2012年慕尼黑上海分析生化展期间，丁香园通讯员专访普兰德全球市场和销售经理 Peter先生。以下是采访实录。

丁香园通讯员和普兰德全球市场和销售经理peter先生合影

 

DXY: Hi, Peter. Welcom to China! As we know, BRAND is famous for its Star Products, such as Transferpette^® and Dispensette^® . So what would be the key to success?
Peter: You are just saying we are very well known to China by our Transferpette^® and Dispensette^® ，meanwhile to other products. But this is just a relatively small portion of our full program.BRAND is a very traditional company with history, it was founded almost 100 years ago,and we started with makingvolumetric glassware used in all kinds of volumetric measurement work.And that time of course, the volumetric glasswarewere all working with so-calledwet chemistry, sample jars, containers, reservoirs. And what a time, we developedthese new instrumentslike the Transferpette^® and Dispensette^® , but we still manufacture glass today and we still have a large portfolio in the chemistry industry.

 

Peter: In china, we have started our business as early as 1991,andthe first instruments we brought to the market were the Transferpette^® and bottle top dispenser. We are very well known for these products, but meanwhile we are also very successful in selling glass in China, and also many other products to China.Since we found our company here in 2009, there was a magnificent step ahead. We have good business in China already, and we are very well known. People were appreciating the quality of our products. All the products that we sell in our catalogue are“made in Germany”. That is very well appreciated by the Chinese customers. After we formed our branchcompany here in shanghai, we added more productslines to complete the portfolio. And now we sell almost the completeproduct portfolio here in China to customers of all kinds：the pharmaceutical industry, environmental industry, food and beverage, academia and research. The quality that we are supplyingreally is a premium quality. There are many companies in china (like the domestic pharmaceutical industry in china)who are trying to go international, and get certified internationally. So they areusing our products in order to help them getting to a quality level that they need to be active and successfully.

 

DXY: So, do you mean that the quality of products is the most important?

Yes.But also the quality of service. This is why we form branch in shanghai, to be close to the market. Since we formed our company here and haveexperienced sales reps on board, with our product and marketing managers and our service engineers,we can respond to customers’ demands much better than in the past. Now, we have the direct access to the market, we built the bridge between the Chinese market and headquarter of Germanyso we can understand the demands of Chinese customer better and also send signal (of new product or new technology) to the market.We arevery interested in China. We see china as one of our major future markets. So we wanted to bring the same service in China that we can bring to the marker in Europe.The product quality is deciding, but also the service quality, the staff we have and the quality of logistics. Since the beginning of this year,we have installed a huge warehouse in shanghai, so we can be even faster in supplying our customers.

 

DXY: Compared to the quality of products, do you mean service is the more important if we focus on the Chinese market ?
Peter: Well, there is not one most important character，it has to be the whole package，the whole package what I mention is quality of service and quality of quick response from our good-team which is conduct our business, supporting our dealers. Only the whole packages works. That is the Success package.

 

DXY: As you mentioned before, BRAND is proud of manufacturing standard which could be a saying called "made in Germany", so what's the spirit of "Made in Germany" in your opinion?
Peter: It is “Reliable”.“Made in Germany” stands for quality, everybody knows that. We have decided to make products in our factory in Germany only because we have very skilled people there, who in some cases have been with the company for many decades. We have people working for BRAND for more than 25years, or more than 30years. So they know their job very well. And we know that they can reach the product quality that our customers expect of us, only if we continue to manufacture in our own factory in Germany. Even our Chinese customers tell us that.Our Chinese distributionpartners, and also our Chinese customers and users say: Please make sure that you are always making products in Germany and in Germany only, so that we can rely on your quality. And yes, we do that, because we know as well that we can reach this quality level only when continue to make product in Germany. And with the people we educated ourselves.

 

DXY: Besides the manufacturing, innovation is also very important. Could you share the BRAND’s attitude towards innovation with us?
Peter: That isa veryimportant issue that you are arising. One of the success factors of ourselves is that we are very innovative. We are innovative with regards of our new products, and we are also innovative with regards of new production technology. We have a team of 42 engineers, that thinking about new products, improving products, but also new production technology all the time, which leads to the factsthat for every biggest exhibition- major exhibition in Germany every 3years, we come out with new product and new product lines, that rarely seen with many of our competitors. And we also improve production process by looking into new production technology. That is something customers cannot see, and do not make their first sight. But when products like our Transferpette^® or the Dispensette^® become better, that must have to do with the improving production technology. And all the products and all the parts of the products you see here are made in our own factory. Lots of the machines and many instrumentswe are using during the manufacturing have been designed and built by ourselves. (Only with the improving of advanced production technology, we can bring our brilliant new idea for products and application into reality.).That is the reason why we have a large team of 42 engineers.

 

DXY: What new products will be introduced to the Chinese market in the analytica China 2012, would you like to give some examples ?
This time for example we are showing our pipette leaking testunit, relatively new product which helps customers to find out whether their pipettes are working or not, or whether they are leaking. With our experience in manufacturing and testing pipettes back to Germany, many users do not really know that their pipettes have problem with leakage, because you cannot see that with the bare eyes. If you get one result, you see that something is wrong with the result but you don’t know why. And the reason quite often is your pipette system is leaking, maybe the pipette itself, maybethe tip you have fixed, and this system(PLT) tells you the reason, tells you whether or not you pipette is ok. That is very new and unique instrument that no one else the world has, we are the only one.

As to the BVC, this is its first show too. This is for vacuum expiration of waste liquid in the biological as well as chemicallab.This brand new system can extensively improve the safety situation for users who is working with hazard liquid either chemically or biologically, for example, with virus experiment. This system is totally automatic and eliminating the possibility of contact with hazard liquid.

 

These two new products are both operated electronically and have the features of easy operating.

 

DXY: And are there any difficulty in use?
Peter: It’s very operational friendly and very simple, in both cases. The systems guide you the procedures.

 

DXY: Under the strategic planning of BRAND,, have you ever think of the future in China?May be in 3 years or in 5 years?
Peter: What our aim in China is giving our customers better support, now we are working on this already, however, in relatively limited area. And we want to expand the area so we can give the market better support. Better support in terms of more knowledge by our well educated sales team. We are selling through dealers only, we are not sellingdirect. And dealers have sells reps that however are not so knowledgeable well enough. They do not know our products so well, so we give support by training them, so they can answer customers’ questions when visiting customers.We also do joint visiting with our distributors. We have repair service with us, we are going to expand and will train our distribution partners, so they can handle repair services as well. Everything we are trying to bring here is aiming better support for the market and expanding support also in regions we are not so active today like the west of the country, big cities like Chongqing, like Wuhan.

 

DXY: What's the major difference between china and Germany market ?
Peter: The major difference is that China is much bigger(territory wise). Of course, China has many specialties, so to speak, not in terms of the size itself, market here is almost the same. The customers are very similar, and the applications are all the same, the competition is similar. But the business style is different, in china you have many administration regulations that you have to learn, which do not exist in Europe, not only in Germany, but all over the Europe. You need all kinds of licenses in order to be able to sell, or to another province, or to bring good thing to the market, so there are administration’s processes here in China we do not know in Europe. Sometimes selling is a little bitmore difficult than that is in Europe, but the market itself is very similar.