Digi-Key’s Kris Haggstrom: “Israel fits us perfectly”

25 May, 2016

“Time to market gets shorter everyday, and many costumers move to Systems on Module and complete solutions”

“Time to market gets shorter every day, and many costumers move to Systems on Module (SoM) and complete solutions”

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Digi-Key’s VP Sales for EMEA & Asia Pacific, Krister Haggstrom, visited last week the company’s office in Israel. Digi-Key is considered the fifth largest global electronics components distributor, and has a long established presence in Israel. So Techtime took the opportunity to learn about new trends in the market.

Kris: “The market undergoes profound changes. One of them is in the SoM business: We see many customers look for complete solutions rather than single components. For example, many customers are interested in System on Module cards – not for a mere development stage – but actually to bring them to production. Time to market gets shorter every day, and many costumers move to Systems on Module and complete solutions.”

How the online development tools program comes along?

“We provide free and professional EDA tools based on our cloud infrastructure. Engineers use these tools in order to easily and rapidly develop new products. The variety of tools we offer caters to engineers and developers at any stage in their design or production process.  Digi-Key began adding more EDA tools a few years ago based on the feedback of our customers and the market, and we will continue that process as the demand for these tools grows. Their exact effect on sales in yet to be studied, but we can already say that it generates new customers.”

So you are focused on Internet sales?

“As a component distribution company, our research and development efforts are internet focused. Digi-Key’s main growth engine is digital marketing and the main effort is to make sure that our website is highly functional and easy to use. As a result of these efforts, we gained 57,000 new customers through Q1 in 2016.

“Engineers from the younger generations come to us because they are online oriented. They know what they are looking for, and they are looking for applications and solutions. Up until a few years ago, the average engineer using our site visited 4 pages. Today, the average is 11 pages per visit.”

What about Israel?

“We see an amazing amount of new customers from Israel. Right now we have more than 3,000 customers here, many of these are startup companies. Our core business is about engineering and the supply of a wide range of components in small to medium quantities. The Israeli market demands a wide range of different components, in small quantities and and extremely short time spans. It is a challenge, but it is a challenge that fits us perfectly.”

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Posted in: Electronic Components , News