If you think obsolete electronic spares are worthless just because everyday the market is flooding with novel electronic items and each time several of them becoming out of date within a short span, then you must relook on obsolete parts from LWI Electronics’ point of view as the company is strongly betting on the business of giving fresh life to these parts.

"It’s not so easy. This requires high-risk appetite and future anticipation capabilities, especially if one is dealing with obsolete parts,"Says Dinesh Singh Samyal, CEO, LWI. Plus, semiconductor parts distribution being a niche area, it requires huge inventory to manage, massive investment and large floor space and key inventory management practices.

However, the key competitive factors that give LWI an edge over its competitors are the amount of inventory that the company maintains, its qualified team, well equipped QC lab and transparent business practice. "We have about 25 member team for this work and source parts from OEMs. We do a lot of R&D and testing before we buy and stock those parts. There are many products that might not be available even with the manufacturers and are often available even with the manufacturers and are often available in LWI’s inventory," adds Samyal.

Today, LWI is an ISO9001: 2000 certified global franchise based semiconductor components and network equipment distribution company, a part of Live Wire Electronics Group. As an organisation, LWI has grown to become the preferred independent distributor of choice to numerous customers. Since 1999, LWI has built a reputation for itself as a highly reliable provider of service and products. LWI is committed to customer satisfaction that is reflected in each aspect of business activity, be it interacting and negotiating with manufacturers or maintenance of inventory, sales or customer service. The adoption of innovative and practical approach to independent distribution enables LWI to deliver on its promise of quality, consistently.

The major contributing factor to LWI’s success as an independent stocking distributor of electronic components has been the maintenance of substantial product inventory from the world’s finest manufacturers. The state-of-the-art system adopted at LWI provides access to a huge database of components and manufacturers, which enables sourcing of worldwide availability of components. A full time technical support and in-house engineering staff helps the customers choose the correct devices for their varied needs.

Not to speak of the availability of latest components,LWI stocks highly allocated and obsolete products in electronic components, integrated circuits and semiconductors. LWI draws products from several international inventories, allowing it to fulfill requirements on a global basis irrespective of local supply limitations. This has been possible through the strong roots in international market place in the supply end of the component industry.The experience and technical expertise available at LWI often proves to be a major resource to its clients. Products that might not be available with the manufacturers are often found in the in-house inventory that LWI maintains of the international inventories that LWI has access to.

"We are also known for our policy of breaking packs and no minimum order requirement on stocked products. This has been possible due to our strong roots in the international market at the supply end of the components industry," states Singh.

Today LWI has over 16,000 square feet floor area in their warehouse in Bangalore. The company act as an imperative link in the supply chain of electronic components that include MIL/industrial grade parts like integrated circuit, capacitors, resistors, discrete devices, linear logic, DSP, DRAM, SRAM, Cache, Memory and many more. Says Samyal, "Today LWI stocks the highest number of line items of new and obsolete semiconductor components with over 65000 in stock line items."

But, will OEMs or manufactures rely on distributors in future as well when they can locate whatever parts they require using technologies like E-commerce? "True. In fact E-commerce has changed the dynamics of the distribution business. Yet, we believe basic trade model will not change. Customers will still prefer local vendors or distributors as they can assure quality, offer warranty and even credit facility, which is quite common in the distribution business,"opines Samyal.

Likewise, to be successful in any business one need to understand the market needs. Since its inception LWI designed a strategy to be in touch with their customers on regular basis. This has helped the company to keep updated about every change and new facility added in a customer’s place so that the new requirements can be met accordingly.With an average of three imports and two exports being done everyday, LWI presently caters to the needs of customers in the U.S,European countries.

However,the business is not as rosy as it appears.In this arena, equipments routed from China and Singapore throw up major challenges. Says Samyal,"Here devices are tampered and refurbished, counterfeited and quality standards are not met." This is affecting not only India but also the global market. So, the company is reluctant to do business in Middle East as these products dominate there. "Few customers who fall pray to the cheap Chinese parts, often come back to us in their production crises for genuine parts after losing time and revenue to such faulty and cheap parts,"adds he.

Despite this, LWI has achieved quite a few of accolades to its credit. This ISO9001: 2000 certified company, member of In-Stock Certified Program(ISCP)and top 10 positively rated by TBF,ERAI member,a U.S based web portal and also rated top 10 preferred vendors by ICS,USA,STRC certified and ESC member."Whoever serves customers fast wins the race. We believe in the theory of survival of the fastest," concludes Samyal.