Specialisation has always been a key element in a distributor's strategy whether dictated by customer or supplier. Goodness me they were all at it 30-odd years ago when US suppliers wouldn't share a distributor's shelves with its main competitors.
In the UK a flurry of little start-ups emerged under the umbrella of a parent company. Thus we had Yes Electronics for RCA Solid State – Say Yes for RCA - and Mogul which represented Fairchild and so on.
In the 80s the Japanese became the competitive no-no spawning Impulse Electronics, a Jermyn-backed Japanese lines only company which was the fastest mover into the market and ditto Dialogue Electronics. Those were supplier driven moves.
Now the focus has shifted to customers and their thirst for knowledge for emerging technologies. You can barely turn round without there is a distributor unveiling its division devoted to embedded or LEDs.
I counted at least five at the Embedded World show in Nuremberg earlier this year and they weren’t short of visitors either. Seems to me this is a more encouraging trend. Distributors can be the vanguard in delivering new products and technologies to their customers, and most importantly helping customers implement these new technologies.
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