activity will likely be limited to one trade show per year for the time being. He explains, “I know there are other shows out there, and many of them probably do a great job of delivering an audience, and we’d work them well, but time is a major factor. LiftEx allows us to gain recognition around the country, which is an important part of our growth strategy. We wouldn’t take an exhibit elsewhere, even for free, if we didn’t think we could do it justice. LiftEx is an exhausting experience in many ways, even if I do now look forward to it coming around each year.”
BUSINESS IS BOOMING It was 13 years ago this summer that Hutin, who admits quietly to having spent a quarter of a century in the lifting industry, took ownership of Pyle, South Wales- headquartered RSS. Few people realize that he was at the company for a spell prior to that before seeking career advancement at Lloyds British Testing. “When I heard the owner [of RSS] was interested in
approaches for the business, it wasn’t a difficult decision to prepare an offer,” Hutin remembers. Even in the early months of his tenure, the business was hitting short-term targets and justifying the investment, but progress was slowed by the recession. Not to be deterred, in 2008 he opened the company’s second depot in Templeborough, Rotherham to enter the market in the north of England. Offices in Aylesford, Kent (2011); Grangemouth, Scotland (2013); Hayes, West London (2016); and Warrington, between Liverpool and Manchester (2017) followed. “Business is good,” he says, as we’d detected from afar.
And next year will surely see depot number seven open, likely in Bristol or Southampton, with the UK’s southwest among a number of areas of primary interest. Earlier this year, Sean Maslen was named sales manager for that very region and has since been building relationships at petrochemical sites, naval facilities and refineries that are littered around the landscape.
The RSS booth at LiftEx 2018
“London is booming too,” Hutin beams. “And as your magazine kindly reported we’ve recently taken delivery [in Scotland] of the first shipment of JD Neuhaus’s [JDN] new range of Mini Next Gen explosion proof air hoists, which we’ll distribute to the UK market.” Interestingly, in the process of on-boarding the range,
Hutin visited JDN USA’s offices in Baltimore, Maryland to mark the launch of the Mini range to the North American marketplace. Tere, extensive product training was just one facet of the meeting, as stateside distributors also participated throughout the week. Hutin says, “Te partnership is really UK-centric, but it was beneficial to spend some time with the U.S. operation, where they have successfully implemented a supply chain through regional distributorships. Te standout realization from the trip was the sheer scale of the market on your side of the pond. We spoke to distributors—significant companies in their own right—who only did business in a single state, and heard stories about manufacturers who have literally thousands of dealers across the country. Imagine a manufacturer having that many partners here in the UK—they’d all be next-door neighbors!”
Steve, Angela Holmes and Alan Varney at RSS headquarters in 2017.
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SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2019
WIRE ROPE EXCHANGE
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