PRINT
IT
RESELLER.UK
43
INTERVIEW
continued...
PrintIT Reseller (PITR):
Please could
you tell us about Brother’s year in
2016?
Phil Jones (PJ):
2016 has been a vintage
year for us. Our market share continues to
go from strength to strength and we [will]
exit the year as the number one brand in
mono laser printing. Our colour laser share
has dramatically increased, in fact across
the board really. So I’m really really pleased
with the way that the commercial side of
the business has been working.
We’re also very fortunate to win a
number of awards including the PC Pro
best printer event award, which is voted
for by end-users, which is fantastic. We
were recognised by Investors in People
with a platinum award – one of the first
companies in the UK to achieve that status,
which really recognised a lot of the work
we’ve been doing around our people,
training, investment and creating a culture
of high performance.
PITR:
What for you were the biggest
industry challenges?
PJ:
The big industry challenges in 2016
have clearly been a lot of turbulence after
the Brexit vote. That’s meant an awful lot
of change for people in terms of pricing,
they’ve had to deal with pricing changes
from multiple vendors in very short time
periods, so that’s been quite a major pain
point. I think the second thing has been
that we’ve seen a real move to services
being demanded by the end-user customer,
and unless business and resellers are in
a state of readiness to react to that, then
they’re quickly being made irrelevant and
being cut out of the conversation, which of
course is always concerning.
We’ve had a lot of merger and
acquisition going on in the channel and of
course that creates quite a lot of uncertainty,
particularly if you put your eggs in one
basket with a particular vendor and that
vendor has been acquired by somebody else.
PITR:
You mentioned the
consolidation in the market, what
impact is that having on resellers?
PJ:
Yes, I think the key thing for me about
this merger and acquisition side is that it
PrintIT Reseller
met up with Phil Jones,
Managing Director of Brother UK to talk
about the company’s plans for 2017, and
what he’s been up to in 2016. Here we
present edited highlights. A video recording
of the discussion can be seen on the
PrintIT Reseller
website
One to one with
Brother UK’s Phil Jones
does just create some uncertainty, because
if you have a commercial relationship with
one particular vendor, and then of course
that’s thrown immediately into doubt. If
you look for example with the HP and
Samsung situation, the channel strategies
of both organisations are a little bit
different, so of course what that will mean
is that there will be winners and losers
somewhere down the line.
I guess if you are somebody sat in the
channel, you’ll be thinking right now, am
I going to emerge a winner or a loser as
a result of this M&A, which of course is
outside of your control. And there may well
be elements of the business that you’ve set
up to support a specific vendor, which may
no longer be required, which might mean
future de-investment. So, it's kind of like
you’re sort of stuck in the middle a little bit
I think at the moment if you are somebody
that has strong allegiance to somebody
that has undergone an M&A.
PITR:
How are customer requirements
changing and what does this mean
for Brother’s channel? How are you
helping them cope with that change?
PJ:
We’re seeing particularly a much
stronger demand for all of our portfolio
products to be offered as a service.
Customers very much now are in the mindset
of acquiring things in the utility basis, you
know printers as a service or IT as a service,
service as a service even nowadays.
So, what we’ve had to do is look widely
We were
recognised
by Investors
in People
with a
platinum
award – one
of the first
companies
in the UK to
achieve that
status
