Distribution company Climb Global Solutions recently announced its acquisition of Douglas Stewart Software & Services, LLC, a distributor focused on K-12 and higher education technology.
The deal, which the announcement described as being for an “aggregate purchase price of $20.3 million payable at closing (subject to working capital and other adjustments), plus a potential post-closing earn-out,” will see DSS fold into Climb’s existing distribution network through which resale partners can access over 100 vendors.
Acquisition provides vertical expertise, new team members
“What excites me most about this is the people,” said Climb CEO Dale Foster. “We don’t move forward with acquisitions if there isn’t a cultural fit, no matter how strong the case for it is on paper. DSS is a great team and I’m excited for what we can all do together.”
The deal will also introduce deep vertical expertise to Climb, a business pathway Foster said the company plans to further develop over the next year.
“We already serve about 15,000 education customers through our partners, but DSS thinks about verticals in a strategic way that we’ll continue to focus on for the education space and others,” Foster said.
Vendor strategy focuses on emerging technologies and innovation
The distributor chooses to enter agreements with vendors only after what Foster described as a “serious vetting process,” which, among other things, considers the vendor’s fit into the distributor’s desire to offer “challengers” and other innovative vendors, including many startups and young companies looking to enter the IT channel space for the first time.
This largely excludes hyperscalers and other well-known technology companies, though Climb does have agreements with Microsoft and now, through the DSS acquisition, Adobe. Instead, Climb targets up-and-coming, innovative vendors, some of which are in the startup phase and looking for growth that Foster believes the channel can accelerate.
Foster also said the distributor has identified strategic tech priorities in product categories including security, data center and infrastructure management, and data and DevOps tools.
Reseller finds trust, respect, and growth with Climb relationship
Cybersecurity VAR Secure Content Technologies has utilized Climb as a distributor for several years, though CEO Karen Greer describes the working relationship between the two companies as a true business partnership.
“Five or so years ago, I thought of distributors as necessary vehicles for purchasing, but not much more than that,” said Greer. “But Climb has been so much more than that for us. They are just as passionate about what I do as I am, and they have helped us grow in so many ways.”
Those ways, according to Greer, include finding new product lines to sell to clients and the marketing support to get those products and the Secure Content Technologies team visible to more potential clients.
Secure Content Technologies focuses exclusively on security solutions and provides products, business guidance, and, in some cases, managed security services to their clients, all in an aim to best support clients through their technology needs.
“We always listen first, and really in some ways we become a project management function for our clients as they tell us what problem they are trying to solve, or what solutions they need, and once we understand, then we start to offer our recommendations.”
The next step in distribution: the marketplace
Climb is, of course, far from the only distribution company that operates in the global IT channel, and it joins several others in offering a marketplace functionality to partners looking for self-service and higher efficiency in their distribution partner.
The Climb Expedition marketplace promises self-service functionality backed up with available agents should customers within the platform have questions or run into problems while purchasing. It offers packages and programs from several leading MSP and channel vendors, including Acronis, Trend Micro, and more. The team’s goal is that nearly half the business will be available through the marketplace by the second half of 2025.
Looking to the future, Foster sees even more focus on marketplaces as channel partners and their customers increasingly aim to self-serve their technology and make decisions faster.
Foster also said his team is focused on building out solutions, offerings, and customers across verticals like education, government and public sector, and healthcare organizations.
For Greer, Climb’s growth is a parallel journey to her own business’ growth potential in the next few years, and she said she looks forward to continuing to work with Climb to achieve her goals.
“This year was a strategic planning year for us in terms of what we can do with Climb and their resources,” Greer said. “In the next year I really want to continue building on that and double the size of our business.”
Businesses in many industries are turning to channel partners for their technology needs, including those in healthcare, legal, manufacturing and construction.