Freestyle IT revenue on the rise

But VAR encounters savage price aggression from larger rivals in first six months of 2011

Mid-market-focused VAR Freestyle IT has logged another sales rise despite attempts by larger rivals to raid its customer base.

The Hook-based VMware, Microsoft and Citrix partner saw sales for the six months to 30 June rise 10 per cent year on year to just under £4m, with gross profit margins hitting 19 per cent.

Freestyle IT director Warwick Everett said he had encountered renewed aggression from larger VARs with telesales teams.

"Winning new business has always been tough," he said. "But where we are uncovering opportunities with existing customers we are coming across some names that are being very aggressive on pricing.

"They appear to be interested only in winning business and not with profitability. We would like to think that, because of the strength of our customer relationships, they are not interested in shaving one or two per cent off the price."

Twenty-strong Freestyle IT works with the likes of Dell, HP, HDS and EMC in the storage space but Everett said it would look to throw its weight behind fewer vendors.

"As a relatively small specialist reseller, we have to invest our training buck wisely and cannot pursue all accreditations," he explained.

Everett attributed the firm's sales increase to its recent expansion into support services through a partnership with Kaseya.