Partner Highlight: Gumdrop

You typically don’t get anywhere in life alone. Whether it’s being raised by your parents, coached by a dedicated leader, or mentored in your professional career. The same goes for the business world. It’s an added bonus when you can receive some help and also give some help – that’s why we strategically partner with mutually beneficial people and organizations. 

We recently sat down with one of those partners to learn more about their business, mission and purpose. Read on to find out more about Gumdrop and how we work together to keep life moving!

A Partnership Was Born

Jay Banker is the Director of Channel Sales for Gumdrop and we were able to connect with him about the company.

We first met Gumdrop at JNUC when their booth was across the walkway from ours. Once we found out more about each other, we started naturally referring conference attendees to one another. We started thinking it might make a lot of sense to carry that further than just the conference. Thus, a partnership was born. 

We have complimentary products and services, which makes for a stellar partnership. Hear from Jay on what Gumdrop is all about:

“We really specialize in device protection – specifically in K-12 but we also have a corporate offering. We focus on how to protect devices, minimize downtime and minimize cost for repairs.”

They have a wide variety of cases, bags and accessories that compliment a range of devices quite nicely. They offer everything from tablet and laptop cases to headphones and keyboards. Their molds fit several different brands including Dell, Acer, Apple and Microsoft. 

Why Protect Your Investments?

Gumdrop offers amazing products that truly help out schools and organizations by protecting their investments. Funding only comes around every so often, so they have positioned themselves in the K-12 market specifically as a way to protect their investments. Jay tells a story of a K-12 customer who recently got a grant to purchase iPads for their students:

“They deployed iPads without cases. Within about 2 weeks, they broke almost half the iPads. It was brutal. The Principal and the Superintendent walked around to every single classroom, rounded up every iPad – broken or not broken – put them in a locker, locked them up and said ‘No one is getting these iPads until we have cases’. They had to go back to [the board] and say ‘Folks, thank you for your investment but we have broken all of them.’ It really drove home the benefit of protecting devices is at the overall organizational level. This can be a very difficult thing to do but that’s why we try to make it easy.”

Quality Protection

Gumdrop pride themselves on the quality of their products, which is measured by MIL-SPEC testing. This is the testing that the U.S. Military – yes, the U.S. Military – puts their equipment through to test the toughness of it. Almost every single one of their cases exceeds these military grade limits:

“They don’t only meet the MIL-SPEC testing, they pass the MIL-SPEC testing. The device has to be dropped 24 times, from 6 feet, on all 6 sides without breaking the device.”

You can catch Jay at trade-shows slinging his iPad and MacBook Air around and dropping them to show off the durability and quality of their products. 

Ease of Deployment

When you roll out devices in a large organization or fleet, ease and efficiency are key. There are a few guaranteed ways to make deployments easier and Gumdrop have covered them all:

“On the Gumdrop side, all of our cases have a clear, plastic back. So, if you’ve got an asset tag or a name tag on the back, you can put your case on there and still be able to see it and know who it belongs to.”

Why Partnerships Work

Jay works specifically with their channel partners (like us) that offer a complimentary service if – and when – the inevitable happens and a service outside of their capacity is needed. He talks more about our partnership and how it helps both sides out:

“Techcycle is a fantastic partner who really helps and provides a fantastic value – and I’m not just saying that. We work with folks like you to partner and drive our case solutions with your warranties.” 

The great thing about partnerships is that they aren’t one-sided (or at least they shouldn’t be). It’s not one side doing all the work while the other gets the credit, and it’s not usually competitive from a sales perspective. Jay talks about how we are very “complementary” to each other, we don’t compete for the same business. Their cases act as a first line defense for our customers’ devices and we step in to help when needed. Because, at the end of the day, that’s who we are both here to help.

Learn More

If you are interested in learning more about Gumdrop, you can visit their websites and request some free samples as well. Being a small business based out of Seattle, WA, you can also pick up the phone and call them directly and talk to real live humans! They are also active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube — so go check them out!

All the best,
Bonny

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