Championing retailers’ future by building and maintaining dealer relationships

I’ve built my company over the last 28 years on professional reputation and delivery of service for trade dealers, achieving this through established reliable and reputable international supply chains, our own experienced long-standing UK team, and the loyalty of our strict trade-only dealer customers.

Central to any successful business are the dedicated people who operate within it and share our common goal which is to give our dealers the very best customer experience.

I feel lucky to have attracted talented and diverse individuals over the years, including specialist personnel for technical support, IT, purchasing, operations, sales, marketing and, more recently, productspecific members for copier toner and printer hardware - all, of course, supported by our fantastic warehouse team.

The bottom line of any business needs to be offering a value proposition for a reliable product and service. My team and I provide this by passing on savings to dealers through our regular specialist supply partner reviews and our professional B2B contract management; this has further helped us expand our portfolio of toner and ink ranges to include types such as OEM and branded - Xerox XET/ IBM - as well as our established unbranded compatible and remanufactured options.

We must listen and react to our dealer customers’ needs. Over the years they have asked for later cut-off points with timed delivery, private labelling, support for their website developments and the provision of free training for dealer sales staff. They have asked us for new products and required of us a sustainable solution which, I’m delighted to say, includes our zero-landfill promise.

Technical efficiency is also high on the dealer wish list for streamlining their daily business processes through EDI electronic ordering and direct invoicing which has helped all parties scale. Furthermore, the visibility of our business through our tradeonly website, and our supported free Fusion Plus data for their dealer websites and back offices, has proved invaluable.

Finally, if COVID taught us nothing else, it was the need to react and diversify to support dealers - which we did by quickly sourcing and onboarding a range of PPE. I’ve never been one to stand still; since the 2020 pandemic, and through our dealer’s further requests, we are now providing an extensive range of stationery items and printer hardware provision and we continue to promote a greener managed print solution.

The number of printed pages and new device rollouts are reducing per annum and OEMs, by and large, are seeking control of end-user data to cut out dealers. A philosophy that counters this with an alternative solution enables the OP dealer longevity in the office printing market.

This is our philosophy.