In Focus: Making their mark
Ignore manufacturing at your peril, warns Insider editor Sam Metcalf.
Working on Insider’s Made in the Midlands Awards Dinner over the past few months has taught me to leave my preconceptions about manufacturing at the door on the way into the workshop.
Gone, you see, are the days of smoking chimneys, dirty overalls, blackened faces, and men hitting bits of metal with other, smaller, bits of metal. What we do have here in the Midlands is a sector that is vibrant, adaptable industry that is now being charged with leading the UK out of recession. Manufacturing is cool again.
Not that you'd know it from the often unassuming owners of these businesses. For every flamboyant Denys Shortt, you have a hundred owner-managers who like to keep their head down, shy away from any publicity, and crack on with stuff.
This can be frustrating for some manufacturers, who want to get out there, try new things and take a few risks. For all its dynamism in actually making stuff, there is a general feeling of conservatism in the industry.
There are notable exceptions, of course – such as the companies who this year entered Insider's Made in the Midlands awards, but, as Dani Saveker pointed out at our recent Family Business Breakfast, should she ever take control of a manufacturing firm again, she won't stand for any pussyfooting around.
Saveker was talking about family businesses in particular, but her family business was, of course, involved in manufacturing.
Saveker said she encountered huge resistance when she tried to grow her family’s former company using outside funding.
"The general consensus was that we didn’t feel we needed to," she said. "There was huge resistance from the family around the fact that they didn’t want debt. That's a real problem when you want to grow the business.
"The thought of debt upset some of the family members, and that made the jobs of those of us with ambition to grow the company very, very difficult."
Other manufacturers, on the other hand, would kill for some debt. Graham Mulholland of epm: technology is a consistent critic of the banks which, he feels, let his company down a few years ago when he needed them most. Mulholland’s company came through the bad times, and is now successful, but there remains an "us against them" attitude. And you can hardly blame him.
But enough of the negatives, because manufacturing in the Midlands is in relatively rude health. From huge organisations such as Jaguar Land Rover down to two-person software outfits, we’ve seen them all whilst putting together our Made in the Midlands Awards this year. It's been an invaluable exercise in getting close to this thriving sector, and it's been an education.
I’m already looking forward to next year's event.
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