Strategy in TECH...
Draper, Inc. announced this week that it has added a new 100,000 sq. ft. building to its campus in Spiceland, Indiana. This is its tenth building and this addition brings the company’s total footprint in Spiceland to no less than 500,000 sq. ft.
Hop on I-70 and head East out of Indianapolis for around forty-five minutes or so and you’ll arrive in Spiceland, a quiet, rural village of under 1,000 people that with its brick church, quaint bandstand in the park, and a picturesque running stream, feels as country-style homey as you could imagine. What brought me to Spiceland? I came to visit the town’s largest employer and Henry County’s (named for patriot Patrick Henry) second-largest employer – Draper, a manufacturer of leading projection screens and roller shades.
Sony Corporation has two large factories in Malaysia – one manufacturing audio products, and the other manufacturing predominantly video products. A new report out of Japan indicates that the company plans to close its audio factory in Malaysia by no later than the beginning of 2022 – or in other words, during the upcoming year of 2021. This move is likely a result of a previously announced strategic refocusing on businesses other than a/v electronics at the major consumer electronics manufacturer.
This is Part 2 of Strata-gee’s series on my recent visit to Crestron. In some ways, as much fun as I had at their Research Center, I can almost say it was eclipsed (if only slightly) by a visit to, at that point, their yet-to-be-officially launched factory that was actually a couple of miles away from the main Crestron campus at a facility in the state of New York.
They call it their “Factory of the Future,” and after touring it…I can see why.
It was like my Uber car was actually a time machine. After landing in Reno, Nevada, my Uber driver – an eccentric older fellow who is both a ride-share driver and a real estate agent – demonstrated an uncommon grasp of the local geography and history. Heading south on I-580 out of Reno there was a dramatic ridge of mountains to my right and a nonstop running monologue from my old-West style stagecoach driver: “Those are the Sierra-Nevada Mountains,” he helpfully offered. And on the left…the high desert.
No doubt about it, Apple Inc. supplier Foxconn has had a really bad week. First, last Tuesday Wisconsin voters kicked Republican Governor Scott Walker out of office, replacing him with Democrat Tony Evers. Then early this week, the company released financial results with disappointing earnings that missed analysts estimates. Both of these unrelated events have combined to cause market analysts to question the company’s strategy going forward.
