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Newly promoted Vickerage not closing Imago warehouse

Ian Vickerage appointed president of ScanSource Communications for Europe after the distributor's acquisition of Imago

Imago Scansource founder Ian Vickerage has insisted he has no plans to close the company's UK warehouse as he is promoted to European president of parent firm Scansource Communications.

His promotion comes after ScanSource bought video and voice comms distributor Imago in September 2014, later renaming it Imago ScanSource.

Speaking to CRN, Vickerage (pictured) said his new position would focus on the crossover of the two distributors, which are still run largely separately. He also said he would be spending more of his time on the Imago side of the business in the short term, but in the long term "that could change".

"The emphasis is more on crossover rather than centralising," he said. "We are keen to leverage the resources we have, which is obviously suppliers, customers and internal resources like employees. There is no real centralising proposal that we have been looking at."

Vickerage said his title at ScanSource Communications is a newly created position and the current managing director, Rudy De Meirsman, will remain in his role but will report to him.

No centralisation

ScanSource has a history of merging its warehouses, having closed down its UK facility in 2010 and relocated stock to its main unit in Belgium. Following its acquisition of German distributor Algol Europe, ScanSource closed its Cologne warehouse and moved all stock to the Belgian facility in 2011.

But Vickerage said there were no plans at present to transfer Imago ScanSource's warehousing unit – currently in Berkshire – to the Belgian facility.

"What they [ScanSource] are interested in me doing is not about centralising, it's about growth and leveraging strengths," he said. "If they said 'please do some centralising' I would have said 'I think you should get someone else to do that'."

Founded in 2008, ScanSource Communications specialises in telephony and communications and focuses on Avaya and ShoreTel. It has completed a number of acquisitions, buying UK distie MTV Telecom in 2008, German outfit Algol Europe in 2009 and most recently Imago – which is Europe's largest Polycom distributor – last year.

Vickerage said the company would "possibly" be looking at further acquisitions.

"The big acquisition from ScanSource was the Imago acquisition and they are looking to major on that going forward," he said. "But ScanSource is a very ambitious outfit and you should expect to see some ambitious moves in the future; that is going to be the emphasis."

Vickerage also said there have been no major hiccups at Imago since it was bought and said its resellers have not been impinged.

"Overall it's had a positive effect," he said. "It hasn't really changed much and obviously we have benefitted from the exchange of information, but the way we run our business has not changed significantly since the acquisition.

"We have been getting on well with them [ScanSource]. It's nice to be working for people who you actually like."

He also said there have been "no negative comments" from any resellers.