Premium brand Samsung, arguably best known for its market-leading smartphones, is rapidly becoming a name to reckon with in the business-to-business (B2B) environment.
And, as the master distributor of Samsung’s B2B ranges since 2021, Mustek can take much of the credit for this success.
Kirk Toweel, Samsung Business Lead at Mustek, explains that the distributor started working with Samsung’s audio-visual and video conferencing (AV-VC) portfolio with products that include professional displays, interactive whiteboards and kiosks, as well as all the associated peripherals.
Adding to the line-up are the vendor’s consumer televisions and its full monitor range.
Mustek has since also taken on the mobile experience (MX) product line-up including smartphones, tablets, wearables and hearables.
“There is a great deal of brand equity in the name thanks to the ecosystem and Samsung’s leadership in the consumer space,” Toweel says. “From its beginnings as a rice cooker manufacturer to where it is today, Samsung has built itself into a premium brand. And, after four years as the master distributor, we are seeing the evolution where partners and customers are starting to recognise Samsung as a B2B brand of choice.”
Yes, there are challenges, Toweel adds. But the timing is right for Samsung and Mustek. “Post-Covid, sales of end user devices was down, but we are seeing an increase now. People are going back to the office, and enterprises are starting to set up their boardrooms and meeting rooms again.
“Thanks to the wide Samsung portfolio, we have seen pretty consistent growth, with some areas up when others are down. For instance, when tablets or monitors are down, smart signage could be enjoying a boost.
“Overall, we have seen approximately 25% growth across the portfolio in the 2024 financial year,” he says. “And we are dominating the market in the areas that we came on board with Samsung for – able to add value to partners and customers.”
Mobile Experience (MX)
The MX division includes tablets, smartphones, wearables and hearables, accessories, and audio devices.
Although these products are often associated with consumers, this doesn’t mean they don’t have a place in the B2B, B2G and B2E worlds.
And sourcing these devices through Mustek means they can be secured with the Knox security platform for business.
Knox gives organisations the ability to configure, customise, deploy, analyse, and manage their devices. So they can improve business performance while supporting workers with better security.
Large organisations or education institutions can licence Knox on all their devices, so an administrator can manage the apps to be used at which times.
Apart from security functions like the Knox Vault, Knox can be employed for asset management and device tracking.
Samsung Displays
The range of display solutions includes smart signage and hospitality solutions.
The smart signage solutions offer professional-grade image quality; LED signage in a range of shapes, sizes, and ratios.
With its top-quality LED and LCD displays, Samsung offers a range of art wall options with irregularly tiled monitors from any of their product models regardless of specifications. Users can create their own video wall designs with flexible results.
And Samsung has developed their own digital signage software to help users to navigate and control their audio and visual media content.
Professional displays can also be integrated into kiosk-type solutions, which are starting to gain traction in the B2G space.
Whiteboards and digital flip charts find a practical use in a range of environments from education to boardroom, offering both static and interactive features.
Components
Components range from gaming and high-resolution monitors to smart monitors and televisions to smart shields, SSDs (solid state drives), and memory.
Popular displays include the Viewfinity 5K Smart Monitor, offering a bigger canvas with 218 PPI for incredible detail. The display is kind on users’ eyes, reducing light reflections without obscuring their view. And, with Smart Calibration and a smartphone, the screen can easily be customised for unique experiences.
Mustek also supplies the market-leading Odyssey Ark gaming monitor, a165Hz 55-inch UHD monitor. The 1000R curve matches the contours of the human eye for better realism, and users can adjust screen size and ratio to enjoy multiple content sources. The Ark is built in Quantum Matrix Technology with Quantum Mini LED, which provides a crystal clear picture.
Samsung business monitors include ultra-wide business monitors, high-resolution monitors, and curved monitors.
Samsung computing products are designed for peak productivity, while its SSDs provide best-in-class storage solutions.
Samsung data storage solutions deliver reliability and performance with features such as V-NAND architecture and non-volatile memory express to ensure connections and larger storage capacities.
Partnering with Mustek
Mustek works with partners to reach a broad customer range: from consumer to SME and corporate and encompassing education, government, and healthcare.
“Our partners include Mom-and-Pop stores all the way up to companies supplying solutions to large corporates and government,” Toweel says.
“We are a good partner in that we will never sell direct to end customers, but go to market via our network of reseller partners.
“We never compete with our partners and always support them,” Toweel emphasises. “In a world where the landscape changes from week to week, and organisations shift their role in the value chain, we will never waver from these distribution fundamentals.
“Working with brands like Samsung that are forward-thinking and spend billions on R&D (research and development) allows us to broaden our offering to our partners and enables them to create new solutions for their customers,” Toweel adds.
“As a distributor, we are sticking to our core role, which is to work with both the vendor and the partner so that, together, we can build solutions.
“We invest in stock and in people. We have got nine people around the country, focusing solely on Samsung. There are brand champions in all the branches and product managers in Johannesburg. This means we can plan properly and promote the solutions where they are relevant.”
Because it’s a solid business, Mustek can also offer partners terms and help them ease cash flow issues when they supply big orders.
“We do warehousing and ensure that product is always available.” Toweel adds. “In fact, Mustek holds anything up to R100-million of stock at any point in time – and ensure that it carries 98% of the Samsung portfolio at any point in time.”
A big value-add that is often overlooked when speaking about distribution is the one-to-one relationship the salespeople foster with partners.
“And we can help partners to fulfil big orders – for instance, when a new smartphone is launched,” Toweel says. “When you add this to the ability to grant terms, personal relationships, and delivery straight to the end customer, you recognise the value of working with a distributor like Mustek.”
The products’ inherent quality has made it possible for Mustek to negotiate an additional year’s warranty on Samsung B2B monitors. “The consumer products come with a two-year warranty, but the B2B solutions through Mustek come with a standard three-year carry-in warranty.”
This is a huge value-add, he says, as it demonstrates Mustek’s commitment to, and confidence in, Samsung’s quality.
In addition, Mustek creates a complete ecosystem that enables partners to take the B2B portfolio to market.
For Samsung, partnering with Mustek makes sense too. “From an administration point of view, no vendor could look after all the reseller partners,” Toweel says.
As a long-time distributor, this is where Mustek excels. “This is what we do, and we do it well,” Toweel points out. “As a successful distributor, we know how to ensure we have the right product at the right time and in the right place.”