Supply problems and the impact of the Easter holidays have taken some toll on the channel over the last few weeks according to analysis from Context.
The Easter break, and the double bank holiday days of Good Friday and Easter Monday, reduced trading and pushed the UK into its first decline of the year, The same problems also had an impact on trading in Germany and Spain.
Context uses a rolling four-week average to track the response to the virus and found that the last few weeks, to 6 April, have been tougher for the channel across Western Europe.
A surge in demand for home working hardware and software had bolstered growth across the region, helping the channel to produce 10 percent growth in the week of 16 March.
But that proved to be the high point and since then the growth numbers have been falling, with 2020 numbers slipping behind last year’s performance. The impact of the reversal was spread across the channel, with the distribution channel and SME and corporate resellers all finding things slowing down. The only bright spot was in the etail sector, which continued to enjoy year-on-year growth, but that accounts for a smaller slice of the overall market.
Context global managing director Adam Simon said: “Supply shortages in certain popular consumer products combined with a slowdown in enterprise activity meant that week 14 did not display a quarterly peak in Europe. In fact, growth fell from 9.2 percent the previous week to just 0.5 percent. In the US, by contrast, growth held up pretty well, rising from eight percent to nine percent over the period.”
Many product categories do remain in high demand and the channel continues to benefit from those. Web cameras (102 percent), virtualisation software (48 percent), notebooks (29 percent), headsets and microphones (27 percent), workstations (27 percent), ink cartridges (19 percent) and all-in-one inkjets (18 percent) are all up year on year.
That ongoing demand, coupled with the Easter holidays having ended, bode well for the next few weeks across the channel.
“There is still high demand in Europe across many home working categories. So channel resellers can hope to expect better growth now the Easter break is behind them, especially if supply shortages ease as they move through the second quarter”, Simon said.
