8/14/2019 0705 Max Communication

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COMPANY REPORT

TELE-satellite International — www.TELE-satellite.com

Ambitionsin HamburgThe people in Hamburg are well-knownfor their levelheaded and conservative wayof thinking. This attitude could actually hidetheir ambitious side from view. This can alsobe easily seen in the company max commu-nication. As a satellite wholesaler, they arevery well known but there is a lot more goingbehind their front doors!

max communication was founded by ThomasGuhlich in 1990. His brother had been operat-ing a successful computer wholesaling busi-ness and this gave Thomas the incentive tostart his own satellite wholesale business. He

Satellite Wholesaler max communication

Entrance to max communication’snew building. The ofces are to theleft with the warehouse to the right.

The two owners of max communication: Managing Director Dirk Wittenborg (left) andfounder and Technical Director Thomas Guhlich (right).

Jens Kortekamp, Director Key Accounts (foreground) with Jörn Dreyer, Manager KeyAccount.

Product Manager Frank Zimnik has reason to smile. He pro-phesizes that “In 2008 HDTV will take off: the Olympics andthe European Football championships will take care of t hat.Naturally, max communication’s Chess brand name willalso have an HDTV receiver, perhaps even by the fall of thisyear.”

Callers to max communication will be greeted by the friendlyvoice of Sonja Scherdin.

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Mobile stock is automatically moved in order to make more room.Warehouse manager Hüseyin Kök with one of their satellitedishes.

traveled with a small truck to Italy and pur-chased satellite antennas there.

This small beginning with only a few employ-ees has since grown at such a tempo that in2004 it was necessary to expand the controlof the company. Thomas Guhlich searched for

a strategic partner and found Dirk Wittenborg,formerly connected with banking and consult-ing. In April 2006 he took over 50% of maxcommunication. Since then Thomas Guhlichhas been handling all affairs related to pur-chasing, logistics and warehousing while DirkWittenborg has been concerning himself withthe nancial, sales and strategic side of thebusiness.

max communication serves satellite dealers.Jens Kortekamp, Director Key Accounts, cameup with the slogan: “One face to the cus tomer”.This simply means that dealers really don’tneed any other suppliers since max communi-

cation would be able to deliver everyth ing theyneed for their daily operation from standardproducts such as dishes, LNBs and receiversto smaller items such as antenna mast brack-ets and coax cable. Jens Kortekamp explains:

“Today many dealers tend not to build up theirown stock since this would require capital andalso because existing stock has the poten-tial to become outdated rather quickly.” TheJust-in-Time principle has also found its wayto retail satellite dealers and this means thatthese dealers have to rely on immediate deliv-eries from wholesalers such as max communi-cation without having to stock every productin large numbers themselves.

To help guarantee this, max communicationmoved to a new building in November 2006.In addition to the 1000 square-meter ofcespace, plenty of room for even further expan-sion, the warehouse is 3000 square-meterslarge and is located in Rellingen’s industrialpark, northwest of Hamburg, next to theA23 autobahn. Marketing Manager MichaelSierakowitz explains: “Today 36 employeeswork for max communication, this includes 10

The service technicians are always busy answering customer service questions byphone or repairing defective receivers or multiswi tches. From the left : Saim Taski-ran, Rainer Flemming and Manfred Schmidt.

employees in sales, four in technical serviceas well as the Product Manager and DirectorKey Account.”

Now the hidden ambitions will nally come tothe surface. What exactly does a Director KeyAccounts do? Jens Kortekamp tells us more:

“At the moment, 70% of max communication’ssales are domestic while 30% are exported toEurope. But we want to change that.” His jobis to build up relationships with wholesalersin European countries . “max communicat ionhas a unique way of working with other deal-ers. Constant quality as well as responsiveservice and price guarantees are extremelyimportant.” max communication sees anopportunity here to apply their experiences toother countires and to export their promise of quality. “There are no European-wide satel-lite wholesalers, only those that are national”,explains Jens Kortekamp. Currently there is agap in this marketplace that max communica-

tion wants to close.

Are there any other gaps? We posed thisquestion to Frank Zimnik, product managerwith many years of experience in the satel-lite industr y. “max communication has builtup their own brand names: Chess as a dealerbrand name and Platinum as a budget andprice-aggressive name”, comments FrankZimnik, “but there’s more. We also offer high-end names such as Topeld for PVR’s, pluswe are also an ofcial partner with ALPS forLNBs and Vantage for receiver s.” Where willall of this go? “As a European-wide dealer wewould offer products based on region and/or

country, such as, a receiver with Conax for theScandinavian market or a CI unit for the Greekmarket.” max communicat ion has arrangedwith the manufacturers, most of which fromChina, to handle the adaptation of the unitsto their destination countries enabling them todeliver region-specic products.

The ultimate goal to deliver to destinationsthroughout Europe was underscored by DirkWittenborg, who told us, “In order to accom-

A look at the warehouse: pallets of satellite pro-ducts

plish our expansion, we began to update ourentire IT infrastructure after our move lastNovember. Our plan is to launch our fully inte-grated business software project in March of this year. Our new shop system goes onlinein the third quarter of 2007: orders can bereceived and processed directly from the cus-tomers and starting with the fourth quarterthe language modules will become active, rstfor English and French with other languages tofollow.”

By the time you read this, max communicationwill already have another building block acti-vated to support European-wide distribution:

the linking with Coface so that customers canbe offered various purchase nancing options.This means that customers can be billed forthe products they order as long as they have apositive credit history.

These many different plans are surprisinglyambitious for a company that already sees itself as one of the three largest satellite wholesal-ers in Germany and may soon be the rst trueEuropean-wide wholesale r. Good luck!