Paul Scholten, Stemmer Imaging – Bild: Stemmer Imaging AG
inVISION: Stemmer Imaging has been quite for a long time, why?
Paul Scholten: Stemmer Imaging has not been communicating well about what we have been doing over the last couple of years, and perhaps we have been focusing more internally than externally. Stemmer Imaging has been a private company and decided to go to the stock market. Usually when you do this, management focuses heavily on shareholder activities, investments, etc., whilst still building on the expertise and knowhow that Stemmer Imaging had in the past and has today.
inVISION: Where will Stemmer Imaging become more active in the future?
Today you need to be present, and it’s not only online, it’s also the outside world. Over the last couple of years, we have not been visible enough at exhibitions and customer events. There are several areas where we have reflected over the last couple of months, and where we believe that we need to play a much stronger role.
One of these is our website. It should showcase our products and provide a comprehensive overview of the product categories we offer. Every supplier with whom we have a partnership should be proud of working with Stemmer Imaging. With the changing market conditions, we need a different online presence. So we have taken the decision to launch a new website by the end of this year. It will demonstrate that Stemmer Imaging is a distributor sourcing various components within the digital imaging world, and then creating solutions based on the technical expertise, experience and knowhow that we have.
The other aspect is that we have already demonstrated our expertise over the last couple of months. When you look at the exhibitions and events we attended – our events in Munich, fairs in Nuremberg (Fachpack), Spain, etc. – the feedback from customers and suppliers has been tremendous. We have analysed all the countries in Europe where we need to be present, and we have been incorporating input from the different sales organisations we have across Europe, ensuring that exhibitions and customer events in each country will be supported. This is also something we have changed: providing more resources and more opportunities for external engagement.
inVISION: Will Stemmer Imaging also be at Vision 2026 in Stuttgart?
Yes, with a great own booth. We are also hosting the European Machine Vision Association board meeting in November at our office in Munich. That’s also a sign that we are embracing this responsibility more actively and ensuring that we are visible to suppliers and customers. We are listening more to our customers and to our salespeople across the countries, making sure that we don’t miss any opportunities that are important for the future.
This includes specialties around cameras, lenses, illumination, and other product groups, but also certain vertical markets where we see significant changes occurring. Two of these are the defence and semicon industries. Stemmer Imaging is performing well in both verticals. We have formed dedicated task forces around them, ensuring that we have all the specialists and knowhow within a department that focuses entirely on these verticals.
inVISION: What other topics will you focus on in the future?
So far, there have been various markets that we follow and where we are quite strong. These will remain. However, our regional teams have extensive market knowledge and capabilities in their respective countries. What we’re doing now is consolidating this regional expertise at headquarters, coordinating a joint approach that leverages the specific market insights from across our regions.
