Armed for the future
Modtec Industries is using design to reach out to customers worldwide
Thursday, March 04 2010 || Cool company || BY Caitlin Sykes
Go past the blokes in work boots enjoying a smoko in the sun, past the friendly faces at reception, up a slightly rickety set of narrow wooden steps and you’ll find yourself in a meeting room at Modtec Industries. It’s a space that could only be described as ‘low key’.
On the wall, however, is a picture of a vastly different looking work environment: a huge, crisp, ultra-modern office. It’s a photo showing Modtec’s monitor arms in Barclays Bank in Tokyo, says Modtec Industries founder and managing director Bruce Davies proudly.
The story of Modtec is one of surprising — and successful — contrasts. It’s a 40-year-old engineering and manufacturing company still based in its original location — the industrial back streets of Silverdale, north of Auckland. But it has also used savvy design thinking and relationship building to position itself at the forefront of the burgeoning worldwide market for chic and ultra-ergonomic computer monitor arms.
Modtec’s Integ-branded modular monitor arms are used in commercial office furniture and medical environments around the world. Australia is the company’s largest export market, but it also sells into the US, Asia and the UK. The company has only been selling its monitor arms since 2003 but the products now account for around half of the company’s business, with the remainder divided fairly equally between its proprietary Freight Pak collapsible freight cage product and its traditional contract manufacturing operations.
It’s been a huge shift of focus for the company, says Modtec’s head of marketing and sales, Ian Cooper.
“We’ve made a significant change moving from 80% contractor/20% proprietary product,” he says. “We’ve been through a couple of years where we’ve now completely reversed it where we’re now probably 80% proprietary and 20% contract.”
While there has been much recent change at the company, Davies has always had a design and innovation focus. Modtec Industries began life in 1969 as a paint manufacturing company. Davies bought the business in the late 1970s with his uncle and two other engineers. “The idea for us was if we wanted to set up an engineering company we needed to get credit,” recalls Davies. “And the first thing someone would say to you if you wanted to get credit was ‘how long have you been going?’ and I could say 10 years.”
Davies had been a production manager at Bendon, where he was involved in a number of projects that used “left-field” technology, he says, to do things like cut fabric or mould or package bras.
“I had experience with fashion, colour and design in the clothing industry. So when I decided to set up an engineering company it had to be different. I used the rules and concepts of design to build an engineering company from the beginning.”
As well as building up the company’s basic engineering skills, Davies started looking for different ways the company could add value to its offerings. He had contact with Australian scientists who had developed new theories on moulding metal; he saw it as an opportunity to get involved in the die-casting business and imported the technology.
Later, when the company bought a powder coating operation, Davies saw it as another opportunity to innovate, developing the company’s Freight Pak collapsible freight and storage containers, which won a Packaging Council of New Zealand award in 1999.
In 2002 Davies bought out his business partner of 15 years, Colin Griffiths, and was looking for the company’s next step. The idea to design and manufacture a computer monitor arm came up during a meeting with one of Modtec's existing customers in the UK, which happened to be a large manufacturer of screens.
Davies initially developed the Integ business with a couple of partners— Paul Barmes and Paul Zwaan — and says the initial design, tooling and set up for the first models cost in excess of $1 million.
The product’s modular design, which can change as user needs and technology evolve, differentiates it from competitors, and Davies says keeping the modular components simple but future-proof has been another challenge.
