Wick Hill and C2000 sever ties with C2000

Wick Hill has parted company with Computer 2000 after the broadband distributor failed to provide adequate focus on its software vendors product range.

According to a source, Computer 2000, which has carried Wick Hill products for five years, had failed to give enough attention to the vendor following its restructuring last year.

The source said: 'This all springs from the way that Computer 2000 had coped with vendor categorisation. It had been trying to focus on too many vendors.'

However, Steve Lockie, general manager of networking at Computer 2000, denied there was any animosity between the two companies. The reason for ending the agreement, he said, stemmed from Wick Hill's licensing policy.

According to Lockie, Wick Hill has an agency agreement with US-based WRQ which manufactures Reflection software - one of the vendor's biggest selling products.

'Wick Hill has certain conditions imposed on it from the US. With the change in licensing policy, it was decided we were not suitable for each other,' said Lockie.

However, Ian Kilpatrick, managing director at Wick Hill, said: 'Some of the routes to market for different products are different and we needed to create demand.'

He added: 'As we are going to launch new products, resellers will need educating. Therefore we are looking at value-added distributors.'

Kilpatrick said Wick Hill will continue to distribute through CHS Electronics and Metrologie but added that it may return to Computer 2000 in a few month's time when its strategy had been re-established.

But according to the source: 'People at C2000 were unhappy that it had been canned, but it was too late to salvage the agreement.'