Vendors should do away with national distis

UDAIPUR, INDIA: The IT Panchayat, which is organized by The DQ Week and DQ Channels, reached the city of lakes—Udaipur last week. The event which saw participation from 50 partners of 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 Girijesh Mishra, NSM, GoIP explaining 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 the exam season, no sales is being generated from the student community; this has lead to a considerably little walk-in. 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. Talking about the solution for vendors to make inroads and get more business, and for the partners to survive, Kothari suggested to adopt the regional distributor model instead of going in for national distributors.

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.”

Elaborating further Anil of Parishram said, “When we do business with national distributors, we have no direct contact with the vendor. The national disti on the other hand is only interested in their business and are not worried about our problems. Take for example the issue of DoA. It is one of the single biggest issue with all the vendors but no one is willing to bring out a clear policy on it or set a process which can be easily followed. Such instances negatively affect a partner when both vendor and disti both wash their hands off it. In this situation, how can one expect loyalty from partners; so tomorrow if some other company comes, we are not hesitant in switching over to them.”

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, “Since there is no previous growth or sales figures available it is difficult to tell in terms of number, but it can be easily

said that Dell is slowly and steadily inching towards becoming the number one vendor in laptops segment. The brand is very stylish and though it is a bit more expensive than the other's 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.