow, outstripping both traditional volume distributors and other catalogue houses.”
Mouser aims to be the design engineer’s one-stop shop for all the board-level components and associated development tools necessary for total project design. The company’s broad-based linecard consists of components across the board from more than 400 industry-leading manufacturers of semiconductors, optoelectronics, embedded modules, as well as passives, interconnects, electromechanical, circuit protection devices, enclosures, thermal management, and wire/cable products. Mouser’s award winning website, www.mouser.com, is updated daily with new products and technologies available for customers to browse and buy online, and searches over 6.7 million products to locate more than a 1.4 million parts numbers that are available for easy online purchase. The website also houses more than 5 million downloadable data sheets and over 400 supplier catalogues. The constant refinement of the site includes technical design information, as well as numerous user-friendly tools such as Project Manager with automatic re-order, BOM import capabilities, automatic order confirmation, and live chat in several languages as well as the Industry leading “on-Line” catalogue.
Burr-Lonnon has another way to define Mouser’s business: “we deal in broken packs”, he comments. “We are happy to ship one or two components if that’s what the customer wants, rather than sending a full reel which causes waste and incurs excessive cost for the design engineer and NPI customer.”
Mouser’s tag line is “the newest products for your newest designs”, and the company is almost religious about having the latest semiconductor or components available as soon as possible, so that designers can begin to use them ahead of their competition and hence gain a competitive edge for their new product. “Volume distributors stock volume components”, explains Burr-Lonnon, “and there are no volume sales for new components. This can leave a designer waiting for the latest component, or maybe he doesn’t even know it exists, which loses him a critical time-to-market advantage. The worst scenario is that components that have been made obsolete – or will shortly become so – are specified, as this causes costly re-designs and manufacturing delays, perhaps even leading to the termination of a project.”
Mouser has a standing order with at least one major semiconductor company so that whenever a new part is launched, it will be in stock at the distributor immediately. New products are added to the Mouser web site daily and currently the company has over one million products on line, nearly one million data sheets online and over one million cross referenced parts online. But the company also still believes in a paper catalogue, producing a catalogue every 90 days – more often than any other catalogue distributor. Burr-Lonnon: “Whenever we put out a new catalogue we see a sales spike, and the business settles back to a higher level, so we will continue to produce a physical copy as well as the widely-used online site.” Mouser’s latest catalogue highlights the newest products from over 400 industry leading manufacturers of semiconductors, optoelectronics and embedded modules, as well as passive, interconnect, electromechanical, circuit protection and much more. Crucially Mouser’s catalogue never details any obsolete products.
Comments Burr-Lonnon: “Other catalogue companies have different models which may work for them, but we believe that by having a new up-to-date catalogue every 90 days, designers will be able to choose only the very newest parts, assuring them access to the most innovative solutions available.”
He continues: “It is also good for our franchises, who sometimes complain that it is a long and difficult process to get new parts into the other catalogues. When component manufacturers ask us what we need to drive the business forward, we just say, ‘let us stock your newest components’, which they love because it helps to build a market for those latest parts.”
Mouser is adding new franchises and new products all the time. Details of new products available on the website are updated very regularly and provide an interesting snapshot of recent activity. Highlighting just two of the many recent agreements - Panasonic and Micropelt - illustrates Mouser’s strategy of working with established major players and emerging start-ups alike.
The much-anticipated agreement between Mouser and Panasonic provides electronics engineers with access to a vast array of advanced electronic components from one of the world’s major manufacturers. Mouser’s Panasonic stock portfolio includes capacitors, RF modules, switches, inductors, resistors and many other passive and semiconductor components.At the signing, Glenn Smith, Mouser President and CEO, stated: “The partnership between Mouser and Panasonic provides a win-win-win solution for our customers, Mouser, and Panasonic. Mouser’s commitment to the rapid introduction of the newest products and technologies will provide Panasonic with new design opportunities for its product lines worldwide, while expanding an already extensive global customer base. We look forward to working with Panasonic and building a strong, successful relationship.”“Panasonic Electronic Components is pleased to work with Mouser Electronics to provide our products to the world’s leading electronics engineers,” said Jeff Howell, Group, Director, Panasonic Electronic Components. “Mouser is a highly respected, reliable distributor that professionals turn to for quick results. That matches up very well with Panasonic’s reputation for delivering quality products and customer service.”
The deal with Micropelt, an innovator in Peltier cooler and thermo-generator devices, sees Mouser adding solid state thin film thermoelectric device evaluation kits to its range, including the TE-Power NODE Evaluation Kit for thermal energy harvesting. Highly modular, the kit shows how free excess heat can provide a continuous power source for low-power wireless sensing applications. The simple-to-use evaluation kit provides customers with an easy-to-handle plug and play wireless sensor system which allows the user to explore and understand thermal harvesting and comes complete with the thermoelectric generator TE-Power Base, various power and power modules, a low-power wireless sensor module and Texas Instrument’s USB Wireless Receiver. Also available from Mouser is Micropelt’s TE-Power PLUS Evaluation Kit, allowing the designer to determine the available power to drive low-power wireless applications by matching energy budget and duty-cycle control. Easily capable of producing 100s of microwatts up to milliwatts, the harvester refills its extendable 100µF capacitor during the latency periods of the duty cycle. The TE-Power Plus has an integrated DC-DC converter that allows the user to set the desired voltage level based on the available gross power.Mike Scott, Mouser Vice President of Active Products, believes the availability of Micropelt products from Mouser will simplify the verification of performance and allow the exploration of new dimensions in thermal energy harvesting. “Being able to create enough energy for a low-power burst radio from an unused, free resource, like a temperature gradient, opens new doors in the field of remote wireless sensing and control. Mouser is very excited to offer this new technology to our engineering customers worldwide.”
Wladimir Punt, VP Sales & Marketing at Micropelt sees multiple benefits. “Since their launch we have seen tremendous growth in demand for our thermo-harvesting evaluation tools. Mouser’s engineering focus and logistical competence means to our US based and worldwide customers that they can start their thermo-harvesting project even quicker – while we and our US engineering partner AdaptivEnergy can concentrate on providing the best possible support for systems and solutions.”
Mouser provides logistical support to customers in Europe from its global 132,000m2 state of the art warehouse that ships to more than 170 countries worldwide daily. Orders are shipped the same day and will be delivered to the customer within two to three days with reduced shipping rates, or even free shipping on larger orders. This year, Mouser has opened new offices in France and Italy – bringing its total number of European locations to five (with a European HQ in Munich and other branch offices in the UK and Israel) in addition to Global expansion in 2010 with new operations opened in Thailand and India to compliment current locations in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. This emphasis on local support – with local language catalogues and websites, local phone numbers and pricing options – combined with a focus on delivering the newest, most innovative parts before other distributors has paid dividends. Mouser understands that 2010 will be challenging for the industry. However, Burr-Lonnon continues to be optimistic. “With long leadtimes well out in some cases to 2011 we do not expect a quick fix to the supply chain. That said, 2010 will be a good year for the market even if it does not stay at current high levels. For Mouser with our growing position in Europe we see only growth in Europe for us regardless of the actual market position.”
