RS Components recently celebrated 80 years since opening its first business operations in London. Founded as Radiospares, in 1937, the company started as a supplier of parts to the burgeoning radio market, and has evolved to become a global distribution enterprise with operations in Europe, North America, Africa and Asia, offering a diverse portfolio of more than 500 000 industrial and electronic components across 2500 global brands.
RS South Africa opened its doors in 1996, the flagship operation in Africa, celebrating 21 years of distributing products and components to engineers around the continent. Brian Andrew, general manager of RS South Africa commented: “How things have changed. In 2009 we took the decision to print our last paper catalogue. It was a big risk to take in a market where e-commerce was just taking off and where the industry was still quite traditional, with engineers requesting our 3000 page catalogue to search for their favourite parts. We started off with just 5% of sales coming through the website in 2009, and this has steadily grown to 65% of all sales now coming through the website. The shift has been phenomenal with unbelievable efficiencies gained through the use of technology.”
The company’s founding principle of service excellence, with ease of doing business at its core, has been a major factor in its success and longevity. Innovation is another vital keystone for supporting customers and suppliers through the product life cycle, and RS is continuing to develop its DesignSpark engineering community, offering technical support, free tools and inspiration to engineers in the design phase.
Mike England, UK managing director and head of Northern Europe region at RS, commented: “RS has a unique offering and an unparalleled 80-year heritage, which we are proud to celebrate today. Customers are at the heart of everything we do, and our focus remains on service excellence, which we will achieve by keeping abreast of technology and market dynamics. This approach, along with our passion to innovate and to inspire the next generation of engineers, is vital in ensuring that RS continues to prosper for the next 80 years and more.”
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