SAVEX COMPUTERS: A stitch in time

Savex Computers is rolling up its sleeves now to make up for its sluggish
pace in the year 2004-05. This was largely related to the change in management
at Samsung Electronics, one of Savex's primary vendors. It thus witnessed a
slight growth in the last quarter — JFM of fiscal 2004-05.

Savex didn't add new products to its current line of vendors in the
previous fiscal. This and the Samsung debacle resulted in an overall dip in its
business, and had only a 10% growth, despite the market being buoyant.

Yet it had a healthy bottom line increase of 30%, despite the changes in the
upper echelons of Samsung. The disty has made several changes in the past year.

To start with it focused quite a bit of its energies on Lexmark
International, its other vendor. It is proud that according to IDC, Lexmark has
gained a 10% marketshare in the printing market without much advertising.

Savex discontinued the distribution of Kobian products as it felt that the
visibility for the brand was very low in the market and its distribution
strategy needed a lot of improvement as well. Though it dropped one vendor
company, it decided to balance this with three more additions.

To better distribute its products, the disty added 800 partners to its
channel network, which now stands at 2,400 members. And several of these
inductees are from the mini-metros and upcountry locations. Among new branches
added to this chain were at Vadodara, Nagpur and Panchkula in Haryana, taking
the total number of branches to 27. For systematic functioning of this disty, it
approximately adds 10% of new employees every year.

Since the market for assembled PCs has gone down from 60% to 45%, Savex now
wants to be a part of the branded market as well. It will also be distributing a
leading monitor brand as well in the near future.

In continuance with its niche focus on peripheral products, Savex recently
added D-Link, Logitech and Antec brands to its kitty. Antec is a US-based
company manufactures high-end computer cases. It has tied up with another
company from the USA, Smart Memory Modules, which makes memory products.