News

Acer to set up retail kiosks for partners

May 27, 2004

REDFERN,Australia—Looking to steal some of the thunder from whitebox vendors and brands such as Dell and IBM, Acer Computer is deploying a series of kiosks, according to an article on ITNews Australia.
 
Greg Mikaelian, national channels manager at Acer said that Acer would not selling direct but simply supporting its retail partners with the new kiosks.
 
Acer will provide bolt-on hardware which will be loaded with the Acer e-commerce software already in use.
 
"In Australia, the whitebox market is big and very substantial, especially in SMBs," Mikaelian said. "Because most of the vendors in the channel haven't offered a viable solution and we expect to pick up a lot of incremental business for our retailers as a result."
 
"A number of years ago, when [US vendor] Gateway left the Australian market, David Jones approached Acer about coming up with an e-commerce solution [it could offer to its customers]," he said.
 
Customers will get a similar experience with the kiosks that they get by logging on to Acer online.  The site features include the ability to customize products, save quotes for seven to 14 days and get orders delivered within two, three or five working days.

"What we find is that most of our business is through channels now, and we did that about three, four years ago," he said.