KEYNOTE INTERVIEW Getting Personal
Dave Saltman - do not accept an invitation to one of his dinner parties!
Who are you? Dave Saltman, at least I was last time I looked in the mirror.
Family status? Married with three children - but that may have changed before we come out of the Coronavirus Lockdown!
Who’s your hero and why? None as such. I hold all pioneers in high esteem, but have always held myself as directly accountable for my actions, there’s no one else to blame.
What’s been the highlight of your career so far? There have been numerous milestones and highlights, both socially and through work, but being responsible for the team of people that grew Pitchcare from an idea to a vibrant mid-sized company of around eighty full time staff was no mean feat. Particularly when it meant finding a quarter of a million pounds every month to pay all the running costs before a blade of grass got cut.
If your younger self saw you now, what would they think? What a fat slob. Seriously, I have always been driven by success and to realise so many of my dreams; I would say that all that hard work and determination has paid off and got me where I always desired to be ... a fat slob!
Which famous people wind you up? There’s quite a few I suppose, but currently Greta ‘bloody’ Thunberg.
What job would you love, other than your own? How could anything come close to a life of landscaping and groundsmanship, outdoor vocations of physical fun. If not, I did really enjoy the banter when being a fruit and veg seller at Kingston Market for a few weeks in my teens.
What was the most embarrassing moment in your life? I don’t get embarrassed easily, so probably meeting the parents of a girlfriend I was seeing when I was fifteen!
What is your favourite film? Blimey, depends on genre, any from the following: Gladiator, 28 Days Later, 12 Angry Men, The Blues Brothers, Predator.
What scares you? Still spiders, even at 53, I can’t get happily comfortable with them!
What would your autobiography be called… and who would play you in the film? A pain in the grass ... Patrick Swayze would have been my first choice
What is your favourite sport? None now, after a life full of mostly football (playing, watching and working within it), if I never saw another sporting event, it would be absolutely fine by me.
Which historical time and place would you most like to visit?
The second world war has fascinated me more than anything else in history, but specifically I would visit the concentration camps such as
18 PC June/July 2020
Auschwitz, if there was any opportunity to have stopped what went on.
What would you cast into Room 101? Time wasters.
Do you have a lifetime ambition? As some will tell you, it has always been global domination
Which three people, living or dead, would you invite to a dinner party? Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot and Idi Amin. I would like to have some conversational mischief with them, before announcing I’d poisoned their meals.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given? The two that I follow are; ‘If you don’t succeed, try and try again’ and Norman Tebbit’s famous misquote, of ‘get on your bike and find work’.
What’s your favourite piece of trivia? I really try not to remember trivia, because that’s exactly what it is.
What’s your favourite smell? As corny as it is, the first cut grass of the season, but I miss Creosote!
Which three albums would you take to a desert island? The Wall - Pink Floyd, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway - Genesis, Requiem - Mozart.
What’s the daftest work-related question you have ever been asked? Will the mower cut shorter if I let the air out of the tyres (fairway mower).
What’s your favourite piece of kit? A broom - without one, everywhere would look a disaster and make me look like one too!
What three words would you use to describe yourself? Confident, humorous, committed.
What is the single most useful thing you could tell a 16-year-old groundsperson or greenkeeper? Get yourself on Pitchcare and start understanding what the profession is all about; everything you need to learn is on there somewhere.
What talent would you like to have? I would love to be able to sing like Freddie Mercury, what an amazing voice he had.
What law/legislation would you like to see introduced? The re-introduction of two years military service for all school leavers. Give them a real sense of respect for authority, discipline, health improvement and working ethic.
companies ‘after-marketing’ to our customers. They were basically letting us find the customers and then stealing them from us, so we had limited repeat business.”
The two companies that supplied the
West Midlands at that time were Breakwells and ALS but, with the former’s owner Len Breakwell retiring, the company closed leaving a big gap in supply.
Dave and John approached the board of ALS with an offer to buy them out on a cash and shares scheme basis but, as the financial crisis was gathering pace, no banks were prepared to support the venture, even though both companies were profitable and the business plan was sound. “We had been sat on the buyout for twelve months, all the while worrying whether another company might come in for ALS or set themselves up in Birmingham, when we learned that the Co-op Bank were changing their business model and were looking to invest in blue chip companies. So, in 2009, we bought ALS, which immediately gave us stock, warehousing and distribution.” “But it wasn’t without its teething problems, not least trying to merge a vibrant young business with the more traditional methods of ALS. And we acquired their contracts division and reps as well!” “Yet, just two years later, we had doubled the turnover from four to eight million pounds and also increased the size of the workforce to around seventy.” “Wrekin Farmers were our landlords, who had been selling off their assets in a tax efficient manner. Their final asset was the twelve acre site we rented at Allscott just outside Telford. So, when it was offered to us for £1.5 million in 2014, we knew it was exactly what we needed. But we needed to have 40% equity to get a mortgage - around £600,000 - and we simply weren’t that cash rich, so I emailed all the staff and asked if they’d like to get involved. The response was fantastic, to the point we were oversubscribed! In the end, we had twenty-three staff members involved via a pension scheme that
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