‘It’s a fabulous little business that’s not little anymore’: ProVu MD
Justin Carl talks new customers, European operations, and shining in distribution land
ProVu started 26 years ago, at the dusk of the 20th century, as a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) hardware distributor.
In 2025, the company is still the only distributor in the country with its own provisioning servers, its MD, Justin Carl, tells CRN.
“We don’t outsource it to anybody else. We route it all ourselves.
“We’re the leading technical distributor of VoIP hardware.”
Beyond VoIP, the business is now involved in other areas such as networking equipment and AV, and is about to achieve £20m in turnover this year.
The company currently ships about a million products out of its warehouse every year, all pre-provisioned, says Carl.
Channel embedded
It works solely with the channel, mainly MSPs such as Daisy Group, Evolve IP, Global 4, Focus Group, and Southern Communications Group (SCG).
“We also have a lot of network providers who buy all their pre-provisioned products through us for their end customers,” he tells CRN.
“We have thousands of small resellers that buy from us as well.
“We don’t ever deal directly with the end customer, so we’re very much embedded in the channel.
“We don’t ever try and compete with our customer base in any way, shape, or form, which is what some so-called distributors sometimes do, because they love their own web shops and don’t really mind who they sell to.”
The brand claims to have always been a pure channel operator.
“The channel system works extremely well in the telco sector, and I think it’s probably one of the best models anywhere in the world for how it works together.
“Whether it’s the end reseller, the service provider, a distributor like us or a vendor behind us, everybody’s got the same goal.
“MSPs don’t want to be running warehouses and managing stock, they don’t want to be dealing with end vendors.
“We’re very protective of the channel, and I think there are many organisations that don’t quite understand that.”
Growing customer base propelling numbers
The distributor currently has around 8,000 customers on its books, with just over 1,000 being regulars.
About 50 per cent of revenue comes from 30 to 40 of its top clients, with O2 Daisy being its biggest customer at the moment.
“When you talk about O2 Daisy, Focus Group, or SCG, these are companies turning over hundreds of millions - billions for some of them.
“They’re excellent to deal with because they understand the model we work with.”
The firm also deals with “hundreds and hundreds” of smaller resellers and IT service providers, supplying them with equipment and expertise.
Its biggest supplier is Yealink, which Carl says it is the main distributor for in the UK.
In networking, it works most with TP-Link and DrayTek.
“Half a dozen suppliers probably make up 80 per cent of what we stock in our warehouse and sell out, but we have upwards of 60 different vendors supplying various bits of hardware.”
ProVu has a workforce of around 20 people, most of them technical, says the MD.
“Even our sales guys aren’t your classic sales team.
“They’re all technically very astute, and that’s what our customers love, because we’re not pushy sales agents.
“They know they’re going to get good advice on the right solution, not just us trying to make money or hit a target.”
Since Carl took over, he’s invested in sales but also in technical staff.
These changes came mainly because of the company’s growth.
“Up to April this year, our business was turning over £15m a year,” he tells CRN.
“This year we’ll turn over £20m.
“We’ve had to take on extra resource in our warehouse - three new heads there alone just to cope with the extra work.”
Operations across the UK and Europe
To support operations, the distributor recently moved to a new warehouse in Meltham, five miles from its Huddersfield HQ.
“We have many thousands of square feet of warehousing space, which is why we moved there,” he explains.
“It’s four times bigger than what we had previously. We’ve already filled it right up to the rafters, already wondering if we’ve got enough space.
“We’re right in the middle of the UK, so it’s a really useful place to get things in and out of.”
Besides operations across the UK, the company also supplies Ireland, despite not having a base there.
It used to export into mainland Europe, but Brexit has made that more difficult, he tells CRN.
“It’s become so problematic with the VAT rules and so on.
“We’re finding it increasingly difficult, to the point where we’re not going to be doing it much longer.
“We will continue in the Republic of Ireland, but beyond that, we’re not really touching it.”
He explains that Brexit hasn’t had such a major impact, as about 95 per cent of its business was UK-based prior to the reform.
Expansion and acquisitions
Even though he plans to expand over the next 12 months, Carl says he’ll be careful, focusing on the fundamentals and not losing sight of what made the company what it is.
“I’ve seen too many businesses expand quickly and then lose their original customers because they’ve forgotten how to look after them.”
Over 26 years, the business has grown organically, and Carl doesn’t plan to make acquisitions anytime soon.
“Some of our key competitors are much larger than us, and I’m sure they may be looking at us to see how we could help them.
“What we do is fairly specialist, so the value of another distributor depends on the contracts they have and what makes them stand out.
“Our growth plans aren’t about merging or acquiring others.”
Growth has been steady but slow, says Carl.
“We got to around £13m turnover three or four years ago, and it’s only grown a bit since to £15m.
“That’s not huge growth in the grand scheme of things. It’s very hard in distribution land to grow your business.”
In addition to its core business, the company’s big push this year came from a major Daisy O2 contract.
“The reason for the growth this year is we won that Daisy contract.
“Within a week of starting it, my phone didn’t stop ringing from key clients we’d been trying to get for years, suddenly wanting to work with us.
“They said, ‘Hey, I hear you’re the guys who can source routers, pre-provision them, hard code them, and fulfil them properly.’
“And the answer was, ‘Yes, we can. Would you like to get in the queue with everyone else, and we’ll decide whether we want to work with you or not?’”
While still in the early stages with some new customers, Carl says the next 12 months will be interesting to see how those relationships develop.
“We’ve proved what we can do and what we can deliver, and we haven’t missed a beat.
“They’re happy with not just our service levels, but our technical expertise.
“We’ve gone from pre-provisioning 200 routers a month to 7,000 a month in the space of four months.
“That’s a big change, and on the back of that, our business will grow, as long as we keep delivering.”