The U.K. angle
ECS' sales/marketing/warehouse centre takes up an entire block in an industrial park that's on the northern side of Milton Keynes. There's a cake factory just to the left, and the gorgeous wafting smell of freshly-baked cakes must make ECS employees stomache's grumble when it lunchtime approaches.
It's the ECS U.K marketing manager's (Andrew Tseng) job to ensure that present customers are kept happy and new potential new customers recruited in both the retail and system integrator channels, in terms of motherboard, notebook, and desktop sales. As we've pointed out, selling Chinese-manufactured ECS motherboards to OEM customers is big, big business, although, as Andrew took pains to point out, ECS is also looking to appeal to the enthusiast/gamer with an ever-increasing range of deluxe boards with tweakable BIOSes. The ECS PF88 is a case in point. Expect to see more motherboards of this ilk in the near future. Indeed, we've currently got a PF88 with an AMD Athlon 64 Turion CPU SIMA card in the labs.
Another facet of Andrew's role is to investigate and action ways and means to expand ECS' notebook business, both in terms of its own branding and whom it sells on to in OEM form. We were sworn to secrecy when informed of exactly who ECS supplies its Biloda-built notebooks to, but think of the largest high street retailer and you won't go far wrong.
Moving on along past numerous people hard at work on a hot Friday afternoon and just before entering the warehouse section of the ECS U.K HQ, ECS has a display wall with some of its finest products. See how many you can name without having to resort to a Google search.
ECS's warranty on its retail motherboards extends to a retail package replacement for a faulty board, much in the vein of Foxconn. A non-functioning retail board is sent back to the testing department at ECS E.U HQ, evaluated, and, if need be, a new retail package issued in its place. Here you can see a rather junior HEXUS associate just about getting to grips with a basic labelling machine ;) (Ed. hm, look like he needs to lose a little weight...).
The sheer scale of the ECS U.K. operation means that a fair chunk of stock needs to be kept in the warehouse. The vast majority of shipments are still processed and dispatched from ECS' European hub, located in Holland, however. It often pays to think of whose name is behind the PCs and laptops sold via etailers. Chances are that it could well be ECS.
Our quick profile of ECS and trip up to the U.K office was intended to show you that sales volume and brand exposure don't necessarily go hand-in-hand in the PC hardware sector. As we've seen, ECS can lay claim to some staggering numbers that would make, perhaps, better-known 'manufacturers' green with envy. ECS has realised this and whilst it seems happy with providing brandless hardware to high-profile companies, it's also looking at ways of getting a bigger piece of the retail action for itself. That's why you will be seeing a greater number of ECS-branded products in the very near future, including a greater range of Extreme-series deluxe motherboards for LGA775 and S939/S754 CPUs.
For those that chuckle and say "I'd never buy ECS", unbeknownst to you, your system may well be powered by one. We look forward to seeing what ECS has planned for 2006, and we'll keep you posted!
