back to article UK distributor Steljes goes titsup

Specialist audio visual distributor Steljes Ltd has called in the administrators after liquidity dried up in what was its 29th year of commercial life. The company had “suffered from severe cash flow difficulties over the past year”, a rep at insolvency practitioner AlixPartners, which is managing the end of life process, told …

  1. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Exclusive distros

    Tend to run stupidly high markups.

    I've seen this in a number of instances.

    USA outfits take note when it's pointed out that high prices impact sales (especially when they realise they're supplying to order and the distro is making more money than they are whilst not assuming any stock risk)

    There's also the issue of resellers "registering a deal" when buyers start investigating products resulting in the first one to win that race having a sale price higher than other resellers can even buy for. I suspect the legality of this kind of lockin is extremely dodgy and I've had resellers openly laugh at me when I've complained about it. (Boot on the other foot when you decide to buy from Germany for half their price instead....)

    1. DonaldKarick

      Re: Exclusive distros

      Agreed.

  2. Warm Braw

    Steljes, which specialised in ... interactive whiteboards

    Couldn't they see the writing on the wall?

    1. Swarthy

      Re: Steljes, which specialised in ... interactive whiteboards

      Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin

  3. Alister
    Facepalm

    Steljes, which specialised in flat panel projectors and interactive whiteboards

    Ah, I'm glad you said that.

    When I first read "audio and visual specialist" I thought they might be one of those ridiculous Hi-Fi places that try to sell you a hand-crafted, gold-plated, unicorn-piss embalmed CAT-6 cable for £500 to improve the sound of your digital audio device.

    1. DiViDeD

      @ Alister

      "sell you a hand-crafted, gold-plated, unicorn-piss embalmed CAT-6 cable for £500"

      Damn! I wish I'd known! I paid nearly two grand for mine!

      It did have the oxygen neutral green line drawn down the side in felt pen, mind.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      If they'd done that they would still be turning a handsome profit, no doubt.

  4. Lee D Silver badge

    My Smartboard reseller is currently spitting bullets. They can't get hold of stock enough for the summer, the biggest spend time for schools, and Smart are basically ignoring them. The software licensing for their boards has just jumped enormously too, they were quoting twice as much as six months ago.

    Smart are already in my bad books because their software was "free" with their boards, is now a subscription, and now almost can't be used on non-Smart hardware because of stupendous licensing to use that same software on a manufacturer's board, and yet Smart's LCD touchscreen offerings are pathetic and vastly overpriced. And now we can't even get hold of their standard boards, either, but worse - no word of why, when or what was happening enough that our resellers can give stable quotes.

    Literally, the only reason to use them is that the .noteboook format has become a defacto standard in UK teaching and nothing else can get close to opening it.

    1. mijenk

      .notebook files

      These files can be opened and edited by the Prowise software... Prowise Presenter & its free...

  5. Alan Brown Silver badge

    "Literally, the only reason to use them is that the .noteboook format has become a defacto standard in UK teaching and nothing else can get close to opening it."

    And the UK directive on NOT using proprietary formats goes out the window yet again.

    Although: for your edification: http://www.richard-slater.co.uk/archives/2008/07/22/smart-notebook-file-format/ -

    "The SMART .notebook format is simply a zipped set of XML and SVG files, This may be common knowledge but it is certainly the first time I have come across it.

    To test it you can create a file in SMART Notebook rename the extension from .notebook to .zip, double click to open, you will be presented with several files named pagen.svg where n is a number, as well as a series of other files and folders including settings.xml, preview.png and metadata.xml.

    The XML and SVG files can be edited in notepad, or perhaps more useful for the SVG files in a program such as Inkscape."

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      Okay, so how do the interactive protractors, calculators and other items translate into XML / SVG / ZIP?

      Maybe individual strokes and text, possibly, but nowhere near everything.

      The notebook format is pretty much in the same position that OOXML was when it was first introduced. Nothing opens it but you might be able to pull text and copy/pasted images out of it. That's it.

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

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