New Delhi-based distributor, Third Wave Exim is planning to make a foray into the retail business shortly. This move is in tangent with its endeavor to popularize the Panasonic laptops, which its distributes. 

So far, Third Wave Exim was targeting certain niche segments only for these machines. These included the government, defense, oil and gas, power industry, manufacturers, shop floor workers and other segments where a laptop had to work under harsh environments. But now, it wants to take this product mainstream for those customers who might want to consider using it in their corporate environment.

The retail shops that Third Wave Exim will partner with will be multi-brand outlets. It is in talks with a few and plans to sign up two outlets in New Delhi and Mumbai each, one in Bangalore, Pune and Ahmedabad. Gauging the success of this initiative and the return on investment, the company will then sign on more retail outlets in other regions as well.

Said Vijay Seth, Director, Third Wave Exim, “We have already set aside the funding for this effort. We will also appoint a person in each of these outlets to promote our brand and products.”

Currently, the distributor markets the Panasonic laptops though a channel network of 11 partners. Each of these premium players has their own network of authorized parents affiliated to them. 

The distributor has been concentrating on the northern and western market, but will now enter the southern market within a few weeks. It will move into the eastern market as well in the next four months. 

Revealing this, Seth said, “We initially wanted to tap these two regions, as a bulk of our customers were present in the north and south. Now that we are well entrenched here, we want to make inroads down south as well.”

Talking about channel expansion plans, Seth says that while the company is open to working with any partner, it will focus on a few. It will add four more premium partners in the south once it enters that region. The company does not want to have more partners in its fold, though. 

This is because the tablet PC is a complex product and partners need to be educated on the applications that can be built on it and how it can be positioned to different customer verticals. This kind of interactivity is possible only with those partners who are really keen on selling a tablet on a regular basis, rather on a case-basis.

Third Wave Exim started distributing the Panasonic tablets six months ago and already the brand contributed almost 50% to its overall revenues of Rs 25 crore, last fiscal. This fiscal, the company expects business worth Rs 60 crore from Panasonic itself, with an overall turnover of Rs 80 crore. 

It also sells office automation and telecom products in the west. Till four years ago, the company focused on the end-user segment for these products. It entered into distribution with Dax Networks in Gujurat and then started distributing Wipro PCs as well.

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