EDITORIAL - Shopaholic catches US BrightStar

You just can't stop those people at CHS Electronics buying up companies. It seems they almost have some kind of shopping disorder - no matter who is up for sale, CHS will buy it. Goodness knows what would happen if there was a January sale of companies each year.

This week, it was the turn of BrightStar. While it is not a particularly nice name, and I would suggest that CHS changes that name before it comes over to the UK because we don't take kindly to Americanisms over here, it has to be said that this is quite a smart move.

Most of us in the UK will not have heard of BrightStar. In fact, there could also be some confusion with another company called BrightStar Services - a CD and diskette replication facility - which has nothing to do with CHS BrightStar. CHS' BrightStar is a Miami-based distributor of cellular phones and accessories, with supply agreements with Motorola and Ericsson.

So it would appear that while the industry has talked about convergence of IT and telecoms for years, it is finally happening. It is fair to say that CHS will probably not see many returns from the business straight away as far as this convergence trend is concerned, but it is well positioned for when this does actually take place. BrightStar, as the CHS subsidiary, will generate a lot of sales and is using the CHS connections in Europe to build up a presence.

While there has been speculation growing in the US market that CHS was expected to buy someone, the consensus was that the sale was going to be a PC distributor. One point which a lot of people forget is that although CHS is based in Miami, it is not actually a US distributor because it doesn't trade or sell in the US market. CHS actually generates 80 per cent of its business in Europe and 20 per cent in Latin America.

But CHS has made no secret about its plan to enter the US market and has previously stated that it would enter this year, but is under no pressure from its shareholders. In the September issue of Fortune, CHS is ranked as the 59th most profitable company. So I would suggest that if anyone wants to sell their company, they should give CHS a call.

So distribution industry veteran Allan Mack has turned up at Datrontech as commercial director. In one sense, this it is not at all surprising, seeing as he worked with Mark Mulford, chairman and founder of Computer 2000, for a number of years. Many people speculated that Mack would go to a vendor because he was bored with distribution. Obviously not.

Mack joins Datrontech at an interesting time. The distributor has not had the best of times recently.

The problem appears to be that while it needed to move its reliance away from memory, it bit off more than it could chew - buying more companies than it could integrate into its portfolio. This is the task facing Mulford.

While the integration process was started a year ago, there is still much to do.

In the meantime, it would appear Mack has been bought in as a troubleshooter.

In the short term, he will help drive component sales as well as helping out Neil Ledger. But the company's culture is similar to that of C2000 four years ago, which means working at Datrontech will seem to Mack like putting on that old jumper you can't bare to throw away.