Zyxel on the hunt for VARs
Networking vendor looks for more resellers as it reaches higher up the value chain
Networking vendor Zyxel is looking to almost double its number of channel partners to help it push up into the mid-market sector.
The vendor, which currently works with about 270 smaller resellers, wants to grow this number to 500, according to Lee Marsden, sales manager at Zyxel.
“We aren’t looking for just any number,” he said. “We want resellers that operate in specific verticals and have built up trusted relationships with end-users. Next year we will focus on the hospitality and the education sectors.”
Marsden added that the vendor has chosen these two verticals for different reasons. The vendor is already known in hospitality and he claimed this would help VARs because the brand name would be recognised. He said that Zyxel has chosen the education sector because the firm wants to target all levels of education from primary to universities.
“We were very SME-focused when we started out, but now we are looking for resellers to help us get into the mid-sized sector,” he said. “We are capable of scaling our products up or down because we manufacture our own kit – we don’t OEM it like other vendors do.”
The firm signed an agreement with Azlan as its fifth distributor in the UK last year, alongside Comtech, Northamber, BT Wholesale and Electronic Frontier (EFL), which brought it into the UK back in 1996.
Conor McCann, general manager at EFL, told CRN: “When we first launched Zyxel in the UK it was very SME focused. It was mostly just an ISDN manufacturer. Its portfolio
has expanded to address a number of different areas. We will help Zyxel to stimulate the market and recruit a number of resellers to its partner programme.
“The challenge is brand awareness, but it has been working hard to extend this and over the past two years has really ramped up its marketing. As it moves further into the mid-market it will come up against the more well-known brands. But the thing that it has on its side is its product portfolio: from security to wireless and networking, it would suit VARs that may be looking to rationalise their number of vendor partners.”
>> Further reading: