Saint John-based Xiplinx Technologies Ltd. has partnered with U.S. distributor R.V. Evans Co. to help increase sales of its flagship product Siteflo.
It is the fourth distribution partnership for Xiplinx, whose technology helps manufacturing plant managers monitor data from around their factories. The company already had partnerships with Shurtape Technologies, Blue Water Automation, and BNAP. It expects to add a fifth, a Michigan-based company, within a few weeks.
Founded in 1937, R.V. Evans is a full-service distributor of industrial packaging and fastening systems based in Decatur, Illinois, right in the industrial heartland of the U.S., which is a key market for Xiplinx.
“Working with them will be pretty impactful for us,” Xiplinx CEO Brent MacDonald said in an email Wednesday. “They represent some pretty massive packaging brands . . . and they’re a really experienced group of performance specialists located in the packaging mecca of North America -- our target market.”
MacDonald said in an interview in June the company had 500 percent user growth in the previous 12 months, and he expected June to be its best month ever in terms of client acquisition. Xiplinx’s client base is largely in Canada and the U.S., though it is moving more into Mexico.
Xiplinx’s product, Siteflo, allows workers around a plant to input data using mobile devices. Siteflo aggregates the data and presents it on an easy-to-read dashboard that plan managers can view in real-time. When it went through Launch36 in 2012, Xiplinx had its greatest traction with beverage makers, but the company is now having success in the consumer packaging market.
MacDonald – who is now going through the PropelICT accelerator – attended Evans’ national sales meeting last week and has worked in two packaging plants in Illinois with the company.
R.V. Evans said in a statement the partnership will allow it to meet customer demands to rapidly identify performance improvement opportunities in manufacturing facilities, and to implement a discrete software monitoring tool to track progress on improvement objectives in real-time.
“It’s just more evidence of our partner based growth strategy working,” said MacDonald.