eBuyer's Rich Marsden: 'We've moved to a preferred partner status and removed some distributors'

New CEO at British reseller says it’s simplifying its supply chain and doubling down on direct sales

eBuyer has moved to a preferred partner status and cut out some distributors to simplify its supply chain and deepen relationships with specific partners, CEO Rich Marsden tells CRN.

Marsden became CEO of the British reseller just six months ago when, together with business partner Mark Reed, he acquired the company from West Retail Group.

Since joining, Marsden has been bringing his own ideas to fulfil the potential he sees in eBuyer and "scale it to incredible new heights."

"Moving to a preferred partner status is a big change for eBuyer, and we've selected a number of distributors to remain as preferred partners. A number have been removed from our supply chain.

"So we've simplified our supply chain to make it easier and so that we can now work closely with our preferred partners to build our business, as opposed to having multiple distributors competing all the time for the same purchase order," he explains.

He confirmed that eBuyer is still working with all the major distributors inlcluding Ingram Micro, TD SYNNEX, Exertis and Westcoast as well as a handful of specialists.

He also says that the company has been doubling down on its direct business and is seeing success with some direct partners.

"That's been another big shift because typically our business would have would have been virtually 100 per cent through distribution and now it's around 50/50.

"eBuyer has always had a lot of direct relationships. We just haven't utilised them.

"There are certain product categories that we probably will only buy direct on moving forwards, such as graphics cards. And there are other categories that are in distribution and will remain in distribution such as laptops and other devices.

"So we've been aligning the right product set with the right partner and the right type of partnership."

Expanding in Europe

Marsden also touched on the opportunity to do more business both in the UK, but also in the EU.

"Europe is not a huge priority for us right now.

"We've got a lot of business to go after within the UK and we do have a lot of customers who have offices dotted around the EU which want us to service their European businesses the same way we do for the UK business.

"And so, the easiest, most frictionless way to do that is to establish a business within the EU, which we've set up and it's doing a small amount of revenue.

"We don't expect it to be material for the next 12 to 18 months. It just gives us the option that customers require us to service their business within the EU."

However, Marsden says he hopes to see this business grow and be producing a revenue of £50-80m over the next five years.

The ‘untold' story of eBuyer

eBuyer's enterprise business currently makes up around 25 per cent of the company's total revenues, Marsden says, but he explains how that's still a lesser-known part of its business.

"I think it's probably the untold story of eBuyer.

"We're really strong on consumer, we have a really strong system integration business. But we've got several salespeople in our office who focus exclusively on B2B customers, and part of that is solution sales.

"So we've got solution specialists, who currently sit in the building and a lot of people don't know that eBuyer actually has the ability to provide a full solution to customers and it's an area that we're looking to grow.

Marsden plans to double down on the solutions business over the next 18 months to "unlock some additional growth".

Trends in the market

Marsden highlights as the main challenge facing eBuyer at the moment as low demand.

"Consumer confidence is better year on year, but it's still not quite where we wanted it to be.

"So that's compressing some demand in our consumer business. And then whilst we're having a much better time in B2B business, still demand could be higher.

"So as confidence comes back, and things settle down with inflation, interest rates and energy costs etc., we expect this to raise demand, which is quite cyclical."

One area where demand hasn't slowed down, however, is in refurbished and recycled devices, Marsden explains.

"I think the biggest shift that we're starting to see particularly in the sectors that we play in is this shift to recycle or refurbished.

"There's a huge demand through both consumer and businesses, consumers are now much more considered.

"And whether they buy new or refurbished, we offer a range of refurbished and we're seeing growth on that category in B2C and B2B."

Marsden says that's an area they will be looking to invest both as range, but also supplies.

As our conversation draws to an end, he reminds us of eBuyer's scope for growth as his main objective looking forward.

He says: "eBuyer still only has a very small, single-digit percentage market share in each of the categories that we're in.

"So there's lots of room for growth for us, even in a market that's probably not quite what it was last year or the year before."