Alicia Shepherd pops up at VIP

Acer's former UK channel manager heads up newly formed retail division at ambitious distributor

Former Acer UK channel manager Alicia Shepherd has returned to her distribution roots and has taken on a new position as head of retail at VIP Computers.

As ChannelWeb revealed, Shepherd was made redundant from Acer just before Christmas as part of a wider shake up in its management structure.

Speaking to ChannelWeb about her new role, Shepherd, who started her career at Micro-P and also worked at C2000, said: “It is fantastic to be at VIP and it is a real breath of fresh air. The approach, desire and willingness from everybody here to work together has really blown me away. It is really nice to be back in distribution.”

Her remit, she explained, will be to grow VIP’s presence in the retail space with some of its key brands including Asus, BenQ and MSI.

“I will be building on the existing company pedigree in terms of customer support, but will be taking the retail proposition forward with key vendors. It means that we can be very strategic in the way that we approach retailers.

"For me it is both a sales role and a business management role and I’m looking forward to helping VIP become an even stronger contender in the retail market.”

She added she will be looking to extend the VIP retail team “as RoI dictates”, but said the whole VIP team will be working together on the retail push.

Dave Stevinson, director of VIP Computers, added in a statement: “Our strategy is to develop relationships with the top 50 technology retailers and the vendors who support them. We are determined to become an important and strategic partner to the retailers and offer them a compelling reason to align with VIP."