“It’s been a great 10 years of solid growth and we are on track for more organic growth this fiscal year” comments Greg Tobin, General Manager of D&H Canada.

What makes D&H different from the other 3 big distributors? Greg says that it’s his staff and the relationships that they build with their clients is the key to their success. He also talked about the three “E’s” but you will have to watch the video interview to learn more about this.

Greg went on to say that because D&H is a private company, they can plan 5 to 10 years in the future, whereas public companies tend to run by quarterly results. Growth by mergers and acquisitions typically ends up being the go-to method and when that fails, they cut costs to meet the numbers. There is always a risk that this strategy could backfire.

D&H specializes in hardware/accessory type products and have been around for about 100 years. They started in 1918 as a small business retreading tires followed by 99 years of distribution experience that spans the days of the first color TV, the first home PC and the first gaming system. From tires to IT…who would have predicted that?

Here are a few companies that I met at the D&H show that looked interesting:

Epson showed off their amazing “supertank” printers and line of projectors for just about every type of user that you could imagine. Epson is one of the best channel-friendly companies in the industry and their team is simply awesome.

Seagate showed off a complete range of storage solutions of just about every flavor and color. They currently dominate the storage market and have some new products coming out soon.

ViewSonic has an incredible range of display products and interactive flat panels that also look great. If you do not already sell them, then give them a try.

This wearable device is made by Manhattan. It’s a portable bar code scanner. They also have other peripherals and connectivity devices. The Intellinet side makes PoE switches and other networking related products.

Trendnet has a comprehensive line of networking products including WIFI and surveillance. Its quality and affordability are key benefits. They are looking for more partners!

iOGear has a solid and huge selection of accessory and peripheral products. Their docking stations adds incredible functionality to notebooks plus they look cool!

Always great to see people off their smartphones and talking to each other…With so much virtual interactions in the World today, meeting people face-to-face is becoming more important.

More cool peripherals from VisionTek for upgrading sluggish computers, charging stations, speakers, drives, memory etc.

I mostly see lots of Cloud and SaaS applications for the world of digital transformation so it was a pleasure to actually see and feel some cool gadgets. I actually told my editors that we should do more articles on these types of products so hopefully you will see more coming from us on this category. I know the channel is shifting to managed everything and recurring revenues, but you still have to buy some hardware sometime. Adding some accessories to improve its use will probably never go out of style. D&H seems to be a great place for the channel to find them!

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