Beta Distribution on course to break £200m revenue barrier

European and technology solutions business set to drive growth for distributor

Beta Distribution is on course to hit its first £200m year, driven by increasing success in its European and technology solutions business, according to director Nigel Morris.

In a Companies House filing earlier this month, Beta reported revenue of £166.3m for the 12 months ending 31 March 2015 - a one per cent increase on the year before.

Now halfway through its next financial year, Morris told CRN that the firm is on course to break the £200m revenue barrier as it sees continued success in its technology solutions business.

Beta's core business has traditionally been in the audiovisual, printer and toner sectors, but it is increasingly moving further into the technology market.

"Some of the technology-based products - the Quantums, some of the disruptive technology brands - that area is growing enormously and we've got some more services going in there," he said.

"We're also beefing up our technology sales team in the areas of servicing MSPs and VARs - that's another area where we're strengthening.

"It's about strengthening our business ready for the next stage but we still have our core business; things like inks and toners. We are still growing in that commodity area because that's all about stock price, availability, good account management, and we're very good at that.

Morris claimed that Beta is having success with emerging vendors because, although they don't have the channel infrastructure in place that the tier-one vendors do, they can offer products of the same quality and functionality as the big vendors.

Coupled with this technology success, Morris added, is the growth in Beta's European distribution arm.

The distributor has been operating in Europe for two years and has just moved to a new distribution centre in Holland. It is now looking to open sales offices in key European regions.

Of Beta's total revenue in its last financial year, £25.5m came from its European business.

Morris said that, although Beta had always planned to move across the channel, the opportunity came after the collapse of European distributor ACI. He explained that three years ago Beta was approached by some ex-employees of this firm who still believed there was a market opportunity in Europe, and that the business has grown from there.

"There wasn't a masterplan that we were going to open in Europe but now we've done it, we've done it properly and we've developed it," he said.

"We do plan to a certain extent, but we're quite a small business in some ways so we don't have to go through committees and sign off, which is the reason we've grown so fast."