With the recovery in manufacturing gathering momentum and hopes growing that the rebalancing of the UK economy is set to continue, it’d be in the interest of politicians and policy makers alike to pay the touch sensor product developer Zytronic a visit.

Based in Blaydon upon Tyne in the North East it produces a range of interactive projected capacitive touch technology products that are used in a host of display solutions from information kiosks and ATMs to gaming machines.

With its own in-house glass processing, electro-plating and coating facilities spread across three factories and staff with extensive material science and electronics skills it is punching well above its weight in the global market.

Recently the company announced that one of its specially designed touch screen solutions was being used in Microsoft’s Envisioning Laboratory in Seattle as apart of a Spatial Desk, a large touch-enabled, multi-monitor workstation used to demonstrate next generation technologies.

At the time Ian Crosby, the sales and marketing director, said that Zytronic was “Excited to be working with Microsoft and had once again pushed the boundaries of what can be achieved with touch technology.”

The company is winning awards and is being chosen by more and more customers to supply them with its touch sensor technology - whether mining conglomerates in Australia or banks in Brazil and beyond. It is truly a British success story in which the quietly spoken Crosby has played a not inconsiderable part.

He joined the company in 2007 and since then has focused relentlessly on driving international sales. Not only does he manage the sales team he’s had direct responsibility for growing sales in Asia, which now account for around a quarter of total sales, and has opened new offices in South Africa and has just appointed a representative in Brazil as this UK business looks to expand into South America.

I wanted to be a geologist

Born in Hull and having spent several years growing up in apartheid South Africa he completed a degree in combined sciences.

“I actually wanted to be geologist, but as part of the course studied ceramic technology. I really enjoyed it but there was obviously the question as to where I could take it as a career. The ceramic industry in the UK was on its knees at the time, but it was while I was attending the annual ‘milk round‘ at university that I met with met Corning, who were then looking for process engineers to start at their glass factory in Sunderland and I liked the sound of it.

“I wanted to go into an engineering manufacturing environment that had a connection with my course. It felt like an interesting company to work for and it was a big organisation, turning over something like $3bn a year.”

Starting as a process engineer Crosby excelled at communicating and dealing with customers and visitors alike. So much so that ultimately, when the opportunity arose, he moved into sales.

“I do think I have a rapport with people. I certainly enjoy talking to customers face-to-face. I worked as a process engineer for three years but I suppose what I wanted was exposure to the wider world, that’s what attracted me to the sales environment. In a factory you need to be inward looking, you’re focusing on efficiency, yields etc and I got a kick out of seeing where the various components we made ended up and how they were used.”

From talking to other sales directors to be good in sales you need to have credibility with your customers and that is based on a deep technical knowledge. Crosby agrees.

“Today when I hire anyone I look for a grounding in manufacturing. If you’re going to be successful you have to have a grasp of the problems that part of the business face and see things from their perspective.”

The move into sales required that he relocate to the South of England where, still as a applications engineer, he supported the sales department out of their offices in Slough. In effect he was working for both sales and business development and that meant dealing with European customers.

“They certainly took a risk employing me, but I was good at communicating with engineers and customers alike. I learned to listen, when not to talk and to be more tolerant of other people‘s views. With so many different cultures it’s very easy to misinterpret people.”

Crosby does come across as a very easy going person. He’s a real pleasure to talk with and you can easily see why he’s been so successful at developing long term relationships with his customers. But while he has a quiet and easy-going manner there’s real drive and purpose.

“I was brought up to believe that the most important word in the English language is not ‘I’ but ‘you’,” he laughs.

Breakthrough

After just six months working with sales and business development Crosby was given his first ‘break’ when he was asked to take over his first product line - a new range of lenses that went into stage, theatre and studio lighting.

“It was great. I had responsibility for a whole product line and was dealing with customers like Thorn Lighting. Through hard graft I grew the line from nothing to several hundred thousand pounds in a couple of years.”

The job took him into Europe and as result he was asked to conduct some business development work for Corning, who were looking at several acquisitions in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It meant visiting a Czech glass manufacturer and writing a report on the state of the facility and the business.

“In the case of this particular factory it would have cost the company an immense amount of money to bring it up to standard and it was decided not to go ahead with the acquisition. It was quite a high profile job they’d asked me to do and as a result I think they saw, from my contribution, that there was some potential in me for some bigger projects.”

