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The acquisition of Honeywell’s Productivity Solutions and Services (PSS) segment by Brady Corporation was completed this week....
The acquisition of Honeywell’s Productivity Solutions and Services (PSS) segment by Brady Corporation was completed this week. Going forward, Honeywell PSS will operate under the name Brady Intelligent Productivity Solutions (IPS).
Brady brings over 100 years of experience in safety, identification, and compliance solutions to the table. This expertise, combined with the strengths of PSS, creates an excellent foundation for innovation and sustainable success – benefiting customers and partners alike.
What does the acquisition mean for you?
- No changes to current processes: For Honeywell PSS partners and you as a Jarltech partner, nothing will change for the time being – existing workflows and processes will continue as usual.
- Reliable service: Your current orders and quotes remain valid, and everything else you know from Jarltech also stays the same – fast deliveries, a wide product selection, and excellent service.
- Gradual integration: The Honeywell brand will be gradually replaced – don’t be surprised when you soon notice Brady in our online shop, in communications, or on products.
Do you have any questions? We’re happy to assist you with our expertise and service – let us know how we can best support you!
Every purchase pays off....
Every purchase pays off. With Jarltech BOOST, you automatically earn valuable reward points for every euro spent on products from selected vendors. Redeem your points for a wide range of attractive rewards. Taking part couldn't be easier – there's no need to register. Points are credited to your account automatically with every eligible purchase, so your balance keeps growing every time you order.
This is how it works:
- Purchase products from selected vendors at Jarltech
- Earn points automatically for every euro you spend
- Log in to our online shop
- Click on Jarltech BOOST
- Redeem your points for attractive rewards
Don't have access to our online shop yet?
Simply get in touch with your Jarltech sales representative. He will be happy to help you set up your personal BOOST account.
Your first reward points are just one order away. Purchase products from selected vendors today, start collecting points and give your sales the boost they deserve!
Sell the CipherLab RK96 mobile computer together with the Full Value Pack until ...
Sell the CipherLab RK96 mobile computer together with the Full Value Pack until December 31, 2026 and offer your customers more service at a special promotional price!
With the Full Value Pack, your customers receive an upgrade from the standard 3-year warranty to a 3-year Premium Warranty for the RK96. But that's not all: the package also includes 3 years of ReMoCloud Express and one operating system upgrade at no additional cost.
Contact your sales representative today and make sure to add the Full Value Pack to every RK96 order!
* Promotion valid until December 31, 2026, while stocks last and exclusively for resellers in the EMEA region. The promotional price for the Full Value Pack is only available in combination with the purchase of part number clrk96-5 (CipherLab RK96) and is limited to one Full Value Pack per device
Getac has informed us of an adjustment to the list prices for selected Android-based products in their portfolio, effective from the 15th of July...
Getac has informed us of an adjustment to the list prices for selected Android-based products in their portfolio, effective from the 15th of July 2026. The adjustment results in a price increase for ZX80, ZX80-EX, ZX10, ZX10-EX devices.
Here is a breakdown of the relevant information for you:
- All new orders placed from the 15th of July 2026 onwards will be subject to the new list prices.
- Orders placed up to and including the 14th of July 2026 will be invoiced at the old list prices.
- Projects remain valid until their expiry date.
Please note that at the time this message was published, not all details regarding the SKUs and the exact new prices were yet available.
Do you have any questions? We will be happy to assist you with our expertise and service – let us know how we can best support you!
Seagull has informed us of an adjustment to the list prices for their portfolio, effective from the 1st of July 2026....
Seagull has informed us of an adjustment to the list prices for their portfolio, effective from the 1st of July 2026. This adjustment includes price increases of 5% for Subscription products and 8% for Perpetual products.
Here is a breakdown of the relevant information for you:
- All new orders placed from the 1st of July 2026 onwards will be subject to the new list prices.
- Orders placed up to and including the 30th of June 2026 will be invoiced at the current list prices.
- Project prices remain valid until the 31st of July 2026 and must be updated after that date.
Details of the affected SKUs and the exact new prices are available upon request from your sales representative. Do you have any questions? We will be happy to assist you with our expertise and service – let us know how we can best support you!
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Distribution mechanics: EOL – Products don’t die overnight, they die with plenty of warning
Sooner or later, every device reaches the same point: End of Life. The manufacturer announces its discontinuation, the product disappears from the price list, and somewhere in a meeting room an end customer utters the sentence every reseller dreads: »What do you mean it’s no longer available? We have 3,000 of them in operation.« Today is about why that sentence should never have to be spoken. Because products in our industry do not disappear overnight. They come to the end of their life with a long, public announcement – you simply have to pay attention.
