Holland circuit board manufacturer finds growth by focusing on customers – MiBiz

Contrary to widespread belief, Asia does not have a lock on electronics manufacturing.

For more than two decades, Holland-based EBW Electronics Inc. has built a growing business around making printed circuit boards (PCB) in West Michigan for customers in the lighting, industrial, office furniture and automotive parts industries.

Executives at the customer-service oriented manufacturer say the company serves as an example that there is a sustainable business model for a domestic high-tech electronics manufacturing industry, including in West Michigan.

EWB, which employs 135 people in Holland and had sales of $26.6 million in 2012, created more than 100 new jobs in the last four years and is currently one year into a four-year strategic growth plan.

“(Circuit board manufacturing is) something that can be done (in the United States) … when it’s done well. We use a lot of high-speed automation rather than a lot of hand labor,” said EBW’s President Cory Steeby. “There is a tremendous amount of room for more circuit board manufacturing at EBW.”

Industry watchers suggest that companies such as EBW could be getting busier. An August 2012 report by IPC, the association for connecting electronics industries, predicted that electronics manufacturers would invest $2.5 billion over the next three years to reshore production from Asia to North America.

EBW Electronics is among the companies planning to invest in North America. Officials plan to break ground sometime next spring on an addition that would double the size of its existing advanced manufacturing facility in Holland.

Steeby said the manufacturer is projecting to add 15 to 20 new jobs in the next year.

At the time of its founding in 1992, EBW Electronics existed solely to manufacture parts for its parent company, Enterprise Brass Works. When the parent company was sold in 2001 to a publicly traded company, the circuit board business was not part of the sale.

But without the parent company, EBW lost its only customer. It was forced to live on its own and to branch out to find customers to survive. The electronic products manufacturing company went on to build the core of its business within two of West Michigan’s legacy industries: the automotive supply chain and office furniture.

For the automotive industry, the company supplies components for external lighting such as taillights or center high-mounted stop lamps, for internal lighting systems and for electronic controls for products including auto-dimming rearview mirrors.

“The last few years (of growth at EBW) has been the automotive world coming back online,” Steeby said. “But more importantly, the electronic content in vehicles has grown tremendously.”

A 2011 study on automotive technology by the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) stated that the use of electronic equipment in automobiles has been growing steadily since the mid-1970s. The average Ford vehicle has approximately 60 microprocessors to power its various electrical components, the study said. A decade prior, most cars had only about 10 microprocessors.

Prior to the recession, CAR’s research found “the market for automotive electronics was forecast to grow at about 7 percent annually for at least a decade.” The economic downturn and near-collapse of the auto industry put the brakes on the sector for a time, but the 2011 survey projected that growth should return as the industry recovered.

“Through our automotive work, we have electronic products go to just about every major automotive OEM,” Steeby said.

In addition to the automotive industry, the company also makes electronic components for industrial controls and equipment, as well as for furnace controls. EBW supplies components for touch-sensitive control switches for electronics such personal task lamps, free-standing lights and other products for the office furniture industry.

“LED lighting has been a good market for the company as well,” Steeby said.

For example, EBW supplies components to Grand Haven-based Light Corp., a designer and manufacturer of lighting products under its own brand and for other office furniture companies.

“Light Corp. has been working with EBW for many years, and they are one of our largest and best suppliers,” said R. Bradley Davis, the company’s president. “Our relationship is much more than simply customer/supplier, as we collaborate on technological solutions for all of our new projects very early in the ideation and development phases for our product launches. We value all that they do to support our growth.”

That level of support is the hallmark for EBW Electronics, which chooses to focus on maintaining customer relationships to drive growth, rather than on actively seeking out new customers, executives said.

The company said that much of its organic growth has come from simply providing that high-quality customer service on a repeated basis. But at the same time, it realizes that it needs to broaden its customer base to continue to grow.

“We have hired someone specifically to help us diversify our source of revenue,” said Pat LeBlanc, chairman of EBW Electronics. “We have gotten this tremendous growth with very little sales effort. The team has done a great job of providing quality product on time for customers. Much of our growth has been word of mouth.”

After a bit of a lull in the first half of 2013, printed circuit board manufacturing should “see a return to modest growth” by the end of the year and continue growing globally through 2016, according to an IPC analysis last month. IPC research showed that printed circuit board shipments decreased 1.5 percent between July 2012 and July 2013, but orders were up 10.2 percent in the same period. Year-to-date, PCB shipments were down 4.2 percent, while orders were flat.

If EBW Electronics wants to continue its growth trajectory — and participate in the industry-wide expansion — it will need to keep looking for ways to branch out, Steeby said.

“The intentional focus right now is to reach out and expand and diversify that customer base. The customers we serve right now, we seem to serve very well. They keep coming back,” Steeby said. “Our goal is to continue being a manufacturer in West Michigan, and we believe that can be done cost-effectively and be done very well right here.”

MiBiz Managing Editor Joe Boomgaard contributed to this report.

 

SIDEBAR: Corporate Animal

EBW Electronics Chairman Pat LeBlanc has had an on-again, off-again connection to the manufacturing industry.

A veterinarian by training, LeBlanc was a tenured faculty member at the Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine from 1986 to 1994 before feeling the pull of the family business.

LeBlanc left academia to join Enterprise Brass Works and spent several years working with his father, Leo LeBlanc, the company’s founder. The younger LeBlanc eventually became president of the manufacturer.

When Enterprise Brass Works was sold in 2001, LeBlanc took the opportunity to get back into the veterinary business, eventually becoming the director of the veterinary teaching hospital at MSU in 2003.

“I did that for 10 years and I kind of wanted to move back to West Michigan,” LeBlanc said of his second tenure in academia.

Now, as chairman of the manufacturer, LeBlanc says he has time to do more strategic, long-term planning to help the company maintain its growth trajectory.

“I thought it would be a good solution to be someone who was looking out beyond the horizon, a little further than (Steeby and the other EBW executives) have time to,” he said.

— Nick Manes, MiBiz