The Newcastle-based wide-format reseller and trade supplier has appointed Lauren Randall as head of technical and software support. She was previously working in the retail sector and started at YPS last month.

Four months ago, it hired former Toshiba employee Philip ‘Charlie’ Charlton as its service engineer and promoted long-term engineer Paul Shorton to head up the support division.

Charlton was with Toshiba for 26 years before joining YPS, in what YPS operations manager Georgia Brown described as an “18-month negotiation”. His role involves providing technical support, working on installs, training customers on new hardware and looking more generally after customers’ needs.

“There is always such a high demand in this industry from operators to salespeople and we were very lucky when we came across Charlie,” said Brown.

“With YPS, one of our main priorities is looking after customer investments and providing fantastic customer service. It is pivotal to the growth of any company and definitely for us. With that in mind, it was vital for us to expand our service department.

“Lauren is working on the software side, helping out with any customer issues and working also on the samples, doing demonstrations to customers so they can get the best out of their equipment."

Purchasing and distribution staffer Wayne Jobling has also been promoted to a service support role. 

YPS is continuing to look at bringing in more staff and may be taking on an apprentice in the near future in its operations department.

Last year, it became an official learning supplier for a ‘project-based learning’ school in Newcastle.

It is an authorised reseller for Mimaki, Canon, Epson and Epilog and also supplies consumables, software and finishing equipment.