Interview I Charlie Peppiatt A year of change


It's been a year of change and progress at Stadium Group. But as Charlie Peppiatt, the company's CEO, explains to Neil Tyler it is only the just the beginning of a long journey


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Charlie Peppiatt A


t the end of July Stadium Group announced that it was acquiring United Wireless, a company that specialises in the design and manufacture of M2M wireless solutions that support wireless connectivity across different wireless technologies.


The decision supports Stadium's new business strategy which is to build a leading integrated electronics technology solutions group with a broad portfolio of value-adding complementary products, design capabilities and global supply chain management for their customers. According to Stadium CEO, Charlie Peppiatt, "Our strategy is all about expanding our current offering and complementing our existing iEMS, Power Products and Interface & Displays businesses. This move into M2M is part of that strategy. There's huge growth potential there." Figures quoted by Peppiatt suggest that global demand for M2M wireless devices is likely to rise at a compound rate of over 20 per cent per year over the next five years, with the number of cellular M2M device subscribers likely to rise to over 490 million by 2018.


It has been a year of change at the company which has been in existence since 1911. Employing over 1000 people Stadium has grown organically and through acquisition - prior to the purchase of United Wireless its most recent acquisition had been that of IGT Industries at the end of 2012.


The company serves a variety of markets


from industrial and aviation to transport infrastructure, medical, emerging and


20 September 2014


Looking back over the past 12-18 months Peppiatt has overseen considerable change at the company. "Yes, it has been a significant period for the company," he concedes. "It has been challenging but the initial restructuring which was required is now complete." According to Peppiatt the starting point for the company was to look at the company footprint, "Was it appropriate and where did we want to focus?" Up until 2012 around 85 per cent of the company's activities, in terms of revenue, came via EMS. "We did operate as a number of separate autonomous business units and we needed to look at how they functioned and whether we could provide a more integrated offering to our customers. We needed to ensure that our various businesses could deliver what we said we wanted to do. That required a degree of consolidation and we closed, for example, our EMS operation in Rugby and transferred it to our main site in Hartlepool, creating a European Centre of Excellence." Stadium also has the advantage of operations in China – a production facility and offices. However, while it has supported Stadium well in the past changes there were also required. "It was a little out-of-date in how it was managed and structured," Peppiatt explains. "Historically you'd have the 'brains' of the operations based in Hong Kong and the 'do-ers' on the mainland. Now that may have worked 15 years ago, but over the past 5-10 years that has become an out-dated model. You create a remote operation and you need to have your frontline leadership on the mainland. As a result we've established a much more China centric operation and have been able to recruit high quality management locally.


"I spent five years in Asia working for


Laird Technologies, so I have a reasonable understanding of what is required. We've appointed a new managing director in Asia with, as I'd describe, Tier One experience and capability."


While working for Laird Peppiatt managed a $4-500m business, employing 6-7000 people at its peak.


"I gained a lot of experience working at


Laird but like many of the people we've recruited recently I wanted to work in a smaller operation, building the right team, with the right talents and abilities, which would be capable of executing a business plan that could double or treble the size of


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the business. That really appealed to me. "There are a lot of things you learn from working in a Footsie 100 company, but there a lot of things you can do without or can improve upon, such as the corporate bureaucracy."


Focus on technology


The consolidation of the operation in Hartlepool and the recruitment of an experienced team in China was crucial to the way in which Peppiatt and the management team at Stadium wanted the company to develop.


"Customers want to understand the technology you are able to offer. Promotional and marketing are certainly critical in that case. However, customers want you to be able to deliver the support that you say you can. They need to have confidence in the team that comes into their plant. We're competing against companies like Toshiba or Honeywell and as the electronics industry moves on so it becomes critical that customers have faith and trust in what you say."


The changes that the company's EMS division has experienced have been considerable, but across the group as a whole those changes have been widespread and deep. "We've standardised out global


offering," explains Peppiatt. "For our size and despite our global presence I felt that Stadium was not demonstrating that it was truly global and that our real capabilities were being sub-optimised."


Peppiatt explains that what Stadium has now become is a 'pocket battleship' with 'factories within factories'.


"What I mean by that," he explains," is that we have established the necessary skills and requirements to drive deeply into those key markets – M2M, power and HMI – that we have identified. In China we have created centres of excellence dedicated to power and HMI with specialisms supporting those business channels."


Sense of direction


Over the past twelve months Peppiatt and the management team he has established have worked hard to lay out a clear plan and give people a sense of direction. "When you manage a business you need to identify the battles that need to be fought. My core values are that you need to treat people with respect. What example are you setting to them? With the senior team now in place they have to walk the talk, they are central to developing the business plan. With a serious and committed management team


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