ACCOLADES: Solutions Distributor of the Year – Distribution Central

Distribution Central's Nick Verykios

Accolades recognises the winners at this year's ARN IT Industry Awards - the best of the best. The distributor category was this year judged on a wide range of criteria, including credit, logistics, marketing and services initiatives, across hardware, software and solutions. This year’s best distributor initiative award went to a company that set up a tool to directly assist the resellers in their marketing initiatives.

It has been seven years since the birth of one cornerstone of Distribution Central, Firewall Systems, was formulated in 2004.

The brainchild of Nick Verykios and Scott Frew has since spawned a variety of business units – Unity Systems, SAN Systems, NetWorld Systems, Annuity Systems and Red Education.

Each business unit has a specific focus on technology areas, which has seen the company nab the Solutions Distributor of the Year at this year’s ARN awards.

Its specialist approach covers many technology areas such as security, networking, unified communications and storage.

Distribution Central managing director, Nick Verykios, said partners get to experience a consultative selling approach, technology support and engineering back end with the efficiencies of a large distributor.

“We’ve gone from nothing to a $200 million company now in short period of time, but we’ve been able to manage and maintain our specialisation despite that growth,” he said. “It’s purely because of our business model, which a lot of people questioned when we started it.”

In 2008, the company set up a new environmental campaign and partnered up with not-for-profit organisation, Carbon Neutral, as part of a plan to plant a native tree for each invoice received.

This initiative led them to pick up another accolade – Sustainability Distributor of the Year 2011. “This was really important to us,” Verykios said. “It’s difficult living in a country like this where you’re starting to listen to debates on carbon tax and whether it matters. Most of our resellers and vendors are asking is it important? Does it make a difference? And they’re coming at it from an economic perspective – this isn’t an economic debate...it’s about caring for our environment and its future.”

Verykios said the ARN IT Industry Awards were special to the company and would be looking at introducing more new initiatives next year to add another award to its cabinet.

“It’s not just the general business community that is recognising us, which is very important to us, but it’s our peers that are saying we’re doing something pretty special,” he said.

“What’s satisfying about it is that among your peers, you’re considered to be at the particular point in time, the best or most innovative at what you do.”

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