Mark Wadsworth, Managing Director of Senior Architectural Systems
First job: When I was 17 years old I had a job with Achrochem in Newport, cleaning up industrial spills. I’ll never forget having to get inside the fuel tank of a Polish grain ship in Cardiff docks, for £2.50 an hour, on my own. How things have changed.
Most useful/favourite gadget: If not my Sonos system then it has to be my onion goggles. I’ve not shed a tear since.
Favourite/most useful website: Moonpig – I never have to worry about missing a birthday again.
Business person you admire: There are so many to choose from and although it may be a bit corny, I have to say Senior’s owner and founder Lennart Jonsson. As one of the company’s founders, he started from scratch and through the good times and the bad, he’s made some tough but effective decisions which have helped us get to where we are today.
Recommended hotel for business: The Dakota Deluxe hotel in Glasgow. The service, price, facilities and location are all top drawer.
Favourite UK restaurant: Gusto in Sheffield.
Best business decision: Developing and launching our SF52 aluminium curtain walling and PURe® range of windows and doors, both of which have been hugely successful. That said, saving £9k a year on paper towels by installing hand dryers wasn’t a bad call either.
Most successful campaign to date: The project videos we regularly post on Senior’s YouTube channel have been a great addition to our marketing campaigns, with one about our work at the Feethams Leisure development in Darlington clocking up nearly 9,000 views!
Working Week: There’s no such thing as a typical working day but more often than not, it’s a bright and early start at 7.30am. I then spend the morning catching up with our departmental heads, mainly production, procurement and sales, to check that we are all on track. The rest of my time is then usually split between visiting customers and more importantly, concentrating on the direction of the SAS strategy. At the moment, my free time is my kids’ time but I would never turn down an opportunity to watch Wales play in the Six Nations Rugby.
Working Location: I’m fortunate that I live only about a half an hour’s commute to our main office in Denaby, South Yorkshire. We have distribution centres in both Scotland and Wales but here is where we have our state-of-the-art manufacturing and powder-coating facility. We also have an in-house gym, although some of my colleagues may say I have forgotten where it is…
This is a really exciting time for Senior Architectural Systems. We have just enjoyed a record-breaking year in terms of turnover and we’ve been working hard to keep up this momentum and most importantly, stay true to our company motto of giving our customers what they want, when they want it. I joined the company in 1999 and became MD in 2014 and throughout that time, we’ve come a long way and I’m incredibly proud of what we have achieved. Throughout our growth and expansion, we’ve never taken our eye off the ball in terms of customer service and when I’m not at HQ, a large part of my working week is spent visiting our clients, discussing their requirements and ensuring that we have the solutions they need. Getting out and about is vital to maintaining our relationships with our customers and for me, it’s one of the best parts of the job.
I also really enjoy spending time on the shop floor as we’ve invested heavily in new equipment over the last few years and it never fails to impress me when I see it all in action. We’ve been able to double our capacity to produce Ali FOLD doors and Ali VU windows thanks to a new state-of-the-art polyamide rolling machine from Müller Technologies and we’ve also made some major investments in our PURe® production line which has been a game changer. Meeting demand and providing a reliable service is what it’s all about and taking time to see how everything is working and what, if anything, can be improved is really important.
We’ve got a great range of products and our work in the commercial sector has shown the industry that we can compete with the big systems houses – we are just fortunate to be UK based and privately owned so there’s no red tape to deal with. This gives us the freedom to do what we do best, which is develop innovative and cost-effective solutions to meet our customers’ needs. One of our biggest success stories over the last few years has been the development of our PURe® aluminium doors and windows which offer some of the lowest u-values available. I’m also really pleased with the way that our SF52 aluminium curtain walling system has been embraced by both our trade customers and the specification market.
Of course another recent major development has been our move into the domestic residential market and the response that we have had for our Ali VU and Ali FOLD windows and doors has been fantastic. We’ve taken on new customers and we can offer an even more comprehensive product range to our existing network and the feedback we have received on both our new range and the support service we offer has been really positive. We’ve never been a company to stand still though and as you can imagine, an average working week is a pretty busy one! There are plenty of projects and products in the pipeline that I’m really excited to be part of and I’m looking forward to when we roll these out to our customer base in the near future.
