Author: Melanie Hollands
technology vendors; which doesn’t come as a surprise considering the
excess inventory downstream in semiconductor components. (This column
Melanie Hollands |
began writing about the growing chip inventory and its likely
repercussions on Sept. 3, 2004.)
Notice that after all the vendors made the top-line (i.e., revenue)
numbers in recent quarters the distribution partners all guided
slightly lower for future quarter top-lines. Incentives seem to be
popular to stimulate sales.
Channel stuffing is essentially a sarcastic term that can be used after
the fact when re-stocking of shelves occurs ahead of a slow-down in
sell-through. I’ve spoken with 12 vendors in the past three days and
the general, collective takeaway: Everyone is doing everything they can
to push product through the channel. This would seem to go hand-in-hand
with the top-line (i.e., revenue) guide-down that distributors gave in
earlier weeks.