Toshiba Offers VARs New Discounts On Demo Notebooks

Under the new Business Demonstration Program, Toshiba VARs receive a 40 percent discount on the Portege m200, Tecra M3 and Qosmio G15 notebooks, the company's three top sellers in the channel, said Darren McGeorge, a senior manager for Toshiba's Digital Products Division.

Toshiba is offering the discounts because of feedback it received from its partners at regional executive council meetings.

"This was one of the items discussed [at the meetings]," McGeorge said. "It is something partners wanted because they said they must have [access to] our products to demo for their customers."

McGeorge said Toshiba also wanted to stay competitive with vendors such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM, which also allow their partners discounts on products so they can loan them to customers to try out or use them as demo machines to make a sale, he said. He added that 40 percent is either higher than or comparable to discounts other vendors offer partners on select products.

Toshiba launched the Preferred Partner Program about 2 ½ years ago and has been trying to build out its channel significantly since then, McGeorge said. The vendor is especially interested in selling its Qosmio multimedia notebook through the channel to business, SOHO and digital home users.