Marius Popitiu, Sales Manager, Ovation Products

I started this outlook for 2014 before Christmas. Trying to finish it after the holidays I can confirm one thing: The New Year is starting as busy as the old one ended.

Productronica 2013 held in Munich last November was for us by far the best show ever (we had our own booth at every productronica show since 1995), kept us busy into the start of 2014 and raises our confidence that 2014 will bring another nice increase of business (even no-one will bet on future business growth any more like it was done before 2008).

We at AdoptSMT expect little changes to the trend we saw during 2013. There is no uniform market. Even comparable companies in the same geographic area and in the same industry segment can show different levels of success, one can expand, the other one be forced to reduce head count and machines in use.

While these differences between our customers help our business in our pre-owned equipment market (we need both demand and supply) we expect to gain market share in the overall stable market of consumables, spares and tools. Our additional customers in 2014 will be in the situation as the ones were we could win during 2013: They have enough business so they needed parts and supplies but are not too busy to look for alternative suppliers who save them money without compromising on quality.

During 2013 we managed to enter many additional accounts, also multinationals, with our range of AdoptSMT Premium Parts and also with many parts and supplies distributed under the suppliers' brand names including Hover-Davis, Count On Tools, Nortec, Thermaltronics, JBC, Techspray and Indium Corporation.

The basis for our growth of business was of course to keep our existing customers, which was the case with the exception of some customers in areas which still suffered from the banking crises (in the South East and South West of Europe).

We do expect higher investments being done by our customers in 2014 compared to 2013. But what we see even more is the focus of them on optimizing the utilization of their existing equipment. This is where we see ourselves as their prime partner - we help them to keep their SMT lines running. This will have us continue the growth we already experienced in 2013.

AdoptSMT want to wish all customers and suppliers a successful year 2014.