ARN : There’ll be a new face on the ARN stand at Milton Keynes, as the company’s new man in the southeast makes his debut at Vendex.
Andy Lamport, 38, has joined vending’s favourite wholesaler after a 4-year stint in sales at Thatcher’s Cider. Andy’s role there was in the on-trade, which serves licensed outlets rather than retail. Like vending, that’s a niche marketplace – but it’s one in which Andy has a lot of experience. ‘Prior to my time at Thatcher’s Cider I had a brief stint at Guiness’ he says, ‘and before that, I had a pub. I rented a place from a pub company and ran it on a self-employed basis. I’d been working on van sales for Walker’s crisps. It was just a career change at the time to run a pub; one came up for rent in my hometown so I enquired and it snowballed from there, really.’
He’s still ‘the new boy’ at ARN but he’s already experienced a huge lifestyle change in his new role. ‘Thatcher’s was field based but I covered a much smaller geographical area compared to my ARN patch’, he says, ‘so the time I’m spending behind the wheel these days is taking some getting used to.’
From his base in Maidstone, Kent, Andy’s patch extends west to Southampton, east to Cambridge and from Southampton on the south coast, up as far north as Gloucester.
With an impressive track record of achievement in his previous posts and a deep-seated desire to realise his potential by going on to great things in his career, it’s no wonder that Andy got the ARN job. However, there’s another factor at play that might have helped his application and will enable him to fit in with his North Shields based employer: he’s a fan of Newcastle United!
‘I know’, he laughs, ‘you couldn’t make it up.’ The distances involved restrict him to rare visits to St, James’ Park, but he did manage to get to the recent game against Villa with his son Bradley, 18 – and with the ARN Head Office just down the road from the black and white cathedral, the chances are that his visits to The Toon suddenly increase in frequency!
In the next few weeks, however, his travels are unlikely to take him further north than Milton Keynes… ‘I’m really looking forward to Vendex’, he says. ‘I understand from my colleagues that the ARN stand is always the busiest at Vendex events so although it promises to be pretty intense, it sounds like it’ll be the perfect opportunity for me to meet with customers and put faces to names.’
So, heads-up. The new face on the ARN stand is Andy Lamport – and he’s hoping to make your acquaintance at Vendex.
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