COVER STORY
Timeless fundamentals with a fresh perspective for 2025
By Steve Rawlins, CEO, Anglia Component Plc
A
s we look forward to 2025, it’s worth noting that the headline of the review/forecast article that Anglia thought was appropriate for the same issue this time last year was: ‘Beware of complacency in 2024’. I hate to say it, but we got that one right! Well, we have been in business for over 50 years so we have seen it all before. What very few people got right was how long this situation – and I’m deliberately not calling it a recession – would last. I refuse to use the ‘R’ word because I think it’s not an accurate description. The reality is that there is a huge amount of business activity. However, there is also still an enormous amount of inventory in the channel – at distributors and customers – which manufacturers forced them to take in readiness for a predicted EV sales bonanza. This, of course, failed to materialise and EV sales have slowed. Whilst I am sure that the EV market will shortly resume a stellar trajectory, in the meantime, that inventory is clogging up the market and distorting the overall picture. However, the consensus among our suppliers and customers is that this over-supply will be exhausted by the middle of 2025, by which time we will start to see real signs of growth. In the meantime, it’s been a challenging couple of years and anyone who says they are even ‘flat’ is probably being ‘economical with the truth’ or operating in a very niche sector. Anglia, too, has faced its share of challenges during this time, but being privately owned allows us to take a long-term view, free from the short-term pressures of City investors. Whilst these investors are highly driven, their focus on short term returns often overlooks the complexities of the electronic components industry. In contrast, Anglia’s half-century of experience has taught us that sustainable success comes from a steadfast commitment to the fundamentals: stock, service, and support. These principles remain at the heart of our business, guiding how we operate, adapt, and serve our customers— ensuring we’re not just meeting expectations but consistently delivering long-term value and reliability.
10 December/January 2025
Accordingly, Anglia sets itself apart by maintaining a team of expert FAEs who deliver real design-in support—something some larger semiconductor manufacturers have scaled back as they shift to a model of single global supply chain and direct technical support. Whilst this model may suit larger customers, it’s the small and medium sized businesses that ultimately lose out; they face little or no choice of where to buy from and significantly reduced technical assistance. At Anglia, we bridge that gap, ensuring personalised support and expert guidance remain accessible to every customer, regardless of size. Unlike the self-styled ‘high service’ distributors – who might more accurately be labelled as ‘self service’ outfits – Anglia has the ability to offer an individual service. For example, we can be flexible on credit terms; we offer free-of-charge delivery across Europe and our Ezysample service. This service is underlined by our commitment to ship sample quantities of NPI (New Product Introductions) from our key partners free of charge to customers in the UK and EU countries. We continue to hold vast inventories – in fact, Anglia is already preparing, we are filling our large UK distribution centre with ICs, discretes, passive, connectors and electromechanical components at least six months in advance of when we expect the upturn to be. Stock-market driven corporations are not allowed the latitude to make
Components in Electronics
investments of this nature, which put customers first, not the shareholders.
They say that in difficult times the companies that innovate are the ones that emerge faster and strongest. In an article this year in the respected business publication, Forbes, Kent Ingle, Forbes Business Council member, put it another way: to avoid stagnation and eventual decline, you need to continuously pursue innovation.”(1)
One of the
ways Anglia innovated in 2024 was the expansion of our Anglia Live platform to serve customers across the EU in addition to the UK. This move was driven by the growing demand from EU-based customers who wanted direct access to our extensive online inventory.
Launched in the UK in 2013, Anglia Live is our business- to-business e-commerce website, offering live inventory, live pricing and online ordering for same day despatch with free of charge shipping. Anglia Live makes available to customers one of the industry’s most comprehensive parametric search engines to date, populated with data that has been verified, formatted and uploaded by Anglia’s in-house team, to ensure complete consistency of presentation. Other features include a fully predictive search based on Anglia part numbers, industry standard part numbers or, by description. Live manufacturers’ data
www.cieonline.co.uk
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