FIVE YEARS AGO, the economy was not very strong. The US was still trying to recover from the stock-market dip after September 11, 2001. Consumer confidence was down. In fact, the situation was somewhat similar to where the economy is today—except that the current economy is in even worse shape because of the housing-bubble burst. Tough economic times do not have to translate into a lack of opportunity, however. In 2003, a company called RFMW was just being spawned. The distributor, which specializes in providing RF and microwave components and component-engineering support, was profitable from the first day of its second year. This achievement can be credited to the fact that RFMW stuck to its business plan, which did not allow for a long period of losses, and never spent money that it did not have. The firm’s success also can be credited to its business philosophy: “Given the right environment, there is no limit to what our team can accomplish.” Here, we talk to Joel Levine, the company’s President, about how they make RFMW an enjoyable place to work and where he sees the company going.
MWRF: Your company started in 2003, correct?
JL: We were basically born at MTT [the Microwave Theory & Techniques Symposium and Exhibition] in Philly in 2003. There, we got commitments from—I will use a round number of 10 major suppliers—that if we started RFMW, they would franchise us. And we would be able to sell their products as a franchised distributor.
MWRF: So that is when you decided that you had a good idea and you should go ahead with it?
JL: We were pretty much ready to go and that was just the confirmation that we were on the right track. Our target date was July 1, 2003 to start and as long as we had all of those confirmations, we were ready to go.
MWRF: What were you doing before you began RFMW?
JL: In 1979, I started what is today the RF and microwave group of Richardson Electronics. That was started originally as a company called RF Gain. That developed into me running the RF and microwave division of Richardson for about 18 years. In 1997, I had an offer that I could not refuse from Penstock. It was a great opportunity to learn from Bruce White and Jerry Quinnell, who pretty much started RF and microwave specialization as far as distribution. I moved to California that year. Then Penstock became fully part of Avnet and was Avnet RF at one point. That lasted until about April 1, 2003 before we left to start RFMW. Avnet had decided that they did not see the need for RF specialization while we felt the industry still needed it. That is why we started RFMW.
MWRF: Who helped you to start up RFMW?
JL: The original founders were myself, Steve Takaki (my partner), a guy who is no longer with us named Mike Lee, and JoAnn Atangan. And all these people are ex-Penstock, ex-Avnet-RF people. We also teamed up with another company called Component Distributors or CDI, which provided infrastructure for us—especially at the very beginning. The key to our success was the suppliers that came with us from the beginning or almost right from the beginning, which were Skyworks, M/A-COM, what was then Sirenza (now RFMD), and eventually TriQuint.
MWRF: Who is currently an active part of the RFMW team?
JL: We have 40 employees mostly in North America. We have opened an Israeli office and we have one person in Europe who is exploring our European strategy and business development. We have salespeople all over North America and our headquarters is in San Jose, CA, which we have just expanded. We have gone from 1000 square feet when we started to around 9000 square feet today. We also have gone from basically just a small office and warehouse to a nicer facility complete with a cleanroom and some value-added capabilities.
MWRF: Who is at the top running the show besides yourself?
JL: Steve Takaki is our Vice President of Sales and Marketing. JoAnn is still with us. Despite her young age, we consider her the company matriarch. She acts as Treasurer and handles financial operations. One other guy has been with us pretty much from the beginning—John Hamilton, who is Director of Marketing. And all our people are RF and microwave experienced. There are even people who, like me, have 30-plus years of experience; it is hard to say that! Even a young one like JoAnn has over 10 years of experience in RF and microwave.
MWRF: Between all of you “folks at the top,” so to speak, what kind of company environment do you try to create?
JL: We have our Ten Commandments. When we were at Penstock, we had the “Five Points of Light.” The keys to the Five Points of Light were: technical aptitude in the sales organization, best suppliers on the line card, strategically profiled inventory, focusing on an RF and microwave-focused customer base and market, and having value-added services. So those were pretty much, although I might be paraphrasing, the Five Points of Light from the Penstock days. Then we read this book, “It’s Not The Big That Eat The Small, It’s The Fast That Eat The Slow” and we added five more:
• Create a culture and a team that provides
an ease of doing business that
is unequaled in the industry. So it is
basically customer-service-oriented.
• To move fast, to be able to make
decisions quickly—and not be bogged
down by bureaucracy.
• To be profitable.
• To have fun and enjoy ourselves.
• To create and control our own destiny
so we can execute the strategy
and the vision that we believe in and
that we think will create shareholder
value because we do have investors.
Those are the basic 10 things that we live by. If you look at it from the perspective of day to day, we try to hire, develop, and employ the best people—like I said before, operational excellence as far as quality service and ease of doing business. Also, concerning the lack of bureaucracy, we try to execute a simple and consistent strategy. We have been in companies where the strategy changes every six months.
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