Forging back to growth (business turnaround story)

[Mr_P]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23443225

In its heyday, Mr Young's company generated £6m a year with 150 staff. This year his turnover will hit £1m, with just 15 workers.

Blimey no wonder they had problems competing in an international market place.

 

[hanser]

Well done Frank and his 15 employees. And thanks Mr P for posting.

My son has an engineering business - work which went overseas is coming back. Far Eastern wage inflation, quality problems, hassle, shipment costs, response times, management input etc don't make it that attractive any more.

Like Frank he's had to sharpen the pencil and do things differently to win back orders but the UK can compete when it puts it mind to it.

 

[John51]

Cheap tat is for the boom times. In a recession people want quality.

 

[Peter Sefton]

Good for him and his workers, and in his 70s

 

[Losos]

A great story, I wish him well. It can be done and in fact one of the reasons that German small and medium size companies are so good is that there is no slack in the workforce. I went to get a haircut recently there were two people working there, one had a customer, the other was busily tapping away on his i-pad organising his social life and there were three people waiting :x :x :x It can be done but it needs a whole new attitude to work and sadly that will take another generation to produce.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

There is absolutely no question that a market exists for premium quality goods. Germany's entire economy is built on that one fact. Just look at the price of Festool tools. (And the quality). If there wasn't a market then of course they would be bankrupt.

Britain is absolutely without question the most inventive nation on earth. Part of the reason is we tolerate eccentricity and that's a great source for innovation but also (believe it or not) it's the English language itself. English is a "technical" language that allows its speakers to articulate very fine details about a concept (any concept). The Chinese language and in fact all pictorial based languages don't have the granularity of definition to allow their users to articulate complex concepts. For this reason the Chinese are brilliant at taking innovations from elsewhere and simply making them cheaper by focusing their staggeringly large and cheap labour force and of course their excellent industrious attitude to work. But without the West...they would be incapable of driving their own economies because their product development skill is positively infantile compared to the English speaking west.

So it is nice to hear of a company who have beaten the trend (though not really related to my monologue above in fairness). I believe that a combination of original innovation plus careful cost containment measures will allow us to compete in the global economy and move us away from this dreadful dependence on tax receipts from the snake oil salesmen in the city!

Rant over...phew