That’s Regal’s EVP Bill Kunz (left) and Operations Manager Avon McCamey featured on the front page of the Pocahontas Star Herald newspaper

Regal Electronics makes front page news
in Pocahontas, Arkansas

Regal Electronics was recently featured on the front page of the Pocahontas, Arkansas, newspaper, the Pocahontas Star Herald, in its February 24, 2005 issue. Pocahontas is the site of Regal’s manufacturing facility for high-speed RJ-45 connectors.

Below is the entire article, featured with permission of the Pocahontas Star Herald:

Regal Electronics quietly making
connectors and an impact in area

Dalton Sullivan, Star Herald Staff

Quietly and almost anonymously, a business from the Silicon Valley in California has been a part of the Pocahontas industrial landscape for the past four years.   Regal Electronics of Sunnyvale, California first put up their shingle on Pace Road in a building behind Northern Technologies in the spring of 2001.

Last week, Dr. William Kunz, the Executive Vice-President of Regal Electronics was in Pocahontas and reflected on the company's first four years in Pocahontas, and what lies ahead."

As far as Pocahontas is concerned," Kunz assures, "we are happy. Unfortunately about the time we came into Pocahontas, the whole dot.com and national economy went bad. It wasn't just our Pocahontas unit; our Canadian unit and our California unit all took a hammering. It had nothing to do with Pocahontas."

Dr. William E. Kunz (left), executive vice president of Regal Electronics, and Regal’s Pocahontas Operations Manager Avon McCamey (right), inspect a few of the RJ-45 connectors that are made at Regal’s Pocahontas facility.  The Sunnyvale, California-based company has seen a rise in their production rate in the past couple of years.

The fact that the down turn in business wasn't related to performance locally, Regal maintained their presence in northeast Arkansas, and that faith in the workers they currently have and the generally positive outlook in the economy, Kunz said that the time has come for Regal to step back and take a look and see in what direction they want to take the Pocahontas unit."

In the last four years," Kunz said, "Regal Manufacturing has pumped more than $1 million into the local economy. Each year we are growing some more, so now we are to the point of considering what other products can we do here."

Currently, the prime product Regal Electronics makes in Pocahontas is a RJ-45 connector. While most Randolph County residents could not identify an RJ-45 connector if it were placed in their hands, Kunz said most computer users could not function without one.  "If you have a computer that you have networked in your facility," Kunz said, "somewhere on the back is a little socket with a plug that usually goes into a wall, or a hub or server, or a net. That is a RJ-45 connector."

Don't expect to find Regal Electronics hardware or parts at Wal Mart or Radio Shack. The parts they make are primarily sold to other manufacturers to be installed as part of larger sets.  "We make them," Kunz said, "and sell them to people who interface electronic equipment." Not surprisingly, given that information, Regal's largest customer is Motorola.  Kunz said
that as long as their customers continue to buy the products they make, they are "happy" to remain anonymous. 

As the company continues to grow, Kunz and Pocahontas Operations manager Avon McCarney huddled last week to go over the operations of the Pocahontas facility and see what type of growth can be pursued at the facility.

"Our product shipments the past three years have increased about 30 percent a year, Kunz said, "and this year looks better as well. "We need to add or augment," Kunz continued, "what types should we do, what is going to be our capability, and how much are we going to have to train."

One of the variables that go into that equation as Regal Electronics tries to decide how best to expand the Pocahontas facility is that the industry itself is constantly changing.  What was the normal way of operating five years ago may now be totally obsolete.

"Five years ago," Kunz said, "people like Nortel, Sun, Cisco, Lucent and IBM, all had their own manufacturing units. They sold those units off to the big contract manufacturers, so now there is a different set of people you are selling to."  What that has meant to Regal is that they have to be more flexible in their scheduled manufacturing runs.  "So this week we may run servers for Sun," Kunz said, "then hubs for Cisco, then switches for Cisco.  So instead of having a uniform flow like we used to have, we have to maintain the inventory and sub-assemblies.  It's changed somewhat in that regards, so we have to be relatively nimble."

But being nimble is a plus, and the ten employees that Regal has in Pocahontas have allowed the parent company in California to look at Pocahontas and wonder what else they can do amidst the rice and soybean fields of northeast Arkansas.