Top 100 Solution Provider IT Weapons today announced its acquisition by Japanese hardware company Konica Minolta.
According to Jeremy MacBean, director of business development at IT Weapons, this is the first deal that the company has entertained, despite previous offers for partnerships.
“Never been interested in anything until we saw the shared vision and interest, and Konica Minolta’s desire to protect what we’ve built,” MacBean told CDN. “There’s nothing that felt quite right before. They have a real hunger for building out services capacity and protect our culture as a services and execution engine.”
Konica Minolta, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, primarily focuses on the lenses, industrial printing and imaging hardware business, although it does offer a managed print service as well. IT Weapons, meanwhile, ranks 60th on CDN’s Top 100 Solution Providers list, and most recently won bronze for Best at Enterprise Solution at CDN Channel Elite Awards 2015, and made an acquisition of its own of fellow solution provider Collins IT in April.
According to MacBean, the deal, which has been negotiated since spring this year, is part of a trend that is seeing hardware manufacturers building service capacity, as well as companies in the channel consolidating.
He added that Konica Minolta has over 10,000 customers in 18 Canadian cities alone, and had successfully made an acquisition in the same vein in the US.
As for IT Weapons, the Konica Minolta’s large customer base will present an opportunity for growth. While MacBean said that there are will be no rebranding, logistical, or changes to management staff, IT Weapons will now have a larger sales force with offices across the country that it can “lean on” to service national clients.
As for whether the sale of IT Weapons is an exit or retirement strategy for its co-founders Jason MacBean and Ted Garner?
“Absolutely not,” MacBean said. “We’re going harder, faster, better, stronger. We can continue to do what we’re great at and have no intention to stop.
