A total of 80 days have passed and D&H Canada is still operating despite the persistent rumours and scuttle-but that the American distributor would have a short leash on its Canadian subsidiary.
Country manager Greg Tobin hasn’t heard any of these rumours, mainly because he has been extremely busy ramping up the business in Canada. He admits that he is not surprised that there are naysayers.
“I challenge (the rumours out there that D&H Canada will only last 18 months). They do not know the history of this organization. About 20 years ago, they were just a regional player and they decided they wanted to become national. And they did it one location at a time. Now they have moved on to Canada. Canada is a market they want to stay in and vendors do want a North American reach. They want a unified organization, not one that is fragmented,” Tobin said.
Tobin recalls the subsidiary’s second order where a reseller needed a small acquisition of just 57 monitors, but they needed them on on both sides of the border. With D&H’s flexibility with locations in Canada and in the U.S., that order was fulfilled, Tobin said.
For Tobin the hardest part of running D&H in Canada is getting that first order with a reseller.
“There is the underdog factor and there are a lot of people who want to make it a success. They place the first order and then I get an email saying ‘it worked pretty good’,” he said.
Currently, Tobin has been focusing on activating accounts and pushing orders through so that these resellers become regular customers.
D&H Canada has managed to sign more than 500 resellers to date and has more than doubled its line card from 30 vendors to 70 vendors. New to D&H Canada are Western Digital, Seagate, Targus, Griffin Technologies, SanDisk, Belkin and Kensington.
“We have a great cross section of customers (resellers) from B.C., Alberta right through to the coast. We even have one in Dawson City, N.W.T. That was interesting. We shipped the product in a couple of days via air to Edmonton and then the rest on the ground,” he said.
D&H Canada is offering its first major promotion to encourage further reseller sign up. For those ordering for the first time, D&H Canada is offering a $50 Visa gift certificate card. Those ordering $700 or more over the Web will get a digital camera. For orders of $5,000 D&H will send that reseller a digital picture frame. At the $10,000 mark they will get an Xbox Elite console gaming system. The grand prize is a digital home experience with 42 inch-flat panel TV from Acer, Xbox Elite, a Halo 3 game, Harmony 1000 remote control and a 5.1 surround sound stereo system. The promo starts on Oct. 1st and runs through Dec. 7th. Every order is eligible for the grand prize.
“If you work out the discount it is substantial and we know that when we get the first order we can proceed and they are comfortable with us. Customers have options to where they purchase there products and we just want to give them a little nudge,” Tobin said.
