Kingston's Hamilton leaves for start-up

Country manager Keith Hamilton has left Kingston Technologies after 13 years with the memory vendor.

Citing the desire to move on, Hamilton has taken a marketing director role at a fledgling venture in Melbourne, Think Group.

The reseller organisation specialises in office stationary, hardware, software, consulting and financing services.

Kingston’s northern region manager, Maritas Bairstow, has moved up to fill the country manager position. Her vacated northern manager role remains unfilled.

Hamilton said he had been wooed over to the Think Group by the company’s vision and approach to the market.

“It sounds cliché but Kingston’s philosophy was that they were training entreprenueurs,” he said. ”I’m now in that position where I want to leverage my knowledge and experience.”

Hamilton said the Think Group was currently seeking $3.5 million in capital funding to facilitate the launch of east- and west-coast offices. The company would then look to an IPO to fund New Zealand and UK expansion.

“The company’s proposition is unique in that it is about transparency, vendor independence and giving customers a fair price,” he claimed. “Up to 40 percent of the cost of purchasing can be hidden.”

Backing this up, Hamilton said the company would show customers, via its online sales engine, exactly how much a given item was being marked up.

As a carrot, customers would be given the option of accessing basic office products at the wholesale price on the condition that they bought their software licences from the company, Hamilton said.

“This way there are no hidden fees or mark-ups on the goods and we can show customers exactly how much we will save them,” he said. “On the software side our prices are still well under retail.”

The company would also partner with other specialist organisations, such as Commander, to act as fulfilment partners while it concentrated on core business, Hamilton said.

Reflecting on Hamilton’s departure, Bairstow said the former country head had made a major contribution to Kingston over the last 13 years.

“Keith was Mr Kingston Australia,” she said. “The company really loved him and encouraged the entrepreneurial spirit he’s shown with joining this new company.”

Bairstow, who has been with Kingston for two years and formerly managed the Toshiba portfolio at Dicker Data, said business at the vendor would continue as usual.

“We will have the same push as last year with flash and notebook memory being big opportunities,” she said. “64 bit computing and the current server consolidation trend all require memory upgrades too.”

Distribution partners Synnex, Ingram Micro and Simms would all remain in place but the company would however review its internal staffing levels, Bairstow said.

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