Acer makes retail switch
Firm wants to reduce conflict between retailers and B2B VARs
Acer UK is segmenting its product strategy to reduce any conflict between its retailers and its business-to-business (B2B) resellers.
Semmy Levit, Acer UK’s country manager, told CRN: “Until now, all of our desktops and notebooks were available to everyone. There was no distinction between channels and from time to time this created some issues for our resellers.
“However, within the next month we will re-focus our brand strategy in terms of notebooks and desktops in order to give a clear focus to both the retail market and our professional market.”
Under the new policy, Acer’s retailers and e-tailers will be able to sell only Acer’s Aspire desktops and notebooks, while the B2B VARs will focus on Acer’s Travelmate, Veriton and Extensa ranges.
“The SME market is a core focus for us this year,” Levit said. “We wanted to understand how we could provide better support to our SME resellers to increase our penetration in the SME space.
“A request that came from the resellers was to support their activities and not let the products they sell be available in the retail and e-tail channel, which is what we are facilitating with our new strategy.”
Jonathan Wall, marketing director at e-tailer Dabs, said: “It’s quite hard for us because 40 per cent of our business is to consumers, 40 per cent is to corporates and 20 per cent is to the small-office/home-office market. With Acer we would probably be classed as a B2B partner, but potentially it could cause a problem if Acer said we can no longer sell a product that we have a market for.
“It has happened in the past with a couple of vendors and we just had to source a similar product from elsewhere.”
Bhavesh Patel, commercial director at Acer distributor Ingram, said: “On the back of the success Acer had last year I think it has a certain level of maturity now that allows it to segment its products between retailers and resellers.
“When all of Acer’s products were available to everyone, it did create some conflict in the channel. I think resellers will appreciate this change in Acer’s strategy.”