Launching International Distribution

 

July 1, 2021

An important part of WAZER’s growth plans is expanding our Channel’s to market. In 2020 we launched our domestic reseller program, focused on the education market segment when we on-boarded a total of 14 Value Added Resellers (VARs). We also dipped our toe in the International channel in 2020 by opportunistically onboarding a French partner mid year, with very promising results. The benefits of having a reseller network include: local installation and technical support, opportunity to see the machine operating in-person, easier access to local decision makers and prospective customers at local trade shows and industry conferences, and a complimentary portfolio of products to increase customer engagement. 

All of these benefits are also applicable for our international customers, indeed even more so when you consider that local time zones, native languages, regulatory requirements specific to that country, and the need to purchase in local currencies, all have an even greater impact on the customer’s purchasing decisions. Add to these observations that we had received many requests from international distributors that wanted the opportunity to sell the WAZER in their country over the prior three years, and the decision to add multiple international partners was the right choice for WAZER.

Selection Criteria

When we started to build the program we were able to apply learnings from our experiences with the domestic partners, as well as incorporate features in the program that would deliver the maximum benefit for both parties right from the start. We were determined to set the program up with the best chance of success but also keeping it as simple to operate as possible. It was obvious that the selection criteria needed to include identifying partners with the capability to stock products and ship to the end customer from their inventory. This would allow us to ship all orders to one single location, consolidate shipments and invoices for multiple machines, and enable the reseller to offer the end user a shorter lead time because they had the machines in stock. We knew that we wanted to ensure that the partners we chose had a showroom for conducting demo’s, a technical staff to support the customers with installation and operation in the field, and that they sold a complimentary range of products like laser cutters, cnc machines and 3D printers so that we could be sure that they are currently in contact with our target customer base.

Regions & Countries

We decided to target our initial selection process in the countries and regions where we were already having the most success selling directly to end users. We figured that this is where there is already the most interest, and we already had a long list of candidates that were requesting to partner with us. We ranked the countries by sales figures, created a list of criteria to identify the best candidates, based on the ones mentioned above, and set ourselves the goal of successfully selecting and on-boarding a total of 10 new International Value-Added Resellers by the end of Q3 2021.

Who & How Many

As of the writing of this article in July 2021 we have successfully on-boarded a total of five new partners, giving us a total number in the channel of six International VARs, with one more selected and in the process of on-boarding. They are:

Next Steps

Finding, recruiting, selecting, and on-boarding these new partners is very important and time consuming, because we must ensure that we choose the right ones for long term growth, and that the business goals of both parties are aligned and mutually beneficial. The program is proving to be very productive with several partners already selling out of their initial stock orders and placing follow-on orders.

Because of this success we have decided to hire a dedicated Regional Channel Sales Manager to support and continue to grow the channel. We will not stop the selection and on-boarding while we are in the process of hiring the new manager, in fact it is still our goal to on-board four more by the end of Q3, but we should be able to add several more to the plan once the manager is hired. There are still a few countries where our direct sales have been strong, but we have not been able to identify the right partner, such as Germany, Italy and Japan. We believe that with additional, dedicated bandwidth on the task, we will be able to find the right partners and increase our coverage of resellers to have all of our top countries and regions covered by the end of 2021

 
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