D&H adds eight vendors, hints at new adjacency

Greg Tobin

D&H Canada GM Greg Tobin

D&H Canada has added a slew of new vendors to its linecard, and is hinting that there are many more to come.

The Mississauga, Ont.-based distie’s new run the gamut from power protection to memory components, but general manager Greg Tobin says he sees the opportunity to bring on more vendors in another field, saying that D&H will soon open up a new adjacency.

While “it’s never a rat race,” as Tobin put it, when adding new vendors, he said the distributor will add “close to double what we would normally on-board” this year, as it builds out this mysterious new adjacent market.

So just where is D&H headed with this? Tobin is remaining tight-lipped for now, other than to say that the company “is unique in bringing in some cutting-edge technologies first,” and a broad hint that the it would have something to do with e-tail.

While we wait for details and ponder that, here’s what we do know about the vendors it has brought on recently.

New relationships for D&H Canada include power vendor APC, storage provider Data Robotics (more commonly known as DROBO), printing and imaging company Epson, ruggedized AV company ETON, mobile accessory company Mobile Edge, projector manufacturer Optoma, memory vendor Patriot Memory, and PC-to-television streaming company Veebeam.

Some familiar names (APC, Epson, DROBO) and some less familiar names to the channel. Among the new vendors, Tobin singled out those that could be lumped together into digital signage and presentation for SMBs, such as Optoma and Veebeam, bringing together streaming technology and small business-focused projectors.

“We like to build out categories and make sure we become a destination within a category,” without oversaturating an opportunity, Tobin said. “The more strategic we become to a solution, the better it is, and we want to build a ‘go-to’ category with projectors.”

Other additions give the distributor “more flexibility,” particularly with those better-known vendor names that help round out existing offerings from the distributor. Tobin said the company typically has more vendors looking to get on its linecard and into its warehouses than it can effectively on-board while still building up services for existing customers – a common “problem” in distribution.

“These were the ones we thought we could be most successful with right now, and the one that are going to help our resellers with the solutions they’re building,” Tobin said. “We want to make sure our solution providers have all the brands they need to develop a full solution.”