Walton marches forward

Local electronic and automobile conglomerate Walton has been stepping up its game in the last few years with expanding its business in new territories. What started as a small trading company back in 1977, has now grown into a nation's premier hub for producing electronic home appliances.

After meeting local demand, Walton has now entered in the era of exporting its good under its own brand as well as an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). They have been exporting to several countries in the Middle East for several years now at a good quantity. Mostly these exports are under the Walton brand name while some of these exports were done as OEMs. Well, things even got better, when last week Walton announced it entered a deal to supply 100,000 units of refrigerators and twenty thousand units of ACs to Hyundai Electronics. Hyundai will import the products through its partner Goldenarch Consumer Electronics. Walton also arranged a press briefing the very same week to announce it entering the US market via e-commerce giant Amazon to sell ICT products i.e. laptop, smartphone, home appliances and other electrical solutions.

But that's not the biggest news. Rather the biggest news for Walton is that it has recently signed an OEM deal with one of the biggest business entities of India, to supply more than one lakh units of refrigerators. And further negotiation is ongoing to supply TV, AC and other home appliances to the same group. 

When asked about what more is in the pipeline, Augustin Sujan, Deputy Director, Walton Group informed that Walton is currently in discussion more than 100 international brands from Europe, North America and the Middle East. He also added that, OEM or not, all the products of Walton is going have 'Made in Bangladesh' tag on them.

In order to expand the business, even more, Walton has hired Italian designers, Japanese R&D experts and has upgraded the entire production facility to meet the global demand. To expand the OEM business it has opened up an office in the USA, Germany and several other countries. Since last year, Walton has hired several international consultants to roll-out the OEM business.

But does that mean the focus is shifting from local to international? Not really, according to Uday Hakim, Executive Director, Walton Group. He said that out of the local demand of 25,00,000 refrigerators per year, Walton is supplying more than 75%. Till last month, Walton has produced more than 16 Lakh refrigerators from its factory that can produce around ten thousand refrigerators per day. Being one of the fifteen countries of the world producing compressor, Walton wants to leverage that to expand its business locally and international, he added.