It was 1987 when Emil Bätz founded BVS Industrie-Elektronik. Early in its history, the company began cooperating with Siemens as an extended arm of the production.
The founder then discovered a gap in the market: added services. “He gave producers and operators of machines peace of mind that they could continue to run without having to worry about a lack of support,” says Director Florian Bätz, who took over the strategic leadership of the company from his father in 2012. “This service soon proved popular, and we had double-digit growth every year. Unfortunately it also drew attention from the competition.”
With the explosion of the internet, and with it e-commerce, BVS ventured online, and it continues to stand out thanks to its repair service. The company’s ability to test and repair assemblies is seldom found elsewhere.
“As a principle, we clean the assemblies using an ultrasonic bath or similar means, and then the components are left to dry for up to 48 hours,” Mr. Bätz explains. “We repair assemblies, replace defective parts including worn parts and components, and offer a twelve-month warranty on the complete assembly. It is a service found nowhere else.”
Customers can count on BVS to have the parts they need in stock. Larger customers will have their own spare parts warehouse to reduce downtimes and their corresponding costs, while smaller customers can rely on BVS’s warehouse of more than 30,000 assemblies.
“Time is always an important factor, and if the customer doesn’t have a part, we do,” Mr. Bätz says. “For that same reason, we do not only deliver the parts using a standard forwarding agency. We send the parts by express courier, so they can be delivered throughout Germany and to neighbouring countries on the same day.”
There is an airport just 15 minutes from BVS. If necessary, the company can charter a plane to transport the parts. This service, on offer now for two years, is unique in the industry. Major carmakers are especially reliant on speedy service and know the cost of unexpected breakdowns.
BVS only works with OEM parts manufacturers to ensure that its components will last. BVS anticipates turnover of 20 million EUR for 2015, up from 18.5 million EUR last year.
The company can fall back on the quality of products made in Germany sought after worldwide, as well as the flourishing production economy in Germany. “The country is still an unbelievably attractive production location due to the massive amount of know-how available here,” Mr. Bätz explains.
Target markets abroad, such as Eastern Europe, are also appealing. Slovakia, for instance, has a booming automotive industry. As Mr. Bätz takes on more responsibilities in the company with an eye towards managing BVS in the near future, he has also made contributions to the company’s growth.
“We are doing more with online marketing and e-commerce, so we have improved our search engine marketing immensely,” he says. “When we started this project, we had a portfolio of 10,000 keywords, and so that we could be a top hit during Google searches, we identified one million potential key words.”
250,000 of those key words were implemented, and by the end of 2013, BVS had acquired 500 new customers, 55% of whom found the company via the internet.
Continued expansion is on the company’s agenda for the coming years. Current exports amount to 25% of turnover, but Mr. Bätz would like to see that increase to half.
“We also want to maintain our position as the market leader in third-party repairs,” Mr. Bätz adds. “That is our overall strategic objective. To achieve it, we will have to bring new manufacturers on board.”
Furthermore, BVS aims to expand its competence portfolio to include robotics. The sector is growing at an incredible pace, and it is set to become a completely new field of business.