technologyreseller.co.uk DISTRIBUTION 09 indicate you are missing out on print volume and revenue. TR: On the print side, your model is to take back used printers, parts and consumables and, where possible remanufacture and reuse items. Do you do that with IT equipment as well? LR: That’s something we’ve been asked quite a bit, including by the manufacturers themselves. Right now, we are so busy remanufacturing printer cartridges and consumables that we don’t have the capacity for it. But we are all about the circular economy and it’s something we’d love to be able to do in the future. Even though we’re not currently remanufacturing or refurbishing IT equipment, with our recycling service absolutely nothing is sent to landfill. TR: You opened a European distribution hub last year. Has that been successful for you and are you using it to distribute IT products to customers in Europe as well? LR: Yes, it’s been really good for us, because we do a lot of business in Europe, especially in Ireland and Italy. Taking Ireland as an example, we can now direct ship from our European hub in France to Ireland in 48 to 72 hours, whereas competitors are taking anywhere from five to 14 days. We can also send items directly to customers’ client sites for a fee that’s very competitive with the rates people would pay for direct shipment in mainland UK. TR: Finally, how do you plan to develop ECS’s IT distribution business in the next 12 months? LR: By building on our existing momentum, to accelerate growth and to expand our reach. Key priorities are to increase our IT offering with new vendors and additional product lines and to develop relationships with more IT resellers and MSPs – to start conversations with them, conduct price reviews and put together full packages to help them with their quotes and tenders. TR: Have you been able to persuade any of the IT companies you’ve targeted to diversify into print? LR: We get the odd introduction to partners they work with on the print side, but the main thing we’ve picked up from those IT companies, apart from IT hardware sales, is the recycling service we offer and the Atom dealer software including the My Greener Side customer portal we have developed for it. Used laptops and hard drives need to be disposed of correctly, with full data erasure and appropriate certification. We do all that in-house and our software allows dealers and their clients to access detailed information, including waste transfer notes, giving them reassurance that all data has been erased and everything has been recycled correctly. They appreciate the fact that we provide full traceability on recycling so that they can be sure they are covered from a compliance perspective in order to avoid legal action and potential unlimited fines. TR: Do IT resellers come to you primarily because they need to buy equipment or because they need to recycle their customers’ used devices? LR: Generally both, and they usually go hand in hand. When we started the recycling service, we hadn’t yet developed the software that works alongside the service. This software has been a gamechanger for IT resellers and managed print providers, which, as well as providing clients with detailed information on the recycling of their devices, serves as a useful sales tool. Once one of our collection boxes on a customer’s premises is full and returned to us via our licensed waste carrier FedEx, we itemise all its contents, which, in the IT world could be old cables, routers, laptops, hard drives etc., and upload all that information onto our Atom portal where the dealer can see the processes that each item has undertaken in order to be recycled correctly. Say the list includes one HP laptop, three cables, a router, a Utax cartridge, a Sharp cartridge and a Samsung printer. If you’re not supplying any of those elements, your sales team can start a conversation with the customer: Who’s supplying the Samsung printer? Can I get you a better rate? Can I do the Managed Print for you? Or if you are already doing the managed print and you see a type of cartridge you haven’t supplied, that would Desktops drive PC market growth as AIready notebooks start to gain ground CONTEXT has reported strong year-on-year growth in desktop PC revenues across European distribution in April & May 2025, outpacing notebooks in both unit and revenue performance. According to the global market intelligence firm’s SalesWatch report, desktop PC revenues rose by 22% yearon-year in the first two months of Q2, with unit growth closely mirroring revenue. In contrast, notebook revenues increased by a more modest 7%, with unit growth at just 3% year-on-year. Marie-Christine Pygott, senior analyst at CONTEXT, said: “Desktops have been the standout performer over the past six months. Their share of total PC revenues in early Q2 reached nearly 17%, the highest level in CONTEXT’s two-year reporting period. This reflects both a longoverdue refresh cycle in commercial environments and the typical spike in demand ahead of major OS support deadlines (in this case the end-ofsupport for Windows 10).” In the notebook segment, growth is more nuanced, according to CONTEXT. Countries such as Germany, the UK and Poland are performing well, unaffected by the decline in education sector purchases that skewed comparisons in markets like France, Spain and Italy. UK distributors report stronger momentum driven by Windows 11 upgrades, with commercial and consumer segments both contributing. Meanwhile, AI-ready notebooks featuring dedicated NPUs (neural processing units) are slowly shifting the market landscape. These accounted for 40-41% of notebook volumes in recent months, although demand is still primarily shaped by the arrival of new processor generations, not customer pull. Notably, Copilot+ devices have climbed from 5% of AI-capable notebook sales in January to 13% in May, led by Intel’s Lunar Lake systems in the commercial space. “The rise of Copilot+ devices is one of the most important trends to watch in the second half of 2025 and moving into 2026,” said Pygott. “Adoption is still early-stage, but momentum is gradually increasing and we’re expecting this to accelerate as use cases multiply and prices come down.” www.contextworld.com To find out more please, call 01427 700 700 or visit www.ecs-uk-ltd.co.uk Marie-Christine Pygott
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