MERLION Business Channel 2010: the closing forum took place in Novosibirsk this year

The fifth season of forum for partners of MERLION, MERLION Business Channel 2010, which started in spring 2010, has finished. The closing forum took place оn October 14 in Novosibirsk.

All in all MERLION has organized six region forums for its partners since March, 2010 – in Rostov-on-Don (for the Southern Federal District), Yekaterinburg (for the Urals Federal District), Kazan (for Tatarstan Republic), Irkutsk (for the Siberian Federal District), Zavidovo (for Moscow, the Central and North-western Federal District) and in Novosibirsk (for the Siberian Federal District).

Sergey Raskolov

On the closing forum in Novosibirsk on October 14 about fifty MERLION’s partners from Siberian Federal District came. The official part of the forum was very eventful. It was started by sales director of MERLION Sergey Raskolov. He told the audience about the structure of his department, reminded that a widest assortment of goods is available to the partners for ordering from stock (more than 12 000 products), and accented the attention of the partners on financial interaction. As for a new business direction (distribution of digital technique, mobile phones and household and beauty appliances) Mr. Raskolov pronounced the results of the first months of sale and determined ambitious plans for 2010 financial year. Separately Sergey mentioned the educational project, which opens additional opportunities to the partners - the Competence Centre.

After Sergey Raskolov’s report representatives of 7 famous producing companies held speeches, in which they told the audience about their companies, development and products.

Matvei Kurilov, AMD

“AMD Vision” (processors)

Matvei Kurilov, the regional representative of AMD in Novosibirsk region, presented the AMD strategy to the audience, and in particular he marked the focus on the progressive producing and technological leadership as well as plans to extend the existing plants. Talking about AMD solution line he underlined that a contemporary user is more concerned about feelings from using than about processors themselves: “VISION technology by AMD simplifies selling PC – it is focused on the suggested using to help the customer to find a notebook or a PC appropriate for himself or herself”. He noted, that AMD corporation is the only company, which develops both processors x86 and graphic technologies aimed at revealing the digital world HD entertainment. He told the audience about the products of AMD company: the mass mobile platform AMD 2010, ultra portable mobile platform AMD 2010, and tabletop platform AMD 2010. He presented the first mobile graphics in the world with support of DirectX® 11-enebled and announced the line of platforms for 2011.

Vadim Khomyakov, BenQ

“LED LCD-screens BenQ 2010, new technologies and advantages”

Vadim Khomyakov, BenQ manager for partnership development, fascinatingly and in detail told the partners about technologies and solutions, which are used when producing LED LCD-screens BenQ, he especially marked the use of ecologically clean technologies and materials. BenQ Company keeps up to date and even now suggests contemporary solutions, such as VA+LED monitors, ML series of LED monitor-TVs and fast 3D-ready gaming LED monitors of ХL series.

Kirill Mishanin, Lenovo

“Power of Lenovo is in our partners” (laptops)

Kirill Mishanin, the Lenovo representative for partnership, began his report with history – he told the audience about the company’s path of development since 1987, acquainted listeners with the international structure of Lenovo and its technologic centres, showed achievements and dynamics of the mobile-PC market. Much attention in his report was paid to the model line 2010 of laptops of Lenovo Think and Lenovo Idea series.

Vladimir Shevchenko, WD

“Western Digital is the leader of the hard-drive market”

There were a lot of interesting facts in the report by Vladimir Shevchenko, manager for partnership development in Siberia and Far East. Among them:

• Western Digital – No.1 in the world by turnover, production output, development of technologies.
• Western Digital - No.1 in Russia by sales, market share, efficiency of work.
• Over 1 million Western Digital disks are sold in the past quarter.
• Western Digital’s market share increased twofold during the past 5 years.
• MERLION is the oldest from six Russian distributors of Western Digital (since 2005).

Ilya Yaskov, Samsung

“Laptop line Samsung. Partnership program”

Ilya Yaskov, manager for partnership development, described in detail the line of laptops and netbooks Samsung. He marked that the production is distinguished by high quality and technological perfection, and this is proved by regular marking with rewards from leading computer periodicals from all over the world.

Natalya Zontova, Verbatim

Verbatim: “Trends in the market of information media. Assortment and new products”

Natalya Zontova, manager for business development and marketing in Russia, introduced the global structure of the company and its subdivision “Europe, the Near East and Africa” to the forum participants. Verbatim has a lot to be proud of:

• 40 years of work experience in the market of information media.
• The company is in top 3 leading companies in Europe in the market of information media.
• It has been in the first place in Europe and in the world in the market of optic information media as long as for seven years in succession.

Mrs Zontova at the end of her report announced a new technology of 3-layer Blu-Ray disks with capacity 100 Gb (which will be available in Russia starting from the 1st quarter of 2011) and a new premium line DataLifePlus for professionals (DVD-R, DVD+R DL, CD-R, BD-R and BD-R DL).

Aleksey Samoilov, HP

“Inkjet business-printers HP OfficeJet Pro. More efficient and economical”

Aleksey Samoilov, production trainer, HP, answered the question “What novelties did the HP engineers brought to the inkjet printing in business?”: new interface for ePRINT printing, a new model of using and a new level of controllability. He brought a strong “PRO” argument for a new flagman in the segment of inkjet multifunctional devices for business – the HP Offecejet Pro, which is evidently economical for business – with it printing on an inkjet printer is 50% cheaper than laser printing! Besides, Aleksey mentioned global market figures: “In Russia the market of inkjet business-devices is growing fast, well ahead of analytics’ forecasts – the growth of Q2` 2010 made +57% (vs. Q2` 2009)”.

The official part was followed by an amusing business-game “Convince in 60 seconds”. Companies HP and Verbatim brought to the forum demo-equipment (MFD HP Officejet and a range of information media Verbatim), which arose great interest of participants and helped them convince the rivals in the game “Convince in 60 seconds”. In this way, a representative of the Verbatim team showed, that it is possible to have a flash memory always secure and at hand… as a tie accessory. On the other hand a representative from the HP team within almost 60 seconds has printed out a 32-paged instruction in colours, thus showing the speed of the MFD HP OfficeJet.

All in all, every participant of the game showed gifts and creativity, all the sketches were convincing. But according to the common opinion, the AMD team became a winner, which, in the person of a “single actor” (and the regional AMD representative at the same time) with the use of a usual notebook and a cord showed how to overclock the processor and change the architecture of a PC or a notebook.

The event was finished with a banquet, a concert of a popular group from Novosibirsk, a show of soap bubbles and with a special performance “Singing glasses”.