Constant Change is Here to Stay

27 May 2016, 13:02 pm
Speciality Bites by Paul Hargreaves

With the EU referendum coming up and a warehouse move this weekend at Cotswold Fayre, I have been thinking about change. We work in an industry that is all about innovation and change and those that don’t embrace change tend not to prosper

I can think of farm shops that were at the forefront of the sector 10-15 years ago, but haven’t changed and innovated and have stopped growing or even are smaller than they once were in a growing market. It is the same with some producers. There are some producers that were in the speciality food in the late nineties or early noughties in a prime position to be category leaders, but have not invested in change and as a result newer producers have overtaken them. It may be that they are happy keeping the business a certain size, but some will not have wanted this.

It is the same within the wholesale sector. Cotswold Fayre’s successful business model has been copied by many others – some older wholesalers that have brought themselves into the 21st century and some “new kids on the block”. Rather than being threatened by this, the only way forward is to keep on changing and innovating and staying one step ahead of the game. 

And so back to our warehouse move! Technology has removed the need to have a warehouse and office on the same site, so becomes much easier to grow the company through multiple warehouses. We are moving our ambient warehouse this weekend to West Berkshire and have a chilled warehouse in Northampton, whilst our marketing, telesales, customer service team and accounts move to some lovely new clean offices in West Reading. This move will, I believe, fuel our growth over the next few years as the office then becomes more of a sales office and less of a logistic office. All very exciting and we look forward to showing some of you our new homes once the move is completed.

Remember, constant change is here to stay. To grow your businesses you need to change and have adaptable staff who thrive on change! More on the second half of that later.

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