Peripheral performers
There's something to be said for having a diverse product portfolio. As we heard earlier in the year, North London distributor Interactive Ideas has been doing very nicely on the back of its strong Linux for enterprise offering. But at this time of year, its peripherals business comes to the fore.
Interactive Ideas today announced it has added CTA Digital to its stable of peripherals vendors, which includes recent additions AverMedia, Pair & Go and Rainbow as well as long-standing brands like Saitek, Mad Catz, Trust, Thrustmaster and Hercules.
HEXUS.channel spoke to marketing director Michael Breeze to find out how Interactive Ideas chooses its peripherals vendors. "We work with a select number of vendors in retail because we offer a lot of added value," he said. "Accordingly we look for vendors that provide something unique and we tend to take on newer brands."
Interactive Ideas is one of a group of distributors that seem to have coped surprisingly well in these challenging economic times thanks, in part, to being a bit smaller and more agile. It had a record year last year and is on track to improve on that performance by a third. To manage all this extra business, it has grown headcount to such a level that it has recently had to move into bigger offices.
CTA Digital has been around for 15 years and has evolved to specialize in peripherals and accessories for the big console makers, like this bowling ball for the Wii.
