Press: TTI on the European Continent

TTI on the European Continent

President doubled sales this year

By Mick Elliott -- 10/25/99

TTI is on a roll in Europe.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based passive components distributor has signed a pan-European agreement with FCI, the world's No. 2 interconnect products manufacturer. The agreement, which is TTI's first across Europe with an interconnect company, is another in a rapid series of steps which will see the company's European revenues doubled from $12 million to $24 million in 12 months.

The impetus for this acceleration was the appointment of Patrick Frizoni as European president at the beginning of the year and a stronger commitment to investment in Europe by TTI. Since Frizoni's arrival, TTI has signed a series of franchise agreements. Passive component makers NIC Components and BC Components have signed European deals and Molex has signed up for the United Kingdom in addition to an existing agreement in Germany.

Frizoni says more deals will be signed. He rejected suggestions that TTI might lose its position as a focused distributor by broadening its line card too much. "Our optimum will be about 25 lines. If we add to the line card, we can also take some off to retain our focus," he said.

"Our customers do have a one-stop-shop solution when they come to us." Patrick Frizoni, TTI Europe

Some industry observers have questioned whether TTI's passive and interconnect model can succeed against distributors which also offer semiconductor product to customers. Aware that this shortcoming could hobble progress and enable broad-line competitors to outmaneuver TTI, Frizoni revealed an agreement with Munich-based EBV Elektronik, a subsidiary of Germany's VEBA Electronics, to provide any semiconductor requirements of TTI customers. "The agreement means our customers do have a one-stop-shop solution when they come to us," said Frizoni.

Through such thinking, Frizoni is set on transforming TTI Europe into a $100 million company by 2003. This target will be reached through organic growth, according to Frizoni, and he has bold expansionist plans to spread the TTI gospel around Europe: Next year, TTI will expand into seven new territories around the continent. Belgian and Dutch operations will see in the new millennium followed by Austria and Switzerland in the middle of the year. The Nordic countries and Spain and Portugal will follow in the third and fourth quarters of 2000.

To augment these and the existing operations in the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Italy and France, TTI has opened a logistics center in Livingston, Scotland. The 20,000-square-foot facility will provide procurement, logistics and point of use replenishment of components and production supplies. It will support a number of large TTI OEM and contract manufacturer customers in the United Kingdom. The FCI deal alone means TTI will hire 10 more people in Europe. "We will be adding sales, marketing and technical support firepower to support FCI's products in all our existing European operations," added Frizoni.

Frizoni is getting by with a little help from friends like Bryan Regan, FCI's European distribution manager. Regan wants TTI to propel his company toward its target of achieving 20 percent of sales through distribution in the short term, probably within the next two years, and then grow to 30 percent in the longer term. And Frizoni has committed to an initial $160 million in inventory of FCI products with more to follow. "Realistically, the line should exceed $1 million in bookings in year one and realistically, it should be a $5 million franchise within three years," he added.