SED Offers New Credit To VARs

The Atlanta-based distributor will offer customers GreenSky Net 60 and GreenSky Rewards credit cards, which offer 60-day interest free terms and rewards points with no black out dates or limited availability seats for airline tickets. The cards can be used anywhere, not exclusively with SED.

So far, customers are opting for the cards with 60-day terms rather than the rewards programs, said Rob Kalman, vice president of marketing at SED.

"Our plan is that as this gets going we'll do some special incentives where that when they buy from SED they'd get extra reward points. We did want to provide something that can help their business in general, even if it's not SED they buy things from," he said.

"We're always looking for programs that help those small to medium customers be able to run their business," he said. "A decent number of our customers do use credit cards."

Resellers can get cards with credit limits of up to $500,000 through SED's credit card partnership with GreenSky. SED has also offered reseller customers $100 off their first order of $1,000 or more when they use the GreenSky card.

"It's a pretty slick idea because it frees up our credit limits. The phones and things like PDAs that we're buying are so much more expensive," said Buddy Glagovics, owner of Buddy's Electronics, Pocomake City, Md.

Keeping credit lines open with a variety of companies helps his business stay afloat when things are tight, he said, and SED's terms will help resellers manage their businesses. Personally, he tries to keep his business "pay-as-you-go" he said, but the cards do come in handy with big orders for expensive products.

"I just got the card Monday so we've not even used it yet. We have other lines of credit that we'll use as we need to," said Glagovics. "It just frees things up so that we can use an extra line of credit."