Midwich woos SMART resellers with £36m credit pot

£4.5m already distributed to Gold and Silver partners as Midwich prepares for orders in peak summer season

Midwich has dished out £4.5m of credit to SMART's Gold and Silver partners as it looks to grab the lion's share of the vendor's £30m to £35m UK business.

SMART's exclusive distributor, Steljes, collapsed last month after the interactive whiteboard and display vendor switched to a fulfilment-only model for distribution and appointed Westcon as a second distributor.

Following Steljes' administration, SMART enlisted Midwich to work alongside Westcon.

Midwich says it is now ready to fulfil SMART orders for the education and enterprise space, with Louise Nevard, head of credit at Midwich, confirming that the distie has already distributed £4.5m of credit to top partners.

"If you annualise that, and take into consideration the credit terms we offer, it comes out at about £36m," she said.

"A large percentage of SMART business is transacted over the summer period so we wanted to line everything up for our partners and make sure we have the additional credit in place to support the business."

SMART products Midwich will be pushing include the 4000 and 6000 series interactive flat panels and SMART Learning Suite education collaboration software.

Steljes founder Nigel Steljes yesterday opened up for the first time about the circumstances behind the distributor's demise, revealing that its issues with SMART dated back to October.

"As I understand it, the SMART business is around £30m to £35m for the UK and we want as much of that as possible," said Nevard.

"We are very hungry for that business, but on the other hand we are very conscious that a business has gone under. We don't want to appear greedy or gloating over a business that has had its demise where a lot of people have been personally affected."