What a journey!
From our humble starting days of my Mum processing rolls of microfilm in the spare bedroom to rapidly expanding in 2023 to 50 staff and halfway through the best sales year in our 50-year history, we have had a great journey. There are so many exciting things to come too. We continue to expand our microfilm product range, despite being told 30 years ago that microfilm was about to die. Digital to Microfilm preservation is only just starting to explode and we have plans and products that we are developing in that area. Our digitisation operations expanded to 4 studios in 2023 with 3 long term and very large contracts forming the backbone of those operations. A fourth massive project starts in February and we have literally dozens of regular clients and projects. We specialise in digitising non-office and heritage items like Glass Plates, Microfilm, Microfiche, Aperture Cards, Photo Negatives of all sizes, Photo Prints, Maps, Books, Newspapers, X-rays, Engineering drawings, Title Deeds, Wills, Registers and manuscripts. 3D object capture has seen us enter a brand-new digitisation world and opens up new conventional digitisation opportunities too. 3D surface scanning of wood, marble, cloth and artwork plus 3D printing now awaits. Our best of breed equipment sales from Zeutschel, SMA, InoTec and Rowe continue to provide the very best scans available, enabling our clients to reach the highest levels of ISO, FADGI and Metamorfoze standards, fully supported by our superb team of engineers and maintenance contracts. Our Recollect platform provides a fantastic community engagement platform to share your unique collections with your community and the wider public, allowing you to gather indexing and linked information from far afield. We are working on a number of new software products to enhance, spread and monetise your collections. Please stay in touch with all of our latest developments by clicking the link to our social media Linktree.
My Dad describes in his blog, how he started the company and the various routes that he took until he retired in 1999. You can see our new up to date Timeline here. Dad did an incredible job of establishing the business and building a fantastic reputation for quality and customer service. As a family we will be eternally grateful to him and Mum for all they sacrificed to get the company to where it is today.
Today we are still very much a family business with Chris Elwell, my brother-in-Law, firmly in charge of day-to-day operations as General Manager. He has been with us for 30 years and the business simply would not run without him. My cousin Martin Tallentire runs our Warehouse and packs and drives everything, everywhere! We have even moved onto the third generation now with both my son Jack and nieces Matilda and Isabella helping out in the digitisation studios. My daughter Emily will be well known to many of you, helping to set up our evening production fiche scanning shift 5 years ago and now working in the Orders department and completing an Apprenticeship degree in Business Management only last Autumn, whilst investigating all areas of the business.
It is also the rest of the family that I must thank. Over the years we have had various members of the family take part in our company journey. The most influential was my Grandmother, Brenda Hubbard, who was the rock by my Dad’s side for over 30 years, to ensure the day to day running was so smooth, while dad was travelling the country, drumming up business. She was known affectionately as the Sergeant Major and she took few prisoners! Rest in peace Grandma. Carol Piggon, my Auntie, was my rock after Dad and Grandma retired. My cousin Sam managed our accounts department for many years, her hands-on accounting helped us manage our cash flow superbly. My sister Sarah was the marketing genius in the early years. My wife, Belinda, ran the Orders department for a number of years. My Uncle Tony was our van driver.
However, it is our unbelievable team that have made everything possible, many of you will know some of the key and longer serving members – Helen Perry, who has been working here in charge of maintenance service contracts for 38 years!; Kay Stout in charge of the hugely busy Orders department; Craig Sellick in charge of Accounts and everything to do with money; Shelley Tolley, the formidable Purchasing Manager and chaser of outstanding accounts; Simon Bloomfield who travels the world managing our Service Team; Claus Peter Iff who manages our sales of microfilm consumables from Austria; Simon Brown who recovered amazingly from serious injury last year and continues to sell huge amounts of equipment; Andrew Austin, our resident digitisation sales expert and last, but not least, Zoli Szendi who manages our 30 strong digitisation studios. Supporting these Managers is a team of enthusiastic, skilled, and knowledgeable staff. There are too many to name individually, but we are only as good as our team and it’s important we acknowledge the great work they do. Wherever possible we like to promote from within and reward the hard work they put in by enhancing their careers.
However, my most heartfelt thanks goes to our customers and suppliers who have given us their confidence and support over the years, to enable us to grow to where we are today. Many of you are close personal friends and drinking buddies, thank you.
To everyone mentioned above, I say thank you very much for making the journey so enjoyable and rewarding. It has, and continues to be, a pleasure to work with you all.
Congratulations on 50 years!!