The eighth dealer conference called ‘The MERLION Olympic Games 2005’ was held October 2-5 in Malta. The conference was supported by ATI, Hewlett-Packard and LG Electronics companies.
On October 2 the MERLION Company, a leading distributor of computer and digital equipment, lit a bright flame of the MERLION Olympics 2005 dealer conference in Malta.
;)
74 company representatives from 47 Russian cities and the former Soviet republics were invited by MERLION to the sunlit Republic of Malta under the bright blue sky. The world’s leading IT companies ATI, Hewlett-Packard and LG Electronics took the role of the Organizing Committee of the Olympics.
;)
Indicating close relations between the IT channel participants and determination to achieve high performance in business, the five Olympic interlacing rings became a symbol of the eighth dealer conference.
In the formal part of the programme the MERLION executives offered their own perspectives of the domestic computer market and informed about the short- term and long-term strategic development plans of the company.
;)
Partnership and openness were named as the key principles of the cooperation between MERLION and its dealers. Igor Petrov, CEO, pointed out that the distributor-dealer cooperation at all levels based on these principles would make the collaboration much too productive. To strengthen the relations between its partners, the company introduced the Official MERLION partner status to be granted to 300 dealers from different Russian regions during the year. For next season MERLION plans to improve the quality of its partners’ service support and provide a better access to the products arranging a common trade area.
;)
Alexey Sonk, President of MERLION, pointed out that the company will go on focusing on profitable and fast-growing product categories such as PCs, notebooks, digital cameras, video and wireless technology products. Vadim Yarotsky, the Deputy Managing Director for Strategic Planning and Marketing, reported the participants about the major principles of developing a profitable product portfolio, giving as an example the MERLION product selection.
Being a large IT-distributor, the company and its partners have been enjoying new opportunities for business development.
In early November within the Bundle Project MERLION will already provide developers with component bundles to assemble PCs that allow regional developers to compete successfully with big computer manufacturers.
Vyacheslav Simonenko, the Director of recently opened MERLION System Solutions Department that coordinates project distribution, told about new company capabilities to be offered to system integrators.
;)
The idea to create a federal specialty computer store chain based on the MERLION partners was also put on the agenda of the conference. According to Oleg Koposov, the Manager of Computer Retail project, “the aim of the project is to strengthen a retailer’s position in regional markets.”
In the informal part of the conference the representatives of MERLION, its Russian and foreign partners formed 5 teams under the flags symbolizing the Olympic rings. The teams did well following the Olympic principle “More, Better, Faster”. At the closing ceremony of the Olympics the winners were granted the title “The knight of the Maltese Cross”.
