Last fall, D&H Distributing announced that despite recession fears, the company grew 25% quarter after quarter and would roll out new partner resources to continue their “Built for Growth, Giving, and Generations” initiative. D&H recently released year-end results for 2022, reporting significant growth in key focus areas like business applications, infrastructure, security, and collaboration, as well as professional services. Michael Schwab, co-president, discussed the story behind the numbers and the significance for channel pros.
Six months ago, D&H opened the hiring doors, especially for salespeople. Are those doors still open?
“Yes, we’re still adding salespeople,” says Schwab, “and some were reallocated. B2B continues to grow, while consumer flatlined a bit.” Another group being recruited? Cloud support employees, taking advantage of tech layoffs.
Schwab reports the supply chain is back to normal for the most part. Transportation costs, including shipping containers and trucking, are down to more normal rates. While some chip shortages occur, no major roadblocks hinder production. “Memory products like SSDs and hard drives in some areas are actually dropping,” he notes.
While Schwab admits it’s tough to see what the second half of 2023 will look like with the current inflation and interest rate increases, D&H remains “cautiously optimistic,” thanks to current conditions, the back-to-school effect in the fall, and the continued strength of the B2B market. “We feel the second half will be strong, and we’re driving forward.” His quarter-after-quarter growth is still over 20%, and the cloud business still increases at north of 100%.
Schwab promises to double-down on growth programs for D&H resellers. “Our Tech Drive Creative Studios, SuccessPath, and education programs are still growing.” SuccessPath takes the flood of information from vendors and offers resellers marketing material for websites, emails, and other content. During 2023, SuccessPath will offer more exclusive programs for partners, and increase educational resources. “Higher interest rates mean it costs more to build infrastructure. Our IaaS and cloud offerings play well with that,” adds Schwab.
From his viewpoint, Schwab sees cloud services like Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud still growing, but not as quickly because enterprises have done most of their transitions. “The middle and SMB levels still have multimillions of seats to move to the cloud.”
His No. 1 takeaway from current conditions for his partners? “Every meeting, more likely than not, will have remote participants, and they want a seamless video experience,” Schwab says. “There are probably hundreds of thousands of huddle rooms and videoconference systems that need to be updated.”
