Insulate Magazine Issue 18

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and it’s quite scary really, that they will use anything at
all, providing they can’t be seen and as far as they are
concerned they don’t know what’s there but they’ll use it
you know. Not just in the insulation but in plasterboard
as well, if they can get round using something of a
cheaper commodity they will and that’s been one of the
biggest things that I’ve seen if I’m being honest.
I suppose the other thing is how innovation has changed
as well in that period of time, we’ve gone from just a
simple wall board to fireline, duplex, insulation so many
different types of brands of
insulation, I know that the insulation
market is improving all the time and
yes there are leaders out there and we
are one of those.
of all. I got the job actually, I was coming back having
been playing Rugby League in Australia and I was
flying home and I told one of the boys to keep a piece
of paper for me in their job advertisements, I phoned
up a guy called Mr Brown and said look I’ve just arrived
back in the UK any chance of an interview, and he said
sorry mate all the interviews are done and finished, I
said well look when is the last day of interviews, he said
tomorrow Friday, I said right where do you live, he said
St Ives Cambridge, so I said you’ve got to go through the
Dartford Tunnel to get home, about five hours of queues
So how would you say the technology
has changed during your time within
your role and within the wider
industry
Well, when I first started we didn’t
have mobile phones, we had the
phonebox! We’d phone in at the end
of the day to see what was going on,
then we had the “brick phone” and
that worked only in certain areas and
then moving on from there we had
Kalamazoo as a reporting tool and
Kalamazoo was a tick box
basically and then that started
evolving. When I started we had
three calls to make a day and they
were three areas where there was
photocopy material, you’d write down what you had discussed
in the car and what materials he was interested in
purchasing and you would just send it in, and you sent it
in on a weekly basis, so it wasn’t every day, just a piece of
Innovation has changed as well in that period of time,
we’ve gone from just a simple wall board to fireline, duplex,
insulation so many different types of brands of
insulation, I know that the insulation market is
improving all the time and yes there are leaders out there
and we are one of those.
paper demonstrating that you’d been to see the customers
as well and what they were intending to order.
The customer wouldn’t necessarily place an order with
you but what they were intending to order. But in those
days the Geography was so much smaller, my patch
was North West London as a Sales Representative first
I said, why don’t I come over see you at 4 o’clock have an
interview and see how it goes. I went over there had the
interview and I found out a lot about British Gypsum at
the time and everything else, and at the end of the interview
he said any more questions and I said …when do
I start! And that was it, that’s how I started. But going
back to the technology itself, how has it changed? It has
gone from those days having paper and just writing one
or two reports, to now, touching a button with Laptops
and Ipads and having the sales figures up in front of you
in a nanosecond
In real time?
Yes real-time it’s quite incredible how it’s all changed and
who knows what’s going to happen in the next ten years.
You know we are doing away with money at the moment
it’s all becoming credit cards, goodness knows what’s
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