Exclusive looking to establish substantial US presence 'sooner rather than later'
VAD takes on former Westcon executive Pat Huth to spearhead vendor and partner alliances in the Americas
Exclusive Group is aiming to continue its aggressive buy-and-build strategy as a means of establishing a presence in the US, according to chief operating officer Barrie Desmond.
The firm's CEO Olivier Breittmayer revealed at the start of the year its intentions to step into the US market, but at the time could not confirm whether the expansion would be made organically or through M&A.
But speaking to CRN sister publication Channelnomics Europe, Desmond said that Exclusive is looking to gain "a substantial presence sooner rather than later" and claimed that the firm's buy-and-build strategy, which contributed to growing its top line to €1.3bn in 2016, is likely to continue in the US.
"It is our intention to continue our buy-and-build strategy and the US is very much on the agenda," said Desmond. "We want a substantial presence sooner rather than later. We are working without taking a breath, trying to make that happen, and I feel confident that we can do it sooner rather than later, but these things have a funny way of turning out, so we cannot speculate on anything until the ink is dry."
Exclusive's last M&A move came in the form of €90m Dutch VAD TechAccess, the firm's first European acquisition in five years.
The French-based distributor also announced that former Westcon exec Pat Huth (pictured) has joined Exclusive to spearhead vendor and partner alliances in the Americas, with an emphasis on the US.
Coming from Westcon-Comstor - which recently sold its US business and a 10 per cent stake of its EMEA and APAC business to US giant Synnex - Huth was previously Westcon's senior director of partner management, where he managed a vendor portfolio worth more than $1bn (€890m) in revenue.
According to Desmond, Huth is tasked with bringing the firm's current vendor portfolio to the US, as well as gaining traction among global systems integrators.
"We are building stronger and larger relationships and contractual agreements with the service providers, the global systems integrators and MSSPs, so really now it is about telling them effectively that they have got another choice in the US market." said Desmond.
"I think there are the global providers we know, the Accentures, the Verizons, the Capgemini's the Atos', and the BT Globals. Then you have got the VARs in the US which consider themselves to be small, even though they are two to four billion dollars in size, which for us is very significant."
He added: "Really, Pat and the team that he builds out will be completely focused on that. We are not going to try and compete with the US regional and domestic VARs, we are not going to go after that. We are going to stay with the specialised ones and stay global and try to provide a difference in
the way that these integrators work.
The COO said Huth (pictured) will look to hire around five people within the next two to three months in operational roles in programme management, logistics and back office functions, and could look to establish an office stateside as headcount increases.
Huth is not the only senior appointment Exclusive has made of late. In March, the distributor appointed Julien Antoine as EMEA boss from his previous post as group director of global operations at the company, to give the firm's largest region more support.