The news that Tech Data Canada had its best year ever in the Rick Reid era is surprising considering the NexInnovations meltdown.
The Mississauga, Ont.-based distributor took a financial and public hit as a result of the high-profile reseller going out of business.
But, in the end, there wasn’t much of a dent made to its bottom line and you have to credit the executive team at Tech Data Canada for moving swiftly in the aftermath of the NexInnovations demise.
The business that NexInnovations did with Tech Data was somewhere north of $200 million. As the industry started to hear whispers of NexInnovations demise, many of the company’s customers started looking for other solution providers to handle its business.
Tech Data Canada recruited many of those solution providers.
Then as the news came out that NexInnovations was officially dead and Softchoice was going to pick up practically all of the remaining pieces for $10 million, Tech Data began aligning itself with Softchoice, a company that deals mostly with Ingram Micro Canada. But Softchoice CEO David MacDonald told CDN that he was not averse to working with Tech Data. Tech Data clearly offered Softchoice a tremendous value proposition convinced the company to move some of its business to Tech Data.
Tech Data could have suffered a major business hit, but instead acted quickly to mitigate the fallout.
The distributor was positioned to absorb the financial loss of NexInnovations business, with whom it had an exclusive relationship, because of the great gains they made out in Western Canada and Quebec. The distributor opened a distribution facility in Richmond, B.C. last year and more recently cut the ribbon on a 2,000 sq. ft. integration centre for Western Canada-based VARs.
Still, financial disaster may have been averted and Tech Data positioned for a good year ended up having a great business year – in fact, its best ever.