UK staff axed in Elcom Net unit merger

US reseller Elcom's merger of its e-commerce unit with its internet sales and technology subsidiary has resulted in 24 staff being made redundant from its UK operation.

The Elcom Systems unit will be subsumed into the elcom.com subsidiary, which was established last month. According to various sources in the UK, a four per cent reduction of employees will result in the restructure, as business is transferred from other divisions to elcom.com. It is not clear which positions have been scrapped.

The move is part of an ongoing restructure of the reseller, in which Elcom Systems was to be integrated as an arm of the services group in October last year as a means of reducing expenses (PC Dealer, 14 October 1998).

Elcom.com was then officially established on 31 December of last year, to which the reseller intended to move a portion of its commodity PC remarketer business, with the expectation that adopting the internet-based model would result in lower costs.

The division also intends to expand from online PC sales to both corporate and consumer markets, into selling office supplies and 'a range of other products consumed by businesses and consumers', according to a statement issued by Elcom's US office.

Elcom was unavailable to comment on the redundancies at its UK operation.