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Ingram Micro to brand PCs

Surprises

from the channel-conflict dept

Mon, Aug 9th 1999 10:41am — Mike Masnick
Massive computer distributor Ingram Micro has decided to start branding its own PCs. This seems, to me, to be a wonderful way to piss off a lot of the companies they work with. They don't seem to think it's an issue, from the quotes in the article, but I wonder what their boxmaking partners and dealers will think of it.
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4 Comments

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  • identicon
    Dan Miller, 9 Aug 1999 @ 12:28pm

    Why?

    What I want to know is why they are doing this? Only a very small percentage of the consumer market would even know who Ingram-Micro even is. You don't see their name on anything that is ever-dropped shipped from them, and for a good reason, they are the "behind the scenes" people, not the in your face branding company.

    I don't understand the desire to change that now, and I'm not sure it will work.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Todd, 9 Aug 1999 @ 2:35pm

      Re: Why?

      Ingram is the distributor of choice for the biggest group of box movers in the country: resellers. You and I NEVER see resellers, but they number 25,000 - 40,000 and their companies sell hardware to the 7M small-medium businesses in the US. When a reseller needs a box, they call Ingram (then TechData -- actually, they speed dial both to ensure they're getting best price). Ingram and the other resellers get fucked quarterly by the OEMs (Compaq especially) in the form of "buy ins", where the OEM will say "help us book the sale this quarter and we'll give you big discounts next quarter". These never pan out for distributors, but if they don't make these deals, they don't get good terms next quarter and they lose sales to the distributor who DID take the deal.

      So, they have been dying to have some means of pushing back against the OEMs and this is it -- think about the power shift when a reseller calls Ingram "Well we have the IBM box you're looking for, but for $75 less we'll give you the same basic PC with our logo on it". The OEMs will absolutely lose sales as the resellers are not as brand sensitive as they are price sensitive -- rather their small business customers are extremely price sensitive, hence the resellers are price sensitive. You follow me here.

      The power for the past 2 years has been in THREATENING to use this "weapon"; now the distis have been forced to actually use it

      Lastly, now is the time when we should really question the value of a brand in PC making/selling -- what is the brand proposition that the big OEMs offer? We'll sell you an asset with a warranty and an 800 number, but are any of the attributes of those three elements any different than our competitors can offer?

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    pr, 27 Jul 2007 @ 9:51am

    employment policy

    anyone out there gone thru Ingram Micro hiring process? curious about final procedures i.e. background checks, etc. - thx

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    pr, 27 Jul 2007 @ 11:01am

    employment policy

    anyone out there gone thru Ingram Micro hiring process? curious about final procedures i.e. background checks, etc. - thx

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]


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