Marsden vows to make CMS 'more fit for purpose' as he takes over the reins
VIP boss takes the top job at sister company CMS Computers
VIP's managing director, Rich Marsden, is taking on the same role at sister company CMS Computers as he looks to supercharge its Zoostorm brand in the channel.
Marsden (pictured) took on the top job at VIP in February after three years as its sales director. He will now take on the additional role of running CMS Computers, replacing departing director Ian Fraser.
CMS was snapped up by distie VIP in November 2011 and since then the duo has remained separate. Marsden said the pair will retain their independence but will benefit from some business efficiencies.
"What we will look to do is streamline the model in the background quite quickly," he told CRN. "They run at the moment as two completely independent businesses. What we will do now, where production is concerned, is make some changes which will benefit both companies in the service centre by making one big service centre. That's an easy win in the background."
From 1 May, VIP will become a distie for CMS, which Marsden said will enable CMS to tap into VIP's strong base of partners. He insisted there is no conflict of interest for either party.
"Ultimately, CMS has the Zoostorm brand and it doesn't supply anything direct to the end user," he said. "100 per cent of the business goes through resellers and what we'll do by making VIP a distributor of Zoostorm is increase our breadth in the resellers by a lot.
"The customer base in VIP is multiple, multiple, multiple times higher than CMS'. They get access to that huge database. It will be a conventional vendor-distributor relationship."
The Zoostorm brand specialises in PCs such as gaming systems, entry-level desktops, all-in-ones, touch-screen laptops and media players.
Marsden said he hopes the move to run both VIP and CMS will allow the latter to follow in the former's footsteps.
"It's a real good opportunity to streamline some of the processes we've got and make it a bit more fit for purpose and ultimately grow the business," he said. "VIP has gone through some fairly big changes itself and that business is performing well. We need the same in CMS."