I know I complain a lot, but in the end this is devastating to my daily ops. Yes, there are other distys in town but they were the savviest. Didn't care about pricing really because for a extremely busy solo guy like me it was essential to be able to will call, return bad stuff, , get courier service, and being able to tell clients I can make a phone call and get pretty much anything to their door within a couple hours.

The part that is most ignorant and frustrating to me is the way they did my reps, who happen to be friends I enjoyed seeing everyday. Pretty much get your stuff and get out is what they were told

In the four years i have operated my integration service I have spent 1M plus with them. Sold and installed every last piece by myself. I really like to extend my middle finger to IM and not buy one more thing from them, really ever.

Did the owners pack up and move to Canada? :)

LOL. Hope Freddy catch that.

Did they not sent you email to notify that they will close on that day? Or they boarded up the door to bar the angry mobsters out?

[Link: twice.com]

IM is no longer calling shots, but ultimately may have been responsible.

Sorry...no tears here....they are absolutely worthless in my market....they shill whatever is being spiffed and are dead hollow people who occupy their chairs for a few months before someone replaces them.

I do miss the old days when Key Distribution was the finest in the market....

Ha prob somethkng like that considering the timing. Got the email Wed afternoon.

Like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

quote from article: Farrar added that the company will “build on the most respected line card in the business and further strengthen AVAD’s renowned customer service, technical support and system design capabilities.” :End Quote

wow. renowned customer service? really? I quit using them soon after IM bought them because their customer service was horrible.

This is common. Many dont even get to get their stuff and get out. They show up to work to find a locked door. They do this to keep employees from walking off with stock and office supplies.

Freddy, Maybe you can get into the distribution biz!

I worked for a boat dealership that had three partners. When the founder of the company had balked at making one of the newer partners the GM (something he wanted badly), the other two had a meeting (they were friends from college), so this was planned a long time before it happened and on the day the takeover was announced, the departing partner & pro shop manager were escorted from the premises by the local police. Lots of ways to screw owners and employees. I guess they could have a manager shadow the employees to make sure they don't walk off with anything valuable.

Of course, painting the situation as advantageous is a fallacy. Suddenly regional centers will be able to ship us more product. That has always been in place with AVAD, where you could get product from another branch.

The only gain is for the company cutting their losses. The losers are the custom guys who relied on local branch pick ups and just in time product.

I stopped keeping anything personal at work, its a two way street, and if I decide its not worth doing, I don't want anything slowing me down on my way out the door.

The longer you stick around the more you see, this  has happened before and will happen again.  With the likes of Snap AV and Amazon it gets harder and harder to make branches work.  Race to the bottom, price is everything.
​Companies that started out with amazing support get bought up, go downhill and are replaced.  Some get better, just not always, what usually makes a company is the people who built it, if they leave, it just floats in the ether, going from one set of hands to another, kind of a dying hulk too big to disappear.