Everett Charles Technologies (ECT) was founded in the early 1960s as a specialty machine shop originally focused on electrical test interconnects. ECT’s founders invented the replaceable spring contact “POGO” for electrical test of printed circuit boards, now commonly used for many purposes in electronic test. In 1983, Dave Van Loan and a group of investors purchased ECT from its original owners.

During its first 20 years, organic growth found ECT producing complete test systems for both bare and populated circuit boards as well as customized test solutions. Today, ECT’s annual sales have grown to over $400 million, distributed across a wide range of electronic test related products and representing a good mix of durable and consumable items. ECT maintains substantial operations throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Significantly increased sales, product diversity, and technical innovation are direct results of ECT’s long history of acquiring competitive and complementary businesses and of the talent that has come with these acquisitions. When ECT joined Dover in 1996, the company had completed ten acquisitions during the preceding decade. Since that time, the company has completed additional and larger acquisitions, facilitating entry into new markets and dominance of existing markets.

The Dover Connection
ECT was not for sale when its chief executive and principal shareholder, Dave Van Loan, first met with Dover in 1995. ECT was doing exceptionally well, and Van Loan was heavily involved in developing new products and buying additional companies.
Van Loan had resisted taking the company public because he recognized that he enjoyed product development and making acquisitions, and he believed that the time spent interfacing with Wall Street would reduce the amount of attention that he could devote to these vital activities. He knew, however, that ECT would require major financial resources to continue its strong growth. Thus, when Dover proposed acquiring ECT, Van Loan was at least willing to consider the idea.

Why Dover?
Van Loan and his shareholders agreed to sell ECT to Dover as the surest way to finance the company’s expansion without giving up any of its inherent strengths. Dover offered an entrepreneurial environment with access to large financial resources. Dover’s historical growth through acquisitions mirrored ECT’s own expansion history. Joining Dover would not mean being taken over by a meddlesome corporate empire with a dissimilar market outlook.

ECT would retain its name and corporate culture. Medical, vacation, and other personnel policies would all remain in place and continue to be managed at the company level. The entrepreneurial spirit that fostered new ideas and the pursuit of additional businesses would be encouraged to thrive and evolve. Nothing that had made ECT the company it was would be lost.

Dover offered ECT the resources and environment that the ECT team needed to achieve its operating and growth objectives without having to relinquish the company’s autonomy or risk its net worth. Dover would handle Wall Street. “We were able to cash out and still play in the game—at a higher level,” Van Loan said.

Continued Success with Dover
ECT has successfully pursued new acquisitions, completing twelve more since joining Dover. During 1997, the company added four businesses to its roster. Luther & Maelzer, a German manufacturer of bare board test machines for European and Far East markets, constituted the largest acquisition to that point in ECT’s history and complemented ECT’s strength in North America. ESH, in Tempe, Arizona, provided an entry point to the semiconductor test market. Each acquisition either added geographic market areas or leveraged existing business into new market segments.
Examples of subsequent add-on acquisitions include TTI Testron (fixtures to test populated boards), ATG Test Systems GmbH (flying probe test of bare printed circuit boards), and Prime Yield Systems (test contactors for packaged semiconductors and a consumer of ECT “POGO” spring contacts).

In late 2001, Van Loan and his management team concluded their largest add-on to date with the acquisition of MultiTest AG, which has manufacturing facilities in Rosenheim, Germany, and Penang, Malaysia. MultiTest has established a leadership position in the gravity-fed semiconductor test handler market. ECT continued its push into semiconductor test with the 2004 acquisition of Rasco AG, also located in Rosenheim, Germany.

In 2005, ECT broadened its reach in the populated circuit board fixture market by acquiring APG Test Consultants of Longmont, Colorado, a leader of in-circuit test program development. ECT could now provide turnkey test solutions to this market, inclusive of programming. Later that year, Santa Clara, California–based Harbor Electronics became an ECT company. Harbor is a leading supplier of sophisticated, application-specific printed circuit boards for semiconductor test, and together with ESH places ECT in a dominant position in this semiconductor test consumables market.

John Pomeroy, president and chief executive of Dover Technologies at the time, said, “ECT performed brilliantly since they came to Dover. Sales volume and market share have grown in the circuit board test business, and they have successfully entered the semiconductor test market.”

As the ultimate endorsement, Van Loan not only embraced Dover’s culture when selling his business, but in 2006 he succeeded Pomeroy as the president and CEO of the Electronic Technologies segment of Dover Corporation.