10 QUESTIONS WITH…
Each issue, we ask a flooring industry professional 10 Questions. This month, we chatted to Josh Burbidge, Flooring Director, Atkinson & Kirby.
across Europe. The team we have in the Group have been through some challenging times but we are now starting to get the business back to the footing it should be in the industry.
Q4
If you could hire any one person to be part of your
team, who would it be and why? It would be Johnny Wilkinson, the ex- England fly-half. He has a relentless focus on improving his skills and continuously growing, which is a quality I greatly admire. He is also unflappable and focused under pressure, as demonstrated by his ability to score the drop goal to win the Rugby World in 2003 in the last minute of the game.
Q1
What was your first job? My first holiday job was
working in the Richard Burbidge factory picking products for customer orders during the school holidays. It was an invaluable experience as it helped me learn the ropes and get a real understanding of the industry.
Q2
How did you get into the industry?
In June 2005 I joined the family business Richard Burbidge Ltd and have had various roles in the Group ranging from running the warehouse to managing Masons Timber Products when we purchased the company in 2011. More recently, I took up the role of the Flooring Director with a focus on getting the Atkinson & Kirby brand specified on large commercial projects.
Q3
What has been your proudest moment?
Personally, my proudest moment was witnessing my wife Kim giving birth to our first child Ophelia. From a professional perspective my proudest moment was securing the contract to supply of flooring into the Edyn Group. This involved 12 months of work from my team and resulted in us supplying the flooring for six different hotels
40 | 10 QUESTIONS Q5
What’s the best advice you could give to
someone new coming into
the industry? Focus on becoming a specialist in one area to make yourself standout from the crowd. I strongly believe that the people who rise to the top of our industry are the individuals who have truly honed their skills to become invaluable to their employer.
Q6
If you could be any character from film or
TV who would you be? It is a cliché to say James Bond and I am not sure I could carry it off, much as I might like to! I really enjoyed the series Designated Survivor, I admired the way Thomas Kirkman, Kiether Sutherland’s character, managed all the situations he faced with a cool head and carefully managed a team of personalities to deliver in the best interests of the country guided by integrity and strong personal values.
Q7
What do you think are the positive and negative
aspects of the flooring trade? The positive aspects of the flooring trade are the relationships I have gained throughout my time running Atkinson & Kirby. The varied background of the
characters in the industry makes every day different. The most frustrating aspect of the trade is that you can work hard for months to secure specifications for a large project just to see the order placed with a competitor at the final hurdle as it all boils down to price, not quality or service.
Q8
What do you think the future holds for
flooring design? I think there will rightly be an increased focus on the environmental impact of flooring that is used in large projects and in people’s homes. Whilst we already focus on the sustainability of the raw material that goes into the production of flooring, there also needs to be a review of the environmental impact of the manufacturing practices used to produce some of the plastic- based floorcoverings like vinyl.
Q9
If you weren’t in flooring, what career
would you choose? If money was no object, I’d spend my days sailing with my family – my father introduced me to the sport when I was 12 and I would have loved to have had the opportunity to sail in the America’s Cup.
Q10
Gail Alcock, Product Director for Flooring
at IDS asked: If you could invent something within the floor industry, what would it be and
why would it benefit? One of the biggest challenges we face with wood flooring is changes in moisture and the fact that the material changes in nature when exposed to excess moisture. I’d like to invent a treatment process that prevents moisture changes impacting the structural integrity of our products.
www.akirby.co.uk
Check out next month’s issue to see what Josh Burbidge, Flooring Director at Atkinson & Kirby asked our next industry professional…
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