Congratulations to Dual Pumps for scooping the 2007 Annual Award for Services to Cleaning and Maintenance. Based in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire – yes the place of pork pie fame – we visited the company’s two sites and presented the award to the whole team!
The passion and dedication for what the company does – the distribution and manufacture of pumps, fluid handling components, agricultural and industrial spraying products, pressure washers, pressure wash accessories and cleaning equipment, shines through.
The head office and distribution centre is based on Norman Way. The place was a hive of activity when we visited it, a veritable feast of pragmatic industry from both those who dealt with the everyday components [of which there were thousands] and the administrative side of the company, who ensured the smooth running of sales, accounts and customer service.
We met the Managing Director – Tony Herridge, who told us that he started in the industry in 1969 and Dual Pumps in 1975, after working for an American company [Hypro] before deciding to move on to pastures new. Dual Pumps began in his own garage and they moved to Norman Way in 1981. Eventually they acquired the second site – Saxby Road and added another unit for bulk storage, six years ago. It allowed the organisation the freedom to have split sites to deal with the different aspects of the business.
Tony told us about his high staff loyalty, many having worked for his company for over 20 years. He pinpointed his key to personnel retention, after agreeing with my suggestion that the culture of high staff turnover came from the lack of empowerment in the workplace, such as autonomy and responsibility for their own actions – a semi-informal work culture! He believes that a company shouldn’t be restricted by hierarchical constraints that many larger corporations have set in stone. He and his team believe that everyone is as important as each other within the company, whether they are sweeping the floor or dealing with the company finances – everyone works as a team.
His experience working for Hypro has stayed with him. The owner of the company would be identified on first name terms by all of his staff and he encouraged this behaviour. Before he went to America he worked for a company in the UK which was extremely hierarchical, Tony feels that this doesn’t instil confidence or a sense of being part of a team.
He believes that good sales begin with good service, and giving the customer a high quality product at a commercially sensible price, is a positive way of achieving the goal! He said, “This instils confidence in our products so when we attend an exhibition we can promote, deal with queries and not worry about customer complaints or product reliability. When I attend, I do not wear a name badge – I go incognito, this places me at an advantage in that I can listen to what people are saying about our service and products and they are saying some very complimentary things”.
He added, ‘we used to undertake a large amount of agricultural shows when we first started out, as our main business was supplying pumps and components for crop spraying and going back 20 – 25 years, the business was huge. We didn’t have the same environmental pressures then, which was probably wrong. Looking back on it, we had a lot more smaller farms and more machinery, now the culture has changed significantly’.
Tony comments, digressing – ‘at Hypro we manufactured one of the first pumps for use in high pressure washers – which, looking at the washers that are available today – were quite laughable on reflection. At that time new MOT regulations were introduced meaning they had to clean the commercial vehicle trailers before they could be tested; it gave a tremendous boost to the business’.
“It is a two-way street, where Dual Pumps listens to what their customers want and customers are able to make suggestions as to what they would like from them – sometimes suggestions are taken on board and acted upon. We have a large spread of customers out there [3000 accounts] with over 80% of our sales coming from small companies. If we only relied on larger organisations for most of our business and just a few went to the wall, there would be more to lose than spreading this over many smaller customers”.
I was shown around the Norman Way site by Chris Wake [20 years] and the first person we met was Tim Legge [17 years] the external Sales Manager. Tim travels all over the UK and Ireland; he is also responsible for arranging the shows the company exhibits at. He currently has two in the pipeline for 2008 in Corby and Devon. He works from a combination of office and home; Tim told me how it was so much easier to do this now there were better forms of communication such as email, fax and the mobile phone. Not so long ago, he used to telephone customers in the evening when he had finished travelling for the day – but not anymore!
The internal Sales Office Manager is Adam Holmes [11 years]. Adam is responsible for the day to day operation of the sales office and has a team of 7 highly dedicated, knowledgeable and professional staff, including Ann and Paul who have both been with the company for over 20 years! The majority of Adams staff have a “hands on” engineering background and this experience is invaluable when discussing technical issues with customers.
Moving to the Saxby Road manufacturing and bulk storage site we met Ian Spence Technical Manager, Stewart Travis Service Manager and Ian Wallace Production Fitter. Stewart is responsible for service, warranty, technical back up and the manufacturing schedule. He has been on the team for over 18 years. Ian Spence a veteran of 19 years service is the Technical Manager and Chief Designer of all machines the company manufactures.
The warehouse is huge and Dual Pumps keep a vast range of products in stock that can be sent to the customer as soon as they require it – no waiting for products to come in! All manufacturing and bulk stock is undertaken at the Saxby Road site; components are picked, packed and despatched at the Head Office in Norman Way.
Purchase Manager Adrian Cubitt told me they use over 2,000 Honda engines yearly, direct from Japan, and mainly for the manufacture of their vast range of engine driven pressure washers and have over 80 other suppliers globally; some of these are based in Canada, USA, France, Japan and their main source – Italy. One of their biggest suppliers is the Italian company Interpump, the world’s largest manufacturer of high pressure pumps for the cleaning industry. Dual Pumps have been the Interpump UK and Irish distributor since 1983.
One of their most recent innovations is the Diesel engine driven Zeta pressure washer. With a pressure of 200 bar and flow rate of 30 litres per minute this is the most powerful machine they manufacture. The Zeta was specifically designed for use in harsh applications; it took over 2 years and hundreds of hours of testing to get this incredible machine from concept to the market. Ian the designer is now working on the second generation of Zeta and he tells me the new range will be bigger and better with flows up to 41 litres per minute and pressures to a staggering 400 bar.
The Zeta and thousands more products can be found in Dual Pumps amazing 248 page full colour catalogue. Tony comments “whenever I visit potential new suppliers, who don’t know of Dual Pumps, I take a copy of our catalogue – the reaction is always amazing”.
They also have one of the best websites I have ever viewed. It looks great, is simple to use and has loads of product information and downloads. This and the catalogue were created by Richard – Dual Pumps own web and graphic designer.
Unfortunately when I visited Richard was in hospital having his appendix out.
During the very unfortunate and tragic 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak in the UK, which affected many businesses so badly, there was an upturn in trade because of the very nature of the products. However, there was a small downside in that the market was then flooded with second hand pressure washers, but this was balanced out by the launch of the first new colour catalogue listing many new products, which provided a substantial boost to the company’s turnover.
To maintain the efficiency required to service Dual Pumps thousands of customers they have recently installed new computer servers, printers and other equipment to support their business. Tony told us that they invested money in efficiency, ‘we don’t waste money, and automation has made things more financially viable’.
Tony and Chris agreed that this award is for the whole team. ‘We don’t employ robots on the telephone and we have many compliments from our customers due to this approach. If a customer should complain, we look upon it as a learning curve and we sort it out as quickly as possible’.
The company is doing well with a 6 million turnover in 2006 – 2007 an amazing 14% increase from the previous year, all of this with a staff of only 25, a fantastic ratio. And a little bit of nostalgia – Tony still distributes Hypro products, the company he used to work for back in the late 1960s!
The last word lies with Tony, “we don’t have a board room or a plush reception – we don’t need it – what our customers get is top quality products combined with an excellent service and that is the pinnacle of our business”.
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