Fighting for vendors
Greg Spierkel, the CEO of distribution giant Ingram Micro, has told HEXUS.channel that Europe’s relatively large number are not necessarily a good thing.
“From a distribution point of view, Europe is the weakest region in the world. It is the most fragmented and least homogenised,” he said. “It’s over distributed and it would be better off if there were just three or four big players implementing bigger programmes and adding more value to the channel.”
Presumably Ingram would be one of these three or four, but Spierkel insisted broader interests than just those of tier one disties would be well served by such a development. “The vast majority of our vendors want technical competence and investment. The fragmentation of distribution is inhibiting that in Europe.”
“The UK and France have been our healthiest from a profitability point of view and the SMB sector is our most profitable category. We would like to put more programmes in place but this requires more from vendors to happen.”
Spierkel was speaking at the first European gathering of the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC), which exists to promote and publicise many of the world’s largest distributors.
