Where Would We Have Been Without John Ewans?

About nineteen years ago I got one of those packs of cards that sometimes arrive in the post. You know the sort, they are mini ads which you sometimes glance quickly through and more often put in the bin. In the pack was an advertisement suggesting that industrial design could add something to the business accompanied by a photo of a very attractive industrial helmet, an item that you would not usually associate with style. The advert struck a chord with me and I contacted the advertiser John Ewans Design of High Wycombe.

Managing Director John came to see me and my brother Peter and we told him that we would be interested in putting design into Instanta products. At the time our boilers, and those of everyone else were, without exception, square but functional metal boxes. We spent some time working with John and with his help we initially developed a pour thru coffee maker. We loved the look of this model and were sufficiently impressed with John Ewan's expertise to decide to ask him to help us to transform our entire range into products that would be functional but would also be pleasing on the eye, easy to assemble and simple to install and service.

As a result, Instanta's image and products moved to a higher plane and, when we showed our boilers at the Hotelympia exhibition in 1996 they received universal acclaim and shortly afterwards we were overall winners in the 1996 Caterer & Hotelkeeper New Equipment Awards for our entire new range - a huge accolade for a small company in a big industry. It is fair to say that at Hotelympia in 1996 Instanta was almost alone in using industrial design in the products and, without it, our boilers would have remained functional but run of the mill. A visitor to Hotelympia this year would have seen that good design is now nearer the norm and we like to think that with John Ewans assistance we helped to blaze that trail in the catering industry. The following are just a few of the many new products that John has helped us to launch.

John is a modest man and didn't send a photo of himself for inclusion in this blog but, as you can see from the products that he has designed, he has no reason for modesty as he is a fantastic industrial designer who has without question been a major contributor to our success. So thank you John and your team for all your hard work and your excellent design. I hope that your relationship with Instanta and our new owners continues to flourish. You can contact John Ewans Design Ltd at their High Wycombe office on 01494 473441.

I knew that I would stir up a hornets' nest yesterday by mentioning immaculate sickness records as I was bound to forget somebody. So here's a mention for Phil Joce in our stores. He joined Instanta in January 1989 and has not had a day off since 1997 although he was five minutes late in 2002 and there was that nose job in 1993. Well done Phil. If there is anybody else I have forgotten I'm sure that I will soon be hearing about it.

All I can really say about Jackass 3D last night is that I have seen it but it was one of those life experiences that I won't be in a hurry to repeat. It was funny in parts but way too long. There are only so many ways that you can watch pain and humiliation being inflicted on people before it becomes tiresome. I liked the mad daredevil stunts but the bodily fluids (and bodily solids) left me cold. As Marion and I were at least thirty years older than everyone else in the packed cinema I suspect that we weren't the target audience.

And it won't be long before another experience that I won't be in a hurry to see hits our screens again.