#305 Steve Low: Get big, get niche or get out.

Now, Titan has

recently condensed its vendor portfolio, which for me, I'm thinking most distributors want to add more vendors all the time.

That's quite a bold move.

So why are you not trying to add more vendors? What's the thinking behind that decision? Yes, really, it's a difficult balance, but we're a specialist,

and I'd rather be important to 20 than middle of the road for 40.

And I think for us as well, as we go deeper into our craft, I think how we ended up with 40 in the first place was we were trying to knit the perfect world of emerging technologies and niche players together, and you end up with a few too many vendors than you could, I think, for us.

reducing it just means we go deeper into that specialism and we get more understanding of the vendor technologies, the updates, we get closer to the senior leadership team, we increase our market share just by proxy and obviously the sales people at the end of the day, the people on meeting their customers go to a meeting now with a really clear idea of the portfolio of technologies we carry rather than a group of competing and I guess you can go you can go two ways as a distributor I mean TD have done incredibly well I think they they broke the 100 billion dollar mark this year by carrying that broad array of technologies and vendors but also the other way to do it is to be specialist and you know I think there's room for two and What do they say? Get big, get niche or get out is I think the saying.

And for us, you know, we'll always be a specialist.

So, you know, reducing that vendor set is really healthy for everyone involved, actually.

And it doesn't mean we're not looking for new vendors.

We always are.

But sometimes you just need a reset and it helps everyone.

So, yeah, we did that.

We saw massive results off the back of that as well.

It actually improved for partners? Improved, yeah, I think we have number one market share in over 80, 85% of our vendors now.

Wow.

I can't think of one C-suite relationship I don't have at any of our vendors.

And I just know that having come from a sales background as well, how easy it is to not have lots of different competing technologies on the shelf and how do you differentiate that, you know, and...

I think for us, it's not about collecting badges.

That's a fact.

You know, we will never be that business.

And also we'll never deviate from our specialism, which is server and storage technologies.

Now, Titan has

recently condensed its vendor portfolio, which for me, I'm thinking most distributors want to add more vendors all the time.

That's quite a bold move.

So why are you not trying to add more vendors? What's the thinking behind that decision? Yes, really, it's a difficult balance, but we're a specialist,

and I'd rather be important to 20 than middle of the road for 40.

And I think for us as well, as we go deeper into our craft, I think how we ended up with 40 in the first place was we were trying to knit the perfect world of emerging technologies and niche players together, and you end up with a few too many vendors than you could, I think, for us.

reducing it just means we go deeper into that specialism and we get more understanding of the vendor technologies, the updates, we get closer to the senior leadership team, we increase our market share just by proxy and obviously the sales people at the end of the day, the people on meeting their customers go to a meeting now with a really clear idea of the portfolio of technologies we carry rather than a group of competing and I guess you can go you can go two ways as a distributor I mean TD have done incredibly well I think they they broke the 100 billion dollar mark this year by carrying that broad array of technologies and vendors but also the other way to do it is to be specialist and you know I think there's room for two and What do they say? Get big, get niche or get out is I think the saying.

And for us, you know, we'll always be a specialist.

So, you know, reducing that vendor set is really healthy for everyone involved, actually.

And it doesn't mean we're not looking for new vendors.

We always are.

But sometimes you just need a reset and it helps everyone.

So, yeah, we did that.

We saw massive results off the back of that as well.

It actually improved for partners? Improved, yeah, I think we have number one market share in over 80, 85% of our vendors now.

Wow.

I can't think of one C-suite relationship I don't have at any of our vendors.

And I just know that having come from a sales background as well, how easy it is to not have lots of different competing technologies on the shelf and how do you differentiate that, you know, and...

I think for us, it's not about collecting badges.

That's a fact.

You know, we will never be that business.

And also we'll never deviate from our specialism, which is server and storage technologies.