HARARE: This month’s Distree Africa event unites channel partners from across the continent for three-days of one-on-one meetings with technology and consumer electronics brands looking to launch, build or manage routes-to-market within the region.
Zimbabwe-based distributor and reseller E-Machines will attend DISTREE Africa 2015. The company, based in Mutare, continues to grow despite market challenges and has benefited from its focus on opportunities in the education sector.
Warren Nhimura, operations manager at E-Machines, said: “We discovered that the education sector has a lot of opportunities that are largely untapped in Zimbabwe. This sector is growing daily and their appreciation of new technologies has been phenomenal. Our growth in this sector in 2014 was up 80% on the year before.”
E-Machines covers a number of different markets including the corporate market, government and education, plus business customers and retailers. E-Machines distributes hardware, software and peripherals from a range of major brands including HP, Canon, Seagate, Lexmark and Verbatim among others.
“Our main reasons for attending DISTREE Africa 2015 are to meet manufacturers and distributors of new products and lines; establish new product and supplier channels, and learn about new products available on the market,” added Nhimura.
E-Machines sees solid opportunities in Zimbabwe for mobile telephony products, interactive educational equipment and telecoms kit. “Our channel business is unique because it presents the customer with genuine and competitively priced products with warranties from the formal channel,” added Nhimura.
“Suppliers can take advantage of a business that is positioned right in the market place and is run by an experienced and honest management team who have been in the industry for more than 14 years. Customers benefit from our proven services backed up by hassle-free warranties provided by manufacturers.”
E-Machines is keen to encourage technology penetration within Zimbabwe. The company is keen to work with suppliers that can provide account flexibility allowing greater stock availability and minimal procurement hassles for customers. This would allow E-Machines for focus more energy on field marketing. “In Zimbabwe, the past year has seen a lot of companies closing down due to viability challenges too numerous to mention. The negative publicity that our country has, did not help the situation.
We have remained afloat and in fact have grown in the process. Our organisation has managed to stay afloat as we have several strategies that we implemented, which have paid off, including the focus on the education sector,” he added. Nhimura continued: “Grey imports and counterfeit products are the biggest threat to the African channel at present. This has created price distortions and put brand reputations at stake as some counterfeit products have simply been a character assassination for some reputable brands.
Governments have been largely been unable to fully control and monitor quality of imports. Fortunately the Government of Zimbabwe is now working on quality control for all imports.” He concluded: “I would like to encourage suppliers to utilise our company to reach out to the [Zimbabwe] market by providing us with trading terms, promotional material and training on new products. We remain keen to grow our market and in turn bring dividends to vendors.”
