Kelway plans Elcom growth

Ambitious reseller Kelway has outlined plans to double Elcom’s sales force after it relocates the firm to new headquarters in the autumn.

Having pledged to re-energise the struggling brand when Kelway snapped up Elcom from administration last month, the VAR now plans to consolidate Elcom’s offices in Basingstoke and Slough into one larger location in Basingstoke.

Phil Doye, chief executive at Kelway, said: “We’ve found a new, state-of-the art building for the Elcom Group so there will be plenty of room for new sales people.

“We want to double Elcom’s existing sales team to 40 people over a 12-month period.”

However, Greg Carlow, managing director at reseller Repton, questioned the investment in the Elcom brand.

“I’m surprised because Kelway has an image of a growth company in the market and Elcom had an image of gradual decline,” he said.

Doye also revealed that Kelway’s new Solutions Team, a six-man high-end unit, is made up partly of former staff from rival Insight.

Insight confirmed that several employees had left, but said they had already been replaced by “more qualified staff”.

Doye added: “Our Solutions Team has already had good wins in areas where Kelway has not traditionally done business such as virtualisation.”

“Our strategy is to get way beyond where we are at the moment – £100m a year – and over the next 12 months we would like to make our plans much clearer to the market.”

Nitin Joshi, founder of advisory service ChannelMoney, said: “Elcom is in a better place now than when it went bust. But, it remains to be seen whether Elcom will be able to attract credit from distributors which it will need if the business is to take off.”

Kelway set for Elcom revival