Interview with Sam Mason, Business & Operations Lead at Luminovo  – North America

Luminovo is a technology company dedicated to transforming how electronics manufacturers manage quoting, BOMs, and supply-chain decision-making through advanced software and AI-driven automation. Serving both OEMs and EMS providers, the company enables faster, more accurate, and more resilient operations across the entire product lifecycle, helping manufacturers navigate increasing complexity and volatility in the global electronics market. Sam Mason, Business & Operations Lead for North America, plays a key role in expanding Luminovo’s presence in the region and supporting manufacturers as they adopt digital tools to modernize their operations. We recently spoke with him to find out how the company is advancing electronics manufacturing in North America and globally through intelligent technology, strategic partnerships, and a focused growth strategy.

Sam, can you briefly describe your role as Business & Operations Lead for North America and how it supports Luminovo’s broader global strategy?

My goal is to take the Luminovo platform and Luminovo success from Europe and transplant it into North America. My role includes leading compliance-related projects, e.g., ITAR, CUI, and building the right team of individuals for our Luminovo go-to-market team! I also support the sales team when needed and lead the customer-success team. I think of myself as the operational and cultural bridge between Luminovo’s amazing European team and the North-American market.

For readers who may be new to Luminovo, how would you summarize the company’s mission and the core problem it is solving for electronics manufacturers?

Our company mission is to bring innovations to life faster and cheaper by creating a more connected and more resilient electronics supply chain.

Luminoso brings quoting intelligence to electronics manufacturing. We transform how RFQs are handled, reducing your response time, finding your most competitive market component pricing, and positioning you to win more profitable business.

What prompted Luminovo’s expansion into North America, and what strategic importance does the region hold for the company today?

To some extent, it was me that prompted the expansion into North America! I started working in the EMS industry in 2015, and during the 2020 supply chain meltdown I developed custom supply chain software with the sole focus of bringing transparency, structure, and automation to many of the quoting (or purchasing) decisions. I discovered Luminovo in 2024, and I was so impressed by their elegant and robust solution to an industry-wide problem that I offered my own support in bringing them to our local market. In 2025, we saw significant adoption of Luminovo in North-America, validating our market-fit, allowing us to “double-down” on our go-to-market for North America. We were also waiting for ITAR compliance (we have that now!) before doubling down on the local market.

How does Luminovo’s technology platform help OEMs and EMS providers improve speed, accuracy, and decision-making across quoting, BOM management, and supply-chain workflows?

For EMS, we accelerate your RFQ response time and protect your margins. We streamline each step in your quoting process, starting with the ingestion of a customer’s BOM, and ending with a fully-costed RFQ. We help you create competitive quotes quickly, winning you more business and protecting your margins.

For OEMs, we transform your electronics procurement into strategic profit and resilience drivers. The OEMs do not care about speed in the same way the EMS providers do, so our focus is to realize your cost-saving opportunities, and to mitigate your supply-chain risk and prevent production disruption. We help you maximize your team’s impact by automating the routine, so they can focus on strategic decision-making or exception handling.

What differentiates Luminovo from other digital or AI-driven solutions serving the electronics manufacturing ecosystem?

Even though we focus on the same industries as other competitors, there are many differences between us and our closest competitors. The first and biggest difference is our ambition and appetite for innovation. We strive to establish the industry-leading practice and to bring about innovation at the fastest pace in the industry. We have a ~50-person engineering team that puts the necessary might to support that appetite.

Second, our platform makes use of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) throughout the platform. All of our competitors connect with distributor APIs to help find pricing, but Luminovo shines in the supporting quoting functions, such as AI-powered BOM importer, instant-PCB pricing, and robust manufacturing (labor) estimating.

How have North American manufacturers responded to Luminovo’s approach, and what types of results or improvements are customers seeing?

Electronics manufacturers are usually either surprised, excited, or relieved when they are introduced to the Luminovo platform. They are relieved that we are bringing speed, efficiency, and innovation to a critical area of their business, and the result is that our customer base is growing rapidly. The results are significant time savings (typically from weeks or days to same-day quoting), and significant savings on the component pricing (~5%).

In what ways is Luminovo helping manufacturers address current industry challenges such as supply-chain volatility, cost pressure, and talent shortages?

We aggregate market data from over one hundred partners to help you find available stock, or the best pricing, or reasonable part alternatives. We also allow EMS to easily compare to their previous quotes so they can see a historical view of their previous bids. We are bringing transparency and speed to the industry, which needs both of those things so badly. For example, our total cost of ownership module can help you estimate the impact that tariffs has on your material costs.

Can you discuss the role of partnerships and integrations in Luminovo’s North America strategy and how they enhance customer value?

We have several categories of Luminovo partners. The first are our data providers, distributors, and PCB shops. These partners make their data available to Luminovo and make their offers available to the world through our platform. They are the supply-side of the electronics supply chain network and a critical portion of our value proposition. The second type of partner are our ambassadors who are typically reps for SMT machines or other electronics-relevant capital assets. Our ambassadors help us market Luminovo and help make introductions between manufacturers in their network and Luminovo. Our ambassadors program is a system that allows for a complete win-win, allowing companies or individuals to bring the industry’s newest innovations to their portfolio of customers.

Luminovo also has available APIs and Webhooks so that our customers can integrate Luminovo to the key tools for the other aspects of their business. As AI-generated code gets easier to create, and the speed of delivery for software gets faster, Luminovo wants to become the underlying “plumbing” for the electronics supply chain. Right now, Luminovo has wrapped their impressive API capabilities with a beautiful UI, but we anticipate that third parties may want to add their own flair to the Luminovo platform, and this is available primarily through our advanced API capabilities and integrations.

How does Luminovo balance global product development with the specific needs, regulations, and operating models of North American customers?

The primary constraints that we come across between different regions are legal or regulation-related. In the US for example, there is a significant ITAR requirement, which we have accommodated through specific configuration of the tool, separate support teams, and entirely separated data centers. We keep our code base uniform, limiting individual customizations, but capture requirements from all of our customers and prioritize them in order of joint impact. Between the strategic prioritization of our customer insights, and our ~50-person engineering team, we are able to not only balance the global product development with individual needs, but we are able to fix problems for our customers that they were not even thinking about yet. In this way, the Luminovo network is at an advantage because Luminovo continually leads the charge towards the theoretical “ideal” electronics supply chain platform.

What industries or customer segments in North America are you most focused on supporting, and why?

In North America, we are focusing on EMS (contract manufacturers). This playbook has worked so well already in Europe that we will be imitating it (with some tweaks to accommodate the local market) into 2026 and beyond.

How do you see Luminovo contributing to the long-term advancement and resilience of the electronics manufacturing industry in North America and globally?

Luminovo is the connective tissue in the electronics supply chain and is reducing the unnecessary friction that has existed there for so long. Not only does this help smooth the supply chain for everyone involved, but it also allows companies with higher labor rates (e.g., US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Europe) to stay competitive in our global manufacturing industry.

Looking ahead, what is your vision for Luminovo’s growth in North America over the next few years, and what excites you most about that opportunity?

I think we will grow really quickly in North America, in the same way that we grew quickly in Europe. In 2026 alone, I expect we will triple in size at least!