BICC-VERO Electronics |
About VERO... |
1961 - VERO is established by Mr Verdon Roe in England. One of the very first VERO products was the "VERO Board", with which many past students of electronic engineering will still be familiar today, a matrix board for assembling test circuits and test setups.
1979 - BICC in the UK acquires the VERO Group. For BICC, a major English cable-manufacturing group, purchasing the VERO Group meant the acquisition of new technology sectors.
1994 - MBO, separation from BICC. The VERO Group management acquired the group in an MBO, with backing from investors.
1995 - Flotation of the VERO Group as a plc on the London Stock Exchange.
1998 - The American Group APW acquires the VERO Group. There was a shift towards focusing on the telecommunications sector.
2007 – APW goes into administration and ceases trading – all assets and IP are sold. |
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Product Marketing Manager: Jul 1991 to Apr 1993 (then promoted) |
British Columbia
Ontario is a p
Yukon,
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Prior to this position, I had been working as the company's Sales Engineer in Scotland/Ireland and caught the attention of the corporate team who moved me into the role of Product Marketing Manager for the backplane product line (VME, Multibus, VXI, Futurebus and Veroboard; and custom backplanes) based in the Southampton area of England.
VERO was in a rather unique position, at that time, as they had their own wet-process PCB shop in England at a time when board shops were springing up in Asia.
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Core competencies |
| • product development |
• structuring product pricing |
• global pricing |
| • marketing/sale collateral |
• product presentations |
• business development |
| • product training |
• global corporate relationships |
• cost-reduction |
This was a global product marketing position at a very interesting time, technically, as the market was moving away from soldered interconnects to gas-tight press fit interconnect system and open architecture backplanes particularly VME was gaining traction in a market that dominated by proprietary architectures.
My role was pretty simple
- develop a new VME backplane product line that would be successful globally. Simple, huh! Well, simple until the various global faction within the company
all had different requirements.
- ensure that our business was well placed within the international standards organization - VITA, the VME International Trade Association - and to network to identify business development opportunities. I was based in the UK and VITA was based in the USA. I attended every standards meeting to advance the goal of my business.
Working with a variety of global customers and ex-customers, some friendly and some not so friendly I developed a basic specification for the product but the dilemma I faced was the production lead times that were too long and a cost structure that was prohibitive. I took this dilemma to the employees who fabricated and assembled the boards and they were very quick to point out manufacturing inefficiencies and by coordinating their feedback with the engineering/operations team I was able to launch not only the companies most successful, profitable product but one which was still on the market until Pentair's acquisition of APW Electronic Solutions in 2006, VMExcel.
After the launch of VMExcel, I was promoted to the position of Marketing Manager of VERO's USA operation in Hamden, CT.
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