Armed with almost three decades of communications sector experience, Blaine Craig has come on board as customer services manager. He worked his way up to BT channel director following his graduation from university and has also gone on to hold notable roles with Virgin Media, EON UK and Azzurri Communications, to name just a few. In this new position with Vapour, he is now responsible for maintaining service levels for customers large and small, as the company continues to grow. He will draw on his client-facing experience to develop relationships, drive swift resolutions for in-life technical faults and proactively uncover smarter ways of working.
Emma Haywood has also joined as channel account manager, following the successful launch of Vapour’s new managed service offering. She too has worked for Virgin Media and has also gone on to hold business development roles with high-end fit-out contractors in London, before moving into wealth management protection where she founded her own consultancy business.
Having known Vapour’s CEO Tim Mercer for a number of years, she has watched the progress of the company since it was established in 2013 and is now excited to bolster the commercial team.
“Vapour’s industry positioning – as only a six-year-old-business – is really quite phenomenal,” commented Emma. “This is a high-energy, driven and incredibly competent team, and I am truly proud to be able to play a part in what comes next.
“We’re on the brink of announcing two particularly exciting new channel partnerships and I look forward to showcasing what we can achieve together.”
Newly appointed non-executive director Jon Pickering completes the trio of hires. As the ex-CEO and co-founder of Block – a £25m turnover IT company which he exited in 2017 – he is a strong addition to Vapour’s board. He has a wealth of technical experience and a demonstrable background of scaling technology companies.
“Jon will add a really different dynamic to our leadership team,” explained Tim. “He constructively challenges technical strategies and his fresh perspective on our ambitious growth plans will – I believe – prove extremely valuable during this period of rapid expansion.
“The 500% growth of our cloud division over the past two years has been widely documented in the media, and we have no plans to become stagnant now. We need the industry’s finest talent to keep pushing forward and I feel privileged to have Blaine, Emma and Jon join us. I foresee a couple of additional hires before the end of 2019 too. Vapour is a really exciting place to be at the moment.”