Samsung print division woos IT VARs

Vendor's head of print Mark Ash says 2016 is the year to focus on partnering with more traditional IT players

Samsung's UK and Ireland print boss is on the hunt for IT VAR partners after seeing its specialist print VARs experience 80 per cent growth in the past year.

To ensure the new partners are supported, the vendor is also recruiting additional staff for its partner-facing team.

Mark Ash (pictured), general manager of print for Samsung's UK and Ireland enterprise business team, said the past three years have been a time of drastic change for the vendor. He joined the company three years ago from Xerox to lead its B2B expansion plans.

"Three years ago we were most definitely a predominantly B2C vendor," he said. "But then we decided to change our focus to B2B. It has been a real journey and we have gone from having an 80 per cent consumer focus three years ago, to 77 per cent business focus.

"We also changed 80 per cent of our management team at the same time and we recruited a lot of specialised people in each area - so for example the head of our partner channel is a former dealer," he added. "Growth has been crazy, with our partner business growing 80 per cent, and our manged print business growing 340 per cent last year."

He explained it wasn't just about print. "Print is part of the overall solution. Our brand gets us into customers, and because we offer so many different products that are relevant at multiple points - such as screens, tablets, phones and print - we don't have to force the products on anyone and can talk about how everything will work together."

Ash added that the initial channel focus had been on specialist print resellers, but now the focus is spreading to IT resellers.

"We are going to replicate the success we have had with our [specialist] dealer channel," he said.