Peter Svensson wrote:
Resellers are almost universally a useless money-sink. Most add no value at all, they are simply another logistics point. Distributors, on the other hand, are usually very knowlegable and are able to support their customers (the resellers) quite well.
My advice: always *always* buy from as early in the channel as possible. Prices are better and the support is _way_ better.
Of course, if you are not familiar with the problem space for which you are purchasing a solution then resellers can add a lot of value.
Peter
Hi Peter-
In my experience, I've found that the biggest advantage to buying through a distributor is the availability of stock, in-house and available for rapid shipment. Distributors typically handle dozens of lines and do not have the manpower to be technically up-to-date on all products.
I agree with you though about buying as "high up" in the channel as possible.
For a small company like Digium, it makes perfect sense for them to provide the hardware support for their products directly, as they are the only ones who can do so practically until they are of a size to develop the huge amount of training materials, spare parts kits etc to allow distributors to provide any kind of support to the customers. Unfortunately, the volumes are probably not really there yet to justify this.
Digium needs to take a hard look at it's support and hardware documentation, as well as size of its engineering staff. It seems to me that they are at a point of growth where a significant investment is required to allow growth to the next level.
Regards Scott Stingel
www.evtmedia.com
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