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Business World |
July 2015
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over there, investing money into improving
their quality management systems. At first,
he acted essentially as a “broker” – clients
would order parts, he would bring the parts
over fromChina to his facility in North Car-
olina, inspect and repackage them, and then
ship them off.
In the beginning, Paragon worked in the
electrical hardware market. One of the com-
pany’s first customers, in fact, was MacLean
Power Systems in Alabama – a company that
manufactured products used by utilities for
building transmission and distribution lines
and substations.
EXPANDED SERVICE
A few years into the company’s life, in 1995,
Paragon expanded to service heavy truck
and industrial applications. In 1996, they es-
tablished an engineering and logistics office
in Shanghai, China. The year after that, they
began to supply the automotive industry
as a direct Tier 1 supplier. They kept grow-
ing rapidly from there, and in 1999 set up a
greenfield automotive foundry in Korea in
partnership with a local company, followed
by more facilities in China – including
Shanghai PMI Machinery in 2006, which
was licensed for export operations.
In 2008, Paragon continued its growth do-