Corel out to draw in new partners

Creative software vendor looking to expand its UK channel and increase market share

Brett Denly: We offer very good margin to our partners

Software vendor Corel is on the hunt for more partners as it looks to ramp up market share.

The Canadian creative software vendor, whose flagship products include WinZip, Paintshop Pro and Corel Draw, is keen to attract quality partners to its books as well as encourage existing partners to be more active.

Brett Denly, vice president of EMEA sales, said: “We are a smaller player in the market with a good value proposition for partners. Our business is divided into four buckets: retail, academic, SMB and corporate. A huge amount of what we do is around licensing.”

He said the vendor, which has two distributors, Computers Unlimited and Gem, has about 300 active resellers in the UK.

“What we are really trying to do is grow that further without diluting the market too much. It is definitely about quality resellers,” he said. “We do offer very good margin to our partners and a lot of support.”

Denly said Corel has recently launched a dedicated partner portal to offer up-to-the-minute product information, videos and tutorials, marketing support and collateral to partners.

“We are hoping our portal will let us re-engage with a broader base of resellers. It is a way for them to reach us and get the information they need at a one-stop shop,” he said.

Partners are divided into the traditional Gold, Silver and Bronze structure, Denly explained, with the split equating to 10 per cent Gold, 20 per cent Silver and the rest Bronze.

“We definitely want to get more SME resellers on board and have an inside sales team phoning partners asking them if they want to join our programme. It is the first time we have really reached out to ask what resellers want from us and what we can provide,” he said.