“People’s eyes light up” at the mention of Northamber’s name, its new MD has claimed, as he opened up on his brief for the role.
30-year industry veteran Jeremy Keefe was brought in to run the AIM-listed firm, which styles itself as the UK’s oldest distributor, on a day-to-day basis in December.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, the former Nuvias UC, Poly, Westcon, Computacenter and Avaya exec said he “jumped at the chance” to lead a new era at Northamber.
He will report into former MD Alex Philipps, who now holds the role of Executive Chairman.
“However you dress it up, we are the oldest, or longest-established, distributor and when you speak to people that have been in the industry a long time and you say ‘Northamber’, their eyes light up,” Keefe said.
“I had a few things brewing at the time, but when I was approached to see if I was interested in talking to Alex, I jumped at the chance.”
“Sticking to our knitting”
Northamber, which ranked 21st in IT Channel Oxygen’s 45 Must-Know UK IT Distributors, registered its fourth straight year of growth in its fiscal 2023, as revenues inched up 1% to £67.1m.
During the period, the Chessington-based outfit expanded its audio-visual unit into unified comms and collaboration (UC&C) via a new partnership with Yealink.
Northamber will “stick to its knitting” when it comes to continuing to focus on its traditional peripherals/document management and solutions-based businesses, while growing in AV, UC&C and cybersecurity, Keefe said.
“We acquired Audio Visual Material in 2020 to help us move into that AV space and it’s just grown and grown and grown. We’ve recently moved into UC&C and are looking for vendors to partner with that will complement the current solutions sets we’ve got there. We’re strong in cyber but quite narrow, so that will be a growth area for us,” he explained.
Adding “commercial astuteness and awareness“
Keefe said he was brought in for his “commercial awareness and astuteness”, and said Northamber is on a similar journey to that of his previous company SIPHON Networks, which became Nuvias UC after Nuvias acquired it in 2017.
“It’s a really similar approach. Nuvias was taking an owner-led business into a managed-led business. Northamber has been a Philipps family business, and Alex as I understood it needed some commercial awareness and astuteness in the business, and asked me to join him to take the business on the next [phase of the] journey,” Keefe explained.
“Alex isn’t going away. The idea is for him to sit on top of the business and look across it as to what we need to be doing as an organisation – different markets, different opportunities of growth outside of our current go-to-market strategies.
“I will drive the day-to-day business but I report into Alex, who has an overview of what we’re doing as a business.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
