STUGA MACHINERY APPOINTS NEW SALES MANAGER TO SPEARHEAD AMIBITIOUS GROWTH PLANS

Great Yarmouth based manufacturer

Stuga – who are now wholly owned by Stürtz Maschinenbau GmbH in Germany

– have appointed a new Sales Manager and Sales Support Coordinator to support their ambitious growth plans.

A NEW CHAPTER IN STUGA’S HISTORY

Since being appointed as Commercial lead in the summer of 2022, Ed Williams has now taken the reigns of the UK business as Managing Director and has made significant strides in re-structuring the business, to meet the present and future demands.

“The first piece of the puzzle was to put together a sales team capable of working together to sell both the Stuga sawing & machining centres, as well as the suite of Stürtz welding, cleaning, logistics and handling solutions – I am delighted to welcome to the industry Oliver Earley, our Regional Sales Manager for the North and ROI regions, and also congratulations to Aimee Cargill who has moved into a new role to support the sales and marketing functions from the administration and technical perspective”.

The Right Fit

Oli has a broad range of experience in technical sales and after starting his career working with a major UK packaging consumables manufacturer in the UK, he enhanced his reputation further by achieving early successes after moving into capital machinery sales for one of the largest packaging machinery manufacturers in the world.

“The move from high-volume consumable sales into consultancy sales of high value machinery came just at the right time for me, and presented a different type of commercial challenge.. Having worked in the food industry for several years already, I was acutely aware of the requirement for excellent after sales too, and recognising a manufacturers ability to meet industry demands for service was a critical decision making factor for me” explains Earley.

After working across various sectors in the food and beverage industry, Oli was excited at the prospect of a change in direction and welcomed the opportunity to get involved with Stuga in the fenestration industry. “When Ed approached me, he explained the background of Stuga and their position in the industry, the growth plans –particularly the ROI & NI markets - and the machinery portfolio. It was clear that Ed wanted to develop a more sophisticated and customer-focussed sales structure and I was delighted to be given the opportunity”.

Structural Development

To support a growing field sales team in their strategy to grow sales of all products, it was vital that there be in place a supporting technical and administrative function that could also provide much-needed impetus to marketing activity – to this end, Williams had introduced Aimee Cargill – previously heading up the parts business – to a newly created role. “It’s a brilliant chance for me to learn new skills and help Ed and the rest of the sales team deliver a result. Supporting the sales team will be a natural progression, and while Marketing is not entirely new to me, I am looking forward to Ed’s support to help me develop and contribute in new ways” says Cargill, who has worked with Stuga for 10 years, after a career in hospitality.

Stuga are also looking for a new technical manager to take full responsibility for the product introduction and service capability around the Stürtz portfolio. “While it is important that the service capability for Stürtz must work alongside and integrate with the existing technical structure, it was clear to me that the current team are very focussed on delivering excellence on the Stuga machines – I didn’t wish to detract from this customer-focussed approach, on the contrary, I wished to enhance it and decided to have a separate lead for the Stürtz machines”.

Investment Is The Key To Growth

When asked about the decision to employ new staff during uncertain economic times, Williams had the following to say: “we have a clear plan to re-establish the Stürtz brand in the UK market; to do this we need 2 key ingredients: a technical structure to provide levels of maintenance and service levels to our loyal customers, and a sales structure to promote and sell the entire range. If we hold back now, we miss the opportunity to get a foothold in the market and the financial backing of Stürtz means that we can weather such uncertainty. It is a bold but positive and forward-thinking move”.

The changes at Stuga and Stürtz aren’t limited to people and structure – they’re also re-developing a new transom corner cleaner into the UK market, building on the success of their previous model, which will be launched at the 2023 FIT Show. “This is a crucial part of the portfolio and compliments our product offering and ensures we can do everything that customers need, especially for meeting the demands of the UK market, where of course the design and configuration of windows is much more complicated than in Europe and the rest of the world” explains Williams. “The new transom corner cleaner will benefit from a turreting cleaning head that allows for quicker cleaning of both sides of the transom, this reducing the manual labour intervention and allowing for operators to focus more on other production activities, whilst also running the cleaning machine.” Williams added.

Shared Goals

Acquisitions in industrial and technology markets are notoriously difficult beasts to tame, as the organisational, cultural, technical and operational forces often clash and can be resistant to change. It appears that so far, its working our well for Stuga and Stürtz, “It’s been full on since I joined in mid-2022 and we’ve already achieved so much in terms of preparing for the future. We still have a lot of new skills to learn and develop, but I am grateful to be working with management teams on both sides of the relationship that are fixed on a common objective to make things work – and we have a plan” Williams explained. Williams has also implemented significant management changes across operational and production processes, to ensure the right amount of focus is given to development of strategy, objectives, processes and procedures, as well as the management of the teams.

Service Service Service

There is an old adage in machinery sales, that says a salesperson will sell the first solution, but the technical back up will sell every machine after. The reality of course, is that both parts of a machinery business work hand in hand, but Williams isn’t losing sight of what’s important to the industry and its clear that Stuga have the technical service capability clearly in their crosshairs. “Getting our technical services to a level of capability on the Stürtz portfolio is going to present us a number of challenges. We have parts holdings to consider, training and familiarisation for engineers – as well as front-line technical support. But we have a plan and the aim is to deliver a quality of service that compares with what we can offer today on our Stuga sawing and machining centres”.

For more information about Stuga Machinery Limited visit: www.stuga.co.uk/news-from-stuga or for more information about Stürtz visit: www.stuertz.com/en/company