Toshiba Tec launches autoID reseller programme

Furness: AutoID may fill the revenue gap for resellers suffering shrinking margins

AutoID vendor Toshiba Tec has rolled out a partner programme to attract more resellers into its fold and capitalise on its strong growth through the recession.

Paul Reynolds, senior manager for the autoID business at Toshiba Tec, said the vendor believed it was time to formalise its partner relationships and attract new resellers to develop its increased sales.

“We really want to promote the skills that our resellers have and make that more available to the marketplace,” he said.

“The autoID business is growing. In credit crunch time, especially last year, we had good growth. We are coming into the end of our financial year now and are well ahead on the previous year, also.”

Growth for the 2009-10 year was tipped to reach 25 per cent of revenue, with 2010-11 doing about the same, he added.

A formal programme would help customers find the right authorised resellers with the right specialisms, and target support accordingly. Mobile offerings were one area that had been doing particularly well, and was expected to continue doing well, Reynolds said.

“There are very different categories of autoID reseller out there. We have authorised service providers and mobile solution providers, and some of those are installing and work with RF networks. Then we have RFID partners and consumables partners,” he said.

He said it would also allow Toshiba Tec to recognise the partners that had done a good job promoting and selling its products. Resellers wanting to join the programme should contact Toshiba Tec and must have achieved a certain volume of sales as well.

Authorised resellers would be expected to use Toshiba Tec marketing materials.

Pharmaceuticals, healthcare patient identification, food manufacturing, and general retail were proving fertile sales ground, Reynolds said.

Hugh Furness, sales and marketing director at barcode software provider Wasp Barcode Technologies, said that the hardware and solutions side of the autoID market may be proving more attractive to conventional business IT resellers.

“These are resellers used to making three to six per cent margins. [Specialist] autoID resellers want to make at least 30 to 40 per cent, so it is a slightly different model,” Furness said.

“People like Toshiba Tec and others are starting to bring in these partner programmes, to get people into their family, as it were, and get them trained and everything else.”

Because IT margins had shrunk so much, IT resellers need to start looking at higher-value products, and autoID-related offerings could fit the bill, said Furness.