D&H Distributing Goes International

The Harrisburg, Pa.-based distributor opened a 38,000 square-foot warehouse and headquarters in Mississauga, Ontario. The expansion should bring D&H an additional 1,000 customers according to the distributor.

The move brings D&H to the international stage for the first time.

"More and more the world is being divided into larger geographies, meaning it's not just a U.S. market anymore. Vendors see a North American market, including Canada," said Michael Schwab, vice president of purchasing at D&H. "And for us to offer a full compliment of solution providers in the North American market [to our vendors] it makes a lot of sense to us to be in Canada."

D&H tapped former Ingram Micro Canada executive Greg Tobin to lead D&H Canada. Tobin will serve as general manager and the Canadian sales and customer service teams will be overseen by eighteen-year D&H veteran Paul McIlhenny.

"Based on his experience and knowledge base in the channel and the way he worked with resellers in the past, we feel very comfortable that we have a great person in Greg to help us drive this initiative," said Schwab.

The company will continue to focus on the small business reseller market, a market which has helped it see at least 15 percent growth annually for the past seven years, and D&H hopes to now take a bite out of what it estimates to be a $6.2 billion Canadian market. The move also brings D&H into competition with other distributors already established in the Canadian market like broadliners Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Synnex and local distributors like Comtronic Computer.

"Historically we have had a lot of Canadian customers that have been signing up with D&H U.S. and have been importing on customers behalf," said Tobin. "The demand was there for D&H."

Vendors, he said, were also pushing D&H into Canada. "All indications are that both the vendors and resellers have given us the green light that they are looking for additional sources of product in the market," said Schwab. D&H Canada will distribute products from vendors including Acer, Brother, Creative Labs, Linksys, Logitech and ViewSonic.

Ashlin Computer was one of the first resellers to purchase products from D&H Canada.

The Toronto-based solution provider had a customer who needed about 60 monitors shipped to five different locations in both the U.S. and Canada. Ashlin Computer had used D&H to ship products to customers in the U.S. in the past, but with the Canadian subsidiary, it can now ship to Canada through the distributor but still maintain one point of contact.

"It was very simple, easy and quick. It allowed me to take care of what otherwise would have been twice as much work for us to deal with separately," said Andrew Lindzon, president. "How many distributors deal with dual-order situations concurrently and keep it simple? Even the largest distributors that have locations on both sides, they treat them independently."

He plans to build a relationship with D&H Canada and continue to use it to source product.

"I've had good experience with both their sales and credit departments moving quickly to take care of things and we haven't had any problems. Time is everything in our business. It takes so much time working on customer issues that you don't want to waste time doing unnecessary work on the purchasing side," said Lindzon.

For now, D&H is planning no further international expansion and is focusing on building business in Ontario and eastern Canada.

"I think it's a one-step-at-a-time process. There certainly is a lot of hard work to accomplish a task like this, so I think for the foreseeable future this is our initiative and the agenda is to get Canada up and running. Today there's nothing that we've identified on the horizon," said Schwab.