This week we are celebrating our 10 year anniversary, we are so excited to celebrate this amazing milestone. We reached out to the team and asked them to think of some special memories from the past decade and they didn’t disappoint!
We start with our Company Chairman Alan Poole who has some insightful and humourous tales to tell.
When the idea of being involved with Neil, Vicki, and Kevin in a new start-up company was put to me, I phoned Joan from the top of a London bus to say “I’ve just been offered involvement in an exciting business venture. Bang goes the retirement plan!”. That idea became Fourteen IP. It was then as it is now, an exciting venture and I still haven’t retired.
As the company started trading, we were joined by very talented people, many of whom still work for the company today. Starting a new company is a tricky business (no pun intended). The casualty rate is very high. Like all businesses we had problems to overcome – but you know what? Those good and talented people worked their socks off, worked as a team, and solved the problems.
I’ll give you an example. At an early stage, we received what was then a lot of work, to complete for customers in a very short time. The trouble was, we were reluctant to take on more staff or incur large overtime costs as we weren’t sure about how orders might flow after that. We asked our good and talented people whether they would be prepared to do the work without overtime pay being paid immediately and then if we had a quieter period take the extra time off work instead, or, if work levels continued, we would pay the overtime that had been earned. Everybody agreed! As it happens, we continued to be busy so the overtime was paid, but the willingness to help the business succeed was remarkable.
Even more remarkable is that, as the business has grown, we have continued to be blessed with talented people, who are willing to work together for the benefit of everybody. The recent and continuing pandemic has adversely affected the business, but our team has shown the same willingness to help that was evident in the early days. So happy birthday Fourteen IP and everybody in it. I’m proud of the company but particularly proud and grateful to be associated with its people. Thank you and my best wishes to you all.
