REID Lifting’s Managing Director, Simon Luke, takes a look back at 2020 and shares his thoughts about the businesses accomplishments.
As we near the end of 2020, I look back with a huge amount of pride at how much we have achieved as a business this year, even in the face of the global pandemic.
Just as you would expect from REID, we’ve taken a positive and proactive approach throughout. At the outset, we very quickly reorganised our Chepstow facility into a Covid-19 secure workplace so that we could continue supplying into those sectors where there was still an urgent need, such as infrastructure, water and facilities maintenance. We also maintained service to all our equipment rental customers, who were providing an on-demand solution for the construction market, which remained busy throughout.
As the months went on, we actually saw demand rise in some areas from customers looking for lifting and lowering solutions which could be set up whilst maintaining social distancing guidelines - and obviously our lightweight portable gantries are ideal for that, as well as being a fraction of the cost of permanent installations or crane hire. As a quick glance at our 2020 case studies shows, the list of applications where our 500kg capacity PORTAGANTRY systems are now being deployed is vast and growing.
We’ve had to be really innovative in the way that we’ve done business for most of this year though. One of our key strategies has been to invest in localising our offer on an international level through our use of digital media. We are developing micro websites and bespoke product sales and demonstration videos and successfully driving lead generation through web and social media. Over the past 9 months, we have really built our social media presence to highlight the benefits of our product and that’s helped to ensure that our enquiry levels have been at least as high as they were before the pandemic.
For those customers that we can still travel to see, we’ve mastered effective, outdoor product demonstrations that allow us to remain socially distant; and I can confidently say that whatever our customers prefer, we do now have a way of showing the advantages and benefits of our products and how they can solve customer problems and challenges.
In terms of products, as well as our Porta Gantries, we’ve seen a significant uptick in demand for our lightweight, portable davit solutions for man-riding applications and in particular for suspended rope access for building and façade maintenance tasks. We’ve been busy this year developing a range of new solutions that comply with BS8610:2017 and IRATA’s ICOP and these products are being widely specified in place of suspended access platforms and combined with our counterbalance gantry or davit systems to enable, for example, changing glazing panels on tall buildings.
During the year, we have been able to expand our international presence and footprint. Of particular note, we have signed an exclusive distribution agreement with a new partner in Japan and look forward to developing opportunities with them in the years to come. We officially opened our US entity in January, possibly not the best year to do that in hindsight, but nonetheless the team in the US have worked very hard and have made good headway, including securing new business with a major equipment rental company and appointing over 20 new resellers. More recently, we have extended our footprint in Europe by appointing a North European sales manager based in Germany. Our future export opportunities look bright.
It has certainly been a challenging year and, if nothing else, it has reinforced in me that the business environment is constantly changing, either due to competition, innovation, social, environmental, economic or political reasons. A pandemic is another example of change, with a twist of adversity and certainly a unique development in all of our lifetimes! I believe that REID responded very well to the challenges we faced as a business and used the time to ensure that the business is well placed to succeed when the world economy recovers. In particular, developing our online and digital presence, making our products easier to understand and specify, expanding our range of support materials for our resellers and distributors, becoming more productive so that we are better equipped to support our customers as demand for product returns to pre-Covid levels, as well as launching some new products in support of our growing safety segment customers.
In spite of the challenges the word faced and still faces, this year has also shown me how resilient the lightweight portable lifting industry has been, with our products in constant demand to support the maintenance of important global infrastructure. Building on this in our key target geographies will further strengthen the business and ensure we remain resilient and prepared for any future change or adversity. The pandemic meant that we increased our focus on brand proliferation around the world through a variety of means because we couldn’t visit with our customers face to face. This, combined with sustained demand, leads me to believe that a lasting impact for the business of the pandemic will be an overall uptick in awareness going forwards.
As we leave 2020 behind and move in to 2021, I am optimistic for a global recovery, albeit I think it will be in the second half of the year before it is widely felt. Our aim is to maximise our potential from the very solid platform we have built for ourselves over the past 12 months, in particular looking after our customers, supporting them in their ambitions and continuing to be pioneers and leaders in lightweight portable lifting. Growing our export revenue, making our US entity fly and developing our business in the personnel lifting and safety segment will all be intrinsic to our success.
Simon Luke, Managing Director