Climb Channel Solutions moves to further fuel EMEA expansion with new hires

Global distie brings on board a host of European directors and VPs to spearhead growth in the region

Climb Channel Solutions today announces a raft of appointments to spearhead the distributor's continued expansion across EMEA.

The Climb Global Solutions-owned company welcomes Roberta McCrossan (EMEA marketing director), Brian Davis (VP sales UK and Ireland), David Keating (country manager Ireland and group security sales director), Kamel Kerbib (country manager France), and Patrick Van Arendonk (sales director Benelux).

The first three names on that list, McCrossan, Davis and Keating, join from DataSolutions following Climb's takeover of the Irish distie last year.

Next we have the new sales director for Benelux, Patrick Van Arendonk, who brings experience working for several vendors and distributors, one of which was acquired by Exclusive Networks. He later went on to manage the Netherlands for Exclusive Networks and later the Cloud First division for the group.

Last but not least, Kerbib has been tasked with expanding the Climb brand across France. A veteran of the information technology, cloud, and services industries, Kerbib was the former co-founder and VP sales for Clougnitive Technology.

"We're very pleased to welcome Roberta, Brian, David, Kamel and Patrick to our EMEA team – a team that is tasked with spearheading Climb's expansion across the region," said Gerard Brophy, chief revenue officer at Climb.

"What matters for Climb as we look towards growth is ensuring we have the right people with the experience we need to be successful.

"In Roberta, Brian and Patrick we have exactly that. I am personally looking forward to working closely with each of them, and to achieve our shared goals together."

Climb soaring higher in Europe

NASDAQ-listed parent company Climb Global Solutions forked out $16.3m to buy DataSolutions in October 2023.

The deal marked its third UK and Ireland buyout in the last three years, following Sigma and Spinnakar in 2020 and 2022, respectively.

Speaking with CRN following the close of DataSolutions and its strategy for the European market, CEO Dale Foster explained why the global distie is going after Europe.

"If you look at the consolidation in distribution, talking about North America, Charles [ Bass, VP alliances] and I go back to a day where we were working for a distributor similar in size to Gerard [Brophy] and CDS Group, and he sold it to Ingram Micro in 2012.

"And we were one of the last ones at that size, around $120m to sell in NA.

"There's no real targets in the US and as part of our strategic plan, when we came over to what was Lifeboat Distribution and is now Climb, even then we were one of the larger ones of the small disties outside of the big three.

"There were no real targets. Our first acquisition was in Canada, but then we saw we were organically growing by emerging vendors that were coming into the market all the time. So that was our home base.

"We had a good balance sheet that we could go after, and we said Western Europe was our target. We acquired CDF Group first, and shout out to Gerard, we were looking for somebody to run our EMEA group, and we acquired his company in 2022. And then it's Gerard's plan and our plans to continue to expand through acquisition and organic growth to the rest of Europe."