Kelway and Repton "a perfect fit"

Repton head Greg Carlow talks to CRN about the future of his firm going forward

Greg Carlow

Greg Carlow, managing director of Repton, is keen to work closely with Kelway'sother divisions after his company was bought for an undisclosed sum this week.

Repton became Kelway’s second acquisition in less than three months, after the aggressive VAR bought Panacea Services in February.

Speaking to CRN today, Carlow said: “This has certainly been a mind-blowing couple of days, but I am just going to work as usual, though not as the owner of a company any more.

“Repton will run as a separate entity until we figure out how the whole company is going to look going forward.”

Carlow hinted that there would be "interesting times" ahead for the competition as Kelway pursues its plans to become a £250m powerhouse in three years.

He added that the mood within Repton was very positive.

“As our staff go forward, they can talk to customers about the whole spectrum as opposed to just the enterprise stuff where we traditionally play,” he said.

Although it was too early to say how the combined company would look, Carlow said in the mid-term it would be "stupid" to have more than one brand.

“Fit wise, it is almost too good to be true,” he added. “We only have three customers that we both deal with, and even then we don’t compete with them in any way. Kelway has traditionally been in volume, Panacea is big in services and we are big on enterprise. Logically it is a perfect fit.”

He added that Repton would carry on with business as usual, but the move to work closely together with Kelway’s divisions would happen within weeks.

“There is a lot of potential synergy between the different parts of Kelway, so there is no reason for that not to start sooner, rather than later.”