Lenovo has said that they are looking to establish over 100 Lenovo gaming stores in the Asia Pacific region, it’s not known if or when any Australian stores will be established.
Currently JB Hi Fi has an exclusive deal with Harvey Norman who are not seen as a destination for hard core gamers. The decision to go exclusive with the mass retailer was made by Brandan Lau the Director of Consumer PC’s at Lenovo Australia.
Initially JB Hi Fi was going to range Lenovo gaming products but dropped the Chinese brand in favour of staying with the Alienware brand from Dell, which has been highly successful for the retailer.
According to Lenovo sources in Hong Kong, the new Asia Pacific stores will sell a range of gaming products including workstations, notebooks, accessories including mouse and keyboards as well as gaming bags.
We also understand that the Company who are successful direct sell operators in Australia, are also looking to sell their B2B PC range which includes Think Pads and 2 in 1 products via the new stores.
Currently Lau is banking on heavy discounting to drive consumer PC sales while at the same time investing in extensive direct sell marketing in mass newspapers and online, for Lenovo PC products a move that has not gone unnoticed by Lenovo consumer PC retail partners.
The Company are also major partners with Amazon.
Combined Lenovo’s consumer and enterprise product lines each contributes 50% of Lenovo’s PC sales in Asia Pacific with the Chinese Company set to shortly market a 25th anniversary range of ‘Think’ enterprise products to lift awareness of their enterprise offering.
What Lenovo are looking to achieve with their direct sell retail format, according to sources, is uptake for a new gaming brand called Legion. All their new gaming products including a new range that will be released at IFA in Germany in September will be branded Legion.
Ivan Cheung Asia Pacific President at Lenovo said recently that excluding Japan and China that gaming products made up 75% of the Asia Pacific’s overall consumer PC sales, Retail News understands that this is not the case in Australia due in part to Lau’s decision to consolidate his gaming sales primarily via Harvey Norman.