AIB International of Manhattan will not be closing their doors anytime soon despite rumors they would be doing so in February of 2020.
AIB International CEO Andre Biane says the business is doing well, although it will be going through some restructuring.
“What we had to do, though, was by listening to our customers and understanding what their needs were is they were asking us to come to them,” Biane said. “Construct the training and configure it for my needs at my site with my people. And so with that, we’ve had to change our business model a little bit which does affect one of the two facilities that we have here in Manhattan.”
This means they are winding the use of the pilot plant, but the business will still be able to expand in Manhattan.
He also says this decision was not taken lightly and will even save costs for both the company and customer.
“We had a couple of residence courses that were anywhere from 16 to 20 weeks of people being here,” Biane said. “So when you start adding up that expense for an individual coming from a client, what we were hearing from our clientele was not so much that the dollar and cents was expensive but it was the time away from home.”
Biane says when they flip the model around, they only have to send one or two people to the client so the cost model changes as well. This allows more people from the client to attend the training.
Biane says this will also not have an impact on their employees.
“Some of them are wanting to continue by this new model,” Biane said. “So we’re converting some of the folks that may have had a very focused job here in Manhattan to being a little more of a road warrior if you want to call it that. For the majority of the 80-some odd employees that are based here in Manhattan, there’s not a big change.”
Vice president of marketing Katie Mayes says they will also be expanding their international market.
“This next year we are looking to expand into Asia-Pacific region,” Mayes said. “We are actively involved in business in China as well. We’re still In North America, still in Latin America, but there is a lot of opportunity in those other regions this coming year. Companies that we’re working with are multi-national so they’re expanding in these regions as well. So we have to be right there alongside with them.”
This is the company’s 100th anniversary.
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