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54 The PCB Magazine • August 2016 is focused on the high technology end of the business. Matties: From a buyer's point of view, what is it that they need to be aware of when they're deal- ing with a company and are looking to buy high- reliability military, medical, and that sort of thing? Barry: I think buyers get bombarded every day with all these people trying to sell them their technology. Granted, there are a lot fewer com- panies now than there were before, but people are still calling them every day. It's difficult be- cause everyone says they can do everything, and that's just not true. Companies have to look for specifics. Again, I mentioned we're not good at doing single- and double-sided flex, so we turn it away. There are companies who specialize in that. There are companies who specialize just in prototypes who can build maybe a 10-layer blind and buried rigid-flex, but can't take it from that 100-piece quantity to 1,000–10,000. Eltek is more of a high-mix, low- to medium- volume so we can build you the 10, but we can also go to the 100 and 10,000. When it comes to high-volume rigid boards, there are compa- nies who specialize in that. To the buyers out there, you can't have one company that does it all. I think you have to have a matrix of maybe three or four companies that fit your needs—one for prototype, one for production, one for maybe rigid-flex. You have to be very careful. The other thing is reliability. Anybody can build one of anything. It's being able to build over and over and over with high reliability. Our products have been out there for over 40 years. We're an old company. We've been around a long, long time even though some people haven't heard of us. You've got to look at reliability. How many products do they have out there in the field? We've shipped 14,000 rigid-flexes towards night vision goggles. We've shipped thousands and thousands of products that are in missile systems, space and medical. You have to look at the company, its history and what it has done. Also, I run into a lot of comments like, "You're in Israel. You're in an unsafe part of the world. You're in the Middle East." It's kind of a false statement. People fear that part of the world, but it's actually safer there than it is here in the U.S. We (Eltek) were born from a military company so we know military reliability and ur- gency. People say, "Well, it's unsafe." I highlight to people some of the recent incidents that have happened in the States and around the world. It's not safe anywhere in the world, plus there are companies that are affected by snowfall, tor- nados, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, etc. We heard of a well-known U.S. facility that was shut down two years ago because of snowfall. It is a global manufacture space now… Matties: It's always something. Barry: There's always something. We might have some bad neighbors, but we've never missed a day of work. With all of our armed conflicts in Israel, we've never missed a shipment to the United States. Again, I've been involved for 13 years. We have sold probably close to $10 mil- lion a year and are growing. Matties: Is it common for buyers to go to your fac- tories for tours? Barry: Yes. We've had a number of the Tier 1 facilities visit; sometimes they'll send an engi- neering team out there or sometimes they'll hire ELTEK LOOKING FOR STRONG GROWTH IN THE USA