Red Spider’s web extends into Middle East
Westhill-based Red Spider Technology was founded in 2003 by four highly experienced oil service engineers who shared a belief that some of the “back to the roots” excitement had gone out of the North Sea technology market.
“Our founding directors felt that the North Sea oil service business in which they worked had gone into a bit of a sustaining mode, and had lost some of the pioneering ‘let’s get after it mentality,’” explains Gary Smith, (pictured below), marketing manager for new technology with the company.
"They were determined to establish a more creative type of company culture, something a bit different which would focus on bringing out people’s in-house talent and responding more to challenge.”
The memorable name and associated branding were deliberately chosen to symbolise the company’s radically different approach to product development, and the formula is clearly very much in tune with the buoyant oil and gas market of recent years.
Red Spider Technology has already grown from the original four to 30 employees, and is on course to double turnover in the next couple of years, increasingly through successful overseas market entry. Along the way, the company was also recognised as 'Most Promising Small Company' by the judging panel at the 2006 Scottish Offshore Achievements Awards.
Assessing the target markets
Red Spider is developing a range of innovative downhole tools for the global oil and gas industry, with its first three products – a water injection valve, a hydraulic Red remote opening barrier, and a TTRD protection sleeve – already successfully deployed in fields as far away as West Africa.
From the onset, the young company recognised it would have to break into overseas markets to achieve the ambitious growth objectives which it had set itself. The first three targets were identified as Norway, the Middle East and the Americas, with individual market assessments carried out on each territory.
“We decided to target Norway first, since we had many established contacts there and knew the market very well,” notes Gary Smith.
“We had that little bit of luck early on which you always need, when Statoil recognised an application for one of the first tools we had developed and profiled on our website.”
From its successful market entry, Red Spider Technology set up a Norwegian subsidiary company, recruited experienced local staff and got on with the challenging business of assessing the other two international target markets.
Attendance at the two major oil shows, OTC and Offshore Europe, played a large part in determining the priorities in the next stage of Red Spider’s international growth.
“At Offshore Europe, we made a couple of really good Middle East contacts, including an Omani who used to work for Shell, who was keen to become our first Middle East agent,” recalls Gary.
“Following OTC, we decided to back off from the American market for the time being – despite the cultural synergies, we really felt we needed to recruit Americans to break in – and concentrate on our assessment of the Middle East market instead.”
With welcome grant assistance from Scottish Enterprise Grampian, the directors and management team made a series of fact-finding market visits to Oman and the UAE.
“At first it was very much a case of information overload, but we were actively assessing a couple of prospective agents and we really put them through their paces to try and give us a good handle on local prospects,” notes Gary.
“We knew how important it was that our first Middle East agent had to show that he really understood our business, and that he could actually get us into face-to-face meetings with local operators.”
Red Spider recognised the importance of this first appointment, and checked out the agent’s credentials very closely. “We vetted him very closely, checked up on all his third-party references, audited his other suppliers to make sure there were no potential conflicts and crawled all over the contract looking for hidden clauses,” recalls Gary.
“But, since he was in fact the genuine article, he was actually quite impressed at how thorough we were, and we subsequently went on to appoint him to the position.”
Servicing a vast energy market
From Oman, Red Spider has had productive presentation meetings in Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, with encouraging results. “We got some small jobs very quickly and now have two major projects in progress, but we could sense early on that the interest in our products and our approach was very genuine,” says Gary.
From its Middle East presence, Red Spider recognised that it could service a vast energy market stretching from Egypt and the Caspian all the way to India, so, in the autumn of 2006, the company took the bold step of opening its first regional office in the Middle East in Jebel Ali, the world’s largest man-made harbour, in the UAE.
“We have appointed a well-connected ex-pat, Willie Morrison, as regional manager for the Middle East, and he can draw on his six years’ recent experience in this market to promote our innovative well intervention and completion products and concepts across this booming oil region.”
Scottish spiders have a reputation for perseverance dating back to the days of The Bruce, and it would already seem that this particular variety is absolutely determined to spin a robust and wide-ranging international web!
For more details on Red Spider Technology, visit http://www.redspiders.com/index.html
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