Business News

OUTDOOR BRAND, OLPRO, EXPANDS WITH MOVE INTO NEW HEADQUARTER SPACE

The outdoor brand has moved into its new headquarter space at Castle Farm, Holt Heath, Worcester. Following two years of rapid growth, OLPRO’s new premises will accommodate the growth in the number of staff the company employs and the need for additional warehouse space to hold more stock. In just the space of 2 years, OLPRO has grown from a team of 8 to 20 and the company now has plans to employ 5 more people throughout the year. On top of this, OLPRO has invested in buying twice the amount of stock it normally purchases for the year ahead, as the outdoor and camping industry continues to see a boom in the number of customers and demand for products. OLPRO’s new head office has the capacity for 50 members of staff in total and includes a purpose-built meeting space with modern conference facilities as well as benefitting from a picturesque countryside backdrop to show off OLPRO’s outdoor products. The Worcester-based brand will continue to use its existing KDO Business Park warehouse as warehouse space and half of the company’s warehouse staff will continue to operate from the building. For more information on OLPRO, visit the company’s website www.olproshop.com

OUR INSURANCE JOURNEY BY HAZELTON MOUNTFORD

Sharing their story, the Directors aim to increase an understanding of their business and encourage new team members to join them for a career in insurance.

Group Managing Director, Gordon Hazelton, specialises in property insurance, including owner and developer insurance, landlord and contents insurance, and oversees HM tenant referencing. Director, Jake Mountford, specialises in, general commercial, fleet and haulage insurance. Just like they had been, the Hazelton Mountford Directors have each encouraged their team members to grow through apprenticeships and further study. Director Simeon Chapman shares that his Grandfather encouraged him to study and gain qualifications, saying: “Once you have them, no-one can take them away.” His Grandfather’s wise words, and many hours of study, now mean that Simeon is one of 4 members of the Hazelton Mountford team with Chartered status. Simeon specialises in Faith and Church insurance as well as Social Enterprise and CICs insurance. Hazelton Mountford are the only Independent Chartered Insurance Brokers in Worcester and welcome a chat if you’d like to talk more about a career in insurance.

Call the team on 01905 611951 and ask for Gordon, Jake or Simeon.

HARD WORK BEATS TALENT

“Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn’t work hard” - Tim Notke In a market that can be described as anything but fixed… a ‘fixed mindset’ is a dangerous attribute for any business leader or employee. People with a fixed mindset have an external locum of control meaning that things happen to them. We hear these people saying “it’s the market”, “that will never work”, “I don’t need training”. Conversely, people with a growth mindset have an action bias – they decide to make things happen, despite the circumstances. These individuals demonstrate resilience, coach-ability and are open to challenge - they are the innovators. There are ‘fixed-mindsets’ in every organisation, we may even find ourselves in that camp from time to time. The good news is that we can switch fixed-mindsets to growth-mindsets using some simple coaching tools. Our use of language is key to this – if we are praising effort and new ideas, rather than just the end result, this will build confidence in our teams that it is okay to fail, as long as we learn from it. We can also use questions to remove barriers and alter self-limiting thinking patterns. When someone tells us “that won’t work”, we can ask “what if it did?”. We can also apply this technique ourselves if we slip into a rut of negative thinking. In this market agility is king, agility of thinking is what will make the difference between surviving and thriving.

www.hewett-recruitment.co.uk

PANDEMIC RETROSPECTIVE

In March 2020, a week before lockdown, Eclarity Solutions Ltd joined the Chamber. No one could have predicted the struggle businesses would face over the coming months. For this Bromsgrove based IT company of 20 years, the challenge was to keep their customers communicating remotely whilst they themselves switched to home working too. This young team, led by experienced director, Phil Gillam, found themselves in a strong position to support their customers, able to quickly provide hardware and networking solutions to connect users to enable remote working. As a managed service provider, Eclarity specializes in Cloud Services, Office 365, Cyber Security, Hosted Telephony and Network Connectivity. The company were well placed to assist customers and keep their business resilient. With support from the Chamber they exhibited at the October 2021 Chamber Expo.