In Your Shoes - Gary Henderson

Gary Henderson is Managing Director of Grampian Fasteners, based in Aberdeen.  He started out helping the family business with its IT in his spare time in 1992 before joining the business in 2000.

Grampian Fasteners is a distributor of industrial fasteners serving every industry that’s involved in fabrication, maintenance or repair of equipment as well as construction.  There’s a strong focus on making it as easy as possible for their customers with an emphasis on excellent service.

As a new member of DACC they have a number of customers in Angus but are aiming to work with more businesses in Dundee and Tayside.

A new week and a new start

It’s always uplifting to welcome a new member to the company.  They’re keen to learn and it also gives me a renewed sense of purpose.  Rachel joined our Purchasing team after her previous employer went into administration.  I didn’t have much time for preparation as she’d only had her 2nd interview on Friday!

I’m training with a friend to run his first 10k and tonight was a short session of punishing hill sprints.

A long day of fitness

I was up at 4:30am for a workout at home before heading to the office and spending more time with the new start.  An evening dinner with the SCDI had me thinking more about the fitness of the business as Sir Ian Wood shared his views on future of Aberdeen and the North East.

Always looking to improve

The quality of our service was top of the agenda today as I joined a meeting of our Customer Care team.  The team meets regularly to focus on improvement that’s come from both customer feedback and where we haven’t met our expectations.  You can never stop improving.

You can never have too many tools

Off to see the accountant first thing followed by the dentist – I’m not sure which was worse!

We reviewed our strategy for expanding our range of hand tools this afternoon.  After all, if you’re using bolts, nuts and screws you’re going to need spanners and screwdrivers.  We’ll soon have Bahco, Facom, Stanley and Teng joining our existing Beta Tools range.

Catch-up day

The person responsible for our marketing is on maternity leave and today was a Keeping-In-Touch day.  I sprang the surprise that we’d joined DACC while she was off.

Everyone has admin they have to do and directors are no different.  Much of the day was spent catching up.

It was a great end to the week to see that the new recruit was really enthused to be part of Grampian Fasteners and can see how she’s going to make a difference.