On Thursday 2nd October, Rotary Club President Mairhi Trickett introduced our newest member Nick Bell to give us a talk on his career to date. Nick was born in Jedburgh but at five-years-old moved to Hawick and after his schooling in the town obtained a 1st Class Honours Degree in Computing at Heriot-Watt University.
This led to his being employed by Kwik Fit which at the time was owned by Sir Tom Farmer. This has developed from a tyre and exhaust fitting company into a group which complements each other in wholesaling, domestic, fleet, and with specialised clients such as farmers having “a drive to service” for on-farm servicing. The company was sold to Ford in 1999 and after further ownership changes became a subsidiary of ITOCHU Corporation of Japan in 2011. ITOCHU still own the business and has a portfolio of trading businesses turning over Yen 672.5 per annum (£3.363 billion)
Nick’s first job with Kwik Fit was as a” Cobol” programmer in the IT department, later becoming an IT Team Leader. By 2015 he became a Work Planning Manager when the business name changed to European Tyre Enterprise Limited. By 2020, the group of Kwik Fit companies was UK and European focused, involved in tyres, servicing, MOT testing, brakes, batteries, air conditioning, and mechanical components.
ETEL is the largest MOT tester in the UK. It has 700 sites and 200 mobile tyre vans, 5,000 staff, and changes 12,000 tyres a day.
One of Nick’s major responsibilities is analysing the business using SWOT analysis, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This allows directors to create strategies to manage the findings of the SWOTs. He spoke of a range of key Strengths such as buying power, the number of sites, fleet business and web sales, and of Opportunities including mobile tyre fitting and servicing, E-Bikes, moving more into Europe and dynamic pricing. Weaknesses include company overheads, staff turnover, and difficulty in keeping retail customers. More complicated cars with extended maintenance agreements through distributors is a Threat, as is competition for fleet servicing contracts.
Nick spoke nostalgically of the days of Tom Farmer, when there was very little staff turnover, but nowadays margins will continue to be squeezed in the business and there will need to be growing turnover to satisfy shareholders and investors.
Nicky is now a Senior Developer with the company but hopes to semi retire to have a consultant role soon. This will enable him to spend more time on his hobbies of coin- collecting, metal prospecting, vineyard management, antiques and internet sales.
A number of comments and queries were discussed and then Ron Smith, one of Nick’s former teachers, gave a vote of thanks for an enlightening and instructive talk.
GCT