Citizen Machinery UK, a subsidiary
of Citizen Machinery Japan, has seen great progress with its asset
funding programme, with sales penetration rising from 75 percent of
its £12 million (€13.7 million) annual turnover in 2007 to nearly
95 percent this year.
The company uses specialist technology
broker CNC Technology Investment to place around 60-70 percent of
customer finance deals with Tier 1 and Tier 2 funders, while some
customers make their own financing arrangements.
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As a result of the CNC relationship,
funders are found to suit customer propositions, with a
corresponding breadth of products available, including hire
purchase, finance and operating lease, and a variety of hybrid
products.
As a low-volume, high-value sales
operation, says MD Geoff Bryant (the company generally takes around
ten orders a month, on an average ticket of £100,000), flexibility
in product offering is central to the sales process.
With SMEs being Citizen’s main
customers, he explains, asset finance is easily presented as a
means to mitigate the high capital costs of the company’s precision
lathe equipment.
Meanwhile, Citizen’s sales staff are
fully trained in stressing the operational benefits of leasing as a
core part of their dialogue with customers.
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By GlobalDataNext year, Citizen Machinery UK will
take responsibility for the sales and distribution of its parent
company’s products over all of Western Europe. When this expansion
comes, it hopes to extend its finance arrangements to cover the new
territory.
• Japan’s Citizen group,
famous for its timekeeping and electronics products, originally
went into the machinery business to produce highly accurate tools
for its own precision watch manufacturing. The
group acquired UK lathe specialist NC Engineering in 2006, after
which the acquisition took on the name of its parent. Based in
Watford, Citizen Machinery UK offers preowned machines, parts and
service provision, as well as new sliding head CNC
lathes.
