Director Justin Tye has told The Channel that while others had an average last year, Exceed is really happy with its growth in financial year 2010. "This growth really started to pick up in November last year and is maintaining its momentum," he said.

The distributor has always been renowned for its focus on HP products, but successfully pulled off a re-branding last year that tried to shake off some of the HP-only perception. “In hindsight our investment in the new brand has been spot on,” says Tye, who explained that the firm's “We are with you” motto is really at the heart of the business.

The company continues to invest in three key areas, people, the brand and its systems. In 2008 it explored licensing its custom-made internal systems, but decided in the end that its successful formula wasn't to be sold to other parties.

Significantly more stock is now being held at its inner city Parnell-based premises, “which allows resellers to collect, for example, a hard drive within minutes of its CBD customers”. This compares favourably to either HP's or Ingram Micro's facilities in Wiri, South Auckland. Although the current warehousing facility can currently cope, soon a time will come when a second location for some of its bigger products (think enormous DesignJet printers) will be needed.

Last year the company brought on board industry veteran Tony Butler, which Tye says has brought a significant wealth of logistics knowledge to the business and made the management team question a number of its own approaches. The company is also gearing up to host a series of events where it will present new business opportunities.