Case Study

Sourcing Services for a Young Growth Company

Sourcing Services for a Young Growth Company

Industry Insights / David Young

Sourcing Services for a Young Growth Company

Helping a Young Company grow their business by providing our local Asian resource to manage their suppliers

Executive Summary

Make your Supply Chain Transformational for your Business! A young growth company that was having issues managing China suppliers at arm’s length. Having identified the need for an upstream resource and by partnering with ET2C, the Founders were able to transform their business and focus on giving their customers what they wanted.

About The Client

Kapow Meggings is a young e-commerce disrupter bringing ‘Meggings’ (Men’s Leggings) to the mainstream. The founders, two Australian brothers (Jordan & Ben) identified an opportunity to make men’s leggings and market them across the US, UK, EU and Australia.

The Challenges

As with any young company, there always going to be limited resource. Marketeers by background, and without a presence in Asia, their China sourcing strategy relied upon platforms like Alibaba. Although they managed to get stock to market, there was a lack of visibility around production, lead times and product quality.Having done all the hard work developing their customer base, this was having a detrimental impact on their business with stock not arriving for peak seasons and returns becoming more common.

Services Used

The Solution

We were immediately able to help them on the ground with our product knowledge and supply base. As a first step, we provided visibility on their incumbent supplier with visits to check on production and quality inspections. We were also able to address production times, implement quality standards relevant for the product and the markets that they were selling into and identify new suppliers that would support their growth over the medium term.

“I’m not sure where our business would be right now without ET2C. When we decided we needed a Sourcing Company to handle factory liaisons, production, and quality control for us, they stood head and shoulders above the other companies we interviewed.” Ben, founder, Kapow Meggings

As well as continuing with a China sourcing strategy, we are now looking further afield for other markets across Asia to support their ranges and their growth.

Results

ET2C helped Kapow control their supply chain and this has had a transformational impact on their business. They can now focus on developing their ranges and ensuing that they are delivering the products that their customers are asking for.

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Leveraging Benefits of Asian Sourcing

Leveraging Benefits of Asian Sourcing

Industry Insights / David Young

Leveraging Benefits of Asian Sourcing

Accessing the Asian Industrial manufacturing sector to drive margin growth

Executive Summary

Low Cost Country Industrial Manufacturing Made Easy As a UK OEM of industrial food processing machinery, our clients needed to increase capacity without increasing capital spend on new machinery and overhead. Working with ET2C gave them an ability to fully leverage the benefits of the Asian manufacturing without repeating past mistakes.

About The Client

Our client was a medium-sized industrial manufacturing business, with an established supply base both in the U.K. and Eastern Europe. They needed to look for additional manufacturing bases to enhance their manufacturing capability. This included high pressure Aluminium die cast moulds, injection moulded plastic parts, rubber moulds, machined items, along with large scale fabricated stainless steel industrial ovens. Machinery ET2C

The Challenges

Although they had previously tried to source from the Far East on an ad-hoc basis, it had not generated any results due to a lack of local knowledge and having the resource to manage the suppliers at source. As a result, the Board had many reservations at looking again for industrial manufacturing in the Far East but it was seen as strategically necessary to leverage the benefits of the Asian supply base.

Services Used

The Solution

With our local expertise with industrial manufacturing, we were very quickly able to provide them visibility across the critical path; from walking them through onboarding suppliers, establishing quality standards, price negotiations through to the shipping. Communication has been integral to quickly establishing a collaborative partnership over the past 18 months making sure that we provide a high service level whether it be response times for quotation, a willingness to proactively help with the manufacturing process or addressing lead times. We have made it our business to understand their business to allow us to act in our client’s best interest. The Function that ET2C provides in terms of the liason between us and the suppliers, finance and processing orders, expediting shipping and supplier sourcing has been absolutely key to the success we have enjoyed so far Alan Woodbridge, Procurement Manager.

Results

Global sourcing strategy has delivered a range of benefits to our client

Increased sales opportunities through cost leadership opportunities
Margin growth
Additional Capacity without increasing overhead

The Challenges

Although they had previously tried to source from the Far East on an ad-hoc basis, it had not generated any results due to a lack of local knowledge and having the resource to manage the suppliers at source. As a result, the Board had many reservations at looking again for industrial manufacturing in the Far East but it was seen as strategically necessary to leverage the benefits of the Asian supply base.

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