Brigantia reinvents itself as a hybrid distribution player

Former buying group heads down wholesale distribution path as it continues to evolve and back disruptive technology

After 20 years in business and several changes of ownership, Brigantia is firmly back under the stewardship of its founder and is morphing into a distributor.

Speaking to CRN, Iain Shaw, founder of Brigantia, explained how he sold Brigantia to Techgate plc in 2012, and then bought it back in January this year after it had been acquired by Claranet in 2015.

Explaining the history behind the organisation, he said: "We were just a subscription-based business and had a model based on member subscription and delivering benefits through deals with larger distributors, in fact we worked with all distributors. At the end of 2007, I looked at the market and a lot of people were going out of business, there were a lot of mergers and takeovers in distribution.

"We had worked with companies such as Entanet for years, but we realised that the future was going to be around connectivity. We had to take the leap and put our money where our mouth was and we became a buying group."

However fast forward several years and the group was bought back from Claranet in January by Shaw and his business partner Martin Wright, and they are developing a wholesale distribution side to the business to meet the demands of its members.

Shaw explained that initially they took the 300-plus members that had been buying direct from Entanet and engaged them in a distribution-style billing agreement instead.

It has since snowballed from there, and the organisation now boasts over 10 vendors on its books, including a master distribution agreement with up-and-coming vendor Hemidal.

"We are looking for more vendors, but we are going to be careful, going for those with a cybersecurity bent," he said. "We are only interested in niche managed services vendors that will give our partners something that they haven't got. We are going to be incubating new and exciting technology, but we are not going to take on things for the sake of taking them on."

But when asked if they were ditching the buying group persona completely he explained: "I think we are best described as a hybrid - we have our wholesale distribution offering and then we have our traditional reinvigorated subscription partner benefits programme."

Shaw added that Brigantia has over 700 members, with more than 300 of them already trading via the wholesale business.

Carl West, supply chain director at Gfk said the move seems a sensible one.

"In principle I can see the benefits of this move," he said. "If they are engaging with manufacturers and they have distribution aligned to that agreement, they can be selective on the products that they take on for their members. They can dovetail the marketing campaigns and bring pricing advantages as well. The bigger players in the market are very much setting up marketplaces for all their services, so this is the way it is going. This will also have some play on the other distributors as well who supply to Brigantia's membership."