A new regional organization comprised mostly of Massachusetts companies wants to expand regionally a “farmers market” approach that several Connecticut groups are using within this state’s borders.
The Advanced Manufacturing and Innovation Competition & Conference wants to create a venue for Western New England manufacturers and suppliers to come together and do business. To meet this goal, AMICCON is developing a trade show, a young innovators competition, and a database of all regional suppliers and end users.
“We are all relatively small states compared to California and Texas, but we’ve got great expertise in the Northeast,” said Deb Santy, director of Connecticut Small Business Innovation Research, one of two Connecticut officials involved in AMICCON. “We’re little, and we need to make sure we are collaborating and talking to each other.”
AMICCON was founded late last year and will put on its first conference Sept. 23 at the MassMutual Center in Springfield. Of the co-founders, partners and members of the steering committees, 24 run the organization, with all but four of them coming from Massachusetts.
The seeds for AMICCON were planted eight years ago when co-founder Ellen Bemben discovered Windsor-based Protedyne, a laboratory robotics company, was using a California supplier for plastic pipettes even though several companies supplied them locally. Bemben urged Protedyne to switch to a local supplier, and she discovered the company simply wasn’t aware of all the opportunities in the area.
Getting supplies locally can reduce shipping costs by up to 80 percent, said Eric Hagopian, president of Hoppe Tool in Chicopee, Mass., and an AMICCON partner. Purchasing departments in manufacturing companies want to shrink the geography of their supply base, and AMICCON can help link them with local suppliers wanting to boost their sales.
“It is the farmers’ market approach,” Hagopian said. “We are not bringing in sellers from all over the country; we are only bringing in sellers that are here locally.”
While the regional-exclusive trade show and innovations competition are new, Connecticut organizations have started offering methods for state suppliers and users to connect with each other locally in the eight years since Protedyne went to California for their pipettes.
In 2004, SBIR started a database for all Connecticut suppliers, service providers and manufacturers that now totals more than 10,000 companies. The database gets used 50-60 times per day to help organizations connect in business dealings, get contact information and send e-mail blasts to particular sectors, Santy said.
In 2005, the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology started a supply chain initiative for aerospace and defense companies that now totals 1,000 entries. The database gets 10 inquiries per week and is growing to include more general manufacturing companies.
“If somebody calls and asks ‘Who does this?’ we can look at our database and tell them,” said Robert Torrani, CCAT director of manufacturing and supply chain initiative. “There are always new companies coming forward that we can assist.”
The benefit of an organization such as AMICCON is it creates more closely knit networking for companies across a larger geographical region, said Daryl Ott, executive director of Connecticut Tooling and Machining Association, the other Connecticut group involved in AMICCON.
CTMA’s 70 member companies already have good communication among them, but during the normal course of business, it can be difficult to identify new resources available just down the street or across state lines, Ott said. If AMICCON can provide tools for local companies to do business more easily, then it helps the region as a whole.
“It is not a lack of communications, but everybody has their own thing going on,” Ott said. “Our members can really benefit from an organization like that.”
