Investment, Productivity, and Brand Values.

Over the last two years we have had what seems everything bar the kitchen sink thrown at us; Covid, Brexit, Russian invasion of Ukraine, plunging £, rampant US $, inflation soaring to 1970’s level etc. Some days it can all feel a bit much for a small manufacturing business that is striving to take on much larger competition on a global scale. However, each of these challenges presents us an opportunity to reassess our priorities and work on innovative solutions to counter some of the worst affects.

Out of the Covid pandemic came reinforcement that our hand build approach is not only advantageous for the end user in terms of performance but also us as a manufacturer. When there was no factory open we simply migrated to our committed staff’s homes and continued the build there, our small calibrated hand tools equally as effective in Drews kitchen as in a corner of our modern production area. The realisation that we needed to further support our staff’s efforts by providing them with efficient kits of parts for home working (rather than reels and reels of cables) led to a significant investment in three new semi-automated cable preparation machines. Back now in the warmth of our factory (it really is well insulated😊) these machines continue to provide support services direct to the staff as well as improve our general productivity.

During Covid the ability to visit our distributor and dealer friends had a significant impact on our ability to put adequate training in place for many of the new innovative high-performance products we have launched. Zoom and Teams are good solutions for transactional businesses however relationship businesses like ours need to squeeze the flesh as we say and need to get into the demo rooms to start imparting knowledge, enthusiasm and purpose. Now free of most of the burden of Covid in terms of travel we consciously decided to dedicate more of our precious staff time to aid understanding and direct support of our partners efforts. The new ecommerce site you see today is a conscious decision to spend less time administration the order intake process but spend more time helping our partners understand the options and solutions available for their own customers. More time for relationship building, less time on bureaucracy.

Open 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year our partners can place their orders in times that suite them, can repeat their orders easily and have a central location for all their customs and regulatory information all in one place.

Investment drives productivity and that ultimately reinforces our brand values which centre around performance, service and good old fashioned value for money!