Kingston Technology has assured its channel partners that its recent partnership with retail giant Tesco will not impact their businesses.
Kingston Memory will now be sold through 650 stores across the UK. Specialist retail distributor Catalus, a Kingston partner, has won the agreement – worth £6m over the next 12 months – to supply Tesco with memory cards from Kingston and Sony. Catalus already supplies the supermarket with its own Tesco-branded removable memory range.
The products that will be supplied by Catalus include 128MB and 256MB Secure Digital memory cards, 256MB Memory Stick PRO Duo and 256MB xD Picture Cards. These will help Tesco strengthen its push into the digital camera, camcorder, music player and mobile phone markets, Catalus claimed.
Speaking to CRN, Ann Keefe, sales director UK and Ireland at Kingston Technology, said: “One of our goals this year is to work more closely with retail partners. Tesco is a market leader with a very strong UK presence. Our Tesco business has already doubled since the launch and is still growing.
“Retail and e-tail can co-exist, and we don’t expect this to have any impact on our other channel partners because this is aimed at the consumer market.”
Jon Blows, general manager at Catalus, said: “We have worked with Tesco for five years, supplying it with our own-branded products. At this time it is just a toe in the water with Kingston and Sony, but we are hoping to supply the full product portfolios, with a wider range of capacities and speed, within the next 12 months.”
Blows added that the distribution agreement will be expanded to Tesco’s stores across Europe later this year. Next month Catalus will also supply Tesco.com with the products.
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