Thern, a respected manufacturer of winches and cranes in the U.S., recognized the growth potential of the European market, and that they would need to change the way they engaged with existing and potential customers in Europe.

The move from a company that was relatively unknown in Europe to one with a well-established European presence and full business support made a world of difference, thanks to a partnership with EuroDev.

During Thern’s four-month introductory program, a dedicated team of EuroDev sales and marketing professionals was trained by Thern on company specifics. Thern and EuroDev also worked together to define new European target markets and preferred market-entrance strategies. These activities included determining and executing primary sales activities, and developing common marketing tools to support each step in the process, from developing leads, approaching prospects and eventually closing deals.

The initial business development strategy involved installing and managing a dense industrial distribution network to cover main target markets in Europe. Within the first year, we made a large number of trips and were able to sign up numerous distributors in the materials handling and lifting equipment industry. To give these distributors a head start, we created a variety of sales and marketing tools, including multilingual brochures, Web pages, technical support documents and training programs. EuroDev also supported Thern’s participation in local trade shows.

After successfully setting up a industrial distribution network, we noticed that Thern was missing out on some of the larger OEMs in the waste water and offshore markets. We concluded that indirect sales channels were not the appropriate method for serving these larger OEMs, so we specifically targeted a selection of these companies, learned what their particular needs were and adapted our strategies to their purchasing processes. After a process of product validation (and, in some cases, even product re-engineering), we now have established solid relationships with some of the major pump manufacturers and oil and gas operators in Europe.

While Thern’s customer base has expanded, Thern has simultaneously increased its service levels to both distributors and OEMs in order to increase customer satisfaction and to accommodate further growth. Some of the ways they’ve done this include offering quotations and price lists in Euros, setting up a local warehouse in the Netherlands and opening an European bank account. The ability of EuroDev to provide these services and facilities in a fast, flexible but secure manner has been crucial to early customer acceptance on behalf of Thern’s clients.

EuroDev was also involved in implementing the CE mark on Thern products. (Although we don’t necessarily consider ourselves CE specialists, our dedicated staff does assist clients in many aspects of the procedures, including machine directives assessments, technical file requirements and notified bodies’ selections and assignments.) While Thern was about to have their winches certified by a notification body, we found out that self-certification complied with the machine directive, and we saved them at least €10,000.

Thern started working with us in 2005, and we’ve been successfully cooperating in the European market ever since. EuroDev and Thern are currently evaluating how we can mutually increase efforts to take their European operations to the next level.

Tulsa Heaters, Inc., is based in in Tulsa, Okla., and supplies fired heaters and waste heat recovery units to the oil and gas market.

Before approaching EuroDev in late 2005, THI already had business experience in Europe by going directly to the market. However, they soon realized that it was essential to have a local European presence served by a dedicated team. They’d discovered that European customers prefer to speak to someone in the same time zone as them, and also were looking for a team that understood the subtleties of their particular culture.

Accordingly, they signed on for a four-month introductory program with us that began on Jan. 1, 2006. We started with market research and exploration so that EuroDev could better understand THI’s way of working and their portfolio. Afterwards, EuroDev’s project manager spent a few days at their Tulsa office in order to meet with Sales, Marketing and Engineering, and also visited some of THi’s production locations in the area.