If you’re tired of hearing negative news about the economy every time you flip on the TV or open a newspaper, here’s some news more soothing to the ears: The Global Technology Distribution Council says the economic downturn has leveled off and the worst is over for distributors in the U.S.
While we haven’t been hit as hard as our neighbours south of the border, this is clearly good news for Canadians too.
The GTDC, a consortium of the IT industry’s wholesale distributors that represent $100 billion in revenue, released these findings in a report based on stats from the NPD Group’s Distributor Track, which aggregates U.S. sales from member distributors. This is the first report of ongoing quarterly reports the GTDC plans to release on business trends facing distributors.
The numbers also show that strong growth categories this year include netbooks, wireless products and network-attached storage, which more SMBs are using to manage, share and store their data.
It’s about time someone made this type of information available on a recurring basis, considering the important role that distributors play in the channel. And it’s more needed than ever right now.
While the numbers are still down, they suggest that sales are trending better for distributors overall and January may have been the “bottom” of the recession. Credit is loosening up. And it’s expected the stimulus package in the U.S. will boost sales.
It’s not only the numbers that suggest this. Distributors have been echoing this sentiment lately – though with caution. No one wants to say for certain that the worst is over, but it appears that business may be starting to pick up again.
D&H, which has weathered this storm particularly well, has reported six per cent sales growth through the end of its fourth fiscal quarter, ended April 30. It saw a 54 per cent increase in sales of notebooks and netbooks; also on the rise were mobile devices, storage, security and networking products.
It’s anyone’s guess whether we’ve really hit rock bottom yet. But with the role that psychology plays in a recession, it can’t hurt to finally see some positive numbers. For months, people have been sitting back, waiting out the storm, resulting in a stagnating economy. Now, perhaps, we’ll start to see a few signs of movement.
Eventually, people have to start investing in IT again. There’s only so long you can hold off on refreshing your equipment or revamping outdated business processes – especially at a time when people need to use their resources more wisely.
So, while no one can say with certainty that the worst is over, the numbers suggest it very well could be.
