'We had bigger offers on the table' - Circle IT founder opens up on decision to sell to Arrow Business Communications
Circle IT founder Roger Harry tells CRN why he opted to sell the business to Arrow Business Communications
Circle IT's founder Roger Harry turned down bigger offers for the business prior to the acquisition by Arrow Business Communications because the VAR provided a better "cultural fit", he told CRN.
Arrow announced the acquisition - its fifth of the year - last week, with CEO Richard Burke claiming Circle would add a "high level of technical skill sets" to "enhance Arrow's cloud, Microsoft and networking capability even further".
As part of the deal, Circle IT's founder Roger Harry will become a major shareholder within the Arrow Group to continue overseeing Circle's growth and, in an interview with CRN, said the opportunity to continue building the business was a big factor in the acquisition.
"We wanted to make sure that whoever was coming in, there was a good cultural fit. Obviously, without being too brash about it, I wanted to take some money off the table as well so that I had good security for the family and for the rest of the business," he told CRN.
"So it was about making sure they (Circle's employees) got some reward out of this whole thing and then we can all carry on as is and push on to the next phase, whatever that may look like.
"These were the first guys we saw on the first day when we started going through the process. We've seen a lot of people after that, we've seen PEs, we've seen big VARs come into the mix, SIs, but nothing really fitted like it did with those guys.
"And it was a key part of our decision because we had some bigger offers on the table but they were more, sort of, take your money and run, as opposed to ‘we're going to carry on building something and move on to the next phase and we want you to be part of that', so that's why I invested back in significantly as part of it because they just fit in so well with us."
The Cardiff-based Microsoft, Dell and HPE Aruba partner acquired Fabric IT back in July which took the company's annual revenues to £25m, Circle claimed when announcing the acquisition.
And Harry said the sale will allow Circle to undergo further expansion by selling into Arrow's existing customer base following the VAR's spree of acquisitions this year.
"They've been very clear that we keep our identity, we keep doing what we're doing now, but we need to be spearfishing in their pond with their 5,000 customers that they're not selling IT solutions to," he added.
"And my first job now is to get round all of those different companies that they've bought and work out how I can sell them into Circle's customers and hopefully vice versa. How can we get into their customers? Because they're not selling them big network transformations, managed services, 365, Fabric with all the stuff that they do with Dynamics and all of that. We've got a good opportunity.
"You've got two types of buy and builds. You've got the ones that buy in and synergise the backside out of them and then run the risk of losing a lot of customers or you've got the newer ones now like Arrow who buy them, leave them to carry on as they are and make sure that those synergies are found by selling across the customer base that they've built.
"And that's where we see we'll get a lot of value from and should see Circle as an entity still growing pretty significantly, because we've got a lot of low hanging fruit now in that Arrow base."