The latest industry movers & shakers

05 April 2012: The latest personnel movements and announcements from around the appliance and CE channel

The very latest movers & shakers are aded at the top... Move your cursor over the photos to see who's who!

Ray Gillenwater is RIM's Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand. Gillenwater has held various positions at RIM in North America and in South East Asia, where he was most recently Country Director of RIM’s operations in The Philippines. He was also involved in RIM’s distribution model for BlackBerry across South East Asia, making the region one of the fastest growing and best performing in the industry.

Sara Beaumont is Breville's new Sales Representative for the South Island. Beaumont will be known to many of her customer base from her previous role with Telecom Mobile. "I am looking forward to continuing the momentum Breville and our retail partners are enjoying well into the future," she says.

 Victoria Harrison is now looking after Nilfisk's Northern Region for Nilfisk-Advance, replacing Suha Garabet.

Marie Parsons will henceforth be handling Nilfisk-Advance’s South Island and Wellington to Palmerston North. Parsons has extensive experience in high value homewares.

Dan Walker is Samsung New Zealand's new National Sales Manager – Consumer Electronics division. Walker joins Samsung from Noel Leeming Group, where he was National Commercial Sales Manager. He will be responsible for Samsung New Zealand’s whitegoods and audio visual sales strategy.

Yusuke Mizoguchi takes up the newly created role of Managing Director of Canon New Zealand in January. The appointment comes as part of "an increased investment in the New Zealand market" by Canon which promises to benefit its local customers by "increasing the visibility of New Zealand market requirements to Canon’s parent company in Japan." At the same time, Mike Johnston, Canon New Zealand’s Country Manager, has decided to leave Canon in the first quarter of 2012.

Vaughan Eustace has been appointed BDT’s Retail Sales Manager; this is a new position and part of a retail sales team expansion. With both sales and product management experience (he was formerly BDT’s Product Manager - Refrigeration & Dehumidifiers), Eustace offers a unique skill set that will strengthen the BDT retail sales force.

Regan McKillop has been named BDT’s new Product Manager - Refrigeration & Dehumidifiers. McKillop previously worked in the air conditioning product management team and has been with BDT for just over 4 years. “His work ethic and enthusiasm will be an asset to the retail customer base,” says BDT.

Paula Brown has joined the Panasonic NZ team in a newly created Marketing Executive role. Her broad sales and marketing experience includes a recent stint as Assistant TV Buyer at Noel Leeming Group. Brown’s role will see her involved with Sales Promotions, Trade Incentives, Visual Merchandising, Sponsorships and other marketing functions.

Megan Dixon has been appointed Business Development Manager for www.lasoo.co.nz, Reach Media’s retail search engine that serves ads from catalogue, newspaper, television and radio. Lasoo is a pre-shop search engine that displays current specials and offers from participating catalogues and retailers around New Zealand – in other words, a giant shopping centre stoked with specials.

Mathew McGillivray is Spectrum Brands' new National Sales Manager. Following the recent merger of Salton and Spectrum Brands, McGillivray will lead the sales team, as well as look after many of key accounts.