With a strong passion for electrical and electronic engineering technology, Mr. Nguyen Manh Cuong, the Director of the STC Electric Electrical Equipment Manufacturing JSC (STC Electric), An Khe Ward, Thanh Khe District, Da Nang, provides thousands of anti-shock relay products to the market for use at home and the workshop.

Solution products from STC Electric have helped thousands of households and businesses relieve the fear of leakage and short-circuit when using electronic devices. Photo: CHIEN THANG

In November, 2022, the STC Electric won the third prize of the Da Nang Innovation Startup Competition (SURF 2022) organised by the municipal Department of Science and Technology. By April 2023, the enterprise had been honoured with the Youth Startup Award organised by Ho Chi Minh City-headquartered Tuoi Tre Newspaper.

These achievements created a premise for STC Electric to improve its competitive position and constantly develop. Up to now, Mr. Cuong's business shows off a product distribution network with more than 194 agents and 8 distributors from North to South. Every month, the enterprise supplies thousands of products of intelligent self-stop pumps, safety relays for pump floats and household pumps to the domestic market.

As revealed by Mr. Cuong, a fact that some workers suffered electric shocks from floats with electric leakage. After researching the principle of electric floats, the man began to come up with the idea of creating a device to lower voltage of the electric float but still ensure that it does not consume too much power, even less cause leakage, short-circuit, and during the use. This product will lower the current to the 220V float to only 12V, even 5V, which is a safe level for users.

After creating the sample product, Mr. Cuong produced the first batch with 30 safety relays for pump floats, a solution to prevent electric leakage causing danger to users during the process of pumping water to the metal storage tank with a capital of only VND 3.5 million. In 2021, consumers tended to choose foreign electrical appliances or those developed by famous domestic brands so STC Electric’s products were not known to many.

“Founding a business when I was only 23 years old, I lacked experience in management and communication, plus the size of the business was extremely small with a few orders. At that time, I had to use many personal belongings to maintain business operation. Before receiving large numbers of orders like now, we only dared to chuck out a few products both for marketing at electric and water stores, and for distribution through small channels. The first year of STC Electric was full of problems,” said Mr. Cuong.

However, thanks to the orientation and selection of strategies to approach the technical world as well as distributors and retailers and promote products directly and indirectly from social networking platforms, the company’s products have secured a position in the domestic market.

The first-time users appreciated it, which motivated the research team to improve and expand production, and so on, each batch of production gradually increased in numbers from a few dozen to a few hundred and then thousands of products. Along with that, the number of agents and distributors also went up rapidly.

In the two years of its startup journey, STC Electric has launched innovative products in both technology and design. From the original function of just eliminating the risk of electric leakage, electric shock, short-circuit causing fire and explosion, increasing the life of the electric float, reducing the load on the wiring to the electric float, now there are more outstanding features such as leading signal from telegraph buoy to safety relay, observing the status of the electric float with a convenient indicator light in the use or repair of the system.

Currently, the enterprise's products are sold to the market in large quantities but consumed relatively quickly with customers mainly being ordinary residents, construction contractors, business and manufacturing establishments.

With the advantages of moderate price, good warranty support policy, beautiful design, many features, lower return error rate than other brands of the same type, the product sales are relatively good. In addition to the anti-shock relay product for electric floats, the company has also manufactured a number of other products, including a smart auto-shutoff pump for circuit breakers.

Mr. Cuong said with the vision of building STC Electric into a high-quality manufacturer that develops research and analysis to offer innovative products capable of meeting the highest needs of customers, he wishes to always create new solutions to solve problems that exist in everyday life.

Reporting by CHIEN THANG - Translated by A.THU