Transfer Multisort Elektronik is one of the biggest global distributors of electronic and electrotechnical components, industrial automatics and workshop equipment. The company offers 300.000 products from more than 950 leading global manufacturers available. For more than 28 years of activity, TME has developed and modernized, continuously upgrading and adapting to client’s needs not only its product portfolio, but also the shopping system functionalities. In this interview, Marta Dudzińska, Media Specialist, TME spoke to EM about company offerings, key strengths, and market growth.
Describe TME’s early years and the vision for the company.
TME is a multi-generational family business, set up in 1990. Everything started with a little shop in offering electronic components for servicing purposes and small-scale production.
2 years later, TME issued its first catalogue and started mail-order sales, which was innovative for its time. With the development of Polish economy and the economies of other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, TME gained new customers and introduced new product groups to its portfolio.
In 1997, the present headquarters was built: a modern logistics centre with a warehouse, which has grown several times since then. Over time, TME has introduced online sales and confirmed its standards of customer service with ISO 9001:2009 and 14001:2005 certificates.
At present, TME is one of the biggest global distributors of electronic and electromechanical components as well as workshop equipment and industrial automation. The company has over 800 employees in its central office in Poland as well as in subsidiaries in other countries.
How has the distributor’s role, in general, evolved in the last 10 years?
Each year, we increase the number of articles in our store, enabling our customers to choose products from among many brands on the market. Thanks to the diversity of our product groups, our store offers comprehensive shopping that is not restricted to electronic components only. Our experts are ready to help customers choose appropriate products, whether they speak Turkish, Bulgarian or Hindi. It might be said that in the last years, as a distributor, we have been improving our offer as much as possible so as to meet all expectations and the highest standards of customer service.
What is the secret behind TME’s phenomenal growth in the past few years?
In TME, we focus on development. Just as in our motto: “sky is the limit.” Each day, we overcome difficulties and improve our store so that our customers might enjoy fast delivery and product diversity. We constantly work on increasing our warehouse capacity, automatizing delivery process and broadening our offer, so that each customer could find what they are looking for. We establish new offices in various parts of the world to improve our availability even more. We are open to new markets and product branches.
What do you see as distributors’ greatest strengths in aiding design engineers going forward?
TME supports engineers by delivering products needed for project implementation. We often engage in various forms of financial cooperation as well, like in the case of Hyper Poland: a fast train that will soon revolutionise the European transportation.
We author a significant number of specialized texts for engineers to familiarize them with the operation and application of individual components.
For a couple of years now, we have been running a special project, “TME Education,” whose aim is to spread technical knowledge in places with limited access to education, among others in Africa and India. Our ambassadors travel to youth centres and schools to introduce young people to the world of electronics, providing them with access to computers and all tools necessary for learning.
We also support students from all over the world and cooperate with technical universities.
Are there any specific markets or industries you see as ripe with opportunity right now?
At the moment, we are developing our sales on further markets, for example India and China. We are also in the process of opening an office in Atlanta, the USA. Further plans include TME locations in Australia and the United Arab Emirates. Due to such a range of expansion, we are currently building a new logistics centre thanks to which we will be able to double the number of packages dispatched daily, as well as to automate the order handling process.
Do you see players like Amazon as competitors, with their B2B platforms?
The offer of stores like Amazon is not as specialized as that of TME. Our products will be of most interest to companies purchasing large quantities of components, but also to engineers and technical students. With a broad range of experts, we are able to advise our customers and treat their orders individually, which also makes shopping in our store easier.
What is the outlook for TME over the next few years?
As was already mentioned, we are expanding our brand to new locations: the USA, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates. In 2020, we will have finished the construction of Greenfield logistics centre with the area of 20 000 square meters. It will allow us to increase the number of products in our catalogue and to dispatch over 10000 orders a day.
