Macromatic earns Fastest Growing Firms Award

Macromatic earns Fastest Growing Firms award from Milwaukee Business Journal. 

TYPE OF BUSINESS: Designs and manufactures industrial relays to control electrical processes and protect equipment from damaging or hazardous fault conditions
ESTABLISHED: 1975
OWNER(S): John Perdue
EMPLOYEES: 25
GROWTH RATE SINCE 2015: 15.91%

MAIN FACTORS ATTRIBUTING TO COMPANY GROWTH? “From the book ‘Good to Great’ by Jim Collins, we learned that rather than focus on growth, focus on what you can be the best at, and growth will come along automatically. This strategy dramatically improved our efficiencies, decision making and profitability. If an opportunity arose in a new market or new product technology or manufacturing process where we could not be the best in the industry, we passed. From the same book, we learned to get the right people on the bus first, then determine where to drive. And once you have them, do everything you can to train, develop and retain them. And most of all, give them all the decision-making authority they need. And finally, we never assumed we knew what the customer wanted — we asked. Someone once remarked ‘there’s the right way, and then there’s the market way.’”

BRIEF EXAMPLES OF CHALLENGES OVERCOME TO ACHIEVE GROWTH GOALS? “We were already successful with catalog distributor and private label accounts, but our greatest opportunity for growth was increasing our participation in the OEM market. To reach our bodacious sales goals, we had to overcome two obstacles: First, justifying the expansion of our sales team from only the president selling with an inside sales representative to adding a sales manager, two regional sales managers and an internal marketing communications specialist. Second, we had to increase the mindshare we get with our local independent sales reps. While they may make more money with the other lines they represent, they know they are receiving all of our support to grow sales in their territory through superior product quality and technical support, competitive pricing and a continuous stream of new products.”

HAS THE “JOBS/SKILLS GAP” IMPACTED YOUR COMPANY GROWTH? IF SO, EXPLAIN HOW. “The jobs/skills gap has not impacted our company growth. We continue to experience double-digit growth and anticipate hitting that goal again this year. With the exception of newly created positions, which over the past two years accounts for a 45 percent increase, office position openings are infrequent. We’ve noticed a slight increase in the time it takes to fill production positions; however, it is still within reason.”

FUTURE PLANS FOR CONTINUED GROWTH? “Macromatic has two main areas of focus for continued long-term growth. Our primary focus will be on market development. This is selling existing products to new customers. Macromatic will identify new vertical markets to pursue and implement new marketing and sales strategies to penetrate these segments. Macromatic will also focus on implementing a product development growth strategy. We will develop innovative IIOT (Industrial Internet of Things) products that serve the growing trends in the industrial markets for data collection, mobile apps and wireless solutions. These innovative solutions will help our customers become more competitive through operational efficiency.”

Read entire article: http://bizj.us/1pogvy