EET takes craic at Ireland

The Irish like to buy from the Irish, claims spare parts distributor

Spare parts and accessories distributor EET Europarts will begin punting its catalogue of 350,000 products to Irish resellers after opening a Dublin office.

Having landed in the UK in 2007, Denmark-based EET has concluded that demand from Ireland's 1,000 or so resellers is sufficient to justify a local presence there.

Simon Smith, UK managing director of EET, stressed the move coincides with the opening of its new, much larger Danish warehouse and launch of a website that allows resellers to sift through EET's stock using a predictive search function.

EET offers a next-day or three-four-day shipment service to Irish resellers but Smith hinted the distributor would move to cut delivery times and freight costs "considerably" in both Ireland and the UK next year.

"The Irish economy is picking up and we have found that there isn't really anyone doing what we do there," Smith said.

"The Irish like to buy from the Irish," he added.

Earlier this year, EET dramatically expanded its European footprint by acquiring Europarts, a firm it billed as its nearest competitor in size. It now operates in 22 countries and has a turnover of €200m (£125m) and claims to have 22,00 parts in stock, daily.

When asked about rival spare parts outfits such as Chiltern IT, Smith emphasised the wide array of brands and products EET carries.

"Chiltern IT do a fantastic job on HP and I admire them greatly, but they do not have IBM and Lenovo. We are a broadline spare parts and accessories distributor and also do surveillance," he said.

The new office will be run by sales manager Andrew Healy, who has previously worked with many local distributors including Midia and Commtech.

Graham Nye, chairman of Chiltern IT, said his firm had looked into launching a local office but had decided against it.

"It is a market dominated by a lot of strongly established characters who are well connected to the corporate end user. We decided we were better off developing our relationship with key brokers and corporate resellers out there, but it sounds like EET has made a good hire and we wish them luck."

Nye denied Chiltern has a narrower focus than his rival, however.

"It is fair to say that, historically, we have been known for our specialisation with HP and its legacy brands but in the last couple of years we have broadened our range and now very much have the same range of vendors as EET do."