Hi Flick,
I can only concur with what Dale has apply stated about Ingram, they are a complicated company that IMO has in recent times a clearer vision of who they are and where they want to go. The story becomes convoluted with the advent of e-commerce and it's development. A few of my observations about Ingram's business.
The traditional wholesale business is a most desirable business but, great amounts of business has shifted into e-commerce, the dilemma being, how to retain the traditional business while maximizing new e-opportunities. You might remember the debacle that Compaq went thru first flirting with MUEI and than GTW, before backing down all together in the face of a huge outcrying from their traditional channel businesses, ( IMO they should have bought GTW ) This hurt CPQ ( big time ) by alienating their core constituencies causing reverberations throughout the entire industry. Around this time the wholesalers were hedging their bets by quietly developing and providing the distribution and logistics for the buy.com's of the net. While it is now commonly known that these wholesalers are in fact the backbone of the e-operations it wasn't widely publicized and is still misunderstood. The ambiguity provided cover for their traditional business, it was the price to pay, we still don't hear a lot about these relationships.
The one variant that I don't think is understood is the distribution and logistic contracting that is happening. An example would be for Ingram to distribute all of Microsoft's products world wide, the economies of scale and it's ability to do it world wide not only save Microsoft's overhead but earns added business by receiving a premium on all of their products, the entire product line and volume. The added kicker is that it would be Microsoft's inventory, costs for financing and overhead for handling all borne by Microsoft, I suspect that the hidden benefit will be lower costs of product destine to Ingram's own customers.
How would you like to be the worlds largest distributor that will receive a premium for every product that companies like Microsoft sell.
How would you like to be the worlds largest distributor and also receive a premium for goods sold over the Internet by the largest of the e-commerce companies, the likes of buy.com and gigabuy.com ( Dell's web sight ).
The possibilities are grand with the right execution.
One last thought is that Ingram increased it's sales over a billion last quarter over the same quarter last year, they're doing a lot of things right.
all just my opnion
Regards
Reseller
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