Acco Brands Canada Inc. has enabled its Kensington computer products group to operate separately from itself. Kensington will still be a division inside the Acco organization in Canada.
In the past, Kensington products were sold under the Acco umbrella then the subsidiary decided that Kensington was not an office products vendor so the company allowed them to develop its own sales team, channel group, marketing department and services representatives, according to Michael Reynolds, associate channel manager for Kensington, based in Brampton, Ont.
Kensington was founded in 1981 with the invention of the System Saver, a combined cooling fan and surge protector that became a peripheral for the Apple II. Currently, Kensington has more than 300 computing accessory products in its inventory.
Meanwhile, Acco Brands is one of the world’s largest suppliers of branded office products, with annual revenues of nearly US$2 billion. The Acco brand names comprise of Swingline, Wilson Jones, Quartet, GBC, Day-Timer and Rexel. Acco Brands are distributed to more than 100 countries. But, Kensington is its only computing brand.
“The goal is to raise our brand awareness to the point where people will say ‘I need a Kensington instead of saying I need a mouse,’” Reynolds said.
Currently, Kensington’s largest partners are its three main distributors Ingram Micro Canada, Tech Data Canada and Synnex Canada. They also have strong relationships with retailers CIS and Grand & Toy.
Its main competitors are Microsoft’s Hardware division, Logitech and Targus. “We are not the biggest, but we are building step-by-step and we will steal marketshare where ever we can,” he said.
Besides its partnerships with the three main broadline distributors, Kensington also has territory managers that handle VARs such as Softchoice and Nexinnovations, Reynolds said.
