Type Employee-owned Website www.intralinkgroup.com Founded 1990 | Industry Management Consulting Headquarters Abingdon, United Kingdom Parent organization IntraLinks | |
Key people James Lawson (Executive Chairman), Gregory Sutch (Chief Executive Officer), Alan Mockridge (President, USA) | ||
"Intralink" is a UK-based consultancy specialising in market-entry and business development services for American and European companies expanding into Northeast Asia. The majority of its clients are institutionally-backed technology companies, but it also works for mid-cap and multinational companies across a broad range of sectors and represents several US state and national government agencies to promote trade and FDI. Its business model is uncoventional in that the majority of the company’s employees are non-locals who have lived, worked and studied in-country and achieved fluency in the local language and culture. Intralink operates as an employee-owned company.
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Intralinks enabling collaboration between companies
1990–1999
The company was founded by ex Jardine-Matheson employee James Lawson at the tail end of the Japanese bubble economy of the 1980s. Although the Japanese economy had (unknown at the time) entered what would later be called the ‘Lost Decades, Lawson was convinced that Japan had become a must-have market for European and US companies wanting to target its new status as a provider of products to the global market, both for western companies to supply into Japanese manufacturers and also as a source of high-quality products and materials. Intralink’s first major success was with a Japanese manufacturer of hosiery supplying high-quality yet reasonably priced stockings into the UK high street market. For the next decade, the company worked with a range of western companies that judged that even though the Japan economic bubble had burst, post-war growth had raised Japanese purchasing power to parity with leading European companies.
2000–2009
Moving into its second decade of operation, Intralink continued working across a broad range of sectors in Japan, but began expanding into areas of new technology and replicating its success in Japan in the neighbouring growing powerhouse of China which was already attracting interest from foreign companies. While Japan continued to be the main part of the business, more and more foreign companies were moving sourcing and manufacturing to China, and Intralink found a role performing supplier and partner benchmark and market landscaping projects for western companies. It established an initial representative office in Shanghai in 2001, and then a wholly foreign owned entity in 2008.
2010–2015
By the early part of the decade, it was evident that China would make the transition from a largely manufacturing economy to one with its own global brands. With the rise of Chinese companies such as Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo and Haier selling own-branded products into global markets, the priority for western companies shifted away from sourcing and manufacturing to getting their cutting-edge components, software and IP designed into the products of these Chinese brands. Intralink followed this trend by working with western companies to develop and execute their sales and licensing strategies for the China market.
At the same time, Intralink moved into South Korea and Taiwan, establishing offices in both markets in 2010. South Korea, the other big Northeast Asian manufacturing economy, had experienced spectacular growth so that "by 2004, South Korea joined the trillion-dollar club of world economies".