EFI and Currie Group have come together in a new distribution partnership for Australia and New Zealand, with EFI Asia-Pacific vice-president of sales Rodd Harrison telling Sprinter that the partnership is a “combination of two powerhouses”.
The deal now makes Currie Group the only distributor for the A/NZ region and is a result of adjacencies between both the businesses’ go-to-market strategies – Currie Group’s expertise in digital printing in general, and EFI’s portfolio of wide format display graphics to further drive analog to digital.
“We’re driving this analog to digital conversion, even in the offset space, and in the high-volume retail graphics space, which gets rid of screen printing. That segways into the EFI and Currie Group partnership,” Harrison said.
“Currie Group is the top business in the space that it plays in. EFI’s wide-format range is quite large and as the main go-to-market in A/NZ, we are now funneling all these leads through Currie Group.”
Partnership talks began a few months ago when Currie Group and EFI started discussing possibilities.
“Currie Group approached us and given its fantastic reputation, incredible infrastructure, great service coverage across every market, not just the eastern seaboard, and a professional group of people, along with our product portfolio and continual innovation, it was the perfect marriage. We now have a tier one manufacturer with a tier one distribution company,” Harrison said.
He mentioned that printers are looking to make a stronger comeback this year following the effects of COVID-19, and to do that need to reengineer their businesses.
“No one is buying capacity, everyone is looking for efficiency. We have been able to close nearly 20 placements in the second half of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, and that’s only because our products are delivering value to customers. The market cannot lie,” he said.
“The pandemic has been brutal on everybody, not just our industry. It has forced everyone to raise their games and change their go-to-market strategies, including us. Literally everything in our business has had to change.
“We’ve had to reinvent ourselves, as well as how we engage with customers, help and support them and the partnership with Currie Group is key in this.”
Moving forward, both companies are working on reaching customers together and setting up a demo centre in Melbourne.
“Through the transition period, the number one priority is our customers. That’s our joint approach,” Harrison said.
EFI has also been building its APAC team – a total of 10 new people, in marketing, sales operations and eight new sales consultants have been hired in the last 12 months, including Darren Massey and Brett Addison in A/NZ. The most recent hires were made in China, Japan, and South East Asia.
“We’re very focused on Asia-Pacific in general. We’ve got a great product portfolio, including our new VUTEk Q3r and Q5r UV LED printers and the XT hybrid printer, and have a great team that is going to customers and showing them that they can be better, faster and have sound ROI,” Harrison added.
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