First of all, why would a manufacturer discontinue a product that is still selling well? Rarely out of choice. More often, it is not the product that has reached the end of its life, but something inside it: a chipset that is no longer manufactured. A display that has gone out of production. A wireless certification that no longer complies with new regulations. An operating system that no longer receives security updates. The manufacturer is not saying, »We don’t want to make it anymore.« They are saying, »We can no longer produce it at a commercially viable cost.« That is simply how the industry works – and, more importantly, it is predictable because it follows a defined sequence of stages.
Those stages all have names, and understanding them is the real trick. First comes the End-of-Life announcement. Then comes the Last Buy or Last Time Buy period, during which the product can still be ordered. Next comes the final shipment. Only years later does service finally come to an end – the point at which repairs are no longer offered and spare parts are no longer stocked. There are often five years or more between the initial EOL announcement and the end of service. That is not a guillotine; it is a long, orderly farewell. If you know all four dates, you do not have an EOL problem. But ignore the first one, and eventually all four arrive at once.
EOL becomes particularly critical wherever large volumes and standardisation meet: during rollouts. An end customer with 3,000 identical devices across 400 stores does not want device number 3,001 to be different. Their software has been validated for that specific model. Their mounting brackets fit that housing. Their employees know those buttons by heart. For them, an EOL announcement is not simply a catalogue update – it is a project. Either they secure enough stock during the Last Buy window to support the remaining lifecycle – replacement units, expansion, contingency stock – or they begin migrating to the successor product in good time. Both are sensible options. Only the third option is a bad one: doing nothing and being caught by surprise.
This is precisely where distribution comes into its own, because this is where we sit closest to the source. We receive EOL notifications first. We know the product roadmaps. We know which successor is genuinely compatible and which merely carries a similar name. A good distributor contacts you before the problem exists: »Your rollout device is being discontinued. The Last Buy window closes on this date, this many units remain available, and here is the recommended migration path.« We consolidate Last Buy quantities across multiple resellers, reserve remaining stock for ongoing projects, and hold inventory for the customer who inevitably realises – after the final sales date – that they still need another 50 units. It is not glamorous work, but it becomes invaluable on the day it saves an end customer’s rollout.
So here is my advice, without making it more complicated than it needs to be: do not treat product discontinuations as an inconvenience. Treat them as a sales opportunity. Every EOL announcement creates a natural reason to speak with your customer – about migration, successor products, contingency stock or the next project. The resellers who understand this benefit twice from every discontinuation: once from the final purchase of the outgoing product and again from the first purchase of its successor. Everyone else is left explaining to their customer why the project can no longer continue.
So remember this: »A product dies twice – once in the price list and once in the field. Miss the first death, and you’ll face the second completely unprepared.«
»I’m on holiday« isn’t an excuse. It’s an organisational issue.
Let me be clear from the outset: I’m all in favour of holidays. We all need them – and we need to take them properly. No phone on the bedside table....
Let me be clear from the outset: I’m all in favour of holidays. We all need them – and we need to take them properly. No phone on the bedside table. No nagging feeling that somewhere, something is about to hit the wall. Better still if the business doesn’t even notice you’re away.
What has really frustrated me this summer, though, is how casually people seem to accept that business simply slows down because someone is on leave. Remove just one person from a chain of four and suddenly nothing moves. For two weeks. Sometimes three. The customer waits. The supplier waits. The project waits. That’s not a holiday problem. It’s an organisational failure.
You can tell an astonishing amount about a company from a single automated email. A good out-of-office message consists of two lines: »I’m away from … until …« – because, frankly, nobody cares whether you’re in Mallorca, at a rehabilitation clinic or on a training course; it makes absolutely no difference to the sender – followed by: »My deputy is [Name], available on [email] and [phone], and is authorised to make decisions in my absence.« That’s it. Nothing more is needed.
Then there’s the other version, the one you receive dozens of times a day: »If your matter is urgent, please contact…« That isn’t a handover; it’s handing the responsibility back to the sender. They now have to decide whether their issue is important enough to bother someone who knows nothing about it, has none of the paperwork and, most likely, isn’t authorised to make a decision. In plain English, the message reads: »I’m on holiday, so please don’t bother the company with orders or enquiries while I’m away.« The crucial word is authorised. A stand-in whose only contribution is to explain that they can’t tell you anything isn’t a stand-in at all.
My view on this isn’t particularly comfortable, but I stand by it: if you haven’t handed over your open tasks properly, then you haven’t earned your holiday. Not because I begrudge anyone time off, but because a proper handover is just as much a part of the job as writing a quotation or making a customer call.
And if there genuinely isn’t a suitable deputy, then in my view the deputy should be your manager. So be it, if that’s the only way to ensure that someone is actually able to make decisions. I have absolutely no problem when one of our department heads comes to me and names me as their deputy. Quite the opposite – that’s exactly the right instinct.
