Irreverence

posted on 07 May 2008 10:50

Britain's Frank Salmon looks happy and so he should. The number of 24 year-olds who buy a company for three quid (maybe $5 at a stretch) and turn it into a 150-man concern turning over £125 million is not that many.

He set up CMS Peripherals in the UK for its original owners in 1988 and bought it for the aforementioned three quid two years later. CMS now distributes products from CA, Pillar Data, Drobo, Quantum, Seagate, Symantec and Western Digital.

He thinks being nimble has contributed to its 35 percent growth rate year-on-year: "" We've ... made it our business to identify the best emerging vendors with the highest potential and then take them to market in the most efficient manner. Keeping one step ahead of the latest storage trends has, and always will be, a key part to our long-term success."

Sounds easy. Is that all you have to do? Now if only I'd had four quid in 1990 I could have bought CMS Peripherals instead and would be driving a Ferrari or whatever and enjoying a huge birthday cake too.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}