Interview


CCL – celebrating 20 years serving the electronics manufacturing industry


Adam Chinery, managing director at CCL (Computer Components Ltd), and Gayle Paterson, account director, Buzzword Tech, discuss the company’s 20-year anniversary and find out how CCL play an active role in supporting Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and Electronic Manufacturing Service Providers (EMS) customers, enabling them to get a financial return on the excess component inventory that they may hold


during that time, I identified the opportunities that existed in managing OEMs’ excess inventory. The company that I worked for experimented in inventory management, and this is where a seed was planted. I developed a business plan that concentrated on creating a company that would be 100 per cent focused on inventory management.


The business was founded with the Adam Chinery, managing director at CCL G


ayle Patterson: Adam, I read with interest that CCL will celebrate its 20th year anniversary in August 2017, congratulations. During this time, you must have seen a lot of changes within electronics manufacturing, and we will go into that in more detail later, but let’s start by winding the clock back 20 years, what was the motivation behind establishing CCL?


Adam Chinery: I worked for an established distributor for 10 years, and


12 July/August 2017


proceeds of the sale of my motorbike, and the initial premises were offices above a wool shop near Kenilworth, Warwickshire. To fulfil my dream, I knew I had to invest in good people. Therefore, in 1988, I recruited my first employee, Vicky Osborn, followed by Kasper Henriksen, both who are still with CCL to this day in senior positions. With more feet on the ground, we were energised and grew to the point that we needed more space, so we moved into a converted farm building, which offered us more room to expand. But, even this wasn’t home for long, we learned that by the time you factored in space for a growing team and storage to hold a comprehensive component stock level, somewhere more suited to scale our business was required. This journey took us to our current location, near Exeter in the South-West, where we have expanded into additional warehousing and approx.15,000 sq ft of space.


I believe our success was the result of our business commitment, we didn’t deviate from our original plan and we have not diversified. In 1997 there was a gap in the market to be an excess inventory


Components in Electronics


partner with a 100 per cent true focus, and today we remain one of the largest companies dedicated to excess management solutions.


GP: Bringing you back to the present-day Adam, how would you say CCL has evolved over those 20 years to meet the needs of your Original Equipment Maker (OEM) and Electronics Manufacturing Service (EMS) customers?


AC: Technology has advanced massively during the past 20 years. Fax communication has given way to email, Skype, and video. The ability to market material to a vast international audience via online trading platforms has increased our ability to put our OEMs overstock in front of literally thousands of potential buyers. Advances in software development have enabled us to create bespoke programs to match excess inventory against live market demand.


Social Media platforms such as LinkedIn


and Twitter have made communication with existing and new customers much more engaging and efficient. The large distributors work more closely now with their OEMs than they did 20 years ago, which has helped to reduce the excess positions of their customers. But, excess inventory will unfortunately always be an issue that all OEM and EMS customers face, and when they do, it is important they choose an established inventory management specialist to guide them.


GP: To be able to compete in your market Adam, it sounds as though you must need to hold an extensive amount of knowledge about current market component pricing. Can you tell us which indexes or guides you follow to keep up-to-date with market price fluctuations?


AC: In addition to our 20 years of sales history, we subscribe to numerous pricing platforms, enabling us to access franchise pricing as well as being able to see pricing


CCL headquarters in Exeter www.cieonline.co.uk


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