Building Your Digital Utopia: How to Create Digital Brand Experiences That Systematically Accelerate Growth by Frank Cowell

Author:Frank Cowell [Cowell, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics, Development, Business Development
ISBN: 9781544506142
Google: G_aLzQEACAAJ
Amazon: 1544506147
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Published: 2020-03-19T23:00:00+00:00

I spoke to Ronn Cort, COO and President of SEKISUI Polymer Innovations, makers of KYDEX Thermoplastics. Surprisingly, his company doesn’t have any salespeople in their organization, and their sales funnel is an hourglass. In a sales hourglass—as opposed to a funnel—the process doesn’t end when the customer signs a contract. Instead, the company continues to engage customers to create a deeper relationship by continuously adding value long after the sale is completed.

The primary goal of SEKISUI is to show their target buyers that the cost of doing business is higher without them, and they provide an impressive list of reasons why this is true. Their actual product offering is at the end of that list.

They have embraced a process called Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM), which is a strategy that greatly reduces lead times in all phases of manufacturing, enabling them to provide customer-engineered products much faster. It’s a model built entirely around the customer.

Their competitors require orders of at least 5,000 pounds, and they have lead times of six weeks to four months. SEKISUI has flipped this on its head, creating customized orders that can be as low as 600 pounds and shipped within twelve days.

They have entirely rebuilt their business around “digital natives,” customers who are fully indoctrinated to use technology in every area of their lives. They recognize this as the new normal, so they raised capital to redesign every aspect of their company accordingly. Anyone can go to their website and figure out the cost of goods and materials. The company values time above anything else, and customers are thrilled to pay more to get their order sooner.

According to Ronn, “Ten years ago, I would have said no one would pay more for shorter lead times, but today, it is baked into the DNA of buyers thanks to companies like Amazon.”

Although they are a boutique manufacturer, large companies are seeing the value in what they do. Leaders of multi-billion-dollar companies have approached SEKISUI to learn how they’ve reinvented the way they do business, so they can emulate SEKISUI’s growth model.

They have baked innovation into their culture. Whereas most organizations simply respond to customer requests and call it innovation, SEKISUI proactively innovates and then takes their ideas to their customer base. They put their money where their mouth is.

As a result of this approach, they are enjoying 40 to 50 percent market shares—even as high as 80 percent—in key markets. Their customers have changed their own business models as a result of the way SEKISUI does business, which has reduced overall costs for customers. Consequently, even though SEKISUI’s products cost more than their competitors, customers are actually saving money as a result of the transformation.

Retention at the company is extremely high, with less than a 1.2 percent return rate. Their on-time delivery rate is an impressive 99.2 percent, and their employee turnover rate is 10 percent (compared to the average of 30 to 40 percent). Three years ago, the company made $149 million, last year they had grown to $186 million.

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