Twenty-five years is a long time in technology. Entire product categories have come and gone. The partnerships that have endured — with clients, vendors and people — are the ones that built something worth celebrating.
Where it started
In 2001, a 26-year-old from Belgium arrived in South Africa with five years of IT distribution experience, a clear conviction about where technology was heading, and the kind of stubborn optimism that most people who’ve built something from scratch will recognise. That was Mauro Mercuri. What he built over the next 25 years became Tactile Technologies — today the largest independent touch screen distributor in South Africa, with offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Belgium.
The early years were about establishing credibility in a market that didn’t know the Tactile name yet. That meant being absolutely reliable on the fundamentals: sourcing the right product, delivering on time, and knowing your subject matter well enough to earn the trust of clients who had other options. It worked. The clients that took a chance on Tactile in those early years are still clients today.
“The businesses that trusted us early — they didn’t just give us an order. They gave us the opportunity to prove what kind of company we were going to be.”
Building the vendor relationships
One of the most important decisions in Tactile’s early history was the deliberate choice not to be all things to all people on the vendor side. Rather than stocking every available product from every available manufacturer, Tactile committed to deep partnerships with a carefully selected group of world-class vendors — FEC, Unitech, Seiko, IIYAMA, Feitian, Flytech.
This approach paid dividends in ways that weren’t immediately obvious. When you have a deep partnership with a manufacturer — when you understand their product roadmap, their engineering philosophy and their supply chain — you can give your clients advice that goes well beyond what’s on the spec sheet. You can say with confidence which product will be supported for the next seven years, and which one is approaching end-of-life. You can secure stock when the market is constrained. You can get answers quickly when something goes wrong.
That’s the difference between being a distributor and being a technology partner. Tactile chose to be the latter, and it’s been the defining characteristic of the business ever since.
The clients who shaped us
Twenty-five years of operating in South Africa means Tactile has worked with companies that most South Africans interact with every day. FNB. KFC. McDonald’s. Mr Price. SPAR. Engen. Sun International. Virgin Active. Nespresso. PEP.
Each of these relationships taught us something. Some taught us about the demands of high-volume retail environments. Others taught us what hospitality clients need from their technology infrastructure. The financial services clients taught us about the non-negotiable nature of security and uptime. The gaming and casino clients taught us about certification requirements and the consequences of hardware failure in a regulated environment.
You cannot replicate this knowledge in a training course. It comes from being present, solving real problems, and caring enough about the outcome to go the extra mile when the situation calls for it. The personal touch — it’s not a marketing line. It’s the way we’ve always operated.
2001 Year Tactile Technologies was founded in South Africa
100+ Years of combined industry experience across the team
$37.2B Global self-service kiosk market size in 2025, growing at 10.9% CAGR through 2030 — the industry Tactile has led locally for 25 years
Expanding the offering — and the geography
Growth at Tactile has never been about chasing revenue for its own sake. Each expansion has been driven by a genuine capability to add value in a new area. The move into Europe in 2013 opened up new vendor relationships and gave Tactile a perspective on technology trends that a purely SA-focused business would have missed. The establishment of a presence in Taiwan in 2019 deepened the manufacturer relationships that sit at the heart of Tactile’s supply chain capability.
The expansion of the solutions portfolio — into biometrics with Palmki, into robotics with AutoXing, into enterprise device management with SOTI, INEFI and Nubis IO — has followed the same logic. Every addition is something the market needed, something Tactile had the expertise to deliver, and something that deepened the value we provide to clients who trust us to manage their technology infrastructure.
What 25 years actually means
In a technology industry where companies appear and disappear with startling regularity, 25 years of continuous operation means something. It means the supply chain relationships are real and deep. It means the market knowledge has been tested across multiple economic cycles, multiple technology generations and multiple shifts in consumer behaviour. It means the team has the kind of experience that only comes from doing the work, day after day, for a very long time.
But more than anything, 25 years means the client relationships are real. When a business has been trusting you with their technology infrastructure for a decade or more, that’s not a commercial arrangement — it’s a partnership. And it’s those partnerships that we’re celebrating this year. The clients who took a chance on us. The vendors who backed us. The team members who built this business with their expertise, their commitment and their willingness to go the extra mile.
“We didn’t build Tactile Technologies. Our clients, our partners and our team built it — together. We just made sure we showed up every day and earned it.”
The next 25 years
The technology landscape in 2026 looks nothing like it did in 2001. Artificial intelligence, advanced biometrics, autonomous robotics and cloud-managed device fleets were science fiction when Tactile was founded. Today, they’re part of our solutions portfolio. The one thing that hasn’t changed — and won’t — is the principle that has guided every decision we’ve made: understand your client’s application, select the right product, manage the full lifecycle, and go the extra mile. Always.
Twenty-five years of big wins. Here’s to the next twenty-five.
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