My task is to make this business as strong as possible: Søren Drewsen
After a record year, EET Group CEO Søren Drewsen shares his strategy for success.
It’s clear that CEO Søren Drewsen is leading EET Group into a profitable future. After recording a slight downturn in 2016, the electronic parts supply company is pleased to report a record-breaking year for 2017.
"We can confirm that FY2017 was a record year for EET Group," says Søren. The company saw a 21% increase in its revenue to €357 million and also made seven acquisitions during the year. In 2018, too, there have been two more acquisitions to date, Pro-Vision in the UK and C2MIntelware in France, adding a further €60 million revenue to the business.
It seems significant that EET’s record-breaking year of profitability and strong outlook coincides with Søren’s first year as CEO. The new EET Group leader has experience in a number of different roles from a diverse array of industries, like management consulting, oil and IT, and holds business degrees from several universities in the US and Denmark. Søren himself maintains that achieving EET Group’s exciting results was made possible by building on the company’s already-strong history of good performance.
Europe first
EET Group is already established in 24 European countries and is looking to take its success further afield, with the plan being to establish a business model that is competitive on a global scale. "My task is to make this business as strong as possible within Europe," Søren says, "and also to make a business model that is so successful, and so scalable, that we can move into other regions of the world."
"My task is … to make a business model that is so successful, and so scalable, that we can move into other regions of the world."
That said, the company isn’t looking to horizons beyond Europe just yet. "In order to have the right brands and the right setup, we need to, of course, have a global scope, in terms of identifying the right vendors and so on," says Søren. "We have to serve our customers. That’s why Europe is our main focus right now."
"We have to serve our customers. That’s why Europe is our main focus right now."
At the same time, EET is focusing on improving its staff, so they can better adjust to a rapidly evolving market. "We have a lot of training sessions to help with integration into the marketplace. Of course, that also creates value for the vendors. We have the people, and we have the accreditation and certificates to do these training sessions for the customers. At the same time, we’re adding not just products, but also different kinds of service: cloud services for surveillance and security stores, network solutions, and so on."
Søren believes the company’s distribution service remains first-class throughout the continent. "We have robots, warehouses and an automated setup," he says. "We’re able to do next-day delivery in Europe – 99.6% of orders registered before four o’clock will be delivered the next day, throughout Europe. It’s quite extraordinary, given that we have more than one million deliveries every year."
As EET continues to solidify its model in preparation for eventual global expansion, Søren is taking care to avoid a strategy of large volumes and turnover, and low margins and profitability. In essence, the distributor is pursuing a vision of quality over quantity, not just saturating the market because it can. Søren is aiming at more service and value, with lower volumes, while pursuing operational effectiveness.
The backbone
EET Group is located in Birkerød, north of Copenhagen, and is the backbone of the EET Europarts organisation, providing all back-office functions.
It employs more than 500 people, serves more than 44,000 dealers and handles more than 1,000,000 deliveries a year.
Facing challenges and change
As with any business, EET Group is faced with challenges and change. The market for PC and laptop spare parts is stable, if not actually declining, while the market for tablets and related accessories will grow enormously over the next few years. At the same time, technological revolutions in the industry will bring new companies trying to shake things up.
"You need to address these very strong players, and differentiate from them."
"You have to take care of any disruptive newcomers in the marketplace," says Søren. "One name springs to mind, but there are also other players out there… You need to address these very strong players, and differentiate from them."