RF manufacturer representative companies work to get manufacturers clients and claim a commission. They are exceptionally useful when you need to a product to market. They have specialist skill and some utilizes specialist contractors to help get your market out there. An RF manufacturer representative company on average may contain only 4 members of staff, however will have contacts within the region you with to manufacturer and potentially supply to. Larger firms may have specialized teams within company to reduce outsourcing costs.
A manufacturers will use an RF manufacturer representative company because their overheads are not constant and as such it is not economically viable to have an inside sales team as it is an overhead when the manufacturer is producing products at maximum capacity.
Why should you work with them? You need to use representative companies due to their extensive knowledge in the domain you are manufacturing in, the local manufacturers and places to advertise other supply chain solutions up and down stream of the manufacturers you decide to use.
Large or Small RF Representative Company?
Representative companies fundamentally be small and act more like an agent to get commission. Sometimes this partnership is beneficial for manufacturers where the product is almost identical to another design and the workflows are already optimized. For example, if you are a manufacturer of gym balls, there are only so many design changes needed, such as logo, texture and materials. By keeping the tooling from previous work and modifying it with insert then the manufacturing and distribution process will be almost identical; the same applies for some RF products. A smaller agent with a smaller commission is then much better for the manufacturer that pays the commission.
However, if the client is lost because of lack of other services then conversely a larger RF representative company is useful as they may absorb that risks of the manufacturer. This is useful for more novel but not necessarily more complex product designs.
From a customer perspective a larger RF manufacturer representative company may help the manufacturing process as well as other aspects of production such as sourcing materials up-stream, logistics, deal with local legal regulations and marketing. Practically anything related to manufacturing and distribution that you need may be found directly from these larger RF representative companies. For example, if you need an RF certification, they may be able to connect you to the right people. Typically, if one person needs something in this process another will.
So, from a manufacturer’s perspective, if they hire a smaller company, they may lose work from new companies and some SME’s that need that level of help. Larger companies may already have this knowledge and experience in house and so may not be extensively impacted.
RF manufacturer representative company: Things to Consider
If you noticed we have spoken very broadly about representative companies with information so far that could apply to almost any mass manufacturing scenario. So, lets circle back to RF design for a minute. Designing RF products can be very difficult to get an optimized a prototype level, when it gets to manufacture you may need help testing the design is working correctly during a small batch run. For more conventional products you may have designed for losses in performance to compensate however you never know until the final product is created. This is why you have technical product specifications (TPS) because once the TPS is created you need to go back to your product specification and compare the output with the design constraints to see if your manufactured product is fit for purpose. Specialists will already know where to take your design to local TPS creation and corresponding test centres before rollout.
