Cameo’s in-house services model hands it a trump card over rivals, its MD claimed as he opened up on its recent exec hiring spree.
The channel services outfit doubled in size in 2022 when it took on 33 staff from Daisy’s disbanded Allvotec arm – and now has a headcount of 106.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, MD Luke Horton-Walker admitted “things needed to change” when just 18 months ago he alone was running the business.
In the intervening period, Cameo has bolstered its management team by hiring five former Daisy and Comms-care execs.
These include former Daisy trio Paul Worthington (who was first to join, as CFO in May 2023) Gareth Tunicliffe (Technical Director from September 2023) and Mark Duckmanton (Commercial Director from September 2024).
Ex Comms-care pairing Rob Darby and Katie Hall also joined its top team in March and September of 2024, as Sales Director and Marketing Director, respectively.
“It was just me [running the business],” Horton-Walker explained.
“When Rob came down, he said ‘I didn’t know you were doing any of this’.
“We’re the biggest-kept secret, because we’ve not done any marketing – we don’t shout about ourselves.”
Employee number eight
Horton-Walker joined Cameo as employee number eight in 2014, taking full ownership of the firm in 2021 via an MBO.
The decision to take all services in-house has handed Cameo an edge over the competition, Horton-Walker claimed.
“At the time I joined we were a small engineering outfit. We were outsourcing our spares and logistics, and it wasn’t working well for us,” he explained.
“So we made the investment and in-sourced all of that and generated this in-house model, which we’ve continued to champion. We own it from start to finish, and control our destiny, and that’s our pitch to customers.
“We have one of the biggest engineering teams now of any channel services provider.”
That in-house model will boost Cameo’s ability to provide reporting to clients as new sustainability rules such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) kick in, Horton-Walker asserted.
New hire Duckmanton, who joined this month after a period spent investing in sustainability companies, has written a carbon reporting tool for travel, he stressed. Cameo’s recent acquisition of a WEEE recycling plant will also boost its proposition here, Horton-Walker claimed.
“We’re very big on on sustainability,” he said.
“Finding our identity”
Cameo’s sweet spot is telephony, networking, server, storage, mainframe and tape.
A recent Fortinet project with brewer Greene King (won by Daisy Corporate Services) catapulted it into the professional services space, Horton-Walker said. Cameo carried out the configuration and distribution, as well as transitioning it to deliver a bespoke maintenance service, he explained.
Asked about his ambitions for the company, Horton-Walker said the aim is to become a “genuinely sustainable services provider”.
“We want to replicate this model in other geographical regions. Western Europe is high on the agenda for us,” he added.
“With the new hires and opportunity that’s out there, we’re really finding our identity.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
