Chairman's message
On why the company was started, why it has stayed narrow, and what we think honesty is worth in this trade.
Able Universal Limited, Hong Kong
Talk to us directly
The chairman's office reads every message sent to the address below. Complaints in particular go straight there.
sales@ableuniversal.hk"We started this company because too many good projects were being held up by hardware that existed somewhere, but not anywhere useful."
When we registered Able Universal in October 2021, the supply chain was in the worst state any of us had seen. Lead times quoted in quarters. Allocations changing weekly. Customers with signed contracts and installation dates who could not get a memory module.
What that period taught us was simple and we have built the company on it. In distribution, the value is not in the catalogue. Anyone can list a part number. The value is in whether the goods are physically present, whether they are what the label says, and whether they can be on an aircraft this afternoon.
On staying narrow
We are frequently asked why we do not add services. Integration is profitable, support contracts are recurring, and a distributor with technical staff is well placed to do both.
We decline for one reason. A large share of our revenue comes from system integrators. The day we start bidding against them for end-user projects is the day they begin treating us as a competitor with visibility into their pipeline. That trade is not worth making, and I do not intend to make it.
On honesty in this trade
Our industry has a reputation problem, and it is largely deserved. Refurbished goods described in language designed to avoid the word. Authorisations claimed but not held. Lead times quoted that nobody expects to meet.
We write the condition of every item on the quotation and on the invoice. We say when we are not an authorised reseller for a brand. When a lead time slips, we telephone rather than wait for the customer to ask. None of this is remarkable. It is simply how a business that intends to be here in twenty years has to behave.
On where we are going
The demand shaping our next few years is artificial intelligence infrastructure, and it is reshaping every line we carry. Accelerators are the visible part. Underneath, it is changing memory pricing, drive endurance requirements, power density and the physical form factors that new platforms will accept.
Our job through that transition is unglamorous: understand it well enough to stock the right things, and be honest with customers about what we can and cannot get. If we do that consistently, the rest follows.
Trust is the only durable asset in distribution. Everything else — stock, credit lines, even relationships with manufacturers — can be replaced within a year. Trust cannot.
Thank you for considering us. If we are already working together, thank you for the business and please continue to tell us plainly when we get something wrong.