I don’t think there’s another region in the world where there’s such a diverse range of cultures as in the Asia Pacific region (APAC). In order to address each market with its various unique aspects, we work through distributors. As Biamp’s Regional Sales Director for APAC, I can attest to the value and importance of our distributor-partners in the region.

The Value of a Great Distributor

At Biamp, we rely on our distributors to be an extension/representative of Biamp to their integrator-customers. Aside from bridging language barriers when they exist, there is a very long list of jobs a distributor performs on our behalf. Here are a few:

• Organizing importing through customs
• Ensuring our products are properly certified within the country
• Keeping adequate stocks to cater for urgent or rush projects
• Providing first-line technical support and maintenance services
• Providing financing for integrators while also managing currency exchange
• Running local marketing activities
• Assisting with translation of technical documents

First and foremost, a great distributor must have a strong desire to grow with Biamp. Needless to say, if we have an exclusive distributor in a particular country or region, Biamp’s growth in that area is precisely defined as the growth of that distributor. Only if the distributor grows sales do we grow sales. A distributor with a strong appetite for growth always serves us well, and our duty in return is to continue creating products that are valuable to their customers and business model.

Integrators prefer to purchase from as few distributors as possible. Fewer points of purchase means less paperwork, less coordination for shipping, and less opportunities for something to go wrong. It also enables integrators to increase their buying power and access to financing from the distributor. Our most successful distributors facilitate this process by having a robust, but focused, product portfolio that complements Biamp’s product families and solutions.

How to Bring Product Education to
APAC Integrators

I often describe Biamp products as a platform, or a foundation, for the ideas of system designers to be built upon. In an audio system, the foundation is the programming of the DSP. We believe our role as a company is to provide audio designers with the foundation and guidelines they need to build their systems to best effect.

In the more developing parts of APAC, we’re introducing many of our integrators to networked media systems for the first time. In order to make sure that systems are built properly to perform at their peak, education of these emerging integrators is critical.

Although Biamp hosts over a hundred certification classes every year, we can’t do this in every country we sell product in. Our best distributors take the lead from us and make the investment in people and equipment to train their integrator-customers in the best ways to integrate and design with Biamp. When I say training, I actually mean anything from a full-blown certification course to a lunch and learn with a simple product demo. Either way, we couldn’t accomplish this level and quality of training without close partnerships with our distributors.

We are truly fortunate to partner with some of the very best AV and IT product distributors in the industry. To our APAC distributors: thank you.