Customer Case Study 3: Trial order to 1 Million Order
Dr. Mohammed is a Professor from a university in Egypt specializing in research on plants and agriculture.
Professor Md first turned to us for help through our website.
He was trying to order some methoxsalen powder (8-Methoxypsoralen or 8-MOP) for one of his research projects at the university.
When we indicated our lead time and prices on the phone, we could almost feel his relief from his tone that there was no need for him to look further.
He should have contacted other suppliers for the powder before, but he didn’t find the right supplier for himself.
After this happy deal with us, Professor Md was willing to share his other project requirements other than APIs and chemicals.
It turned out that he had many projects on his hands.
The Challenge We Were Facing
The Professor’s new requirement was a plant extraction line.
But the total value was estimated to be at least 1,580,000.00 USD.
Though our mother company Sunrise Technology has been dealing with equipment for the pharmaceutical and chemical industry for over 20 years, their focus is on analysis equipment, not the plant extraction line.
This was a headache for both sides because there were tons of technical issues to be discussed together on functions and installations for each part of the plant extraction line.
As you know our specialty was on chemicals and APIs, not those plant extract machines.
Especially what the Professor needed was all-new equipment never set up in other parts of the world before.
Because each part of the manufacturing line was from different manufacturers, we had to get all the parts from 4-5 different factories one by one and assemble them together.
Which factory should we choose to set them up to make the whole process easier?
So the key pointed to how to find the right one.
How We Managed To Do It
After rounds of negotiation, we selected one of the five manufacturers to be the assembler.
It was the manufacturer among them who provides the main parts of the production line.
But still, this project required close technical collaborations among all manufacturers.
Though this was a huge project with a big margin, we still decided to back out from it.
We knew what we are good at and what we are not.
It was a wise move for us to leave professional work to professionals.
We were happy to take chemical orders for the Professor and provide all the help we could for the plant extraction line for him for free.
Professor Mohammed praised us highly for what we had done.
He promised us his future chemical orders as his gratitude for our help in his production line project.
What others say
One of our colleagues said it was a pity that we did not get the professor’s order for the plant-extract line.
If we could get it and try to set up a temporary technical team, it would enrich our experiences in handling big projects of machines and serve more customers in the future.
We could not say that we did not think about it, but the technical requirements for this project were way beyond our current abilities.
The professor is still happily working with us now.
Let’s hope we can successfully get one of his other production projects soon.