Mentor Distribution puts AV plan for Ireland on display
In associaion with Mentor Distribution
Mentor Distribution launched in Ireland in mid 2023, bringing a next-day delivery ethos to a market that has historically had long lead times. “We heard directly from vendors who talked about the frustration in the Irish market with stock availability,” explains Tyler.
With a fulfillment centre in Dublin, and a growing Irish team led by Steven O’Neill (pictured), Tyler says Mentor’s USP is getting the latest stock to the Irish market quickly, while also carrying stock long-term. “Over the past 10 years in the UK, we’ve built up a reputation for stock holding, for being flexible and working with resellers who have customers with long-term projects to make sure the products they need will be available. We keep lots of product in stock for our customers, we manage that supply chain.
“We think there’s a big opportunity in Ireland for a company like us who invest in stock holding, and who offer same day/next day delivery. We’ve seen how successful this strategy has been for us in the UK, and we’re applying those same logistics here in Ireland.”
Mentor Distribution is a family-run business, founded in the UK in 1991. “My father started the business 35 years ago when he noticed the market was moving away from integrated solutions to a split between the compute side and monitor displays. At that time, he started working with a vendor called iiyama, and brought them into the UK. Now we’ve expanded to work with all the top AV and display vendors, including AG Neovo, Aurora and Hisense, and we have established long-term relationships with them.”
These relationships are important to Mentor, and allow them to offer customisation options to their customers. “We’ve been a distributor for Sharp/NEC for about 25 years, for example, and we’re one of the only distributors allowed to dismantle their products to integrate additional technology like privacy screens or IR screens without affecting the original warranty. That’s a recognition of our long-standing relationship and our engineering excellence.”
As a small company, Tyler says they have flexibility when it comes to project deadlines, product sourcing and delivery. “If a reseller comes to us saying ‘I’m going to be taking x number of these per month’, or ‘I’ve got this great opportunity to push this product’ we’re more than happy to sit down and work with them on the logistics, whether that’s stocking the product, holding it, or delivering it the next day. And that goes for small companies who may only need 10-20 screens a month, all the way up to multinationals who are shipping large medical devices with integrated screens.”
Tyler says the company is relishing bringing options like this to the Irish market. “Rather than being another box shifter, who’s chasing revenue and the number of units shipped per month, we’re more interested in developing longer term relationships. We’ve done it for the last number of years, and we think it’s been really successful, and that growth has allowed us to invest in someone like Steven in the Irish market.”
Local presence
Steven O’Neill, who is the Ireland country manager for Mentor Distribution, has noticed some key differences in the Irish market compared to the UK. “We have our fulfillment centre in Dublin which allows us to offer same-day delivery in Dublin and parts of Leinster, and next-day delivery to the rest of the country. But what we’re also noticing is how many customers who will collect their products from the warehouse.
“People will collect from us because they like the fact that they can go and pick the stock up and take it straight to the customer. We have a number of customers, almost daily, picking up from us now, which really no one else offers in Ireland.”
The makeup of the Irish market is different too, says O’Neill. “One of the interesting things in Ireland is the volume of partners and customers that are now doing AV but never did before. What I mean by that is the traditional resellers in Ireland who would have done storage, networking, software, etc, now they’re seeing this connection between all of it, and so they’re either acquiring smaller AV resellers or big ones, or they’re building out a practice around AV. That’s an interesting development.”
Both Tyler and O’Neill say they’re recognising the demand in Ireland for the latest AV and display innovation and they want to make sure Mentor is bringing the latest technology to the Irish market. “That’s our MO. We want to make sure that what we are bringing in is the latest technology. So, for example, iiyama just brought out their new Pro graphics range of monitors. They’re going to be directly in stock in Ireland in the next couple weeks; they’re a bit of a surprise, because they weren’t supposed to launch until January 2026, but they’ll be available here shortly,” says Tyler.
“Everyone goes to the ISE (Integrated Systems Europe) show in Barcelona each year, and we’ve had lots of meetings with Irish resellers at that show. They say ‘this is fantastic, but can we order this now and not have to wait two to three weeks?’ And now we can say ‘absolutely’. That’s what we see as our role, and it’s one of the key promises we’re making to the Irish market.”
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