Lawless leaves Avnet

After more than five years with Avnet Technology Solutions, Gavin Lawless, has left the distributor.

Lawless joined Avnet as its national sales director, before taking the helm from Colin McKenna in October 2006, who went into retirement.

Since then, Lawless led the company through the acquisition of ChannelWorx in 2007, and most recently when it acquired itX.

Since the itX acquisition, Lawless stepped into take charge of services and adjacent businesses which included itX’s previous acquisitions ICO, Briell and Sydmed.

Lawless said the time was right and he done everything he set out to achieve.

"I had taken the business from being a relatively unknown player in the market to become a very big force in the IT channel," Lawless said. "I developed a significant brand that stands out for quality, enterprise IT products and we attracted and retained very good people throughout the years. It's really time for me to find the next challenge.

Lawless plans to stay within the IT industry.

Avnet A/NZ vice-president and general manager, Laurie Sellers, said after merging the two organisations, it had fairly strong management team at Avnet and Lawless did a great job of growing the business during his tenure.

“During the second half of the calendar year of 2010, Gavin and I spent a bit of the time talking about the acquisition of itX, and that was completed on January 4. He played a major role in that,” Sellers said.

“But as part of the acquisition the decision was made for Gavin to hand the reins to me and he agreed to take on a much smaller role and at the same time he was helping me with the migration and integration of the overall business.

“It was unfortunate that we didn’t have a big enough role to challenge him with previous level of experience. After a bit more time and thought and given that he played his part in the integration, he decided it was time to move on.”

Sellers said previous staff that reported to Lawless will now report to him and it may look at ways of improving the overall structure of the business.

“I prefer to create some internal opportunities to fill the gap and give some of the other guys a chance to increase their scope of responsibilities,” Sellers said. “We wish him all the best. It all ended in a very friendly and open manner.”

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