After establishing itself in Southeast Asia, David McIntyre talks
about how Midwich is looking to grow in order to continue to
provide value to the AV industry.
Midwich has made its mark on Southeast Asia’s AV industry. David McIntyre, APAC commercial manager at Midwich Asia, says: “We worked hard to advocate for our brand and differentiate ourselves from our competitors and we are now more aligned with the wider Midwich group — where we have some larger, tier-one brands knocking on our door and seeking our support on how we can give them breadth and coverage in the market — there have been some good wins over the years.”
The Midwich ‘difference’ is clear to see as the distributor has expanded its offering in the APAC region. McIntyre expands: “We strategically curate brands who align with us from a global strategy point of view, or based off feedback locally on which brands could add value to the AV market. A huge portion of our focus lies in strengthening and expanding our alliances not just in SEA but globally. Since we have the same partnerships in different countries, we can align with familiar vendors across the world.”
The value that Midwich provides to the market will continue to be refined as McIntyre says: “We have a very ambitious growth plan, and we've achieved some significant success to date. We are always on the lookout for new partnerships and vendors to drive and support our goals. In the short term, our focus will be on addressing some gaps, particularly targeting partners in the UC&C and audio space. We will also continue to monitor the convergence of AV and IoT to ensure we can support them as well.”
Not just interested in ‘moving boxes’, Midwich is bolstering its expanded technology portfolio with the addition of expertise and talent. McIntyre elaborates: “We have invested in additional headcount within the sales, support, and technical fields, leveraging the alliances and resources we have built within the wider Midwich group to ensure that we are delivering value in the local markets. Recognising the convergence of AV and IT, we have also been actively hiring individuals with a strong IT background after observations that our clients primarily require IT support.”
The headcount expansion translates to direct value for the AV channel as McIntyre adds: “With the expansion of the sales and support team, we can confidently manage the breadth of inquiries that come through. We are also focusing on getting SIs who have traditionally been importing solutions on their own to leverage our inventory and expanded portfolio, thus giving them access to a larger breadth of solutions that we can offer.”
The aim for Midwich as always remains providing value to the wider AV industry. McIntyre concludes: “We want to take the onus and burden of delivering projects away from SIs as much as we can in the capacity of a trade-only distributor, especially those in Australia and New Zealand as they are typically seen as being big islands in the middle of nowhere, far from the rest of the world. The international brands that we represent typically do not have their own local resources. Hence, we position ourselves to be an extension of the vendor which means that our clients receive the same support they would get from a vendor. Our expansion efforts thus ensure that we can keep up the high standards required for us to add value to the market. To date, we have done that very well and will continue to invest in the means to deliver the right result.”