Vendors should do away with national distis

The IT Panchayat, which is organized by The DQ Week and DQ Channels, reached
the city of lakes-Udaipur March 23. The event which saw participation of 50
partners from the city was sponsored by Gigabyte, Emerson and GoIP.

The event started with Suniel Kumar, Area Manager, Gigabyte telling the
partners about their product offerings and was followed by a presentation in
which Girijesh Mishra, NSM, GoIP explained the intricacies of their product
line. This was followed by an open house discussion with the partners.

Pavan Kothari of Ficusa Enterprises said, “The partners were hoping that the
setting of the DGS&D contract rates would help provide some stimulus to the
business, but with the elections being declared and the code of conduct now in
place, that has been postponed and as a result the partners are witnessing a
decline in sales.”

“With people being careful while spending, and it being exam time, no sales
is being generated from the student community; this has lead to considerably
decreased walk-ins. In fact many partners in the city have shut down their
retail operations and are now concentrating solely on box pushing,” remarked a
partner. When inquired he said that all retail sales have moved to the big LFRs
like Croma etc, and that the general perception was that you would get a better
deal there. Talking about the solution for vendors to make inroads and get more
business, and for the partners to survive, Kothari suggested that vendors adopt
the regional distributor model instead of going in for national distributors.

Channel partners engrossed in the open house discussion

Elaborating about the advantages of having a regional disti model, he further
said, “The reason why this model will be more beneficial for the vendor is that
partner loyalty is enhanced.”

Citing the instance of Dell, most partners felt that their business model was
conducive for growth of the business and profits for channel partners. When
asked about how Dell was doing in the city, “The brand is very stylish and
though it is a bit more expensive than the others available in the market but
people still want it. Dell's business model ensures that the partner registers
good growth,” said another partner who is a Dell dealer in the city.

Ajay Chawla from Ingram Micro and Virendra Singh from Neoteric represented
the national distributors and mingled around with the partners listening to
their queries.

Shivangi Yadav

shivangiy@cybermedia.co.in