Well-known industry veteran Rodney Featherstone has left Connect NZ and says he is now working for a company called Zone Global. Featherstone had been with Connect NZ for ten years before leaving the company in January this year. He was national sales manager of the IT division of Connect NZ.
Featherstone refused to elaborate on why he left Connect NZ.
Featherstone stated to Reseller News in an email: “I started Connect in 2002 and began my time there as an IT Account Manager. In the subsequent years I entered into a JV [joint venture] with Connect NZ delivering IT services into the Auckland marketplace. I was later appointed the Connect NZ service manager when my JV business was merged into the Connect NZ Group.
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After several years in the service management capacity I was shifted into sales management with the view to take the nationwide IT strategy forward.”
Connect CEO Karl Rosnell has so far refused to comment on Featherstone’s departure saying that it was “inappropriate to do so at this time”.
Reseller contacted Featherstone through the Zone Global web site. Featherstone says the business involves re-kitting mobile phones and reselling the secondhand units overseas.
“The new role I have taken is sales and relationship manager working with a company called Zone Global. I work from the NZ head office and manage customers and suppliers in the Asia Pacific region. The company offers a number of facets to the business and these are broken into 3 main areas of focus,” says Featherstone, explaining that those include “delivery of reverse logistics services to the mobile network operator business”.
“These services include, receipting, grading, kitting, refurbishment, brokerage, data cleansing, recycle through our NZ, Australia and Hong Kong offices, supply of new, used and refurbished technology devices into local and global markets.”
The company also purchases “excess stock technology items and returned goods”.
“We work to increase our customers ROI on used and damaged goods and limit their loss when expired or overstocked items need to be sold. With our international contacts we are able to sell these goods into alternative markets that do not impact on our suppliers business,” he says.
Featherstone says he is keen to hear from NZ distributors. “I am interested to hear from NZ distributors, retailers and resellers that are in the market to either sell or purchase technology in bulk or have an appetite to work with a global vendor in creating their own branded devices.”
