Altech and Robinson part ways

With less than two months under his belt at a distributor, John Robinson and second-tier distributor Altech have parted ways amicably.

Robinson confirmed his departure to CRN, stating he is “looking for something now and back on the market after a short honeymoon in distribution.”

He is currently looking at a few options and hopes to be back at work before the end of March.

Altech managing director, Antony Sheen told CRN Robinson’s departure was due to both parties not being suited to each other.

“Every person has a probation period and Altech decided to stop Robinson’s probation, because I felt he belongs to a different type of company,” he said. “We are a privately owned organisation and John came from big companies, like AMD where he had bigger budgets to do things.”

Sheen said he was never in a rush to hire anyone to replace Kevin Hartin, Altech’s former national sales manager. Robinson came to Sheen just as Hartin left his position in December.

“I just said lets try and see if it works for us or not. I hadn’t made any plans to formally hire anyone after Kevin left and Altech created a new job role for John,” he said.

Sheen said he was in no rush to look for a new replacement for Robinson for the time being, however he is looking for more product managers.

“We are always looking for new bright people and there is no huge rush to replace John because we are not going to miss out on anything. Here in Sydney, we already have a NSW sales manager and another manager just below him,” he said.

Sheen said things at Altech never looked better, especially with the launch of Microsoft Vista. While February looks to be record month in terms of sales for Altech.