Digi-Key Electronics at embedded world 2023

“We’re finding 2023 as robust as we ended the year last year… We know there are some economic clouds on the horizon, especially with consumer and investment confidence. At the same time, we exited last year with a lot of pent-up demand for parts that weren’t available. As we’re seeing improvement in supply chain, we’re seeing head winds and tail winds balance out into stable business for us,” explains Tim Carroll.

Digi-Key hit $1 billion in sales in EMEA in 2022, making Europe its fastest growing region.

According to Carroll, part of this success is down to large investments in having regional relevant parts and skews in stock in the market. Success is also due to localisation, where Digi-Key has made great strides in having more payment types available on its website.

Digi-Key has started organising more of its teams by business unit. It has sales, marketing and supplier resources focused on automation and control.

The industrial automation sector

“The way customers buy semiconductors and passives is very different than the way industrial automation gets purchased. We’re having to retool our customer journey online, and our marketing. In some ways the automation and control industry is five-10 years behind.

“We’re expanding our business to adapt to that new customer journey and way people are purchasing products,” explains Carroll.

In 2022 Digi-Key signed 550 new lines. Digi-Key now supplies 14.9 million parts on the website: “You have to think about all that goes into making sure we’ve got data sheets and specifications. Customers come to expect Digi-Key to have pristine data. We’ve made huge investments in onboarding new suppliers and doing it digitally,” explains Carroll.