The global site of the UK's leading magazine for automation, motion engineering and power transmission
28 March, 2024

LinkedIn
Twitter
Twitter link

RS turns the spotlight on its own-label products

01 February, 2016

RS Components has announced plans to place a greater emphasis on its own-label products and has launched a new brand, RS Pro, to identify its range of more than 40,000 own-label industrial and electronics products. It also plans to extend the range and to back them with an RS Seal of Approval, “representing leading industry standards for audit, inspection, test and certification”.

Although RS has been selling own-brand products for 75 years, its distribution business took priority in 1990s. “We lost our way,” admits Kurt Colehower, who was brought in last year to be president of RS Private Label.

Nevertheless, the own-label business of RS and its sister brand Allied Electronics is worth £162m, representing more than 12% of the revenue of their parent group, Electrocomponents. Worldwide, there are around 250,00 customers for the own-brand products. Of the existing 40,000 own-brand products, around 10% are exclusive to RS and Allied.

Colehower, who has previously worked for Arrow Electronics and Solectron, says that one driver for the changes is to follow similar trends in the consumer sector. He sees RS’s new global own-label identity as “a great opportunity to reinvigorate the brand”. It will offer customers “dependable quality and performance at a fair price,” he adds.

Colehower: a great opportunity to reinvigorate the brand

The RS Pro range will be more visible and accessible to customers and will be easier to buy online. Customer choice will be improved by removing some existing products from the portfolio and by adding new ones. RS expects the range to expand by more than 10% each year.

“We want to build a global product brand that is synonymous with quality, performance and value,” says Colehower.  




Magazine
  • To view a digital copy of the latest issue of Drives & Controls, click here.

    To visit the digital library of past issues, click here

    To subscribe to the magazine, click here

     

Poll

"Do you think that robots create or destroy jobs?"

Newsletter
Newsletter

Events

Most Read Articles