As a result Crosby was asked by his Sales Director to set up a satellite office in Southern Europe.

“That guy was an inspiration to me. He was old school. Very aggressive but he got on well with customers. He was very confident on the big stage but great at bringing negotiations down to a personal level. While we had offices in Wiesbaden and outside Paris he felt there was scope for something in Italy - well what an opportunity, I couldn’t refuse.”

After two weeks of learning Italian “with a little old Italian in St Helens” Crosby was in Italy. His brief was to develop the company’s industrial business and over the next two years he succeeded in building a sustainable business generating $1.5m a year in revenues.

As part of his assignment he had to recruit a small team and I ask him whether he’s good at identifying talent and once again he’s very modest about his achievements.

“I’ve been fortunate, most of the appointments I’ve made have worked, whether that’s through luck or design I don’t know. Because of the type of product and market we were dealing with it wasn’t about closing a deal there and then, it was all about building a long term relationship with the customer. I needed to find people who were comfortable with taking that approach to sales.”

With the Southern European office established Crosby came back to the UK, where he was appointed the UK regional sales manager for Corning’s industrial products. A business worth around $6m and with responsibility not only for the UK but for South Africa and Scandinavia.

“I reported to a real power house. She was originally from East Germany - a teacher - and had escaped to the West prior to the collapse of communism in the late 1980s. She’d seen the work I’d done in Italy and wanted me to do the same in South Africa. We were running it and Scandinavia remotely, but we couldn’t do justice to the market by paying just a couple of visits a year.”

After successfully organising the South African office Crosby was now looking for something different.

“I really wanted to work in the head office over in Corning, which is in up-state New York. I got the chance and it was all very exciting, selling in the US. It helped being English as it certainly got you noticed.”

Corning is a town of around 50,000 people, 7-8,000 who work directly for the company - and for someone who’d always worked in satellite offices it proved a challenging experience.

“Too much in the way of politics!” He confides.

Boom and bust

After a couple of years he and the family decided to return to the UK where he was appointed European Sales Manager but while the company’s industrial business went from strength to strength, Corning had spent most of the 1990s riding the telecoms boom. The company had seen its turnover surge from $3bn to $7bn as it made numerous acquisitions, most of which it did at the top end of the market. Share values soared and then the bubble burst.

“I was responsible for industrial products, it was non sexy, steady and reliable. But when telecoms blew up in 2000 the whole company suffered. We went through a horrible time shedding 15,000 employees and while the industrial products division was unaffected on a day-to-day basis, we saw investment cut. Because of the implosion in the telecoms business new opportunities within Corning were few and far between, people were fighting for their careers, and that was not an environment in which I wanted to work, so I took the opportunity and left.”

Crosby certainly admits to having mixed feelings about leaving Corning and his decision to join Filtrona Filters was, with hindsight, akin to jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

“I joined as European Sales Manager and had a ready made team most of whom thought they should have got the job instead of me. It was tough. I was appointed to use my knowledge from working at Corning to develop a comprehensive set of processes and to restructure the department.

“The company sold cigarette filters and it was a totally different and not very satisfying experience. As I explained earlier I look for people who are fairly stable and can build long term relationships with customers and we couldn’t do that. The company went through a demerger, then made numerous acquisitions and from a sales perspective that meant having to integrate new products and manage disparate sales teams. That was difficult.

“We had very demanding customers like Philip Morris and Imperial Tobacco to deal with, and that was made all the harder by poor planning and industrial disputes. We were constantly saying sorry.”

After three years he was offered the chance to go to Singapore but refused.

“By then my face didn’t fit any more and it was time to leave. It’s funny when I look back I worked for two very large companies but they were so different. Corning despite being a billion dollar plus organisation had a small business mentality. Filtrona was……” he shrugs.

“At least my mum was happy when I left. She hated me working for a company that was involved with cigarettes!”

Crosby started looking for work in the UK and got the call from a recruitment agency that a glass related company in the North East of England was looking for a sales and marketing director and that’s where we came in.

“It’s been the most enjoyable three years of my career. It was tough to begin with. It involves making decisions that will have an impact on the whole company but I’ve learned to relax more as time goes on and I’m surrounded by a great management team.”

“I’ve always loved glass as a medium to work with, and I’m glad to be back where I started. Back in the North East and in business where so much is happening and which has so much promise.“

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