profile BeRex
In Snook’s opinion, BeRex’s fabless approach also allows it to focus on putting together and maintaining a strong team that excels in designing chips, ensuring their quality, and fostering great customer relationships. In contrast, if a fab is on-site, its running can take precedent over everything, while keeping its technology competitive can require further investment.
A big concern facing any start-up operating in a niche market is that its orders are too small for fabs to be interested in its business. “Each fab has its own minimum order requirements,” says Snook, who reveals that this could be several wafers, or it could be a dozen of them. “These are not seriously limiting factors, but they are certainly factors that we take into account as we make business decisions.”
Although individual orders may be low, these mount up. And this means that fabs are willing to deal with smaller, loyal customers, if both sides establish a good working relationship. “Are you honest? Do they like to deal with you? Qualities like that don’t appear on any spreadsheet, but they are very critical to that relationship,” says Snook, “Our relationships with our fabs are very, very good – they know who they are dealing with personally. They are dealing with the same people all the time.”
This strong relationship helps BeRex’s to offer rapid turnaround times. While some firms quote six weeks, eight weeks, or even 16 weeks, BeRex promises to ship a production product within just two weeks. “I don’t think we’ve broken that promise to our customers in almost eight years of operation,” says Snook, who reveals that the money saved from fabless operations is re-deployed on engineering resources and building up an inventory.
Back in the US Today BeRex generates most of its income from sales of infrastructure products, with revenue from devices built for microwave applications not coming far behind. Lee became aware the microwave market through a business friend in the US, who suggested that he should take a look at the RF and microwave amplifier market. “When I looked at the potential of that market, I thought we could do better than any of the current vendors.”
To sell products to the US military, BeRex Corporation founded an independent company in Silicon Valley, BeRex Inc.. By taking this step, the organization avoids issues related to imports, exports and the sharing of information. “We need to keep a firewall between an off- shore company and a US company,” explains Snook.
April / May 2012
www.compoundsemiconductor.net 23
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175