Meet the Team - Blog

July – Customer Service

February – A month of Preparation

March will see a host of new products being launched by the Product team. As a result, February became a busy month for the Marketing team. We have been preparing launch materials for our sales teams and getting ready to activate product campaigns. It is also an exciting time - finishing off the campaign materials and seeing them come to life is always good to see.

To ensure all is ready, final photography shoots have taken place for new inspection lamps, Flooders, Electrical Analysers, and Heavy Duty JumpStarters – we have been busing setting up shoots, getting the props, selecting, and editing images and getting final artwork ready.

As well as all the exciting new products, Marketing have been working with sales teams to win new business. Meeting new customers, understanding what they need and how we can help grow their business is fundamental to any business succeeding. For us in Marketing it has given us the opportunity to showcase what Ring is about and get creative. We have been trying different tools such as LinkedIn Campaign Manager, Direct Mail with surprise and delight boxes, and working up POS and merchandising solutions; all to get engagement, to get that first meeting, so the sales teams can then do their job.

At the end of January, we were told that we had been nominated in CAT Magazine’s annual awards, in the Environmental Category. On the 9th of February we went to Manchester to the award dinner. Sadly, we came away empty handed. However, while it would have been great to win, to be nominated is an achievement in itself. To be recognized in front of your customers and the market in general for the work we are doing to improve our environmental credentials, such as a move to plastic free packaging and commitment to being more sustainable, is the real takeaway. It was also good to network with customers, other suppliers and catch up with old friends.

Lastly, In February we onboarded our new PR agency who will look after our media relations for all three brands – OSRAM, RING and NEOLUX. Looking forward to the new partnership growing and them helping us to achieve our goals, reach new audiences and elevate all three brands reputations.

Day in the Life

Wow, what a start to the year!

As I look back on the whirlwind of 2022 when we welcomed our first Chinese suppliers to Leeds for over 3 years, launched some amazing products (many of which are award-winning – (had to get that in!) and enhanced our ways of working, attended my first Automechanika in Frankfurt (my team did an amazing job selling our products on the stand) and trained our Osram and Ring colleagues, I can’t believe we’re now in 2023!!

The first weeks of 2023 have flown past – we welcomed OSR over and my new line manager joined us for a week. Henning Bohnhirst, Global Head of ACE, met with my team and we discussed how we are going to work going forward across the Group and create a global approach to our product development. It’s all very exciting as we evolve to support both Ring and Osram to achieve our ACE mission.

January and February has been a busy month for shipping our new products. We’ve got lots of exciting ones on the way – flooders, new inspection lamps (look out for colours!), trade dashcams, a Lidl dashcam for Osram (a very stressful project) and many more. These are an essential contribution to our Grow ACE strategic vision.

I can’t not mention my team, who strive to develop and deliver our fantastic products. In our team meeting we celebrate our successes on a weekly basis and I’d like to share some of these with you all. No matter how big or small our successes are, they can make such a difference. Ones that stick out for me are: the team working together to overcome some particularly challenging issues with launching some of our products, thinking creatively to find solutions, some great customer feedback on our products as well as welcoming Chloe Huntlea to our team!