IB Woman
Issue No. 50 - December/ /
Janice accelerates prospects
by Penelope Herbert
A PhD in experimental astrophysics doesn’t appear, on the surface, to provide a wealth of career opportunities. But Dr Janice Reid knew physics had a big electronics component which would accommodate her research skills.
Coming to Adelaide from Ireland in 1990 on a Commonwealth Scholarship, Janice had been working part-time with a very small, Adelaide-based electronics company before completing her PhD. Tomco Technologies had been established by her future husband who was literally soldering in his lounge room.
“Shane is an electronics engineer and I am a
scientist so it is a good fit,” explains Janice, now CEO of
Tomco Technologies which designs and manufactures radio-frequency amplifiers.
“In 1995 we started working together full-time because I could see a path forward in designing innovative electronics. Adelaide was, and still is, a great place to start a business as start-up costs and overheads are low.”
Janice says the fledgling company applied for R&D and overseas export development grants rather than seek venture capital support but the process was frustrating and time consuming. Tomco Technologies ultimately funded its own growth, a tradition that has continued to this day.
“This was during the rise of the internet so I set up a website with good images and a ‘dot com’ web address hiding the fact that we were based in Adelaide,”
says Janice.
“I felt we needed to project a credible image especially because our target was USA contracts, and they needed to at least assume we were based in America.”
With a focus on the USA market, Janice says the business did market research in 1999 to determine the direction of the company. She found developing a niche product in supplying radio-frequency systems was a key factor in potential success.
Tomco now designs and manufactures equipment for industrial, scientific, medical and defence applications including radar and plasm...
