Trustmarque mad for Manchester with new Media City base

Reseller on the hunt for new business in the north west

Trustmarque has cut the ribbon on its new Manchester base as it looks to win over new customers based in the area and better support those with which it already has ties.

The branch, which is in Salford's Media City complex, is the firm's fifth UK base.

The company is headquartered in York and has a London City base - to which it moved after closing its Bracknell branch - along with an Edinburgh site and a newly opened Glasgow office, which came from its recent acquisition of Opin Systems.

Field and home-working staff will get to use the new office as a base for customer meetings, training sessions and events, but some staff will be based there permanently.

Trustmarque's group director of operations Ben Cranham (pictured) said it made sense to open a north-west branch as business growth is generated from a more widely distributed base of customers.

"It's useful to have offices that are as close to as many customers as possible," he told CRN.

"The London City office has been very successful based on customer feedback and in terms of making it easy for staff to work there. From our point of view, when we look at growth and development, [it is best] to distribute our workforce across the UK rather than build another floor in York."

The channel is far from under-represented in the north west of England, with the likes of ANS Group, UKFast, Intrinsic and Softcat calling the area home.

Cranham added that although Trustmarque will be on the hunt for new business, the decision to set up shop in the region was made with customers in mind.

"Being in the location and having a local presence gives us a broader opportunity," he said. "It's an opportunity to support existing customers as well as attract new business.

"You're going to have resellers and service providers going to centres of population from both a customer and employee perspective.

"We had the same situation in York with resellers opening on our doorstep, but it was not a problem for us. The physical location is not important from that sense, it's just [about] closeness to customers."