In an effort to help cut costs and gain a competitive foothold in the Canadian marketplace, Philips Canada has turned the logistics roles in its monitors division over to distributor Supercom.
Philips Canada, a Markham, Ont-based healthcare, lifestyle and technology solutions provider, has worked with the Markham, Ont.-based distributor of computer and consumer electronic products to distribute its monitors for seven years. Now Supercom will deal directly with the parent company, Philips Taiwan, and since July 1 has been the direct distributor for Philips products in Canada.
Despite these recent changes, Philips Canada ensures both partners and customers that service depots, customer service and warranty policies will remain the same, in accordance with Philip’s global standards.
Marc Rossi, product manager at Supercom, believes his company has what it takes to succeed in this new role.
“We’re a fully fledged computer distributing company,” Rossi said. “Effective July 1, we manage inventory and warehousing for the Philips line of products in Canada.”Craig Hucal, Philips business manager for monitors in Canada, assures users the company is still going strong.
“Going into this model was a way to make Philips more competitive in the marketplace,” Hucal said. “By reducing the number of touch times, we felt this was a good way to have a more competitive distribution model and it was a way to take some of the costs out of the product.”
While Supercom has warehouses in both Toronto and Vancouver and sales offices in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, Rossi said management decisions in regards to Philips Canada monitors will come from its Toronto offices. The stocking and distributing of the monitors will be carried out in both Supercom’s Toronto and Vancouver warehouses.
“We have over 6,000 partners across Canada,” Rossi said. “We want to ensure that business continues so we’ll continue to partner up with distributors and sub distributors.”
From a revenue standpoint, Hucal said since Philips Canada no longer distributes monitors directly, revenue gained from them will now go back to Philips Taiwan.
“We want to get the message out there that Philips is still alive and well,” Hucal said. “We see the market expanding we expect the demand for widescreen monitors to ramp up. We’ll continue to be successful by continuing to run promotions, reseller and customer appreciation events and training whenever we can.”
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