Water, water, everywhere

On Wednesday, I circumnavigated the M25. I’m told that, when it opened, people used to try to complete the circuit in an hour.  I would judge that rather more difficult today.  Anyway, my Honda which passed its 100,000 miles minutes after my last blog is now well past its 101,000 miles.

(I know the above is a rubbish picture but the key point here is that, after complaining two weeks ago about my inability to position pictures using the blogger.com interface anywhere but at the top of the post, I thendiscovered Microsoft Live Writer.  This is a free application which is part of Windows Live and can easily be downloaded from http://download.live.com/writer.  It is a cut-down word processor especially designed for blogging (offline!) but it links easily to your blogging account so that you can easily preview and play with layout just as if you were in something like Word.  Anyway, the above picture is not at the top of the post and nor will the next one be!)

What drove me to such levels of tedium?  (I refer to the M25, not to the geek-speak in the last paragraph. But I understand the possible confusion.)

Well…. for that, I need to tell you a story!

Blenheim Palace Natural Mineral Water is an important business for us.  The water course runs under the Palace and then flows across the estate towards Combe and beyond.  There are actually two water courses (deep down and about 10m apart) under the park.  We use the deeper one as it has a more distinctive taste – the higher one apparently tasted like Hildon!  It is a very stable supply, allowing us to claim the hallowed status of Natural Mineral Water.

The first bottling plant was actually at the Palace.  A wise veteran of the water industry (John Odell) had uncovered the water course and arranged to test it.  He and the Duke quickly went into a partnership which runs to this day.  Initially sold locally, the demand for the  water quickly outstripped the capacity of the plant, so the decision was made to follow the path of the water course and build a better water plant down at Park Farm, in the heart of Blenheim Park.  There, a much larger plant was built to fill glass bottles, and a second line was added to fill the large 19 litre bottles you see on top of commercial water coolers.

With the prestigious bottled water mainly sold into high end hotels and restaurants in London, the business has grown to a much larger size, selling over 2.5 million bottles a year. The local market has grown recently too, as Oxfordshire hotels and restaurants have become more sensitive to the environmental implications of shipping water from Scotland – or even, Lord help us, Fiji!

Blenheim Palace Natural Mineral Water drank in Oxford will not have moved more than ten miles in its life – and unlike mains water, it won’t have been through the human body seven times either. Go to our website for details of suppliers. PLEASE!!

Anyway, when I was appointed as Finance Director back in 2003, John (our CEO) thought it would be very funny to put me in charge of the water business (“oh, don’t worry, you’ll enjoy the P&L responsibility.” Ha!). In the run up to a trustees’ meeting, I have little time to spend on that business so I tend to over-react afterwards and run around to see customers etc.

Now, bear in mind that I am a simple Northern boy.  In the North, cities have a centre.  They’re not too big.  You can get around them fairly easily.

Bear something else in mind.  My knowledge of London is pretty lousy too. I may have worked there for six years but that only taught me where Canary Wharf, Oxford Street, Paddington and Marylebone are. I still think London is laid out exactly like a tube map.  And (fatally in this context) I have no idea where London starts and stops.

My plan was to visit two very important London business partners for our water business.  The first was Casa Julia, a wonderful Italian wholesaler which distributes a lot of our water into London.  The second was Love Water, a water cooler company supplying cooler water into London and the Southern Home Counties.

How hard could it be to visit two customers in London in one day.  Hell, I’d be back in time to do some work in the afternoon.

It was only as I checked my routes on Google Maps that I began to see the problem.  It turns out that the London which Casa Julia is based in is Braintree, Essex.  And it further turned out that the London Love Water was based in was…wait for it… London Gatwick.

It turns out that these two Londons are not exactly close to each other….

Come to think of it, they are not exactly near London either.

But it was a great trip nonetheless.  Casa Julia was a fascinating visit, which I undertook with our sales manager Bernie Drewell.  Enzo, who runs it, is a giant of a man who has patiently built up a wonderful operation over 30+ years.  Their site has a slight mirage quality to it, rising up beautifully out of an industrial estate

 

Yes this really is their warehouse! And they have built a mirror image opposite.  They are growing very quickly and working very hard to grow our business too, for which we are very grateful.  Their reputation among London hotels is very strong and they are treasured partners.  More than that, they insisted we join them for a light lunch and managed to produce delicious gluten free bread for sandwiches. I think I love them!

Love Water is a water cooler company in which we have made a sizeable investment, backing Nick Swan who we have known (and traded with) for many years.  He does not have beautiful offices but he does have a superb track record and, like the Casa Julia team, possesses great integrity – not always a given in any industry.

Thanks to guys like these, we will continue to grow this important business which is led by the completely inimitable Trevor Rawden. There are many photos which I could publish of this colourful man.  But don’t worry, Trevor, your secrets are safe with me (well, and everybody else too). I will confine myself to this showing Trevor and some of his team celebrating a recent contract win…… Luckily, we just happened to have a camera to hand to capture this spontaneous moment.

Our sales effort is led by Bernie Drewell and Alan Smith, an unstoppable combination who could write the manual on selling.  Where they get their stamina from I do not know but they keep Trevor and his team very busy!

We are very blessed in this business with the quality of partners we have and, as with all of our businesses, we try always to be great partners too. We know that, wherever our water goes, there also goes our name and reputation.  That is something we feel very relaxed about, due to the quality of our team, our product and our partners.

And that is why I was still smiling as I completed my circumnavigation (well, that plus the fact that United had just taken the lead against CSKA Moscow…..).

PS my challenge for next time is to work out how to wrap text around the photos :)

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