More than 1000 senior channel executives from across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) gathered at the Salle des Etoiles in Monaco on Thursday 21st February for the ‘EMEA Channel Academy: 2013 Awards’, held in conjunction with DISTREE EMEA.
A total of 27 awards were presented during the Gala Dinner with hundreds of attending distributors and retailers using a live electronic voting system to select their preferred vendors across 12 product categories. Taking place for the fifth year in a row in 2013, the awards also benefitted from an improved voting process for distributor categories, incorporating the use of data from research house CONTEXT’s ChannelWatch second tier reseller and retailer survey for the first time
Farouk Hemraj, CEO and Co-Founder at DISTREE Events, explained the benefits of the new approach: “As always, we surveyed more than 100 vendors to find out their preferred distributor by region. This data was then combined with the results from CONTEXT’s ChannelWatch survey, which was completed by approximately 4000 resellers and retailers across the EMEA region.”
“The vendor votes and second tier partner votes were equally weighted using a parity system to determine the winner in each region. This new process ensures that we are evaluating distributors using feedback from both upstream and downstream business partners,” he added.
The ‘EMEA Channel Academy: 2013 Awards’ also included dedicated retailer awards and initiative awards, with the overall winners determined by a VIP Jury of regional channel experts. The inclusion of retailer awards for the first time reflected the growing importance of this sector in the DISTREE EMEA delegate base.
The full list of ‘EMEA Channel Academy: 2013 Awards’ winners are as follows:
Esquire – African Distributor of the Year
BDL Group – Middle East & North Africa Distributor of the Year
AB/AT Computers – Central & Eastern Europe Distributor of the Year
Merlion – Russia & CIS Distributor of the Year
Arena – South East Europe Distributor of the Year
Ingram Micro – Southern Europe Distributor of the Year
ALSO-Actebis – Northern Europe Distributor of the Year
Ingram Micro – DACH Distributor of the Year
Tech Data – France & Benelux Distributor of the Year
Computer 2000 – UK & Ireland Distributor of the Year
Maplin – European Retailer of the Year
Euroset – Russia & CIS Retailer of the Year
Carrefour – Middle East & Africa Retailer of the Year
Esquire – EMEA Distributor Initiative of the Year
Jackys Electronics – EMEA Retailer Initiative of the Year
Samsung – Monitors/TVs Vendor of the Year
Seagate – Components Vendor of the Year
Microsoft – Software Vendor of the Year
HP – Printing Vendor of the Year
Trendnet – Home Networking Vendor of the Year
Port Designs – Accessories Vendor of the Year
Microsoft – Gaming Vendor of the Year
WD – Storage Vendor of the Year
JBL by Harman – Audio Vendor of the Year
Canon – Imaging Vendor of the Year
Samsung – Mobile Device Vendor of the Year
Lenovo – PCs Vendor of the Year
