Synnex Eyes Greenville Hires After Consumer Electronics Distributor Wynit Shuts Headquarters

Synnex has expressed interest in the 140 employees being laid off by wholesale consumer electronics distributor Wynit.

"We need to keep these IT associates in Greenville," Bob Stegner, Synnex's senior vice president of North American marketing, wrote in a tweet Saturday. "Synnex is always looking for good people."

Fremont, Calif.-based Synnex declined to comment to a request for additional information regarding what, if any, outreach it is doing to the displaced workers.

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Wynit unexpectedly announced the closure its Greenville, S.C.-based headquarters Friday just two years after the distributor moved there from Syracuse, N.Y. The company said in a statement that a disappointing holiday selling season and a number of unexpected financial issues necessitated the facility closure.

Wynit sells photo, wide-format printing, security and drone products from vendors such as HP, Epson, Canon, Microsoft, SanDisk, Fitbit and DJI. The distributor's customers include retail giants such as Best Buy, Target, Walmart, REI and Kohl's.

"This is not what we wanted or expected," Wynit Chief Operating Officer Pete Richichi said in the statement. "Unfortunately, we were unable to adjust fast enough to unforeseen changes. This was purely a financial decision."

The company was founded in 1987 and announced plans to move its headquarters from Syracuse N.Y. to Greenville in November 2015, growing its headcount in the Palmetto State from 36 to 140 employees since then. Wynit will maintain its software publishing and supply chain divisions in Minnesota, according to the company.

Synnex has rapidly expanded its footprint in Greenville in recent years, which serves as the company's North American distribution headquarters. The distributor first came to Greenville in 1998 with just 25 employees.

The company embarked upon $6.5 million expansion of its Greenville distribution headquarters in April 2015 to enhance its sales capabilities around cloud, services and digital signage. The addition increased Synnex's technology services footprint in Greenville to 150,000 square feet, and its base of employees in the area from 1,250 to 1,400.

The expansion houses new demo rooms and 150 new salespeople in its CloudSolv, VisualSolv and ServiceSolv business units, according to the company. The new hires spanned the gamut from sales support to senior-level officials.

One year later, the company's Concentrix customer case business opened a new location in Greenville to serve as its North American base of operations for the healthcare and insurance verticals, as well as its core customer relationship management (CRM) business services. The 143,883-square-foot facility more than doubled Concentrix's footprint at the location.

Concentrix's Greenville operations provide major healthcare and insurance companies with both front-office and back-office capabilities such as claims processing enrollment services and continuous customer support through the client lifecycle.

Greenville has also served as the headquarters for IT distributor ScanSource since its founding in 1992. And CompuCom, No. 23 on the 2014 CRN Solution Provider 500, relocated its corporate headquarters late last year from the Dallas Area to Indian Land, S.C., creating 1,500 corporate and contact center jobs in the Charlotte, N.C suburbs.