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in this field was not for him and on
completion of the degree in 1978 he still
didn’t know what to do. He wandered
for a while, taking up a number of jobs
ranging from manual labouring to grape
picking in France. Richard had met his
first wife at school and being the typical
business man with an eye for a deal –
he combined the grape picking with a
honeymoon! Better still he went on this
trip with £50 and came back with £200
– an early sign of his business flare.
On the career
ladder
After the trip Richard came back to
the UK, returning to Yorkshire, and
found a job as a trainee sales engineer
at Jungheinrich, at that time a fairly
small German fork lift company who
were just getting established in the
UK. Finally Richard found something
that he enjoyed and his career with
the company progressed rapidly. He
was the youngest ever regional sales
manager at 27 years old and ran the
South East operations based in Essex.
Richard became the head of a team
who grew market share from virtually
nothing to over 16% in just under four
years, selling equipment and services
to Ford Motor Company, Unilever,
Safeway (now Morrisons), British
Telecom, Sainsburys and many other
blue chip companies. Richard cut his
teeth at Jungheinrich for 9 years in
total, leaving the company during the
early part of 1988.
At this time, the Information Technology
(IT) industry was booming and
Richard became tempted with a career
change. He noticed how IT experts
had a tendency to talk down to their
customers and users and he felt
that there was a much better way of
communicating with others. As a result
Richard applied to, and successfully
joined, Apple (THE company to be with
at that time) as a salesman working
with dealers to promote Apple products.
Richard recalls that the initial training
was amazing, consisting of 12 days
of sessions from 8am-7pm, complete
with the Apple company song – and it
didn’t stop then as any preparation for
the next morning had to be done on
the evening! Richard notes though that
the Apple approach really inspired him
and his colleagues to be part of this
company.
One of Richard’s dealers was an
inspirational professional, Joe Exley,
who had developed software for stock
control and design of carpets so that a
roll of carpet could be optimised when
cutting to reduce waste. Joe was the
company owner and strongly believed
that there was a market in the UK for
this software product that had been
co-developed in Australia. Richard
really liked Joe, the product and the
Barnsley sense of humour so he
joined the company as Sales Director.
During his time there (1988 through
to 1994) the product did really well
and the company quickly became the
market leader in the carpet distribution
industry. Sadly, Joe died prematurely
leaving his majority shareholding to his
3 sons and shortly afterwards Richard
left the company and decided to return
to his ‘fork truck’ roots.
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Jungheinrich had just bought Boss
fork trucks in Leighton Buzzard and
Richard went to Boss to meet their
Managing Director, Bob Bischof former
Managing Director at Jungheinrich
GB and a man that Richard admired
and knew very well. He was offered a
job as Sales Operations Manager and
was responsible for setting up rental
divisions within the company to rent
forklifts, and for providing technical and
marketing support to sales staff around
the country. After three years Boss
decided to set up separate businesses
to give better company service to
customers and Richard was made
Managing Director in the South East.
The business prospered over the next
2-3 years but there was a change in
management and policy at Jungheinrich
to have one company, not several, and
they merged them all together. Up to
that time Richard had been encouraged
by Jungheinrich to organise a
management buyout of the South East
operation and therefore didn’t agree
with the new policy so he decided to
move on to pastures new.
August 2010
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