Interview
The ‘Digi-Key Difference’ bringing more growth in hopes for another successful year
Digi-Key is one the largest electronic component distributors in the world and Mark Larson, vice chairman, sits down with CIE editor, Amy Wallington, to talk about how ‘The Digi-Key Difference’ is driving the company’s growth
Digi-Key is currently the seventh largest Mark Larson F
ounded in 1972, Digi-Key has been committed to offering the broadest product offering of electronic components as well as providing the best services possible for it’s customers, leading it to become one of the highest ranked electronic component distributors in the world. I sat down with Mark Larson, who has been with the company since it was founded in 1972 to talk about what makes Digi-Key different to the rest and how its continuing growth keeps them ahead of the competition.
Larson, who is the semi-retired vice chairman, told how there were only 14 people working at Digi-Key when he started compared to now where there are around 3500 people. “The sales have also grown over the years,” said Larson, “and we are expecting to have a record year. And this is in spite of the fact that electronic component distribution is generally somewhat soft and lethargic, especially in the States, but I know it’s being felt a bit in Europe as well. But we are outperforming the market reasonably significantly at this point and I think it is that we have a slightly different business model.”
10 December 2016/January 2017
electronic component distributor in the world. It has started to unveil some new initiatives for the coming year to boost its growth even further and maybe move up the list of the world’s biggest electronic component distributors. “Figure 1 shows the results of a North American survey where they asked engineers what distributor they think of when they think of these six different industries,” explains Larson. “So for example, when asked who they think of when they think of semiconductors, 44 per cent said they thought of Digi-Key which is huge. Obviously one distributor has to be the one they think of the most but you wouldn’t expect any one to be that much higher than the rest. “However, what is really interesting about this is that all of the graphs show that between 30 and 50 per cent of people think of us for most of the industries but only 18 per cent think of us when they think of automation and control which is quite low compared to the rest of them. It’s still very good and if that was the only
Figure 2: Digi-Key is the seventh largest electronic component distributor in the world
chart we were looking at we would think it was great but instead, I saw this as an opportunity to build our presence in that market. Although we already offer switches, relays and things like that, we can see that there is a lot of product that we could add that would strengthen our position in this area.”
The company has also made it more of a focal point on their website by giving it a button in the middle of the homepage taking customers to a page called ‘Industrial Automation, Controls & Safety Product Selector’ where there is an image of a conveyer belt. The page encourages customers to select a product around the
conveyer belt and the website will show all products related to that area.
Larson said, “This is a kind of soft launch
in this area and really starts broadening the product. We have always been electronic components but this is slightly beyond the edge of that. Suppliers such as Panasonic carry an incredible 40,000 components in automation but we have only ever carried very few. So making a major move in this automation and control area is a major initiative for us and has only just been introduced.”
Another key initiative that Digi-Key is
Figure 1: The results of a survey showing Digi-Key to be the most thought of distributor for electronic components
Components in Electronics
slowly rolling out is a new website designed for makers. Making it separate from the main Digi-Key site is important as Larson explains: “Many companies try to incorporate the professional engineer’s needs with the makers needs and it can become very confusing all on one site. We have always had many makers in our customer base but I wouldn’t say our website really caters to them. We view our site as a tool for the professional engineer or the professional purchaser. So we decided to make a separate website that’s more friendly to the maker. And we didn’t want to diminish the appeal of the professionals so we said we will maintain the Digi-Key site, highly focused on the professional then we will introduce this new site specifically for the maker.” The website,
maker.io, is currently fully available in the US. It can be accessed in the UK but is not UK friendly yet with all products available in USD. The UK site is expected to be unveiled in the second quarter of 2017. The website has a step-
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