Varlink celebrates 10 years in business

Specialist distributor talks growth, value-add and fighting off the giants

Launching a brand new distributor in a post-recession climate is never an easy task, but VAD Varlink has not only survived, it is thriving.

The York-based firm first emerged on the channel scene in 2005 to grab a slice of the rugged PDA and mobility markets.

Mike Pullon, managing director and founder of Varlink (pictured, right) said: "In our first year we did £900,000 of sales, and in our last financial year [to the end of August] we have hit between £11.5m and £12m turnover. We started the business with just eight people, and now we have a total of 38. We had 20 customers when we started, now we sell to hundreds a month. Times have changed."

Pullon added the firm still works with three of its original manufacturers - Datalogic, Opticon and Zebra.

"When we started, tablets had not been invented, but now we are selling a significant number of rugged and durable tablets. The same with Android, it is now a significant part of our mobile product set and wasn't around in 2005," he said. "I also don't think the cloud was around then either, at least not in its present form, and now the trend is selling solutions as a service and we are seeing our customers do that more and more."

He said a decision that paid off in the early years was broadening out the distributor's mobile computing offering to include electronic point-of-sale (ePoS) products and customers to its mix.

"That now accounts for a quarter to a third of our business," he said. Pullon stressed the firm would continue to focus on the UK and Irish markets, rather than trying to compete with the bigger players in Europe.

"We are sticking with growing the business in the UK," he said.

Pullon added that a focus for the business going forward would be to act more as an "interpreter" between vendors and its resellers.

"Manufacturers have little direct contact with resellers, particularly the smaller players, as they reduce infrastructure and rely on digital communications, and often great features within products are buried in the hardware without the reseller actually being aware of them. This is where we come in - we can sit resellers down and explain how the technology works. This is how we are trying to add value to the channel, by showing them how solutions can actually benefit their business," he said.

He added that Varlink has also appointed its first dedicated alliance marketeer - to guide and help vendors make a case for their products within the channel.

Other aims for the future, Pullon explained, include automating Varlink's processes more to help its partners make instant decisions over their website without having to speak to an account manager, thus saving time.

"We are also trying to make our product sets ever more coherent with our customer needs, and we will continue to do research in the market and help plug product gaps," he said.

Looking ahead financially, Pullon said the next logical move would be to aim for £20m turnover and also focus on growing net profit.

"Over the last couple of years we have dealt with a lot of vendor consolidation, but we have still increased the bottom line and had a stable top line, but now I want to grow that top line. Because we are privately owned we are not being forced to achieve growth in certain areas, and we can find replacement vendors should things change. With the amount of consolidation in the market and among our vendor partners it is actually working in our favour and we are getting access to more product sets as a result."

And despite increased competition from "two multinational players" Pullon said Varlink will continue to offer customers a personal approach as opposed to a "US approach to doing business".

"I'll leave that to the larger players who are taking lumps out of each other," he quipped.

To celebrate the distributor's decade in business, along with the obligatory cakes and candles, it has announced it will be looking to raise at least £1,500 for the local St Leonard's Hospice in York through a variety of fundraising initiatives, including a team running the Hull Marathon relay race and another taking part in the York Marathon.

To find out more about Varlink's fundraising activities, click here.