VAR Trust Systems doubles sales in 2015

WiFi services player reaps benefits of multi-year contracts and claims it is on track for £12m by the end of 2016

NetApp, HP and Cisco partner Trust Systems has doubled its revenues in 2015 and says it is on track to hit £12m by the end of the year.

The Cirencester-based reseller claims to have posted sales of £6m for its year ending 31 December, up from £3m in 2014. It has previously set itself the goal of £12m, and its commercial director Mike Dowson said he is confident of hitting this by the end of 2016.

Key to its sales growth in 2015 were WiFi connectivity and networking management contracts with three major supermarket chains and also its ability to win multi-year deals, Dowson said.

"People want a one-stop shop but we do provide them that," he said. "[We deliver] the networking, security, hardware component, a bulletproof design and then [that is] delivered, managed and maintained. We are doing that as part of three- and five-year contracts. Although our revenues were £6m last year, we wrote a lot more in contractual terms because it flows through the books for the next few years and has become a springboard for secondary contracts."

Looking into 2016, Dowson said the firm's strategy around offering bespoke WiFi services has been pretty well "refined" but said the VAR is looking to expand and could be open to acquisitions. He also said the firm is branching out from its retail client base and winning new customers such as coach company National Express.

After recently taking on three new staff, and 10 for the whole of 2015, Trust Systems has grown to a headcount of 22.

He added that in 2015, the firm used its profits to invest in a splash portal which is an application hosted in Trust Systems' datacentre that allows customers to collect data from customers using its WiFi.