Hardware distributor, TodayTech, has restructured its management team and made a raft of appointments in an effort to improve its services capability.

The newly created roles come one month after George Skaf abruptly departed from the distributor as its general manager of marketing and sales.

The distributor has appointed former Optima procurement manager, Max Lee, to head up its Intel business and recruited Achieva Technology's former sales and product manager, Lewis Leung, to take on the NSW sales manager and Western Digital product management roles.

Other new faces include Chris Choong, who will head up TodayTech's Victorian sales and oversee consumables and peripherals, while John Thai will manage the Queensland team and digital and consumable business. TodayTech CEO, Jack Zhong, said the new management structure would allow the distributor to be more involved with resellers. Previously, the distributor did not have allocated vendor managers in place and the product management team sat separately to the sales team.

"We're trying to make our structure simple and more involved," he said. "Our mission is to empower by services and lead with technology."

TodayTech is also placing a greater emphasis on the retail market and has hired Libby Mitchell as its national retail development manager. Emerald Firli has also been recruited as the distributor's marketing manager. Mitchell's resume includes stints with Swann Communications, Omega and Optima, while Firli was previously a marketing executive at Ingram Micro.

"We didn't have a retail development arm in place and we needed to develop more depth around the business that we have," Zhong said. "Libby's primary responsibility is to recruit retail business as that's the area we are expanding into."

TodayTech is in negotiations with key retail partners, he said. The types of retailers he would like to attract include tier-two and tier-three players as well as consumer electronic stores. Zhong defined tier-three retailers as those selling systems, notebooks and printers who maintain up to five store locations.

"Vendors have a lot more products geared towards retail and we think it's a great opportunity for us," he said. "We see it as a very good fit with TodayTech because we are big enough to compete, but small enough to be flexible with those kinds of customers."

Types of products to be sold through retailers include LCD monitors with TV tuners, printers, scanners, notebooks and desktop PCs, Zhong said. The distributor is now in discussions with more vendors to enhance its portfolio. In April, TodayTech signed up with Philips to access its range of LCD monitors.