24 March 2008
Midwich has launched a specialist division to cater for high-end audio-visual technology, which it claimed would have been in danger of faltering without a greater degree of market-making activities.
The distributor’s Hi-Technology business unit has four technical pre-sales consultants to promote a portfolio including Panasonic’s 103in plasma screen, Philips 3D screens, weatherproof and touchscreen displays and Barca projectors.
Nick Culley, managing director at Midwich, said the technology was highly specialist and integrators would require a lot of hand-holding.
"If we did not give these products additional focus, most resellers would have struggled to find a home for them. We are trying to provide some channel development activity for the vendors," he said.
Midwich will offer seeding units to trade customers and pre-sales consultancy to cover aspects such as site surveys. Culley said it was working with software developers to provide content for large screens.
Though confident it could open the doors of customer prospects, Neil Colquhoun, channel business manager for presentation products at Panasonic Business Systems, said most customers required local specialist support.
"The sales cycles on these technologies are longer and require technical expertise. Trying to open that up through a generalist sales floor at a distributor does not work," he claimed.
The move by Midwich brings it squarely into competition with PSCo, a former high-end screen division of Maverick that split from the business last summer, but Culley said no distributor could match its operation.
However, Stuart Holmes, managing director at PSCo, said he would be surprised if anyone could beat its post-sales service on the limited portfolio it offered.
"Midwich has made a number of acquisitions and has become a jack-of-all-trades," he said.
