20 Years of Inspiring Trust

Today, Memory Experts is recognized as a dominant provider of electronics solutions for the office equipment industry. Backed by a management team with a combined experience of more than 50 years in the memory storage side of the business, the brand is now trusted by businesses worldwide when it comes to anticipating their needs.

 

In fact, the chances are that if you buy a digital copier or a multi-function printer anywhere in the world, then it’s almost certain that you’ve already come into contact with a product from Memory Experts – the kind of reach its founders could only have dreamed of back in 1994 when the company was founded.

Initial forays began with the brokering and reselling of products from the likes of IBM, but it was to be the developing and manufacturing of its own portfolio of solutions that would form a key part of company strategy moving forward.

At first the firm used subcontractors to manufacture different types of laptop, server and printer memory. Whilst some of these were owned by Memory Experts, it was the resale of technology belonging to other firms that allowed the company to facilitate quick growth and forge a global presence. This led to it gaining a foothold with customers in the office equipment side of the business.

Soon after, the firm began building its own proprietary memory boards for printers and custom laptop memories for HP and Toshiba, whilst making inroads into the OEM space it would come to call its home over the next 20 years.

Once the company understood what was happening in the office equipment sector, in terms of the pace of change and the technology switch from analog to digital, it began to leverage its core competencies and experience in the storage side of the business and for manufacturing memory. This meant that rather than being seen as a volume commodity-based business, Memory Experts could now position itself as the go-to for all proprietary solutions.

And as mighty oaks from little acorns grow, the firm rapidly began to carve its niche. First came the manufacturing of products – such as machine-specific memory boards – and approaches to the dealer markets in North America as Memory Experts began to offer quality products at a substantially lower cost.

With margins on machines dropping constantly, dealers soon realized they couldn’t find ways to capitalize upon the actual box shifting itself, so making money around the options became attractive to them. Memory Experts was instrumental in creating a market by offering solutions at an affordable cost.

This move soon attracted the attention of those in the OEM space who, having initially viewed the firm with suspicion, began to see it as a partner going forward.

For Memory Experts this was a milestone. Every single machine that was launched in the office equipment industry had a proprietary memory solution and so the firm began to drip-feed its own products into the market. Over time, this would lead to the brand becoming trusted advisors and innovators within the memory and office equipment space. With a track record of quality for making the right choices the company soon became the de facto choice for businesses everywhere in many people’s eyes.

As Gerard Reusing, CEO, Memory Experts, notes: “For the most part, the end user doesn’t even know we exist and this is why our customer base trusts us to deliver a product that they put their name on.

These days 90 percent of Memory Experts business is straight to the OEM channel, meaning the firm supplies the OEM on a local basis countrywide, with solutions being bundled before they go to dealers. This ensures products become part of the standard specifications of that machine, wherever it may be sold.

With a strategic dominance in all of its niche markets encapsulating some 65 countries you might envisage this means millions and millions of units sold en masse, but for Memory Experts, the devil is in the detail. Instead, it fills the space supplying high quality products to market, preferring to control the process from design all the way through to manufacturing and distribution. For clients this means competitive pricing, backed by the knowledge they’re getting first-class service on a global scale.

So, what is it that attracts the likes of Ricoh, Toshiba, Xerox and Siemens apart from low costs and that enduring ability to continually innovate? The firm’s own 40,000 sq ft state of the art manufacturing facilities in Southern California certainly plays a major part. This specialist operation, backed up by around 100 staff across offices in four countries including the US, Canada, the UK, and Hong Kong, gives Memory Experts a lean operation where quality, consistency and customer service comes above all else.

Over the years this set-up has allowed the firm to develop made-to-measure cable assemblies, memory expansion modules, hard drive sub-systems and data security solutions that continue to inspire trust. This expertise would see Memory Experts setting up its own ISI division for custom cabling in 2000 before entering the security market in 2002, when the formation of MXI Security positioned the company firmly in the aerospace, banking, government and military markets to name but a few.

This approach has left the firm in an enviable position. During some 20 years in business, Memory Experts has only lost one customer – which it has since regained – due to its continued emphasis on service.

Indeed, when you speak to those customers already working with the firm, the reasons for doing so – like their profiles – seem remarkably similar. For one, it’s the intuitive account manager who ensures the relationship remains worry-free. For another, it’s the security. Knowing that Memory Experts solves a variety of problems means it never has to worry about products failing.

As Ije Rodgers, Senior Product Manager, Ricoh, puts it: “The reason I choose to go with Memory Experts is because I know that no matter how unique our solution is or whatever we need, whether it’s a clip or a bracket or something else, they’ll be able to do it exactly to our specifications and it always works.”

This is a sentiment echoed by Gino Verardi, MA & OEM Sales Manager at Oki Solutions: “When we use their product and we fit it in our machine, we forget it’s there.”

“If you look at the profile of our customers today and 10 years ago, you’d see the same names,” adds Reusing. “And that’s literally on a global basis. It’s not just territory lines, it’s everywhere. I’d like to think that says something about the way we go about our business.”

And this is something Dino Pagliarello, Senior Manager, Product Marketing at Konica Minolta Business Solutions, is happy to confirm. “One thing I can tell you that I’m 100% confident with regards to Memory Experts International is that I can rest assured that their quality assurance is top notch. I feel comfortable that when I’m putting their product in our devices, that there won’t be any errors or failures.”