Former BenQ Canada chief Jimmy Davlouros has found a new home as a leader of a Singapore consumer electronics brand rolling out in this country, declaring he can take the company from nothing in sales to $100 million by the end of the year.
He’s become the vice-president and North American general manager for VisionQuest, a line of LCD TVs, monitors, DVD recorders and players and home theatre systems made by KXD Digital Entertainment Ltd.
Eventually, he said, the company will expand into portable electronics, such as GPS systems, MP3 players and digital photo frames.
Last February Davlouros was elevated to being BenQ’s North American chief operating officer, but he left five months later, saying he was the wrong person for that job. For several months he consulted to white box manufacturer MDG Computers and VisionQuest before being offered a post by the manufacturer.
Now he’s about to introduce a channel program and line up resellers to carry the company’s products here.
“It’s a wonderful brand,” he said in an interview. “It’s coming into the market in North America from a very paletable end-user perception. I’m trying to build an extremely comfortable, cool brand. Now, everybody’s trying to do that, or so it appears, and how they’re tying to do that is by price-points and expose price positioning through e-tailers and retailers, whereas I’m taking a totally different approach to market” by going through the channel.
Initially the products are being distributed here through Synnex Canada, with several SKUs already in its system.
“We’re getting more consumer electronics, so it definitely fits with our strategy,” said Synnex Canada CEO Jim Estill. “I think this could become a material line for us.
“I also think VisionQuest has a very, very aggressive growth plan.”
Davlouros, he added, is “one of the reasons we’re signing the line. He has a proven track record of creating and making markets.”
Michelle Warren, a PC monitor analyst at Partner Research of Toronto, said she’s not surprised VisionQuest is moving here after starting in the U.S. But, she added, “it will be tough for them to build market share in Canada, because the monitor market is pretty well populated.
“If they come in in the segments that are experiencing tremendous growth, such as 19- and 20-inch LCD segments, there’s some room. At the same time you’ve got some really strong brands, such as Samsung, Viewsonic, LG and NEC in the corporate market. In the consumer market there’s more of a play solely on price, depending upon which products they bring in. The question is whether it’s profitable market share.”
Known for being a colourful marketer — Estill called him “flamboyant” — Davlouros built channels and brands for Brother International and Samsung Electronics here before moving to BenQ.
In 2005 he was elevated to BenQ’s Los Angeles office as executive-vice president, but soon returned to Canada when the division here ran into sales trouble. A year later he was asked to go south again, but it didn’t work out.
“I regret accepting the title of chief operating officer,” he said. “I thought it would be an experience, a stepping stone to the next step, you know. That’s what I thought it was. But I basically shouldn’t have taken that role. I should have stuck to my guns and merchandise, merchandise, merchandise. My claim to fame is building a comfortable brand for consumers, right? And making a lot of money for the resellers.
“I resigned,” he said. “I had to.”
“I’m just not COO material,” he said. “I’m a merchandiser. And I had a wonderful relationship with the (BenQ) president, who I think is a brilliant man and supported me throughout. And we just cut ties on a very amicable and a wonderful level. The guy’s fantastic. He did everything he could for me, and I just couldn’t live with myself at that caliber of a career. I wanted to come back home.”
He began consulting to MDG almost as soon as he left BenQ. He was asked to bring the company into consumer electronics, and ended up introducing the company to VisionQuest, whom he was also advising. Later, VisionQuest asked him to join its company full-time.
The VisionQuest partner program has not been fleshed out, but Davlouros said benefits will include demo products, MDF funds, co-advertising, rebates and promotional activities. Initially, resellers and not big box retailers will be his focus.
At the end of 2007, he wants the brand to be a widely-recognized name in Canada. “Am I going to do $100 million by 2007? You betcha,” he said.
Comment: [email protected]
