Article

Who's Who: Michael Smith

Michael Smith, co-founder and managing director of NeoProducts, has spent most of his life traveling the globe. He is putting that to good use as his company expands from Australia into the UK.

March 18, 2004

NeoProducts managing director Michael Smith knows a little something about traveling the globe. On a recent weekend, he was in

Melbourne, Australia, watching his beloved Richmond Tigers in an Australian Football League match. A few days later, he was in England, where the home country and Australia were in the midst of the semi-annual cricket competition known as the Ashes.

"I certainly love my Aussie Rules (football)," Smith said in a recent interview. "I've always been a sports fanatic and I thoroughly love watching sports. We certainly get involved in watching sports wherever we can."

But while his travels allow him to indulge in his love for spectator sports, Smith does more than rack up frequent flyer miles and ticket stubs. His passion for sports is matched by his thirst for business success. As founder and managing director of the Australia- and London-based kiosk manufacturer NeoProducts, he has forged a strong reputation in a competitive, growing field.

Founded in Australia in 1987, NeoProducts has grown to become a worldwide kiosk manufacturer. Earlier this year, the company was the successful bidder of a contract to build and service more than 9,000 Jobpoints kiosks for UK Jobcentres. In mid-August, NeoProducts announced it had wrapped up a deal to acquire LGC Associates, a UK-based kiosk developer.

NeoProducts is thinking long term with its European expansion. The company has a 26,000-square foot manufacturing facility in Birmingham, England, and nearly 100 employees in the United Kingdom, presenting NeoProducts the opportunity to become a stronger presence in the European market. Going global suits Smith from a business standpoint. As a man who has seen most of the globe during his 53 years, it also appeals to him from an aesthetic standpoint as well.

"NeoProducts is now a significant member of the kiosk industry," Smith said on August 20. "A global expansion is one of the most significant drives for us."

Moving on, moving up

Smith said NeoProducts's expansion was born of ambition and necessity: to be truly ambitious, one needs to think outside the boundaries of Australia. Despite its lofty reputation as a unique travel destination, Australia's population of 19 million-located on a land mass roughly equal to the United States-did not afford Smith and his company the business base needed to match his ambitions.

"The situation in Australia is pretty simple-while it's quite a good market, it's not a big one," Smith said. "With 19 million people it's smaller than Europe and certainly the United States. Around 1997 or `98, we decided if we were to grow the company we had to go international because we didn't have a big enough domestic market to expand into."

So Smith played to his strengths, which include networking and traveling. He said Europe was a market that suited the company well. Before long he started landing projects that allowed the company to build its Birmingham facility.

Michael Smith:Managing Director: NeoProducts Birthdate: December 13, 1947Residences: England and Australia Education: Mechanical engineering degree, Adelaide University. Doctorate in mechanical engineering , Cambridge University. Family: Married, one son and one daughter

"I believe the market in the U.S. is heavily retail, whereas Europe has been more institutional, which tends to suit our products and methodologies better," Smith said.

Along the way, Smith impressed potential clients with his knowledge and enthusiasm, key components in establishing NeoProducts on the Continent.

"We chose NeoProducts for two main reasons," Gary Parker, program manager on the Jobpoints project, said. "First, they offered us the best value for money, and secondly, we wanted a company with the knowledge and ability to work with us on a new design to meet our client's exacting requirements."

Parker added that Smith's reputation and abilities also helped to make the sale.

"I should say that Mike is a world-leading expert in kiosk technology. Whatever question we raised, he could answer, and his answers were backed-up by personal experience," Parker added. "Also, his commitment was evident right from the start. We knew he would move Heaven and Earth to help us achieve our objectives, and we had every confidence in his ability to deliver. He's also a really nice guy."

Parker said more than a third of the Jobpoints kiosks have been delivered to the roughly 1,000 Jobcenters run by the British government. He said the response has been tremendous.

"The machines are totally transforming the service," he said. "The client is delighted."

Living and thinking outside the box

Going global appeals to Smith from a practical business standpoint. But it also has a romantic appeal for him, having lived most of his life with a suitcase in one hand and travel guide in another.

Born in England, Smith moved to Kenya with his family when he was two and grew up in the East African nation, developing an affinity for adventure and a taste for the outdoors.

"My parents, after the war (World War II), decided they didn't want to live in the United Kingdom; they wanted to do more," he said. "I guess that's where I got my entrepreneurial background from. My father was a printer, but later became a photographer. He gave me the spirit."

Educated in Kenya, Australia (where he completed his undergraduate work at the University of Adelaide), and England (where he received a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Cambridge University), Smith returned to Australia to work as a technical consultant in the late 1970s and early `80s before forming his own consulting company, Managed Technology, in 1984.

Three years later, Smith joined with industrial designer Robert Pataki to form NeoTechnics, a consulting and product design company. NeoTechnics got involved in kiosk design a year later and quickly began manufacturing its own kiosks, transforming NeoTechnics into NeoProducts in 1989.

"The setting up of NeoTechnics was just an opportunity that made sense at the time for both of us," Smith said. "We had worked together previously, thought there was a good opportunity and we were both looking for a change.

"When we first started we were basically in product design," Smith added. "But people approached us to start manufacturing our own designs. After a couple of efforts we thought this was the business we wanted to be in."

Combining design and manufacturing capabilities has been an essential strategy in NeoProducts's growth. One of the first major products was a payphone for Australian communications company Telstra. The success of that project led to other deals, including bridal registry kiosks for major retailer Target and gaming machines for TABCorp., the off-track betting service in the Australian state of Victoria. Telstra remains a client and NeoProducts is currently rolling out a touchscreen phone for the company to replace NeoProducts's older machines.

Smith bought out Pataki about eight years ago-citing the company's change from design consulting to manufacturing-marketing for the buyout-and has managed to keep the company private, something he is proud of.

"We've been profitable every year of operation, except for a couple," he said. "I've always plowed the profits back into the business. We've never had to fund ourselves through outside sources."

And Smith believes the growth of the kiosk industry mirrors the maturing of NeoProducts into an international company, though he said the kiosk industry has not grown as smoothly as he anticipated.

"It's been quite fragmented and lumpy; it hasn't been as smooth a growth cycle as expected," he said. "But we've definitely moved from the early stage to the growth stage. It's happened over the last couple of years. People understand the touchscreen kiosks and are now seeing it as a product in the marketplace."

Same as it ever was

Smith said his future is pretty much business as usual, which means accumulating more frequent flyer miles.

"I'll be back in Australia in a couple days time," he said. "I'll be there for a few days, visiting some clients. I'm doing a lot of traveling, six to eight trips back and forth this year, and not just to Australia, but some stops in between."

While the traveling allows him to network with current and prospective clients while indulging in spectator sports, Smith said one thing he would love to reconnect with is his love of the outdoors.

"Back in my youth I did a fair amount of mountaineering and sailing," he said. "The last few years that has disappeared. Getting back to that would be wonderful, but I suppose it's just wishful thinking."

But even if Smith does not get back to his adventurous roots, he has more than enough on his plate to keep him-and his travel agent-busy.