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I have started my own business and would like to be able to purchase new computers at dealer costs and dont know where to start looking. I have applied for affiliates but havent heard anything from them. If someone knows who I need to contact please let me know and explain the steps of how I need to go about it. please and thank you

9 Spice ups
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I do that with my side business, an LLC. First, I would suggest you chose a vendor. I chose HP. I then, after creating my business and all the devil in the details stuff, applied to become a reseller. You will need your local/state licenses for resale.

Then create an account with companies that cater to resellers. They are Tech Data, Ingram Micro, Synnex, and a few others that I can’t remember.

You need to be very organized on the accounting side because you will need to report sales tax to your jurisdiction.

Good luck.

1 Spice up
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Depending on the type of product you are looking for Ex. New, Refurbished, Non Working will depend on the type of companies you look for. If you are applying for affiliate programs you are working with companies that will only allow you to gain slim ROI per unit. I would advise you to take a look at companies that deal with excess and obsolete, or repair facilities for OEM’s.

Genco

D&H Distirbutors

My company supplys certain items but for more on a component level.

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Synnex, Ingram and Tech Data are good! I have contacts for Synnex if you need them.

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DJPostedok wrote:

I have started my own business and would like to be able to purchase new computers at dealer costs and dont know where to start looking. I have applied for affiliates but havent heard anything from them. If someone knows who I need to contact please let me know and explain the steps of how I need to go about it. please and thank you

Generally you have to be a partner of the company that you are selling (HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo, etc.)

Then, once you have that in place (trivial work) you need a logistics/wholesale partner. Ingram Micro and companies like that.

That’s all you need.

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yeah get yourselve invovled with specific vendor partners and then to complete your channel go to one of the distributors. d&h have a robust smb model, ingram tech data are the main players in my experience, also check out synnex

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Since HP is on the way out of the PC and laptop market and IBM/Lenovo seem to be losing more ground each day I would say go with Dell.

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Craig M wrote:

Since HP is on the way out of the PC and laptop market and IBM/Lenovo seem to be losing more ground each day I would say go with Dell.

I’m not sure if it has recently changed, but Dell isn’t all that reseller-centric. Theirs has been more of a direct sell model. If that has significantly changed, I’d like to know. I hear ya on the HP spinoff, but the spinoff company won’t be tiny in any sense of the word.

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Dell is doing more direct sales you are correct, but they still subcontract out certain work. If it deals with excess & obsolute (which is still good product depending on the market) you can find the subcontract companies to deal with. There is also any comapanies that do business or have contracts with Foxconn. Dell is still #1

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Craig M wrote:

Since HP is on the way out of the PC and laptop market and IBM/Lenovo seem to be losing more ground each day I would say go with Dell.

I wouldn’t work with Dell as a reseller. Dell is famous for going to your customers behind your back and offering them a better price than you offered them to steal them from you. Dell is not reseller friendly. We’ve all been burned by them pretty badly.

They never even had a reseller capability before - you always had to pay full price and mark up from there. So no one would buy through you anyway since it guaranteed a higher price.

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Craig M wrote:

Since HP is on the way out of the PC and laptop market and IBM/Lenovo seem to be losing more ground each day I would say go with Dell.

HP is NOT exiting the PC business. It is considering making it its own company - there is no hint that they’ve ever considered leaving the market and that division grew this quarter.

Lenovo is just Lenovo, not IBM connection.

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Scott Alan Miller wrote:

Yeah. I got burned a few times by them and that is my aversion to Dell. One of the worst times, and this was a few years ago, they kept sending invoices to our customers. I’ve been reasonably happy with HP for a number of years.

I know this comment may date me, but I remember how upset I was with Compaq and HP when they put up direct sales business sites. Before then, you could only get business product through channel. Different world though.

I do like the spifs offered through HP though. Pain to keep track, but nice income coming back for things I sell anyway.

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Denis Kelley wrote:

In general, HP is really protective of its channel but has direct sales too. You really need both. But Dell is an enemy of their partners and acts like the channel is its competition instead of its path to customer acquisition. Now only does the channel itself get burned but so does any customer working with the channel to get Dell gear since the prices are higher AND the channel makes basically zero margins. Everyone loses.

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I personally think Dell is all about the name even thou the product they produce is usually good quality. What do you think about Toshiba? I have seen a lot of their products coming out.

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DJPostedok wrote:

I personally think Dell is all about the name even thou the product they produce is usually good quality. What do you think about Toshiba? I have seen a lot of their products coming out.

Toshiba is fine but has a more limited product line (focused on the laptop market primarily.) They would be very similar to HP to work with. Dell is really unique in how they treat people pushing their products as enemies.

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I would also look in your local yellow pages under Computers, Wholesale and see what you have in your city. There will most likely be a couple of national ones that maintain a sales office that you can pick up locally components and white box computers. Very handy for when you need parts NOW for a customer. Tech Data, Ingram, etc. are good for a wide variety of parts and some of their lines you have to be a registered vendor to that manufacturer to purchase their stuff. Count on a couple days lead time to get parts shipped from the major wholesalers.

Good luck with your new business!

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I’ve been in retail (brick and mortar store) and enjoyed it, but for is the computer sales were worthless as an income stream the last couple of eyars - too many box stores selling things way too low.

If I had stayed in retail I had already planned to sell computers only as a service to maintenance customers. In other words if our accountants, hospitals, banks, etc. needed new equipment we bought, installed, and maintained it.

For walk-in customers (private homes, etc.) we were getting out of that business.

Having said that, Ingram-Micro and other mentiooned already were good sources for - almost everything.

For “white-box” computers it was almost impossible to beat Houston wholesale companies. There is a huge wholesale technical supply in Houst and that’s where we bought most of the non-branded stuff, and some of the brand name items.

Best of luck.

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I’ve done the “new&used with service and repairs” bit a couple times now. Both times I lasted a little over 5 years before I started getting annoyed with the customers. Not that they ever knew, NEVER let your customers know. Both times when I was finally fed up with it I was able to sell the company lock, stock & barrel, with pretty full customer lists.

If you are willing to put in the time, and depending on your location, you can easily make quite a bit of money doing used systems, custom systems (users love pretty blinky’s for some reason), and occasionally major names (hp, etc). Depending on your market however, it may not be feasible. Are you looking to sell to businesses? big or small? are you looking to support as well? or are you more interested in having a store front where the average joe walks in? these and many others are things you’ll want to consider before putting too much money into this.

I used to love my CDW account, ingram micro was pretty decent too. My favorite has been to just watch the major sites and grab deals when I see them. Since I would also do used, taking customer trade ins on new systems generally meant I was never out of stock, and I’d buy systems by the pallet from companies either going out of business or doing desktop/server refreshes (I was known to have just about anything… literally).

Just pick your field and play ball. It’s a rough game, but if you can stand it, it can be worth playing.