More than Apple at Renaissance

Renaissance general manager Warwick Grey is on a mission. He's determined the company will be seen by resellers as more than just an Apple shop.

"Yes, we still do Apple, but we are one of a couple of [Apple] distributors now," he says. "It is a core brand for us and we have a lot of things that go around it – what I call the three Cs: cases, connections such as speaker docks, drawing tablets and printers, and customisations for build to order Macs.

"But we are also a PC vendor.

Grey says about 20% of the distribution business is currently from non-Apple related products and Renaissance is in Microsoft's top five for server licenses in New Zealand. "And we're probably in the top three for servers in general, after HP and IBM, as a lot of our customers use Linux or have their own licenses.

The company owns the Insite brand which specialises in built-to-order desktop, notebook and server computers and has a strong following in the education sector, including Massey and Otago universities.

Grey says the company can provide a range of wrap-around services, providing the technology to build a network, layer a wireless network on top and put in traffic and network management. "We really have an end-to-end offering.

"Resellers don't always know that they can deal with us for a lot more besides Apple," Grey says. "We've got a broad range of brands – such as Fuji Xerox, Sonic Wall, Palo Alto Networks – that they are possibly not familiar with [as brands we have].

The company plans to run more road shows to boost the profile of its brands. A recent series of roadshows, run in conjunction with Microsoft, was 'very successful', Grey says, attracting 40 resellers across the country.

The company has also taken the step of releasing an organisational chart (above) showing key staff members. Grey says while the perception is that everyone has changed within Renaissance, 'people have been here for ages'."Resellers may not know who does what, so this will show the general picture for them," he says, adding that resellers should feel free to pick up the phone and call any of the Renaissance team.

"There are plenty of reasons for resellers to have a relationship with us," he adds.