Interview pt.1: We talk to one of Antec's honchos about the financial crisis, what sets Antec apart, and the sounds of silence...
Atomic recently got to sit down with Scott Richards, Senior Vice President at component-maker Antec. The company's got some very cool modular cases coming out later in the year (which we'll be getting you details of very shortly, 'cause they are way sexy!), and he was down-under for the press-briefing.
Since he's an old mate, we thought a nice, in-depth interview was just the ticket...
Atomic: Well, let's start with the GFC - was it a tough year, 2009? Or did Antec weather it pretty well?
Scott Richards: Well, we're in an interesting spot, and we actually did pretty well. On one side of things, when folks are well-off, they tend to buy news systems, rather than upgrading a component at a time, and that impacts our case business, and our power supply business, and so on; but no one could afford that last year.
But on the other side of the coin, when people don't build new systems it does mean that they're upgrading and enhancing their current systems to get a little extra life out of them.
We've heard numbers, worldwide, that the overall business in PCs and that kind of stuff with a lot of distributors is maybe down 25 or 30 per cent, and I think because of the other side of that - the upgrade side - we're not down that much.
Actually, the last recession in the states, the one after the internet bubble burst, our business increased that year.
Atomic: So it's people just trying to keep their current system going, or get just a bit more performance for less.
Scott Richards: Yeah. Instead of buying a whole new system, maybe the just be a graphics card to boost graphics performance; which means maybe they need to upgrade their PSU, and maybe some more fans, so they end up throwing a hundred, or a hundred and fifty dollars or to get something faster, rather than a whole new machine.
Atomic: So how is the case market doing, right now? That must be a very difficult market to be in, because it's getting more packed, at least that we can see.
Scott Richards: Yeah, I kind of call it the Wild West; and power supplies are the same thing. Once people realise there's a market there, there's this kind of herd mentality, especially with a lot of Asian manufacturers.
Atomic: Even in the last few months we've seen two or three new vendors come into the market.
Scott Richards: And good luck to them! But my job is to look after Antec, not to worry too much about what other companies are doing. You've got to do what you do well, and know what succeeds for you.
Atomic: So how does Antec do that? How do you innovate in such a crowded market?
Scott Richards: It's a constant challenge.
One of the ways that we do it is by really listening to the feedback we get from our customers. For example, we have general mail and contact pages on our website, like complaints@antec.com and suggestions@antec.com, and I get CCed on those, the President of the company gets CCed, so we get the real feedback part of the process, not some guys report of things we want to hear, and a lot of that's very valuable.
So that's one. Two, one of our big advantages is being in Silicon Valley. Our headquarters is in Fremont, in the northern part of the Valley, so we've got all of a twelve minute drive to get to Nvidia's HQ, and few minutes further to get to Intel's... We have a lot of direct, day-to-day interaction with a lot of the folks at these companies, so we see a lot of the roadmaps; we see inside their thinking of where the industry is going and get a lot of direct suggestions.
For instance, company X might come to us and say we're coming out with something, and there's no case to support, so we can work together really closely.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012