It's Mike Chubbs' 36th Birthday on Sunday and we all wish him a really great day. Mike has been working at Instanta for 14 years and, after starting on the shop floor, has risen to being in charge of our engineering workshop and running 2 CNC lathes. We are delighted with the progress that he has made and are sure that he will make a great job of training his new sidekick Craig Mercer. Mike is a devoted father to son Jamie and partner to Lisa. He enjoys golf and football and is a talented centre back with a local side. He also supports Everton but nobody's perfect. Have a good one Mike.
Four of us are off to the NEC tomorrow for the big Interbuild Exhibition. We've got a superb stand (or so the stand fitters tell me) and I am looking forward to seeing it. Nick and Marion have put a lot of effort into the design and Nick has spent hours organising everything so I am sure that it will run very smoothly. I am grateful to both of them for all their efforts and hope that we get the custom that we deserve.
The new DB2000 push buton models are going well with another 9 ordered this week. For a model in its infancy this is very encouraging and I am confident that this will soon become a staple in the mould of the WB200 which made Instanta what it is today.
Which reminds me of around 22 years ago when Instanta was doing very nicely indeed with a near monopoly in the auto fill water boiler market for the catering trade. My dad was invited to give a talk to a catering conference and devoted his entire slot to telling everyone how the WB200 was his baby and how it had made him his fortune. The upshot was that within two months his monopoly was blown out of the water by competitors who had been at the talk and thought "We'll have some of that". Nice one dad. So if any competitors are reading this and haven't got a boiler in the range, we are doing rubbish and it's really not worth the effort. And, although we stopped making the WB200 in its original shape in 1996, I am pleased to say that we still get asked for spares. A true testimony to their longevity.
We did something nasty this week and fired someone. I really don't like doing this and it is really a last resort but rules are rules and if the rules say that you must report sickness, you must report sickness. It's not difficult.
I am doing well with my staff appraisals and have only two left to do. The interviews have gone well and I am really pleased with the level of staff performance and commitment that I have seen. I am pretty sure that I will see the same from the last two so I am really happy with this side of things.
You will have noticed a somewhat depressed air hanging over the last couple of blogs. It has not exactly lifted but we have at least made a plan of action to cover eventualities if late payers turn into non payers. Thanks to Marion we have had a near perfect record on bad debts over the last few years and it is inevitable that some will crop up in a recession. The secret has to be to limit the risk and spread the customer base as wide as possible. I think that we are doing that but the chasing is no fun.
I went to see Datafile software yesterday, They held an open day to demonstrate their new software and show people around their new offices. We have been using Datafile accounting software for over 20 years and it has been excellent. However I learnt so much more about its capabilities yesterday and am really looking forward to using all the new features next year. I strongly recommend this software to anyone considering an accounting package.
Well it's time to finish those staff interviews now. Wish us luck at the NEC. Will probably be blogging from the hotel.
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