Panning for growth at WhiteGold

“Rather than the approach of some of the higher-end distributors that are excellent logistically, they are not as good as knowing the products inside out, providing the level of support and having the experience to back that. Security has been our focus for the past five years and that is now morphing into other areas, but we want to keep that same feel,” said Whitehand. “We are chastised by other distributors as we are faster, but to us that is a massive value as the end-user wants to know quickly and the resellers can find out product information very quickly.”

Reseller community

The distributor now has a reseller base of around 700 resellers, with a core of 75 to 100 resellers buying on a regular basis. WhiteGold has a largely horizontal set of resellers as spam, viruses, email, and using a network goes across a number of segments.

“The trick is getting a small number of resellers for each vendor who are really going to fire up on a consistent basis. I think those broad-based distributors have that ‘we’re here, we’ve got it when you want it, where do you want it to go’ approach, a lot of those guys, partly as they’re larger organisations baked by big bank roles, pick up those vendors who just want that approach and get as many resellers as they can, it’s a numbers game. Where they come unstuck is where some of the anti-virus guys are losing market share as the infrastructure is not great in terms of support, flexibility and efficiency of what they are putting out there,” said Whitehand.

Expanding future
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We want to be a $20 million plus business in the next couple of years. Then a long-term aim of reaching $30 to $50 million in turnover. We will grow the strength of our market, it’s about how you grade yourself and support your channel and bringing new technologies to market. We will be executing in new areas, but with the same business model. The fact people ask us for the networking infrastructure because we are doing the security infrastructure, because they go hand-in-hand, and this is bringing bigger deals to the table.”

Whitegold’s headcount has reached 13 now and the firm is looking to open offices in Queensland soon and possibly ACT within six month’s time. The firm already has offices in Sydney and Melbourne, which are both set to see their staff figures swell.

“We will move into storage this year. I’m thinking about having a separate business unit for that,” he said. “We are going to be working with a vendor that takes a very different approach to storage. We will be competing will all the big guys, such as the
NetApps and the EMCs, but it is a very different type of technology.”

Whitehand said the firm will also start to operate in the wireless infrastructure space, while expanding in security compliance and networking management with a new vendor.

“In terms of what we have got now, our mainstays are still WatchGuard, Fortinet and Barracuda. We will be continuing doing what we are doing and diversifying, too. There will be more consolidation in the distribution market. Most of the businesses our size have an exit strategy, so they know if they are either going to forge ahead and try to become one of the big guys. You are never going to become a broad-based distributor overnight.
“
We are doing nicely as we are and looking to the future thinking: ‘it would be nice to have a choice’. If we are doing well, why would we sell? However if we did get it to the point where we could get a really good return, then maybe we would,” concluded Whitehand.

at distribution for growth panning security whitegold