New distributor on the block: Robinson launches PCMerge

Former AMD country manager and industry veteran, John Robinson, has established a new distribution business.

Robinson has had a prolific career in the IT industry. He spent five years with AMD before moving onto the now defunct local branch of Anthology Solution, vendor of Yellow Machine storage. After a brief stint in IT distribution as Altech’s national sales manager, Robinson eventually ended up as country manager for desktop virtualisation vendor, NComputing.

His new company, PCMerge, will deal exclusively with NComputing’s range products, which allow multiple users to use one PC simultaneously. While the vendor already has Ingram Micro and Leader Computers as its distributors, Robinson said his experience and commitment to his former employer will give PC Merge an edge over competitors.

“I will have far more focus than the other distributors,” he said. “I believe I will do significantly more than the others because of my past experience internally with the company and the support I will get.

“That’s not to say NComputing won’t support other distributors, but the other two have a lot of other products in their portfolio so it’s probably harder for them to stop and smell the roses for NComputing when they have a hundred other resellers to promote and manage.”

However, Robinson admitted it will start selling direct while going through the process of recruiting resellers. PCMerge is interested in finding 100 resellers in the next 12 months to establish a national presence.

“We will sell direct and offer the products with a compelling recommended retail price and we will encourage resellers to come on-board which will receive a significant discount so they can make better margins,” Robinson said. “But the ultimate goal is to sell wholesale.”

Robinson said an initial direct sales approach will also allow him to break into the lucrative education sector. The company has put forward a 40 per cent discount trial promotion for schools and will actively pursue this market.

PCMerge plans to offer bundled solutions and has approached local assemblers for servers and PCs. It will align with several monitor vendors but only in a reseller capacity.

While it is still a nascent company, Robinson is expecting $1 million in revenue within this financial year.

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