Interview


How did you get started in this industry and what is your current role?


I’ve been at Ellis for 19 years, starting as technical manager in 2003 and becoming operations manager, operations director and finally managing director. I’ve been MD for two years.


Ellis is essentially an SME, but you have an international presence - how do you maintain your export success?


Yes absolutely - we have just over 60 employees, most of whom are from York and Scarborough and the surrounding villages. More than half our product is exported, so we have a global reach and presence. We sell through distribution; we’ve got a very good sales team and distributors around the world who we deal with directly. Our sales team have weekly meetings with them and go and visit them as often as they can to maintain the relationships. We’re now up to 50 distributors all over the world and we’re always looking at where we can go next.


So in the last few years we’ve had Brexit, a pandemic and an energy crisis. Did Ellis experience any supply chain issues or staff shortages and how did you deal with these? Like most companies, supply chain has been a problem over the last couple of years. We’ve seen the cost of raw materials like stainless steel, even cardboard, go through the roof. It is a challenge when prices are going up on a weekly, sometimes even a daily basis. We’ve had to keep ahead of that and be as efficient as we can to save passing it all on to our distributors. Shipping has been a problem as well - it’s expensive and taking longer than it did pre- pandemic.


How have these challenges affected your distributors? How did you support them through this?


When the issues started, we saw what was happening so significantly increased our stock of raw materials to try and ride some of it out, but you can only do that for so long, and it ties up a lot of cash. The plan this year was to reduce our stock


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testing and we’ve got our own tester on-site to make sure that things are correct and up to standard.


Do you have any outreach strategies for supporting customers?


We do a lot of ‘lunch and learn’ type events, getting out in front of people and supporting them. Although we sell through distributors, we’re very keen to get involved as a company to back up our products. We do CPD courses in person and on our online portal.


levels and release the cash back into the business. But then with the Russian war things took a turn again, so we still have high stock levels but things are starting to settle in certain areas. It’s about finding the balance. We try to absorb as much of the daily stresses and uncertainties as we can - we don’t want our customers to deal with it if we can manage that for them.


How are you future-proofing the business against ongoing and future challenges? We plan a lot and keep a keen eye on what the markets are doing. We’ve seen a reduction in aluminium and stainless steel, but it’s still a challenge and lead times are a lot longer than they used to be.


What are your customers’ demands for cable cleats currently and how do you meet these? Cable cleats is an established market - we’re seeing a lot of projects around wind, data centres and renewables at the moment. We are also looking at bespoke offerings. Where we can sort people’s problems out for them, rather than selling volume we might develop the product specifically for them. As an SME, we can be quite flexible and quickly get new projects out the door.


Can you tell me about your approach to quality assurance?


We see ourselves as the market leaders in QA in the cable cleat arena. We’ve always had a very good reputation within the industry for reliability and


It’s been a challenging couple of years, but what have been some of your personal Ellis highlights?


We like getting involved in the big projects. Seeing our products get used in something that’s actually making a difference is a great feeling - knowing that the cleats you’re producing will end up helping to keep the power on somewhere, or the London Underground going. Seeing people progress within my team and learn new skills is also very important to me. I volunteer with a local training provider that facilitates apprenticeships. We’ve got a very low staff turnover - I’ve been here 19 years and I’m still the young lad! Some of our staff have been here for 30 odd years.


What do you believe are the main forces driving innovation in the UK electro-technical sector today?


Renewables is a growth area in the UK, but with our global reach we do a lot in Europe and the Far East as well with wind. There are different areas where we can be involved and can add our expertise, from export cables for offshore to substations. Because it’s a relatively new market, there’s lots of activity in general, which will mean more opportunities in the future.


What are Ellis’ aims for the rest of 2022 and beyond? Anything exciting in the pipeline that you can talk about?


We’re going to continue supporting our existing customer base, but we’re looking at a few new areas and doing a bit more bespoke work.


September 2022 electrical wholesaler | 27


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