What doesn’t work is when several employees take leave at the same time without proper coordination and, all of a sudden, nobody is able to move a project forward. If that doesn’t bother you, perhaps you’d be happier in the civil service. In a company that depends on satisfied customers, it matters a great deal.
In an ideal world, there wouldn’t be an out-of-office message at all. A colleague or manager would simply read your emails and reply to them. That’s how we did things at Jarltech for 30 years. We don’t always manage it in every single case anymore, and I’ll gladly admit that some of our own out-of-office messages still need attention. But I remain convinced that, with us, nothing gets left behind. With some other companies, I’m afraid I’m not so sure.
And now to the real point – one that actually has very little to do with customers.
When you’re packing your suitcase, which feeling would you rather have?
Option one: »Ha! Nothing works without me anyway.« It sounds important, but in reality it’s a badge of failure. It also means checking your inbox three times a day out of guilt, and never really switching off.
Option two: »A colleague is covering for me during what is usually a quieter period. Customers and suppliers are looked after. Nothing is left waiting. And in a few weeks I’ll do exactly the same for them, so they can go away just as relaxed.«
The second option isn’t just more professional. It’s far more restful too.
That’s why I don’t see holiday planning as some tedious administrative task for HR. I see it as one of the most important leadership responsibilities of the year. Anyone who arranges proper cover, clarifies decision-making authority in advance and makes sure that three key people aren’t all away at the same time is practising management in its truest sense: making sure the business continues to function without them.
Operational readiness comes first – in August just as much as it does in November.
So remember this: »If nothing works without you, that isn’t proof of your importance. It’s proof of your company’s poor planning.«
Distribution dynamics: The one big customer – blessing, addiction, risk
Today, I'd like to make things a little more personal. This isn't about vendors, pricing, or logistics....
Today, I'd like to make things a little more personal. This isn't about vendors, pricing, or logistics. It's about something I've witnessed time and again over the past thirty years – and something that almost always ends the same way.
It starts off as a success story. A reseller wins a major end customer. First comes a project, then a follow-up order, then a framework agreement. Revenue grows, the relationship deepens, and before long, that single customer accounts for half the company's business. From the outside, it looks like hitting the jackpot. From the inside though, it's an addiction.
Because, almost unnoticed, something begins to happen to the business. It reshapes itself around its biggest customer. The best employees work almost exclusively for them. Internal processes become their processes. The warehouse fills up with their products. New customer acquisition quietly fades into the background – why chase new business when the existing business is booming? Every single one of these decisions is perfectly rational on its own. Taken together, however, they create a company that can no longer exist without that one customer. And the deceptive part is that, the entire time, it feels like growth.
Then comes the big day – and it arrives in many different disguises. The customer is acquired, and the new owner brings in their preferred supplier. The purchasing manager who has known you for fifteen years retires, and their successor wants to make a name for themselves with a competitive tender. The customer runs into financial trouble – and because they're your largest outstanding debtor, they take you down with them. Or, more simply, they become so large that they decide to buy directly from the manufacturer. None of these scenarios involve bad intentions. They're all perfectly normal. And when one customer represents half your revenue, there's nothing you can do to prepare for any one of them – except prepare long before they happen.
Let's run the numbers. A reseller generates €5 million in annual revenue, €2.5 million of which comes from a single customer. Let's assume an average gross margin of twelve percent – that's €600,000, with €300,000 contributed by that one account alone. By now, the reseller has already built its cost structure around the total business volume: staff, warehouse, facilities, vehicles. If that customer disappears, €300,000 in contribution margin vanishes almost overnight, while the costs remain exactly where they are. You might survive a few months – maybe a year if you're fortunate. Building replacement customers of that size, however, typically takes three to five years. That gap is exactly why so many stories that begin with »We've landed a fantastic key account« eventually end with »Unfortunately, we had to close the business.«
And because this series is about honesty, I'll admit something else: we know this challenge from our own experience – just one level higher. Distributors can become too dependent as well, particularly on a single manufacturer whose brand represents a significant share of total revenue. We, too, must actively ensure that our portfolio is broad enough to withstand unexpected shocks. Excessive concentration isn't a reseller problem. It's a business problem. The only difference is whether you address it while business is thriving – or wait until the fever has already set in.
So what should you do? Take excellent care of your major customer, of course – they're a gift. But at the very same time, invest the same discipline in everything else. Win a few new customers every year with real growth potential. Build a second market segment. Develop a second pillar of your business – maintenance contracts, professional services, or another product category that generates recurring revenue instead of depending on individual projects. And keep one simple KPI under regular review, perhaps once every quarter: What percentage of my revenue comes from my largest customer? If that number keeps increasing year after year, your business isn't becoming stronger. Your dependency is. It just happens to be wearing the same suit as growth.
So remember this: »A customer who generates half your revenue is no longer just a customer – they've become your silent shareholder. Only without any liability.«
