Make the web your shop window

2 March 2011




In Grant Jamieson’s view, trade associations will become increasingly important in helping their members get the best deals they can in terms of support from the government of the day.

Winkworth, whose brands include Winkworth Mixers, BPT Skerman, Premier Colloid Mills and Ystral, joined the PPMA in 1999. In Grant’s three years at Winkworth, the company has capitalised on the benefits of being a member, and now he is in a position to help other companies do likewise. In the current economic climate, all corners of the world must be considered as territories to trawl for new business. How to generate international interest and develop fruitful commercial relations to drive sales will be his special area of activity.

With globalisation has come reliance on digital technology to initiate and conduct relationships between supplier and customer. The corporate website acts as a window into a company’s world, says Grant, and he stresses that it must reflect all that the company can do, focus on its range of expertise and promote its ability to offer quality.

Grant entered the processing and packaging arena from the aerospace and high quality engineering sectors. He thinks that what he brings in from the ‘outside’ is high expectations. Experience in the oil and gas sector underlined for him the importance of repeatability and a 24/7 approach: “Let someone down and the whole system crashes.”

The biggest difference he sees between his old and new environments is that in processing and packaging the product and service is largely tailor-made and the bespoke elements are defined by the customer. A company’s accumulated know-how and flexibility is its major selling point, says Grant, and he wants to encourage members to exploit such a valuable UK intellectual asset base to attract international customers.

He describes a model website as one that gives a clear message to visitors that the company can be trusted to supply viable solutions.

“Video promotion is a culture that will grow and grow,” says Grant. It enables visitors to ‘click and watch’ as they talk - the kind of multi-tasking that comes easy for the generation that has grown up with information and communications media at their fingertips. With this is mind, Winkworth’s new eBook accessed by the website is designed to provide reassuringly simple to follow explanations and video clips, to convey that buying capital equipment need not be daunting.

“The danger in failing to maximise an internet presence is to be overlooked,” he warns. “The website is the trigger to call and discuss. Like our fellow PPMA members, we offer breadth and depth, and work across many sectors. We believe, with our application experience, UK companies have more to give than customers can do on their own.”

His personal ethos is: “Attitude is everything! I'm a firm believer that skills can be coached, sciences can be taught, but attitude is personal. As a (qualified and now retired England level 2 Rugby) coach, those with the right attitude put more into and get more out of life. They are the ones I'm happy to invest in.”

My ideal candidate for a student or graduate placement: “Those who make the effort deserve the reward. So a student who demonstrates initiative to find the opportunity will be well placed. Clearly the intellect and relevant social skills need to be in place too. A placement is a great opportunity for the realisation of where their strengths and capabilities really lie. So I'd look for the one who will make the most of the opportunity.”

My personal strength is to inspire trust: “An employer must trust that you will make good judgements, that you will apply yourself in the right areas and manage all your resources to get the best of them. The most significant resource in a business is its staff. A key skill of mine is creating the environment for my staff to produce, perform and for them to make the right judgements.”

Grant Jamieson - career history

• Precision engineering expertise gained with the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough

• University degree in Engineering with Business Studies and Diploma in Management Studies (DMS)

• Operations Director for a world-class global, subsea acoustic instrumentation design and manufacturing company

• 2003 Managing Director for a privately owned sub-contract fabrication precision engineering business

• 2008 Managing Director of the Winkworth Group.


Grant Jamieson. Grant Jamieson

Grant Jamieson Grant Jamieson


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