Ingram Micro has revealed plans to brand its white-box PCs within the next two months. UK resellers will get access to the kit if the planned US trial goes well. At the System Builder Summit Conference in Phoenix this week, Ingram said that it intended to start the branding exercise to establish market presence for its resellers. The Ingram Micro name will not be used on the systems and no direct marketing or advertising will take place for end-users, the broadliner said. Doug Antone, Ingram Micro executive vice president, told the conference that resellers would be given sales tools and support to market the products. He outlined the distributor's worldwide plans for the branding of these systems. "Within the next one to two months, we will determine if it makes sense to brand our unbranded offerings. This decision will be made corporately, and then rolled out worldwide on that market condition and request from our customer set. This will also include the UK," he said. The boxes will be aimed at resellers selling to small and medium-sized businesses, but reception in the UK has been mixed. The Ingram produced machines would be competing with those from existing UK systems builders. Luke Ireland, a director at PC assembler Evesham Micros, was unfazed. He said: "It is inevitable that distributors will go into PC assembly. But it is already a very competitive market, and I think they’ll struggle." US systems builders reacted by saying Ingram was trying to cut them out of the market. Ireland was more upbeat. "They might try to take our business, but there’s a lot more to a PC than what goes in the box," he added. Peter Rigby, director of rival distributor CHS Electronics, was similarly dismissive: "This is still a fast growing market. The problem will be convincing resellers to take the products on board and change from their present branding." ®