U.S.-based RackSolutions, a custom vendor of computer rack and mounting solutions, is expanding north of the border and will open a new warehouse and customer service centre in Toronto within the next couple of months.
RackSolutions is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Innovation First International and was established in 1996, Larry Harris, the company’s president said.
The company, which Harris says originally started out offering robotics solutions, has since expanded its offerings to also include custom rack solutions. With rack inconsistencies present in many organizations, Harris says RackSolutions offers “fast, simple, out of the box solutions that enable any server to fit into any rack,” which is ideal for saving space inside data centres.
Using its Greenville, Tex.-based manufacturing plant, the company custom designs and makes solutions for its customers and is also able to pick, pack and ship its offerings out on a daily basis.
With recent interest in and the adoption of data centres, Harris says the company has been seeing most of its business coming from this area as of late, as opposed to other areas such as accounting firms and lawyers offices.
RackSolutions does business globally and also has a warehouse location in the UK and representation in Mexico, with plans to open an office in Mexico in the near future.
As for Canada, Harris says due to an increase in customer demand, RackSolutions will open a warehouse in Toronto within the next couple of months.
“This will make it easier for Canadians to get their products,” Harris explained. “There will probably be about four people in the Canadian location at first and the rest of the expertise will be coming from our Texas facility. We feel there’s a lot of business in Canada and having to go through customs, duty and freight was proving to be a challenge.”
The company’s go-to-market efforts are a combination of both direct and indirect sales, Harris said. In addition to original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partnerships with vendors such as Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), RackSolutions also has a distribution partnership with Ingram Micro (NYSE: IM).
Harris says the company prides itself on being able to offer customers a prototyped solution within two to three days of the initial request, he said. RackSolutions is looking to further expand its reach into the Canadian channel and is now having discussions with other distributors too, Harris revealed.
Some of the company’s products include all-in-one desktops for industry-specific verticals such as hospitals and schools to move around, wall mount solutions and server racks.
While its solutions are all branded under the RackSolutions name, Harris says on occasion, the company has even entertained the idea of private-labeling for some of its products. RackSolutions partners should also expect to receive margins in the double-digit range, he added.
As for a message to the partner and end-user community, Harris says, “Choose RackSolutions because of our agility, quality and customization. We design everything with our in-house engineers and we also provide prototypes at no charge to the customer. We’re also very fast and efficient and if we stock the product, we offer same day shipping if the order comes in by noon.”
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