A newly-established portal showcasing HP accessories allows the vendor to maintain its channel emphasis and avoid development cost, while also showing Acquire is focused on building HP’s brand, the companies say.
Acquire director Simon Scott says his company was among the first of HP’s e-business partners to establish a dedicated portal, or sub-website, for HP in 2002. He says it has “been playing the dedicated site game” for about six years.
“We saw [the accessories portal] as an opportunity to show HP, as our biggest vendor partner by a country mile, that we’re focused on the brand and can enhance their business,” says Scott. “We have an economy of scale and know what it costs to maintain a fully transactional website.”
HP SMB marketing manager Warwick Grey says the vendor has established its own such sites overseas, but New Zealand is one of only a few countries where this work is done by a channel partner.
“They’re getting the benefit as far as having an online procurement portal that’s so extensive. It is HP for HP accessories, but delivered through a reseller.”
An added benefit of the portal is other resellers can use it to reference which accessories are available for different HP products, particularly notebooks.
“Usually there is a lot of effort that goes with resellers selling the PC or notebook, but they don’t say, ‘what can we look at with accessories’? And there’s some really good margin in that. We can direct resellers to this site to see what accessories there are and what they should be offering.”
Grey says the portal is “a great idea to support New Zealand customers, and a chance for HP resellers to make more money”.
As well as dedicated HP portals, Acquire has previously established sub-websites for Symantec, D-Link and Sony.
It also offers portals showcasing products for particular customer groups, such as nzicait.com, which offers HP product bundles for the New Zealand Society of Chartered Accountants.
Scott says Acquire now has about 30 brand or customer group-focused sites.
