Netgear to add three local staff by end of the year

Cites recovering economy in decision to hire

By Hamish Barwick, Auckland | Monday, 08 March 2010
By the fourth quarter of this year three staff will have joined Netgear’s business development manager Kent Dapiere, currently the only employee here.

ANZ managing director Ryan Parker says the decision to hire is based on positive signs of economic recovery and an increase in sales of the vendor’s networking products.

It plans to hire two channel sales staff to support the national retail and small and medium business sectors. In addition, the company seeks to recruit an account manager or another business development manager to focus on the telecommunications space and support accounts such as Telstraclear and Vodafone.

Dapiere says his personal goal is to grow the Netgear business to a point where Parker will make him New Zealand country manager.

Netgear wants to provide greater support for partners through videoconferencing, and it has already identified a couple of partners that have the technology in place.

“We see that as a great way of getting our reseller partners to work more closely with us on opportunities and bringing them to our distribution partners, and help them [resellers] be successful. We have been punching well below our capability in New Zealand. A lot of it’s our own fault, because we have been a little bit erratic in our ability to support the market.”

Parker adds the vendor will hold reseller training sessions mid-year, focusing on its SMB and retail products such as the Connected Lifestyle home networking range.

“We want to help the partners tell the Netgear story to the consumers,” he says.