Ingco - the right partner!

In October, Skillcraft Agencies, hosted two very important events. The first was the Ingco Global Conference in conjunction with Ingco China and the second, the opening of Skillcraft’s new 6 000m 2 warehouse.

Skillcraft Agencies is a family business that is celebrating 30 years of trading this year. Twelve years ago the company started selling the Ingco brand, but it was not until 5 years ago – after a key visit to Ingco China that Skillcraft began to realise the brand’s true value.

At the Global Conference, it was interesting to hear about local market growth and Ingco’s international footprint, its past accomplishments and future plans. The conference included a virtual tour of Ingco China’s factory, and it is almost impossible to convey the sheer size of this tool company, which follows the simple philosophy of providing ‘professional tools at an affordable price’.

A week after the Global Conference, it was time for the ribbon cutting ceremonial event to officially open Skillcraft’s warehouse facility based in City Deep, Johannesburg. The event was well attended by buying groups, suppliers to Skillcraft, some media participants and the Skillcraft staff.

The current Skillcraft Agencies’s managing director, Angelo Angelos’s father, George Angelos started Skillcraft Agencies 30 years ago as an offshoot of another company, in partnership with Peter Roodt, the first Skillcraft MD.

Over the next 20 years Peter developed a national footprint supplying a range of tools which grew to over 130 local brands and over 30 imported brands. When the local Ingco agent (12 years ago) went bankrupt, the brand fell into the laps of Skillcraft by pure coincidence. The company imported and stocked a range of the products for some time, but only after visiting the Ingco head office in China in 2016, the Skillcraft team realised the true value of the brand.

The Skillcraft delegations have since visited Lesley Liu, the founder and chairman of Ingco, every six months since then, to implement the company philosophy and strategy. Initially 12 products were focused on, imported in large quantities and sold at very low prices. “The growth of Ingco China during the six months between our visits was staggering. The Ingco China warehouse was half full, then it was full, then there was a second warehouse, then there was a third. The testing labs were in prefab huts behind the warehouse. Eventually they were in their own facility. The 20V factory was two small assembly lines, then it occupied two floors, now it occupies 80 000m2”, said Angelos. “It soon became apparent that Skillcraft needed to drop all other brands and focus on the Ingco brand if we wanted to reach its full potential. The company refocused and went from selling 120 local brands and 30 imported brands, to selling only one - Ingco. It was not worth it for us to spend money on a container of any other brand when we could spend that money on Ingco and get 10 times faster sales results”, said Angelos.

LOCAL GROWTH Fundamentally Ingco is a market disrupting brand. It is a wide range of professional tools made affordable. It has paved the way for unprecedented growth of the brand in South Africa and the world. Ingco is already the number one global brand outside of America and Europe. “Our partnership with Ingco China has been absolutely phenomenal. Their wisdom, guidance and support has been invaluable to us and is a huge part of our success. “Locally, we partnered with the major buying groups to supply stores. We made a decision to focus our sales on independent hardware stores.

“We also partnered with brilliant IT, supply chain, logistics, graphics and media companies. They too believe in our vision and have put us on the front foot in every sphere of our business. Some of the important business strategies for Ingco was the decision to level the playing field among all of its customers. Everyone gets the same price and the same deal. This decision was made after talking to hundreds of customers who complained of not being able to compete, because other brands do selective deals that don’t include them.” This level playing field strategy has led to stability and trust, according to Angelos.

Skillcraft also introduced the ‘buy 10 get 3 free’ on a selected range of items and then extended this to the entire range. This was followed up with the ‘buy 5 get 1 free’ deal, to allow something in the middle, especially for smaller stores or slower moving products.

“We realised early on that the key to success was at store level. We have focused a lot of our efforts at the store with the buyer, the owner and the consumer. This meant that we needed to have lots of sales reps conducting many service calls. The result of these efforts is that we have close relationships with each of our customers, who we consider to be our partners,” says Angelos.

The company invested in full time promoters to do store level training and demo days. This year, over 900 days of store level training and promotion had been done already.

But probably a key driver of local success was to stock up when Covid struck as it was clear that a global stock shortage was coming. Today, Skillcraft’s warehouses are full, its supply chain under control, the company values its staff and business partners, which includes its resellers. Skillcraft Agencies is on a path to even greater success and one can sense, this is only the beginning.

The new well-stocked warehouse.

FUNDAMENTALLY INGCO IS A MARKET DISRUPTING BRAND. IT IS A WIDE RANGE OF PROFESSIONAL TOOLS MADE AFFORDABLE

A captive audience.

The celebration cakes for the day's festivities.

JacoViljoen and Angelo Angelos.