Former Electrograph President Aims To Grow Almo

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If it's true that difficulty often disguises opportunity, that adage must have some resonance with former Electrograph Systems President Sam Taylor, who in late June was named executive vice president of the new professional audio/visual division of Almo.

Following the decline of Electrograph, which entered liquidation in late May, Taylor signed on with Almo to spearhead its new division. And he brought nearly 30 of his colleagues with him, including former Electrograph Vice President of Marketing Melody Craigmyle, now the Almo pro A/V division's director of marketing.

"We were able to come to a very nice arrangement [with Almo] for a good portion of the sales force," Taylor said in one of several Channelweb.com interviews.

Almo is best known for distributing consumer electronics and appliances, but according to Taylor, was looking for an entry into the pro A/V space. With its pro A/V team in place as of June 17 -- when Taylor's appointment was announced -- it's been steadily adding pieces, including a West Coast sales team led by regional sales director Steve Stacy that debuted on July 8, and an East Coast team, announced Aug. 10, that was led by John Riley, former Electrograph vice president of Eastern regional sales.

Overall, about 30 former Electrograph sales executives have transitioned to Almo, and Taylor's team has announced a number of vendor agreements for the pro A/V division in the past six weeks, including Panasonic, NEC Display and, most recently, Samsung.

"When it became evident that Electrograph had to liquidate, I know Sam spoke to a number of folks, boiled that number down to a handful, and then decided," said Warren Chaiken, president and COO of Philadelphia-based Almo. "I think what brought him here is that he looked at our company, our culture and our business and saw a lot of the old Electrograph. We hammered out [the agreement] the Saturday [June 13] before InfoComm [June 16-20], and everyone from Electrograph that's come through our organization so far has said, 'Wow, this is a good thing.' I don't think they're blowing smoke, either."

Taylor said he'd had conversations following Electrograph's liquidation with "nine or 10" different companies, and found Almo to have the most interest. That so many of his former Electrograph colleagues would join him at Almo was "always in the plan, and they [Almo] agreed with it."

According to Chaiken, he and Taylor had never met before their talks began, but they knew of each other professionally and through mutual friends and acquaintances working for vendors like Pioneer.

In the discussion phase, Taylor said he had three "very lengthy meetings" with Chaiken's team, but within two weeks of when they began, there was a plan in place.

"The bottom line is, we weren't touching this vertical [pro A/V]," said Chaiken. "If you look at who Almo is today, we touch on a lot of different areas in the spectrum of products we service, and now we can leverage the resources of this company to add to this other channel."

Did it worry Chaiken, at all, that he was hiring -- for a new division, no less -- a president and many senior executives from a company that landed in major financial trouble?

"In doing our due diligence, one of the things I found out about Sam is that his reputation is one of the best in the industry," Chaiken said. "I even said to him, 'I'm still trying to find dirt on you, Sam, because I can't find it.' I think for Sam and a lot of the people that went on board [with Almo], they were a victim of circumstances they couldn't control. Just like a lot of private equity companies out there -- and remember, this is me looking at it from the outside -- they couldn't get the financing they needed, the manufacturers took a look at the credit lines, and it all started to become a downhill snowball cycle."

Next: Electrograph's Unraveling

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