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Life in the channel


TOGETHER WE CAN


Jonathan Sutherland, sales director at Exertis talks product, distribution and supporting customer needs.


How do you ensure your product ranges stay relevant to evolving customer needs? We have an extremely knowledgeable retail team in our business that work with our customers daily to review the performance of our brands, and what our portfolio is offering in relation to our customers’ needs. Tis enables us to be agile when discussing the requirements of our customers and we can feedback to our vendor partners using this insight to capitalise on opportunity. Our portfolio team also has extensive market knowledge and is


working with our vendor partners in the same way. Tis enables us to get a fantastic insight from all sides into current market trends, which ultimately helps us support our customers ranging choices to maximise sales.


Do you have specific areas of expertise within the tech landscape? If so, what are they and how do they benefit your partners? Yes, we have over 180 years of combined technology and distribution experience just within our own retail team. Tis experience, alongside our portfolio team, benefits our partners by providing them with insights, guidance and solutions tailored to their needs. Whether this be launching new categories or new technology, supporting them with operational or working capital challenges, our retail expertise helps our partners achieve their goals efficiently and effectively. We offer strategic advice at a brand product and category level; we


want to help our partners navigate the complex technology market by providing them opportunities for innovation and help drive their growth and competitiveness. What emerging technologies are you keeping your eye on? Tis year’s CES was very focused on AI, it was mentioned in almost all new technology from computing and mobile, as you would expect, but also across almost everything else. We are seeing AI-enabled devices across our portfolio and it is an


exciting time. We feel this is likely to have a positive impact on our customers’ sales.


www.pcr-online.biz What AI means for the consumer will require more education


and retail execution will be key, we can add real value here as our marketing team are engaged with all our vendors to help support retail execution. We are optimistic this should drive propensity to purchase. Te


new features across computing and mobile brands should help drive the upgrade from Covid-purchased devices into something far more user-friendly with brand new feature sets. Gaming is a world that is always evolving, and mobile gaming is


going to continue to grow, as is PC handheld gaming. Our gaming specialism as well as our digital business in Ztorm, coupled with our unique bundling capability, really will help our retailers offer their customers choice. We see this as another growth opportunity in the year ahead. We will work closely with all of our vendor partners and retailers to help maximise these new trends and support execution at retail.


What sets you apart? We want to make the complex easy for our customers. In addition


to the value, we have a world-class logistics facility that delivers real added value to our customers, from our unique bundling capability (enabling our partners to differentiate from their competitors and win), to our ever-growing volume of dropship solutions which has grown 25% in the last year alone (direct shipments to end consumer). Our customers can trust Exertis to deliver products next day to


their customers, taking logistics costs out of their business. Tis also gives our customers a significant working capital benefits as we hold the stock for them. We genuinely believe in partnership across our whole


organisation. We want to continue to work with our customers in all aspects of their businesses. We are passionate about people, and we want to continue to partner with customers to understand their values and align even more closely with them.


March/April 2024 | 49


Interview


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