Midwich lights the lamp

After missing out on Maverick's assets, the AV distributor goes head to head with rivals

Watching the market: Midwich hopes its lamp division will help it to the top of the UK market.

Midwich has launched a dedicated projector lamps division called Which Lamps in a bid to compete with rivals Just Lamps and Hotlamps.

The move comes shortly after the distributor narrowly missed out on buying Hotlamps when Computer 2000 (C2000) snapped up the assets of failed audiovisual distributor Maverick, including Hotlamps, last month (CRN, 19 November).

Darren Lewitt, divisional director at Midwich, said: “Although we missed out on acquiring Hotlamps, we have been able to set up our own division with a dedicated product manager and sales staff and feel this is the best route for us.”

Midwich’s goal is to grow Which Lamps to become the UK’s largest lamp distribution business.

“As the largest projector distributor in Europe, it is a natural aspiration to become the UK’s largest lamp distributor,” said Lewitt.

However, Dave Bethell, managing director of Just Lamps, said: “Midwich has been selling projector lamps from the projector vendors it carries for some time, so I struggle to see what it is now offering that is so different - apart from putting a name to it.”

Lewitt responded: “We have invested in a huge stockholding - the brands we represent cover more than 70 per cent of the UK market - and we aim not to disappoint resellers with stock shortages or lengthy lead times. If VARs have a specific run-rate project we will also allocate lamps for them on an ongoing basis.”

He also claimed that Which Lamps’ differentiator is that it only sells UK-sourced, original lamps.

Meanwhile, Jon Sidwick, managing director of the new Maverick Presentation Products, owned by C2000, said he had secured exclusivity for the APO range of compatible lamps that Hotlamps previously sold. “During the turmoil surrounding Maverick, many of our competitors tried to steal our vendors, including APO. But I have now gained back the exclusivity contract for the UK and Hotlamps is up and running again.”

Asked if Maverick had lost any vendors as a result of it entering administration, Sidwick replied: “We have not had any vendors say no yet, but there are still a few conversations to conclude. There is one vendor we might lose as it had been saying for some time that it was over distributed (in the UK).

“On a positive note we have also secured all the manufacturing links for our Vision range of installation accessories and will be relaunching the Vision brand in January,” added Sidwick.