Cape Town's Apple resellers, Digicape and Project 3, have decided to merge.
However, they have to obtain approval from Apple's South African distributor, the Core Group.
Digicape and Project 3 are the only premium independent Apple resellers in the Mother City and the country, as the Core Group owns the majority of the other outlets directly. The Core Group also distributes Apple products to other retailers, such as Incredible Connection and Dion, for resale.
An Apple “premium reseller” is the highest classification the US computer group awards those companies that carry the Apple brand of computers and electronics exclusively.
Digicape and Project 3 have made a name for themselves within the Western Province, marketing themselves in the education, personal computing and various business spaces. Digicape has opened a second store in Johannesburg.
Digicape executive director Robin Olivier says the parties have been in negotiations for some time and found it made sense to combine their resources.
“Currently, we each have our own service centres, our own sales staff and so on. However, neither of us have enough resources to do all that we want to do in terms of marketing and other things, so it makes sense for us to merge,” he says.
Issues such as possible name changes, or the structure of the new company, have not been worked out yet, as Olivier says there is still plenty of time to do that.
“The new company will probably be headed by [Digicape CEO] Graeme Greathead, but I expect that Project 3 CEO Alan Greenberg will most definitely be an executive director of the new company,” Olivier says.
The biggest stumbling block for the formation is obtaining the Core Group's approval. In terms of Digicape's and Project 3's licence agreements with Apple and the Core Group, the latter has to give its approval.
“The agreement says the approval cannot be unreasonably withheld,” Olivier says. “While we have presented to them, they have not yet given us the nod and we are a little bit surprised as we would have thought it would have been an open and shut case.”
The Core Group had not responded to ITWeb's queries by the time of publication.
Share
