ESys branches out from hard-drive heritage

Storage drops to only 50 per cent of distributor's sales following new signings

Components distributor eSys’s strategy to reduce its focus on storage has ensured hard-drive sales have fallen from 77 to 50 per cent of its EMEA business in the past nine months.
Nigel Edwards, who was appointed as the pan-European distributor’s EMEA vice president last April, vowed to decrease the distributor’s reliance on storage upon his arrival.
“Hard drives are now down to half of our revenues and I want to take that down to 35 per cent in the long term, so we have a more balanced spread in our business,” Edwards said. “If customers are buying hard drives, most also need to buy components such as graphics cards, memory and motherboards. Why are we not trying to sell them that too?”
The past nine months has seen eSys sign a slew of pan-European vendors with component manufacturers, including Hightech, Pioneer, Kingmax and Yusmart.
This adds to the company’s pan-European partnerships with hard-drive vendors Western Digital, Samsung and Fujitsu.
Esys famously saw its partnership with Seagate terminated in November 2006 after the distributor denied Seagate access to its accounts.
“It was not difficult to convince more vendors that we could do big volumes. We have ramped things up quickly with Pioneer and are Hightech’s top EMEA partner after two quarters,” Edwards said.
Edwards stressed eSys did not want to be seen as a broadliner, and would sell a limited range.
“The big issue for customers calling Bell Micro or Computer 2000 is people try to sell them everything, but they have no real focus. We do not want to lose that focus and become a supplier of everything but a master of nothing,” he said.
ESys recently poached Debbie Farry from Bell Micro to head up its UK business.
“An area that I want to develop in the UK is the e-tail business, and Debbie came from Bell Micro’s e-tail team,” he said.
“The UK is constantly challenging and highly competitive, more so than other European markets.”
Ed Bateman, business unit manager at Bell, said: “ESys probably does need to reduce its focus on hard drives given what happened with Seagate. I understand that it wants to sign new vendors, but it may struggle to do that with its sales model.
“Customers want to buy products, but they need more than that from a distributor,” he added.
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