Enterprise Hub Network - Case History
Surrey Enterprise Hub
Mike Lunch
Magnet Schultz Ltd
Magnet Schultz Ltd is based in Old Woking and is part of the Magnet-Schultz Group, a worldwide manufacturer of solenoids and related products. During the past 40 years it has represented the UK interests of the Magnet-Schultz Group’s German headquarters, initially as an agent, and since 1991 as a wholly-owned subsidiary.
Using solenoid technology, it focuses on providing top quality engineering solutions for a spectrum of applications from supplying a bare solenoid to manufacturing a complex assembly.
Unrivalled customer satisfaction is key to its success, and it aims to obtain detailed understanding of customers’ objectives through open communication and a close and well organised working relationship.
Creative solutions
It cites this approach as the reason for its continued growth, enabling it to become one of the strongest and most respected names in the engineering industry.
Magnet Schultz Ltd’s customers are found in industries ranging from the aerospace and marine sectors to energy and the construction industry. Its highly-valued specialism is using creative and highly-qualified engineers to find new solutions using solenoid-based technology that perform and function to exacting standards in line with the customers’ requirements.
The managing director at Magnet Schultz Ltd is Andrew Newton and the firm employs 12 people.
Finding the Hub
Business Link referred Magnet Schultz Ltd to SEEDA and the Surrey Enterprise Hub who, in turn, thought the company was an ideal candidate for SEEDA’s High Growth Business Coaching Programme.
In October 2006 Magnet Schultz Ltd was selected from a SEEDA shortlist to take part in the progamme by business coach Andrew Cross. Andrew Cross, spent 12 months with the company with meetings typically twice per month.
Strong links with the Hub have continued ever since and Magnet Schultz Ltd makes good use of seminars and other events.
How the Hub assisted
The first four months of the High Growth Business Coaching Programme involved Andrew talking to key decision makers to understand the issues faced by Magnet Schultz Ltd - he then assessed the needs of the company and produced an action plan.
The plan highlighted the need for:
- Improvement in the handling of sales leads and enquiries
- Creating an integrated marketing and communications strategy
- Focus on the design and manufacture of added-value products
- Exploring partnerships with organisations in related fields.
Andrew enlisted support from the Designing Demand programme which has been developed by the Design Council to help businesses get full value from design.
Magnet Schultz Ltd was given five free days with a design consultant, who specialised in the engineering sector and who, in conjunction with Andrew Cross and Andrew Newton, created a brief to put out to design companies.
As a result, two pitches were made and one company appointed to carry out the work at a time when the company was launching a new name, strengthening its branding and completely redesigning its website.
Other assistance included:
- Sending Andrew Newton’s deputy - Director Robert Kershaw - on a Business Accelerator Programme based at Henley Management College.
- Introducing the company to grant funding for research and development programmes.
Business coach Andrew Cross said: “The company progressed very well through this programme - I provide a neutral sounding board with no vested interest and the company took everything on board. I am very confident it will continue to prosper and its new business structure should mean that within two years or so it will be operating at an entirely different level.
“Part of my job was helping Magnet Schultz Ltd improve on ideas it already had. This is a very serious business, growing rapidly – if it continues to concentrate on the added-value aspect of the business it will become even more profitable.”
Andrew Newton, MD at Magnet Schultz Ltd, said “Before the Hub became involved, we had been making steady progress with the added-value aspects of our business – it was organic growth, steady but not spectacular.
“The single most important thing the programme has helped us to do is understand the potential in partnerships with other companies and organisations. Before talking to Andrew, we might have been concerned about issues like loss of IP, but now view the benefit of partnerships on a much broader basis.”
He added that the company had benefited from honest analysis from an experienced and impartial business person who had brought fresh ideas and asked the right questions.
A growing business success
Andrew Newton said the new approach to partnerships had had a direct impact on sales which would show in the company’s turnover in the next 12 months. Its order book had already risen by 50 per cent in the past six months, he said, and the true effects of the Hub intervention would be apparent in the next two to three years.
He added that Magnet Schultz Ltd would continue to meet the needs of its customers by providing high quality solenoid-based products and increase market penetration by working with organisations in the supply chain who share its business aims and principles.
“Within two or three years this company will operate on an entirely different level.”
Contact Magnet Schultz
Magnet Schultz Ltd
3-4 Capital Park
Old Woking
Surrey
GU22 9LD
United Kingdom
T: +44 (0) 1483 794700
F: +44 (0) 1483 757298
E: sales@magnetschultz.co.uk
Contact the Surrey Enterprise Hub
Surrey Enterprise Hub
Surrey Technology Centre
40 Occam Road
Surrey Research Park
Guildford GU2 7YG
Mike Lunch Hub Director
T: 01483 685222
Andrew Cross Portfolio Director
T: 01483 685232
info@surreyhub.co.uk
www.surreyhub.co.uk
Surrey Enterprise Hub is part of the Enterprise Hub Network, a South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) backed organisation working across the South East. The Enterprise Hub Network is focused on helping entrepreneurial individuals and organisations bring highly pioneering and distinctive ideas to market across a range of sectors.
