Grey turns to blue

The early history of handset distributor RP Europe (RPE) is a little murky and managing director Richard Crawley goes only so far to clear up the question of its name.

The R in RPE denotes, of course, Crawleys first name, Richard. But, contrary to popular belief, the P does not stand for Phones International chairman and chief executive Peter Jones, considered by many within the industry to have backed RPE in its early days.

It does, however, stand for Peter just a different industry associate of Crawleys called Peter, with whom he founded the business in 2003 but is no longer involved.

Nevertheless, Peter Jones loomed large over proceedings in the very early days. Crawley originally conceived RPE as an escape route from Jones handset distribution business Data Select, where he had worked as purchasing director. It had filed two years dormant accounts before Crawley finally quit Data Select in early 2006 to focus on RPE and, in its first few months, Crawley worked with Jones on the project out of Data Selects offices in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, up the road from RPEs present site in Bourne End.

Jones originally saw RPE as a means to break into new distribution sectors, according to Crawley. He says: Peter was going to invest money into the business and have a shareholding, and work with me in non-competing sectors to Data Select. There was a lot of talk about refurbished products, and opportunities on exports. We were looking at most things.

The decisive split came in August 2006. Crawley decided that RPE needed to distance itself from Data Select, to make its own way in distribution. We decided we couldnt progress like that. Im not saying Peter understood the reasons, but we parted on amicable terms. At that point, he hadnt put a penny into the business, he explains.

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