By GREGORY ZELLER //
A Spectronics Corp. subsidiary focused on automobile leak-detection technologies has hit the gas on a souped-up website, part of a larger expansion effort for one of Long Island’s busiest high-tech manufacturers.
Tracer Products, the automotive division of the longtime Westbury-based ultraviolet-light innovator, has officially launched its redesigned, multilingual website, built specifically to “provide the company’s existing vendors as well as new partners an enhanced interface on all levels,” Spectronics Corp. said in a statement.
More than a year in the making, the new site features a cleaner look, sharper graphics, demonstration videos and an “Under the Hood” feature – a fast and powerful search engine that helps users navigate the sight more efficiently.
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The responsive site, coded in-house by Spectronics Corp. programmers, is designed to present and function as smoothly on a customer’s smartphone as a customer’s laptop. It also includes a separate search function dedicated to the tools demanded most by fleet-management professionals.
The idea, according to Tracer Products National Sales and OEM Manager Gary Testa, was to make the site as quick and as intuitive as possible, as a showcase of how Tracer is “capitalizing on our growth.”
“Our customers, and their customers, are busy people,” Testa said. “This redesign reflects what they want to see from us and our products.”
To keep up with international demand, the new site has been translated into Spanish, German, French and Chinese. Tracer Products’ proprietary Tracerline fluorescent leak-detection dyes are used by automotive manufacturers in the United States, Japan, Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, China, Brazil, Mexico, Korea and the United Kingdom.
All told, Tracer Products has placed leak-detection dyes in more than 205 million cars and trucks manufactured globally, according to Spectronics Corp., which was founded in 1955 by Morris and Bill Cooper – the inventors credited with bringing fluorescent leak detection to the automotive industry.
The new website is also another highlight of Spectronics Corp.’s current growth spurt. In May, just months after the company acquired Bohemia-based Computer Numerically Controlled-machining specialist H&I Manufacturing, current President Jon Cooper – son of cofounder Bill – said his company has basically run out of space in its Westbury facility and has “already begun to think about” securing new elbow room.
Any such expansion of the company’s headquarters would “absolutely” happen in this region, Cooper said, stressing his firm commitment to keeping Spectronics Corp. centered on Long Island.
But the company is also looking to expand by acquiring new out-of-state operations, with Cooper referencing RFQs – Requests for Quotations, the end-user’s version of an RFP for suppliers – from potential customers across the country.
“We’re always open to additional acquisitions and I’m looking at a few right now,” Cooper told Innovate LI, noting talks with other Long Island-based manufacturers – including a 350-person shop with a line of newer CNC machines – and with manufacturers as far afield as Los Angeles.
That California company – which produces “a complementary line of products that dovetails perfectly with our product line,” according to Cooper – is a blueprint for how Spectronics Corp.’s Long Island-centric national expansion might work. Cooper noted a “transition period” that would keep a hypothetically acquired Los Angeles operation in Los Angeles, but only over the short term.
“It’s a family-run business that cares about its employees, so we would be committed to keeping that company in California for three to five years,” the president said. “But eventually, we would want to move them here to Long Island.”
Spectronics Corp. is also looking to beef up its standing as an international manufacturer, a push evidenced not only by a busy 2015 in which Spectronics invested heavily in new machinery – including a cutting-edge 3D printer and a state-of-the-art automated bottling system – but in the multilingual nature of the new Tracer Products website.
A Spectronics Corp. spokesman said the company is currently working to translate the site into several additional languages, in preparation for the development of new global markets.
