An evolving relationship

Vendors including Brother, Canon, Epson, Lexmark and OKI built their IT channel with business equipment dealers selling copiers, faxes and typewriters.

Over the past few years, this expanded to include IT resellers as customers began to rely on their “computer man” for software support and buying equipment.

The costs of these exclusive partnerships for resellers and dealers were high. Not that long ago printer vendors expected all their reseller partners to commit to the vendor’s product by reaching sales targets, employing trained and accredited sales teams and having showrooms for demonstrations. Warranty and DOA products (Dead on Arrivals) were seen as a cost of business that a dealer agreed to wear in return for the “privilege” of being a vendor’s dealer.
Much has changed. Now a broad-based distributor model is favoured which removed many of these ‘costs’ of doing business and helped reshape the printer distribution market.

No longer are resellers locked into one or two vendors. They now have the ability to quote on almost any brand and can take advantage of the extensive logistics resources available from distributors across Australia. For print vendors, this solved problems caused by resellers who wanted to offer multiple brands but whose minimum orders were lower than a direct account because they were spasmodic buyers.

Service is another area that’s seen dramatic changes, and expect more to come. In the past, the cost of products meant it was always worth repairing, so service was a major requirement. Vendors traditionally outsourced repair and servicing of their machines, relying on their dealers for all frontline service calls and workshop repairs —which also meant that the resellers had to carry a full range of spare parts.

But as printers and printing equipment became more reliable, pressure has eased on resellers. In most cases vendors with exposure to the retail channel have improved their direct service levels by employing a help desk to support retail sales and increasing the number of in-house technicians. Often distributors also play a role.

Today distributors are valued by both vendors and resellers, thanks to the added support they offer in areas such as supply and marketing. Distributors often have leading edge e-commerce platforms for ordering and also for back ending into the resellers’ own websites with prices, specifications, images and quantities on hand. This provides significant benefits for resellers — it allows them to appear much larger than they may be and gives a greater offering to their customers than they could ever have in their own right.

Marketing initiatives by distributors also help resellers offer customer promotions which would be too expensive and time-consuming to implement on their own. Events allow resellers to meet vendors in a low cost, effective way.
With more than 9000 resellers across Australia, distributors undoubtedly played a vital role in facilitating a smooth relationship between the printer vendors and resellers. It is safe to predict that this will continue to be the case.


By Graham Harman, general manager, OKI Printing Solutions

an distribution evolving hardware relationship