Specialism: Components distribution, PC assembly
Vendors include: AMD, AOC, ASUS, Corsair, Gigabyte, MSI and Razer, Palit, Coolermaster, Thrustmaster, Hyte, Brazen
Revenue: £185.8m (-17%)
Headcount: 135
This components distributor and PC builder saw revenues fall 17% to £186m in its year to 30 June 2023, £156.7m of which was generated from the UK.
Gross profit margins also shrank from 7.5% to 6.1% amid a “normalisation” of supplies and prices for products such as graphics cards.
VIP sold its Ergo Computing PC brand in July 2022, resulting in a profit on disposal of £781,000.
The Warrington-based AMD, ASUS and Corsair partner has signed several new vendors in 2024 including Palit and Coolermaster, VIP Computer Centre MD Harpreet Sahni told us (see below).
“Our gaming monitors category has really returned to form in H2”
Quickfire Q&A with VIP Computer Centre MD Harpreet Sahni
What is your sweet spot?
Right where value meets quality, and we remain there by staying agile enough to adapt to changing market demand and flexible enough to best meet our customer’s evolving needs.
Which product, service or vendor has stood out for you in 2024?
We’ve seen our gaming monitors category really return to form in H2 so far.
If you could change one thing about your business at the stroke of a wand, what would it be?
Deliver and implement our IT infrastructure projects overnight.
When will the UK distribution market return to growth?
It really depends what you refer to as “growth” here and what sectors you’re specifically looking at – the distribution market is broad with a wide spread of growth and shrinking areas. Most companies in our sector experienced the tremendous highs and lows that came with the COVID pandemic, but the market in general has grown from the levels we were seeing in 2019 pre-COVID.
Name one area of your business where you are expecting to add staff in 2025
Our corporate/B2B channel.
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?
While I can understand the sentiment, the value offered by the AWS marketplace platform remains different to the value added by a distributor. If you draw comparison to the “distributor-like” service offered by a platform for software distribution, then, yes, you could class AWS Marketplace as one of the world’s largest distributors, though the services offered are limited and only represent a portion of what a distributor would provide.
If you could undertake a secret, two-week apprenticeship at another distributor to see how they roll, which would you choose?
Westcoast – they have remained privately owned and been on a great journey of both organic growth and acquisition over the last few years.
See who made the wider Oxygen 50 Must-Know IT Distributors 2024 here.
