Sydney, Australia: Scholastic Media & Technology has grown its sales of Wacom Interface Solutions by over 160% in the past 24 months, edging past channel competitors and demonstrating an ability to deliver as effectively on hardware as it does on software.
Wacom appointed Scholastic as a distributor in 2004. The deal was the first foray into hardware for Scholastic and it dovetailed naturally with existing distribution agreements for software vendors such as Adobe and Autodesk. The recent addition of Corel products also benefits from the links to bundled versions with various Wacom tablets.
Scholastic now distributes Wacoms’ Bamboo, Intuos and Cintiq tablet technologies to education and retail outlets throughout the country. Managing Director of Wacom Australia, Mr. David Spencer confirmed that Scholastic has moved very quickly since being appointed a distributor and is jockeying for pole position within the channel.
“Category awareness is rapidly growing and we are air-freighting in product to meet demand in the channel” said Mr. Spencer. “Scholastic has proven a good fit for Wacom and it has significantly increased unit distribution. The fastest growing segment for Wacom distribution through Scholastic has been into retail,” said Mr. Spencer.
According to General Manager of Scholastic Media & Technology, Mr. Wayne Cooper there is a significant upward trend in consumer demand for Wacom product lines, and growing awareness means retailers are fielding more questions through the buying process.
“We’ve noticed a significant upward trend in consumer demand for this technology and it has generated a need for more information within retail,” said Mr. Cooper. Scholastic has addressed demand with one-on-one resources to “ensure retailers are well supported in their understanding of the Wacom product lineup and how different product SKUs best fit differing user profiles.”
“Consumer demand for this technology extends right across the product spectrum from the entry-level at home use of Bamboo to the high end production intensive professional use of Intuos4.The products have a very broad appeal so our unique domain knowledge and dedicated support resource adds a lot of value to our retail channel. We have also seen strong consumer focus on the award winning Cintiq range that utilize interactive pen-display technology, and believe they are fast becoming the weapon of choice for graphic designers and CAD professionals in Australia.” said Mr. Cooper.
A strong footing in the education sector has served Scholastic well, and the channel for Wacom products such as the Bamboo range of pen and graphics tablets has been growing steadily for the past two years in that domain. More recently, Scholastic also picked up a relationship with Avid, which in combination with Wacom’s professional hardware options, the Intuos and Cintiq, means the distributor has also been able to utilise its education base to edge into supply of the pro-broadcast student user market.
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