Online advertising campaign
Abbey Telecom buys Phones4Less Blackburn-based dealership Abbey Telecom has acquired online dealership Phones4Less for an undisclosed fee. The deal will see more money made available to Phones4Less for its online advertising campaign, but will otherwise mean business as usual for both companies, an Abbey Telecom spokesman told Mobile News. They will, effectively, still compete against each other, he said. They will share engineers and stock, but each will retain its assets, including current staff and premises. It will be business as usual. Negotiations started six weeks ago and finished last week. Originally Abbey Telecom MD Tony Raynor approached Phones4Less. He has an entrepreneurial spirit and saw in Phones4Less a business that was going to grow, said the spokesman. Both companies are successful at present. He saw an opportunity and took it. Both Abbey Telecom and Phones4Less deal in fixed and mobile solutions to the SME market. Abbey Telecom has an annual turnover of £1.4 million and caters to north west-based businesses from its base in Blackburn. Online dealership Phones4Less has an annual turnover of £500,000 and just two staff. Its costs are low because it out-sources engineering work to local dealerships, such as Abbey Telecom, and sells to large, tech-savvy companies that already know what their businesses need. Engineering and sales costs are therefore minimal. Raynor, who also becomes managing director of Phones4Less as a result of the deal, said: We have been working with Phones4Less for a number of years and it has used our team of engineers to install new telecom systems throughout the UK. Phones4Less has a very strong presence in the telceoms market. It targets prospects that know what they want and where they want it without talking them through the usual sales cycle. As an online dealer it is able to offer systems much more competitively, as it does not rely on sales teams. The acquisition makes a great deal of common sense, Raynor continued. We will be able to reduce our cost overheads by more effectively using the engineering teams, and will have greater buying power with the telecoms system manufacturers, enabling both companies to make further savings for their customers.
|
