Official word out of Dell is that Frank Fuser, Dell Canada’s first ever channel chief, has retired.
His retirement comes just after accepting a promotion to this post on March 7th.
I find Fuser’s retirement five weeks after being promoted to a senior position incredibly hard to believe.
One source close to the situation called Fuser’s announced retirement “strange.”
At a channel event last month many partners speculated that Fuser was not long for the job.
I wrote a blog suggesting that Fuser was in for an uphill battle because of his lack of channel experience. After I interviewed Fuser, he emailed me to ask me out to lunch. I found this strange because PR practitioners would set up these lunch meetings for executives. This is normally the case for some new to the channel or to the Canadian market.
After agreeing to the lunch the head of Dell Canada PR emailed me to say the lunch would have to be rescheduled because Fuser had an important out of town meeting to attend. That was fair enough, but there wasn’t any correspondence further for the Fuser lunch date.
I asked Greg Davis if Fuser’s lack of channel experience had anything to do with the decision to leave Dell Canada. Davis said that it wasn’t and then reverted back to the official company line that Fuser retired.
I do not know Fuser’s age, but from his photo he doesn’t look like he’s pushing 65.
If Fuser resurfaces at another company then Dell Canada looks horrible by claiming that he retired.
Davis will be taking over Fuser’s duties and I think it’s a smart move on his part because he was the Canadian president for Dell for two years and established solid relationships while he was here. Plus as it stands right now he has the most channel experience in Dell.
Davis said that he now wants to view Dell’s channel commitment in a North American approach rather than U.S. one and a separate Canadian one. This is an interesting approach and we shall see if it works.
You can’t help but feel sorry for Fuser. He may have had some channel experience, but he does not have enough channel experience for this market. For Dell to gain any kind of foothold in the channel you need someone who has that kind of experience.
I wish him luck in his future endeavours.
One quick hit before I go. Arrow Electronics Inc. announced that Andrew Bryant has been named president of the enterprise computing solutions (ECS) division. Bryant was at one time the president of Avnet Logistics for Avnet Inc. With this appointment, Catherine Morris, who served as co-president of Arrow ECS along with Kevin Gilroy, was promoted to chief strategy officer reporting directly to Michael Long, the president and COO of Arrow. As for Gilroy, he is leaving the organization.
