Trams lined up for staff take-over
Employees at Apple and HP reseller complete MBO
Staff at London-based reseller Trams have completed a management buy-out (MBO) of the Apple and Hewlett-Packard (HP) specialist.
Hugo Kirby and Wendy Howland-Jackson, founders of Trams, have left the company after reaching what the new joint owners, Warren Peel and Alex Page, described as an amicable deal.
"We approached Hugo about five months ago. Nigel [Lomas, the firm's commercial director] and I have worked at Trams for about five years and we wanted to buy the company from Hugo," said Page. "He agreed, so we arranged funding."
The firm's revenue comes predominantly from selling Apple products; about 70 per cent of sales are made from the vendor's computers and accessories.
Trams buys direct from Apple. More recently the company has diversified to selling HP products.
"There is always a risk with these transactions, in that the people involved have to live together afterwards. Once an owner sits down at the table with employees, the relationship changes," said Jonathan Massing, a director at Kingswood Corporate Finance, which provided the MBO team with financial advice.
"We have some expertise in this area, and managed to get an early lock-in from Hugo and Wendy to the transaction."
The new management at Trams intend to bulk out the company's services offerings.
Warren Peel, new managing director of Trams, said: "Services have not been as big a part of what we do as they should have been over the past year.
"We are going to offer maintenance and software support, as well as onsite troubleshooting for software. A lot of our core customers have not taken a lot of services from us in the past."