Scholastic Media and Technology, a division of education specialists Scholastics, has grown its sales of tjhe Wacom Interface tablet by over 160 percent in the past two years.
Wayne Cooper, general manager of Scholastic Media and Technology, attributed its success with the Wacom range to its strong roots in the education sector.
Wacom appointed Scholastic as a distributor in 2004. The deal was one of Scholastics' first forays into the hardware market.
Cooper said the deal has dovetailed with existing distribution agreements for software vendors such as Adobe and Autodesk.
The recent addition of Corel products also benefits from the links to bundled versions with various Wacom tablets, he said.
Scholastic now distributes Wacoms' Bamboo, Intuos and Cintiq tablet technologies to education and retail outlets .
"Tablets are not the kind of mass consumption 'ho hum' technology that printers are," Cooper said.
"Consumers are curious, interested and excited about tablet technology and they expect the resellers to be in a position to answer questions.
"We make sure our resellers have the right information and can give the right advice, which makes it easier for them to sell."
Cooper said stock sales from 2006 showed Scholastic only distributed around 2000 tablets. In 2008/09 Scholastic distributed more than 11,000 tablets nationally.
"Our commitment to supporting and training resellers to on-sell these products is producing very rapid growth in both commercial and retail sectors nationally for Wacom technology," he said.
"At the time we were signed to distribute Wacom, the organisation that was moving the majority of Wacom technology was Ingram Micro.
"Larger mainstream distributors have missed the curve because they are opportunistic and volume oriented, which has left the market wide open."
Cooper said it has been able to gain traction because sectors like retail are now in need of the kind of domain knowledge that it's used to providing to customers in the education sector.
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