PSINovember2017

INTERVIEW
Supplying demand
This month PSI talks to Frankie Bellavia of Midwich Security about
market trends and the buying options for installers
rancesco "Frankie" Bellavia is Head of Sales
Ffor Midwich Security, the specialist security
arm of trade-only distributor Midwich,
partnering with brands such as Panasonic,
Bosch, Dahua, Hanwha Techwin, Lilin, TDSi,
SeeTec and more. Previously he was the General
Manager at Postfield Systems prior to which he
was GM for Sprite Solutions.
PSI caught up with Frankie at Technology
Exposed, the annual event hosted by Midwich
and attended by over 1000 installers and their
customers.
How have the last twelve months been
for the company?
The past year was extremely exciting for
Midwich. Midwich Group Plc has made some
acquisitions extending our AV business in Iberia
and Benelux to help grow the company
oversees. On the security side, we've had a
great twelve months with our most successful
year to date.
What's the relationship between the AV
side of Midwich and the security side?
If we went back three years ago our business
was predominantly selling security systems to
AV installers and IT resellers almost as an addon
to the other products they were selling.
Today, this has changed a lot as I would
estimate that our business is now 60% security
with 40% in the AV/IT sector.
We have various divisions within our sales
floor and these are broken down into a number
of business units. We have an IT-only unit that
has a fairly large team that deals with the
resellers and end users. Then we have an
education team that is purely focused on
universities, schools and colleges and there are
a couple of AV teams that have different tiers of
accounts. For example, some of the larger AV
accounts will sit with the AV 1 team with some of
the smaller to medium sized accounts and
development accounts sitting in with AV 2. We
also have a business development team for
customers in various sectors who will be
nurtured to get them to a specific level before
passing them on the correct team.
Are you seeing any trends in the security
market at the moment?
With the introduction of GDPR from May 2018,
we are seeing an interest in the security on the
products themselves. We have all heard of
instances recently where there have been
breakdowns in security and some CCTV systems
have been hacked, which is exactly what the
new legislation for 2018 is all about. As a result,
we're getting more interest coming through in
how this can be stopped and how it might affect
companies with fines etc if they are hacked - so
there is a growing interest in securing systems
and networks. (continued over)
“With the introduction
of GDPR from May 2018,
we are seeing an
interest in the security
on the products
themselves”
www.psimagazine.co.uk
19