‘With the investment, we were able to almost double our channel and field sales team, so we’ve been expanding distribution and our channel partners—and that’s been our fastest growing part of our business,’ Plugable CEO Lynn Smurthwaite-Murphy tells CRN.
Laptop peripherals vendor Plugable is doubling down on the channel, upping its product ambitions and boosting its supply as the result of a new minority equity stake it has received from Taiwanese PC maker Acer, according to its CEO.
In an exclusive interview with CRN, Plugable CEO Lynn Smurthwaite-Murphy said that the investment from Acer Gadget, a subsidiary of Acer, represents a “strategic partnership” between the two vendors, which is already helping her company invest in the channel.
“With the investment, we were able to almost double our channel and field sales team, so we’ve been expanding distribution and our channel partners—and that’s been our fastest growing part of our business,” she said.
Allen Jong, president of Acer Gadget, said in a statement that the Plugable stake reflects his company’s “strategy to strengthen its high-end PC peripheral portfolio and accelerate innovation in connectivity solutions that support modern computing environments.”
Smurthwaite-Murphy declined to disclose the investment amount from Acer.
From Amazon Seller To Channel Player
Founded in 2009, Plugable is a 55-employee, channel-centric company that makes a variety of peripherals for PCs, including docking stations and, more recently, external GPU enclosures that bring extra computing power to laptops via Thunderbolt connectivity.
While the Redmond, Wash.-based company got its start selling products to consumers through Amazon, it has made a big push in recent years to reach business customers through channel partners under Smurthwaite-Murphy, a channel veteran who previously served in leadership roles at StarTech.com and Westcon-Comstor.
“From what we’re told by our channel partners is we’re the fastest growing of all the peripherals [vendors]. And then when it comes to third-party docking stations, we have been number one at a couple of larger partners,” Smurthwaite-Murphy said.
Plugable now works with three of the largest U.S. distributors—TD Synnex, Ingram Micro and D&H Distributing—and nearly 700 channel partners, including SHI, CDW and Insight.
On top of growing Plugable’s channel and field sales team, the company is boosting spending in channel marketing and incentive programs, according to the CEO.
“We’re spending more time going out in the field at events. We’re going to end-user events as well, so a lot more brand awareness and evaluation programs. We’re getting our product out in the hands of end users.” she said.
Plugable Sees Local AI Opportunity With The Channel
One increasing area of focus is Plugable’s AI-related products such as the TBT5-AI, a Thunderbolt 5-based external GPU enclosure for laptops that can support high-end Nvidia GPUs such as the GeForce RTX 5090 with a dedicated 850-watt power supply.
“It gives the channel an opportunity for a proof of concept—and a successful one—because we all know that’s been a real challenge for channel partners,” Smurthwaite-Murphy said.
Bernie Thompson, Plugable’s founder and CTO, said products like this are expected to play into expectations that companies will start shifting hundreds of billions of dollars of AI spending to local inference solutions over the next couple years.
“We are delivering plug-and-play AI on the desk,” he said.
Thompson said this will represent a big opportunity for channel partners, especially because of the high average selling prices for such products, which can range from $5,000 to $15,000 depending on the Nvidia GPU’s performance level.
“There’s an opportunity for channel partners to really ramp up their revenue in an area that, for recent years, has been ramping down, but all evidence is there’s going to be a big amount of dollars going into local AI,” he said.
Acer Deal Gives Plugable A Supply Chain Boost
As part of Acer Gadget’s investment in Plugable, Smurthwaite-Murphy said her company will get more access to an “even more stable supply chain,” which will allow it to “develop products and bring them to market faster” and expand internationally.
“Because enterprise companies really want an international footprint,” she said.
The supply chain boost will also help Plugable become “a little more bullish in our inventory positions” and, as a result, more ambitious about new product development, according to Smurthwaite-Murphy.
“In the past, we were forced to pick our investments in new products, where this is giving us a little bit more of an ‘and’ versus an ‘or’ [situation] because they’ve got a supply chain that we weren’t dealing with before,” she said.
