Sony Drops Direct B2B Sales For Vaio Notebooks, Taps Channel

The San Diego-based notebook unit of the global electronics giant has converted its telephone support operations in Austin, Texas, and retrained its employees there to focus solely on providing contact and support for VARs.

The shift to an all-channel model, made quietly in stages over the past several months, has led to an immediate boost in business-to-business sales for Sony's Vaio operation, said Mike Abary, Sony's vice president of Vaio marketing.

"You can no longer buy direct, if you are a business," Abary said. The move to an all-channel model, he said, was driven largely by the better economics of delivering to businesses via solution providers.

"We were selling a whole lot to individual businesses that weren't necessarily returning a lot to us," Abary said. "We couldn't get a lot of scale. It was very transactional business. We determined we could never replace the effectiveness of the channel, that it was a very expensive proposition to sell direct to businesses when it's highly transactional."

Sony is making a bigger bet on the channel at a time when the notebook space is seeing significant turbulence. Apple's switch to an Intel-based processing platform this year, missteps by Dell and a massive notebook battery recall have left the PC space's fastest-growing segment in what many see as a period of tumult.

And although another Sony unit, Sony Energy, has been hit by the continuing laptop battery recall controversy, the Vaio unit has been largely unaffected by the battery problems.

Abary said the moves to shore up Sony's integration with the channel have already begun paying off.

"This most recent half-year, which ended Sept. 30, was the best growth out of our B2B business in five and a half years," Abary said. "That's truly a testament to the strength of the channel."

Sony's efforts to redirect its manpower to helping solution providers includes changes at its Austin facility. With the site employing 20 people, Sony spent three or four months retraining those employees to reach out to and help solution providers instead of end users, Abary said.

"We had our call center in Austin focus on that pre-existing reseller base that already expressed an interest in Sony," he said. "Those are the resellers we have been contacting, letting them know what to offer, giving them updates on the products we have."