Fujitsu grants Arrow and Ingram stay of execution as Entatech axed

Arrival of new top brass at Arrow and Ingram prompts Fujitsu to give duo another six months to prove worth

Fujitsu has granted Ingram Micro and Arrow a six-month stay of execution after axing Entatech in a distribution review.

The hardware vendor has served Entatech notice but is holding off making a decision on the two broadliners until new management there have had a chance to bed in.

Fujitsu first announced it would review its five-strong line-up in April after concluding it was over-distributed. Of those, Tech Data and Exertis were the two successful candidates.

"We have offered an extension to Arrow and Ingram while their new leadership beds in and define their strategies and priorities," Fujitsu UK sales director Kevin Matthews said, referring to the recent arrivals of Jesper Trolle and Matt Sanderson, respectively.

"I talked about three all along, but Arrow and Ingram's new leadership may come up with new priorities and areas I'm not yet aware of, so I'm keeping an open mind on that," he added.

Entatech has recently made a major investment in its Fujitsu business but Matthews said the distributor lacked the European footprint and mature enterprise focus it wanted.

"We reorganised internally at the beginning of April, creating a new products business in Europe under the leadership of Michael Keegan, and that has been designed so we can drive the scale of our business throughout Europe," he said.

"To that end, we decided that we'd like to focus on distribution partners that have a European footprint."

"Secondly, we have a particular focus on our enterprise business and when I looked at the other distributors, they had a more mature and established enterprise business unit that we felt gives us the chance to get to our growth numbers more quickly," Matthews added. Also, some of the other distribution partners are playing in verticals we have a desire to penetrate, and Enta didn't offer that."

Entatech, which laid out a new focus today, will work out a notice period until the end of July, Matthews confirmed.

CRN understands that Entatech was one of Fujitsu's larger partners - possibly behind only Exertis - but Matthews said size didn't come into it.

"It's all about looking forward and with the commitments the four have made, I'm confident we will meet our internal growth targets," he said.

Dave Stevinson, managing director of Entatech, said: "Naturally we are quite disgruntled. We generated a lot of net new business for Fujitsu and had a loyal and trusted dealer base. I make no apologies for being a UK focused distributor. Our strategy will be consistent: we will be 100 per cent trade only, 100 per cent UK focused and only sell authorised product."

"We admire the chaps from Fujitsu and will wish them every success with their slimmed down channel. We will work positively with the new distribution line-up to ensure a positive handover of our valued resellers to ensure no break in supply. As a company we will direct our efforts and energies into our vendors in line with our revised product focus."