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05 Feb 2007
Horizon UK is looking to break out of the distribution bracket and carve out a niche in the industry as a ‘distribution integrator’, the firm told CRN last week.
The company recently completed its rebranding exercise, first revealed by CRN last October (CRN, 13 October). As a result, the five different divisions – Clarity Technology, Enterprise Systems, Solutions, EquIP Technology and Data Management – will all be prefixed by the Horizon brand name.
John Unsworth, managing director of Horizon UK, told CRN: “Our main aim is to be dominant in the market, but we don’t want a wide kitbag in terms of vendors.
“We feel a high value-add services model is a far more relevant way to operate than broadline distri- bution, and we have a completely different way of doing business. We don’t want to be known as a distributor.”
Unsworth added that the firm has a strong focus on the system integrator space and is looking at re-classing itself more as a ‘distribution integrator’.
Simon Welch, marketing director at Horizon UK, said: “We have a much smaller number of vendors that we handpicked because they are best of breed. We have been able to retain value and margin, and the way we deliver is very different. We are not really a distributor, we look much more like a system integrator.”
David Galton-Fenzi, group sales director at distributor Zycko, said: “The problem with the definition of distribution is that a lot of people’s perception is founded on the likes of Ingram and Tech Data, who don’t offer what we consider to be value-add to the reseller market.
“What Clarity is trying to do is re-engineer itself to offer a core range of value-add to help it stand out from other distributors. But to us, Horizon is a broadline distributor: it carries competing product sets in its portfolio. The danger is that it could be sending confusing messages to the market.”
However, Andy Gass, managing director UK of Computer 2000, said: “We give the right amount of value to each product and partner. It is also about credit lines, shipping times and e-commerce efficiency. These are the important things in a distributor. Anyone who doesn’t think so will not last long in distribution.”
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