STEVEN GOETSTOUWERS EPIC CEO INTERVIEW
Admesy’s Prometheus colorimeters.
you can’t go crying when they don’t pay your invoice within 30 days. Like everybody else, we’ve had supply chain problems and we’ve had to invest a lot in inventory management. But in the longer term, the main challenge will be scalability. Currently, for our measurement devices, a high runner is around 2-3,000 units per year, which for a photonics measurement company is a high volume, but for any other industry it’s a day’s production. But I believe that photonics measurement principles at some point will become so mainstream that we will have to think about how we will be able to ramp up to 500,000 a year or even more.
wouldn’t do it.
What we basically do is to follow the trends of the high-volume manufacturers and try to build a product that matches that trend and that we can also sell to other customers. Our new VIS | UV-NIR Neo Spectroradiometer is a good example.
How do you see the market evolving?
JP
The consumer electronics market will remain interesting and we’re seeing a lot of interest in AR/VR.
SG
We had to build a spectrometer to meet a phone manufacture’s
Some of our customers are currently discussing AR/VR measurement solutions and we expect a lot to happen in his area. Right now, a customer is working on an under-display camera with facial recognition fully integrated in the display. This can create a weaker spot on the display so it requires a specific measurement solution. Overall, I believe that by offering a very high-level measurement performance based on the non-destructive properties of light, new applications will open up both for us and for the photonics industry in general.
specifications for some quality steps in the line, similar to our colorimeter and everything had to happen within a split second because they were building 40 million phones. We produced the device and with a couple of adaptations produced our Neo Spectrometer, which is a standalone device that can be easily integrated it into other production lines. With this spectrometer we are involved in a project for the biomedical analysis of kidney diseases and glass inspection for greenhouses.
If you started again, what would you do differently?
JP
I’d probably be even more aggressive in our investments. Until now, we’ve been to some
SG
What were your main challenges when you became CEO? The first challenge was a to regain focus. We had a relatively large portfolio of testing
What are the future challenges for Admesy?
JP
JP
extent bootstrapping, which is inevitable for a small company. But there have been many times when we we’ve done something and then thought we should have done this earlier. For example, in the midst of the COVID crisis, we expanded our assembly space from 600m2 to 3,000m2 and our clean room from 165m2 to 750m2. We immediately saw the advantages and in hindsight, I would have done it four or five years earlier.
SG Consumer electronics is very much an up and down market. At the same time, it’s growing consistently. A main challenge is our need to remain superior at a technical level because there are always cheaper Asian alternatives. But as long as we’re technically better, the major brands will buy from us because they want the technically best measurements solution. Another challenge is our size. With 42 people, our company is a reasonable size in the photonics industry. We’re no longer small, but when you look at it on a global scale, we pale into insignificance compared with some of our customer who have a workforce of 300,000 or more. Getting a big order from a large company takes about a year right to recover because you have to spend a lot of money. Of course, you can also make a lot of money, but you won’t receive the first payment for 90 days after delivery. Despite our small size, our customers treat us as equals but they expect us to play the game like a big boy, which means
SG
products, but they were generating low sales. Instead of wasting a lot of time trying to understand other applications and customising for small customers, we had to learn how to say ‘no’ to customers and go back to what we knew and what we were good at. So we went back to colorimeters and fought our way into the major phone lines in Asia.
What’s your advice for the next generation of entrepreneurs?
JP
This is a crazy job You wake up with it and you go to bed with it, so you can only carry on if you
SG
What have been your personal challenges as CEO?
JP
really like what you’re doing. But be careful not to fall in in love with your technology. If you do, you can no longer objectively evaluate it. We’ve made the mistake several times of thinking we’d come up with an amazing product, but when we went to the customer, they weren’t interested. Two months after looking at it more objectively, we understood why.
Like most entrepreneurs, when I started, I was a type of control freak, and my main personal
SG
challenge has been learning to let go. My main job is to build the team, but you can only build a good team if you give them the responsibility and allow them to do something in a way you
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