Why a lack of 'proactive' disties led this former reseller director to launch a VAD

Wise Distribution MD says he saw room in the IT distribution market for a disruptive newcomer

An absence of "proactive" IT distributors led to a channel veteran establishing his own VAD.

Scott Saunders set up Wise Distribution in June, after spending time as sales director at Trust Systems.

He told CRN that his time working with vendors such as McAfee, distributor Brightstar Corporate (later Tech Data Mobile) and reseller Trust has given him the expertise to carve out a niche for his IT distribution company.

"I've built a lot of reseller channels for vendors, and when I was building them I always put a two-tier model in place - partners and distributors - but it was very hard to find a proactive distributor," he said.

"The whole point for me of having a distributor [as a vendor] is to walk me into resellers that they have a good relationship with. In hindsight, that didn't really happen.

"I wasn't getting a lot of value out of the distributors I was dealing with. I don't know how you can call yourself a distributor if all you're doing is pricing and not walking me into the right type of partners."

Reading-based Wise Distribution specialises in cybersecurity and has so far signed up five UK vendors: Agari, Node4, Silex and Safe Data Storage.

Saunders expects to sign 10 partners in the first year, and hopes that turnover will reach £10m within five years. He counts Kite Distribution and Cloud Distribution among Wise's competitors.

He added that there is an impending announcement regarding a partnership with an Irish distributor too, but could not disclose any further details.

"There's a partnership there to be done because my team's expertise is the UK, not Ireland," Saunders said.

"I'd rather have a partnership with an Irish distributor who is Irish and has expertise in that area," he explained, adding that it will give Wise a "foothold" in the EU.

The MD said that working as sales director at Trust has given him an insight into what resellers need from distributors.

"[Trust allowed] me to work with a reseller and speak their language and [understand] the issues and problems that they face on a daily basis," he said. "It allows me to empathise with the partners because I understand the struggles they have.

"There is definitely room for more proactive, disruptive distributors. I know a lot of the reseller partners because they have been channel partners for me at other vendors I've worked for."