“”We’ve always been the poor cousins of the PC family,”” says Terry Tomacek, general manager of Acer Canada.
Not any more. Citing an IDC report, the company says it chalked up a 231 per cent third quarter growth in sales of desktop PCs, notebooks and servers over the same period a year ago.
There
are twice as many Acer resellers as there were in 2003, thanks to deals struck with Radio Shack — “”those guys do some big numbers with us,”” says Tomacek — and an expansion into all of the Hartco franchise stores. This was also the first full year of a distribution contract with Synnex.
These factors plus aggressive pricing have boosted Acer sales, he says.
Things are so good Tomack hired three more service people this year to boost his staff to 23, and the division hopes to move into a new facility shortly in the Toronto area. “”We need twice as much space as we currently have,”” he says.
But arguably the highlight of 2004 came last month when Ingram Micro Canada agreed to distribute Acer laptops and monitors, validating the push manufacturer began four years ago to be more than an industry also-ran.
“”Ingram brings us the large reach and depth to grow our business rapidly,”” Tomacek enthuses. In the new year, he hopes, the company’s desktops and servers will flow through the Ingram stream.
He credits Acer’s all-channel, single price to all resellers strategy as being a key to this leap. Even the rise in the Canadian dollar helps, he says, because buyers see more value in PCs. However, “”as prices comes down it gets a challenge to grow revenue,”” he admits.
“”I certainly hope in 2005 we can double revenue again.”” He believes Acer will be the number one notebook vendor in the Canadian that distributes solely through the channel, and fourth overall. “”We still have a long way to grow,”” he says, “”but ultimately our goal is to be the number one notebook and LCD vendor.””