Dear customer

Financial institutions imploding, mega corporations stumbling, jobs lost and homes repossessed; an impending recession even in South Africa, all these things are enough to challenge even the most positive ones among us to rethink the future. And so, we also went through a few cycles of asking what the next few years will have in store for us. The short answer is, we don’t really know, except that it is going to be tough. I am not an economist or a futurist, so I am not going to try and be smart about how these matters will develop.

We concluded rather quickly that if ever only the fittest would make it, this was going to be it. In our definition we said that ‘fittest’ does not necessarily mean sexy product or the size of the marketing budget. We believe that it means staying power and service. We believe that the surviving businesses will be those that are financially robust and can stay the distance, and those who can differentiate themselves through quality of service. In tough times customers become a lot more concerned about value for money.

I do not have to remind you that Med-e-Mass has been around (in various forms) since the 1980’s. It has gone through troubled times, lean times, good times and a few very rough patches. We are still here today, the largest PMA vendor in the country, with arguably the most comprehensive service network. Our shareholders (Bytes and Altron) have strong balance sheets and equally impressive track records. About our staying power you can rest assured.

But we know this is not enough – to be able to hang on to our customers with great service is going to separate the proverbial men from the boys in the next year. It is for this reason that we are now going through an intensive period of rethinking everything we do as regards our customers – from the product experience we give to the way we treat your telephone support calls. On behalf of everyone at Med-e-Mass, I would like to repeat our pledge that we would like to be known for our ‘will do’ attitude when it comes to supporting you. If you have any reason to doubt that we are living up to this, please let me know.

Kind regards

Hennie du Plessis
CEO