With every year that has ever passed since our origins in 1996, there have been changes and challenges, triumphs and milestone moments.
2017 has been as eventful as ever, more so in fact…
Working through the biting January cold, the renovation work was completed for our whole team to move into our new Warrington base on the site of the old engineering facilities for the RAF Burtonwood WW2 airbase. With it, our new custom-built spray shop and workshop increasing our self reliance and sustainability.
Longtime team member and family man Dave Abbott, father of director Craig Abbott also decided it was time to slow down in January and moved from the fitting teams into the workshop giving him more leisure time that was much deserved after so many years of dedicated service. He was joined by Jon Abbott, our resident spray shop expert making a dream pairing in the preparation of our components.
Old and New: Dave & Jon
As the weather improved we were excited to be informed that we had been nominated for the prestigious National Family Business Awards. Following a successful Skype interview we were shortlisted and received our invitations to a glittering ceremony at Wembley Stadium.
In July we learned of the sad news that James Grace Bespoke Staircases had entered administration. We had shared a friendly rivalry for several years with James Grace who despite being a bigger company than ourselves, had struggled in a competitive marketplace. Being a members of the same specialist industry, our paths had crossed with many of the staff, suppliers and customers effected by events there and our best wishes went out to, and remain with all those effected.
In stark contrast, the Abbott-Wade family travelled down to London in July for the glittering awards ceremony where we were delighted to win the Best Small Business in the North West among the UK’s leading family businesses.
2017 also saw the latest addition to the Abbott-Wade family – the birth of Little Reggie Tyson. His proud dad Charles quite rightly put down his tools for a few weeks to take on his new parenting duties.
August continued to be eventful with experienced fitter Mike Bradshaw joining the fitting ranks and Lewis Wooder joining us as an apprentice. Lewis has been working alongside Craig and Dave Abbott in the workshop building stair components in addition to on site with our fitting team. Lewis shows the exceptional talent and drive to grow with us through Abbott-Wade’s next 30 years!
Mike & Lewis join the team
Back to School: As the next generation of the Abbott-Wade family started school for the first time or moved into the juniors, another team member was also coming back to school. Former Abbott-Wade fitter Andy Hamilton left us in summer 2015 to enrol in a product design degree. As he enters his last year of studies Andy has rejoined us on a part-time basis in the design office utilising his new found CAD skills under the expert eye of Les Dash our Design Manager. Meanwhile Lana Kayat from our frontline office team has returned to university to study for a Masters Degree in Health Psychology while remaining in her Abbott-Wade role for 3 days a week.
Team Members Andy & Lana
Our team of designers met at Abbott-Wade HQ in October design team meeting taking the opportunity to discuss new ideas, share feedback about what our customers have looking for and to debate current and future trends to ensure that we’re always putting our customers needs first.
Like buses, 2 prestigious awards have come our way this year. The Corporate LiveWire Innovation & Excellence Awards have named Abbott-Wade the Best Bespoke Home Improvement Company on the country. It is more recognition that we’re incredibly proud of after many years of hard work and dedication to pioneering our industry.
Our reputation and ethos attracted two more highly experienced and talented craftsmen into our ranks in October as fitters Ben Royle & Sam Brierly joined our team and have already received numerous positive reviews from our customers.
Fitters Ben & Sam join our team
As the year draw towards it’s conclusion, director Craig Abbott celebrated his 40th birthday with his family and friends in November which included father and mentor Dave Abbott, long-time friend and fellow director Mike Wade and his family, wife Michelle, stepson Charles and of course – baby Reggie Tyson, the newest member of the Abbott-Wade family.
Craig & Michelle celebrate at the National Family Business Awards
With the year so full of milestone moments and celebrations almost complete, there was just one more important event remaining in the company calendar – the Annual Abbott-Wade Christmas Party! Each year since 1996, every member of the Abbott-Wade team get together for an evening of festivity. Year-on-year the numbers have grown. It’s not the standard ‘office Christmas party’ as all staff from designers, office staff, fitters & directors get together to celebrate the achievements of the year. It’s an opportunity to blow off steam and have fun as only a family business can.
We hope you’re 2017 has been as enjoyable as ours and we wish you all a very happy Christmas and a prosperous 2018.
