David MacDonald: the soft and hard facts about Softchoice; CEO discusses hardware business.(Close-Up)

A few years ago Softchoice Corp. was one of the preeminent software resellers in Canada. Through acquisition it reinvented itself into a North American reselling force with not only software, but hardware as well. The company now has its sights set on Europe through a strategic partnership with IT solution provider PC-Ware Information Technologies AG of Leipzig, Germany.

Softchoice's growth has been spearheaded by David MacDonald, the company's president and CEO. Computer Dealer News visited MacDonald at his Toronto headquarters to talk about its future plans.

CDN: What is your forecast or plan for growth in 2004?

David MacDonald: 2002 was an interesting year for us because we did a lot of business with Microsoft licensing and a lot of customers accelerated decisions and got themselves current. So 2003 we did not have customers who were not in the market place, so Microsoft business is down. But in both the U.S. and Canada we are seeing strong double digit growth for non-Microsoft vendors. In fact, in the U.S. on a year-to-date basis we have grown our non-Microsoft business by 35 per cent. The hardware business is growing leaps and bounds and in November it was more than 15 per cent of our revenue. If you look at what we do for our customers it has translated well in the hardware space.

CDN: How has Softchoice been able to gain margins in the hardware business, when most other resellers find no margin in hardware anymore?