Digi-Key's new strategy 'going well'

"Things are beginning to happen more quickly," he said, "and Digi-Key is getting to be less virtual." This is evidenced by the recent establishment of offices in London and Munich and the imminent opening of a Shanghai branch. According to Larson, 86% of revenue comes from the web, with orders coming from more than 500,000 customers. "Although 83% of our customers are engineers," he said, "the purchasing and management sector is the fastest growing part of the business." To some extent, these are people being won from the broadliners. "Traditional relationships mean less today," he believes, "particularly in the engineering market. Now, they are looking for where they get the best value and I think the deck has been reshuffled." Highlighting this, Larson said revenues from production related business will hit $600million in 2013, an increase of 15% over last year. Overall, the company expects revenues of $1.6bn.