Simon Lane
Office supplies provider Winc Australia has hired former Ricoh country manager Simon Lane as the new general manager for its solutions business.
Lane replaces Drew Fairnham, who has moved on as the chief commercial officer for Frucor Suntory.
Lane previously spent three years as Ricoh Australia country manager of commercial and industrial solutions. He also spent more than a decade at Fuji Xerox Australia as its CMO and ran his own sales and marketing support business, Spitfire Group, for two years in between the two leadership roles.
Lane’s appointment comes almost a year since Winc "aggressively revamped" its operations model across both Australia and New Zealand markets that featured the appointment of Peter Kelly as its new A/NZ CEO.
At the time, the major restructure resulted in a number of redundancies, which impacted its technology and managed print services business units, along with consolidating its warehouse operations in an effort to ‘transform’ its business to focus on ‘five major industry types’ including government, education, care, industrial and professional services sectors.
Winc also offloaded its software licensing business in Australia to Crayon, which also involved bringing across key staff.
Under Lane's leadership, the Solutions business unit stretches across furniture; print and marketing services; technology; health, hygiene and safety.
“Winc has a terrific Solutions business and a lot of hard work has gone into getting it to that position,” Lane said. “I’m joining Winc with a mandate to grow our Solutions business and, in particular, to expand the share of wallet across our existing customers.
“That requires us to maintain our performance in all the areas that are working really well, while lifting our capabilities and offer to ensure we are anticipating our customers’ emerging needs. Winc is in a great position to succeed and I have joined the business at a very exciting time.”
Lane highlighted Winc’s diverse range of offerings, scale and supplier relationships as the key to reducing complexity for customers.
“Indeed, I believe one of my key roles is to ensure our customer base knows the extent of our capability. Winc, for example, offers top quality furniture for learning and work environments.
We manufacture, warehouse and distribute marketing and promotional items on behalf of thousands of our retail, banking and corporate clients,” he said.
“Our technology catalogue is extensive and continues to expand. At the same time, we have what I think are some untapped opportunities in our portfolio and I am exploring those areas with a view to accelerating their growth potential.”
Lane will be leaning into his leadership experience through continuing to foster close partnerships, which he said were critical to sustaining a competitive advantage.
“We have terrific partners at Winc and smart people, underpinned by an ability to sell and distribute on a large scale. I’m excited about the possibilities that can bring as we expand our solutions footprint across our customer network,” he said.
