JUPITER INTERNATIONAL: Seagate Saves The Day

Jupiter International's agency revenues were just 40% of its overall
turnover of Rs 184 crore in 2003-04, while its brand 'Frontech' contributed
the rest. Its distribution revenues stood at Rs 98 crore, a marginal growth of
8% over the previous fiscal.

Seagate contributes around 60% to the overall revenues, while Samsung chips
in another 15%. Its distribution of BenQ CDRs brought in Rs 42 crore, almost 48%
of the overall revenue.

The company claims that though agency turnover might have not improved
drastically, its bottomline has. This discrepancy is because prices of products
kept falling frequently, though its profit margins remained more or less the
same.

The company tied up with ASrock for distribution of its motherboards, last
fiscal, becoming the Taiwanese vendors second distributor in the country. It
also added 120 partners to its dealer network and launched several incentive
schemes for the channel.

Although the company stocks inventory in all its 14 branches, logistics
management became increasingly difficult and it decided to work with ICICI
Infotech to deploy an ERP implementation. A test run was done in 4 offices and
the full-scale deployment will happen in the current fiscal.

Jupiter also doubles up as a service center for all its principals, except
Seagate. Last year, its shed is supplier image and also worked with its vendors
to create brand awareness by means of roadshows and online promotions. It also
used these conduits to generate business leads which were then passed on to its
channel.

Jupiter also decided to realign its channel structure to avoid channel
in-fighting. It appointed select master resellers in different regions and did
business solely through these partners. This helped to bring a price stability
for its distributed products, as under-cutting was strictly monitored.