Q&A
That capability is especially valuable to specialist value-added resellers looking to expand into adjacent technical categories without heavy upfront overhead. We also collaborate closely with systems integrators to augment their design and delivery bandwidth. Third, we are seeing immense demand from data centre operators managing the exponential data generation tied to AI models. They need to rapidly scale existing
quote a product today and necessarily expect that price to remain valid three or four weeks later. In some cases, a quotation may only be valid for the week in which it is issued, meaning we have to re‑quote regularly to keep pricing aligned with the market. So, the business environment is very positive but maintaining that business in the current market requires significantly more work and agility than it did previously. TR: What internal investments have you made over the past year to support this scale? JC: Clearly, a major area of investment has been the return to the Hammer brand. We have invested significantly in ensuring that the market understands who Hammer is today, from the rebranding of our website through to communicating our position as an outcomes-driven, differentiated value‑added distributor. We have been telling the market about our heritage and our 35 years of pedigree in storage media, while at the same time introducing new propositions such as Hammer AI Works and building the customer and partner network around it. We have also invested in expanding the physical business. We have opened larger offices in both Germany and the Netherlands. In the UK, we have moved our large sales and commercial organisation into a brand-new facility. At the same time, the expansion of the business has enabled us to relocate and expand our Netherlands-based Central European logistics and warehouse operation. Technology and sales enablement have been another major area of investment. Over the last 12 months we have implemented a new company-wide CRM system, and everyone in the business is now using it to manage customer interactions
based marketing and becoming much more sophisticated in understanding our customers’ digital behaviour and areas of interest. That enables our sales teams to engage with customers at a much more relevant point and bring our consultative approach to the specific technology areas they are showing an interest in. TR: How has the broader distribution landscape evolved over the past 12 months? JC: The transformative impact of artificial intelligence across the technology sector is undeniable. The important difference today is that AI is no longer somebody else’s dream. We are seeing businesses of all sizes begin to realise its benefits. What was previously something that perhaps only the largest multinational organisations could afford is increasingly becoming a reality for many more businesses. That is clearly driving a huge amount of the activity we are seeing across the distribution market. At the same time, I think we are seeing a continuation of the polarisation within distribution. On one side, there are the large multinational broadline distributors that dominate the transactional supply market. On the other, there is growing recognition, even among some of the largest resellers and partners, that there is a different type of opportunity around genuine value-added distribution. Customers increasingly want help with emerging categories. They want access to disruptive technologies rather than simply the next version of a conventional product. And they want distribution partners that can augment their own capabilities and help them solve customer problems. That plays directly to Hammer’s strengths. Our deep technical understanding of our portfolio means we can take technologies from more than one part of the business and bring them together into a solution. We can then go a step further because we have the ability to design and build those solutions on behalf of our reseller partners. For me, that is the increasingly important role of value-added distribution: not simply being the route through which a product gets from a vendor to a reseller, but understanding the technology, understanding the customer’s outcome and helping our partners turn that into a deliverable solution. https://www.hammerdistribution.com
footprints while evaluating emerging AI‑optimised storage architectures. Finally, we are seeing significant
demand from OEMs engineering dedicated AI appliances. These partners rely on our certified integration and production services facility to build, configure and validate complex multi-node systems, delivering far greater technical value than conventional logistics distribution can provide. TR: What market dynamics have defined the last 12 months, and how have they shaped operations at Hammer? JC: There are two significant changes that have affected our business. The first is that AI has moved from being a future concept to a very real and significant infrastructure investment. Hyperscalers and other organisations
are investing billions, and that has created enormous demand for key technology categories.
As a result, it has become increasingly difficult to source many of the enterprise components we represent. Forecasting and allocating product to customers has become more challenging, and we have seen significant price increases across a number of categories. In some areas, prices have approached double the levels we were seeing 12 months ago. The positive side of that dynamic is that, when we are able to source the right products for the right customers, we can maximise the value of those transactions and our profitability. The same pressures are affecting the solutions side of our business. Whether it is a storage platform, a traditional CPU-based server or a GPU-based AI server, those systems are all competing for the same underlying supply of memory, processors and storage media. OEMs are therefore experiencing the same volatility in both availability and pricing. From a business perspective, that creates opportunities, but it also makes the business much more demanding to manage. Every order now requires considerably more attention to close. We can no longer
and relationships. Being AI‑enabled, it is helping our sales teams quickly
understand previous conversations, capture commitments and follow up with customers in a much more timely and accurate way. From a management perspective, it gives us a level of visibility we have never previously had within Hammer. We can understand how our business is segmented, what we expect from individual accounts, and how that rolls up across sales teams and geographic locations. It gives us a much better understanding of what our customers are telling us and what we are committing to them. Finally, we have invested in our marketing capabilities. We are moving beyond traditional email and contact-
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