Samsung organizes channel meet to pacify discontent partners

NR Sethuraman

Chennai

27th September 2007

For the first time Samsung India Electronics held a consumable reseller meet
in Chennai, which saw the participation of around 120 consumable dealers. Sharad
Agarwal, Manager - Digital Imaging Solutions, Samsung India Electronics said
that in the past Samsung had not met with any of its resellers and retailers but
has realized that such meetings are important, especially when it comes to
solving their issues in terms of business.

Claiming that Samsung has 2,500 resellers in the Tamil Nadu, Agarwal added
that these meets would strongly develop the channel relations that would come in
handy in motivating partners to push sales. It is not surprising to find Samsung
take such pro-channel steps, because partners in the state had voiced their
discontent when Samsung decided provide printers to ELCOT with three-year
warranty, while the channel was offered printers with just one-year warranty.

When asked about this issue, Agarwal said, "We have two marketing
strategies where we provide different offers to the government and to the
channel. At present we were providing two to three-year warranty to the
government and one-year warranty for the channels. But owing to demands from our
partners to bring parity in warranty policies, we would provide printers with
three-year warranty for the channel very soon."

Samsung claimed that its toner market share grew to 48 percentage, while its
overall business has grown by 65 percentage and Tamil Nadu, while Karnataka
contributed more than 35 percentage to over all revenue. Samsung India is now
aiming to capture 25 percent market share for printers and is working for that.

It has set a target of selling 2,10,000 units of consumables by the end of
this year for which it is working closely with its partners. "We have also
introduced many schemes like packing gifts with the toners for the resellers and
we are giving a 'best pricing offer' to them per toner. Besides this, we provide
overseas trips to the best performing resellers," Agarwal added.

Samsung is also going to get tough on the fake refilling business and
proposes to take legal action against those found guilty. "We are going to
kill that black market to protect the interest of our resellers," Sharad
informed.

Towards this end, the company has initiated customer education programs to
highlight the difference between genuine and fake toners and the damage that
spurious toners can cause to the printers.