HSC Q&A: Bob Sweetlove

“Some focus on hardware and some want to add airtime. Those in the former camp don’t want to fight us. Those in the latter will find it hard to get the right systems” – Bob Sweetlove, business manager, HSC

You launched the Mobile Club in June. What has changed?
The old Unity scheme was much the same – 50 connections per month, or 150 per quarter, to qualify for elite membership.

The difference now is we’ve added hardware – so it can be a combination of airtime connections and/or SIM-free units now. Unity included Gold, Silver and Bronze membership, where Gold entry was at the 50 connections mark and had been for eight years.

So that elite membership hasn’t changed so much. Unity was a blend of network and HSC benefits. Mobile Club is just HSC benefits – things we can control as apposed to things we rely on networks for.

What’s your trading base, and how many are club members?
Since we launched Mobile Club in June/July, 555 dealers have bought from us. Sixty – or around 10 per cent – are VIPs. That was the target number always, but we will take more on as the business grows. And more benefits will come with that growth.

Other distributors have made a lot of their airtime portals recently, and HSC has made much of its here. Why?
Ours has been going a while, but we re-skinned to make it a cleaner dashboard. The functionality of it is more apparent now – now, you log in and get a clear board of sales marketing finance, bulletin feeds and price guides.

And, yes, 20:20 did an entire show on its portal recently, but there is nothing it is doing we haven’t offered for some time – real-time stock availability, pricing, ordering, next day delivery. We just haven’t made the same noise – perhaps we don’t sell ourselves to the industry enough.

Are hardware sales as important to HSC now as airtime sales?
No, because our channels are for airtime. But HSC is now one of very few doing competitive airtime and competitive hardware on the one account.

Traditionally, distributors for airtime and handsets have been independent. We have got the blend right. There are three things customers need – device, airtime contract and software.

The latter is becoming more important. The supply chain should be more efficient and dealers should be able to get all of that from a single place – which they can with HSC.

Does the entry of certain hardware distributors to the airtime space concern you?
Some competitors will focus purely on hardware and some talk about adding airtime. Those in the former camp clearly do not want to get into a fight with HSC, or whoever.

And those in the latter will find it a complex process to establish the requisite systems to compete with us. They require the tools and skills and ability to fight against us – and the credibility and the database in the market.

But Brightpoint and Brightstar are global brands, and they are playing in the UK market already as B2B specialists and attempting also to work across sectors.
Sure, they have considerable resources and scale and if they start to play in this market, then they will of course raise eyebrows. But we are more confident now than ever.

We have equivalent resources – we we are owned by Carphone Warehouse. Its JV partner Best Buy is the biggest buyer of laptops in the world. So I think if we organise our own business well, which we are doing, we can compete well.

I’m not stressed about airtime itself – I’m more worried about the size of the overall dealer network and number of sales. That’s the biggest threat.

Full interview in Mobile News issue 455 (January 18, 2010).

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