Eureka comes to Leicester rescue

Apple dealership Leicester Computer Systems has been saved from collapse after being bought by Eureka & Macay.

In April, acquisitive Apple dealer Rapid Group failed in its attempt to buy Leicester, which has offices in Leeds, Peterborough and Leicester, as the two could not agree terms. (PC Dealer, 9 April). Leicester later went into receivership.

The acquisition by Eureka will bring the combined turnover of the Eureka & Macay group to about #10 million. The company will gain direct dealer status from Apple as both organisation are Apple business centres.

Malcolm Sandom, general manager at Eureka, said the group was looking to diversify into PC and Unix products.

?At the moment we?re 100 per cent Apple. What we?re doing is going back to our existing customer base saying: Same people, same business, different products. We don?t want all our eggs in one basket. But our primary target market will be print/publishing/graphics and higher education.?

Sandom said the two Midlands branches wanted to in- crease focus on value-added services such as training, support and database development.

The company was forced to scale down the workforce in its back-end divisions. All stock control and purchasing is now done direct from Maidenhead.

Sandom said the group had lost about 12 staff, but insisted that there were no more redundancies in the pipeline.