INSIGHT


certainly the company that has made it mainstream. In the United States, our online store accounts for over 76% of our daily sales. The transition was a challenge for some of our customers and salespeople. The fastener industry is a very traditional business with long entrenched business practices. However, BBI was confident that our web platform would bring a new level of value to our distributors. We often draw analogies between our


website and an airline kiosk. There are two groups of travelers, those that go to an airport and get in line, and those that go to an airport and check in themselves at a kiosk. While it’s certainly true the person at the kiosk has to do more to get his ticket, it is also true that the person at the kiosk can check in and get to the gate faster than an individual who has to wait his turn at the desk. Both methods gets you what you need, but in business, speed and execution usually leads to better market share, and in a commoditised business this speed and execution matters in differentiating yourself from your competitors. We believe the web will be a


tremendous asset to our distributors in Europe. Our web-sales in the UK is already at 45%, and we believe we can push this to the 70% range by the end of 2011. Coincidentally, the vast majority of


our web-sales come from Continental Europe and not from the United Kingdom. The English language, for all practical purposes, is the mostly widely used language in business, and English is often easier to read than it is to pronounce for many cultures. Hence, we believe there is an affinity for individuals whose mother


tongue is not English to use our website as it minimises the errors and time needed when ordering fasteners.


IT is clearly fundamental to the management ethos of BBI now – explain how systems and people balance in the business.


This is a very good question, as we


believe many people confuse what are IT and what are human resources. To Brighton Best, there is no separation of the two. Everyone is IT, and everyone has a responsibility to make sure our IT is the best in the industry. IT is a system that is developed by


people. If left alone, it is only a tool. However, the logic of how our IT system works needs to come from everyone in the company. From the salespeople entering an order to the warehouse staff scanning an order out, everyone bears a responsibility to understand the current procedures; and if something does not make sense to them, for them to make recommendations to our IT department on how to streamline the program. In effect, our IT system is a living program, always evolving and learning how to be faster and more robust. We strongly believe that there is no


conflict between technology and people. We consider having an in-house IT staff of 40 professionals and internally developing all our systems one of our greatest assets. Our systems will never stop growing, we will continue to strengthen and push the envelope to bring new technologies and improve efficiencies for ourselves and for our customers. There was a common misconception


that when BBI introduced its online ordering system we would have no need for salespeople. Although we have achieved online sales of 75%, we have actually increased our sales staff by 10%. Our salespeople are not just clerks quoting prices and inventory availability. They are now true salespeople taking care of the customer’s more involved needs because the website has freed up their time to do so. We have always emphasised that the system is just a tool to provide quick answers to pricing and inventory questions. Use it when you don’t feel like talking to a salesperson or call anytime if you do.


There has been a radical extension of the BBI product range in the USA and the installation of a major increase in warehouse capacity in the United Kingdom. What has happened so far and is planned for 2011 in terms of range development for the European market?


2008 was indeed our rebranding year as


we worked to integrate Brighton Best. We moved or expanded about 15 warehouses in one year, which was a tremendous feat considering we had only 19 warehouses in the United States. Our square footage under roof expanded from about 400,000 to over 1 million, and to fill in the space we rapidly expanded into the medium carbon / low carbon / stainless families. In the UK, we increased our warehouse


space from approximately 20,000 sq ft to about 60,000 sq ft. We have already expanded into the 8.8 hex head, and are expecting to sell stainless fasteners in the second quarter of 2011. We will continue to expand our product range in


Ta Chen / Brighton Best International headquarters in Tainan, Taiwan


120 Fastener + Fixing Magazine • Issue 67 January 2011


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