RISING STARS: Zach Thonen

Zach Thonen
Director of Marketing
LuscomBridge

To gain better insight into how early career professionals in the electronics industry have turned challenges into opportunities to ensure continued growth, The Representor interviewed Zach Thonen, director of marketing at LuscomBridge.

He shared how playing in a cover band led him to this industry, how he uses AI tools to keep up to speed and why rep firms should leverage early career people’s technical capabilities more.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself, personally and professionally.

I sing and play guitar in a death metal band and play guitar in a tribute band to The Cure. I studied in Sweden for a year, and lived in China for three years. I’m told my Mandarin is somewhere between incredible and incomprehensible. I love traveling, experiencing things and meeting people you can’t find at home, and being inspired by what people have accomplished around the world and throughout history. My role at LuscomBridge has evolved into a marketing and new business outreach-focused role. I support our sales team by collaborating with our principal RSMs and marketing managers, as well as our field sales team, to create and deploy industry/application-focused marketing campaigns. I also manage our marketing database of over 20K contacts, and provide internal sales support tools, accrue new contacts and identify areas for operational improvement.

How long have you worked in the electronics industry?

I started in December of 2020, at the height of COVID-19, doing market research as an intern. Eventually I began engaging with customers and getting hands-on sales experience, before finding my niche role in marketing & outreach-focused sales support.

What made you choose this industry as your current career path?

I actually learned of this industry through the singer from my Cure band. In fact, I joined the band in part as a secret plan to prove my reliability to our singer as a means of breaking into this industry — it worked! My career as a manufacturers’ rep allows me to work with smaller, more dynamic teams where I can influence decision making, implement new ideas and apply myself critically. Supporting customers allows me to be a (very) small part of some amazing, innovative projects, and again, it’s amazing to see what people can accomplish. Lastly, electronic component sales/marketing feels like one of the few areas of sales/marketing where you get to actually help an individual solve a problem.

What are some of the main challenges you have encountered as you embark on your career journey?

One of the biggest challenges coming into this industry is being able to quickly wrap my head around numerous technologies, and learning how to communicate about them meaningfully without overextending myself.

What steps have you taken to overcome these challenges and ensure that you can establish and nurture a successful career?

Research, detailed note-taking and collaboration have been the key to maintaining technological accuracy. I consult a principal’s resources first, and pair this with an AI tool like Gemini to ask general questions about the technology and to learn what the primary concerns of relevant engineers would be. I take notes in a program called Obsidian, which has deep customizability and allows me to be extremely organized for recalling info at later times.

What are some training tools or networking/ industry events that you have found beneficial to your professional growth?

For me, the most helpful tool is the most direct and clearly defined outline of a manufacturer’s products and strengths. Webinars and trainings are great for case studies or telling a story about your company or product. However, if I’m going to start putting rubber to the road as quickly as possible, I want you to give me the training wheels. I often create these types of outlines myself. I developed an internal tool for Luscom- Bridge that we call “battle cards” which are essentially one-page documents that outline a manufacturer’s product types with significant specs, USPs or questions to ask engineers, DR program info and info on competitors. It provides a one-stop place to get your bearings before a customer call or meeting.

Do you think that there is enough new talent entering the electronics industry? What could make this field more attractive to young professionals?

I was very fortunate to receive a lot of help from others getting into this industry. The job market right now is absolutely brutal, and I know there are lots of smart, talented young people who would love to receive a lifting hand from more experienced adults around them.

Our industry can be very slow moving, and that can make it difficult to establish yourself as a new rep, and for firms to take on new hires. However, one area we’ve seen rapid development is in how reps utilize technology to reach and engage with customers. Where once walk-ins and cold calls were great for growing new business, now we compete for customers’ attention through a multitude of asynchronous methods and mediums. An understanding of emerging technologies and an experimental approach are key to growing in this environment, and this is exactly where I think young people can create immediate value for rep firms looking to bring in some younger talent. Young professionals want to bring fresh ideas, be creative and bring themselves to a role.

I think first, younger professionals need to be made more aware of our existence! If it wasn’t for my Cure band, I would never have known this industry exists. I think the biggest constraints to youth entering our industry are awareness and slow growth, and I recommend finding ways to leverage younger professionals’ tech proficiencies to evolve rep firms.

Where do you see your profession and the industry 10 to 20 years from now?

I think as AI continues to supplant more of our daily busy work, interpersonal aspects like relationships and strong customer service will become even more important in differentiating yourself as someone others want to work with. Professionally, what keeps you up at night? There are four things keeping me up currently: 1) Tariffs, and the uncertainty surrounding them, 2) AI’s rapid developments and the need to keep up with them, 3) Chinese tech innovations in things like EVs and AI competing with Western alternatives, and finally, 4) Optimism — or rather a lack thereof — by customers, buyers and decision makers.