Brother's Channel Push Sees Results

A year after launching the company’s first channel program, executives at Brother Industries say the provider of office technology hardware is seeing significant growth thanks to the partners it has added.

"Our growth has been pretty substantial," said Steve Santucci, senior director of sales, about the company's growth over the last year. In an email to CRN, Brother said participants enrolled in its partner program - which is open to resellers in the U.S., the Caribbean and parts of South America - has doubled since the initiative was launched.

"We started last September and now … there are over 900-plus resellers partnering with us," said Jeff Sandler, director of product planning for the U.S.-based division of the Japanese-based company. Sandler said that although some of the 900 were doing business with Brother before its channel push, the company is excited to have a reseller community to engage with it as it moves forward.

Santucci said that, within the last year, Brother has taken "a complete 180," changing from a company that sold only a little through the channel to one that does all of its sales through the channel. He said Brother has worked hard over the last year to reach into the channel and tell its story.

[Related: Brother Launches New Channel Program, SMB Solution]

"I don’t know what the secret recipe is," Dean Bellone, CEO of CompSource, a Brother partner said, "but Brother has me involved."

Bellone said he also sells solutions from HP, Lexmark and Xerox, but over the last year Brother went from "almost non-existent" to becoming CompSource's top hardware provider.

He said the shift has occurred because Brother has communicated with him consistently and clearly, keeping him up to date on information he wants to know for his business.

Bellone said other vendors touch base with his people quarterly, on average, yet don’t really give him information he wants to know. Brother, on the other hand, communicates weekly.

"It's kind of funny," he added. "After a while, they [vendors] stop talking about their products and instead talk in generalities. But Brother hasn’t done that - it's refreshing," because product information is what he needs. "We know exactly what is on special and how to sell it."

Other vendors are neglecting that ’personal touch,’ Bellone said. "We have reps [with the other vendors], but I can't tell you a single promo.’

Bellone said he was impressed with the amount of time it has taken Brother to shift its focus to the channel, noting that at the end of last year, he only recommended Brother to people who wanted an Inkjet printer for less than $100. But now, he sees many of the vendor’s products simply "fitting the bill."

"A year ago, we didn’t have a channel," Santucci said. Although the company did business with solution providers, it wasn’t until September 2014 when Brother began adding features like fast-track pricing, protected products, a volume print program and a managed print services program that would enable the company to begin working with its partners and offering rewards for loyalty.

He said Brother has been building its channel through campaigns and programs such as its protected product program, its "Don’t supersize, optimize" campaign and its newest resource, the Brother Knowledge Center.

"I think [Brother's success] is all part and parcel of us being a much more channel-friendly organization than we ever have been before," he said.

"The response has been really gratifying," said Santucci. "I don’t want to say we are done, or that we are happy with where we are - we have to do more - but, from a first-year standpoint I can say we have made a lot of progress."

Bellone said he believes Brother has become a "very different company" because of the changes it has made.

"This isn't your grandma's Brother," he said.

PUBLISHED OCT. 19, 2015