Synnex Canada Ltd. has expanded its distribution offerings to now include Lenovo’s TopSeller ThinkCentre desktops and TopSeller ThinkPad notebooks, in an attempt to tackle new market and customer opportunities.
Mark Hardy, vice-president of product management at Synnex Canada, said Synnex and Lenovo first entered into a distribution agreement early last year, when the distributor initially stocked Lenovo’s 3000 desktop and notebook PC line of products that target the SMB customer. Their engagement with Lenovo, he said, was to bring on board new customers who had never purchased from the Lenovo brand before.
“Based on our success with them in this space (with 3000),” Hardy said, “we increased our product offerings to now include their TopSeller ThinkCentre and ThinkPad products. The TopSellers are the key skus from Lenovo that are priced well and are their top selling products,” he added.
While Hardy said Synnex’s primary focus is in seeking out brand new customer opportunities with these offerings, by no means, he said will the distributor be turning away other customers who wish to work with Synnex and who deal in the SMB space and beyond.
“There’s definitely the opportunity for consumers and for partners who sell to consumers to get engaged with Lenovo’s ThinkCentre and ThinkPad product line,” Hardy said. “I see this doing well with home users. And while the SMB space is our focus and one of our strengths, the products are not limited to just the SMB customer.”
In addition, Hardy said partners can also find opportunities with business users in the corporate sector and with sales teams. He also mentions that because Synnex is going after a new type of customer with these products in Canada, he’s not afraid to say that it will be a bit of a challenge for Synnex partners and resellers.
“Finding new opportunities is going to require a lot of heavy lifting and lots of engagement from our partners,” he advises.
But for the partners who work in this space, Hardy mentions they should expect to receive their standard hardware margins and may be a little bit more depending on the circumstance.
To help support its channel, Hardy said Synnex also offers marketing materials such as flyers that resellers can request on demand. These resources, he said, can then be customized by the reseller to add their own company information on it.
“I would tell our partners to engage with us or Lenovo because they have excellent pre and post sales support both on the Web and personal,” Hardy said. “We also offer a number of marketing programs to help them sell Lenovo products to their customers,” he adds.