Author: Svetlana Belova
«The past year has been difficult for many of us, but despite a general decline in sales at the end of 2008, we have been able to implement the plan year, namely: to grow by 35%», – comments on the outcome of work in 2008, Konstantin Shlyakhov, Vice President, General Manager of «Marvel-Distribution».
With regard to the economic crisis, growth in the company consider quarterly.
Growth in sales (in 2008 as a percentage of 2007)
I quarter: 45
II quarter of: 76
III quarter: 45
IV quarter: 2.5
As the leaders «Marvel», fulfillment of the targets of growth was made possible due to several factors.
One of them – the expansion of the portfolio distribution: in the past year the «Marvel» has 15 new vendors (Abit, AOC, AudioCodes, AVE, Asus, Belinea, Gigabyte GSmart, Gigabyte (PDA), iiyama, Olympus, Philips, Packard-Bell, Proview, Raptoxx, Zotac). Some of the contracts was transferred to the company after the merger with the distribution unit Erimex. In addition, expanded the existing agreement: «Marvel» has received the authorization to supply a family of notebooks Lenovo IdeaPad (in addition to the ThinkPad), as well as the XP family of disk arrays and server solutions Business Critical System of Hewlett-Packard. Now «Marvel» is working with more than 50 vendors. This vendor number 1 is Cisco. In 2008, sales of equipment that the manufacturer has increased by 89% (a year earlier – at 66.1%). Among the vendors making significant share of sales, Hewlett-Packard (the entire line of products), Acer (monitors and laptops), Sony (TSFK and laptops), Canon (TSFK and peripherals), APC (UPS solutions ISX and low-power) , IBM (the whole line), mobile communications Sony Ericsson and HTC, as well as Dell (the whole line).
In the distribution of sales by product departments trend the past three years: declining proportion of components, peripheral equipment, the share of retained PCs, laptops, servers, greatly increasing the proportion of network solutions.
Despite this, the largest share in the structure of distributor sales accounted for by the Department «Components, peripherals, digital equipment». According to Sergey Patskevich, vice president of marketing and director of the department, over the past year, unit sales grew by 17%. Most of the traffic (27%) – Mobile communications (in 2007 – 23%). Slightly less than accounted for by monitors (23%) and product TSFK (20%). Equal position (13%) took the components and the UPS, while the periphery is only 4%.
Second place for the circulation of this year the Department of «Network and Telecommunications». This unit has better dynamics (+73%), which enabled it to improve their positions (in 2007 it ranked third). Panel «Network scale enterprise (Enterprise)», part of the department, was in the «Marvel»’s largest product line, and placed second in the rate of growth. As noted by Igor Belik, Director of «Network and Telecommunications», in 2008 the equipment was sold at 87% more than in 2007 in the department, the product line, took 82%. The share of solutions for PSC accounts for 12% of sales, for voice solutions – 6%.
According Vlas Smith, director of the department «Laptops, PCs and servers», his unit during the period grew by 29%. Most of the sales unit accounted for laptops (55%). Another 33% – on the servers and SAN. PC took only 8%, and the device PDA – 4%.
Finally, on the outcome of the youngest department of the company «Marvel». «Unit« Audio-Video »occupies 0.2% of sales until the distributor. In doing so, almost half (46%) are in the direction of hi-fi Components. Premium hi-fi and hi-end equipment occupies 22% of unit sales, even 32% – cables and accessories », – told him about the structure of the department director Sergey Fomin.
Implementation annual sales also contributed to the growth of the dealer network: from 2160 companies from 130 cities in 2007 to 2525 companies from 152 cities in 2008, the share of the best dealer in 2008 was 3.7% (in 2007 — 3.14%).
In the ten best cities in the volume of sales (excluding Moscow and St. Petersburg) was composed of Ekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Krasnoyarsk, Rostov-on-Don, Perm, Krasnodar.
According to Anton Cherepahina, Director of Sales «Marvel», in the structure of sales in 2008 have dominated the supply of ready-reseller «boxed» products. During the reporting period, they increased by 15% and made 52,3% in turnover. Sales, design decisions have increased by 65% and their share increased from 40% in 2007 to 47.7% in 2008
In 2008 «Marvel-Distribution» was recognized as a distributor with the highest rate of growth of output Linksys, Cisco best distributor in the market of the PSC in Russia and other CIS countries, as well as the best distributor of NTMs in Russia and other CIS countries. The company also received an award «For the greatest growth in sales among distributors SAN Hewlett-Packard».
In 2008, the company held 77 events in Russia: 67 seminars and training sessions for vendors of products in 24 Russian cities, 9 informal meetings with partners in St. Petersburg and Moscow, as well as multi-partner conference in Pribaikalye.
During the reporting period, together with the vendor was organized 14 trips abroad for partners. Among them, two dealerships Academy: Winter – in Bali, and football – in Turkey. Meetings with partners of different expertise held in the Netherlands, New Zealand, Hungary, Ireland, Austria, where the partners visited one of the matches of the championship football EURO-2008 in the Monaco team partners «Marvel» bolela for team of «Zenit» in the match for the UEFA Super Cup , the Singapore distributor partners visited the first-ever night race «Formula 1». In 2008, the winners of the marketing program, please visit exotic Malaysia, have mastered the basics of winter sports in Lapland, got to the Czech culture in Prague, and visited the world capital of gambling – Las Vegas. In all events «Marvel» in 2008, was attended by about 1,7 thousand partners. In addition, in 2008 spent 205 distributor marketing programs for product 35 vendors.
According to Constantine Shlyakhova crisis – it is an opportunity to prepare for new growth. Therefore, the company is doing to meet the recovery «heeled». «At the beginning of the crisis, all distributors were faced with the same problems – he says. – The fall of the IT market by 40% resulted in the formation of excess inventory in the channel sales. In addition, bank lending has declined sharply as a result, customers began to abandon the IT projects, and second-level partners experienced a shortage of working capital. Notable part of market players are not able to pay in time for its obligations. As a result, we have received so-called crisis of confidence between partners. That such “baggage” we have come to the end of 2008 »
The company made crisis measures will solve (or reduce) a large part of the problem. By the end of 2008, a «Marvel» was not overdue debts, and bank loan funds have been minimized. Inventory turnover of the dealer at the beginning of January was 1.5 months, «new» sales. It has been a reduction of staff – about 20% (in the market as a whole at least 40%). Credit policy was revised sharply reduced the number of «bad» debts.
With respect to plans, the main tasks in the current year Shlyakhov Constantine finds:
increase in market share due to the fact that in the context of falling sales of the company will reduce the turnover is slower than the market as a whole;
preserve the solvency and good credit history in order to be able to buy a new product;
search for new product niches and opportunities for additional sales;
development network, remaining in that period;
improving inventory turnover;
greater control over expenditures and other indicators of the company budget.