Ingram Micro Layoffs Spark Plea from MSP

After hearing about the Ingram Micro layoffs that could send hundreds of employees packing, Pamela Miranda, owner of Triella, an MSP in Ontario, Canada, had a message for the IT distribution giant: Don’t lay off my rep.

“I love him; he’s amazing,” she said of her new account rep who focuses on business development. “He’s a real go-getter. I felt like we weren’t getting any service from the person before him. I like this one. I hope he stays.”

Triella’s Pamela Miranda

Channel Futures identified the rep but could not reach him. Ingram Micro confirmed the layoffs, citing local and global market conditions. The company refused to provide details outside of a short statement:

“Ingram Micro did announce some changes to the team. These were made as a result of changing global and local market conditions, and we realize these changes are significant to those impacted,” an Ingram Micro spokesperson told Channel Futures. “We will continue to invest in developing our teams to adapt to market opportunities and provide the best experience to our channel partners.”

Ingram Micro Layoffs Light Up Boards

Several former Ingram employees and other anonymous sources hit the boards at Thelayoff.com to spread the news, offer support to those cut and to complain about the company. The number of people laid off ranges from 50 to about 300, according to posters on the site. One said the cuts were in preparation for Ingram’s proposed IPO, which the California-based company filed for confidentially last September. Companies file confidentially to keep financial details private until they have to publicly release them. Ingram Micro says it posted about $51 billion in net sales for 2022.

It was also unclear which departments and regions got hit the hardest. One poster reported losing members from a team in Asia Pacific and heard that a whole department got wiped out in EMEA.

“My team was reduced in half,” one wrote. “This team cannot function any longer.”

Department managers seemed heavily targeted, some posters wrote, while others said no particular role or department dodged the axe.

“There are people who worked less than a year and those who worked more than five years,” one wrote. “There are those who did not perform and those that performed. I am devastated.”

“What a mess,” another wrote about the Ingram Micro layoffs. “All groups, president club winners, people who didn’t miss quotas … customers are wondering what’s going on.”

Miranda, who bought Triella (No. 75 on the 2023 Channel Futures MSP 501 list) about a year ago and is looking to buy more MSPs in Ontario, said the relationship with her Ingram Micro rep is important because it’s otherwise difficult for smaller MSPs to be heard by such a big company. When she was looking to extend her accounts payable schedule, for example, Miranda said she had to tell the same thing to three different people within Ingram before she rectified the issue.

“It’s hard to get people to pay attention because we’re not … a massive company. We don’t have the volume,” Miranda said. “But I like the [account rep] I deal with.”