Dynasil Corp. of America specializes in designing and manufacturing optical components and related products and materials used by university research labs and manufacturers of equipment used in medical, scientific, military and industrial applications.
The company’s sales fell 18.4% year over year in the first fiscal quarter ended Dec. 31, to $9.14 million from $11.20 million, but Dynasil expects to begin making up part of that decline with a new e-commerce site due to launch later this month for the company’s Optometrics subsidiary, president and CEO Peter Sulick says.
Dynasil operates six subsidiaries that each specialize in a niche market within the optical products industry. Optometrics designs and manufactures optical components for original equipment manufacturers and for university, industrial and government laboratories. Original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, build and sometimes also resell products built according to the specifications of the original manufacturer.
The Optometrics e-commerce site will start out offering about half of the subsidiary’s 4,000 SKUs, and generate up to $500,000 in incremental sales this year, Sulick said on a conference call with stock analysts this week, according to a transcript from Seeking Alpha. Although that’s only a tiny fraction of the $93.44 million in total sales Dynasil recorded in its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2016, Sulick said he expects the e-commerce site will play an important role in building market share with new product lines offered exclusively online and priced “slightly below” the competition. “We are also going to be offering certain other products that are competitive with other offerings in the market,” he added.
Although the e-commerce site will initially only operate for Optometrics, Sulick said Dynasil plans to expand the site to also offer optical films from its EMF unit and synthetic optical materials from its Dynasil Fused Silica unit.
By offering more products and expanding the company’s exposure, Dynasil’s new e-commerce strategy could generate more business to help overcome fluctuations in customer demand. Sulick noted that the 18% drop in first-quarter revenue resulted from a one-time large order in the year-earlier quarter from a major customer who wanted to build up a safety stock of inventory.
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