HP tendering for supplies distributor

The company has invited around 10 organisations to bid for the business left by the departure of Daisytek. It will reduce that number to a shortlist of around four, with an announcement expected by late August, said Rebekah O'Flaherty, general manager of IPG at HP.

Currently, Tech Pacific, Dynamic Supplies and Digiland deliver HP consumables to the reseller and retail channels.

O'Flaherty said that every two years the company does a review of its supplies distribution channel and it had started the latest review process prior to Daisytek going into administration. “They [Daisytek] did the large format retail [consumables] which they served well.

HP is looking for a distributor that can service the large format retail channel, she said. “We have been fortunate to have the distributors in place that have been able to absorb business that has been lost.”

The demise of the Daisytek relationship hadn't had any affect on HP's consumables sales revenue but the “timing couldn't have been worse,” O'Flaherty said, adding that the end of financial year was generally a busy time for consumables sales.

Ingram Micro is one distributor pitching for the business. Steve Rust, managing director at Ingram, said the addition of HP consumable products to its books would result in incremental business for the distributor.

It would complement Ingram's broader retail strategy and give its white-box and “corner-store” customers better access to HP supplies, Rust said.

Meanwhile Daisytek administrator PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is negotiating with a short list of distributors to purchase the remainder of Daisytek.

PwC's Martin Brown told iTnews earlier this week that he is anticipating that contracts would be exchanged a creditor's meeting on Friday, July 4. Daisytek Australia went into administration on May 23 and lost its HP distribution agency earlier this month.