Confed-ITA suspends trading with Redington

The dispute between partners in Pondicherry and Redington India over the
direct selling of spares, AMCs and support packs has cropped up again with the
Confed-ITA suspending trading with Redington across Tamil Nadu for four days.
“The problem is that Redington decided to sell the spares, AMCs directly to the
customers. In fact, the Pondicherry association had taken up this issue with
Redington earlier and the vendor had agreed to go through the channel. But as
recently as May 25, Redington has picked up new orders. So the traders have
decided to go on a protest against this move,” said S Karthikeyan, President,
Confed-ITA.

Confed-ITA is the coming together of 10 IT associations in Tamil Nadu, and
upon a request from the Pondicherry association all the other associations
decided to boycott trading with Redington, Karthikeyan indicated. “As it is the
channels work on wafer-thin margins and if vendors go to customers directly, we
stand to lose both the customer as well as the margins. This puts us in a very
difficult situation. Going direct to customer is not the right practice given
that channels exist. Also we believe that the vendor should practice one of the
two things-either go directly or through channel. There is no point in indulging
in both,” Karthikeyan said.

As it stands, Redington is believed to be in talks with the Pondicherry
association to find an amicable solution to the issue. “Redington apart, we are
also in talks with other vendors like HP and Lenovo to come to an arrangement
whereby such anomalies are taken care of and there is no direct billing done,”
Karthikeyan added.

JK Senapathy, President-Sales, Redington India said, “The issue pertains to
one quotation that was given by our services division and the quotation was
given in response to a customer need. We are a very partner-centric company and
believe in doing business with our partners. We shall continue the same in
future as well.”