Moving to new pastures

820 Greenbrier Circle, Unit 25, Chesapeake, VA 23320. That is the address of the most recent Hectronic subsidiary. The new Hectronic office is located on the Eastern coast of the USA, in the state of Virginia, one of the most beautiful landscapes of Northern America. This is the achievement of one of the main goals which we started to aim for after one of the first US-market analyses.

The 200 sqm subsidiary has three offices, a reception, conference room and a warehouse with service workstation. Mike Griese is the Managing Director and is supported by Henk Algra (Chairman) and Wolfgang Stanek (Director). With two more Sales Engineers the still small team will try to intensify already existing contacts and to successively take a foothold in this most important market. The first steps were already made. We already installed the first CITEA parking ticket machines in Bethany Beach, a well-known seaside resort on the Atlantic coast, after two successful participations at the parking tradeshow IPI.

It is hardly surprising then that Hectronic boss Stefan Forster looks optimistically into the future after this promising start. Our opportunities in the USA are excellent; we just have to put the work in. The installation meets all the wishes of the city administrator, how he stated in his first intermediate report. Support costs were drastically reduced. While up until recently it was necessary to maintain 750 parking meters, there are now only 18 CITEAs which do the same job. And they actually do even more, thanks to the modern communication technology. The administration also expects an increase in revenue of up to 30 %. The beauty of it: These expectations are absolutely realistic as a first intermediate report shows. And this income is very important for the city in this time of economic uncertainty.