Axminster HQ tour, Who's going

[adidat]

HI there,

Anyone attending tomorrow Sawdust1 (colin) and myself (chris) are there at 12. be nice to say hello to some forumites!

Adidat

 

[woodbloke66]

Nope, not me. Having worked for Axminster for three years, I know what's coming :lol: - Rob

 

[adidat]

yes i rather enjoyed the last one you organised! nice to see you back again

Adidat

 

[woodbloke66]

yes i rather enjoyed the last one you organised! nice to see you back again

Adidat

At that time I wasn't working for the company, but agreed, it was an excellent day out. To anyone else who's going, ensure you have deep pockets or plenty of credit on the card as there'll probably be a load of goodies to peruse - Rob

 

[adidat]

what do you do there Rob, haven't seen a blog post from you in a while?

Adidat

 

[woodbloke66]

what do you do there Rob, haven't seen a blog post from you in a while?

Adidat

You mean what DID I do there, surely? I no longer work for the company and as such have no affiliation or connections with it. Whist I was there I was part of the Marketing Dept which you'll see tomorrow. If you do a trawl through 'The Knowledge' pages, there's plenty of my old stuff, including an April Fool's Day peice and there's a video of it somewhere on UToob as well. It was the first one I ever did, and took hours and hours to shoot, but we had a real laugh making it! - Rob

 

[AndyT]

I intend to be there. I missed the earlier one, so it will all be new to me.
Booked in for an early tour.

 

[woodbloke66]

I intend to be there. I missed the earlier one, so it will all be new to me.
Booked in for an early tour.

You'll enjoy it Andy - Rob

 

[adidat]

Will be good to see you andy, its been a few years!

adidat

 

[marcros]

I didn't know about this, not that I would have been able to attend.

Is it a ukw event or a general axis one?

 

[AndyT]

I didn't know about this, not that I would have been able to attend.

Is it a ukw event or a general axis one?

It's their own promotion. It's been on their website for a month or more and publicised to their email list. Only at Devon HQ afaik.

 

[woodbloke66]

I didn't know about this, not that I would have been able to attend.

Is it a ukw event or a general axis one?

It's their own promotion. It's been on their website for a month or more and publicised to their email list. Only at Devon HQ afaik.

It's not specifically a UKW event like the last one but open to all. It's also a ticket entry fee of £5, I think proceeds of the sale go to the British Heart Foundation - Rob

 

[AndyT]

It was a good day out and a lot of work had been put into making it run slickly. Here are a few things I learned on the tour.

- The operation is pretty huge and growing steadily. I forget the exact numbers but I think it is 500+ staff at HQ with another couple of hundred in the stores.

- They like to do as much as possible in-house. That includes IT, marketing, promotions, photography.

- They have a substantial manufacturing base making lathe chucks and the UKJ range, using modern CNC machining.

- The warehouse is extensively automated. Items are deliberately shelved in mixed sequence so there's no chance of picking the wrong one from a range of similar ones in the adjacent bin. The system knows the weight of each item and completed orders are weighed to check the total.

- They have a policy of zero waste to landfill. This has led to good ideas such as shredding cardboard cartons on site to make packaging material.

- The budget line of Rider tools are imported as bulk packs of components and checked and assembled in-house. They export quite a lot of these eg to Sweden.

- The telesales people are in a separate room but most of the other office staff are in one big open plan room. The directors are all in there as well, not in separate luxury.

- All the staff seemed genuinely welcoming and interested in their work.

 

[Selwyn]

I can't believe they employ nearly 700 people. I'm just astonished they sell that much stuff.

Good company though. Things are cheaper elsewhere of course generally but still a good company. Probably wouldn't buy my power tools off them but good for all those odds and ends and a few bits of core machinery

 

[woodbloke66]

.... the exact numbers but I think it is 500+ staff at HQ...

I can't be sure of the figures Andy, but I seem to recollect from my time at AxHQ that the number of bodies isn't anywhere near 500+, for one thing the size of the canteen is nowhere near big enough to feed them all :lol: If you halve that figure you'd be somewhere near - Rob

 

[AndyT]

.... the exact numbers but I think it is 500+ staff at HQ...

I can't be sure of the figures Andy, but I seem to recollect from my time at AxHQ that the number of bodies isn't anywhere near 500+, for one thing the size of the canteen is nowhere near big enough to feed them all :lol: If you halve that figure you'd be somewhere near - Rob

Thanks Rob. I'm not as good as I should be at remembering big numbers!
Sorry to spread confusion.

 

[AndyT]

I've had a look round the corporate info on their website.
They published their gender pay gap report, which gave the figure of 276 staff at April 2017, 30% of them female.

 

[woodbloke66]

I've had a look round the corporate info on their website.
They published their gender pay gap report, which gave the figure of 276 staff at April 2017, 30% of them female.

That sounds more like it Andy, but does this figure of 276 include all the staff or just those at HQ? I think, though can't be sure, there's probably ten or maybe less (?) in each store - Rob

 

[sawdust1]

I think the tour guide said they process around 15,000 orders a day or did i incorrectly hear what he said.
A bit of an eye opener as to how big they have become from their humble beginnings when they where a 2 man band machine shop, they made a lot of items for Racal in Seaton when i was an apprentice their and we purchased most of the tools from them, it was that period they started to stock and sell more tools.

 

[woodbloke66]

I think the tour guide said they process around 15,000 orders a day or did i incorrectly hear what he said.

They stock about 16000 lines but I reckon 15,000 orders a day is a bit optimistic :lol: That would be around 1875 per hour in a nominal 8hr day Mon-Fri if online orders over the weekend aren't included. The warehouse system is pretty sophisticated, but I don't reckon it or the staff could handle that volume of traffic...15,000 orders per week perhaps?

What's very impressive (and I was told this by Ian Styles) is that when you hit the 'submit' button on the 'puter, your order is on the back of a waggon at AxHQ within 15 minutes - Rob