Ingram pledges credit support to smaller VARs

Ingram’s UK head is maintaining a positive attitude despite the doom and gloom surrounding the market.

Julian Klein, UK managing director of Ingram Micro, said the distributor will continue to focus on keeping credit flowing in the channel and supporting its reseller base.

“It is pretty tough out there,” said Klein. “Credit is one of the areas that is already, or will be more and more challenging, and that is where we are focusing hard on making sure we provide the right level of credit to our smaller customers.

“As a distributor, you have to be able to provide that credit while satisfying the needs of the vendors and VARs. Ingram can do that.”

Retail, one of Ingram’s focus areas, has taken a battering recently, but Klein remained buoyant.

“Clearly retail has seen challenges in the past few months and that has had a level of impact for us as well, but there are always shards of light in these areas,” he said.

He added that the broadliner continues to make ground in the radio frequency identification space.

“The market is growing and has seen less buffeting by the economic climate because of the nature of its products and solutions,” he said. “It is all around driving efficiency in high-velocity organisations.”

Nitin Joshi, director of ChannelMoney, said distributors have a key role to play in credit creation.

“Distribution credit is where it is at. In its most helpful form, good credit policy enables sales. For less sophisticated distributors, the policy tends to be: “Computer says no”. In this cash crisis, the heroes are the distribution credit managers.”

In related news, today sees the departure of Ingram UK’s commercial director Bhavesh Patel (Channelweb, 9 January). Mike Farrah, head of category for PCs and peripherals, will fill the role temporarily.

“Bhavesh has such big shoes to fill that we are going to take our time finding a replacement,” said Klein.