Kingston Technology Co. is going grande in its bid to sell more flash memory products.
The Fountain Valley memory products maker is adding workers and boosting advertising in Latin America to grow sales for memory products used in consumer electronics.
The company has sold products in Latin America since the late 1990s. Now it plans to boost investment in its operations in the region from “a few million dollars” to upwards of $8 million, company officials said.
“The U.S. market is stable but is not growing as fast as Latin America,” spokeswoman Heather Skinner said.
Latin America was second to Eastern Europe as Kingston’s fastest-growing region last year and could be the fastest this year, said Carolina Maldonado, Kingston’s sales and marketing director for the region.
The increase in spending primarily is targeted at Mexico and Brazil, the region’s two largest economies. Chile and Argentina also will see a sizable boost.
The key for Kingston is to increase sales of its flash memory products. Kingston started selling flash in 2003. Flash is chip-based memory typically used to store more photos, digital music and movies in consumer electronics.
Sales in the company’s flash unit have doubled every year, said Mark Leathem, who heads up Kingston’s marketing and business development for flash.
Flash memory could account for a third of Kingston’s $3 billion in yearly sales, though the company declined to say.
Kingston already is the world’s top seller of traditional memory boards for computers and networking gear,known as dynamic random access memory, or DRAM. It claims 17% of the market.
The company has seen big gains in Mexico, particularly for DRAM, during the past few years. Maldonado said the company is quadrupling spending to grow employment and advertising in Mexico to $4 million.
Brazil, meanwhile, is becoming known for its technological prowess. The country has 20 million Internet users, according to a Department of Commerce report last year.
There are risks to expanding in Latin America. Political turmoil and economic instability can wipe out investment in the region.
But there are rewards.
“You see a lot of (tech) companies that don’t focus on Latin America, don’t take the time to work the region,” Maldonado said.
Kingston has earned the trust of customers in the region, Maldonado said. The company was the only memory products maker to stay in Argentina after a political crisis a few years ago knocked the economy on its heels, she said.
Kingston has to be flexible to operate in Latin America. That includes adjusting the way it sells its products or changing the ways it offers credit to customers.
The company’s latest push into the region includes a shake-up in the way it does marketing and sales, tailoring the efforts to the tastes and preferences of Latin America.
In the U.S., consumers tend to do a lot of research online or just look at the product before buying it, she said. Latin American buyers like a more personal experience, Maldonado said. They want to use the product and talk with a salesperson,not dial a toll-free number or buy online.
There’s also less general knowledge about flash memory and how it can beef up consumer electronics.
Kingston is going to college campuses, cafes and into the streets to lure customers.
“You have a more touchy feely approach, rather than the Web-based stuff,” Maldonado said. “We want to talk to moms who are taking pictures for their kids’ birthday parties, or to students who want to (transfer music) to their phones.”
Kingston also is doing some traditional print advertising and billboards in the region. It also has considered a TV ad.
