In an effort to do more business with large retailers and e-tailers in Canada, Lenovo has announced an expanded distribution partnership with Synnex Canada Ltd., a subsidiary of Synnex Corp.
Through the partnership, Synnex will distribute Lenovo’s IdeaPad portfolio of notebook and netbook products. Currently being offered through Synnex are the Lenovo IdeaPad Y530, all-on-one notebook, Lenovo IdeaPad U110, for mobile users, and the Lenovo S10 and S12 netbooks.
Sammy Kinlaw, North American director of distributor sales at Lenovo, says the expanded partnership was a “natural fit” for the company, which is hoping to strengthen its retail and e-tail presence with Synnex’s help.
“By the holiday time frame, Synnex will have our entire IdeaPad portfolio,” Kinlaw said. “They’ll have our 10, 12, 14, 15 and 16-inch products.”
Kinlaw says in addition to offering the IdeaPad products through Synnex, both Supercom and Ingram Micro also offer the line as well.
“The goal is to reach large retail and e-tailers such as NewEgg, Tiger Direct, etc.,” he said. “Synnex has a huge reach into the partner set that we’re not currently selling into.”
Through distribution with Synnex, both retail partners, TigerDirect and Canada Computers are offering the IdeaPad line up of products. While there’s currently no big-box retail store offering the IdeaPad line through Synnex, there are talks for new retail partnerships going on now. Kinlaw says he expects to see a major big box retailer with Synnex to be announced sometime before the end of the year.
Mark Hardy, vice-president of product management at Synnex, says the partnership with Lenovo is a fairly recent one, dating back to only 18 to 24 months ago.
“We also offer Lenovo’s ThinkPad line, but this expansion now includes the consumer product, IdeaPad,” Hardy said. “IdeaPad fits into the consumer and SMB business (markets) extremely well.”
Since its distribution partnership began, Hardy says Synnex has already signed up “hundreds” of new resellers for Lenovo, and growing. Currently, Synnex has over 15,000 resellers around the world.
To help its resellers in this space, Hardy says the distributor is providing marketing materials, virtual flyers, whitepapers and alternate terms and conditions with these products.
“With any newly announced product line or expansion, you want to be able to put those products into as many hands as you can possible reach,” Kinlaw said. “Synnex is helping us do this by expanding our partnership beyond the commercial line of products that we also have available today.”
Hardy said that especially in these trying economic times, a product line such as this one is nothing but good news for the channel.
“In these economic times, there’s an opportunity for resellers to find new opportunities in the consumer and SMB side of the equation. The products offer the portability, reliability and functions that are a good fit for this customer set.”
In other Lenovo news, the company has just announced two additions to its ThinkServer portfolio of products, geared towards the SMB market. The new products include the TS200 tower and the RS210 rack single-processor servers, which offer users virtualization capabilities, along with power-savings. The ThinkServer TS200 and RS210 will be available through Lenovo’s channels by the beginning of next quarter.