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AccessChannel Gives Small Vendors Access to
Wide Market
By Pedro Pereira, June 16, 2005
Small makers of innovative technology
and boutique software developers typically find when
they are ready to expand into two-tier distribution
that no one will carry their product. That's because
distributors tend to think big. They require volume
commitments that scrappy little companies can't fulfill
and marketing dollars they do not have. It becomes a
Catch-22 in which a small company must have a distributor
to achieve a certain volume, but can't get a distributor
interested if it hasn't already reached that volume.
Distributors, of course, don't want to take ownership
of merchandise that often is too new and market-untested
even if it has potential, or, in some cases, too complex
or expensive, even if carries the promise of higher
margins. Setting up new vendors requires an investment
by the distributor that may never be recovered if the
product doesn't move fast enough or ever.
Al Mann and Mike Terrell are intimately familiar with
this situation, having both worked in purchasing at
the world's largest IT distributor, Santa Ana, Calif.-based
Ingram Micro Inc. And they think they've hit on the
solution to give small, low-volume vendors a shot at
getting their products distributed through Ingram Micro's
mammoth logistics infrastructure.
Mann and Terrell joined forces last fall to form AccessChannel,
a logistics outsourcing company in San Jose, Calif.,
that will act as an intermediary between Ingram Micro
and the vendors.
"This will be the way emerging technologies actually
get their shot in the marketplace," Mann told Ziff
Davis Internet.
"This is an opportunity to change the way technology
manufacturers reach the market, but it's fundamentally
the same channel."
Mann, who spent 12 years at Ingram Micro, is AccessChannel's
CEO, and Terrell, who was at the distributor 10 years,
is chief operating officer. They decided to get together
after hearing that they each, unbeknownst to the other,
had been working on identical logistics models. The
distribution veterans decided to collaborate and approach
Ingram Micro with the idea. The distributor liked what
it heard and signed a contract with AccessChannel.
"Ingram Micro saw the light very quickly,"
Mann recalls.
Next Page: Why didn't we think of that earlier?
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