Specialism: Thin clients and Chromebooks
Key vendors: Lenovo, Google, Igel, BT, HP, Lego Education, Asus
Distribution revenue: £20m (+2%)
Headcount: 80 (total)
Distribution activities are set to generate around £20m of this education-focused hybrid reseller-distributor’s calendar 2024 revenues, MD Guy Watts told us.
Thin client and Chrome will contribute £9m towards that total apiece, with BT chipping in an additional £2m (with the total up fractionally year on year).
Ipswich-based Getech’s total sales hit £51.9m in its year ending 31 December 2023.
“[The return to market growth] is getting closer”
Quickfire Q&A with MD Guy Watts
What is Getech’s sweet spot?
A project involving 1,000 Chromebooks, with white glove services, professional services, Google workspace training and nationwide deployment.
Which product, service or vendor has stood out for you in 2024?
Google continues to grow in the education space, and Chrome Enterprise is finally starting to show some traction. But I would say Lego Education, where we have worked hand in hand with resellers and the largest of UK companies to develop programmes covering, recruitment, outreach, social value and funding gaps. Truly innovative and each one entirely unique.
If you could change one thing about your business at the stroke of a wand, what would it be?
A never ending supply of professional sales people who demonstrate that same work ethic, determination and will to succeed that used to be commonplace.
When will the UK distribution market return to growth?
It’s getting closer. We were told by numerous vendors and analysts it would be CY24 H2 , and now we are being told CY25 H1. Whilst revenue may be down ever so slightly, we’ve added a whole raft of professional services that have boosted GP.
Name one area of your business where you are expecting to add staff in 2025
We will definitely be adding to our professional services team to cope with increased demand for our outreach projects for Lego education. We are also about to launch a really compelling digital signage solution, with the best content provider, best hardware solution and best management, plus a new PoC programme for resellers in the Google education space.
At its Channel Forums EMEA in October, Canalys characterised AWS Marketplace as one of the world’s largest distributors, owing to its growing third-party software business. On balance, do you agree?
It’s hard to disagree , but I find most analysts state the bleeding obvious anyway, and then pile on a load of data to prove the most obvious points.
If you could be a fly on the wall for a day at another distributor, which would you choose?
Probably Phil Bell’s at Westcoast, to see how many times a day he practices his golf swing.
See who made the wider Oxygen 50 Must-Know IT Distributors 2024 here.
